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?’