10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  Rebus nearly said something, but Ormiston had judged her right. Mrs Soutar smiled tiredly and stepped back into her hall. ‘You’d better come in. A bit of steak would stop those eyes swelling, but all I’ve got is half a pound of mince, and it’s the economy stuff. You’d get more meat from a butcher’s pencil. This is my man, Dod.’

  She had led them along the short narrow hall and into a small living room where a venerable three-piece suite took up too much space. Along the sofa, his shoeless feet resting on one arm of it, lay an unshaven man in his forties, or perhaps even badly nurtured thirties. He was reading a war comic, his lips moving with the words on the page.

  ‘Hiy, Dod,’ Mrs Soutar said loudly, ‘these are the polis. Davey’s just put the heid on one of them.’

  ‘Good for him,’ Dod said without looking up. ‘No offence, like.’

  ‘None taken.’ Rebus had wandered over to the window, wondering what the view was like. The window, however, was a botched piece of double glazing. Condensation had crept between the panes, frosting the glass.

  ‘It wasn’t much of a view to start with,’ Mrs Soutar said. He turned and smiled at her. He didn’t doubt she would see through any scheme, any lie. She was a short, strong-looking woman, big boned with a chiselled jaw but a pleasant face. If she didn’t smile often, it was because she had to protect herself. She couldn’t afford to look weak. In the Gar-B, the weak didn’t last long. Rebus wondered how much influence she’d had over her son while he was growing up here. A lot, he’d say. But then the father would be an influence too.

  She kept her arms folded while she talked, unfolding them only long enough to slap Dod’s feet off the end of the sofa so she could sit herself down on the arm.

  ‘So what’s he done this time?’

  Dod put down his comic and reached into his packet of cigarettes, lighting one for himself and handing the pack to Mrs Soutar.

  ‘He’s assaulted a police officer for a start,’ Rebus said. ‘That’s a pretty serious offence, Mrs Soutar. It could land him a spell in the carpentry shop.’

  ‘You mean the jail?’ Dod pronounced it, ‘jyle’.

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  Dod stood up, then half doubled over, seized by a cough which crackled with phlegm. He went into the kitchenette, separated from the living room by a breakfast bar, and spat into the sink.

  ‘Run the tap!’ Mrs Soutar ordered. Rebus was looking at her. She was looking sad but resilient. It took her only a moment to shrug off the idea of the prison sentence. ‘He’d be better off in jail.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘This is the Gar-B, or hadn’t you noticed? It does things to you, to the young ones especially. Davey’d be better off out of the place.’

  ‘What has it done to him, Mrs Soutar?’

  She stared at him, considering how long an answer to give. ‘Nothing,’ she said finally. Ormiston was standing by the wall unit, studying a pile of cassettes next to the cheap hi-fi system. ‘Put some music on if you like,’ she told him. ‘Might cheer us up.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ormiston, opening a cassette case.

  ‘I was joking.’

  But Ormiston just smiled, slammed the tape home, and pressed play. Rebus wondered what he was up to. Then the music started, an accordion at first, joined by flutes and drums, and then a quavering voice, using vibrato in place of skill.

  The song was ‘The Sash’. Ormiston handed the cassette case to Rebus. The cover was a cheap Xeroxed drawing of the Red Hand of Ulster, the band’s name scratched on it in black ink. They were called the Proud Red Hand Marching Band, though it was hard to conceive of anyone marching to an accordion.

  Dod, who had returned from the sink, started whistling along and clapping his hands. ‘It’s a grand old tune, eh?’

  ‘What do you want to put that on for?’ Mrs Soutar asked Ormiston. He shrugged, saying nothing.

  ‘Aye, a grand old tune.’ Dod collapsed onto the sofa. The woman glared at him.

  ‘It’s bigotry’s what it is. I’ve nothing against the Catholics.’

  ‘Well neither have I,’ Dod countered. He winked at Ormiston. ‘But there’s no shame in being proud of your roots.’

  ‘What about Davey, Mr Soutar? Does he have anything against Catholics?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? He seems to run around with Protestant gangs.’

  ‘It’s the Gar-B,’ Mr Soutar said. ‘You have to belong.’

  Rebus knew what he was saying. Dod Soutar sat forward on the sofa.

