10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  The conversation had clearly taken an unexpected turn. ‘What are you talking about?’ Soutar yelled. ‘I don’t do drugs! I’m as fit as fuck, pal!’

  Rebus looked at Soutar’s exposed chest. ‘Whatever you say, Davey.’

  Soutar sprang to his feet, the chair tumbling behind him. He threw off his jacket and stood there, chest inflated, pulling both arms up and in to show the swell of muscle.

  ‘You could punch me in the guts and I wouldn’t flinch.’

  Rebus could believe it, too. The stomach was flat except for ripples of musculature, looking so solid they might have been sculpted from marble. Soutar relaxed his arms, held them in front of him.

  ‘Look, no tracks. Drugs are for mugs.’

  Rebus held up a pacifying hand. ‘You’ve proved your point, Davey.’

  Soutar stared at him for a moment longer, then laughed and picked his jacket up off the floor.

  ‘Interesting tattoos, by the way.’

  They were the usual homemade jobs in blue ink, with one larger professional one on the right upper arm. It showed the Red Hand of Ulster, with the words No Surrender beneath. Below it the self-inflicted tattoos were just letters and messages: UVF, UDA, FTP, and SaS.

  Rebus waited till Soutar had put on his jacket. ‘You know Jamesie MacMurray,’ he stated.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You bumped into him last Saturday when the Brigade was marching on Princes Street. You were there for the march, but you had to leave. However, you said hello to your old friend first. You knew Mr Cave was a Catholic right from the start, didn’t you? I mean, he didn’t hide the fact?’

  Soutar was looking confused. The questions were all over the place, it was hard to keep up.

  ‘Pete was straight with us,’ he admitted. He was staying on his feet.

  ‘And that didn’t bother you? I mean, you came to his club, bringing your gang with you. And the Catholic gang came along too. What did Jamesie say about that?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with him.’

  ‘You could see it was a good thing though, eh? Meeting the Catholic gang, divvying up the ground between you. It’s the way it works in Ulster, that’s what you’ve heard. Who told you? Jamesie? His dad?’

  ‘His dad?’

  ‘Or was it The Shield?’

  ‘I never even –’ Davey Soutar stopped. He was breathing hard as he pointed at Rebus. ‘You’re in shite up past the point of breathing.’

  ‘Then I must be standing on your shoulders. Come on, Davey.’

  ‘It’s Mr Soutar.’

  ‘Mr Soutar then.’ Rebus had his hands open, palms up. He was sitting back in his chair, rocking it on its back legs. ‘Come on, sit down. It’s no big deal. Everybody knows about The Shield, knows you’re part of it. Everybody except Mr Cave here.’ He turned to Peter Cave. ‘Let’s just say that The Shield is even more extreme than the Orange Loyal Brigade. The Shield collects money, mostly by violence and extortion, and it sends arms to Northern Ireland.’ Soutar was shaking his head.

  ‘You’re nothing, you’ve got nothing.’

  ‘But you’ve got something, Davey. You’ve got your hate and your anger.’ He turned to Cave again. ‘See, Mr Cave? You’ve got to be asking, how come Davey puts up with a committed worker for the Church of Rome, or the Whore of Rome as Davey himself might put it? A question that has to be answered.’

  When he looked round, Soutar was on the stage. He pushed over the sets, kicking them, stomping them, then jumped down again and made for the doors. His face was orange with anger.

  ‘Was Billy a friend too, Davey?’ That stopped him dead. ‘Billy Cunningham, I mean.’

  Soutar was on the move.

  ‘Davey! You’ve forgotten your fags!’ But Davey Soutar was out the door and screaming things which were unintelligible. Rebus lit a cigarette for himself.

  ‘That laddie’s got too much testosterone for his own good,’ he said to Cave.

  ‘Look who’s talking.’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Just an act, Mr Cave. Method acting, you might say.’ He blew out a plume of smoke. Cave was staring at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. ‘You need to know what you’ve gotten into.’

  Cave looked up. ‘You think I condone sectarian hate?’

  ‘No, my theory’s much simpler. I think you get off on violence and young men.’

