10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  Why couldn’t his mother have painted like this? When they died. (Together, in bed. A gas leak. The police said the child was lucky to be alive. Lucky his own bedroom window had been open a couple of inches.) When they had died, all he’d taken with him from the house had been her paintings, every single one of them.

  ‘Only a game.’

  ‘Long nosehairs, Johnny.’ Snipping with the scissors, his father asleep. He’d pleaded with his eyes, pleaded with her to stick the point of the scissors into his father’s fleshy noiseless throat. She’d been so gentle. Snip. So kind and gentle. Snip. The child was lucky.

  What could they know?

  Rebus walked up the stairs and through the bookshop. Other officers were close behind him. He motioned for them to spread out. There would be no escape. But he also warned them to keep their distance.

  Malcolm Chambers was his.

  The first gallery was large, with red walls. A guard pointed through the doorway on the right and Rebus strode towards it. By the side of the doorway, a painting showed a headless corpse, spouting blood. The painting mirrored Rebus’s thoughts so well that he smiled grimly. There were spots of rust-coloured blood on the orange carpet. But even without these, he would have had no difficulty following Chambers’s trail. The tourists and attendants stood back from him, pointing, showing him the way. The alarm bell was bright and sharp, focusing his mind. His legs had become solid once again and his heart pumped blood so loudly he wondered if others could hear it.

  He took a right, from a small corner room into another large gallery, at the far end of which stood a set of hefty wooden and glass doors. Near them another attendant stood nursing a wounded arm. There was a bloody handprint on one door. Rebus stopped and looked through into the room itself.

  In the furthest corner, slouched on the floor, sat the Wolfman. Directly above him on the wall was a painting of a monastic figure, the face cowled and in shadow. The figure looked to be praying to heaven. The figure was holding a skull. A smear of blood ran down and past the skull.

  Rebus pushed open the door and walked into the room. Next to this painting was another, of the Virgin Mary with stars around what was left of her head. A large hole had been punched through her face. The figure beneath the paintings was still and silent. Rebus took a few paces forward. He glanced to his left and saw that on the opposite wall were portraits of unhappy looking noblemen. They had every right to be unhappy. Slashes in each canvas almost ripped their heads from their bodies. He was close now. Close enough to see that the painting next to Malcolm Chambers was a Velázquez, ‘The Immaculate Conception’. Rebus smiled again. Immaculate indeed.

  And then Malcolm Chambers’s head jerked up. The eyes were cold, the face stippled with glass from the BMW’s windscreen. The voice when it spoke was dull and tired.

  ‘Inspector Rebus.’

  Rebus nodded, though it had not been a question.

  ‘I wonder,’ Chambers said, ‘why my mother never brought me here. I don’t remember being taken anywhere, except perhaps Madame Tussaud’s. Have you ever been to Madame Tussaud’s, Inspector? I like the Chamber of Horrors. My mother wouldn’t even come in with me.’ He laughed, and leaned against the foot-rail behind him, ready to push himself to his feet. ‘I shouldn’t have torn those paintings, should I?’ he was saying. ‘They were probably priceless. Silly really. They’re only paintings, after all. Why should paintings be priceless?’

  Rebus had reached out a hand to help him up. At the same time, he saw the portraits again. Slashed. Not torn, slashed. Like the attendant’s arm. Not by human hand, but with an instrument.

  Too late. The small kitchen-knife in Chambers’s hand was already pushing through Rebus’s shirt. Chambers had leapt to his feet and was propelling Rebus backwards, back towards the portraits on the far wall. Chambers was infused with the strength of madness. Rebus felt his feet catch on the foot-rail behind him, his head fell back against one painting, thudding into the wall. He had his own right hand clasped around Chambers’s knife-hand now, so that the tip of the knife was still gouging at his stomach but could go no deeper. He jerked a knee into Chambers’s groin, at the same time jamming the heel of his left hand into Chambers’s nose. There was a squeal as the pressure lessened on the knife. Rebus twisted Chambers’s wrist, trying to shake free the knife, but Chambers’s grip held fast.

