10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  The old man was unscrewing another whisky bottle, different brand. ‘She’s made the flat nice, hasn’t she? I haven’t been here for a couple of years.’

  Rebus nodded, noticing that the huge TV set had been moved out to make more space. He guessed it was in the bedroom. He scanned the male mourners again, looking for old lags, known faces, looking for someone who could have procured a shotgun for Wee Shug.

  ‘Oh aye,’ the old man went on, ‘it’s lovely now. New carpets and wallpaper, really nice.’

  And new TV, Rebus thought. New front door, and bedroom fittings that didn’t exactly look superannuated. Money: where the hell had the money come from?

  ‘New carpet in the hall, too,’ the man was saying. He lowered his voice still further. ‘I suppose she did it for Wee Shug. You know, to make his coming home a bit more welcome. I mean, after a jail cell you want something nice.’

  Rebus looked at the man more closely. ‘Served time yourself?’

  ‘A long time ago, son. Back in the fifties. Saughton was a different place then, everything was different. And mind, I’m not saying it was worse.’ Their drinks replenished, he screwed the top back on and passed the bottle to the next man along. Rebus wondered how many more old lags there were in the crush around him. Then he saw someone else coming into the room, and he stopped with his glass half an inch from his mouth.

  She was dressed in black, a small woman with a pillbox hat and a short veil which covered her eyes but not her mouth. And behind her, much taller, a younger woman wearing a simple navy suit, low-cut and tight at the hips. It looked the sort of thing you would wear a blouse under, but Maisie Finch wasn’t wearing a blouse, or anything else beneath it that Rebus could see.

  For now though, he was more interested in the woman with her. It was Helena Profitt. Rebus turned towards the draining-board, where a rubicund man, hot and jacketless and sporting bright red braces, was dispensing the drinks.

  ‘Give us a couple of sherries,’ Rebus murmured in the man’s direction. The order was passed along and a few moments later Rebus had his sherries. He left his own whisky on the breakfast-bar and carried them into the living room.

  Helena Profitt was having a muted conversation with Tresa McAnally, so Rebus tapped Maisie Finch on the shoulder. When she turned towards him, he handed her the glasses.

  ‘Thanks.’ She sniffed the contents before handing one glass on to Helena Profitt.

  ‘Funny,’ Rebus said, ‘you never mentioned knowing Miss Profitt.’

  She smiled, then took a sip of sherry and screwed up her face.

  ‘Too sweet?’

  ‘It’s loupin’. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Whisky, dark rum, soft drinks. Maybe some vodka.’

  ‘A voddy would slip down.’ She surveyed the scrum in the kitchenette and changed her mind, draining the glass.

  ‘So,’ Rebus said in an undertone, ‘how do you know Helena Profitt?’

  ‘Same way most folk in this room do.’ She smiled again and turned to the widow. ‘Tresa, hen, mind if I smoke?’ The packet was already out of her pocket.

  ‘Go ahead, Maisie.’ A pause. ‘It’s what Wee Shug would have wanted. He liked a ciggie himself.’

  Taking their signal from this, a lot of hands reached into pockets and handbags. Packs were opened, handed round. Rebus took one from Maisie, and she lit it for him.

  ‘Nice lighter,’ he said.

  ‘It was a present.’ She looked at the slim onyx and gold lighter before returning it to her pocket.

  ‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘Miss Profitt used to live in the tenement?’

  ‘Floor below this.’

  As more people arrived and had to offer their condolences, or else needed to say goodbye before leaving, Rebus and Maisie found themselves moved away from the widow and Miss Profitt. They ended up by the mantelpiece. Rebus picked up a bereavement card. It was signed simply, ‘From all Shug’s pals in Saughton. We shall remember him.’

  ‘Touching,’ Maisie Finch said.

  ‘Either that or a bit sick.’

  ‘How’s that, Inspector?’ He noted she said ‘Inspector’ quite loudly. The nearest mourners looked him up and down, and he knew word would now go around.

  ‘Depends why he killed himself,’ he said. ‘Maybe it had something to do with Saughton.’

