10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘What’s back there?’

  ‘The loo,’ said Vanessa, stooping to recover a few of the books. ‘What the hell’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Maybe he’s had a bit of bad news,’ Rebus speculated. He was helping her retrieve books. He stood up and examined the blurb on the back jacket of Fish out of Water. The front cover illustration showed a woman seated more or less demurely on a chaise longue, while a rugged suitor leant over her from behind, his lips just short of her bared shoulder. ‘I think I might buy this,’ he said. ‘Looks like just my sort of thing.’

  Vanessa accepted the book, then stared up from it to him, her disbelief not quite showing through the shock of the scene she’d just witnessed. ‘Fifty pence,’ she told him quietly.

  ‘Fifty pence it is,’ said Rebus.

  And after the formal identification, while the autopsy took its defined and painstaking course, there were the questions. There were an awful lot of questions.

  Cath Kinnoul had to be questioned. Gently questioned, with her husband by her side and a bloodstream dulled by tranqs. No, she hadn’t really taken a close look at the body. She’d known from a good way off what it was. She could see the dress, could see that it was a dress. She’d run back to the house and telephoned for the police. Nine-nine-nine, the way they told you to in emergencies. No, she hadn’t gone back out to the river. She doubted she’d ever go there again.

  And, turning to Mr Kinnoul, where had he been this morning? Business meetings, he said. Meetings with potential partners and potential backers. He was trying to set up an independent television company, though he’d be grateful if the information went no further. And the previous evening? He’d spent it at home with his wife. And they hadn’t seen or heard anything? Not a thing. They’d been watching TV all night, not current TV but old stuff kept on video, stuff featuring Mr Kinnoul himself . . . Knife Ledge. The on-screen assassin.

  ‘You must have learned a few tricks of the trade in your time, Mr Kinnoul.’

  ‘You mean acting?’

  ‘No, I mean about how to kill . . .’

  And then there was Gregor Jack . . . Rebus kept out of that altogether. He’d look at any notes and transcripts later. He didn’t want to get involved. There was too much he already knew, too much prejudgement, which was another way of saying potential prejudice. He let other CID men deal with Mr Jack, and with Ian Urquhart, and with Helen Greig, and with all Elizabeth Jack’s cronies and cohorts. For this wasn’t merely a case of the lady vanishing; this was a matter of death. Jamie Kilpatrick, the Hon. Matilda Merriman, Julian Kaymer, Martin Inman, Louise Patterson-Scott, even Barney Byars. They’d all either been questioned, or were about to be. Perhaps they’d all be questioned again at a later date. There were missing days to be filled. Huge gaps in Liz Jack’s life, the whole final week of her life. Where had she been? Who had she seen? When had she died? (Hurry up, please, Dr Curt. Chop-chop.) How had she died? (Ditto.) Where was her car?

  But Rebus read all the transcripts, all the notes. He read through the interview with Gregor Jack, and the interview with Ronald Steele. A Detective Constable was sent to Braidwater Golf Course to check the story of the Wednesday afternoon game. The interview with Steele, Rebus read very carefully indeed. Asked about Elizabeth Jack, Steele admitted that ‘she always accused me of not being enough fun. She was right, I suppose. I’m not exactly what you’d call a “party animal”. And I never had enough money. She liked people with money to throw around, or who threw it around even if they couldn’t afford it.’

  A touch of bitterness there? Or just the bitter truth?

  To all of which Rebus added one other question – had Elizabeth Jack ever left Edinburgh in the first place?

  Then there was the separate hunt, the hunt for William Glass. If he had gone to Queensferry, where would be next? West, towards Bathgate, Linlithgow, or Bo’ness? Or north, across the Forth to Fife? Police forces were mobilized. Descriptions were issued. Had Liz Jack spent any time at all at Deer Lodge? How could William Glass simply disappear? Was there any connection between Mrs Jack’s death and her husband’s ‘night out’ at an Edinburgh brothel?