  ‘Ye see, it’s history, isn’t it? The Protestants have run Ulster for hundreds of years. Nobody’s going to give that up, are they? Not if the other lot are sniping away and planting bombs and that.’ He realised that Ormiston had turned off the tape. ‘Well, isn’t that right? It’s a religious war, you can’t deny it.’

  ‘Ever been there?’ Ormiston asked. Dod shook his head. ‘Then what the fuck do you know about it?’

  Dod gave a challenging look, and stood up. ‘I know, pal, don’t think I don’t.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ Ormiston said.

  ‘I thought you were here to talk about my Davey?’

  ‘We are talking about Davey, Mrs Soutar,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘In a roundabout way.’ He turned to Dod Soutar. ‘There’s a lot of you in your son, Mr Soutar.’

  Dod Soutar turned his combative gaze from Ormiston. ‘Oh aye?’

  Rebus nodded. ‘I’m sorry, but there it is.’

  Dod Soutar’s face creased into an angry scowl. ‘Wait a fuckn minute, pal. Think you can walk in here and fuckn –’

  ‘People like you terrify me,’ Rebus said coolly. He meant it, too. Dod Soutar, hacking cough and all, was a more horrifying prospect than a dozen Caffertys. You couldn’t change him, couldn’t argue with him, couldn’t touch his mind in any way. He was a closed shop, and the management had all gone home.

  ‘My son’s a good boy, brought up the right way,’ Soutar was saying. ‘Gave him everything I could.’

  ‘Some folk are just born lucky,’ said Ormiston.

  That did it. Soutar launched himself across the narrow width of the room. He went for Ormiston with his head low and both fists out in front of him, but collided with the shelf unit when Ormiston stepped smartly aside. He turned back towards the two policemen, swinging wildly, swearing barely coherent phrases. When he went for Rebus, and Rebus arched back so that the swipe missed, Rebus decided he’d had enough. He kneed Soutar in the crotch.

  ‘Queensferry Rules,’ he said, as the man went down.

  ‘Dod!’ Mrs Soutar ran to her husband. Rebus gestured to Ormiston.

  ‘Get out of my house!’ Mrs Soutar screamed after them. She came to the front door and kept on yelling and crying. Then she went indoors and slammed her door.

  ‘The cassette was a nice touch,’ Rebus said on his way downstairs.

  ‘Thought you’d appreciate it. Where to now?’

  ‘While we’re here,’ said Rebus, ‘maybe the youth club.’

  They walked outside and didn’t hear anything until the vase hit the ground beside them, smashing into a thousand pieces of shrapnel. Mrs Soutar was at her window.

  ‘Missed!’ Rebus yelled at her.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Ormiston said, as they walked away.

  The usual lacklustre teenagers sat around outside the community hall, propping their backs against its door and walls. Rebus didn’t bother to ask about Davey Soutar. He knew what the response would be; it had been drilled into them like catechism. His ear was tingling, not hurting exactly, but there was a dull throbbing pain in his nose. When they recognised Rebus, the gang got to their feet.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Ormiston said. ‘You’re right to stand up, by the way. Sitting on concrete gives you piles.’

  In the hall, Jim Hay and his theatre group were sitting on the stage. Hay too recognised Rebus.

  ‘Guess what?’ he said. ‘We have to mount a guard, otherwise they rip the stuff off.’

  Rebus didn’t know w
hether to believe him or not. He was more interested in the youth sitting next to Hay.

  ‘Remember me, Malky?’

  Malky Haston shook his head.

  ‘I’ve got a few questions for you, Malky. Want to do it here or down the station?’

  Haston laughed. ‘You couldn’t take me out of here, not if I didn’t want to go.’

  He had a point. ‘We’ll do it here then,’ said Rebus. He turned to Hay, who raised his hands.

  ‘I know, you want us to take a fag break.’ He got up and led his troupe away. Ormiston went to the door to stop anyone else coming in.

  Rebus sat on the stage next to Haston, getting close, making the teenager uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve done nothing, and I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘Have you known Davey a while?’

  Haston said nothing.

  ‘I’d imagine since you were kids,’ Rebus answered. ‘Remember the first time we met? You had bits in your hair. I thought it was dandruff, but it was plaster. I spoke to ScotScaf. They hire out scaffolding to building contractors, and when it comes back it’s your job to clean it. Isn’t that right?’

