Resurrection Men

him . . .

When he woke up, the CD had finished and his neck felt stiff. He’d been dreaming that he was in a restaurant with Jean. Some posh hotel somewhere, but he was wearing clothes he’d been given by Rhona during their marriage. And he had no money on him to pay for the expensive meal. He’d felt so guilty . . . guilty of betraying Rhona and Jean . . . guilty about everything. Someone else had been in the dream, someone who had money enough to pay for it all, and Rebus had ended up following him through the maze of the hotel, everywhere from its penthouse to the cellars. Had he been going to ask for a loan? Was the figure someone he knew? Had he been going to take the money by force or duplicity from a total stranger? Rebus didn’t know. He pulled himself to his feet and stretched tiredly. Couldn’t have been asleep more than twenty minutes. Then he remembered that he had to be in Tulliallan by morning.

“No time like the present,” he told himself, snatching up his car keys.

Ponytailed Ricky was back on the door of the Sauna Paradiso.

“Christ, not you again,” he muttered as Siobhan walked in.

She looked around. The place was dead. One of the girls was lying along a sofa, reading a magazine. There was baseball on the TV monitor, the sound turned off.

“You like baseball?” Siobhan asked. Ricky didn’t look in the mood for conversation. “I watch it sometimes,” she went on, “if I’m awake through the night. Couldn’t tell you the rules or half of what the commentators are talking about, but I watch it anyway.” She looked around. “Laura in tonight?”

He thought about lying, but knew she’d spot it. “She’s with someone,” he said.

“Mind if I wait?”

“Take your coat off, make yourself at home.” He waved his arm in an exaggerated greeting. “If a punter comes in and wants to take you downstairs, don’t go blaming me.”

“I won’t,” Siobhan said, but she kept her coat on, and was glad she was wearing trousers and boots. The woman on the sofa, now that Siobhan studied her, was ten years older than she’d originally thought. Makeup, hair and clothes: they could put years on you, or take them off. She remembered when she’d been thirteen, knowing she could pass for sixteen or older. Another of the women had appeared from the curtained doorway. She gave Siobhan a look of curiosity as she moved behind Ricky’s desk. There was an alcove there with a kettle. She made herself a mug of coffee and reappeared, stopping in front of Siobhan.

“Ricky says you’re looking for some action.” She was in her mid-twenties with a pretty, rounded face and long brown hair. Her legs were bare, with black bra and panties visible beneath a knee-length negligee.

“Ricky’s having you on,” Siobhan informed her. The woman looked in the direction of the desk and stuck her tongue out, displaying a silver stud. Then she dropped into the chair next to Siobhan’s.

“Careful, Suzy, you might catch something.” This from the woman on the sofa, who was still flicking through her magazine.

Suzy looked at Siobhan. “She means I’m a cop,” Siobhan said.

“And is she right? Am I going to catch something?”

Siobhan shrugged. “I’ve been told I’ve got an infectious laugh.”

Suzy smiled. Siobhan noticed that she had a bruise on one shoulder which the negligee was failing to conceal. “Quiet tonight,” Siobhan commented.

“There’s always a bit of a rush after the pubs close, then it calms down again. You here to see one of the girls?”

“Laura.”

“She’s got a punter with her.”

Siobhan nodded. “How come you’re talking to me?” she asked.

“Way I see it, you’ve got your job to do, same as I have.” Suzy held the chipped mug to her lips. “No sense getting worked up about it. You here to arrest Laura?”

“No.”

“Asking her questions then?”

“Something like that.”

“Your accent’s not Scottish . . .”

“I was brought up in England.”

Suzy was studying her. “I had a friend sounded a bit like you.”

“Past tense?”

“This was at college. I did a year at Napier. I can’t remember where she was from . . . somewhere in the Midlands.”

“That could be about right.”

“That where you’re from?” Suzy was wearing frayed moccasin-style slippers. She had crossed one leg over the other and was letting one moccasin dangle from her painted toes.

“Around there,” Siobhan said. “Do you know Laura?”

“We’ve worked some of the same shifts.”

“She been here long?”

Suzy stared at Siobhan, but didn’t answer.

“All right then,” Siobhan said, “what about you?”

“Nearly a year. That’s me just about ready to quit. Said I’d do it for a year and no longer. I’ve got enough saved now to go back to college.”

The woman on the sofa snorted.

Suzy ignored her. “You make good money in the police?”

“Not bad.”

“What . . . fifteen, twenty thousand?”

“A bit more actually.”

Suzy shook her head. “That’s nothing to what you can make in a place like this.”

“I don’t think I could do it, though.”

“That’s what I thought. But when college fell through . . .” She got a faraway look. The woman on the sofa was rolling her eyes. Siobhan didn’t know how much of it to believe. Suzy had had nearly a year to fashion her story. Maybe it was her way of coping with the Sauna Paradiso . . .

A man suddenly came out from behind the curtain. He looked around the room, surprised to find no other men there except Ricky. Siobhan recognized him: the less drunk businessman from her previous visit, the one who’d mentioned Laura by name. With head down, he walked briskly to the front door and made his exit.

“Has he got a tab or something?” Siobhan asked.

Suzy shook her head. “They pay us, then we settle with Ricky later.”

Siobhan looked across the desk, where Ricky was standing watching her. “Going to let Mr. Cafferty know I’m here?” she called.

“You still on about him?” Ricky grinned. “I keep telling you, I own this place.”

“Sure you do,” Siobhan said, winking at Suzy.

“Another month tops, that’s me out of here,” Suzy was saying, to herself more than anyone, as Siobhan got up and made for the curtained doorway.

Only one cabin had its door closed. She knocked and opened it. She could hear a shower running. It was behind a frosted glass door. The room had a wide bench topped with a mattress, a spa bath in one corner, and not much else. Siobhan was trying not to breathe in the fetid air.

“Laura?” she called.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Siobhan Clarke. All right if I wait for you outside?”

“Give me two minutes, will you?”

“No problem.”

Siobhan climbed back up the stairs. The place was still dead. “Tell Laura I’m right outside,” she ordered Ricky. Her car was actually across the road. She sat in it, the radio playing softly, window rolled down. A few cars and taxis rumbled past. Not too far away, she knew the streetwalkers were plying their trade: a trade less safe than that enacted in places like the Paradiso. Men would pay for sex: it was a fact of life. And as long as the demand was there, there’d be no shortage of suppliers. It struck Siobhan that what troubled her most about the