10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Is that it?’ Flower said.

  It took Rebus half a paragraph to be sure, then he smiled and nodded. He placed the evidence in a carrier-bag, put the case back on its shelf, and wiped it clean with the sleeve of his jacket. Rico was looking around at the other bags and cases.

  ‘No way,’ Rebus said, coming to wipe the door where Rico had held it shut. ‘And don’t even think of coming back here on your own, understand?’

  They relocked the door behind them, and walked up the slope just before the gates were closed for the night.

  41

  Rebus couldn’t sleep.

  He sat in his chair smoking a cigarette, reading the file the DCC had prepared – maybe ‘crafted’ was a better word. He’d done a good job of making it look so thorough while leaving so much out. He played part of the tape, using headphones so he could turn the volume up. Sir Iain was right about one thing – any lawyer listening to the tape would think that the police officer present hadn’t done very much. Rebus found that his hand was shaking. He hadn’t had a drink all day, and didn’t especially want one now. He was just a bit scared, that was all. He wasn’t sure he had enough, even now . . . especially now.

  Then he thought of something, something he’d almost persuaded himself to forget, and reached for the phonebook, finding the page, running his finger down the names, then along to a particular address. A flat on Dublin Street.

  It was past three o’clock when Rebus got there, the streets dead, not even any taxis rippling over the setts. Rebus pressed the buzzer and waited, then pressed it again. Then a third time, keeping his finger on it this time.

  The intercom crackled into life. ‘What? What?’

  ‘Mr McAllister?’ Rebus inquired, as if it was the middle of the day.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Inspector Rebus. If you’re alone, I’d like to come up for a word.’

  Rory McAllister was half dressed and less than half awake. He was on his own.

  Rebus walked around the spacious living room, admiring the ornaments and books, while McAllister made them both a cup of coffee.

  Then they sat down opposite one another. McAllister rubbed at his eyes and yawned.

  ‘So what is it, Inspector?’

  Rebus put his mug down on the polished wooden floor. ‘Well, it’s just this, sir. That day we met for lunch, you were . . . well, how can I put it? It struck me afterwards that you were too enthusiastic, too willing to talk. Then I saw you going to see Audrey Gillespie and . . . well, I started thinking.’

  McAllister tried to hide behind his steaming mug. ‘About what?’

  ‘You don’t deny you went to see Mrs Gillespie?’

  ‘Not at all. I know her, of course. I met her husband several times, professionally and socially. Mrs Gillespie accompanied her husband on those social occasions.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘And the other occasions – there’s interaction between the district council and the Scottish Office?’

  ‘Of course, and both Councillor Gillespie and myself worked on an industry remit.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Rebus said. ‘And did the councillor know you were seeing his wife behind his back?’

  ‘Now hang on –’

  ‘Let me finish. You see, Mr McAllister, all this stuff Tom Gillespie found out, is it possible he could have gleaned so much unaided? Someone had to be passing him the information, perhaps anonymously.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Never mind, you’ll catch up. I think you found out about Mensung and PanoTech and Charters’ other scams. Sir Iain trusted you, had you pegged as a possible successor. Maybe he had you go into Mensung to make sure there was nothing that could come to light.’ Rebus stood up. ‘Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Because you either passed the information on so you could scupper Sir Iain – in other words, for the public good. Or you did it to keep Gillespie busy and out of the way while you enjoyed a fling with his wife – which might be called the private good. Either way, I think you did it.’

  ‘And you were generous enough to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to let me know your suspicions?’ McAllister sat back in his chair, hands pressed to his chin as if in prayer.

  ‘I came here,’ Rebus said, ‘because if you did it only to smooth your affair with Audrey Gillespie, then I’m sunk. Whereas, if you really did want to get at Sir Iain, then we could be of use to one another.’

  McAllister looked up and frowned. ‘How?’

  So Rebus sat down again and told him.

  It was Sir Iain he wanted. He’d cancelled out all the other numbers in the equation, except Charters and Sir Iain. And Sir Iain was one possible route to Derry Charters. Rebus wanted him. He wanted him because people like Sir Iain Hunter were always in the right, even when they were wrong. Sir Iain lived and worked by the same ground rules a lot of villains swore by. He was selfish without appearing to be, full of arguments and self-justifications. He espoused the public good, but lined his pockets with the public’s money. He wasn’t so very different from the likes of Paul Duggan. If Rebus tried hard enough, he found he could blame Sir Iain for the fates of Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Kirstie had run away from home because her father had been shown the city’s corrupt heart, and wasn’t going to do anything about it. But the heart was artificial, and Sir Iain Hunter was working the bellows.

  When Rebus climbed the stairs to his flat, he found someone huddled in his doorway. It was Sammy. His hand on her shoulder woke her up, and she sprang to her feet.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been phoning you all day. I was worried about you.’ There were dried tearstains down both her cheeks. ‘I thought I’d wait for you here.’

