10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (265 page)

Rebus tried to swallow, couldn’t. He hadn’t noticed the name of the club. He looked with new eyes, saw dancers and drinkers, saw proprietorial arms around unwilling necks. Saw hungry eyes and money used for mating. He imagined Johnny Bible standing quietly by the bar, ticking off possibles in his mind, narrowing the options down to one. Then asking Michelle Fifer for a dance . . .

When Rebus suggested they move on, Lumsden didn’t disagree. So far, they’d paid for one round of drinks: the restaurant meal had been ‘taken care of, and the bouncer on the door of the club had nodded them through, bypassing the cash desk.

As they left, a man escorted a young woman past them. Rebus half-turned his head.

‘Someone you know?’ Lumsden asked.

Rebus shrugged. ‘Thought I recognised the face.’ He’d seen it only that afternoon: dark curly hair, glasses, olive complexion. Hayden Fletcher, Major Weir’s ‘PR guru’. He was looking like he’d had a good day. Fletcher’s companion glanced back at Rebus and smiled.

Outside, there were still slants of purple light in the sky. In a cemetery across the road, starlings were mobbing a tree.

‘Where now?’ Lumsden said.

Rebus stretched his spine. ‘Actually, Ludo, I think I’ll just head back to the hotel. Sorry to wimp out like this.’

Lumsden tried not to look relieved. ‘So what’s your itinerary tomorrow?’

Suddenly Rebus didn’t want him to know. ‘Another meeting with the deceased’s employer.’ Lumsden seemed satisfied.

‘And then home?’

‘In a couple of days.’

Lumsden tried not to let his disappointment show. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘get a good night’s sleep. You know your way back?’

Rebus nodded and they shook hands. Lumsden headed off one way, Rebus the other. He kept walking in the direction of the hotel, taking his time, window-shopping, checking behind him. Then he stopped and consulted his map, saw that the harbour area was almost walking distance. But the first taxi that came along, he flagged it down.

‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

‘Somewhere I can get a good drink. Somewhere down by the docks.’ He thought: ‘Down Where the Drunkards Roll.’

‘How rough do you want?’

‘As rough as it gets.’

The man nodded, started off. Rebus leaned forward in his seat. ‘I thought the city would be livelier.’

‘Ach, it’s a bit early yet. And mind, the weekends are wild. Pay-packets coming off the rigs.’

‘A lot of drinking.’

‘A lot of
everything
.’

‘I hear all the clubs are owned by Americans.’

‘Yanks,’ the driver said. ‘They’re everywhere.’

‘Illegal as well as legal?’

The driver stared at him in his rearview. ‘What were you after in particular?’

‘Maybe something to get me high.’

‘You don’t look the type.’

‘What does the type look like?’

‘It doesn’t look like a copper.’

Rebus laughed. ‘Off-duty and playing away from home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Edinburgh.’

The driver nodded thoughtfully. ‘If
I
wanted to get high,’ he said, ‘I’d maybe think about Burke’s Club on College Street. This is us.’

He pulled the cab to a stop. The meter read just over two pounds; Rebus handed over five and told him to keep the change. The driver leaned out of his window.

‘You weren’t a hundred yards from Burke’s when I picked you up.’

‘I know.’ Of course he knew: Burke’s was where Johnny Bible had met Michelle.

As the cab drew away, he took stock of his surroundings. Right across the road was the harbour, boats moored there, lights showing where men were still working – maintenance crews probably. This side of the road was a mix of tenements, shops and pubs. A couple of girls were working the street, but traffic was quiet. Rebus was outside a place called the Yardarm. It promised karaoke nights, exotic dancers, a happy hour, guest beers, satellite TV, and ‘a warm welcome’.

As Rebus pushed open the door, he felt the warmth straight off. It was broiling inside. It took him a full minute to work his way to the bar, by which time the smoke was stinging even his hardened eyes. Some of the customers looked like fishermen – cherry faces, slick hair and thick jerseys. Others
had hands blackened with oil – dockside mechanics. The women had eyes drooping from drunkenness, faces either too heavily made-up or else needing to be. At the bar, he ordered a double whisky. Now that the metric system had taken over, he could never remember whether thirty-five mils was less or more than a quarter gill. Last time he’d seen so many drunks in the same place had been after a Hibs/Hearts match. He’d been drinking down Easter Road, and Hibs had won. Pandemonium.

