10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

‘Here’s my answer, Mr Mathieson,’ he said.

  He walked out without saying another word.

  38

  Because he hadn’t decided.

  His pride wouldn’t let him kowtow to people like Hunter and Mathieson – they were men, not gods. And he hated people putting one over on him, which was exactly what would be happening if he gave in. But . . . but . . . He kept seeing those hundreds of faceless workers, driving to work in their new cars, or signing on in a sweltering dole office. One man’s life against thousands . . . It wasn’t fair, it shouldn’t be down to him to decide.

  Well, what was stopping him taking it elsewhere? He drove into town along Corstorphine Road, past the office suite used by Mensung, and decided to drop into Torphichen Place. Davidson probably wouldn’t be there at this hour, but he could find out what was happening with Gillespie’s files.

  The duty desk officer let him through the door. Rebus walked along the silent hall and up the stairs. The only person in the CID room was Rab Burns.

  ‘Hiya, John, what brings you here? The urbane conversation? The ersatz coffee?’

  ‘Bags of rubbish, to be precise.’

  ‘Eh?’

  So Rebus explained, and Burns shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about them.’

  ‘Maybe they were locked away at close of play.’

  ‘They’d be in the cupboard. Hold on, I’ll fetch the key.’ But there was nothing in the cupboard. ‘You don’t suppose they could have been thrown out by mistake?’

  A shiver went across Rebus’s shoulders. ‘Mind if I use your phone?’ He punched in Davidson’s number and waited until the detective answered. ‘It’s me, where are the files?’

  ‘John, I was going to call you.’

  ‘Where are the files?’

  ‘Orders, John.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They were requisitioned. I was going to tell you in the morning.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  Davidson was a long time answering. ‘The DCC’s office.’

  Rebus slammed down the receiver. Allan bloody Gunner! ‘Any idea of the DCC’s home number, Rab?’

  ‘Oh aye, we’re close friends like.’

  Rebus’s look shut him up. They found the number on the Emergency roster. Rebus rang and waited and waited. A woman picked up the receiver. There was laughter in the background. A party, maybe a dinner party.

  ‘Mr Gunner, please.’

  ‘Who shall I say?’

  ‘Walt Disney.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Rebus was shaking with anger. ‘Just get him.’

  A full minute later, Gunner lifted the receiver. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Rebus. What the fuck are you playing at?’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ The words were hissed, Gunner not wanting his guests in the other room to hear.

  ‘All right then. With respect, sir, what the fuck are you playing at?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Gillespie files, where are they?’

  ‘In the incinerator.’

  And Gunner cut the connection. Rebus tried again, but the line was busy – the receiver had been left off the hook. Rebus grabbed the Emergency roster from Burns and looked down it for Gunner’s address.

  ‘You can borrow my computer if you like,’ Burns said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To write your letter of resignation.’

  ‘Rab,’ Rebus said to him, ‘you stole that line from me.’

  Rebus gave the bell a good long ring. Gunner didn’t look surprised as he unlocked the door.

  ‘Come into the study,’ he said angrily.

  As Rebus followed him, he heard the sounds of the dinner party. Instead of following Gunner into the study, he walked to a closed door and opened it.

  ‘Evening,’ he said. ‘Sorry to drag the host away, we’ll only be a minute.’

  Then he smiled at the guests, closed the door again, and went into the study. Around the table had been seated the Lord Provost and his wife, the chief constable and his wife, and Gunner’s wife. There were two other place settings, one for Gunner himself.

  ‘Sir Iain couldn’t make it then?’ Rebus guessed.

  Gunner closed the study door. ‘He’ll be joining us for coffee.’

  ‘Cosy.’

