10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘The drink. You better tell me a little more about the other.’

  ‘It’s a boring job or I’d do it myself. Does the library keep a record of books consulted and borrowed?’

  The librarian thought about it, then nodded. ‘Some computerised, some still on cards.’

  ‘Well, the computer will be quick, but the cards may take you a while. It’ll still be easy money, believe me. What about if someone came in to consult old newspapers?’

  ‘Should be on record. How long ago are we talking about?’

  ‘It would be in the past three to six months. The papers they’d be looking at would be from 1968 to ’70.’

  He paid for two drinks with a twenty, opened his wallet so the librarian could see plenty more.

  ‘It might take a while,’ the young man said. ‘I’ll have to cross-reference between Causewayside and George IV Bridge.’

  ‘There’s another hundred if you can hurry things along.’

  ‘I’ll need details.’ Bible John nodded, handed over a business card. It stated name and a phony address, but no phone number.

  ‘Don’t try to get in touch. I’ll phone you. What’s your name?’

  ‘Mark Jenkins.’

  ‘OK, Mark.’ Bible John lifted out two fifties, tucked them into the young man’s breast pocket. ‘Here’s something on account.’

  ‘What’s it all about anyway?’

  Bible John shrugged. ‘Johnny Bible. We’re checking a possible connection with some old cases.’

  The young man nodded. ‘So what books are you interested in?’

  Bible John handed him a printed list. ‘Plus newspapers. Scotsmans and Glasgow Heralds, February ’68 to December ’69.’

  ‘And what do you want to know?’

  ‘People who’ve been looking at them. I’ll need names and addresses. Can you do it?’

  ‘Actual newspapers are held at Causewayside, we only stock microfilm.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I may need to ask a colleague at Causewayside to help.’

  Bible John smiled. ‘My paper’s not short of a bob or two, as long as we get results. How much would your friend want . . .?’

  The Whispering Rain

  Mind me when mischief befalls me from the cruel and the vain

  The Bathers,

  ‘Ave the Leopards’

  5

  The Scots language is especially rich in words to do with the weather: ‘dreich’ and ‘smirr’ are only two of them.

  It had taken Rebus an hour to drive to Raintown, but another forty minutes to find Dumbarton Road. He hadn’t been to the station before: Partick cop-shop had relocated in ’93. The old station, the ‘Marine’, he’d been there, but not the new place. Driving in Glasgow could be a nightmare for the uninitiated, a maze of one-way streets and ill-signposted intersections. Rebus twice had to leave his car and call in for instructions, both times queuing outside phone boxes in the rain. Only it wasn’t real rain, it was smirr, a fine spray-mist which drenched you before you knew it. It was blowing in from the west, moisture straight from the Atlantic Ocean. It was all Rebus needed first thing on a dreich Monday morning.

  When he got to the station, he noticed a car in the car park, two figures inside, smoke billowing from an open window, radio playing. Reporters, had to be. They were the graveyard shift. At this point in a story, reporters divvied the hours into shifts, so they could go off and be somewhere else. Whoever was left on recce was on a promise to buzz any breaks in the story to the other journalists pronto.

  When he finally pushed open the station door, there was scattered applause. He walked up to the desk.

  ‘Finally made it, then?’ the Duty Sergeant asked. ‘Thought we were going to have to send out search parties.’

  ‘Where’s CI Ancram?’

  ‘In a meeting. He said for you to go up and wait.’

  So Rebus went upstairs, and found that the CID offices had become a sprawling Murder Room. There were photographs on the walls: Judith Cairns, Ju-Ju, in life and in death. More photos of the locus – Kelvingrove Park, a sheltered spot surrounded by bushes. A work rota had been posted – interview grind mostly, shoe-leather stuff, no big breaks expected but you had to make the effort. Officers clattered at keyboards, maybe using the SCRO computer, or even HOLMES – the major enquiry database. All murder cases – excluding those solved straight off – were put on the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. There were dedicated teams – detectives and uniforms – who operated the system, typing in data, checking and cross-referencing. Even Rebus – no great fan of new technology – could see the advantages over the old card-index system. He stopped by a computer terminal and watched someone entering a statement. Then, looking up, he saw a face he recognised, walked up to its owner.