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘Then maybe all you are, Mr Cave, is misguided. Get out while you can. A policeman’s largesse never lasts.’ He walked over to Cave and bent down, speaking quietly. ‘They’ve swallowed you, you’re in the pit of the Gar-B’s stomach. You can still crawl out, but maybe there’s not as much time as you think.’ Rebus patted Cave’s cheek. It was cold and soft, like chicken from the fridge.

  ‘Look at yourself some time, Rebus. You might find you’d make a bloody good terrorist yourself.’

  ‘Thing is, I’d never be tempted. What about you?’

  Cave stood up and walked past him towards the doors. Then he walked through them and kept going. Rebus blew smoke from his nose, then sat on the edge of the stage, finishing the cigarette. Maybe he’d tripped Soutar’s fuse too early. If it had come out right, he’d have learned something more about The Shield. At the moment, it was all cables and coiled springs, junctions from which spread different coloured wires. Hard to defuse when you didn’t know which wire to attack first.

  The doors were opening again, and he looked up. Davey Soutar was standing there. Behind him there were others, more than a dozen of them. Soutar was breathing hard. Rebus glanced at his watch and hoped it was right. There was an Emergency Exit at the other end of the hall, but where did Rebus go from there? Instead, he climbed onto the stage and watched them advance. Soutar wasn’t saying anything. The whole procession took place in silence, except for breathing and the shuffle of feet on the floor. They were at the front of the stage now. Rebus picked up a length of wood, part of the broken set. Soutar, his eyes on the wood, began to climb onto the stage.

  He stopped when he heard the sirens. He froze for a moment, staring up at Rebus. The policeman was smiling.

  ‘Think I’d come here without my cavalry, Davey?’ The sirens were drawing closer. ‘Your call, Davey,’ Rebus said, managing to sound relaxed. ‘If you want another riot, here’s your chance.’

  But all Davey Soutar did was ease himself back off the stage. He stood there, eyes wide and unblinking, as if sheer will of thought might cause Rebus to implode. A final snarl, and he turned and walked away. They followed him, all of them. Some looked back at Rebus. He tried not to look too relieved, lit another cigarette instead. Soutar was crazy, a force gone mad, but he was strong too. Rebus was just beginning to realise how very strong he was.

  He went home exhausted that evening, ‘home’ by now being a very loose term for Patience’s flat.

  He was still shaking a bit. When Soutar had left the hall that first time, he’d taken it all out on Rebus’s car. There were fresh dents, a smashed headlamp, a chipped windscreen. The actors in the van looked like they’d witnessed a frenzy. Then Rebus had told them about their sets.

  He’d thought about the theatre group on his way, under police escort, out of the Gar-B. They’d been parked outside the Dell the night he’d seen the Ulsterman there. He still had their flyer, the one that had doubled as a paper plane.

  At St Leonard’s, he found them in the Fringe programme, Active Resistance Theatre; active as opposed to passive, Rebus supposed. He placed a couple of calls to Glasgow. Someone would get back to him. The rest of the day was a blur.

  As he was locking what was left of his car, he sensed a shape behind him.

  ‘Damn you, weasel-face!’

  But he turned to see Caroline Rattray.

  ‘Weasel-face?’

  ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  She put her arms round him. ‘Well I’m not, I’m me. Remember me? I’m the one who’s being trying to phone you for God knows how long. I know you got my messages, because some
one in your office told me.’

  That would be Ormiston. Or Flower. Or anyone else with a grudge.

  ‘Christ, Caro.’ He pulled away from her. ‘You must be crazy.’

  ‘For coming here?’ She looked around. ‘This is where she lives?’

  She sounded completely unconcerned. Rebus didn’t need this. His head felt like it was splitting open above the eyes. He needed to bathe and to stop thinking, and it would take a great effort to stop him thinking about this case.

  ‘You’re tired,’ she said. Rebus wasn’t listening. He was too busy looking at Patience’s parked car, at her gateway, then along the street, willing her not to appear. ‘Well, I’m tired too, John.’ Her voice was rising. ‘But there’s always room in the day for a little consideration!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed.