  He let her in. She looked around the living room and saw the duvet on the chair. ‘Is this where you sleep?’

  ‘Some nights,’ Rebus said, lighting the fire.

  ‘You can’t get much rest there.’

  ‘It’s all right. Do you want anything to drink?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  He puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled. ‘I think so, just about.’ He sank into his chair. ‘I’m a bit scared, that’s all. I’m going to do something tomorrow; it may not turn out the way I want.’

  ‘One reason I wanted to see you,’ she began. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind, that note . . . and what happened. I thought maybe if you could tell me the story, it would help.’

  Rebus smiled. ‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story.’

  His daughter had curled up in front of the fire, and held a cushion against her chest. ‘Tell me anyway,’ she said.

  So Rebus told her, leaving nothing out – it was no less than she deserved. And afterwards, she fell asleep still clutching the cushion. Rebus placed the duvet over her, turned the fire down low, and sat down in his chair again, tears falling so softly that he knew he wouldn’t wake her.

  He was wearing his best suit.

  Flower had phoned first thing to say he wasn’t going. He didn’t explain, didn’t need to. Rebus didn’t need any more from him. Flower was thinking tactically: if it all went wrong – as it well might – Flower would be in the foxhole. He still had Rebus’s promise: chief inspector. If it all worked out.

  Sammy had helped him with his grooming. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he didn’t look too bad considering, and the suit definitely helped.

  ‘Patience chose it for me,’ he told his daughter.

  ‘She has good taste,’ Sammy agreed.

  He phoned first, stressing secrecy and urgency. There were problems, but finally he was given fifteen minutes in the mid-morning. Fifteen precious minutes. He had a bit of time to kill, so paced the flat, emptied the jar and put it back under the radiator, found his dental appointment card and tore it up.

  Sammy gave him a good luck kiss as he left the flat.

  ‘We’re not so very different,’ she told him.

  ‘Like father and daughter,’ he said, returning
the kiss.

  He parked at the front of St Andrew’s House, and a guard came out and told him he couldn’t do that. Rebus showed his warrant card, but the guard was adamant, and directed him to the visitors’ parking.

  ‘Tell me,’ Rebus said, ‘if I was Sir Iain Hunter, would I still have to move the car?’

  ‘No,’ said the guard, ‘that would be different.’

  And Rebus smiled, feeling a little of the tension leaving him. The man was right: that would be different.

  He walked up the steps to the building. Close up, it didn’t look so much like a power station or the Reichstag. He was signed in at the desk and given a visitor’s pass. Security had to check the contents of his bag – just some papers and a cassette. Someone came down to escort him upstairs, where he was passed on to someone else who took him to a secretary’s office. On the way, in a short narrow corridor, his escort nearly bumped into Sir Iain Hunter. She apologised, but Sir Iain wasn’t paying her any attention. Rebus winked at him and smiled as he passed. He didn’t look back, but he could feel the eyes boring into him, right between the shoulder-blades.

  This, he thought, is for Willie and Dixie, and for Tom Gillespie. And for everyone who doesn’t know the way the system works, the way it makes room for lying and cheating and stealing.

  But he knew, above all, that he was doing it for himself.

  There was no secretary in the secretary’s office, just Rory McAllister, looking very ill-at-ease but there, as he’d promised. Rebus found another wink to spare. Then the secretary came in and ushered them into an ante-chamber. She knocked on the door in front of them and opened it.

  He’d joked with the security man about the contents of his bag – ‘I’d hardly be carrying a bomb in a Spar carrier-bag’ – but now he walked into the room with the booby-trap tucked under his arm.

  ‘Good of you to find time to see us, sir.’

  He meant it, too. Dugald Niven, Secretary of State for Scotland, had a busy schedule. Rebus was sure it would go ahead as usual, no matter what.

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful thanks to: Ronnie Mackintosh, for helping me with my inquiries; Councillor Devin Scobie, for steering me through local government; John Mathieson, Staff Training Officer, HM Prison Edinburgh, for his advice; The Scottish Office, especially the Publications Department, New St Andrew’s House; staff of Edinburgh City Chambers; staff of LEEL and Scottish Enterprise; staff of Edinburgh Central Lending Library and the Scottish National Library; Jon for the sofa; and the usual nod to everyone at the Oxford Bar.

  All inaccuracies are, of course, my own.

  The lines quoted by Mrs Kennedy are from The New Testament in Scots, translated by W. L. Lorimer (Penguin, 1985).

  Discussion points for Let It Bleed

  ‘Rebus looked out of the window. It had started snowing. “Weather like this,” he said, “there’s never much trouble in Edinburgh, trust me.”’ To what extent should the reader trust Rebus?