  This last line was the one pursued most eagerly by the newspapers. They seemed to be favouring a verdict of suicide in the case of Elizabeth Jack. Husband’s shame . . . discovered after she’s been on retreat . . . on her way home she decides she can’t face things . . . sets off perhaps to visit her friend the actor Rab Kinnoul . . . but grows more desperate and, having read the details of the Dean Bridge murder, decides to end it all. Throws herself into the river above Rab Kinnoul’s house. End of story.

  Except that it wasn’t the end of the story. As far as the papers were concerned, it was just the beginning. After all, this one had it all – a TV actor, an MP, a sex scandal, a death. The headline writers were boggled, trying to decide which order to put things in. Sex Scandal MP’s Wife Drowns in TV Star’s Stream? Or TV Star’s Agony at MP Friend’s Wife’s Suicide Act? You could see the problem . . . All those possessives . . .

  And the grieving husband? Kept well away from the media by protective friends and colleagues. But he was always available for interview by the police, when clarification of some point was required. While his father-in-law gave the media as many interviews as they needed, but kept his comments to the police succinct and scathing.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me for? Find the bugger who did it, then you can talk all you want. I want the animal who did this put behind bars! Better make them bloody strong bars, too, otherwise I might just pull them apart and strangle the life out of the bugger myself!’

  ‘We’re doing what we can, believe me, Sir Hugh.’

  ‘Is it enough though, that’s what I want to know!’

  ‘Everything we can . . .’

  Yes, everything. Leaving just the one final question: Did anyone do it? Only Dr Curt could answer that.

  6

  Highland Games

  Rebus packed an overnight bag. It was a large sports holdall, bought for him by Patience Aitken when she’d decided he should get fit. They’d enrolled together in a health club, bought all the gear, and had attended the club four or five times together. They’d played squash, been massaged, had saunas, encountered the plunge pool, gone swimming, survived the expensively equipped gymnasium, tried jogging . . . but ended up spending more and more time in the health club bar, which was stupid, the drinks being double the price they were at the pleasant-enough pub round the corner.

  No longer a sports bag then, but these days an overnight bag. Not that Rebus was taking much this trip. He packed a change of shirt, socks and underwear, toothbrush, camera, notebook, a kagoul. Would he require a phrase book? Probably, but he doubted if one existed. Something to read though . . . bedtime reading. He found the copy of Fish out of Water and threw it in on top of everything else. The phone was ringing. But he was in Patience’s flat, and she had her own answering machine. All the same . . .

  He went through to the living room and listened as the message played. Then the caller’s voice. ‘This is Brian Holmes, trying to get in touch with –’

  Rebus picked up the receiver. ‘Brian, what’s up?’

  ‘Ah, caught you. Thought maybe you’d already headed for the hills.’

  ‘I was just leaving.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to drop by the station first?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because Dr Curt is about to pronounce . . .’

  The problem with drowning was that drowning and immersion were two entirely different things. A body (conscious or unconscious) might fall (or be pushed) into water and drown. Or an already dead body might be dumped into water as a means of concealment or to lead the police astray. Cause of death became problematical, as did time of death. Rigor mortis might or might not be present. Bruising on and damage to the body might be the result of rocks or other objects in the water itself.

  However, froth from mouth and nose when the chest was pumped down on was a sign
that the body was alive when it entered the water. So was the presence in the brain, marrow, kidney and so forth of diatoms. Diatoms, Dr Curt never tired of explaining, were micro-organisms which penetrated the lung membrane and would be pumped around the bloodstream by a still-beating heart.

  But there were other signs, too. Silted matter in the bronchial tubes provided evidence of inhalation of water. A living person falling into water made attempts to grip something (a true-life ‘clutching at straws’) and so the hands of the corpse would be clenched. Washerwoman’s skin, the shedding of nails and hair, the swelling of the body – all these could lead to an estimate of the amount of time the corpse had spent in the water.

  As Curt pointed out, not all the relevant tests had been completed yet. It would be a few more days before the toxicology tests would yield results, so they couldn’t be sure yet whether the deceased had taken any drink or drugs prior to death. No semen had been found in the vagina, but then the deceased’s husband had provided information that the deceased ‘had trouble’ with the pill, and that her preferred method of contraception had always been the sheath . . .