  Upright again, away from the wall now, they wrestled for control of the knife. Chambers was crying, howling. The sound chilled Rebus, even as he grappled with the man. It was like fighting with darkness itself. Unwanted thoughts sped through his mind: crammed tube trains, child molesters, beggars, blank faces, punks and pimps, as everything he’d seen and experienced in London washed over him in a final rolling wave. He dare not look into Chambers’s face for fear that he would freeze. The paintings all around were blurs of blue, black and grey as he danced this macabre dance, feeling Chambers growing stronger and himself growing more tired. Tired and dizzy, the room spinning, a dullness coursing through his stomach towards the hole made by the knife.

  The knife which is moving now, moving with new-found power, a power Rebus feels unable to counter with anything more than a grimace. He dares himself to look at Chambers. Does so, and sees the eyes staring at him like a bull’s, the mouth set defiantly, the chin jutting. There is more than defiance there, more than madness, there is a resolution. Rebus feels it as the knife-hand turns. Turns one hundred and eighty degrees. And then he is being pushed backwards again. Chambers is rearing up, driving him on, powerful as an engine, until Rebus slams into another wall, followed by Chambers himself. It is almost an embrace. The bodies seemingly intimate in their contact. Chambers is heavy, a dead weight. His cheek rests against Rebus’s. Until Rebus, recovering his breath, pushes the body away. Chambers staggers backwards into the room, the knife buried in his chest all the way up to the hilt. He angles his head to look down, dark blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth. He touches at the handle of the knife. Then looks up at Rebus and smiles, almost apologetically.

  ‘So unbecoming . . . in a man.’ Then falls to his knees. Trunk falls forward. Head hits carpet. And stays like that. Rebus is breathing hard. He pushes himself up from the wall, walks to the centre of the room, and pushes at the body with the toe of his shoe, tipping Chambers sideways. The face looks peaceful, despite the welts of blood. Rebus touches two fingers to the front of his own shirt. They come away moist with blood. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that the Wolfman had turned out to be human after all, human and mortal, mortal and dead. If he wanted to, Rebus knew he could take the credit. He didn’t want the credit. He’d get them to take away the knife and check it for fingerprints. They would find only Chambers’s. That didn’t mean much, of course. The likes of Flight would still think Rebus had killed him. But Rebus hadn’t killed the Wolfman, and he couldn’t be sure exactly what had: cowardice? guilt? or something deeper, something never to be explained?

  So unbecoming . . . in a man. What kind of obituary was that?

  ‘John?’

  It was Flight’s voice. Behind him stood two officers armed with pistols.

  ‘No need for silver bullets, George,’ said Rebus. He stood there, surrounded by what he supposed would be millions of pounds’ worth of damaged works of art, alarm bells ringing, while outside the traffic in central London would be backed up for miles until Trafalgar Square could be opened again.

  ‘I told you it’d be easy,’ he said.

  Lisa Frazer was fine. Shock, a few bruises, whiplash. The hospital wanted to keep her in overnight, just to be sure. They wanted to keep Rebus in, too, but he refused. They gave him painkillers instead, and three stitches in his stomach. The cut, they said, was fairly superficial, but it was best to be safe. The thread they used was thick and black.

  By the time he arrived at Chambers’s huge two-storey flat in Islington, the place was crawling with police, forensics, photographers and the usual retinue. The reporters outside were desperate for a quote, some recogni
sing him from the impromptu conference he had given outside the house on Copperplate Street. But he pushed past them and into the Wolfman’s lair.

  ‘John, how are you?’ It was George Flight, looking bemused by the day’s proceedings. He had placed a hand on Rebus’s shoulder. Rebus smiled.

  ‘I’m fine, George. What have you found?’

  They were standing in the main hall. Flight glanced back into one of the rooms off this hall. ‘You won’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I’m still not sure I do.’ There was a tang of whisky on Flight’s breath. The celebrations had begun already.

  Rebus walked to the door and into the room. This was where the photographers and forensics people were busiest. A tall man rose to his feet from behind a sofa and looked across to Rebus. It was Philip Cousins. He smiled and nodded. Near him stood Isobel Penny, sketchbook in hand. But Rebus noticed that she wasn’t drawing, and her face had lost all traces of liveliness. Even she, it seemed, could still be shocked.

