10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Get the fuck off me!’

  The grip tightened again, Rebus’s face pressing harder into the wall. I’ll go through it in a minute, he thought. My head’ll be sticking out into the corridor like a hunting trophy.

  ‘He was my brother,’ Smylie was saying. ‘My brother.’

  Rebus’s face was full of blood which wanted to be somewhere else. He could feel his eyes bulging out of their sockets, his eardrums straining. My last view, he thought, will be of this damned roller-towel. Then the door swung inwards, and Ormiston was standing there, cigarette gawping. The cigarette dropped to the floor as Ormiston flung his own arms around Smylie’s. He couldn’t reach all the way round, but enough to dig his thumbs into the soft flesh of the inner elbows.

  ‘Let go, Smylie!’

  ‘Get off me!’

  Rebus felt the pressure on him ease, and used his own shoulders to throw Smylie off. There was barely room for all three men, and they danced awkwardly, Ormiston still holding Smylie’s arms. Smylie threw him off with ease. He was on Rebus again, but now Rebus was ready. He kneed the big man in the groin. Smylie groaned and slumped to his knees. Ormiston was picking himself up.

  ‘What the hell sparked this?’

  Smylie pulled himself to his feet. He looked angry, frustrated. He nearly took the handle off the door as he pulled it open.

  Rebus looked in the mirror. His face was that sunburnt cherry colour some fair-skinned people go, but at least his eyes had retreated back into their sockets.

  ‘Wonder what my blood pressure got up to,’ he said to himself. Then he thanked Ormiston.

  ‘I was thinking of me, not you,’ Ormiston retorted. ‘With you two wrestling,’ he stooped to pick up his cigarette, ‘there wasn’t room for me to have a quiet puff.’

  The cigarette itself survived the mêlée, but after inspecting it Ormiston decided to flush it anyway and light up a fresh one.

  Rebus joined him. ‘That may be the first time smoking’s saved someone’s life.’

  ‘My grandad smoked for sixty years, died in his sleep at eighty. Mind you, he was bedridden for thirty of them. So what was all that about?’

  ‘Filing. Smylie doesn’t like my system.’

  ‘Smylie likes to know everything that’s going on.’

  ‘He shouldn’t even be here. He should be at home, bereaving.’

  ‘But that’s what he is doing,’ argued Ormiston. ‘Just because he looks like a big cuddly bear, a gentle giant, don’t be fooled.’ He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Let me tell you about Smylie.’

  And he did.

  Rebus was home at six o’clock, much to Patience Aitken’s surprise. He had a shower rather than a bath and came into the living room dressed in his best suit and wearing a shirt Patience had given him for Christmas. It wasn’t till he’d tried it on that they both discovered it required cuff links, so then he’d had to buy some.

  ‘I can never do these up by myself,’ he said now, flapping his cuffs and brandishing the links. Patience smiled and came to help him. Close up, she smelt of perfume.

  ‘Smells wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘Do you mean me or the kitchen?’

  ‘Both,’ said Rebus. ‘Equally.’

  ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Fizzy water till the cooking’s done.’

  ‘Same for me.’ Though really he was dying for a whisky. He’d lost the shakes, but his ribs still hurt when he inflated his lungs. Ormiston said he’d once seen Smylie bear-hug a recalcitrant prisoner into unconsciousness. He also told Rebus that before Kilpatrick had come on the scene, the Smylie brothers had more or less run the Edinburgh Crime Squad.

  He drank the water with ice and lime and it tasted fine. When the preparations were complete and the table laid and the dishwasher set to work on only the first of the evening’s loads, they sat down together on the sofa and drank gin with tonic.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  And then Patience led him by the hand out into the small back garden. The sun was low over the tops of the tenements, the birds easing off into evensong. She examined every plant as she passed it, like a general assessing her troops. She’d trained Lucky the cat well; it now went over the wall into the neighbouring garden when it needed the toilet. She named some of the flowers for him, like she always did. He could never remember them from one day to the next.

  The ice clinked in Patience’s glass as she moved. She had changed into a long patterned dress, all flowing folds and squares of colour. With her hair up at the back, the dress worked well, showing off her neck and shoulders and the contours of her body. It had short sleeves to show arms tanned from gardening.

  Though the bell was a long way off, he heard it. ‘Front door,’ he said.

  ‘They’re early.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Well, not much actually. I’d better get the potatoes on.’

  ‘I’ll let them in.’

  She squeezed his arm as they separated, and Rebus made his way down the hallway towards the front door. He straightened himself, readying the smile he’d be wearing all evening. Then he opened the door.

  ‘Bastard!’

  Something hissed, a spray-can, and his eyes stung. He’d closed them a moment too late, but could still feel the spray dotting his face. He thought it must be Mace or something similar, and swiped blindly, trying to knock the can out of his assailant’s hand. But the feet were already on the stone steps, shuffling upwards and away. He didn’t want to open his eyes, so staggered blindly towards the bathroom, his hands feeling the hallway walls, past the bedroom door then hitting the lightswitch. He slammed the door and locked it as Patience was coming into the hall.