  Haston just looked at him.

  ‘You’re under orders not to talk, eh? Well, I don’t mind.’ Rebus stood up, facing Haston. ‘There was ScotScaf scaffolding at the two murder sites, Billy’s and Calumn Smylie’s. You told Davey, didn’t you? You knew where building work was going on, empty sites, all that.’ He leaned close to Haston’s face. ‘You knew. That makes you an accessory at the very least. And that means we’re going to throw you in jail. We’ll pick out a nice Catholic wing for you, Malky, don’t worry. Plenty of the green and white.’

  Rebus turned his back and lit a cigarette. When he turned back to Haston, he offered him one. Ormiston was having a bit of bother at the door. The gang wanted in. Haston took a cigarette. Rebus lit it for him.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what you do, Malky. You can run, you can lie, you can say nothing at all. You’re going away, and we’re the only friends you’ll ever have.’

  He turned away and walked towards Ormiston. ‘Let them in,’ he ordered. The gang came crashing through the doors, fanning out across the hall. They could see Malky Haston was all right, though he was sitting very still on the edge of the stage. Rebus called to him.

  ‘Thanks for the chat, Malky. We’ll talk again, any time you want.’ Then he turned to the gang. ‘Malky’s got his head screwed on,’ he told them. ‘He knows when to talk.’

  ‘Lying bastard!’ Haston roared, as Rebus and Ormiston walked into the daylight.

  Rebus met Lachlan Murdock at the Crazy Hose, despite Bothwell’s protests.

  Murdock’s uncombed hair was wilder than ever, his clothes sloppy. He was waiting in the foyer when Rebus arrived.

  ‘They all think I had something to do with it,’ Murdock protested as Rebus led him into the dancehall.

  ‘Well, you did, in a way,’ Rebus said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, I want to show you something.’

  He led Murdock up to the attic. In the daytime, the attic was a lot lighter. Even so, Rebus had brought a torch. He didn’t want Murdock to miss anything.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is where I found her. She’d suffered, believe me.’ Already, Murdock was close to fresh tears, but sympathy could wait, the truth couldn’t. ‘I found this on the floor.’ He handed over the disk cover. ‘This is what they killed her for. A computer disk, same size as would fit your machine at home.’ He walked up close to Murdock’s slouched figure. ‘They killed her for this!’ he hissed. He waited a moment, then moved away towards the windows.

  ‘I thought maybe she’d have made a copy. She wasn’t daft, was she? But I went to the shop, and there’s nothing there. Maybe in your flat?’ Murdock just sniffed. ‘I can’t believe she –’

  ‘There was a copy,’ Murdock groaned. ‘I wiped it.’

  Rebus walked back towards him. ‘Why?’

  Murdock shook his head. ‘I didn’t think it . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘It reminded me . . .’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Ah yes, Billy Cunningham. It reminded you of the pair of them. When did you begin to suspect?’

  Murdock shook his head again.

  ‘See,’ said Rebus, ‘I know most of it. I know enough. But I don’t know it all. Did you look at the files on the disk?’

  ‘I looked.’ He wiped his red-rimmed eyes. ‘It was Billy’s disk, not hers. But a lot of the stuff on it was hers.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Murdock managed a weak smile. ‘You’re right, I did know about the two of them. I didn’t want to know, but I knew all the same. When I wiped the disk, I was angry, I was so angry.’ He turned to look at Rebus. ‘I don’t think he could have done it without Millie. You need quite a setup to hack into the kinds of systems they were dealing with.’

  ‘Hacking?’

  ‘They probably used the stuff in her shop. They hacked into Army and police computers, bypassed security, invaded datafiles, then marched out again without leaving any trace.’

  ‘So what did they do?’

  Murdock was talking now, enjoying the release. He wiped tears from below his glasses. ‘They monitored a couple of police investigations and altered a few inventories. Believe me, once they were in, they could have done a lot more.’

  The way Murdock went on to explain it, it was almost ludicrously simple. You could steal from the Army (with inside assistance, there had to be inside assistance), and then erase the theft by altering the computer records to show stocks as they stood, not as they had been. Then, if SCS or Scotland Yard or anyone else took an interest, you could monitor their progress or lack of it. Millie: Millie had been the key throughout. Whether or not she knew what she was doing, she got Billy Cunningham in. He placed her in the lock and turned. The disk had contained instructions on their hacking procedures, tips for bypassing security checks, the works.

