‘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.