  ‘Tresa tells me he had the big C.’

  ‘That’s only one possible reason.’ He found her eyes. ‘I can think of others.’

  She looked away, almost casual. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Guilt, shame, embarrassment.’

  She smiled sourly. ‘Not in Shug McAnally’s vocabulary.’

  ‘Self-pity?’

  ‘That’d be more like it.’

  Rebus saw a pillbox hat and veil moving towards the door. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.

  Helena Profitt was at the front door when he caught her.

  ‘Miss Profitt?’ She turned to him. ‘I think we’d better talk.’

  He led her into the McAnallys’ bedroom.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ she asked, looking around her, not liking the surroundings.

  Rebus shook his head. The TV was in here sure enough, giving them a narrow aisle to move about in. ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said.

  She sighed. ‘Tom told me he’d told you.’

  ‘You recognised Mr McAnally that night?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘Did he recognise you?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m certain he did.’

  ‘Did he know beforehand that you were close to the councillor?’

  Now she stared at him through her veil. ‘What do you mean “close”? I’m his ward secretary, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all I meant.’

  ‘How could he have known? No, I don’t think he knew.’ She suddenly saw what he was getting at. ‘His suicide had nothing to do with me!’

  ‘We have to check these things. Why didn’t you say anything at the time?’

  ‘I . . .’ She sat down on the edge of the bed, hands in her lap, then stood up again abruptly. Rebus watched the bedcover float, finding its level. It was a waterbed. Disconcerted, Helena Profitt patted her hat and tugged at her veil. It didn’t make much of a hiding place.

  ‘Is it to do with Maisie Finch?’ Rebus asked.

  She thought about it, then nodded solemnly before bursting into a fit of loud sobbing. Rebus touched her shoulder, but she spun away from him. A mourner opened the door and looked in. Rebus got the feeling there were others out there, all wanting to see the tears.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said, closing the door firmly. Helena Profitt had brought a hankie out of her sleeve and was blowing her nose. Rebus offered her his own handkerchief, and she used it to dab at her eyes. There was eyeshadow on the white cotton when she handed it back. The door was pushed open again. The man with the red braces stood there.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Rebus said.

  The man glowered. ‘We know who you are. Maybe you’d better leave.’

  ‘What are you going to do – throw me out?’

  The sweaty face creased in a sneer. ‘You lot are all the same.’

  ‘And so are you lot.’ Rebus pushed the door hard until it closed. He turned back to Helena Profitt.

  ‘What is it you’re not saying?’ he asked solicitously. ‘It’ll come out eventually, you know.’

  ‘I moved out of this tenement four years ago,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been back a couple of times since. I should come more often. Maisie’s mother misses my little visits . . .’

  Four years ago. ‘After McAnally raped Maisie?’ he guessed.

  She breathed deeply a few times to calm herself. ‘You know, we didn’t do anything, none of us. We all heard a scream – I know I heard it – but nobody phoned for the police. Not until Maisie ran into Tresa’s. It was Tresa herself who phoned, to say her own husband had just raped their next door neighbour’s girl. We heard the scream, but we jus
t went on minding our own business.’ She wiped her nose again. ‘Isn’t that typical of this bloody city?’

  Rebus remembered the words he’d used so recently: guilt, shame, embarrassment.

  ‘You felt ashamed?’ he offered.

  ‘You bet I did. I couldn’t stand to live here any longer.’

  He nodded. ‘Are you surprised Maisie stayed on, knowing McAnally would be back?’

  She shook her head. ‘Maisie’s mum would never move. Besides, Maisie and Tresa, they’ve always been close, especially so since the . . .’

  Rebus tried to imagine walking out of prison and into a situation like that. How much closer had Tresa and the younger woman grown in McAnally’s absence?

  ‘Tell me what happened that night.’

  ‘What?’ She tucked the hankie back into her sleeve.

  ‘The night of the assault.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Her cheeks were reddening with anger. ‘It’s none of your business. It’s long past, long forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten, Miss Profitt?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, not by a long chalk.’

  Then he turned from her and left the room.