  ‘Look, Rebus –’

  ‘I had a little think on the way here, and something occurred to me. Here it is. McAnally wasn’t in Charters’ cell to get to the bottom of anything; he was there so you could be sure Charters was keeping his mouth shut. And you got proof of that, because Charters paid McAnally to scare off the councillor. It was a cover-up from the beginning, whether Flower knew that’s how you were playing it or not. You wanted the whole thing kept hidden, and now that you’ve burnt those papers, that’s the way it’ll stay.’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘No, I’m worthless. It’s up to people like you, and you’re not going to do a damned thing. You’re going to remain Hunter’s puppet, all the way to chief constable.’

  The doorbell rang again, and Gunner walked out, returning with Sir Iain Hunter.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ Hunter said, removing his topcoat, ‘you do seem to pop up everywhere.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a cassette. ‘It’s all there,’ he said, handing it to Gunner.

  Rebus felt the floor move beneath him. ‘You were bugged?’ he said.

  Hunter smiled. ‘Thank God he didn’t make us all strip.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘I begin to get it.’

  ‘Sir Iain,’ Gunner said, ‘has been gathering evidence of an embarrassing scandal.’

  ‘A scandal,’ Rebus added, ‘that will conveniently lack one important name. I should’ve known the Scottish Office was involved from the start. I can’t see a prison governor, especially one like Big Jim Flett, covering up McAnally’s record on the say-so of the police alone. But the DCC backed up by the Permanent Secretary . . . well, that would be a different story. After all, the Scottish Office pulls the purse-strings.’ His eyes fixed on Hunter. ‘And a lot of other strings besides.’

  ‘Inspector Rebus,’ Hunter said coolly, ‘it is a fact of life that you simply can’t have the Permanent Secretary mixed up in anything unsavoury. For the good of the country, he must be protected.’

  ‘Even if he’s in it up to his eyeballs?’

  ‘Even then.’

  ‘This stinks,’ Rebus said. ‘What’s the tape? An insurance policy?’

  ‘I’m preparing a file,’ Gunner said. ‘Unofficially, and to be kept under lock and key.’

  ‘And if anything should happen to leak out in future . . .?’

  ‘The file will show,’ said Hunter, ‘that Charters and others acted unlawfully.’

  ‘To the extent of murder?’ Hunter nodded. ‘What about Mathieson? Will he be implicated?’ Rebus smiled. ‘Sorry, daft question. Of course he will. You’d sell everything to the court to save your own neck, you –’

  ‘Hypocrite?’ Hunter suggested. ‘Hypocrisy is acceptable if it is for the public good.’

  ‘You know,’ Gunner added, ‘I could have you booted off the force.’

  ‘I’d fight you all the way.’

  Gunner smiled. ‘I know you would.’

  Hunter touched Gunner’s arm. ‘We’ve kept your guests waiting long enough, Allan.’

  Gunner’s eyes were still on Rebus. ‘Under normal circumstances, you’d be welcome to join us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t join you if you were coming apart at the seams.’

  ‘The stories I hear,’ Gunner said, ‘it’s you that’s been coming apart at the seams.’

  ‘Bear something in mind, Inspector,’ Hunter said, examining his cane. ‘You were at that meeting, too. You’re on the tape, listening to men confess their part in illegal acts. I didn’t hear you caution them, I didn’t hear you do anything much. If questions should ever be asked, they’ll be asked of you along with everyone else
.’

  ‘I’ll see you to the door,’ the chief constable-in-waiting told Rebus.

  39

  John Rebus did what he had to do – went on a forty-eight-hour bender.

  It wasn’t difficult in Edinburgh. Even in winter, without the benefit of extended summer opening hours, if you paced things right you could drink round the clock. It was all down to permutations of late-licence restaurants, casinos, and early-opening bars. You could always drink at home, of course, but that wasn’t what a bender was about. You could hardly do your bender justice when the only person around to listen to your stories was your own sour self.

  Rebus didn’t worry about missing work. He’d been on benders before, after losing cases he’d tried desperately to win. Always he did it with the blessing of his superiors, who might even chip in towards expenses. He thought maybe he’d phoned the Farmer from some pub along the way, and maybe the Farmer had said something about Allan Gunner having okayed things. Hard to tell though, hard to remember.

