‘No can do.’
‘It’s important.’
The bouncer shook his head slowly. His eyes didn’t move from Rebus’s face. Rebus knew what he saw: a middle-aged lush, a pathetic figure in a cheap suit. It was time to disabuse him. He opened his warrant card.
‘CID,’ he told the tux. ‘People are selling drugs on these premises and I’m a heartbeat away from calling in the Drugs Squad. Now do I get to talk to the boss?’
He got to talk to the boss.
‘My name’s Erik Stemmons.’ The man came around from his desk to shake Rebus’s hand. It was a small office, but well furnished. Good sound-proofing too: the bass from the dance floor was as much as you could hear. But there were video screens, half a dozen of them. Three showing the main dance floor, two the bar, and one a general view of the booths.
‘You want to put one in the bogs,’ Rebus said, ‘that’s where the action is. You’ve got two on the bar: staff problems?’
‘Not since we put the cameras in.’ Stemmons was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, the arms of which he’d rolled up to his shoulders. He had long curling locks, maybe permed, but his hair was thinning and there were tell-tale lines down his face. He wasn’t much younger than Rebus, and the younger he tried to look the older he seemed.
‘Are you with Grampian CID?’
‘No.’
‘Thought not. We get most of them in here, good customers. Sit down, won’t you?’
Rebus sat down. Stemmons got comfortable behind his desk. It was covered with paperwork.
‘Frankly I’m surprised by your allegation,’ he went on. ‘We cooperate fully with the local police, and this club is as clean as any in the city. You know of course that it’s impossible to rule narcotics out of the equation.’
‘Someone was snooking up in the toilet.’
Stemmons shrugged. ‘Exactly. What can we do? Strip search everyone as they enter? Have a sniffer dog roaming the premises?’ He laughed a short laugh. ‘You see the problem.’
‘How long have you lived here, Mr Stemmons?’
‘I came over in ’78. Saw a good thing and stayed. That’s nearly two decades. I’m practically integrated.’ Another laugh; another no reaction from Rebus. Stemmons placed his palms on the desktop. ‘Wherever Americans go in the world — Vietnam, Germany, Panama — entrepreneurs follow. And so long as the pickings stay good, why should we leave?’ He looked down at his hands. ‘What do you really want?’
‘I want to know what you can tell me about Fergus McLure.’
‘Fergus McLure?’
‘You know, dead person, lived near Edinburgh.’
Stemmons shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, that name means nothing to me.’
Oh, Vienna, Rebus nearly sang. ‘You don’t seem to have a phone in here.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A phone.’
‘I carry a mobile.’
‘The portable office.’
‘Open twenty-four hours. Look, if you’ve a beef, take it up with the local cops. I don’t need this grief.’
‘You haven’t seen grief yet, Mr Stemmons.’
‘Hey.’ Stemmons pointed a finger. ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it. Otherwise, the door’s the thing behind you with the brass handle.’
‘And you’re the thing in front of me with the brass neck.’ Rebus stood up and leaned across the desk. ‘Fergus McLure had information on a drug ring. He died suddenly. Your club’s phone number was lying on his desk. McLure wasn’t exactly the clubbing type.’
‘So?’
Rebus could see Stemmons in a court of law, saying the exact same thing. He could see a jury asking itself the question too.
‘Look,’ Stemmons said, relenting. ‘If I was setting up a drug deal, would I give this guy McLure the number of the club’s payphone, which anyone might pick up, or would I give him my mobile number? You’re a detective, what do you think?’
Rebus saw a judge tossing the case out.
‘Johnny Bible met his first victim here, didn’t he?’
‘Jesus, don’t drag that up. What are you, a ghoul or something? We had CID hassling us for weeks.’
‘You didn’t recognise his description?’
‘Nobody did, not even the bouncers, and I pay them to remember faces. I told your colleagues, maybe he met her after she left the club. Who’s to say?’
Rebus went to the door, paused.
‘Where’s your partner?’
‘Judd? He’s not in tonight.’
‘Does he have an office?’
‘Next door.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘I don’t have a key.’
Rebus opened the door. ‘Does he have a mobile phone too?’
He’d caught Stemmons off guard. The American coughed a response.
‘Didn’t you hear the question?’
‘Judd doesn’t have a mobile. He hates telephones.’
‘So what does he do in an emergency? Send up smoke signals?’
But Rebus knew damned well what Judd Fuller would do.
He’d use a payphone.
He thought he’d earned a last drink before home, but froze halfway to the bar. There was a new couple in one of the booths, and Rebus recognised both of them. The woman was the blonde from his hotel bar. The man sitting beside her, arms draped along the back of the booth, was her junior by about twenty years. He wore an open-necked shirt and a lot of gold chains around his neck. He’d probably seen someone dressed that way in a film once. Or maybe he was going in for the fancy-dress contest: seventies villain. Rebus knew the warty face straight away.
Mad Malky Toal.
Stanley.
Rebus made the connection, made almost too many of them. He felt dizzy, and found himself leaning against the wall-phone. So he picked up the receiver and slammed home a coin. He had the phone number in his notebook. Partick police station. He asked for DI Jack Morton, waited an age. He pushed more money home, only to have someone come on and tell him Morton had left the office.
‘This is urgent,’ Rebus said. ‘My name’s DI John Rebus. Do you have his home number?’
‘I can get him to call you,’ the voice said. ‘Would that do, Inspector?’
Would it? Glasgow was Ancram’s home turf. If Rebus handed over his number, Ancram could get to hear of it, and would know where he was... Fuck it, he was only here another day. He reeled the number off and put down the receiver, thanking God the DJ had been playing a slow number: Python Lee Jackson, ‘In a Broken Dream’.
Rebus had those to spare.
He sat at the bar, his back to Stanley and his woman. But he could see them distorted in the mirror behind the optics. Dark distant figures, coiling and uncoiling. Of course Stanley was in town: hadn’t he killed Tony El? But why? And two bigger questions: was he here in Burke’s Club by coincidence?
And what was he doing with the blonde from the hotel?
Rebus was starting to get inklings. He kept an ear out for the telephone, prayed for another slow record. Bowie, ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’. A guitar like sawing through metal. It didn’t matter: the phone didn’t ring.
‘Here’s one we’d all rather forget,’ the DJ drawled. ‘But I want to see you up dancing to it anyway, otherwise I might just have to play it again.’
Lieutenant Pigeon: ‘Mouldy Old Dough’. The telephone rang. Rebus leapt to it.
‘Hello?’
‘John? Got the hi-fi loud enough?’
‘I’m at a disco.’
‘At your age? Is this the emergency — you want me to talk you out of there?’
‘No, I want you to describe Eve to me.’
‘Eve?’
‘Uncle Joe Toal’s woman.’
‘I’ve only seen her in photos.’ Jack Morton thought about it. ‘Blonde out of a bottle, face that could bend nails. Twenty or thirty years ago she might have looked like Madonna, but I’m probably being generous.’