It took him five minutes to engage in conversation with his neighbour, who used to work on the rigs. He was short and wiry, already completely bald in his thirties, and wore Buddy Holly glasses with jam-jar lenses. He had worked in the canteen.

‘Best of fucking food every day. Three menus, two shifts. Top quality. The new arrivals always stuffed themselves, but they soon learned.’

‘Did you work two weeks on, two off?’

‘Everybody did. Seven-day weeks at that.’ The man’s face was pointing down at the bar as he spoke, like his head was too heavy to lift. ‘You got hooked on it. The time I spent on land, I couldn’t settle, couldn’t wait to get back offshore.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Times got tougher. I was surplus to requirements.’

‘I hear the rigs are hoaching with dope. Did you ever see any?’

‘Fuck aye, all over the place. Just for relaxation, understand? Nobody was daft enough to go out to work wired up. One false move, a pipe can have your hand off – I know, I’ve seen it. Or if you lose your balance, I mean, it’s a two-hundred fucking foot drop to the water. But there was plenty of dope, plenty of booze. And I’ll tell you, there might not have been any women, but we had scud mags and films up to our ears. Never seen the like. All tastes catered for, and some of them were pretty disgusting. That’s a man of the world talking, so you know what I mean.’

Rebus thought he did. He bought the wee man a drink. If his companion leaned any lower over the bar, his nose would be in the glass. When someone announced that the karaoke would start in five minutes, Rebus knew it was time to leave. Been there, done that. He used his map to guide him back towards Union Street. The night was growing livelier. Groups of teenagers were roaming, police wagons – plain blue Transits – checking them out. There was a strong uniformed presence, but nobody seemed intimidated. People were roaring, singing, clapping their hands. Midweek Aberdeen was like Edinburgh on a bad Saturday night. A couple of woolly suits were discussing something with two young men, while girlfriends stood by chewing gum. A wagon was parked next to them, its back doors open.

I’m just a tourist here, Rebus told himself, walking past.

He took a wrong turn somewhere, ended up approaching his hotel from the opposite direction, passing a large statue of William Wallace brandishing a claymore.

‘Evening, Mel,’ Rebus said.

He climbed the hotel steps, decided on a nightcap, one to take up to his room. The bar was full of conventioneers, some of them still wearing their delegate badges. They sat at tables awash with empty glasses. A lone woman was perched at the bar, smoking a black cigarette, blowing the smoke ceiling-wards. She had peroxide hair and wore a lot of gold. Her two-piece suit was crimson, her tights or stockings black. Rebus looked at her and decided they were stockings. Her face was hard, the hair pulled back and held with a large gold clasp. There was powder on her cheeks, and dark gloss lipstick on her lips. Maybe Rebus’s age; maybe even a year or two older – the sort of woman men called ‘handsome’. She’d had a couple of drinks, which was perhaps why she smiled.

‘Are you with the convention?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Thank Christ for that. I swear every one of them’s tried chatting me up, but all they can talk about is crude.’ She
paused. ‘As in crude oil – dead crude and live crude. Did you know there was a difference?’

Rebus smiled, shook his head and ordered his drink. ‘Do you want another, or does that count as a chat-up line?’

‘It does and I will.’ She saw him looking at her cigarette. ‘Sobranie.’

‘Does the black paper make them taste any better?’

‘The
tobacco
makes them taste better.’

Rebus got out his own pack. ‘I’m a wood-shavings man myself.’

‘So I see.’

The drinks arrived. Rebus signed the chit to charge them to his room.

‘Are you here on business?’ Her voice was deep, west coast or thereabouts, working-class educated.

‘Sort of. What about you?’

‘Business. So what do you do?’

World’s worst reply to a chat-up: ‘I’m a police officer.’

She raised one eyebrow, interested. ‘CID?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you working on the Johnny Bible case?’

‘No.’

‘The way the papers tell it, I thought every policeman in Scotland was.’

‘I’m the exception.’

‘I remember Bible John,’ she said, sucking on the cigarette. ‘I was brought up in Glasgow. For weeks my mum wouldn’t let me out of the house. It was like being in the clink.’

‘He did that to a lot of women.’