  Still harder to forget.

  He’d grab an hour’s sleep, then be awake a couple of minutes at most before the knot was in his guts, reminding him of things he’d far rather forget.

  Towards the close of the first day, he was in a bar on Lothian Road, and noticed Maisie and Tresa there, having a good time to themselves. They were at a table, and Rebus was at the bar. Pairs of men kept accosting them – to no avail. Then Maisie saw Rebus and got up, weaving towards him.

  ‘I see the period of mourning’s over,’ Rebus said.

  She smiled. ‘Ach, Wee Shug was all right.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  Her eyes were only half open, heavy-lidded. ‘See,’ she began, ‘it wasn’t him I wanted, it was Tresa.’ She lit a cigarette for herself, using the onyx and gold lighter. ‘He came to see me the day he topped himself, told me what he was going to do. He gave me this lighter. Maybe he was looking for sympathy, or someone to talk him out of it. Daft bastard: he was doing just what I wanted. I wanted Tresa. I love her, really I do.’

  Rebus remembered something she’d told him before, about Wee Shug: ‘He deserved what he got.’ He realised now that she hadn’t meant it vindictively; she’d meant he deserved whatever he was paid. She’d stuck him in prison, and he’d still come back to her, telling his story . . .

  ‘Was it rape?’ Rebus asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  He sucked on his cigarette. ‘Did you scream?’

  Now she laughed. ‘The neighbours thought I did. They wanted to have heard it, otherwise there’d be no guilt. We Scots need a bit of guilt, don’t we? It gets us through the day.’

  Then she planted a kiss on his cheek, and stood back to gaze at him, before making her way back to where Tresa McAnally sat waiting for her.

  She was right about the guilt, he thought. But there was more to it – the neighbours hadn’t done anything at the time, and that was typically Edinburgh. People would rather not know, even if there was nothing there – they didn’t want to be told that their body (or their country) was rotten with cancer, but nor did they want to be told that it wasn’t. And in the end they just sat there, zugzwanged, while the likes of Charters and Sir Iain Hunter got on with another game entirely.

  In the middle of the second day, in the same rancid clothes as the day before, wreathed in a fug of nicotine and whisky, and in possession of a hangover he was trying to drink away, he met Kirstie Kennedy. Maybe it was halfway down Leith Walk, or at the top of Easter Road. She was shorter than him, and wanted to whisper in his ear. She didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to do it – he stooped under the weight of his skull and shoulders.

  ‘You should get straight,’ she told him. ‘Killing yourself’s no answer.’

  He recalled her words later, when more or less seated on a bench in what purported to be a bar on Darly Road. It had the dimensions and atmosphere of a bonded warehouse. He had just been speaking to the old thin man, the one who liked American history. Rebus had started to give him a history lesson which didn’t have much to do with Hopalong Cassidy, and the man shuffled off to another part of the bar, where Tartan Shoelaces stood protectively close to his erring wife Morag. Rebus had stood them all a couple of drinks when he’d come in.

  Some young turks were playing pool, and Rebus tried to concentrate on their game, but found himself yawning noisily.

  ‘Not keeping you up, are we, pal?’ one of the players snarled.

  ‘Cut it out,’ the barmaid called to them. ‘He’s polis.’

  ‘He’s guttered, that’s what he is. Plain mortal.’

  And then Kirstie’s words came back to him. You should get straight. Killing yourself’s no answer. Well, it depended what the question was. Get straight . . . straight, as in even. Someone sat down next to him. He tried turning his head to look at them.

  ‘Found you at last.’

  ‘Sammy?’

  ‘I got a phone call from somebody called Kirstie. She said she was worried.’

  ‘I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘You’re a mess. What’s happened?’

  ‘The system, that’s what’s happened. You were right, Sammy. And I knew you were right, all the time I was saying you were wrong.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Well, you were right, too. I shouldn’t have smuggled that note out for Derwood Charters.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Gerry Dip isn’t talking. We’ll pin him for the credit cards if nothing else. There’ll be no mention of Charters at the trial. You won’t be involved.’