  He looked into the living room. Smoke hung in the air like winter fog. He saw Maisie, perched on the arm of the widow’s fat armchair, one slim leg crossed over the other. She was holding Tresa McAnally’s hand and giving it a pat, and Tresa, head bowed, was listening to whatever Maisie was telling her. Listening to it, and managing to smile. Rebus would have called Tresa McAnally ‘feisty’; maybe even ‘brassy’. But neither description fitted her just now. Maybe it was just the circumstances, the funeral, but he didn’t think so.

  ‘Car’s here,’ someone at the window said, meaning that the hearse was arriving. The minister got to his feet to say a few words, a tumbler of whisky in one hand, cheeks redder than they had been. Rebus pushed his way back into the hall, slipped out of the open door, and made his way down the tenement stairs. The man in the braces leaned over the guard-rail.

  ‘I hope we meet again, pal, some place where there are no witnesses.’

  The threat echoed down the stairwell. Rebus kept walking. When he drove off, he left a space kerbside for the hearse.

  15

  Rebus wasn’t the only one interested in Shug McAnally’s suicide. He’d read the newspaper article, scanning it quickly first to see if he was mentioned. He wasn’t, which was a relief. Mairie Henderson’s was one of three names sharing the by-line. It was impossible to see where her contribution started and ended except, of course, that she’d interviewed Rebus’s daughter Sammy; and though Sammy wasn’t mentioned by name, the outfit she worked for was: Scottish Welfare for Ex-Prisoners, or SWEEP as it preferred to be known.

  The police called it Sooty.

  SWEEP, like the other care agencies mentioned in the piece, was concerned that Hugh McAnally’s suicide only a week after his release from prison was evidence of a problem of readjustment and a lack of real concern ‘within the system’ – Sammy’s words to be sure. Police, prison staff, and Social Services were marked out for criticism. The governor of HM Prison Edinburgh could do no more than explain to the journalists how inmates were prepared for release back into society. A ‘spokesman for SWEEP’ insisted that ex-prisoners – SWEEP never called them ‘offenders’ – suffered the same psychological problems as released kidnap victims or hostages. Rebus could hear the words in Sammy’s mouth; he’d heard them from her before.

  He’d been surprised to get a letter from his daughter a couple of months back, saying she’d got a job in Edinburgh and was ‘coming home’. He’d phoned her to check what this meant, and found it only meant she was returning to Edinburgh.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, ‘I don’t expect you to put me up.’

  The job she’d landed was with SWEEP. She’d been working for some time with inmates and ex-prisoners in London, ever since she’d visited a friend in jail and had seen the conditions and, as she put it, ‘the loneliness’.

  ‘This friend,’ Rebus had unwisely said, ‘what were they in for?’

  After which their conversation had become stilted to say the least.

  She didn’t want to be met off the train, but he went to Waverley anyway. She didn’t see him watching as she flung her army-style kitbag and scuffed red rucksack on to the platform. He wanted to walk forwards to greet her, maybe throw his arms around her, or more likely stand there in the hope that she’d throw her arms around him. But she hadn’t wanted to be met, so he stood his ground, half hoping she’d see him anyway.

  She didn’t; she just looked around the concourse with a good deal of pleasure, swung the rucksack on to her back, and picked up her kitbag. She was thin, dressed in clingy black leggings, Doc Marten shoes, a baggy grey T-shirt and black waistcoat. Her hair was long these days, ponytailed with pieces of bright cotton threaded through it. She sported several earrings in either ear, and a nose-stud. She was twenty years old, a woman, and her own woman at that, striding with confidence from the platform. He followed her up the ramp out of the station. A bright winter day was waiting for her. He didn’t suppose she’d worry about the cold.

  Later, she’d come to Patience’s flat for a meal. Rebus had suggested vegetarian to Patience, just to be on the safe side.

  ‘I always cook vegetarian for the teens and twenties,’ she’d replied.

  ‘I might have guessed you would.’

  After that visit, there had been others, Sammy and Patience growing closer as Patience and Rebus moved even further apart. Until one day Rebus had left, giving the students who rented his flat their marching orders and moving himself back in.