  ‘Hiya, Jack, thought you were still in Falkirk?’

  DI Jack Morton turned, his eyes opening wide in disbelief. He rose from his desk, took Rebus’s hand and pumped it.

  ‘I am,’ he said, ‘but they’re short-handed here.’ He looked around the room. ‘Understandably.’

  Rebus looked Jack Morton up and down, couldn’t believe what he saw. Last time they’d met, Jack had been a couple of stone overweight, a heavy smoker with a cough that could crack patrol-car windscreens. Now he’d shed the excess weight, and the perennial ciggie was missing from his mouth. More, his hair was professionally groomed and he was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, polished black shoes, crisp shirt and tie.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Rebus asked.

  Morton smiled, patted his near-flat stomach. ‘Just looked at myself one day and couldn’t understand why the mirror didn’t break. Got off the booze and the cigs, joined a health club.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Life and death decisions. You can’t afford to hem and haw.’

  ‘You look great.’

  ‘Wish I could say the same, John.’

  Rebus was thinking up a comeback when CI Ancram entered the room.

  ‘DI Rebus?’ They shook hands. The Chief Inspector didn’t seem keen to let go. His eyes were soaking up Rebus. ‘Sorry to keep you.’

  Ancram was in his early fifties, and every bit as well-dressed as Jack Morton. He was bald mostly, but with Sean Connery’s style and a thick dark moustache to match.

  ‘Has Jack been giving you the tour?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  ‘Well, this is the Glasgow end of the Johnny Bible operation.’

  ‘Is this the nearest station to Kelvingrove?’

  Ancram smiled. ‘Proximity to the locus was just one consideration. Judith Cairns was his third victim, by then the media had already hit on the Bible John connection. And this is where all the Bible John files are stored.’

  ‘Any chance I can see them?’

  Ancram studied him, then shrugged. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Rebus followed Ancram along the corridor to another suite of offices. There was a musty smell in the air, more library than cop-shop. Rebus saw why: the room was full of old cardboard boxes, box-files with spring hinges, packets of curl-edged paper bound with string. Four CID officers – two male, two female – were working their way through everything and anything to do with the original Bible John case.

  ‘We had this lot stashed in a storeroom,’ Ancram said. ‘You should have seen the stoor that came off when we brought them out.’ He blew on a folder, fine powder rising from it.

  ‘You do think there’s a connection then?’

  It was a question every police officer in Scotland had asked every other police officer, for there was always the chance that the two cases, the two killers, had nothing in common, in which event hundreds of man-hours were being wasted.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ancram said. Yes: it was what Rebus felt, too. ‘I mean, the modus operandi is close enough to start with, then there are the souvenirs he takes from the scene. The description of Johnny Bible may be a fluke, but I’m sure he’s copying his hero.’ Ancram look
ed at Rebus. ‘Aren’t you?’

  Rebus nodded. He was looking at all the material, thinking how he’d like to have a few weeks with it, how he might find something no one else had spotted . . . It was a dream, of course, a fantasy, but on slow nights sometimes it was motivation enough. Rebus had his newspapers, but they told only as much of the story as the police had wanted made public. He walked over to a row of shelves, read the spines of the box-files: Door to Door; Taxi Firms; Hairdressers; Tailors’ Shops; Hairpiece Suppliers.

  ‘Hairpiece suppliers?’

  Ancram smiled. ‘His short hair, they thought maybe it was a wig. They talked to hairdressers to see if anyone recognised the cut.’

  ‘And to tailors because of his Italian suit.’

  Again Ancram stared at him.

  Rebus shrugged. ‘The case interests me. What’s this?’ He pointed to a wall chart.

  ‘Similarities and dissimilarities between the two cases,’ Ancram said. ‘Dancehalls versus the club scene. And the descriptions: tall, skinny, shy, auburn hair, well dressed . . . I mean, Johnny could almost be Bible John’s son.’