  The scene was certainly shocking. But worst of all was the smell, the smell and the buzzing of flies. One wall was covered in what had been paintings – very crudely done paintings, as even Rebus could tell. But now they had been slashed into tatters, some of which lay across the floor. And on the opposite wall was as much graffiti as would befit any tower block in Churchill Estate. Venomous stuff: FUCK ART. FEEL THE POOR. KILL PIGS. The stuff of madness.

  There were two bodies thrown casually behind the sofa, and a third lying under a table, as though some rudimentary effort had been made to tidy them out of sight. Carpet and walls were stained with fine sprays of blood and the cloying smell told Rebus that at least one of the bodies had been here for several days. Easy to confront this now, now that it was at an end. Not so easy to work out the ‘why?’. That was what worried Flight.

  ‘I just can’t find a motive, John. I mean, Chambers had everything. Why the hell did he need to . . .? I mean, why would he just . . .?’ They were in the flat’s living-room. No clues were being offered up. Chambers’s private life seemed as tidy and innocuous as the rest of his home. Just that one room, that one secret corner. That apart, they might have been in any successful barrister’s apartment, poring over his books, his desk, his correspondence, his computer files.

  It didn’t really bother Rebus. It wouldn’t bother him supposing they never found out why. He shrugged.

  ‘Wait till the biography’s published, George,’ said Rebus, ‘maybe then you’ll get your answer.’ Or ask a psychologist, he thought to himself. He didn’t doubt there would be plenty of theories.

  But Flight was shaking his head, rubbing at his head, his face, his neck. He still couldn’t believe it had come to an end. Rebus touched a hand to his arm. Their eyes met. Rebus nodded slowly, then winked.

  ‘You should have been in that Jag, George. It was magic.’

  Flight managed to pull a smile out of the air. ‘Tell that to the judge,’ he said. ‘Tell that to the judge.’

  Rebus ate that night at George Flight’s home, a meal cooked by Marion. So at last they were having the promised dinner together, but it was a fairly sombre occasion, enlivened only by an interview with some art historian on the late-night news. He was talking about the damage to the paintings in the National Gallery’s Spanish Room.

  ‘Such pointless waste . . . vandalism . . . sheer, wanton . . . priceless . . . perhaps irreparable . . . thousands of pounds . . . heritage.’

  ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ said Flight sneeringly. ‘At least you can patch up a bloody painting. These people talk half the time out of their arses.’

  ‘George!’

  ‘Sorry, Marion,’ said Flight sheepishly. He glanced towards Rebus, who winked back at him.

  Later, after she had gone to bed, the two men sat together drinking a final brandy.

  ‘I’ve decided to retire,’ said Flight. ‘Marion’s been nagging me for ages. My health’s not what it was.’

  ‘Not serious, I hope?’

  Flight shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that. But there’s a security firm, they’ve offered to take me on. More money, nine till five. You know how it is.’

  Rebus nodded. He’d seen some of the best of his elders drawn like moths to a lightbulb when security firms and the like came to call. He drained his glass.

  ‘When will you be leaving?’ Flight asked.

  ‘I thought I’d go back tomorrow. I can come back down again when they need me to give evidence.’

  Flight nodded. ‘Next time you come, we’ve got a spare bedroom here.’

  ‘Thanks, George.’ Rebus rose to his feet.

  ‘I’ll drive you back,’ said Flight. But Rebus shook his head.

  ‘Call me a cab,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t want you done for D and D. Think what it would do to your pension.’

  Flight stared into his brandy glass. ‘You’ve got a point,’ he said. ‘Okay then, a cab it is.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket. ‘By the way, I’ve got you a little present.’

  He held the clenched fist out to Rebus, who placed his own open palm beneath it. A slip of paper dropped from Flight’s hand into his. Rebus unfolded the note. It was an address. Rebus looked up at Flight and nodded his understanding.

  ‘Thanks, George,’ he said.

  ‘No rough stuff, eh, John?’