  Christ, thought Rebus, imagine poor old Jack being asked about that. Still, there might be even less pleasant questions to answer . . .

  ‘What we have so far,’ Curt said, while everyone begged him silently to get on with it, ‘is a series of negatives. No froth from the mouth and nose . . . no silted matter . . . no clenched hands. What’s more, rigor mortis would suggest that the body was dead prior to immersion, and that it had been kept in a confined space. You’ll see from the photographs that the legs are bent quite unnaturally.’

  At that moment, they knew . . . but still he hadn’t said it.

  ‘I’d say the body was in the water not less than eight hours and not more than twenty-four. As to when death occurred, well, some time before that, obviously, but not too long, a matter of hours . . .’

  ‘And cause of death?’

  Dr Curt smiled. ‘The photographs of the skull show a clear fracture to the right-hand side of the head. She was hit very hard from behind, gentlemen. I’d say death was almost instantaneous . . .’

  There was more, but not much more. And much mumbling between officers. Rebus knew what they were thinking and saying: it was the same M.O. as the Dean Bridge killing. But it wasn’t. The woman found at Dean Bridge had been murdered at that spot, not transported there, and she had been murdered on a riverside path in the middle of a city, not . . . well, where had Liz Jack died? Anywhere. It could be anywhere. While people were muttering that William Glass had to be found, Rebus was thinking in a different direction: Mrs Jack’s BMW had to be found, and found quickly. Well, he was already packed, and he’d okayed the trip with Lauderdale. Constable Moffat would be there to meet him, and Gregor Jack had provided the keys.

  ‘So there it is, ladies and gentlemen.’ Curt was saying. ‘Murder would be my opinion. Yes, murder. The rest is down to your forensic scientists and yourselves.’

  ‘Off are you?’ Lauderdale commented, seeing Rebus toting his bag.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Good hunting, Inspector.’ Lauderdale paused. ‘What’s the name of the place again?’

  ‘Where is it expensive to be a Mason, sir?’

  ‘I don’t follow . . . ah, right, a dear lodge.’

  Rebus winked at his superior and made his way out towards his car.

  It was very pleasing the way Scotland changed every thirty miles or so – changed in landscape, in character, and in dialect. Mind you, stick in a car and you’d hardly guess. The roads all seemed much the same. So did the roadside petrol stations. Even the towns, long, straight main streets with their supermarkets and shoe shops and wool shops and chip shops . . . even these seemed to blur one into the other. But it was possible to look beyond them; possible, too, to look further into them. A small country, thought Rebus, yet so various. At school, his geography teacher had taught that Scotland could be divided into three distinct regions: Southern Uplands, Lowlands, and Highlands . . . something like that. Geography didn’t begin to tell the story. Well, maybe it did actually. He was heading due north, towards a people very different to those found in the southern cities or the coastal towns.

  He stopped in Perth and bought some supplies – apples, chocolate, a half bottle of whisky, chewing gum, a box of dates, a pint of milk . . . You never knew what might not be available further north. It was all very well on the tourist trail, but if he stepped off that trail . . .

  In Blairgowrie he stopped for fish and chips, which he ate at a Formica-topped table in the chip shop. Lashings of salt, vinegar and brown sauce on the chips. Two slices of white pan bread thinly spread with margarine. And a cup of dark-brown tea. The haddock was covered in batter, which Rebus picked off, eating it first before starting on the fish.

  ‘You look as if you enjoyed that,’ the frier’s wife said, wiping down the table next to him. He had enjoyed it. All the more so since Patience wouldn’t be smelling his breath this evening, checking for cholesterol and sodium and starch . . . He looked at the list of delights printed above the counter. Red, white and black puddings, haggis, smoked sausage, sausage in batter, steak pie, mince pie, chicken . . . with pickled onions or pickled eggs on the side. Rebus couldn’t resist. He bought another bag of chips to eat while he drove . . .

