by Craig Cabell
EXIT WOUND
‘The girl screamed once, only the once, but it was enough.’
Exit Music
Jackie Leven’s song ‘John Rebus’ depicts a lonely man by its musical content alone – the kind of man we witnessed sitting alone at the bar in The Naming of the Dead.
Most single men, when engrossed in a very busy – intricate – working life, have no time to be lonely. They have their occupation, colleagues and other distractions to keep them busy. But what is interesting – with regards to Rebus’s self-contentment – is his thought processes at the beginning of his last book, Exit Music. He meets with another policeman who is due for retirement, not as immediately as Rebus, but nevertheless he had major plans for his retirement. He would become a taxi driver. Rebus is quite clear that he wouldn’t undertake such a profession, but he thinks of the normal comforts of retirement – a house, a wife, loving children nearby, or a complete escape to a foreign clime with a loved one – but none of that is applicable to him. He doesn’t have his own home, he is divorced, and his child is living in sin in London while he is alone in Edinburgh.
Maybe Rebus could snatch some time with his friend Siobhan Clarke, but maybe she can get on with her own life and career now without him around.
So what is left? The pub?
A depressing picture begins to take shape and that is coupled with a sense of unfulfilment. Again, at the beginning of Exit Music there is Rebus making Clarke go through all his unfinished cases with him. Conversely, there is complete complacency, as Rebus and Clarke attend an autopsy and hardly take notice of what is going on. Rebus is tired. He is aware of the shortcomings in his life – personal and professional – but there is only so much that can be put right. In that respect he is a realist, but he has something of the cynic about him that keeps him away from pragmatism. So is he an underachiever? In a way, yes. He hasn’t shaped his destiny the best way possible and he only has himself to blame for that.
Destiny is something Rebus blanks out as much as possible. His destiny has been shattered by his memories – those facts in his life that brought down his dreams. He was an underachiever in the SAS, an underachiever in relationships – from Rhona to anyone else he tries to court – and could have done better in the Police Force. There is a telling moment in Death Is Not The End, where he speculates that if he died that night he would leave nothing significant behind, and that made him want to drink: the last solace for the unhappy man.
So with that in mind, Exit Music is really about parting dignity – from the force, his colleagues and his enemies.
Enter ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty stage right. Rebus has had minor victories over Cafferty but a showdown between the two men was inevitable. It happened in Exit Music – to a degree – but that nagging feeling of unfinished business, underachievement – just a general feeling of discontent – is prevalent at the end for both the reader and John Rebus. And that in itself encapsulates Rebus’s whole life, from our first meeting with him (where we learn about his premature exit from the SAS) to his ongoing, haphazard, disparate love life (peppered with booze, greasy food and too much hard work). Rebus is a stomach ulcer waiting to happen and he embodies many retiring police officers with bad habits and ruined relationships because of the intensity of the job. Although one could argue that he epitomises the retiring Scot, I would venture he epitomises the same type of creature in England, Wales and Ireland too. He is as much a victim of ‘British’ society as a self-wounding teenager with a low opinion of him/herself.
In 2007 I interviewed Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read, the arresting officer of the infamous Kray Twins and a man who also played his part in the capture of criminals working on The Great Train Robbery. Despite a high-profile career, Read told me that he was the victim of jealousy within the force that cost him a promised promotion, so even being a celebrity copper in the real world has its share of discontent.
And what about Siobhan?
I hate the cliché of unrequited love. Rebus is an older man, working with and influencing a much younger, not unattractive, intelligent woman. He will undoubtedly find her attractive or easy on the eye but he doesn’t let that interfere with their relationship – personal or professional – and Siobhan respects him for that. My God, he can be a realist when he needs to be.
In a profession rife with sexism and one-upmanship, Rebus and Siobhan had found someone (each other) with the same moral code with regard to work, but completely different in age, gender and habits.
Some comparisons can be made between Siobhan and the young Gill Templer – and Gill had been his girlfriend – but all that strengthens is the argument that Rebus would find the lady attractive when younger. Let’s be honest, if they had had a relationship, Siobhan would have probably gone the way of Gill: obtain her promotion and start pulling her hair out over John bloody Rebus!
‘Goodyear was chatting to Siobhan Clarke now. Whatever he said made her laugh. Rebus decided it was time for a cigarette break and reached out to take Sonia’s hand, planting a kiss on the back of it.’
Exit Music
What is interesting is how Rebus and Siobhan’s relationship will endure after Rebus leaves the force. In what way will they confide, socialise and interact with each other, and how will they cope with other people’s opinion of that relationship? There is a bond between them that the intensity of their work has forged. Their lives have been in each other’s hands and, perhaps, that is the mutual understanding as to how they will take their own lives forward. And there lies the rub: Siobhan and Rebus house the perfect platonic relationship. And one thing is for certain, she will shed a tear when he dies, because she knows that he really loved her but never admitted it.
Do we get any of this information from Exit Music itself? Yes. That one moment before Rebus takes Sonia’s hand. It’s left unsaid but it’s symbolic because spiritually, Rebus has just let go of Siobhan’s hand.
