10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

Curiously, it was only in leaving Scotland that I began really to become interested in my native country’s history and politics. I started to devour books on these subjects, and would return to Edinburgh three or four times a year, usually begging a bed or sofa at a friend’s place. I would take long walks around the city, using up rolls of film in my cheap camera, and spending hours in the various libraries. Now that I was a full-time writer, I felt a fresh obligation to get the details right. For Strip Jack, I wrote to the University of Edinburgh’s Pathology Department, and was granted a meeting with Professor Anthony Busuttil. He became responsible for much of the forensic detail in the book (and in others in the series). When Dr Curt speaks of ‘diatoms’ and ‘washerwoman’s skin’, it is really Professor Busuttil talking. That first meeting was memorable in that the Professor momentarily mistook me for a police officer and began discussing the case of a slashed throat. As he started to bring out the autopsy photos, my greying face told him he’d made a mistake . . .

  Living and working so far from Edinburgh, I fell back on personal history and reminiscence for much of Rebus’s inner life. When he recalls picnics and holiday destinations, they are my experiences rather than his. The MP Gregor Jack, however, comes from nowhere other than my imagination. I based him on no one I knew. His circle of friends, though, is another matter. I had made close friends in high school, and not many since. The story of how ‘Suey’ got his nickname comes from a real-life event which occurred during a school trip to Germany when I was sixteen. And the ‘dyslexic bigotry’ of ‘Remember 1960’ appeared on a friend’s tenement stairwell in Easter Road.

  Rebus also takes on some of my own characteristics. On one trip to Edinburgh, I’d consulted a doctor about the panic attacks I’d been suffering. Rather than medication, he’d prescribed self-hypnosis and relaxation techniques. In giving my problems to Rebus, I was using my writing as a form of therapy. Just as I had taken him to London in Tooth & Nail, so that he could dislike the place on my behalf, so I dumped my health problems on him too. However, I also did him the favour of placing him in a relationship with Dr Patience Aitken, who had a flat in Oxford Terrace next door to one of my high-school friends. (He would pop up in the book, actually, in the scene in the Horsehair Bar.) Patience would provide Rebus with some much-needed emotional stability . . . at least for a few books.

  Reading the novel now, it seems to me that Strip Jack is partly a story of friendship, of ties formed at school and never loosed. But it’s also another of my explorations of the theme of Scotland’s Jekyll and Hyde character: people hide their true selves behind a veneer of respectability. By the end, the villain of the piece has been reduced to something ape-like, bringing to mind descriptions of Mr Hyde in Stevenson’s story.

  Up until the final moments of Strip Jack, Rebus had been based in a fictitious police station on a fictitious street. However, now that I was a full-time author, earning a living by writing about real professions, I felt I owed it to the real-life practitioners to make my books as authentic as possible. I would take Rebus out of my made-up Edinburgh and into the real one: he would work in a real cop-shop and drink in real bars.

  My long apprenticeship was nearing its end.

  April 2005

  1

  The Milking Shed

  The wonder of it was that the neighbours hadn’t complained, hadn’t even – as many of them later told the newsmen – realized. Not until that night, the night their sleep was disturbed by sudden activity in the street. Cars, vans, policemen, the static chatter of radios. Not that the noise ever got out of hand. The whole operation was directed with such speed and, yes, even good humour that there were those who slept through the excitement.

  ‘I want courtesy,’ Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson had explained to his men in the briefing room that evening. ‘It may be a hoor-hoose, but it’s on the right side of town, if you take my meaning. No telling who might be in there. We might even come across our own dear Chief Constable.’

  Watson grinned, to let them know he was joking. But some of the officers in the room, knowing the CC better than Watson himself apparently did, exchanged glances and wry smiles.

  ‘Right,’ said Watson, ‘let’s go through the plan of attack one more time . . .’

  Christ, he’s loving this, thought Detective Inspector John Rebus. He’s loving every minute. And why not? This was Watson’s baby after all, and it was to be a home birth. Which was to say, Watson was going to be in charge all the way from immaculate conception to immaculate delivery.