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me what to do!’

  ‘Christ, Caro . . .’ He squeezed shut his eyes and she relented for a moment. It was long enough to appraise his physical and psychic state.

  ‘You’re exhausted,’ she concluded. She smiled and touched his face. ‘I’m sorry, John. I just thought you’d been avoiding me.’

  ‘Who’d want to do that, Caro?’ Though he was starting to wonder.

  ‘What about a drink?’ she said.

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, pouting. A moment ago, she had been all tempest and cannon fire, and now she was a surface as calm as any doldrums could produce. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Eight o’clock then, in the Caly bar.’ The Caly being the Caledonian Hotel. Rebus nodded assent.

  ‘Great,’ he said.

  ‘See you then.’ She leaned into him again, kissing his lips. He drew away as quickly as he could, remembering her perfume. One more waft of that, and Patience would go nuclear.

  ‘See you, Caro.’ He watched her get into her car, then walked quickly down the steps to the flat.

  The first thing he did was run a bath. He looked at himself in the mirror and got a shock. He was looking at his father. In later years, his father had grown a short grey beard. There was grey in Rebus’s stubble too.

  ‘I look like an old man.’

  There was a knock at the bathroom door. ‘Have you eaten?’ Patience called.

  ‘Not yet. Have you?’

  ‘No, shall I stick something in the microwave?’

  ‘Sure, great.’ He added foam-bath to the water.

  ‘Pizza?’

  ‘Whatever.’ She didn’t sound too bad. That was the thing about being a doctor, you saw so much pain every day, it was easy to shrug off the more minor ailments like arguments at home and suspected infidelities. Rebus stripped off his clothes and dumped them in the laundry basket. Patience knocked again.

  ‘By the way, what are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘You mean tomorrow night?’ he called back.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing I know of. I might be working . . .’

  ‘You better not be. I’ve invited the Bremners to dinner.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Rebus, putting his foot in the water without checking the temperature. The water was scalding. He lifted the foot out again and screamed silently at the mirror.

  20

  They had breakfast together, talking around things, their conversation that of acquaintances rather then lovers. Neither spoke his or her thoughts. We Scots, Rebus thought, we’re not very good at going public. We store up our true feelings like fuel for long winter nights of whisky and recrimination. So little of us ever reaches the surface, it’s a wonder we exist at all.

  ‘Another cup?’

  ‘Please, Patience.’

  ‘You’ll be here tonight,’ she said. ‘You won’t be working.’ It was neither question nor order, not explicitly.

  So he tried phoning Caro from Fettes, but now she was the one having messages left for her: one on her answering machine at home, one with a colleague at her office. He couldn’t just say, ‘I’m not coming’, not even to a piece of recording tape. So he’d just asked her to get in touch. Caro Rattray, elegant, apparently available, and mad about him. There was something of the mad in her, something vertiginous. You spent time with her and you were standing on a cliff edge. And where was Caro? She was standing right behind you.

  When his phone rang, he leapt for it.

  ‘Inspector Rebus?’ The voice was male, familiar.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Lachlan Murdock.’ Lachlan: no wonder he used his last name.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Murdock?’

  ‘You saw Millie recently, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know. What the hell did you say to her?’

  ‘Are you at your flat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m coming over.’

  He went alone, knowing he should take some back-up, but loath to approach anyone. Out of the four – Ormiston, Blackwood, ‘Bloody’ Claverhouse, Smylie – Smylie would still be his choice, but Smylie was as predictable as the Edinburgh weather, even now turning overcast. The pavements were still Festival busy, but not for much longer, and as recompense September would be quiet. It was the city’s secret month, a retreat from public into private.

  As if to reassure him, the cloud swept away again and the sun appeared. He wound down his window, until the bus fumes made him roll it back up again. The back of the bus advertised the local newspaper, which led him to thoughts of Mairie Henderson. He needed to find her, and it wasn’t often a policeman thought that about a reporter.

  He parked the car as close to Murdock’s tenement as he could find a space, pressed the intercom button beside the main door, and got the answering buzz which unlocked the door.

