HARD GRAFT - GQ November

The doorman’s pit bull terrier in the foyer of the nightclub was meant to act as a deterrent to any troublemakers. But it was no defence against the man running up the stairs shooting at it with a silver-coloured pistol. Two shots and the dog was dead. The gunman and his posse trampled over the animal as the punters scattered.

Bullets were pumped into the groin and thigh of a bouncer. The barman was kneecapped. A member of the gang smashed a bottle and rammed it into the face of a second doorman. The bouncer’s main artery was severed and it took 50 stitches to close up the wound. “How no one was killed is a miracle,” says the policeman in charge of the case.

Other doormen haven’t been so lucky: four have been killed in the last six months, victims of a new wave of drug violence where bouncers are at the frontline of the big money to be made from dealing in nightclubs across Britain. As the profits escalate, so the stakes are raised, and the new drug dealers and old-school firms of doormen become inextricably linked.

A survey published by the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence has showm that over 50 per cent of sixteen-year-olds have taken drugs. Even more significantly, some 60 per cent have been offered drugs. Those figures illustrate the huge increase in drug dealing and consumption that has meant the Summer of Love in 1988 became the Summer at Hate in 1995.

Dealers can make good money selling drugs anywhere. But in the nightclubs that play house, garage, rave and jungle music. it is a safe bet that over half the punters are potential customers. Those punters will pay a street price of £12 for a tablet of ecstasy which the dealer has bought for £2.

If a dealer can operate in a club and sell to 500 clubbers, he will have made a handsome £5,000 profit in one night – if he can trade exclusively, with his own people doing the selling for him. The doormen are the crucial link in the chain that leads to this ready market for drugs. They are the key either to big profits, or eviction and possibly arrest.

If the doormen evict a dealer, then they will have denied him big money. If they let him trade freely without eviction, then rivals may try and move in on the same pitch. “Where there’s drugs, there’s money and where there’s money there’s going to be violence,” says Simon Jones, a club promoter and doorman, who has worked on most Midlands doors.

“It happens at every club.” The reason is simple. Nightclubs offer dealers captive markets, instant cash and huge profits rather than a steady trickle of one-off punters or small-time dealers. One way to cash in without risk of ejection or being reported to the police is to pay the “door” – the term for firms hired by clubs to operate their security.

Nightclub doormen are becoming inextricbly linked to drug dealing. For either a flat fee (between £500 and' a £1,000) or a percentage of the drugs sold – usually paid in cash to the head door-man – “the door” will turn a blind eye to the fact that the dealer and his runners are selling drugs to punters. But an even more important part of the deal is that the security people will evict any rival dealers.

In many cases they will even take the drugs and hand them over to the dealer with whom they have a deal and split the profits. Those dealers, obviously, have no recourse to the law. But they do have the underground muscle to vent their revenge on the bouncers. The result is another, and potentially the most ruthless rung in the escalating ladder of drug violence: word-of-mouth deals, counter deals and betrayals between terms of drug dealers and bouncers whose last resort is murder.

Upstairs at an Essex nightclub, in a back room that used to be a basic kitchen in the innocent days of Chicken-in-the-Basket culture, a much more sinister purpose is in hand. It's 2am and the stifling air is heavy From the thronging punters grooving to the latest house and garage cuts below. Gary, the head doorman, sits in his black suit and bow tie on one of the old work surfaces, wiping perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief.

Opposite him is Matthew, a major local drug dealer. He has permed hair and wears black jeans, a black T-shirt and a waistcoat. Both of them sport a small tattoo between their thumb and forefinger, a tacit hardman insignia that shows neither is an easy touch. There is an awkward silence. The two men stare at each other, neither showing fear, and Gary wipes the perspiration from his head again.

“I’m a very unhappy man, Matthew,” he says. “Why’s that, Gary'” The doorman hands over a scrap of A4 exercise book paper with dates of weekends and cash beside them. The dealer looks down it. Both men know that the end result of this meeting could mean serious violence for either of them.

Gary’s door firm could take Matthew for unpaid debts from dealing at the club; Matthew’s drug dealing firm could get violent with Gary to save the £4,000 he claims they owe him. "I think you know.” “I don’t. I don't know.” “You owe me tour grand, you know that." "I don’t think it’s four grand.” “You owe me the money. You’ve walked past me loads of times. But you haven’t come up to me about the money.”

