‘She’s a popular young woman,’ she said. Fox cupped a hand to his ear, but Clarke just shook her head, the gesture telling him it wasn’t important. She rattled her drained glass instead and motioned towards the bar. He accepted the offer with a thumbs-up.
As she queued, Clarke saw a sign atop the bar alerting clubbers to a number they could text with requests. She added it to her phone before sending a message: Thanks for the BoC. See you around. Having collected her drinks, she turned towards the gallery and saw the nod Mackenzie gave in her direction.
Message received.
‘Can we go after this?’ Fox yelled in her ear as she handed him his drink.
‘The party shirt isn’t enjoying its outing?’
‘I just don’t want to get blood on it.’
‘I doubt there’ll be any trouble, Malcolm. Place looks well policed.’
‘I meant from my ears.’ He drained his drink in one go and waited for Clarke to do the same. She threw a wave towards the gallery as she followed him out of the room.
At the entrance, a party of young men was arriving. Despite the cold, they had no jackets, their tight short-sleeved shirts showing off gym-toned biceps. Clarke recognised a couple of faces from her visit to Tynecastle.
‘No fucking way,’ one of them barked, giving a harsh laugh.
‘Bit of powder still in your left nostril,’ Clarke advised him.
‘Who’s the lumberjack?’ another voice enquired, meaning Fox.
‘Seems you let all sorts in here,’ Clarke said to the nearest doorman.
‘Should have a policy on ugly tarts, though,’ one of the Crew said.
Fox tried to shove his way past Clarke to get to the speaker. She made sure he didn’t. A couple of the cops looked ready to square up to him, the doorman intervening.
‘They’re from Tynecastle,’ Clarke informed Fox.
‘Then I look forward to making their acquaintance in a Leith interview room,’ he said, teeth gritted.
A queue had formed behind the Tynecastle contingent, including a hen party armed with satin sashes, fake tan and deely boppers. They started to complain about the wait. Another clubber stood off to one side, filming with his phone. Clarke shook her head at him, but he ignored her.
‘We don’t want any trouble,’ one of the doormen was saying.
‘Relax, C,’ one of the cops reassured him. ‘We’re just measuring cocks here.’ He made eye contact with Clarke. ‘Got to say I think hers is winning.’
There was more laughter as the Crew began to filter through the doorway. Clarke watched them descend the stairs, offering each other slaps on the back. One of them punched the air. They seemed already to have pushed Clarke and Fox from their minds — they had a dance floor they now needed to own. Clarke turned her attention to the doorman they’d called C.
‘Regulars?’
‘They can sometimes get a bit exuberant.’
‘Especially after a few lines.’
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘That’s good,’ Fox added. ‘You won’t mind the drugs squad coming and checking your toilets then?’
‘Not if they don’t mind patting down half a dozen of their own.’ The doorman looked at him without blinking.
Clarke took Fox’s arm and led him away. She could no longer see the clubber who’d been filming, didn’t suppose it mattered anyway. One thing she knew was, he wasn’t the Courant. A little further up Blair Street, she noticed a parked Range Rover. She broke away from Fox and walked around it. A sticker on the back window told her it had been bought from High End Motors.
‘More my style than yours,’ Fox commented.
‘True enough, Malcolm. Especially if you’re thinking of an expedition to fell some trees.’
He glanced down at his jacket. ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’
‘It’s fine,’ Clarke assured him, taking out her phone and snapping a shot of the Range Rover’s licence plate.
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am,’ Clarke said, taking his arm again. ‘Let’s go find ourselves a nice quiet bar.’
Back home, Clarke poured herself another orange juice and popped two ibuprofen tablets into her mouth. There wasn’t much in the fridge, so she settled for an apple and started charging her phone. She found herself thinking about Michael Leckie. Why had she opened up to him? Poor bugger now knew enough to pen her obituary. She reckoned it was because of the way he’d taken her into his confidence, telling her about his father. It struck her that maybe he’d made it all up, just so she would open up. He’d said he didn’t work for the Mackenzies, but maybe that was a lie, too.
You have to trust someone sometime, girl, she told herself.
Fox, too, had opened up, telling her things she wasn’t supposed to know. Maybe they were on the same side and maybe they weren’t. She reckoned Malcolm’s ethics might be prone to shifts as and when required. He lived for advancement. Offer him that in exchange for Rebus and she doubted he’d think twice. Whatever an idealist was, Malcolm Fox was probably the opposite.
Then again, at least he had goals, and achievable ones at that. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth... Tell me I’m wrong... She thought of John Rebus, who had bent every rule to breaking point in pursuit of results, regarding every unsolved case as an affront. Illicitly, he’d taken copies of many of those case files home with him on his retirement. Every morning and evening they were there, taunting him with past failure. Did that make him an idealist or just an obsessive? Those cases would never be closed — he knew it and she knew it. Maybe it was guilt he felt, guilt at having let the victims down.
Had Francis Haggard too felt guilt? His lawyer certainly thought so. His confession would have incriminated those he’d worked with and called friends, possibly the only real friends he’d had. You didn’t go to those lengths in the hope of a lesser sentence or even no sentence at all. Talking entailed losing everything for only relatively minor gains. There had to be a compelling reason. Atonement was the only thing she could think of. Past sins acknowledged and paid for.
She picked up her phone again and was googling Haggard’s namesake, St Francis, when a text arrived. It was from Laura Smith.
There’s someone outside.
She stared at the three words for a moment before making the call.
‘Are your doors locked?’ she checked.
‘Yes,’ Laura told her.
‘Who is it, do you know?’
‘It’s a man in a car. He was here last night, too. I thought maybe he was a minicab or something.’
‘The same car, you’re sure?’
‘Can you come take a look?’
‘I’ve had one drink too many, but leave it with me. Meantime, keep your lights off, stay away from the windows, okay?’
‘Am I being paranoid?’
‘There’s only one way to find out...’
Clarke hung up and called it in, requested a patrol car and stressed the urgency. Her one caveat: nobody from Tynecastle. Then she phoned Smith again.
‘Officers are on their way,’ she told her. ‘You’ll probably see the blue light.’
‘Like Roxanne?’
‘Except I think her light was red, wasn’t it?’
‘Thanks for doing this.’
‘What are friends for?’
‘Is there any news, by the way?’
‘Christ, Laura, you never stop, do you?’
‘I can’t afford to.’
‘Reckon you’ll get a story out of this?’