  Maybe it was a male menopause thing, this need to flex a bit of muscle. Most of the chief supers Rebus had known in his twenty years on the force had been content to push pens over paper and wait for retirement day. But not Watson. Watson was like Channel Four: full of independent programmes of minority interest. He didn’t make waves exactly, but by Christ he splashed like hell.

  And now he even seemed to have an informer, an invisible somebody who had whispered in his ear the word ‘brothel’. Sin and debauchery! Watson’s hard Presbyterian heart had been stirred to righteous indignation. He was the kind of Highland Christian who found sex within marriage just about acceptable – his son and daughter were proof – but who baulked at anything and everything else. If there was an active brothel in Edinburgh, Watson wanted it shut down with prejudice.

  But then the informer had provided an address, and this caused a certain hesitation. The brothel was in one of the better streets of the New Town, quiet Georgian terraces, lined with trees and Saabs and Volvos, the houses filled with professional people: lawyers, surgeons, university professors. This was no seaman’s bawdy-house, no series of damp, dark rooms above a dockside pub. This was, as Rebus himself had offered, an Establishment establishment. Watson hadn’t seen the joke.

  Watch had been kept for several days and nights, courtesy of unmarked cars and unremarkable plainclothes men. Until there could be little doubt: whatever was happening inside the shuttered rooms, it was happening after midnight and it was happening briskly. Interestingly, few of the many men arrived by car. But a watchful detective constable, taking a leak in the dead of night, discovered why. The men were parking their cars in side streets and walking the hundred yards or so to the front door of the four-storey house. Perhaps this was house policy: the slamming of after-hours car doors would arouse suspicion in the street. Or perhaps it was in the visitors’ own interests not to leave their cars in broad streetlight, where they might be recognized . . .

  Registration numbers were taken and checked, as were photographs of visitors to the house. The owner of the house itself was traced. He owned half a French vineyard as well as several properties in Edinburgh, and lived in Bordeaux the year through. His solicitor had been responsible for letting the house to a Mrs Croft, a very genteel lady in her fifties. According to the solicitor, she paid her rent promptly and in cash. Was there any problem . . .?

  No problem, he was assured, but if he could keep the conversation to himself . . .

  Meantime, the car owners had turned out to be businessmen, some local, but the majority visiting the city from south of the border. Heartened by this, Watson had started planning the raid. With his usual blend of wit and acumen, he chose to call it Operation Creeper.

  ‘Brothel creepers, you see, John.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Rebus answered. ‘I used to own a pair myself. I’ve often wondered how they got the name.’

  Watson shrugged. He was not a man to be sidetracked. ‘Never mind the creepers,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get the creeps.’

  The house, it was reckoned, would be doing good business by midnight. One o’clock Saturday morning was chosen as the time of the raid. The warrants were ready. Every man in the team knew his place. And the solicitor had even come up with plans of the house, which had been memorized by the officers.

  ‘It’s a bloody warren,’ Watson had said.

  ‘No problem, sir, so long as we’ve got enough ferrets.’

  In truth, Rebus wasn’t
looking forward to this evening’s work. Brothels might be illegal, but they fulfilled a need and if they veered towards respectability, as this one certainly did, then what was the problem? He could see some of this doubt reflected in Watson’s eyes. But Watson had been enthusiastic from the first, and to pull back now was unthinkable, would seem a sign of weakness. So, with nobody really keen for it, Operation Creeper went ahead. While other, meaner streets went unpatrolled. While domestic violence took its toll. While the Water of Leith drowning still remained to be solved . . .

  ‘Okay, in we go.’

  They left their cars and vans and marched towards the front door. Knocked quietly. The door was opened from within, and then things began to move like a video on double-speed. Other doors were opened . . . how many doors could a house have? Knock first, then open. Yes, they were being courteous.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting dressed, please . . .’

  ‘If you could just come downstairs now . . .’

  ‘You can put your trousers on first, sir, if you like . . .’

