Four days later. 2348 hours. Ten days after the attack on Selection, Porter took a sip of his pint and waited for the man they’d been sent to lift. He was sitting next to Bald at a table at the front of the Paradiso Bar, midway along the main strip and thirty metres up from the marina. Outside a cool wind blasted in from the Mediterranean, shaking the awnings above the restaurants and tumbleweeding cigarette butts across the cobbled street. Close to midnight and Puerto Banus was heaving with stag groups and tourists and bored-looking Russian models with their Louis Vuitton handbags and Jimmy Choo high heels. Marbella in January was a lot like Essex in July, thought Porter. Only with less fake tan. Thirty metres away on the other side of the street stood the Pony Lounge. The strip club was discreetly tucked away on the first floor of a whitewashed building at the corner of the strip, at Porter’s two o’clock. A set of steps led from street level up to a whitewashed building with a plain brown door and a small neon sign above it in bright pink lettering, and the svelte silhouette of a topless dancer.