  Today was Tuesday. Five days since Elizabeth Jack’s body was found, probably six days since she died. Memories were short, Rebus knew. Her photograph had been in all the newspapers, had appeared on television and on several hundred police posters. And still no one had come forward with information. He’d worked through the weekend, seeing little of Patience, and he’d come up with this notion, this latest straw to be clutched at.

  The scenery deepened around him, growing wilder and quieter. He was in Glenshee. In it and through it as quickly as he could. There was something sinister and empty about the place, a louring sense of dis-ease. The Devil’s Elbow wasn’t the treacherous spot it had seemed in his youth; the road had somehow been levelled, or the corner straightened. Braemar . . . Balmoral . . . turning off just before Ballater towards Cockbridge and Tomintoul, that stretch of road which always seemed to be the first of the winter to close for snow. Bleak? Yes, he’d call it bleak. But it was impressive, too. It just went on and on and on. Deep valleys hewn by glaciers, collections of scree. Rebus’s geography teacher had been an enthusiast.

  He was close now, close to his destination. He turned to the directions which he had scribbled down, an amalgam of notes from Sergeant Moffat and Gregor Jack. Gregor Jack . . .

  Jack had wanted to talk with him about something, but Rebus hadn’t given him the chance. Too dangerous to get involved. Not that Rebus believed for one second that Jack had anything to hide. All the same . . . The others though, the Rab Kinnouls and Ronald Steeles and Ian Urquharts . . . there was definitely . . . well, maybe not definitely . . . but there was . . . ach, no, he couldn’t put it into words. He didn’t really want to think about it even. Thinking about it, about all those permutations and possibilities, all those what ifs . . . well, they just made his head birl.

  ‘Left and then right . . . along the track beside a fir plantation . . . up to the top of the rise . . . through a gateway. It’s like Treasure Hunt.’ The car was behaving impeccably (touch wood). Touch wood? He only had to stop the car and stretch his arm out of the window. No plantation now, but a wild wood. The track was heavily rutted, with grass growing high along a strip between the ruts. Some of the larger potholes had been filled in with gravel, and Rebus’s speed was down to five miles an hour or less, but that didn’t seem to stop his bones being shaken, his head snapped from side to side. It didn’t seem possible that there could be a habitation ahead. Maybe he’d taken a wrong turning. But the tyre tracks he was following were fresh enough, and besides, he didn’t fancy reversing all the way back along the trail, and there was no spot wide enough for a three-point turn.

  At last, the surface improved, and h
e was driving on gravel. As he turned a long, high-cambered bend, he found himself suddenly in front of a house. On the grass outside was parked a police Mini Metro. A narrow stream trickled past the front entrance. There was no garden to speak of, just meadow and then forest, and a smell of wet pine in the air. In the distance, beyond the back of the house, the land climbed and climbed. Rebus got out of the car, feeling his nerves jangle back into position. The door of the Metro had already opened, and out stepped a farm labourer in police uniform.

  It was like some sort of Guinness challenge: how large a man can you get in the front of a Mini Metro? He was also young, late teens or early twenties. He gave a big rubicund smile.

  ‘Inspector Rebus? Constable Moffat.’ The hand Rebus shook was as large as a coal shovel but surprisingly smooth, almost delicate. ‘Detective Sergeant Knox was going to be here, but something came up. He sends his apologies and hopes I’ll do instead, this being my neck of the woods, so to speak.’

  Rebus, who was rubbing his neck at this point, smiled at the joke. Then he pressed a thumb either side of his spine and straightened up, exhaling noisily. Vertebrae clicked and crunched.

  ‘Long drive, eh?’ Constable Moffat commented. ‘But you’ve made not bad time. I’ve only been here five minutes myself.’

  ‘Have you had another look round?’

  ‘Not yet, no. Thought I’d best wait.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Let’s start with the outside. Big place, isn’t it? I mean, after that road up to it I was expecting something a bit more basic.’

  ‘Well, the house was here first, that’s the point. Used to have a fine garden, well-kept drive, and that forest was hardly there at all. Before my time, of course. I think the place was built in the 1920s. Part of the Kelman estate. The estate got sold off bit by bit. There used to be estate workers to keep the place in check. Not these days, and this is what happens.’