10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  On Wednesday, Rebus began to realise that his world was a black comedy.

  Michael had been moved into the Arden Street flat without any fuss. Rebus had informed Patience of his brother’s return, but had said little more than that. She was spending a lot of time with her sister’s girls anyway. She’d taken a few days off work to show them Edinburgh. It looked like hard going. Susan at fifteen wanted to do all the things which Jenny, aged eight, didn’t or couldn’t. Rebus felt almost totally excluded from this female triumvirate, though he would sneak into Jenny’s room at night just to re-live the magic and innocence of a child asleep. He also spent time trying to avoid Susan, who seemed only too aware of the differences between women and men.

  He was kept busy at work, which meant he didn’t think about Michael more than a few dozen times each day. Ah, work, now there was a thing. When Great London Road police station had burnt down, Rebus had been moved to St Leonard’s, which was Central District’s divisional HQ.

  With him had come Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes and, to both their dismays, Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson and Chief Inspector ‘Fart’ Lauderdale. There had been compensations – newer offices and furniture, better amenities and equipment – but not enough. Rebus was still trying to come to terms with his new workplace. Everything was so tidy, he could never find anything, as a result of which he was always keen to get out of the office and onto the street.

  Which was why he ended up at a butcher’s shop on South Clerk Street, staring down at a stabbed man.

  The man had already been tended to by a local doctor, who’d been standing in line waiting for some pork chops and gammon steaks when the man staggered into the shop. The wound had been dressed initially with a clean butcher’s apron, and now everyone was waiting for a stretcher to be unloaded from the ambulance outside.

  A constable was filling Rebus in.

  ‘I was only just up the road, so he couldn’t have been here more than five minutes when somebody told me, and I came straight here. That’s when I radioed in.’

  Rebus had picked up the constable’s radio message in his car, and had decided to stop by. He kind of wished he hadn’t. There was blood smeared across the floor, colouring the sawdust which lay there. Why some butchers still scattered sawdust on their floors he couldn’t say. There was also a palm-shaped daub of blood on the white-tiled wall, and another less conclusive splash of the stuff below this.

  The wounded man had also left a trail of gleaming drips outside, all the way along and halfway up Lutton Place (insultingly close to St Leonard’s), where they suddenly stopped kerbside.

  The man’s name was Rory Kintoul, and he had been stabbed in the abdomen. This much they knew. They didn’t know much more, because Rory Kintoul was refusing to speak about the incident. This was not an attitude shared by those who had been in the butcher’s at the time. They were outside now, passing on news of the excitement to the crowd who had stopped to gawp through the shop window. It reminded Rebus of Saturday afternoon in the St James Centre, when pockets of men would gather outside the TV rental shops, hoping to catch the football scores.

  Rebus crouched over Kintoul, just a little intimidatingly.

  ‘And where do you live, Mr Kintoul?’

  But the man was not about to answer. A voice came from the other side of the glass display case.

  ‘Duncton Terrace.’ The speaker was wearing a bloodied butcher’s apron and cleaning a heavy knife on a towel. ‘That’s in Dalkeith.’

  Rebus looked at the butcher. ‘And you are . . .?’

  ‘Jim Bone. This is my shop.’

  ‘And you know Mr Kintoul?’

  Kintoul had turned his head awkwardly, seeking the butcher’s face, as if trying to influence his answer. But, slouched as he was against the display case, he would have required demonic possession to effect such a move.

  ‘I ought to,’ said the butcher. ‘He’s my cousin.’

  Rebus was about to say something, but at that moment the stretcher was trolleyed in by two ambulancemen, one of whom almost skited on the slippery floor. It was as they positioned the stretcher in front of Kintoul that Rebus saw something which would stay with him. There were two signs in the display cabinet, one pinned into a side of corned beef, the other into a slab of red sirloin.

  Cold Cuts, one said. The other stated simply, Fleshing. A large fresh patch of blood was left on the floor as they lifted the butcher’s cousin. Cold Cuts and Fleshing. Rebus shivered and made for the door.

  On the Friday after work, Rebus decided on a massage. He had promised Patience he’d be in by eight, and it was only six now. Besides, a brutal pummelling always seemed to set him up for the weekend.