  The silent actions of the two youths who died suggest to Rebus ‘something fatalistic; something agreed between them’. What does Rebus feel in response? Could it be said that he’s so interested in these and other suicides generally because, aside from the very different motivations of murderers from suicides, he plays with his own well-being through the precarious way he looks after himself? Has he ever contemplated suicide himself?

  Referring to the Rolling Stones, Rebus thinks, ‘What a shambles the band were, yet sometimes they could get it so right that it hurt.’ Could the same be said of Rebus’s police work?

  Daughter Sammy is now back from London and living with Patience Aitken. How does this make Rebus behave? And how does Sammy’s involvement with SWEEP further affect her relationship with her father?

  Rebus is ordered to take some time off. How does Ian Rankin detail his response? What happens to Rebus’s ‘Protestant work ethic’?

  What lesson does Rebus learn at the hands of Rico Briggs? Why don’t Wee Shug’s actions in the surgery make sense to Rebus?

  How lucky is Lucky?

  Rebus feels that this case draws on connections and coincidences. Could the same be said for Ian Rankin’s intricate plotting in Let It Bleed?

  ‘That’s your problem, Inspector – you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike.’ Do these words from the Farmer strike a chord with Rebus, or does he brush them aside?

  Ian Rankin says that in some ways Let It Bleed is a return to the Scotland of his second novel, Hide & Seek. Would you agree?

  Does Let It Bleed, as Ian Rankin claims, ‘celebrate our national relationship with alcohol’? If so, what is the reader supposed to make of Rebus’s signs of alcoholism? Why does he believe he drinks? And what does Rebus actually feel about his excessive drinking?

  Is much of what Rebus discovers really a crime, or could it be considered instead just a sharp way of doing business?

  The US edition has a different ending that ties up some of the loose ends, although this alternative dénouement isn’t offered here. What are the loose ends left hanging? And do they worry the reader?

  BLACK & BLUE

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Empty Capital

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  The Whispering Rain

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Furry Boot Town

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dead Crude

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  The Panic of Dreams

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  North of Hell

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Discussion Points

  O would, ere I had seen the day

  That treason thus could sell us,

  My auld grey head had lien in clay,

  Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!

  But pith and power, till my last hour,

  I’ll mak’ this decleration;

  We’re bought and sold for English gold –

  Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

  Robert Burns,

  ‘Fareweel to a’ Our Scottish Fame’

  If you have the Stones . . . to say I can rewrite history to my own specifications, you can get away with it.

  James Ellroy

  (Capitalisation the author’s own)

  INTRODUCTION

  Late December 1996. After six years in France, I was back living in Edinburgh, renting a house. Problem was, the owners, who lived most of the year in London, needed it for Christmas. As a result, we were temporarily homeless. We’d spent Christmas itself with my wife’s family in Belfast, and were spending New Year with friends in Cambridge. An aunt in Bradford could put us up for a few days, as could my nephew in Lincolnshire. After Bradford, we dropped in on friends near York. It was while resting at their house that I read in The Times a teaser for a book review. It went something along the lines of ‘the best crime novel of 1997 has already been written – discover its identity next week’. My latest book was due for publication towards the end of January, so I kept my fingers crossed and bought The Times on the a
ppointed day.

  The reviewer was Marcel Berlins; sure enough, the novel he had flagged up was Black & Blue.

  He wasn’t wrong, either – when November came round, my eighth Inspector Rebus adventure picked up the Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel published in 1997. It went on to be shortlisted for the American equivalent, the Edgar (named after Edgar Allan Poe – I lost out to James Lee Burke), and also won Denmark’s Palle Rosenkrantz Prize. Eventually it would end up on the school syllabus in Scotland, and a lecturer at St Andrews University would publish a book-length critique of its themes.

  So what the hell is it that made Black & Blue so different from my previous efforts?

  Well, for one thing, the book looked different. My publishers, Orion, had found a spooky photo of some trees, and had added a new, bold typeface to the cover, making Black & Blue look more than a crime novel. They were also prepared to put some muscle into promoting the book, with posters and advertisements. But more than this, to my mind the book was simply bigger and better than my previous work: I felt I’d served my apprenticeship. It was as if all the previous Rebus novels had been leading to this. I would no longer confine my detective to Edinburgh and its environs. He would visit Glasgow, Aberdeen, Shetland – even an oil installation hundreds of miles out in the unforgiving North Sea. Oil would be a theme of the book, allowing me to examine Scotland’s industrial decline and reshaping. Difficult to discuss oil without bringing politics into the equation, so the book would be political too. And Rebus would swell in stature. I would put his reputation, career and life on the line. I’d have intertwined narratives, with various sub-plots dodging in and out of the main story.

  And I would do all this while using as my backdrop a series of real-life unsolved murders from thirty years before – and bringing that killer into the books as a character. Almost a decade on, I still think this an audacious ploy. And Bible John has yet to sue me for libel.