  ‘John? John, what is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said through his teeth. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Are you sure? Who was at the door?’

  ‘They were looking for the upstairs neighbours.’ He was running water into the sink. He got his jacket off and plunged his head into the warm water, letting the sink fill, wiping at his face with his hands.

  Patience was still waiting on the other side of the bathroom door. ‘Something’s wrong, John, what is it?’

  He didn’t say anything. After a few moments, he pried open one eye, then shut it again. Shit, that stung! He swabbed again with the water, opening his eyes underwater this time. The water seemed murky to him. And when he looked at his hands, they were red and sticky.

  Oh Christ, he thought. He forced himself to look in the mirror above the sink. He was bright red. It wasn’t like earlier in the day when Smylie had attacked him. It was . . . paint. That’s what it was, red paint. From an aerosol can. Jesus Christ. He staggered out of his clothes and got into the shower, turning his face up to the spray, shampooing his hair as hard as he could, then doing it again. He scrubbed at his face and neck. Patience was at the door again, asking him what the hell he was up to. And then he heard her voice change, rising on the final syllable of a name.

  The Bremners had arrived.

  He got out of the shower and rubbed himself down with a towel. When he looked at himself again, he’d managed to get a lot of the colour off, but by no means all of it. Then he looked at his clothes. His jacket was dark, and didn’t show the paint too conspicuously; conspicuously enough though. As for his good shirt, it was ruined, no question about that. He unlocked the bathroom door and listened. Patience had taken the Bremners into the living room. He padded down the hall into the bedroom, noticing on the way that his hands had left red smears on the wallpaper. In the bedroom he changed quickly into chinos, yellow t-shirt and a linen jacket Patience had bought him for summer walks by the river which they never took.

  He looked like a has-been trying to look trendy. It would do. The palms of his hands were still red, but he could say he’d been painting. He popped his head round the living room door.

  ‘Chris, Jenny,’ he said. The couple were seated on the sofa. Patience must be in the kitchen. ‘So
rry, I’m running a bit late. I’ll just dry my hair and I’ll be with you.’

  ‘No rush,’ said Jenny as he retreated into the hall. He took the telephone into the bedroom and called Dr Curt at home.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s John Rebus here, tell me about Caroline Rattray.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Tell me what you know about her.’

  ‘You sound smitten,’ Curt said, amusement in his voice.

  ‘I’m smitten all right. She’s just sprayed me with a can of paint.’

  ‘I’m not sure I caught that.’

  ‘Never mind, just tell me about her. Like for instance, is she the jealous type?’

  ‘John, you’ve met her. Would you say she’s attractive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she has a very good career, plenty of money, a lifestyle many would envy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But does she have any beaux?’

  ‘You mean boyfriends, and the answer is I don’t know.’

  ‘Then take it from me, she does not. That’s why she can be at a loose end when I have ballet tickets to spare. Ask yourself, why should this be? Answer, because she scares men off. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but I know that she’s not very good at relationships with the opposite sex. I mean, she has relationships, but they never last very long.’

  ‘You might have told me.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you two were an item.’

  ‘We’re not.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Only she thinks we are.’

  ‘Then you’re in trouble.’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Sorry I can’t be more help. She’s always been all right with me, perhaps I could have a word with her . . .?’

  ‘No thanks, that’s my department.’

  ‘Goodbye then, and good luck.’

  Rebus waited till Curt had put his receiver down. He listened to the line, then heard another click. Patience had been listening on the kitchen extension. He sat on the bed, staring at his feet, till the door opened.

  ‘I heard,’ she said. She had an oven glove in one hand. She knelt down in front of him, her hands on his knees. ‘You should have told me.’

  He smiled. ‘I just did.’

  ‘Yes, but to my face.’ She paused. ‘There was nothing between the two of you, nothing happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he said without blinking. There was another moment’s silence.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  He took her hands. ‘We,’ he said, ‘are going to join our guests.’ Then he kissed her on the forehead and pulled her with him to her feet.

  22

  At nine-thirty next morning, Rebus was sitting in his car outside Lachlan Murdock’s flat.

  When he’d washed his eyes last night, it had been like washing behind them as well. Always it came to this, he tried to do things by the books and ended up cooking them instead. It was easier, that was all. Where would the crime detection rates be without a few shortcuts?

  He had tried Murdock’s number from a callbox at the end of the road. There was no one there, just an answering machine. Murdock was at work. Rebus got out of the car and tried Murdock’s intercom. Again, no answer. So he picked the lock, the way he’d been taught by an old lag when he’d gone to the man for lessons. Once inside, he climbed the stairwell briskly, a regular visitor rather than an intruder. But no one was about.

  Murdock’s flat was on the Yale rather than a deadlock, so it was easy to open too. Rebus slipped inside and closed the door after him. He went straight to Murdock’s bedroom. He didn’t suppose Millie would have left the computer disk behind, but you never knew. People with no access to safe deposit boxes sometimes mistook their homes for one.

  The postman had been, and Murdock had left the mail strewn on the unmade bed. Rebus glanced at it. There was a letter from Millie. The envelope was postmarked the previous day, the letter itself written on a single sheet of lined writing paper.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t say anything. Don’t know how long I’ll be away. If the police ask, say nothing. Can’t say more just now. Love you. Millie.’