  But first he wandered into the Broadsword for a pint of the local brew. They didn’t come more local than Gibson’s Dark, a heavy beer made only six hundred yards away at the Gibson Brewery. A brewery, a pub and a massage parlour: Rebus reckoned if you threw in a good Indian restaurant and a corner shop open till midnight he could live happily here for ever and a day.

  Not that he didn’t like living with Patience in her Oxford Terrace garden flat. It represented the other side of the tracks, so to speak. Certainly, it seemed a world away from this disreputable corner of Edinburgh, one of many such corners. Rebus wondered why he was so drawn to them.

  The air outside was filled with the yeasty smell of beer-making, vying with the even stronger aromas from the city’s other much larger breweries. The Broadsword was a popular watering hole, and like most of Edinburgh’s popular pubs, it boasted a mixed clientele: students and low lifes with the occasional businessman. The bar had few pretensions; all it had in its favour were good beer and a good cellar. The weekend had already started, and Rebus was squeezed in at the bar, next to a man whose immense alsatian dog was sleeping on the floor behind the barstools. It took up the standing room of at least two adult men, but nobody was asking it to shift. Further along the bar, someone was drinking with one hand and keeping another proprietorial hand on a coatstand which Rebus assumed they’d just bought at one of the nearby secondhand shops. Everyone at the bar was drinking the same dark brew.

  Though there were half a dozen pubs within a five-minute walk of here, only the Broadsword stocked draught Gibson’s, the other pubs being tied to one or other of the big breweries. Rebus started to wonder, as the beer slipped down, what effect it would have on his metabolism once the Organ Grinder got to work. He decided against a refill, and instead made for O-Gee’s, which was what the Organ Grinder had called his shop. Rebus liked the name; it made the same sound customers made once the Grinder himself got to work – ‘Oh Jeez!’ But they were always careful not to say anything out loud. The Organ Grinder didn’t like to hear blasphemy on the massage table. It upset him, and nobody wanted to be in the hands of an upset Organ Grinder. Nobody wanted to be his monkey.

  So, there he was sitting with the Bible in his lap, waiting for his six-thirty appointment. The Bible was the only reading matter on the premises, courtesy of the Organ Grinder himself. Rebus had read it before, but didn’t mind reading it again.

  Then the front door burst open.

  ‘Where’s the girls, eh?’ This new client was not only misinformed, but also considerably drunk. There was no way the Grinder would handle drunks.

  ‘Wrong place, pal.’ Rebus was about to make mention of a couple of nearby parlours which would be certain to offer the necessary Thai assisted sauna and rub-down, but the man stopped him with a thick pointed finger.

  ‘John bloody Rebus, you son of a shite-breeks!’

  Rebus frowned, trying to place the face. His mind flipped through two decades of mug shots. The man saw Rebus’s confusion, and spread his hands wide. ‘Deek Torrance, you don’t remember?’

  Rebus shook his head. Torrance was walking determinedly forward. Rebus clenched his fists, ready for anything.

  ‘We went through parachute training together,’ said Torrance. ‘Christ, you must remember!’

  And suddenly
Rebus did remember. He remembered everything, the whole black comedy of his past.

  They drank in the Broadsword, swopping stories. Deek hadn’t lasted in the Parachute Regiment. After a year he’d had enough, and not too long after that he’d bought his way out of the Army altogether.

  ‘Too restless, John, that was my problem. What was yours?’

  Rebus shook his head and drank some more beer. ‘My problem, Deek? You couldn’t put a name to it.’ But a name had been put to it, first by Mickey’s sudden appearance, and now by Deek Torrance. Ghosts, both of them, but Rebus didn’t want to be their Scrooge. He bought another round.

  ‘You always said you were going to try for the SAS,’ Torrance said.

  Rebus shrugged. ‘It didn’t work out.’

  The bar was busier than ever, and at one point Torrance was jostled by a young man trying to manoeuvre a double bass through the mêlée.

  ‘Could you no’ leave that outside?’

  ‘Not around here.’

  Torrance turned back to Rebus. ‘Did you see thon?’

  Rebus merely smiled. He felt good after the massage. ‘No one brings anything small into a bar around here.’ He watched Deek Torrance grunt. Yes, he remembered him now, all right. He’d gotten fatter and balder, his face was roughened and much fleshier than it had been. He didn’t even sound the same, not exactly. But there was that one characteristic: the Torrance grunt. A man of few words, Deek Torrance had been. Not now, though, now he had plenty to say.