  Two days later, his set of keys to Patience’s flat had been handed over to Sammy, and she’d moved her stuff into the guest bedroom. Not a permanent arrangement, as both women said; just something they wanted to do for now.

  Sammy was still there.

  That first evening, the evening of the stuffed red peppers, Rebus and Sammy had argued about prison and ex-prisoners, right and wrong, society versus the individual. Sammy kept using the words ‘the system’; Rebus niggled her by using the term ‘con’. Although he agreed with at least some of her points – well thought out, persuasively argued – he found himself setting up in opposition to her. It was something he did, not just with her. Glancing across the table at Patience, he’d seen a weary smile. She’d told him before: he liked to antagonise just to get a response.

  ‘Know why?’ she’d said. ‘Because conflict is more fun for you than consensus.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ he’d told her. ‘I’m just the devil’s advocate, that’s all.’

  So he’d ignored the weary smile and continued his joust with his daughter . . .

  He closed the paper, folded it, and tossed it into a wastepaper-bin. Gill Templer came into the office. He’d been waiting there for her for close to fifteen minutes. She didn’t apologise.

  ‘You forgot to tell me,’ she said, ‘that your daughter works for SWEEP.’

  ‘It’s not an issue.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  He saw what she meant. ‘You mean, before you gave an interview?’

  ‘Some woman reporter, nice as ninepence until the end of the session, then: “and tell me, what is your feeling about one of your inspectors having a close relative so involved with SWEEP?”’

  Mairie Henderson, thought Rebus. Probably not interested in the answer either, just trying to discomfit the interviewee, see if anything shook loose.

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her no comment. Then I went straight to Chief Superintendent Watson and asked him who the hell she’d meant.’ She paused. ‘It had to be you.’

  ‘Is that my cue for a song?’

  She slammed a hand down on her desk. ‘It’s your cue to get the hell out of my office!’

  Rebus got the hell out.

  Rebus’s appointment with the governor of Saughton was in the late afternoon.

&
nbsp; The guard-house phoned ahead, then let him through. He was met at the other side of the gate and taken to the governor’s office. There was an ante-room where the secretary sat behind a computer. She was taking a phone call, but nodded for him to take a seat.

  ‘You see,’ she said into the receiver, ‘control shift asterisk is supposed to clear that, but it’s not doing it.’ She listened, and tucked the receiver between cheek and shoulder so she could work on her keyboard with both hands. ‘No, that’s not working either. Hang on, that’s got it. Thanks, bye.’ She put the phone down and shook her head in exasperation. ‘Sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth,’ she confided to Rebus. ‘The governor will be back in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rebus said. ‘Typewriters are about as high-tech as I can manage.’

  ‘They keep sending me on courses, but after half an hour I’m completely bamboozled.’

  The door Rebus had come through opened suddenly, and the governor came in. Rebus stood up, they shook hands, and the governor led him into the inner sanctum.

  ‘Sit down, Inspector.’

  ‘I appreciate you seeing me, sir.’

  The governor dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s not often a suicide on the outside brings me into the equation, but I’ve had reporters hounding me on this one. McAnally’s death seems to have stirred up a bit of debate. They must be hard up for news.’ He sat back, resting his hands on his stomach. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got you.’

  The governor was a handsome man in his late fifties. He peered at Rebus over metal-framed glasses. He was bulky rather than fat, and his silvering hair was thick and healthy. His suit looked expensive, his shirt laundered, and his unfussy blue tie had a sheen that Rebus took for silk. He saw himself as a ‘man-manager’, and was a public voice in the drive to reform Scotland’s penal system: an end to slopping-out and cell-sharing; brighter, better equipped halls; a strong emphasis on vocational training, education and counselling. Not every sight-impaired Open University student knew that their braille text was probably transcribed by Saughton’s Braille Unit.

  It wasn’t all sunny though: Saughton had its drug problems, its share of HIV-positive inmates. But at least it had a full-time medical staff to cope, or to begin to try to cope.