  Your feet made the same sound on every tenement stairwell, like sandpaper on a church floor. Murdock had opened the door to his flat. Rebus walked in.

  Lachlan Murdock did not look in good fettle. His hair was sprouting in clumps from his head, and he pulled on his beard like it was a fake he’d glued on too well. They were in the living room. Rebus sat down in front of the TV. It was where Millie had been sitting the first time he’d visited. The ashtray was still there, but the sleeping bag had gone. And so had Millie.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since yesterday.’ Murdock was standing, and showed no sign of sitting down. He walked to the window, looked out, came back to the fireplace. His eyes were everywhere that wasn’t Rebus.

  ‘Morning or evening?’

  ‘Morning. I got back last night and she’d packed and left.’

  ‘Packed?’

  ‘Not everything, just a holdall. I thought maybe she’d gone to see a pal, she does that sometimes.’

  ‘Not this time?’

  Murdock shook his head. ‘I phoned Steve at her work this morning, and he said the police had been to see her yesterday, a young woman and an older man. I thought of you. Steve said she was in a terrible state afterwards, she’d to come home early. What did you say to her?’

  ‘Just a few questions about Billy.’

  ‘Billy.’ The dismissive shake of the head told Rebus something.

  ‘She got on better with Billy than you did, Mr Murdock?’

  ‘I didn’t dislike the guy.’

  ‘Was there anything between the two of them?’

  But Murdock wasn’t about to answer that. He paced the room again, flapping his arms as though attempting flight. ‘She hasn’t been the same since he died.’

  ‘It was upsetting for her.’

  ‘Yes, it was. But to run off . . .’

  ‘Can I see her room?’

  ‘What?’

  Rebus smiled. ‘It’s what we usually do when someone goes missing.’

  Murdock shook his head again. ‘She wouldn’t want that. What if she comes back, and sees someone’s been through her stuff? No, I can’t let you do that.’ Murdock looked ready
for physical resistance if necessary.

  ‘I can’t force you,’ Rebus said calmly. ‘Tell me a bit more about Billy.’

  This quietened Murdock. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Did he like computers?’

  ‘Billy? He liked video games, so long as they were violent. I don’t know, I suppose he was interested in computers.’

  ‘He could work one?’

  ‘Just about. What are you getting at?’

  ‘Just interested. Three people sharing a flat, two of them work with computers, the third doesn’t.’

  Murdock nodded. ‘You’re wondering what we had in common. Look around the city, Inspector, you’ll see flats full of people who’re only there because they need a room or the rent money. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have needed someone in the spare room at all.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘So what should we do about Miss Docherty?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You called me, I came, where do we go from here?’ Murdock shrugged. ‘Normally we’d wait another day or so before listing her missing.’ He paused. ‘Unless there’s reason to suspect foul play.’

  Murdock seemed lost in thought, then recovered. ‘Let’s wait another day then.’ He started nodding. ‘Maybe I’m overreacting. I just . . . when Steve told me . . .’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t anything I said to her,’ Rebus lied, getting to his feet. ‘Can I have another look at Billy’s room while I’m here?’

  ‘It’s been gutted.’

  ‘Just to refresh my memory.’ Murdock said nothing. ‘Thanks,’ said Rebus.

  The small room had indeed been gutted, the bed stripped of duvet and sheet and pillowcase, though the pillow still lay there. It was stained brown, leaking feathers. The bare mattress was pale blue with similar brown patches. There seemed a little more space in the room, but not much. Still, Rebus doubted Murdock would have any trouble finding a new tenant, not with the student season approaching.

  He opened the wardrobe to a clanging of empty wire hangers. There was a fresh sheet of newspaper on the floor. He closed the wardrobe door. Between the corner of the bed and the wardrobe there was a clear patch of carpet. It lay hard up against the skirting-board beneath the still unwashed window. Rebus crouched down and tugged at the carpet’s edge. It wasn’t tacked, and lifted an inch or so. He ran his fingers underneath it, finding nothing. Still crouched, he lifted the mattress, but saw only bedsprings and the carpet beneath, thick balls of dust and hair marking the furthest reach of the hoover.