  Rebus didn’t doubt that the further Billy Cunningham got in, the more he wanted out. He’d been killed because he wanted out. He’d probably mentioned his little insurance policy in the hope they would let him leave quietly. Instead, they’d tried to torture its whereabouts out of him, before delivering the final silencing bullet. Of course, The Shield knew Billy wasn’t hacking alone. It wouldn’t have taken them long to get to Millie Docherty. Billy had stayed silent to protect her. She must have known. That’s why she’d run.

  ‘There was stuff about this group, too, The Shield,’ Murdock was saying. ‘I thought they were just a bunch of hackers.’

  Rebus tried him with a few names. Davey Soutar and Jamesie MacMurray hit home. Rebus reckoned that in an interview room he could crack Jamesie like a walnut under a hammer. But Davey Soutar . . . well, he might need a real hammer for that. The final file on the computer was all about Davey Soutar and the Gar-B.

  ‘This Soutar,’ Murdock said, ‘Billy seemed to think he’d been skimming. That was the word he used. There’s some stuff stashed in a lock-up out at Currie.’

  Currie: the lock-up would belong to the MacMurrays.

  Murdock looked at Rebus. ‘He didn’t say what was being skimmed. Is it money?’

  ‘I underestimated you, Davey,’ Rebus said aloud. ‘All down the line. It might be too late now, but I swear I won’t underestimate you again.’ He thought of how Davey and his kind hated the Festival. Hated it with a vengeance. He thought of the anonymous threats.

  ‘Not money, Mr Murdock. Weapons and explosives. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  Jamesie talked like a man coming out of silent retreat, especially when his father, hearing the story from Rebus, ordered him to. Gavin MacMurray was incensed, not that his son should be in trouble, but that the Orange Loyal Brigade hadn’t been enough for him. It was a betrayal.

  Jamesie led Rebus and the other officers to a row of wooden garages on a piece of land behind MacMurray’s Garage. Two Army men were on hand. They checked for booby traps and trip wires and it took them nearl
y half an hour to get round to going in. Even then, they did not enter by the door. Instead, they climbed a ladder to the roof and cut through the asphalt covering, then dropped through and into the lock-up. A minute later, they gave the all clear, and a police constable broke open the door with a crowbar. Gavin MacMurray was with them.

  ‘I haven’t been in here for years,’ he said. He’d said it before, as if they didn’t believe him. ‘I never use these garages.’

  They had a good look round. Jamesie didn’t know the precise location of the cache, only that Davey had said he needed a place to keep it. The garage had operated as a motorcycle workshop – that was how Billy Cunningham had got to know Jamesie, and through him Davey Soutar, in the first place. There were long rickety wooden shelves groaning with obscure metal parts, a lot of them rusted brown with age, tools covered with dust and cobwebs, and tins of paint and solvent. Each tin had to be opened, each tool examined. If you could hide Semtex in a transistor radio, you could certainly hide it in a tool shed. The Army had offered a specialised sniffer dog, but it would have to come from Aldershot. So instead they used their own eyes and noses and instinct.

  Hanging from nails on the walls were old tyres and wheels and chains. Forks and handlebars lay on the floor along with engine parts and mouldy boxes of nuts, bolts and screws. They scraped at the floor, but found no buried boxes. There was a lot of oil on the ground.

  ‘This place is clean,’ said a smudged Army man. Rebus nodded agreement.

  ‘He’s been and cleared the place out. How much was there, Jamesie?’

  But Jamesie MacMurray had been asked this before, and he didn’t know. ‘I swear I don’t. I just said he could use the space. He got his own padlock fitted and everything.’

  Rebus stared at him. These young hard men, Rebus had been dealing with them all his life and they were pathetic, like husks in suits of armour. Jamesie was about as hard as the Sun crossword. ‘And he never showed you?’

  Jamesie shook his head. ‘Never.’

  His father was staring at him furiously. ‘You stupid wee bastard,’ Gavin MacMurray said. ‘You stupid, stupid wee fool.’