  Rebus left the letter lying where it was and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves stolen from Patience. He walked over to Murdock’s workdesk and switched on the computer, then started going through the computer disks. There were dozens of them, kept in plastic boxes, most of them neatly labelled. The majority had labels with spidery black handwriting, which Rebus guessed was Murdock’s. The few that remained he took to be Millie’s.

  He went through these first, but found nothing to interest him. The unlabelled disks proved to be either blank or corrupted. He started searching through drawers for other disks. Parked on the floor one side of the bed were the plastic binliners containing Billy’s things. He looked through these, too. Murdock’s side of the bed was a chaos of books, ashtray, empty cigarette packets, but Millie’s side was a lot neater. She had a bedside cupboard on which sat a lamp, alarm clock, and a packet of throat lozenges. Rebus crouched down and opened the cupboard door. Now he knew why Millie’s side of the bed was so neat: the cupboard was like a wastepaper bin. He sifted through the rubbish. There were some crumpled yellow Post-It notes in amongst it. He picked them out and unpeeled them. They were messages from Murdock. The first one contained a seven-digit phone number and beneath it the words ‘Why don’t you call this bitch?’ As Rebus unpeeled the others, he began to understand. There were half a dozen telephone messages, all from the same person. Rebus had thought he recognised the phone number, but on the rest of the messages the caller’s name was printed alongside.

  Mairie Henderson.

  Back at St Leonard’s he was pleased to find that both Holmes and Clarke were elsewhere. He went to the toilets and splashed water on his face. His eyes were still irritated, red at their rims and bloodshot. Patience had taken a close look at them last night and pronounced he’d live. After the Bremners had gone home happy, she’d also helped him scrub the rest of the red out of his hair and off his hands. Actually, there was still some on his right palm.

  ‘Cuchullain of the Red Hand,’ Patience had said. She’d been great really, considering. Trust a doctor to be calm in a crisis. She’d even managed to calm him down when, late in the evening, he’d considered going round to Caroline Rattray’s flat and torching it.

  ‘Here,’ she’d said, handing him a whisky, ‘set fire to yourself instead.’

  He smiled at himself in the toilet mirror. There was no Smylie here, about to grope him to death, no jeering Ormiston or preening Blackwood. This was where he belonged. He wondered again just what he was doing at Fettes. Why had Kilpatrick scooped him up?

  He thought now that he had a bloody good idea.

  Edinburgh’s Central Lending Library is situated on George IV Bridge, across the street from the National Library of Scotland. This was student territory, and just off the Royal Mile, and hence at the moment also Festival Fringe territory. Pamphleteers were out in force, still enthusing, sensing audiences to be had now that the least successful shows had packed up and headed home. For the sake of politeness, Rebus took a lurid green flyer from a teenage girl with long blonde hair, and read it as far as the first litter bin, where it joined many more identical flyers.

  The Edinburgh Room was not so much a room as a gallery surrounding an open space. Far below, readers in another section of the library were at their desks or browsing among the bookshelves. Not that Mairie Henderson was reading books. She was poring over local newspapers, seated at one of the few readers’ tables. Rebus stood beside Mairie, reading over her shoulder. She had a neat portable computer with her, flipped open and plugged into a socket in the library floor. Its screen was milky grey and fllled with notes. It took her a minute to sense that there was someone standing over her. She looked round slowly, expecting a librarian.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ said Rebus.

  She saved what she’d been writing and followed him out o
nto the library’s large main staircase. A sign told them not to sit on the window ledges, which were in a dangerous condition. Mairie sat on the top step, and Rebus sat a couple of steps down from her, leaving plenty of room for people to get past.

  ‘I’m in a dangerous condition, too,’ he said angrily.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ She looked as innocent as stained glass.

  ‘Millie Docherty.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me about her.’

  ‘What exactly should I have told you?’

  ‘That you’d been trying to talk to her. Did you succeed?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘She’s run off.’

  ‘Really?’ She considered this. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘What did you want to talk to her about?’

  ‘The murder of one of her flatmates.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be?’ She was looking interested.

  ‘Funny she does a runner when you’re after her. How’s the research?’ She’d told him over their drink in Newhaven that she was looking into what she called ‘past loyalist activity’ in Scotland.

  ‘Slow,’ she admitted. ‘How’s yours?’

  ‘Dead stop,’ he lied.

  ‘Apart from Ms Docherty’s disappearance. How did you know I wanted to talk to her?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Her flatmate didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No comment at this time.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Come on,’ said Rebus, ‘maybe you’ll talk over a coffee.’

  ‘Interrogation by scone,’ Mairie offered.

  They walked the short walk to the High Street and took a right towards St Giles Cathedral. There was a coffee shop in the crypt of St Giles, reached by way of an entrance which faced Parliament House. Rebus glanced across the car park, but there was no sign of Caroline Rattray. The coffee shop though was packed, having not many tables to start with and this still being the height of the tourist season.

  ‘Try somewhere else?’ Mairie suggested.