10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  Rebus had been telling Kilpatrick all about Big Ger Cafferty. ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘if it’s a gang thing, then it’s nothing to do with paramilitaries, is it? So I can’t help you.’

  Kilpatrick smiled at him. ‘What is it, John? Most coppers I know would give their drinking arm for an assignment with SCS.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But you’re not one of them?’

  ‘I’m quite attached to my drinking arm. It comes in handy for other things.’ Rebus looked out of the window. ‘The thing is, I’ve been on secondment before, and I didn’t like it much.’

  ‘You mean London? The Chief Superintendent told me all about it.’

  ‘I doubt that, sir,’ Rebus said quietly. They turned off Queensferry Road, not a minute’s walk from Patience’s flat.

  ‘Humour me,’ said Kilpatrick stiffly. ‘After all, it sounds like you’re an expert on this man Cafferty too. I’d be daft not to use a man like you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And they left it at that, saying nothing as they turned into Fettes, Edinburgh’s police HQ. At the end of the long road you got a good view of the Gothic spires of Fettes School, one of the city’s most exclusive. Rebus didn’t know which was uglier, the ornate school or the low anonymous building which housed police HQ. It could have been a comprehensive school, not so much a piece of design as a lack of it. It was one of the most unimaginative buildings Rebus had ever come across. Maybe it was making a statement about its purpose.

  The Scottish Crime Squad’s Edinburgh operation was run from a cramped office on the fifth floor, a floor shared with the city’s Scene of Crime unit. One floor above worked the forensic scientists and the police photographers. There was a lot of interaction between the two floors.

  The Crime Squad’s real HQ was Stuart Street in Glasgow, with other branches in Stonehaven and Dunfermline, the latter being a technical support unit. Eighty-two officers in total, plus a dozen or so civilian staff.

  ‘We’ve got our own surveillance and drugs teams,’ Kilpatrick added. ‘We recruit from all eight Scottish forces.’ He kept his spiel going as he led Rebus through the SCS office. A few people looked up from their work, but by no means all of them. Two who did were a bald man and his freckle-faced neighbour. Their look wasn’t welcoming, just interested.

  Rebus and Kilpatrick were approaching a very large man who was standing in front of a wall-map. The map showed the British Isles and the north European mainland, stretching east as far as Russia. Some sea routes had been marked with long narrow strips of red material, like something you’d use in dressmaking. Only the big man didn’t look the type for crimping-shears and tissue-paper cut-outs. On the map, the ports had been circled in black pen. One of the routes ended on the Scottish east coast. The man hadn’t turned round at their approach.

  ‘Inspector John Rebus,’ said Kilpatrick, ‘this is Inspector Ken Smylie. He never smiles, so don’t bother joking with him about his name. He doesn’t say much, but he’s always thinking. And he’s from Fife, so watch out. You know what they say about Fifers.’

  ‘I’m from Fife myself,’ said Rebus. Smylie had turned round to grip Rebus’s hand. He was probably six feet three or four, and had the bulk to make the height work. The bulk was a mixture of muscle and fat, but mostly muscle. Rebus would bet the guy worked out every day. He was a few years younger than Rebus, with short thick fair hair and a small dark moustache. You’d take him for a farm labourer, maybe even a farmer. In the Borders, he’d definitely have played rugby.

  ‘Ken,’ Kilpatrick said to Smylie, ‘I’d like you to show John around. He’s going to be joining us temporarily. He’s ex-Army, served in Ulster.’ Kilpatrick winked. ‘A good man.’ Ken Smylie looked appraisingly at Rebus, who tried to stand up straight, inflating his chest. He didn’t know why he wanted to impress Smylie, except that he didn’t want him as an enemy. Smylie nodded slowly, sharing a look with Kilpatrick, a look Rebus didn’t understand.

  Kilpatrick touched Smylie’s arm. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He turned and called to another officer. ‘Jim, any calls?’ Then he walked away from them.

  Rebus turned to the map. ‘Ferry crossings?’

  ‘There isn’t a ferry sails from the east coast.’

  ‘They go to Scandinavia.’

  ‘This one doesn’t.’ He had a point. Rebus decided to try again.

  ‘Boats then?’