‘And now it’s all happening again.’ She paused. ‘When I said I remembered Bible John, your line should have been, “You don’t look old enough”.’

‘Which proves I’m not chatting you up.’

She stared at him. ‘Pity,’ she said, reaching for her drink. Rebus used his own glass as a prop, too, buying time. She’d given him all the information he needed. He had to decide
whether to act on it or not. Ask her up to his room? Or plead . . . what exactly? Guilt? Fear? Self-loathing?

Fear.

He saw the way the night could go, trying to extract beauty from need, passion from a certain despair.

‘I’m flattered,’ he said at last.

‘Don’t be,’ she said quickly. His move again, an amateur chess player thrown against a pro.

‘So what do
you
do?’

She turned to him. Her eyes said that she knew every tactic in this game. ‘I’m in sales. Products for the oil industry.’ She angled her head towards the rest of the men in the bar. ‘I may have to work with them, but nobody says I have to share my time off with them.’

‘You live in Aberdeen?’

She shook her head. ‘Let me get you another.’

‘I’ve an early start tomorrow.’

‘One more won’t hurt.’

‘It might,’ Rebus said, holding her gaze.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘bang goes the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

He felt her eyes on him as he walked out of the bar towards reception. He had to force his feet up the stairs towards his room. Her pull was strong. He realised he didn’t even know her name.

He switched on the TV while he got undressed. Some sub-Hollywood garbage: the women looked like skeletons with lipstick; the men acted with their necks – he’d seen barbers with more Method. He thought of the woman again. Was she on the game? Definitely not. But she’d hit on him quick. He’d told her he was flattered; in truth, he was bemused. Rebus had always found relationships with the opposite sex difficult. He’d grown up in a mining village, a bit behind the times
when it came to things like promiscuity. You stuck your hand in a girl’s blouse and next thing her father was after you with a leather belt.

Then he’d joined the army, where women were by turns fantasy figures and untouchables: slags and madonnas, there seemed no middle ground. Released from the army, he’d joined the police. Married by then, but his job had proved more seductive, more all-consuming than the relationship – than
any
relationship. Since then, his affairs had lasted months, weeks, mere days sometimes. Too late now, he felt, for anything more permanent. Women seemed to like him – that wasn’t the problem. The problem lay somewhere inside him, and it hadn’t been eased by things like the Johnny Bible case, by women abused and then killed. Rape was all about power; killing, too, in its way. And wasn’t power the ultimate male fantasy? And didn’t he sometimes dream of it, too?

He’d seen the post mortem photos of Angie Riddell, and the first thought that had come to him, the thought he’d had to push past, was:
good body
. It had bothered him, because in that instant she’d been just another object. Then the pathologist had got to work, and she had stopped being even that.

He was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. His prayer, as every night, was that there would be no dreams. He woke up in darkness, his back drenched in sweat, and to a ticking noise. It wasn’t a clock, not even his watch. His watch was on the cabinet. This was closer, much more intimate. Was it coming from the wall? The headboard? He switched the light on, but the sound had stopped. Woodworm maybe? He couldn’t find any holes in the headboard’s wooden surround. He switched the lamp off and closed his eyes. There it was again: more geiger counter than metronome. He tried to ignore it, but it was too close. It was inescapable. It was the pillow, his feather pillow. There was something inside, something alive. Would it want to crawl into his ear? Lay its eggs there? Mutate or pupate or just enjoy a snack of wax and
eardrum? Sweat cooled on his back and on the sheet beneath him. There was no air in the room. He was too tired to get up, too nervy to sleep. He did what he had to do – tossed the pillow towards the door.

No more ticking, but still he couldn’t sleep. The ringing phone came as a relief. Maybe it was the woman from the bar. He’d tell her, I’m an alcoholic, a fuck-up, I’m no good for any other human being.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Ludo here, sorry to wake you.’

‘I wasn’t asleep. What’s the problem?’

‘A patrol car’s coming to pick you up.’ Rebus grimaced: had Ancram tracked him down already?

‘What for?’

‘A suicide in Stonehaven. Thought you might be interested. The name appears to be Anthony Ellis Kane.’

Rebus shot out of bed. ‘Tony El? Suicide?’

‘Looks like. The car should be there in five minutes.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

Now that John Rebus was in Aberdeen, things were more dangerous.