“I wasn’t walking past you Gary. I was waiting for the bill." “You do agree that you owe me the money, don’t you?” “Well, I don’t know if it’s that much.” “Have a look at this.” “Tell me what don’t you agree with on that, then,” says Gary. “You know it’s been tough.” “That ain’t my problem. I’ve turned down a couple of people who ivan' to deal in here. To be honest it's because I want the money from you. But I'm being taken for a cunt. What are you going to do."

“I’m not taking you for a cunt. Gary. I owe a lot. You know it's been tough. I'll get 500 to i you in a couple of weeks." “What about the rest? It’s more than 500.” “As soon as – what else can I say? I've got to buy the gear.” “I don't like being taken for a cunt. I'm a very unhappy man.” “I’m not taking you for a cunt. Gary. Times are hard. You know that I owe. I’ve had my court fine. “Do you agree you owe me that money?”

“I’ll pay it as soon as." “How many dealers have you got working. Four?” "Four. yeah. but it'‘ quiet. You know it’s quiet tonight.” “There's still, what 500 people here. You should be selling at least a pill to a third of them.’ “I know.” “Why aren’t you." Matthew doesn't say anything. He senses he’s losing the argument. Two of his dealers have been busted and he’s 2,000 tabs of ecstasy down.

Gary has already talked to one of his partners. He too knows that Matthew doesn't have the cash. He also knows ‘ he can hand the right to deal to another dealer – at the risk of a revenge attack from Matthew’s drug dealing firm. “Because they're a bunch of cunts‘." continues Gary. “They can't sell anything. It’s no good standing there with the ear in your pocket. You've got to sell it, you now.

That kid down there. Fucking hell. he ain’t a dealer. That’s why you're not selling. You could sell to 150 people. What's that. Ten, twelve quid each?" "I know Gary. I’ve got to get myself started." “I hear you’re paying them down in Southend. That's 'cos they demand it or you get hurt. I’m being Fair and I'm treated like a cunt.” “C’mon Gary, you know it ain’t like that." “You don't get no grief here. You’ve got no problems with the Old Bill. You’ve got no competition. You’re treating me like a cunt.

You wouldn’t do that to them down in Southend, would you." “I don’t know about that, as it goes.” “Well, you can start with that five hundred. Because I ain't being taken for a cunt. I want my money.” “You’ll get it, Gary. As soon as. And I ain’t being funny when I say that. I mean it.” “Not with those cunts dealing, you won’t.” “I know Gary, but I’m getting it sorted, you know what I mean?”

“Well, I ain’t a happy man. Start with that 500 and you can tell me .hat you’re gonna do. Because the onus isn’t on me to come asking you for money. I ain’t like that. It’s you who owes the debt.” As the conversation ends another bouncer comes to the door. “Gary, there’s a problem, the Old Bill are here,” he says. Gary hurtles into the bar and round to a back entrance with two other doormen in tow.

Outside the club a man is stripped to the waist with blood streaming down his face. He’s been ejected and hit by one of the doormen after two girls had complained of being harassed. The police are questioning the witnesses as clubbers watch, half-interested, in the street behind the club, illuminated by the flashing light of the ambulance.

It’s a familiar nightclub scene. But as drug use continues to rocket, clubs are becoming increasingly dangerous places for the people who work in them. Although the police will attend any incidents and investigate them, they accept that drug use in nightclubs is now electively unstoppable.

“In theory, it’s right that if people are found in possession of drugs, we should become involved,” says Sergeant John Hills, from London’s Kentish Town Police Station, in charge of licensing the borough of Camden’s nightclubs. “But we’re living in the real world here and we can’t stop what people do. “And if we did, we'd have to be permanently there. It's not physically possible. We’d have to have a police station in every one of these places.

You have to pick your priorities. The priorities are to stop people dealing in these places and get them away. When they deal, then we do get involved.” As a result of the recent killings, a new organisation of Camden licensees called CILLA – Camden Inner London Licensing Association – has been set up to try and tackle the increasing problem of drug use in clubs and the violence associated with it.

CILLA is now considering a move where all club doormen have to be licensed. Neighbouring Westminster Council has had a licensing scheme in operation for the past two years, as has Bradford. This autumn Parliament is considering a bill requiring club doormen to be licensed nationwide. The existing licensing schemes require bouncers to be registered, to go through basic training in fire drill. personal relations and first aid.