  ‘Boats, yes. We think boats.’ Rebus had expected the voice to be basso profondo, but it was curiously high, as though it hadn’t broken properly in Smylie’s teens. Maybe it was the reason he didn’t say much.

  ‘You’re interested in boats then?’

  ‘Only if they’re bringing in contraband.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Guns.’

  ‘Maybe guns.’ He pointed to some of the east European ports. ‘See, these days things being what they are, there are a lot of weapons in and around Russia. If you cut back your military, you get excess. And the economic situation there being what it is, you get people who need money.’

  ‘So they steal guns and sell them?’

  ‘If they need to steal them. A lot of the soldiers kept their guns. Plus they picked up souvenirs along the way, stuff from Afghanistan and wherever. Here, sit down.’

  They sat at Smylie’s desk, Smylie himself spilling from a moulded plastic chair. He brought some photographs out of a drawer. They showed machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades and missiles, armour-piercing shells, a whole dusty armoury.

  ‘This is just some of the stuff that’s been tracked down. Most of it in mainland Europe: Holland, Germany, France. But some of it in Northern Ireland of course, and some in England and Scotland.’ He tapped a photo of an assault rifle. ‘This AK 47 was used in a bank hold-up in Hillhead. You know Professor Kalashnikov is a travelling salesman these days? Times are hard, so he goes to arms fairs around the world flogging his creations. Like this.’ Smylie picked out another photograph. ‘Later model, the AK 74. The magazine’s made of plastic. This is actually the 74S, still quite rare on the market. A lot of the stuff travels across Europe courtesy of motorcycle gangs.’

  ‘Hell’s Angels?’

  Smylie nodded. ‘Some of them are in this up to their tattooed necks, and making a fortune. But there are other problems. A lot of stuff comes into the UK direct. The armed forces, they bring back souvenirs too, from the Falklands or Kuwait. Kalashnikovs, you name it. Not everyone gets searched, a lot of stuff gets in. Later, it’s either sold or stolen, and the owners aren’t about to report the theft, are they?’

  Smylie paused and swallowed, maybe realising how much he’d been talking.

  ‘I thought you were the strong silent type,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I get carried away sometimes.’

  Rebus wouldn’t fancy being on stretcher detail. Smylie began to tidy up the photographs.

  ‘That’s basically it,’ he said. ‘The material that’s already here we can’t do much about, but with the help of Interpol we’re trying to stop the trafficking.’

  ‘You’re not saying Scotland is a target for this stuff?’

  ‘A conduit, that’s all. It comes through here on its way to Northern Ireland.’

  ‘The IRA?’

  ‘To whoever has the money to pay for it. Right now, we think it’s more a Protestant thing. We just don’t know why.’

  ‘How much evidence do you have?’

  ‘Not enough.’

  Rebus was thinking. Kilpatrick had kept very quiet, but all along he’d thought there was a paramilitary angle to the murder, because it tied in with all of this.

  ‘You’re the one who spotted the six-pack?’ Smylie asked. Rebus nodded. ‘You might well be right about it. If so, the victim must’ve been involved.’

  ‘Or just someone who got caught up in it.’

  ‘That tends not to happen.’

  ‘But there’s another thing. The victim’s father is a local gangster, Big Ger Cafferty.’

  ‘You put him away a
while back.’

  ‘You’re well informed.’

  ‘Well,’ said Smylie, ‘Cafferty adds a certain symmetry, doesn’t he?’ He rose briskly from his chair. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the rest of the tour.’

  Not that there was much to see. But Rebus was introduced to his colleagues. They didn’t look like supermen, but you wouldn’t want to fight them on their terms. They all looked like they’d gone the distance and beyond.

  One man, a DS Claverhouse, was the exception. He was lanky and slow-moving and had dark cusps beneath his eyes.

  ‘Don’t let him fool you,’ Smylie said. ‘We don’t call him Bloody Claverhouse for nothing.’

  Claverhouse’s smile took time forming. It wasn’t that he was slow so much as that he had to calculate things before he carried them out. He was seated at his desk, Rebus and Smylie standing in front of him. He was tapping his fingers on a red cardboard file. The file was closed, but on its cover was printed the single word SHIELD. Rebus had just seen the word on another file lying on Smylie’s desk.