  Then: ‘Christ, sir, come and take a look at this.’ Rebus followed the flushed, youthful face of the detective constable. ‘Here we are, sir. Feast your peepers on this lot.’

  Ah yes, the punishment room. Chains and thongs and whips. A couple of full-length mirrors, a wardrobe full of gear.

  ‘There’s more leather here than in a bloody milking shed.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about cows, son,’ Rebus said. He was just thankful the room wasn’t in use. But there were more surprises to come.

  In parts, the house resembled nothing more lewd than a fancy-dress party – nurses and matrons, wimples and high heels. Except that most of the costumes revealed more than they hid. One young woman seemed to be wearing a rubber diving suit with the nipples and crotch cut away. Another looked like a cross between Heidi and Eva Braun. Watson watched the parade, righteous fury filling him. He had no doubts now: it was absolutely proper that this sort of place be closed down. Then he turned back to the conversation he was having with Mrs Croft, while Chief Inspector Lauderdale lingered only a short distance away. He had insisted on coming along, knowing his superior and fearing some almighty cock-up. Well, thought Rebus with a smile, no cock-ups in sight yet.

  Mrs Croft spoke in a kind of gentrified Cockney, which became less gentrified as time went on and more couples spilled down the stairs and into the large, sofa-crammed living room. A room smelling of expensive perfume and proprietary whisky. Mrs Croft was denying everything. She was even denying that they were standing in a brothel at all.

  I am not my brothel’s keeper, thought Rebus. All the same, he had to admire her performance. She was a businesswoman, she kept saying, a taxpayer, she had rights . . . and where was her solicitor?

  ‘I thought it was her that was doing the soliciting,’ Lauderdale muttered to Rebus: a rare moment of humour from one of the dourest buggers Rebus had ever worked with. And as such, it deserved a smile.

  ‘What are you grinning at? I didn’t know there was an interval. Get back to work.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus waited till Lauderdale had turned away from him, the better to hear what Watson was saying, and then flicked a quick v-sign at him. Mrs Croft, though, caught the gesture and, perhaps thinking it intended at her, returned it. Lauderdale and Watson both turned towards where Rebus was standing, but by then he was already on his way . . .

  Officers who had been posted in the back garden now marched a few pale-faced souls back into the house. One man had leapt from a first-floor window, and was hobbling as a result. But he was insistent, too, that no doctor was necessary, that no ambulance be called. The women seemed to find the whole thing amusing, and appeared especially taken by the looks on their clients’ faces, looks ranging from the ashamed and embarrassed to the furious and embarrassed. There was some short-lived bravado of the I-know-my-rights variety. But in the main, everybody did as they were told: that is, they shut up and tried to be patient.

  Some of the shame and embarrassment started to lift when one of the men recalled that it wasn’t illegal to visit a brothel; it was only illegal to run one or work in one. And this was true, though it didn’t mean the men present were going to escape into the anonymous night. Give them a scare first, then send them away. Starve the brothels of clients, and you’d have no brothels. That was the logic. So the officers were prepared with their usual stories, the ones they used with kerb-crawlers and the like.

  ‘Just a quiet word, sir, between you and me, like. If I were you, I’d have myself checked over for AIDS. I’m serious. Most of these women could well be carrying the disease, even if it doesn’t show. Mostly, it doesn’t show till it’s too late anyway. Are you married, sir? Any girlfriends? Best tell them to have a test, too. Otherwise, you never know, do you . . .?’

  It was cruel stuff, but necessary; and as with most cruel words, there was a truth to it. Mrs Croft seemed to use a small back room as an office. A cash-box was found. So was a credit-card machine. A receipt-book was headed Crofter Guest House. As far as Rebus could tell, the cost of a single room was seventy-five pounds. Dear for a B&B, but how many company accountants would take the trouble to check? It wouldn’t surprise Rebus if the place was VAT registered to boot . . .

  ‘Sir?’ It was Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes, newly promoted and bristling with efficiency. He was halfway up one of the flights of stairs, and calling down to Rebus. ‘I think you better come up here . . .’