More importantly, they will be required not to have a criminal record. If a bouncer is charged, then he will be struck os the register and won't be able to work. This system is already operating in Westminster. Gary scoffs at these proposals. “If you employ doormen who are essentially wet behind the ears, they won’t have any effect,” he says.

“Everyone will take the piss and there’ll be a lot more trouble. “Drugs are a fact of life in clubs. What we’re doing is keeping every-thing sweet. The punters know who the dealers are and know that the gear isn't going to be dodgy. We stop rival dealers going in there and getting into fights. With this arrangement, it’s all controlled. There’d be a lot more trouble if we didn’t deal with these people."

There would also. of course, be a severe drop in income for the bouncers. With an average wage of £10 an hour. they earn less than £100 a night. They can double their money simply by turning a blind eye to the dealers working their nightclub. Some doormen have also dealt drugs themselves, but generally their sidelines are protection and intimidation. “I don’t mind bashing somebody or taking their money,” says Gary.

“But there’s something dirty about dealing drugs. I’ve got two kids. What would they think if I got caught doing that?” Bagley’s nightclub in London’s King’s Cross, where a bouncer was killed earlier this year, is a member of CILLA. It has its own internal security which watches over the security guards on the door contracted out to Newglass, a large security firm staffed by a lot of ex-army soldiers that also offers security for film and pop stars.

“I don’t want drugs, I want to sell alcohol at the end of the day,” says Bagley’s promotions manager Debbie Lee. “There’s an awful lot of money to be made: we already make a very good living from the door and the bar. Our security company feels the same, they make a very good living running a door.”

But she concedes that it is impossible to totally police a club door. “From a venue point of view, I think anyone is corruptible,” she says. “You have a door earning £80-£100 a night and you have someone offering them a lot of money to turn a blind eye. We’re realistic, but we like to think our doormen are loyal. Doormen who are corrupt aren’t just a danger to the public, but the venue management and the venue bouncers.

“But in order to understand the problem, you have to understand the demand out there as well. If people weren’t taking drugs, there wouldn’t be the demand. Once the government wake up and the police wake up we might be able to do something. But I don't think anyone’s prepared to put it on record that the youth in this count have a massive drug culture.

Everyone’s frightened of being too liberal.” Home Office statistics show seizures of controlled drugs increasing from 72,065 in 1992 to 85,876 in 1993 (the latest figures available) with persons convicted for trafficking increasing from 6,329 to 6,678 over the same period. But those figures don’t reflect the huge increase of drug use in Britain’s nightclubs over the past year.

“It’s a very clandestine activity,” says Greg Poulter, deputy; director of the drug welfare charity, Release. “In that scene drug use is seen as the norm rather than the exception. It’s not that everyone’s using it, it’s that people don't see it as deviant. It’s seen in the same ivan as the clothing or bottled water.”

The punters in the clubs are largely unaware of the deals that go on to supply them. Although big dealers go to nightclubs to oversee their team of smaller dealers who trade direct, they don't carry the drugs themselves. As drug culture has become a fixture of many nightclubs, it is also moving away from ecstasy to LSD, because it’s cheap. and cocaine, because punters are being sold bad or weak ecstasy and it’s seen as a safe, if expensive, alternative.

With cocaine being sold in nightclubs at £60 upwards a gimme, the profits are set to become much higher. While the clubs hate violence on their presses and try to strike up good working relationships with their doormen. they also know that drugs are part of club culture. “To be honest they will actually say to the doormen: ‘Right, search them but don’t be too thorough, don’t search girls’, and so on.

Drugs provide a vibe and a club will run better if there’s a certain amount there because that’s what people want,” says one promoter who has run clubs across London. It is the hardmen of the drug firms and door firms who are dictating whether that demand is supplied and who supplies it. Back in the Essex nightclub, Gary has a word with Matthew, who’s talking to a couple of friends older, harder than the other punters at the bar.

Matthew whispers something in his ear and he moves into a crowd of kids dancing at the edge of the dance floor and hauls one of them away. Five minutes later the kid is thrown out and Gary goes into the back room. “Fifteen packets of dope. Two grammes of charlie."Three hundred quid’s worth,” he says. The kid with the drugs won't come back, but his supplier might, and the scene is set for another clash between doormen and drug dealers.

Gary, though, isn’t too concerned. “They’re hard, but they’re children compared to the people in my firm,” he says