Dewar took the piece of paper. It said, The Bell Tavern, Salamander Street. ‘I’ll give it a try. ‘
‘Want some company?’
Dewar considered for a moment. ‘A kind thought,’ he said. ‘But two men asking questions smacks of officialdom. I’ll go alone.’
‘Please yourself. Are we going to eat first?’
‘Sure. I just have a couple of calls to make first.’
Dewar went up to his room and called Simon Barron on his mobile number. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
‘Zilch,’ replied Barron. ‘All the action seems to be at your end. All our boys ever do is nip round the corner to have coffee at the Bookstop Cafe and then it’s back to the student centre.’
‘So they’re still there?’
‘Still waiting by the look of it.’
‘You have seen both of them? Not just Abbas?’
‘Siddiqui and Abbas and two students were at the cafe this afternoon. They stayed for about forty minutes. The girl who runs the place treats them like regulars now.’
‘I know this must be bloody boring for you and your men but it’s absolutely vital that they keep tabs on Siddiqui and his pal over the coming week. All hell could break loose.’
‘So I understand. If it’s any comfort, there’s a contingency plan for dealing with the Iraqis should they threaten the containment of the incident.’
Dewar chose not to ask what this meant in practice but he could guess. When he’d finished speaking to Barron he called Karen.
‘How are things?’ she asked.
‘Not good. Still only one confirmed case but they’ve only managed to isolate one contact — Kelly’s partner, Denise Banyon. Worst of all, no vaccine has turned up yet. The words “knife” and “edge” spring to mind.’
‘Let’s hope Kelly and Denise were a couple of stay-at-homes,’ said Karen.
Dewar and Wright ate in one of the many waterfront bistros that had sprung up in the last five years in Leith. The area was undergoing a transformation; the run-down tenements and warehouses of yesteryear — the typical environs of any docks area of a major city, were giving way to trendy new apartment blocks and chic cafes and shops. The transformation however, was not as yet complete. Old Leith and its inhabitants were still there, eyeing the designer-clad newcomers with unease and suspicion and disguising it as wry amusement. This in itself gave the area a certain exciting ambience. Pleasure was always heightened when a dash of uncertainty was added.
The Bell Tavern was located in a street which had so far escaped the attentions of the developers. It was as it had been since the early part of the century and before. One side of the street comprised bonded warehouses, their blackened stonework and iron-barred windows preventing views of the docks themselves, the other side, lines of dark stone tenement buildings. The Bell Tavern was on the corner of one of these buildings.
Dewar’s first impression was that it was lit by a candle, his second that the air inside had been replaced by tobacco smoke. He asked for a large whisky.
‘Kind?’ asked the barman. His minimum wording matched his expression. It wasn’t hostile, it wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t anything.
Dewar glanced at the gantry. ‘Laphroaig.’
The glass was placed down in front of him, the money taken and change returned, all without expression or comment from the barman who went back to his conversation with two customers at the other end of the bar.
Dewar added a little water to his whisky from the jug on the bar top and looked around him. He supposed that this might once have been called ‘a working man’s pub’ but his guess now was that it was more of an unemployed or old man’s pub.
He was very much aware of the lack of colour in the place, an impression heightened by the bad lighting. The walls were beige and brown and the ceiling a dirty yellow from years of nicotine attack. The clientele almost universally wore dark clothes The overall effect was of a an old photograph, a sepia-tint picture of the past.
‘You’ve got good taste in whisky,’ said a voice at his elbow.
Dewar turned to find a smiling man in his sixties, about a foot shorter than he, dressed in a coarse black suit and wearing a cap at an angle to the side. His complexion suggested a heart problem but he seemed cheerful enough as he put his empty half-pint glass on the bar.
‘You drink it yourself, then?’ asked Dewar.
‘The days when I could afford malt whisky have long gone, Jimmy,’ laughed the man.
‘Then you must have one with me,’ said Dewar.
The man seemed slightly offended. ‘Now dinnae get me wrong. I wisnae suggesting for one minute that …’
‘And I didn’t think for one minute that you were.’ interrupted Dewar. ‘I’m a stranger; I’d be glad of the company.’
‘In that case then …’ the man conceded. ‘Thanks very much. Name’s Bruce, Jackie Bruce.’
Dewar bought Bruce a drink and asked, ‘You’re local then?’
‘And you’re not,’ said Bruce. ‘English?’
‘Yes, I’m looking for someone.’
‘A relative?’
‘Not exactly, his name’s Michael Kelly.’
‘What’s someone like you wantin’ with a waster like Kelly?’
‘You know him?’
‘He comes in here aften enough, him and his mate, Hannan but the word is, Kelly’s in hospital Drug overdose, somethin’ like that. As if these nurse lassies didnae have enough to do without numpties like Kelly adding to it. Junkies! Christ, when I was young, drugs were something you saw the Chinese taking at the pictures, now you’re trippin’ over the buggers on every street corner.
‘It’s a big problem,’ Dewar agreed, taking a sip of his drink. He didn’t want to push things along too obviously. ‘You mentioned someone called Hannan?’
‘Tommy Hannan. Come to think of it, I’ve no’ seen him for a few days either.’
‘Is he local?’
‘Aye, that’s why Kelly comes along here. Tommy stays just round the corner in Jutland Street.’
‘Maybe he could tell me how Mike is,’ said Dewar.
‘If anyone can, Tommy can. These two are thicker than thieves … come to think of it, they are thieves!’ He let out a cackle of chesty laughter that Dewar joined in. ‘You’ll have another one?’ he asked, seeing that the whisky had disappeared.
‘That’s very nice of you. It’s no’ often I can have an intelligent conversation in this place.’
Dewar ordered the drinks and went for the final hurdle. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know which number in Jutland Street, would you?’
‘Sure, he stays in the stair next to my brother. Number thirty-seven.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dewar, feeling well pleased with himself. He lingered on for a bit, talking about this and that so that Bruce wouldn’t be too conscious of the fact he’d been pumped for information. He left shortly after nine thirty.
The air was cool and damp on his face when he emerged from The Bell. but after all the tobacco inside it seemed sweeter than a mountain breeze. The street lights were reflected in puddles on the ground. He hadn’t realised it had been raining while he was inside. Now he had to find out what ‘round the corner’ meant in real geographical terms.
He walked along Salamander Street looking at the street names off to his left but stopped after four hundred yards, feeling he was out of ‘round the corner’ range. He retraced his steps and started out in the other direction. Jutland Street was the first opening he came to.
There were no names or entryphone tags outside the common entrance to number 37 but on the other hand, there was no lock on the front door either. It was propped open with a wooden wedge. Dewar entered and found that there was no lighting. He figured this was why the door had been jammed open — to let some light from the lamppost outside filter into the passageway. There was enough light to see that neither of the names on the two ground floor doors was the one he was looking for so he climbed the stairs to the first landing. ‘Hannan’ was on the second door. It was written in biro pen on a piece of white card and sellotaped to the wood. Dewar pushed the buzzer.