and headed down a darkened alley. The driver kept the engine running until a beam of light showed him she’d opened her stairwell door.
“Always like to make sure,” he explained to Rebus. “Can’t be too careful these days. Where to, chief?”
“Quick U-turn,” Rebus answered. “Drop me at the Nook.” It was a two-minute ride, at the end of which Rebus told the driver to add twenty quid to the bill as a tip. Signed his name to it and handed it back.
“Sure about this, chief?” the driver asked.
“Easy when it’s someone else’s cash,” Rebus told him, getting out. The doormen at the Nook recognized him, which didn’t mean they were happy to renew the acquaintance.
“Busy night, lads?” Rebus asked.
“Paydays always are. Been a good week for overtime, too.”
Rebus got the bouncer’s meaning the moment he walked in. A large group of drunken cops seemed to have monopolized three of the lap dancers. Their table groaned with champagne flutes and beer glasses. Not that they looked out of place-a stag party on the far side of the room was enjoying the competition. Rebus didn’t know the cops, but their accents were Scottish-a last night on the town for this motley crew before they headed home to their wives and girlfriends in Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen…
Two women were gyrating on the small central stage. Another was parading along the top of the bar for the benefit of the lone drinkers seated there. She squatted to allow a five-pound note to be tucked into her G-string, earning the donor a peck on the pockmarked cheek. There was just the one stool left, and Rebus took it. Two dancers emerged from behind a curtain and started working the room. Hard to say if they’d been giving private dances or taking a cigarette break. One started to approach Rebus, her smile evaporating as he shook his head. The barman asked him what he was drinking.
“I’m not,” he said. “Just need to borrow your lighter.” A pair of high heels had stopped in front of him. Their owner wriggled her way down until she was at eye level with him. Rebus broke off lighting his cigarette long enough to tell her he needed a word.
“I’ve a break coming in five minutes,” Molly Clark said. She turned toward the barman. “Ronnie, give my friend here a drink.”
“Fine,” Ronnie answered, “but it’s coming out of your wages.”
She ignored him, stretching herself upright again and treading gingerly toward the other end of the bar.
“Whiskey, thanks, Ronnie,” Rebus said, pocketing the lighter unnoticed, “and I prefer to add my own water.”
Even so, Rebus could have sworn the stuff poured from the bottle had already seen its share of adulteration. He wagged a finger at the barman.
“You want to tell Trading Standards you’ve been here, that’s your business,” Ronnie shot back.
Rebus pushed the drink aside and turned on his stool as though interested in the dancers when actually he was watching the posse of cops. What was it, he wondered, that marked them out? A few had mustaches; all had neat haircuts. Most still wore ties, though their suit jackets were draped over their chairs. Various ages and builds, yet he couldn’t help feeling there was something uniform about them. They acted like a small, separate tribe, slightly at odds with the rest of the world. Moreover, all week they’d been in charge of the capital-saw themselves as conquerors, invincible, all-powerful.
Look on my works…
Had Gareth Tench really seen himself that way too? Rebus thought it was more complex. Tench had known he would fail, but was determined to give it a try all the same. Rebus had considered the outside chance that the councilman had been their killer, his “works” the little gallery of horror in Auchterarder. Determined to rid the world of its monsters-Cafferty included. Killing Cyril Colliar had put Cafferty briefly in the frame. A lazy investigation might have ended there, with Cafferty the chief suspect. Tench had also known Trevor Guest…helps the guy out then is incensed to come across his details on a Web site. Decides he’s been betrayed.
Leaving only Fast Eddie Isley. Nothing to connect Tench to him, and Isley had been the first victim, the one who set the whole train in motion. And now Tench was dead, and they were going to blame it on Keith Carberry.
Who else have you talked to about Gareth Tench?
You’re supposed to be the detective around here…
Or a poor excuse for one. Rebus reached for his drink again, just to give himself something to do. The dancers on the stage looked bored. They wanted to be down on the floor, where this week’s pay was being emptied into peekaboo bras and minuscule thongs. Rebus didn’t doubt there’d be a rotation-they’d get their chance. More men were coming inside, executive types. One of them was grinding to the room’s pounding sound track. He was fifteen pounds overweight and the moves didn’t suit him. But no one was about to ridicule him: that was the whole point of somewhere like the Nook. It was all about the shedding of inhibitions. Rebus couldn’t help thinking back to the 1970s, when most Edinburgh bars had offered a lunchtime stripper. The drinkers would hide their faces behind their pint glasses whenever the dancer looked in their direction. All that reticence had melted away in the course of the intervening decades. The businessmen were yelping encouragement as one of the lap dancers at the police table started doing her stuff, while her victim sat with legs parted, hands on knees, grinning and sweaty-faced.
Molly was standing next to Rebus. He hadn’t noticed her ending her routine. “Give me two minutes to throw a coat on, and I’ll see you outside.” He nodded distractedly.
“Penny for them,” she said, suddenly curious.
“Just thinking about how sex has changed over the years. We used to be such a shy wee nation.”
“And now?”
The dancer was gyrating her hips mere inches from her victim’s nose.
“Now,” Rebus mused, “it’s…well…”
“In your face?” she offered.
He nodded his agreement, and placed the empty glass back on the bar.
She offered him a cigarette from her own pack. She’d wrapped a long black woolen coat around her and was leaning against one of the Nook’s walls, just far enough from the doormen for eavesdropping to be a problem.
“You don’t smoke in the apartment,” Rebus commented.
“Eric’s allergic.”
“It was Eric I wanted to speak to you about, actually.” Rebus was making a show of examining his cigarette’s glowing tip.
“What about him?” She shuffled her feet and Rebus noticed she’d exchanged the stilettos for sneakers.
“When we talked before, you said he knows how you go about earning a wage. You even told me he’d been a customer at one point.”
“And?”
Rebus shrugged. “I don’t really want him getting hurt, which is why I think maybe you should leave him.”
“Leave him?”
“So I don’t have to tell him that you’ve been milking him for inside info, and passing everything he tells you back to your boss. See, I’ve just been talking to Cafferty, and it suddenly clicked. He’s known stuff he shouldn’t, stuff he’s been getting from the inside, and who knows more than someone like Brains?”
She snorted. “You call him Brains…why don’t you start crediting him with some?”
“How do you mean?”
“You think I’m the big bad hooker, wheedling stuff out of the poor sap.” She rubbed a finger across her top lip.
“I’d go a bit further actually-seems to me you’re only living with Eric because Cafferty tells you to-probably feeds that coke habit of yours to make it all worthwhile. First time we met, I thought it was just nerves.”
She didn’t bother denying it.
“Soon as Eric stops being useful,” Rebus went on, “you’ll drop him like a stone. My advice is to do that right now.”
“Like I said, Rebus, Eric’s no idiot. He’s known all along what the score is.”
Rebus narrowed his eyes. “In the apartment, you said you stopped him taking job offers-how will he feel when he finds out that was because he’d be no use to your boss in the private sector?”
“He tells me stuff because he wants to,” she went on, “and he knows damned fine where it’ll end up.”
“Classic honey trap,” Rebus muttered.