  ‘No rough stuff,’ agreed Rebus.

  Family

  He slept deeply that night, but woke at six the next morning and sat up in bed immediately. His stomach hurt, a burning sensation as though he had just swallowed a measure of spirits. The doctors had told him not to drink alcohol. Last night he had drunk just the one glass of wine and two glasses of brandy. He rubbed the area around the wound, willing the ache to go away, then took two more painkillers with a glass of tap-water before dressing and putting on his shoes.

  His taxi driver, though sleepy, was full of tales of yesterday’s action.

  ‘I was on Whitehall, wasn’t I? An hour and a quarter in the cab before the traffic got moving again. Hour and a bleedin’ quarter. Didn’t see the chase either, but I heard the smash.’

  Rebus sat back in silence, all the way to the block of flats in Bethnal Green. He paid the driver and looked again at the slip of paper Flight had given him. Number 46, fourth floor, flat six. The elevator smelled of vinegar. A crumpled paper package in one corner was oozing under-cooked chips and a tail-end of batter. Flight was right: it made all the difference having a good network of informers. It made for quick information. But what a good copper’s network could get, so too could a good villain’s. Rebus hoped he’d be in time.

  He walked quickly across the small landing from the open lift to the door of one of the flats where two empty milk bottles stood to attention in a plastic holder. He picked up one bottle and hurried back to the lift just as its doors were shuddering to a close to place the milk bottle in the remaining gap. The doors stayed where they were. So did the lift.

  You never knew when a quick getaway would be needed.

  Then he walked along the narrow corridor to flat six, braced himself against the wall and kicked at the doorhandle with the heel of his shoe. The door flew open and he walked into a stuffy hall. Another door, another kick and he was face to face with Kenny Watkiss.

  Watkiss had been asleep on a mattress on the floor. He was standing now, clad only in underpants and shivering, against the furthest wall from the door. He pushed his hair back when he saw who it was.

  ‘Jee-Jesus,’ he stammered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, Kenny,’ said Rebus, stepping into the room. ‘I thought we’d have a little chat.’

  ‘What about?’ You didn’t get as frightened as Kenny Watkiss was by having your door kicked in at half past six in the morning. You only got that frightened by the idea of who was doing it and why.

  ‘About Uncle Tommy.’

  ‘Uncle Tommy?’ Kenny Watkiss smiled unconvincingly. He moved back to the mattress and started pulling on a pair of torn denims. ‘What about him?’

&n
bsp; ‘What are you so scared of, Kenny? Why are you hiding?’

  ‘Hiding?’ That smile again. ‘Who said I was hiding?’

  Rebus shook his head, his own smile one of apparent sympathy. ‘I feel sorry for you, Kenny, really I do. I see your kind a hundred times a week. All ambition and no brain. All talk but no guts. I’ve only been in London a week, and already I know how to find you when I want you.

  Do you think Tommy can’t? You think maybe he’ll lay off? No, he’s going to nail your head to the wall.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft.’ Now that he was dressed, having pulled on a black T-shirt, Kenny’s voice had lost some of its trembling. But he couldn’t hide the look in his eyes, the haunted, hunted look. Rebus decided to make it easy for him. He reached into a pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes, offered one to Kenny and lit it for him before taking one himself. He rubbed at his stomach. Jesus, it was hurting. He hoped the stitches were holding.

  ‘You’ve been ripping him off,’ Rebus said casually. ‘He handled stolen goods, you were his courier, passing it down the chain. But you’ve been skimming a little off the top, haven’t you? And with each job you’d take a little more than he knew about. Why? Saving for that Docklands flat? So you could start your own business? Maybe you got greedy, I don’t know. But Tommy got suspicious. You were in court that day because you wanted to see him go down. It was the only thing that could have saved you. When he didn’t, you still tried putting one over on him, yelling out from the public gallery. But by then it was only a matter of time. And when you heard that the case had been dropped altogether, well, you knew he’d come straight after you. So you ran. You didn’t run far enough, Kenny.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ The words were angry. But it was the anger that came of fear. It wasn’t directed at Rebus. He was merely the messenger.