CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,89
fancy it, James?’
James laughed. ‘Maybe the Dogs of War will make me a better offer.’
‘Cheeky little bastard,’ Shampoo Jr shouted, giving James a gentle punch in the back and making beer spew down his top.
‘So what do you boys fancy?’ Will asked. ‘Hardcore stage for some dancing? Look around the strip, or the swap meet?’
‘Flesh Tent,’ Minted and Rhoda said in unison.
‘What’s that?’ James asked.
Will laughed and grabbed James by his shirt. ‘If you’ve never been you’ve got to go there first.’
‘And it’s better while you’re still sober,’ Rhoda added.
At the bottom of the hill the lads turned away from the strip and headed towards a white hexagonal tent. After stopping to buy bottles of iced Budweiser they paid four quid each, got their hands stamped and headed inside, with James getting teased as the older boys pointed at the Strictly Over 18s sign.
Inside there were about a hundred and fifty seats, but the all-male audience stood crushed up at the front. Music blasted out of tinny speakers as six topless women danced limply up on stage.
James and the other lads jostled up close to the stage as the music stopped playing and a seedy looking fatty in a velvet jacket walked up to a microphone.
‘OK folks, let’s give our beautiful amateur ladies a big round of applause. And a reminder, our winner walks out with a hundred pounds and you the audience get to decide.’
‘Looks like we’ve missed most of it,’ James said.
Will shook his head. ‘It goes on like this all day. Strippers, pole dancers, amateur girls. Last year they had these two Estonian chicks in leather whipping each other.’
‘So let’s hear some noise for contestant number one,’ the compere shouted.
The room stayed quiet as a woman in her fifties dressed in red suspenders stepped forward and wiggled her flabby arms.
James spat out a mouthful of beer. ‘Oh that’s gross,’ he moaned.
‘They always do that,’ Shampoo Jr explained. ‘One really disgusting one to rile up the crowd.’
Contestant numbers two and three got some noise from the crowd. Contestant four got a good reception, except from a group behind James who were jeering and calling her a whore. This caused a whole bunch of men to back up from the stage and before James knew it two groups of outlaws were facing off directly behind him.
‘Come on folks, it’s just a bit of fun,’ the compere shouted. ‘My old mum used to tell me to hold my breath and count to ten.’
‘I’ll slit your throat,’ roared a huge barrel of a man standing directly behind James, but it all seemed like bravado until James saw the flash of a butterfly knife, which promptly plunged into a stomach.
Will and the others had backed out through a gap, but James found himself trapped between the stage and the fight as a dozen men traded kicks and punches. Folding chairs scraped on the wooden floor as men piled out the back of the tent in a state of panic, then became the weapons of choice as the brawl spread across the room.
James didn’t want to get involved, but his only way out was up the three steps at the side of the stage. To his astonishment the fat compere charged towards him and ordered him to get down before swinging a punch.
‘I’m just trying to get out,’ James shouted, as he ducked the punch and whacked the compere around the head.
The six topless contestants had run off and were grabbing their tops and shoes from behind a flimsy partition. As James raced across stage to a back exit someone switched on the lights. The smaller of the two fighting groups was running out, there was no sign of Will or the others, but James could see the patches from up on stage and realised that the man who’d been stabbed was a London Brigand.
James jumped off the back of the stage and followed two of the contestants through a rear flap. The tent backed on to the metal perimeter of the Tea Party compound. James stepped gingerly over an air-conditioning pipe and cables, but he heard a girl screaming back inside the tent.
‘You dirty bitch,’ the compere yelled as he hit the girl again. ‘I don’t give a shit where your clothes are.’
This seemed wrong, so James rushed back inside where the petite contestant number five stood barefoot and still topless. Her dark hair was wound around the compere’s hand.