  ‘That’s something I’ve been asking myself. Supposing Johnny Bible is basing himself on his hero, and supposing Bible John’s still out there somewhere . . .’

  ‘Bible John’s dead.’

  Rebus kept his eyes on the chart. ‘But just supposing he isn’t. I mean, is he flattered? Is he pissed off? What?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘The Glasgow victim hadn’t been to a club,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t last seen in a club. But she’d been to one earlier that evening, he could have followed her from there to the concert.’

  Victims one and two had been picked up by Johnny Bible in nightclubs, the nineties equivalent of a sixties dancehall: louder, darker, more dangerous. They’d been in parties, who were able to furnish only the vaguest descriptions of the man who had walked off into the night with their friend. But victim three, Judith Cairns, had been picked up at a rock concert in a room above a pub.

  ‘We’ve had others too,’ Ancram was saying. ‘Three unsolveds in Glasgow in the late seventies, all three missing some personal item.’

  ‘Like he never went away,’ Rebus muttered.

  ‘There’s too much to go on, yet not nearly enough.’ Ancram folded his arms. ‘How well does Johnny know the three cities? Did he pick the clubs at random, or did he know them to start with? Was each locus chosen beforehand? Could he be a brewery delivery-man? A DJ? Music journalist? Maybe he writes fucking travel guides for all I know.’ Ancram started a joyless laugh, and rubbed at his forehead.

  ‘Could always be Bible John himself,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Bible John’s dead and buried, Inspector.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  Ancram nodded. He wasn’t alone. There were plenty of coppers who thought they knew who Bible John was, and knew him to be dead. But there were others more sceptical, and Rebus was among them. A DNA match probably wouldn’t have been enough to change his mind. There was always the chance that Bible John was out there.

  They had a description of a man in his late twenties, but witness evidence was notoriously uneven. As a result, the original photofits and artists’ impressions of Bible John had been dusted off and put back into circulation with the media’s help. The usual psychological ploys were being used too – pleas in the press for the killer to come forward: ‘You obviously need help, and we’d like you to contact us.’ Bluff, with silence the retort.

  Ancram pointed to photos on one wall: a photofit from 1970, aged by computer, beard and glasses added, the hair receding at crown and temples. They’d been made public too.

  ‘Could be anybody, couldn’t it?’ Ancram stated.

  ‘Getting to you, sir?’ Rebus was waiting for an invitation to call Ancram by his first name.

  ‘Of course it’s getting to me.’ Ancram’s face relaxed. ‘Why the interest?’

  ‘No real reason.’

  ‘I mean, we’re not here for Johnny Bible, are we? We’re here to talk about Uncle Joe.’

  ‘Ready when you are, sir.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s see if we can find two empty chairs in this fucking building.’

  They ended up standing in the corridor, with coffee bought from a machine further along.

  ‘Do we know what he strangles them with?’ Rebus asked.

  Ancram’s eyes widened. ‘More Johnny Bible?’ He sighed. ‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t leave much of an impression. The latest theory is a length of washing-line; you know, the nylon stuff, plastic-coated. The forensic labs have tested about two hundred possibles, everything from rope to guitar strings.’

  ‘What do you think about the souvenirs?’

  ‘I think we should go public with them. I know keeping them hush-hush helps us rule out the nutters who walk in to confess, but I honestly think we’d be better off asking the public for help. That necklace, I mean, you couldn’t get more distinctive. If someone out there has found it, or seen it . . . housey-housey.’

  ‘You’ve got a psychic working the case, haven’t you?’

  Ancram looked nettled. ‘Not me personally, some arsehole further up the ranks. It’s a newspaper stunt, but the brass went for it.’

  ‘He hasn’t helped?’

  ‘We told him we needed a demonstration, asked him to predict the winner of the two-fifteen at Ayr.’

  Rebus laughed. ‘And?’

  ‘He said he could see the letters S and P, and a jockey dressed in pink with yellow spots.’

  ‘That’s impressive.’

  ‘Thing is though, there was no two-fifteen at Ayr, or anywhere else for that matter. All this voodoo and profiling, a waste of time if you ask me.’