  ‘But I am involved.’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘Just keep your mouth quiet, that’s what everyone else is doing. Nothing’s going to happen.’

  ‘Is that what this is about?’

  Rebus straightened his back. He didn’t like Sammy seeing him like this; that thought had only just struck him.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘whether you can put this behind you or not is down to you and your conscience. That’s what I’m saying.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m going to clean up.’

  He made it to the toilets. He didn’t want the pool players coming in for a ‘Dalry Discussion’, so wedged the door shut with paper towels while he stuck his head under the cold tap. He dried himself off, then was copiously sick into the bowl. Unjamming the door, he walked back into the bar.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Sammy asked him.

  ‘Ninety-five per cent to go,’ Rebus told her, taking her hand in his.

  Who could he go to?

  The Lord Advocate? Hardly: he was probably on pheasant-shooting terms with Hunter. He was the Establishment, and the Establishment would be protected at all costs. The chief constable? But he was retiring, and wouldn’t want anything to tarnish his last few months in office. The media perhaps, Mairie Henderson? It was the story of the year, except there was no proof. It would be the word of an embittered policeman against . . . well, everybody.

  He’d spent time steeping in the bath at home, then showering. Sammy had made him drink a couple of litres of orange juice, and about a packet of ‘Resolve’.

  ‘I can’t forget what I did,’ she told him quietly.

  ‘Maybe you got my guilt complex along with my genes,’ he told her.

  After Sammy had gone back to Patience’s, Rebus had called Gill Templer. He needed advice, he told her. They arranged to meet at her health club. She had a sauna and massage booked; they could talk in the bar after that.

  There was a view from the bar’s first-floor window down on to a quiet New Town street. All around Rebus sat healthy people, tanned and smiling with good teeth and trim confidence. He knew he fitted in like a paedophile in a classroom. He had trashed his bender clothes, just trashed them, and was wearing the gear he’d bought for the trip to Sir Iain’s.

  Gill came in and nodded towards him, then went to the bar and bought herself something non-alcoholic. Her skin glowed as she came over to his table. ‘You look rough,’ she said.

  ‘You
should have seen me earlier. You could have sanded doors with me.’

  She picked a sliver of orange out of her glass and sucked on it. ‘So what’s the big mystery?’

  He told her the whole story. She started to look uncomfortable halfway through, the look changing by degrees to simple bemusement.

  ‘I’ll take another orange juice, if you’re buying,’ she said when he’d finished.

  She needed time to think, so Rebus didn’t hurry the barman. But when he came back to the table, she still didn’t have anything to say.

  ‘See, Gill, what I need is the nod on a search warrant, so I can go into Gunner’s house and seize the file and the tape. We could get one from a JP – there are enough councillors left to choose from.’

  Her face darkened. ‘Why me?’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How good do you think I’d come out of this? Do you think anyone would forget that I was the one who’d helped you?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gill.’

  Her voice softened. She stared into her drink. ‘Sorry I’m letting you down, John.’

  ‘They could crucify me if they wanted to.’

  She stared at him. ‘They don’t want to. You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘You’re going to be promoted to chief inspector. There’s an opening in Galashiels. It came down to the chief super from the DCC.’ She smiled. ‘You’re trying to arrange a search warrant for his house, and he’s busy giving you a hike up. How’s that going to look in court?’

  ‘It’s true,’ Chief Superintendent Watson confirmed.

  Rebus was in the Farmer’s office, but not sitting. He couldn’t sit, couldn’t even stand at ease.

  ‘I don’t want it, I won’t accept it. That’s allowed, isn’t it?’

  The Farmer made a pained face. ‘If you refuse, it’s a snub no one will forget. You might never get a second chance.’

  ‘I don’t mind snubbing Allan Gunner.’

  ‘John, Gunner didn’t recommend you for promotion, I did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Several months back.’

  ‘You did?’