  ‘So what do you do, Deek?’

  Torrance grinned. ‘Seeing you’re a copper I better not say.’ Rebus bided his time. Torrance was drunk to the point of slavering. Sure enough, he couldn’t resist. ‘I’m in buying and selling, mostly selling.’

  ‘And what do you sell?’

  Torrance leaned closer. ‘Am I talking to the polis or an old pal?’

  ‘A pal,’ said Rebus. ‘Strictly off-duty. So what do you sell?’

  Torrance grunted. ‘Anything you like, John. I’m sort of like Jenners department store . . . only I can get things they can’t.’

  ‘Such as?’ Rebus was looking at the clock above the bar. It couldn’t be that late, surely. They always ran the clock ten minutes fast here, but even so.

  ‘Anything at all,’ said Torrance. ‘Anything from a shag to a shooter. You name it.’

  ‘How about a watch?’ Rebus started winding his own. ‘Mine only seems to go for a couple of hours at a stretch.’

  Torrance looked at it. ‘Longines,’ he said, pronouncing the word correctly, ‘you don’t want to chuck that. Get it cleaned, it’ll be fine. Mind you, I could probably part-ex it against a Rolex . . .?’

  ‘So you sell dodgy watches.’

  ‘Did I say that? I don’t recall saying that. Anything, John. Whatever the client wants, I’ll fetch it for him.’ Torrance winked.

  ‘Listen, what time do you make it?’

  Torrance shrugged and pulled up the sleeve of his jacket. He wasn’t wearing a watch. Rebus was thinking. He’d kept his appointment with the Grinder, Deek happy to wait for him in the anteroom. And afterwards they’d still had time for a pint or two before he had to make his way home. They’d had two . . . no, three drinks so far. Maybe he was running a bit late. He caught the barman’s attention and tapped at his wrist.

  ‘Twenty past eight,’ called the barman.

  ‘I’d better phone Patience,’ said Rebus.

  But someone was using the public phone to cement some romance. What’s more, they’d dragged the receiver into the ladies’ toilet so that they could hear above the noise from the bar. The telephone cord was stretched taut, ready to garotte anyone trying to use the toilets. Rebus bided his time, then began staring at the wall-mounted telephone cradle. What the hell. He pushed his finger down on the cradle, released it, then moved back into the throng of drinkers. A young man appeared from inside the ladies’ toilet and slammed the receiver hard back into its cradle. He checked for change in his pocket, had none, and started to make for the bar.

  Rebus moved in on the phone. He picked it up, but could hear no tone. He tried again, then tried dialling. Nothing. Something had obviously come loose when the man had slammed the receiver home. Shite on a stick. It was nearly half past eight now, and it would take fifteen minutes to drive back to Oxford Terrace. He was going to pay dearly for this.

  ‘You look like you could use a drink,’ said Deek Torrance when Rebus joined him at the bar.

  ‘Know what, Deek?’ said Rebus. ‘My life’s a black comedy.’

  ‘Oh well, better than a tragedy, eh?’

  Rebus was beginning to wonder what the difference was.

  He got back to the flat at twenty past nine. Probably Patience had cooked a meal for the four of them. Probably she’d waited fifteen minutes or so before eating. She’d have kept his meal warm for another fifteen minutes, then dumped it. If it was fish, the cat would have eaten it. Otherwise its destination would be the compost heap in the garden. This had happened before, too many times, really. Yet it kept on happening, and Rebus wasn’t sure the excuses of an old friend or a broken watch would work any kind of spell.

  The steps down to the garden flat were worn and slippery. Rebus took them carefully, and so was slow to notice the large sports holdall which, illuminated by the orange street-lamp, was sitting on the rattan mat outside the front door of the flat. It was his bag. He unzipped it and looked in. On top of some clothes and a pair of shoes there was a note. He read it through twice.

  Don’t bother trying the door, I’ve bolted it. I’ve also disconnected the doorbell, and the phone is off the hook for the weekend. I’ll leave another load of your stuff on the front step Monday morning.

  The note needed no signature. Rebus whistled a long breathy note, then tried his key in the lock. It didn’t budge. He pressed the doorbell. No sound. As a last resort, he crouched down and peered in through the letterbox. The hall was in darkness, no sign of light from any of the rooms.