  ‘So you’ve nothing to go on?’

  ‘Not much. No saliva at the locus, not so much as a hair. Bastard uses a johnny, then takes it with him – wrapper included. My bet is, he wears gloves too. We’ve a few threads from a jacket or the like, forensics are still busy with them.’ Ancram raised his cup to his lips, blew on it. ‘So, Inspector, do you want to hear about Uncle Joe or not?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’ Rebus just shrugged, so Ancram took a deep breath. ‘OK, then listen. He controls a lot of the muscle-work – and I mean that literally; he has a share in a couple of bodybuilder gyms. In fact, he has a share in just about everything that’s the least bit dodgy: money-lending, protection, prozzy pitches, betting.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Maybe. There are a lot of maybes with Uncle Joe. You’ll see that when you read the files. He’s as slippery as a Thai bath – he owns massage parlours too. Then he’s got a lot of the taxi cabs, the ones that don’t switch their meters on when you get in; or if they do, the rate-per-mile’s been hiked. The cabbies are all on the broo, claiming benefit. We’ve approached several of them, but they won’t say a word against Uncle Joe. Thing is, if the DSS start sniffing around for scroungers, the investigators receive a letter. It details where they live, spouse’s name and daily movements, kids’ names, the school they go to . . .’

  ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘So they start requesting a transfer to another department, and meantime go to their doctor because they’re having trouble sleeping at night.’

  ‘OK, Uncle Joe isn’t Glasgow’s Man of the Year. Where does he live?’

  Ancram drained his cup. ‘This is a beauty. He lives in a council house. But just remember: Robert Maxwell lived in a council house, too. You have to see this place.’

  ‘I intend to.’

  Ancram shook his head. ‘He won’t talk to you, you won’t get past the door.’

  ‘Want a bet?’

  Ancram narrowed his eyes. ‘You sound confident.’

  Jack Morton walked past them, rolling his eyes: a general comment on life. He was searching his pockets for coins. As he waited for the machine to pour his drink, he turned to them.

&nbs
p; ‘Chick, The Lobby?’

  Ancram nodded. ‘One o’clock?’

  ‘Braw.’

  ‘What about associates?’ Rebus asked. He noticed Ancram hadn’t yet said he could call him by his nickname.

  ‘Oh, he has plenty of those. His guards are bodybuilders, hand-picked. Then he has some nutters, real headbangers. The bodybuilders might look the business, but these others are the business. There was Tony El, poly-bag merchant with a penchant for power tools. Uncle Joe still has one or two like him. Then there’s Joe’s son, Malky.’

  ‘Mr Stanley knife?’

  ‘Emergency rooms all over Glasgow can testify to that particular hobby.’

  ‘But Tony El hasn’t been around?’

  Ancram shook his head. ‘But I’ve had my grasses out sniffing on your behalf; I should hear back today.’

  Three men pushed open the doors at the end of the hall.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Ancram said in an undertone, ‘it’s the man with the crystal balls.’

  Rebus recognised one of the men from a magazine photograph: Aldous Zane, the American psychic. He’d helped a US police force in their hunt for Merry Mac, so called because someone passing the scene of one of his murders – without realising what was happening on the other side of the wall – had heard deep gurgling laughter. Zane had given his impressions of where the killer lived. When police finally arrested Merry Mac, the media pointed out that the location bore a striking resemblance to the picture Zane had drawn.

  For a few weeks, Aldous Zane was newsworthy all around the world. It was enough to tempt a Scottish tabloid to pay for him to offer his impressions in the Johnny Bible hunt. And the police brass were just desperate enough to offer their cooperation.

  ‘Morning, Chick,’ one of the other men said.

  ‘Morning, Terry.’

  ‘Terry’ was looking at Rebus, awaiting an introduction.

  ‘DI John Rebus,’ Ancram said. ‘DCS Thompson.’

  The man stuck out his hand, which Rebus shook. He was a mason, like every second cop on the force. Rebus wasn’t of the brotherhood, but had learned to mimic the handshake.