  ‘Shield?’ he asked.

  ‘The Shield,’ Claverhouse corrected. ‘It’s something we keep hearing about. Maybe a gang, maybe with Irish connections.’

  ‘But just now,’ interrupted Smylie, ‘all it is is a name.’

  Shield, the word meant something to Rebus. Or rather, he knew it should mean something to him. As he turned from Claverhouse’s desk, he caught something Claverhouse was saying to Smylie, saying in an undertone.

  ‘We don’t need him.’

  Rebus didn’t let on he’d heard. He knew nobody liked it when an outsider was brought in. Nor did he feel any happier when introduced to the bald man, a DS Blackwood, and the freckled one, DC Ormiston. They were as enthusiastic about him as dogs welcoming a new flea to the area. Rebus didn’t linger; there was a small empty desk waiting from him in another part of the room, and a chair which had been found in some cupboard. The chair didn’t quite have three legs, but Rebus got the idea: they hadn’t exactly stretched themselves to provide him with a wholesome working environment. He took one look at desk and chair, made his excuses and left. He took a few deep breaths in the corridor, then descended a few floors. He had one friend at Fettes, and saw no reason why he shouldn’t visit her.

  But there was someone else in DI Gill Templer’s office. The nameplate on the door told him so. Her name was DI Murchie and she too was a Liaison Officer. Rebus knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter!’

  It was like entering a headmistress’s office. DI Murchie was young; at least, her face was. But she had made determined efforts to negate this fact.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘I was looking for DI Templer.’

  Murchie put down her pen and slipped off her half-moon glasses. They hung by a string around her neck. ‘She’s moved on,’ she said. ‘Dunfermline, I think.’

  ‘Dunfermline? What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Dealing with rapes and sexual assaults, so far as I know. Do you have some business with Inspector Templer?’

  ‘No, I just . . . I was passing and . . . Never mind.’ He backed out of the room.

  DI Murchie twitched her mouth and put her glasses back on. Rebus went back upstairs feeling worse than ever.

  He spent the rest of the morning waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Everyone kept their distance, even Smylie. And then the phone rang on Smylie’s desk, and it was a call for him.

  ‘Chief Inspector Lauderdale,’ Smylie said, handing over the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I hear you’ve been poached from us.’

  ‘Sort of, sir.’

  ‘Well, tell them I want to poach you back.’

  I’m not a fucking salmon, thought Rebus. ‘I’m still on the investigation, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know that. The Chief Super told me all about it.’ He paused. ‘We want you to talk to Cafferty.’

  ‘He won’t talk to me.’

  ‘We think he might.’

  ‘Does he know about Billy?’

  ‘Yes, he knows.’

  ‘And now he wants someone he can use as a punchbag?’ Lauderdale didn’t say anything to this. ‘What good will it do talking to him?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Then why bother?’

  ‘Because he’s insisting. He wants to talk to CID, and not just any officer will do. He’s asked to speak to you.’ There was silence between them. ‘John? Anything to say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. This has been a very strange day.’ He checked his watch. ‘And it’s not even one o’clock yet.’

  8

  Big Ger Cafferty was looking good.

  He was fit and lean and had purpose to his gait. A white t-shirt was tight across his chest, flat over the stomach, and he wore faded work denims and new-looking tennis shoes. He walked into the Visiting Room like he was the visitor, Rebus the inmate. The warder beside him was no more than a hired flunkey, to be dismissed at any moment. Cafferty gripped Rebus’s hand just a bit too hard, but he wasn’t going to try tearing it off, not yet.

  ‘Strawman.’

  ‘Hello, Cafferty.’ They sat down at opposite sides of the plastic table, the legs of which had been bolted to the floor. Otherwise, there was little to show that they were in Barlinnie Jail, a prison with a tough reputation from way back, but one which had striven to remake itself. The Visiting Room was clean and white, a few public safety posters decorating its walls. There was a flimsy aluminium ashtray, but also a No Smoking sign. The tabletop bore a few burn marks around its rim from cigarettes resting there too long.

