Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time by M.P. Wright

mainly elderly men whose only interest was the liquor that sloshed around in their beer glasses.
    Vic was clean-shaven and dressed in a black velvet jacket with a purple paisley shirt, its top three buttons opened, and around his neck he wore a thin silk scarf held by a gold hoop. His tight dark-grey flares were held up by a wide black leather belt, its diamanté buckle hanging suggestively above his crotch. I called out to him and he turned and walked towards me, a massive grin on his face. He greeted me with all the exuberance of a man who permanently lived his life to the full.
    “Brother, you see the titties on her?” he asked. He gave a gentle nod backwards with his head towards the heavyset barmaid. “She carrying more milk in there than on the back o’ a Unigate float.” He gave out a loud belly laugh at his own remark. “What you drinking? No, wait. I’ll git you a rum, you looks like you freezing ya ass off!” He rubbed his hands together excitedly as he returned to the bar.
    We found a table that over looked the entrance to the pub and drank in silence. I knew that Vic wasn’t happy with my decision to keep searching for Stella, but he’d go along with me, right or wrong. The way he saw it, you didn’t run out on your family when they needed you the most – it was as simple as that. He looked around the room before knocking back the rest of his rum. He slammed the glass down hard on the table, breathing in deeply through his nose before he spoke.
    “Man, this place is giving me the shits. It’s like some nasty honky morgue. Let’s git the hell outta here.”
    The Speed Bird club was a brothers and sisters kind of place. That’s not to say that white folk weren’t welcome. It’s just that they chose to stay away. It was run by Elrod Haddon, a one-time heavyweight boxer and now small-time gambler who’d bought a stake in the bar. He’d earned the nickname “Hurps” during the Second World War on account of how many times he had caught the clap off of the hookers that he’d bedded as he made his way across bombed-out France.
    “I had me a rifle in one hand and a tube o’ medicated dick cream in the other,” he would joke to those who enquired after his moniker. His character was as large as his ego. Hurps was well known in St Pauls. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy who didn’t take any shit from his customers and expected none back. I liked him.
    The Speed Bird was a cellar club that rarely required a doorman. You went in to drink, smoke and dance. You took a fight out in the street, and if you pushed your luck at the bar you’d end up with your ass kicked out on the road. Vic would feel right at home. The effects of the aspirin were wearing off and I just wanted to find out what Jocelyn knew and head back to my bed.
    The place reeked of patchouli oil and three-day-old reefer, and like the Prince of Wales, it was practically empty. On the far wall overlooking a small dance floor was a series of American-diner-style booths, each with leather seating on either side of grey Formica-topped tables. We chose the last booth, and Vic slid across the seat and rested his back in the corner, one leg propped up on the cracked leather cushion. He took his hip flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewing the cap.
    “I got no need to ask what you drinking,” I said sarcastically.
    He took a heavy glug of rum from the flask before answering me.
    “Hell, you don’t buy ice and fry it, fool. I got a shitload o’ this stashed. You know what Hurps can do with his old piss water over there,” he scoffed, waving the back of his big hand towards the bar dismissively.
    I crossed the dance floor over to where Hurps was sitting. He was perched on top of a high-backed chrome stool, with a pair of half-framed gold spectacles perched on the tip of his nose while he read a copy of the Bristol Evening Post . Bobby Bland’s “Stormy Monday Blues” was playing on the sound system as I stood beside him.
    “How’s