  Rebus wasn’t keen. Holmes looked to be a long way up, and Rebus, who lived on the second floor of a tenement, had a natural antipathy to stairs. Edinburgh, of course, was full of them, just as it was full of hills, biting winds, and people who liked to girn about things like hills and stairs and the wind . . .

  ‘Coming.’

  Outside a bedroom door, a detective constable stood in quiet discussion with Holmes. When Holmes saw Rebus reaching the landing, he dismissed the DC.

  ‘Well, Sergeant?’

  ‘Take a look, sir.’

  ‘Anything you want to tell me first?’

  Holmes shook his head. ‘You’ve seen the male member before, sir, haven’t you?’

  Rebus opened the bedroom door. What was he expecting to find? A mock-up dungeon, with someone stretched out naked on the rack? A farmyard scene with a few chickens and sheep? The male member. Maybe Mrs Croft had a collection of them displayed on her bedroom wall. And here’s one I caught in ’73. Put up a tough fight, but I had it in the end . . .

  But no, it was worse than that. Much worse. It was an ordinary bedroom, albeit with red lightbulbs in its several lamps. And in an ordinary bed lay an ordinary enough looking woman, her elbow pressed into the pillow, head resting at an angle on her clenched fist. And on that bed, dressed and staring at the floor, sat someone Rebus recognized: the Member of Parliament for North and South Esk.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Rebus. Holmes put his head round the door.

  ‘I can’t work in front of a fucking audience!’ yelled the woman. Her accent, Rebus noted, was English. Holmes ignored her.

  ‘This is a bit of a coincidence,’ he said to Gregor Jack MP. ‘Only, my girlfriend and me have just moved into your constituency.’

  The MP raised his eyes more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ he said. ‘A terrible mistake.’

  ‘Just doing a bit of canvassing, eh, sir?’

  The woman had begun to laugh, head still resting on her hand. The red lamplight seemed to fill her gaping mouth. Gregor Jack looked for a moment as though he might be about to throw a punch in her general direction. Instead he tried a slap with his open hand, but succeeded only in catching her arm, so that her head fell back on to the pillow. She was still laughing, almost girl-like. She lifted her legs high into the air, the bedcovers falling away. Her hands thumped the mattress with glee. Jack had risen to his feet and was scratching nervously at one finger.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Rebus said again. Then: ‘Come on, let�
�s get you downstairs.’

  Not the Farmer. The Farmer might go to pieces. Lauderdale then. Rebus approached with as much humility as he could muster.

  ‘Sir, we’ve got a bit of a problem.’

  ‘I know. It must have been that bugger Watson. Wanted his moment of glory captured. He’s always been keen on publicity, you should know that.’ Was that a sneer on Lauderdale’s face? With his gaunt figure and bloodless face, he reminded Rebus of a painting he’d once seen of some Calvinists or Seceders . . . some grim bunch like that. Ready to burn anyone who came to hand. Rebus kept his distance, all the time shaking his head.

  ‘I’m not sure I –’

  ‘The bloody papers are here,’ hissed Lauderdale. ‘Quick off the mark, eh? Even for our friends in the press. Bloody Watson must have tipped them off. He’s out there now. I tried to stop him.’

  Rebus went to one of the windows and peeped out. Sure enough, there were three or four reporters gathered at the bottom of the steps up to the front door. Watson had finished his spiel and was answering a couple of questions, at the same time retreating slowly back up the steps.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Rebus said, admiring his own sense of understatement. ‘That only makes it worse.’

  ‘Makes what worse?’

  So Rebus told him. And was rewarded with the biggest smile he’d ever seen flit across Lauderdale’s face.

  ‘Well, well, who’s been a naughty boy then? But I still don’t see the problem.’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Well, sir, it’s just that it doesn’t do anyone any good.’ Outside, the vans were arriving. Two to take the women to the station, two to take the men. The men would be asked a few questions, names and addresses taken, then released. The women . . . well, that was another thing entirely. There would be charges. Rebus’s colleague Gill Templer would call it another sign of the phallocentric society, something like that. She’d never been the same since she’d got her hands on those psychology books . . .