  ‘They made you come then, Strawman?’ Cafferty seemed amused by Rebus’s appearance. He knew, too, that as long as he kept using his nickname for Rebus, Rebus would be needled.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  Cafferty was no longer amused. ‘Is it true they tortured him?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’ Cafferty’s voice rose. ‘There’s no halfway house with torture!’

  ‘You’d know all about that.’

  Cafferty’s eyes blazed. His breathing was shallow and noisy. He got to his feet.

  ‘I can’t complain about this place. You get a lot of freedom these days. I’ve found you can buy freedom, same as you can buy anything else.’ He stopped beside the warder. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Petrie?’

  Wisely, Petrie said nothing.

  ‘Wait for me outside,’ Cafferty ordered. Rebus watched Petrie leave. Cafferty looked at him and grinned a humourless grin.

  ‘Cosy,’ he said, ‘just the two of us.’ He started to rub his stomach.

  ‘What do you want, Cafferty?’

  ‘Stomach’s started giving me gyp. What’s my point, Strawman? My point’s this.’ He was standing over Rebus, and now leant down, his hands pressing Rebus’s shoulders. ‘I want the bastard found.’ Rebus found himself staring at Cafferty’s bared teeth. ‘See, I can’t have people fucking with my family, it’s bad for my reputation. Nobody gets away with something like that . . . it’d be bad for business.’

  ‘Nice to see the paternal instinct’s so strong.’

  Cafferty ignored this. ‘My men are out there hunting, understood? And they’ll be keeping an eye on you. I want a result, Strawman.’

  Rebus shrugged off Cafferty’s pressure and got to his feet. ‘You think we’re going to sit on our hands because the victim was your son?’

  ‘You better not . . . that’s what I’m saying. Revenge, Strawman, I’ll have it one way or the other. I’ll have it on somebody.’

  ‘Not on me,’ Rebus said quietly. He held Cafferty’s stare, till Cafferty opened his arms wide and shrugged, then went to his chair and sat down. Rebus stayed standing.

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with your son?’

  Cafferty shook his head. ‘I kept in touch with his mum. She’s a good woman, too good for me,
always was. I send her money for Billy, at least I did while he was growing up. I still send something from time to time.’

  ‘By what means?’

  ‘Someone I can trust.’

  ‘Did Billy know who his father was?’

  ‘Absolutely not. His mum wasn’t exactly proud of me.’ He started rubbing his stomach again.

  ‘You should take something for that,’ Rebus said. ‘So, could anyone have got to him as a way of getting at you?’

  Cafferty nodded. ‘I’ve thought about it, Strawman. I’ve thought a lot about it.’ Now he shook his head. ‘I can’t see it. I mean, it was my first thought, but nobody knew, nobody except his mum and me.’

  ‘And the intermediary.’

  ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve had people ask him.’

  The way Cafferty said this sent a shiver through Rebus.

  ‘Two more things,’ he said. ‘The word Nemo, mean anything?’

  Cafferty shook his head. But Rebus knew that by tonight villains across the east of Scotland would be on the watch for the name. Maybe Cafferty’s men would get to the killer first. Rebus had seen the body. He didn’t much care who got the killer, so long as someone did. He guessed this was Cafferty’s thinking too.

  ‘Second thing,’ he said, ‘the letters SaS on a tattoo.’

  Cafferty shook his head again, but more slowly this time. There was something there, some recognition.

  ‘What is it, Cafferty?’

  But Cafferty wasn’t saying.

  ‘What about gangs, was he in any gangs?’

  ‘He wasn’t the type.’

  ‘He had the Red Hand of Ulster on his bedroom wall.’

  ‘I’ve got a Pirelli calendar on mine, doesn’t mean I use their tyres.’

  Rebus walked towards the door. ‘Not much fun being a victim, is it?’

  Cafferty jumped to his feet. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘I’ll be watching.’

  ‘Cafferty, if one of your goons so much as asks me the time of day, I’ll throw him in a cell.’

  ‘You threw me in a cell, Strawman. Where did it get you?’

  Unable to bear Cafferty’s smile, the smile of a man who had drowned people in pigshit and shot them in cold blood, a cold devious manipulator, a man without morals or remorse, unable finally to bear any of this, Rebus left the room.