‘I’ll make it up to you.’ Oakes blew Stevens a kiss, grinned and winked at the barman. Turned back to Stevens. ‘Look at you, man, all trembling and sweating. A cardiac arrest’s having your name paged as we speak. You got to slow down, Jim. Go with the flow.’
‘My editor wants better copy.’
‘You could give him Kennedy’s assassin, he’d say he wanted better copy. You and I know, Jim, the best stuff has to wait for the book, right? The book’s what’s going to make us rich.’
‘If I find a publisher.’
‘It’ll happen, trust me. Now sit down here beside me and let me buy you one. Hell, I don’t mind putting my hand in my pocket for a friend.’ He wrapped an arm around Stevens’ shoulders. ‘You’re with Cary now, Jim. You’re part of my exclusive circle. Nothing bad’s going to happen.’ Oakes made eye contact, held it. ‘You can depend on that,’ he said. ‘Cross my heart.’
‘Just drop me off at Haymarket,’ Janice said. They were back in the car, heading into town.
‘You sure? I could drive you—’
She was shaking her head.
‘Look, Janice, a trail like this... we’re bound to run into dead ends. Maybe a lot of them. It’s something you’ll have to accept.’
She shook her head. ‘I was thinking of all those kids... wondering what they’ll be like when they grow up. If I’d had a daughter...’ She shook her head again.
‘It was pretty ghastly,’ Rebus agreed.
She looked at him. ‘Did you think so? I thought so too, at first. But then I kept looking... and they all looked so beautiful.’ She took out a handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes.
‘I think I’d better drive you home,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t want that.’ She paused, put a hand on his arm. ‘I just mean... I don’t want to put you... Oh Christ, I don’t know what I want any more.’
‘You want Damon back.’
‘Yes, I want that.’
‘What else?’
She seemed to consider the question. But in the end she made no answer, just turned to him again and smiled, eyes shiny from crying.
‘In a funny way, it’s like you’ve never been away,’ she told him.
He nodded. ‘Just the thirty-odd years. What’s that between friends?’
They shared the laughter; he touched the back of her hand with his fingers. Parked outside Haymarket station, they sat in silence for a while. Then she opened the door, got out. Smiled one last time and walked away.
Rebus sat for another minute or two, imagining himself running down to the platform, seeking her amongst the crowds... Like in a film. Real life was never like that. In films, there was nothing you couldn’t do; in the real world... in the real world it always got messy.
He went back to Oxford Terrace. Patience wasn’t home. They’d passed beyond the stage of leaving notes. He soaked in a bath for half an hour, drifting off to sleep, startling himself awake as his chin dipped beneath the water. He saw the headline: dog-tired cop in bathtime tragedy. One for Jim Stevens to relish.
He lay on the sofa, put some music on. Pete Hammilclass="underline" ‘Two or Three Spectres’. He knew they were there, his ghosts, settling around him, getting comfortable. More comfortable than he could ever be. Patience, Sammy, Janice... A point was coming, between Patience and him. A crisis point maybe, but then they’d been there before. But was there some point coming between Janice and him too? Something very different...? He picked up a book, covered his eyes with it.
Slept.
21
Ama Petrie wasn’t the only one who’d thought the mystery blonde looked ‘tarty’ or a bit like a pro. On his way down to The Shore that evening, Rebus decided on a slight detour.
A few of the working girls still plied their trade dockside. Most of the city’s prostitutes worked in licensed premises masquerading as saunas, but a few still took risks by walking the streets. Sometimes it was because they were desperate or unemployable — which meant they had an obvious drug habit — while others just liked to do their own thing, despite the dangers. Over in Glasgow, there were fewer saunas and more girls on the street. Result: seven murders in as many years.
Rebus’s thinking: street girls worked Leith; the blonde looked ‘tarty’; the taxi had brought her and Damon to Leith. It was another possibility. Say they hadn’t been making for the Clipper. Say they’d been heading for her room.
Her room, or maybe a hotel...
There were only three women out this evening on Coburg Street, but he knew one of them. Stopped the car and called her over. She got into the passenger seat, bringing waves of perfume with her.
‘Long time no see,’ she said. Her name was Fern. Punters assumed it was made up, but Rebus knew from her records that she’d been born Fern Bogot. He knew too that she worked the streets because she liked to be her own boss. In saunas, the proprietor was always taking a cut. She had her regulars; didn’t often go with strangers. Mature gentlemen preferred. She found them less aggressive.
Her mane of red hair was a wig, though it looked natural enough. Rebus put the car into gear and signalled to move off. She took her punters to some waste ground in Granton. If Rebus stuck around, he wasn’t a punter, and that made everyone uneasy. Looking in his rearview, he saw one of the remaining women peering at the car, then turning to scrawl something on a wall.
‘What’s she doing?’ he asked.
Fern turned back. ‘Good old Lesley,’ she said. ‘She’s taking your registration. That way, if my body turns up, there’s something for the cops to go on. We call it our insurance policy. Can’t be too careful these days.’
Rebus nodded agreement, drove them around the streets, asking his questions. She studied the photographs in detail, but was forced to shake her head.
‘Nobody like that works down here.’
‘What about the lad?’
‘Sorry.’ She handed the photos back. Rebus exchanged them for one of Janice’s flyers.
‘Just in case,’ he said.
When he dropped her back at her patch, he got out of the car and went to look at the wall. Sure enough, there were rows of car registration numbers scrawled there, most of them in various shadings of lipstick, some worn away by the elements. His own was at the bottom of the last column. He looked up the column, started to frown. At the top was a number he thought he recognised. Where did he know it from...?
Suddenly it dawned on him: he’d seen it in a file at Leith police station. Leith: where Jim Margolies had been stationed. It was mentioned in the file on Jim’s suicide.
It was the registration number of his car.
‘What is it?’ Fern asked.
Rebus tapped the wall. ‘This one. Belongs to a guy called Jim. A cop.’
She frowned in concentration, then shrugged. ‘Not one of mine,’ she said. ‘But it’s orange lipstick.’
‘So?’
‘Lesley has a code, her way of telling who’s gone in which car.’
‘And who does orange lipstick mean?’
She was shaking her head. ‘Not a who so much as a what. Orange means whoever it was, he liked them young...’
Roy Frazer wasn’t the only one waiting for Rebus down at The Shore. Sitting in the car alongside him was the Farmer.
‘Checking up on us, sir?’ said Rebus, getting into the back seat. As he got in, Frazer got out, closing the door after him.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ the Farmer said. ‘I’ve spent half the day trying to find you.’ He handed Rebus the day’s surveillance notes. ‘First entry,’ he snapped.
Rebus looked. Bill Pryde recorded himself taking over from Rebus at 0600. His next entry: ‘Cary Oakes entered hotel at 0745.’