‘… he couldn’t see himself ever leaving
Edinburgh. It was the oxygen in his bloodstream, but still with mysteries to be explored.’
Exit Music
Exit Music is set in the late autumn of Edinburgh and the career of DI John Rebus. We find him trying to tie up the loose ends of his career but being thwarted by the murder of a Russian poet. Even though Rebus’s career is coming to an end, the crimes on the streets of Edinburgh continue – a humbling notion surely, as he must have originally set out, like most young cops, to bring crime to a grinding stop!
A key aspect of the novel is a Russian delegation coming to Edinburgh in order to bring new business to the city, an interesting point when one considers a Russian has just been killed in Edinburgh. Somebody doesn’t want progress…
So much has changed in Scotland since Rebus joined the force but there is one constant: ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty. It has been Cafferty’s presence that has kept Rebus’s spark of duty alive, almost as if the gangster’s presence keeps Rebus somehow in line. He would never jeopardise his career if he knew that there was a genuine possibility of putting Cafferty behind bars once and for all.
There is a synergy between the cop and the gangster and the nuances of this are not appreciated until Cafferty is beaten up with only days to go before Rebus retirement. Surely he is to blame? Even the good guys think that he was behind it. And doesn’t this hark back to the first Rebus novel, where we believe Rebus could be the murderer?
Cafferty dies at the hospital but Rebus is there and he fights to bring his nemesis back because he needs a big showdown – he wants blood and pain, not a death in sleep. Death in sleep was for Rebus to endure at the end of retirement, not ‘Big Ger’!
Rebus hangs on to Cafferty’s life because it is one of the few things left that make sense in his own life. He remembers how he got the name Strawman: when called to the dock to give evidence against Cafferty, somebody called the wrong name – which sounded like Strawman – and Cafferty had called him that ever since. And as the lyrics of Lou Reed’s song would dictate, a Strawman would g
o straight to the Devil and then straight on to hell. ‘I’ll see you there, Strawman, third piece of fiery brimstone to the left. Just me and you, slugging it out for eternity.’
The interesting thing about Exit Music is that as Rebus spirals to his doomsday, Siobhan Clarke gets immersed deeper into the thought processes that would make her a much better police officer – she has a future, Rebus doesn’t. But she has something of Rebus’s unorthodox approach to her; something has indeed rubbed off from the sorcerer to the apprentice, which in a way proves that the system doesn’t really work. Rules have to be broken occasionally.
Siobhan didn’t start out a cynic or a maverick and, although time will tell if these influences will prevail, she can at least see them and understand them. She will have to choose what course she wants to follow in the future. By being with Rebus, she has grown up very quickly, gained much experience – was it too much too soon? No, of course it wasn’t, but that trait of cynicism would be with her for a little while yet… won’t it, John?
The quote from Exit Music at the head of this chapter brings the Rebus series full circle. It is the opening line of the novel and echoes the opening line of the very first Rebus novel Knots and Crosses: ‘The girl screamed once, only once.’
One can always over-analyse the change of writing style, speculating that if Rankin rewrote Knots and Crosses, he would lengthen the original opening line to give more rhythm and allow the reader to dwell on the verb. Frankly, he probably changed it deliberately on nothing more than a whim. But the following story would show less cut and thrust and more subtlety within the sub-text. Rankin has commented on – analysed – his own novels (see Rebus’s Scotland at least), and through writing about Rebus for 20 years and at least as many novels, novellas and other collections, he would know more – and ostensibly have more to say – about the character and his profession. In short, we are talking confidence here. Rankin is so familiar with his characters, at ease with his own style – gently explaining the odd Scottish word or phrase – that there is a natural flow that comes from all Rebus novels. From Black and Blue onwards? No, from the very beginning, but as far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, from The Black Book onwards – the book that introduced St Leonard’s,’ Big Ger’ and Siobhan Clarke.
Finally, is Exit Music a grand finale for John Rebus, or is it an anti-climax? That’s an interesting question and one I posed to Rankin.
‘The version of Exit Music I handed to my editor ended with Rebus at the railway station. My editor begged me to take Rebus back to the hospital for one last scene with “Big Ger”. I think that worked. Maybe it’s better than the original ending; maybe it’s just a different ending.’
But can Rankin let Rebus go?
‘It’s funny but with The Complaints [the next big novel after Exit Music], the story takes place in the Edinburgh police HQ… and I can sort of feel Rebus’s presence just through the walls; maybe in the next office or corridor along, or one flight up; or in the canteen. He’s still working somewhere, he hasn’t left the building.’
But is this indeed The End for Rebus, as there is a new character that populates Rankin’s novels?
‘Let’s see what the future brings,’ Rankin says. ‘My new character is an Internal Affairs cop. There are a few skeletons in Rebus’s closet, aren’t there? Who knows, maybe Internal Affairs will come knocking on his door one fine day…71
‘I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.’
Groucho Marx
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
‘“You’ve known Cafferty a long time,” Stone said.