  ‘Something came up,’ he called. No response. ‘I tried phoning, I couldn’t get through.’ Still nothing. He waited a few more moments, half-expecting Jenny at least to break the silence. Or Susan, she was a right stirrer of trouble. And a heartbreaker too, by the look of her. ‘Bye, Patience,’ he called. ‘Bye, Susan. Bye, Jenny.’ Still silence. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He truly was.

  ‘Just one of those weeks,’ he said to himself, picking up the bag.

  On Sunday morning, in weak sunshine and a snell wind, Andrew McPhail sneaked back into Edinburgh. He’d been away a long time, and the city had changed. Everywhere and everything had changed. He was still jetlagged from several days ago, and poorer than he should have been due to London’s inflated prices. He walked from the bus station to the Broughton area of town, just off Leith Walk. It wasn’t a long walk, but every step seemed heavy, though his bags were light. He’d slept badly on the bus, but that was nothing new: he couldn’t remember when he’d last had a good night’s sleep, sleep without dreams.

  The sun looked as though it might disappear at any minute. Thick clouds were pushing in over Leith. McPhail tried to walk faster. He had an address in his pocket, the address of a boarding house. He’d phoned last night, and his landlady was expecting him. She sounded nice on the phone, but it was difficult to tell. He wouldn’t mind, no matter what she was like, so long as she kept quiet. He knew that his leaving Canada had been in the Canadian newspapers, and even in some of the American ones, and he supposed that journalists here would be after him for a story. He’d been surprised at slipping so quietly into Heathrow. No one seemed to know who he was, and that was good.

  He wanted nothing but a quiet life, though perhaps not as quiet as a few of the past years.

  He’d phoned his sister from London and asked her to check directory enquiries for a Mrs MacKenzie in the Bellevue area. (Directory enquiries in London hadn’t gone out of their way to help.) Melanie and her mother had lodged with Mrs MacKenzie when he’d first met them, befo
re they moved in together. Alexis was a single parent, a DSS case. Mrs MacKenzie had been a more sympathetic landlady than most. Not that he’d ever visited Melanie and her mum there – Mrs MacKenzie wouldn’t have liked it.

  She didn’t take lodgers much these days, but she was a good Christian and McPhail was persuasive.

  He stood outside the house. It was a plain two-storey construction finished off in grey pebbledash and ugly double glazing. It looked just the same as the houses either side of it. Mrs MacKenzie answered the door as though she’d been ready for him for some time. She fussed about in the living room and kitchen, then led him upstairs to show him the bathroom, and then finally his own bedroom. It was no larger than a prison cell, but had been nicely decorated (sometime in the mid-1960s, he’d guess). It was fine, he’d no complaints.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he told Mrs MacKenzie, who shrugged her shoulders as if to say, of course it is.

  ‘There’s tea in the pot,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go make us a cuppy.’ Then she remembered something. ‘No cooking in the room, mind.’

  Andrew McPhail shook his head. ‘I don’t cook,’ he said. She thought of something else and crossed to the window, where the net curtains were still closed.

  ‘Here, I’ll open these. You can open a window too, if you want some fresh air.’

  ‘Fresh air would be nice,’ he agreed. They both looked out of the window down onto the street.

  ‘It’s quiet,’ she said. ‘Not too much traffic. Of course, there’s always a wee bit of noise during the day.’

  McPhail could see what she was referring to: there was an old school building across the road with a black iron fence in front of it. It wasn’t a large school, probably primary. McPhail’s window looked down onto the school gates, just to the right of the main building. Directly behind the gates was the deserted playground.

  ‘I’ll get that tea,’ said Mrs MacKenzie. When she’d gone, McPhail placed his cases on the springy single bed. Beside the bed was a small writing desk and chair. He lifted the chair and placed it in front of the window, then sat down. He moved a small glass clown further along the sill so that he could rest his chin where it had been. Nothing obscured his view. He sat there in a dream, looking at the playground, until Mrs MacKenzie called to him that the tea was in the living room. ‘And a Madeira cake, too.’ Andrew McPhail got up with a sigh. He didn’t really want the tea now, but he supposed he could always bring it up to his room and leave it untouched till later. He felt tired, bone tired, but he was home and something told him that tonight he would sleep the sleep of the dead.