“Nigh on twenty years.”
“You first gave evidence against him in Glasgow
High Court.”
“That’s right. Bloody lawyer got me mixed up with the previous witness, called me ‘Mr Stroman.’ After that, Cafferty’s nickname for me was Strawman.”
“Like in The Wizard of Oz?”’
Exit Music
‘You asked me right at the beginning of this interview: how many more books are left? Well, the time to finish the series realistically is when I haven’t got anything new to find out about Rebus, when he’s got nothing new to show me, or he becomes tedious to write about and I’ve got nothing new to say about Edinburgh through his eyes.’
Rankin told me this during my Fleshmarket Close interview. At the time I thought he was cranking himself up for a Rebus in retirement set of books but he kept assuring me that he didn’t know – never knew in fact – what the next book was going to be about until he started it. In August 2009, shortly after the proofs of The Complaints had gone off and the hardback was awaiting release, he told me that he still didn’t know what the next book would be. He was determined to have a year off: he wasn’t going to write another graphic novel (because he didn’t enjoy the experience much), he still didn’t know if he was going to continue with Siobhan, but the new character – Inspector Malcolm Fox – intrigued him and as Rankin told me in July 2009, there were enough skeletons in Rebus’s closet to warrant investigation…
In truth, there were probably too many avenues open to Rankin. He wanted to do a funny 18th-century Edinburgh novel (an extension of a radio play he had written). He had told me – or rather teased me – that he could dust off Summer Rites and make it fit for publication (his wife did think it one of his best novels)! He could even find the original manuscript of Westwind – so radically different from the published version – and release that for the first time (although that didn’t cross his mind, it crossed mine!). Again, so many options. A real literary mid-life crisis, i.e. did he want to tie himself down for another 20 years with a new character? Or did he want to go back over old ground and continue Rebus through a series about Siobhan?
The subject was so broad we had to discuss it:
So why don’t you kill Rebus off and be done with it?
‘I had an irate woman come up to me at a signing in Edinburgh and she said, “Don’t you dare get rid of Rebus! Don’t you dare! I don’t like that Siobhan, so don’t you dare,” and for some people the characters are very real to them. It’s almost like they’d be losing a friend if he died. In fact the characters are probably more real to them than I am to them!’
Didn’t Conan Doyle have this problem? In fact he killed off Sherlock Holmes!
‘He did indeed. He killed him off at the Reichenbach Falls and had to bring him back because the fans demanded it. So perhaps I’ll put Rebus over the Reichenbach Falls!’
I dare you! Yes but he killed him off and then wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles.
‘Yeah, good move wasn’t it? Commercially it was good, but was it good for his soul?’
(It may be a bit of literary banter but Rankin nearly gave Rebus a Reichenbach ending towards the end of Strip Jack. There is a scene where Rebus is running through a forest in the dead of night when suddenly the moon breaks through clouds and he notices that he is about to plummet off a plateau into a river. Then suddenly the murderer comes out of nowhere, hurtling towards him… well, there was the opportunity!)
OK, you’re taking the piss now!
‘I honestly don’t know what is going to happen next. When I had five books to go before Rebus retired, I didn’t know if I was going to kill him off in the very next one!’
In August 2003 Rankin told me that if Rebus retired when Rankin was 48, then he would have plenty of time to write other things that interested him. It was then that he told me about his historical novel.
‘I’ve got plenty of time to write comedies, historical novels – I would love to write about 18th-century Edinburgh – it was a fascinating time, lots of men of genius running around, and people escaping the guillotine in France running around. A real hotchpotch – there was a judge who kept a pig as a pet, Sir Walter Scott running around, just mad, mad times in Edinburgh and that would be interesting to do as a comedy. I’ve done something similar for radio with a priv
ate eye and it was good fun.’
Rankin could write an historical novel next. He is after all a frustrated historian anyway: books such as Strip Jack have characters by the name of Knox (as in John Knox) and his Rebus series started with homages to Robert Louis Stevenson, as did his new series. The Complaints brings Stevenson’s classic Kidnapped to mind with character names such as Breck and Fox (Red Fox) and a location of Queensferry (OK, Rankin uses Queensferry a lot but the comparison is there if you want it) and Heriot Row is suggested very early on too.
So what is certain?
‘I’ll keep writing. It’s how I make sense of the world. People think you’re in it for the money, but there gets to a stage where you’ve got all the money you need. J K Rowling, she’ll keep writing and it’s not just audience pressure – it’s almost like a therapy. You’re giving shape to chaos, the chaos around you.’
CONCLUSION
LET IT BLEED
‘I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a noble deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble but both more intelligent and nearer home. Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we feed… there must be something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.’
Robert Louis Stevenson, January 1886
Like most writers, Ian Rankin tantalises and teases his audience with little snippets of his own life within his famous character John Rebus, but Rebus isn’t Rankin. The author had no flirtation with National Service, although family and childhood friends would. He didn’t join the Police Force, although his imagination very early on took him into the insalubrious world of crime and social comment.
