10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

Tactful, John. The silver-tongued clarion of bad news. With tears in his eyes, Ford excused himself and left the room.

  Rebus got to work.

  He opened drawers and the small built-in wardrobe, but eventually found what he wanted beneath Mitchison’s bed. A bin-bag and a series of carrier bags: the deceased’s worldly goods.

  They didn’t amount to much. Maybe Mitchison’s background had something to do with it. If you didn’t burden yourself with stuff, you could high-tail it out of anywhere, any time. There were some clothes, some books – sci-fi, political economics, The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. The last one sounded to Rebus like a ballroom competition. He found a couple of envelopes of photographs, went through them. The platform. Workmates. The budgie and its crew. Other groups, onshore this time: trees in the background. Only these didn’t look like workmates – long hair, tie-dye T-shirts, reggae hats. Friends? Friends of the Earth? The second packet seemed light. Rebus counted the photos: fourteen. Then he pulled out the negatives: a count of twenty-five. Eleven short. He held the negs up to the light, but couldn’t make out much. The missing photos seemed more of the same; group portraits, a couple of them with only three or four figures. Rebus put the negs in his pocket, just as Willie Ford came back into the room.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘My fault, Mr Ford. I spoke without thinking. You know earlier I asked you about porn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about drugs?’

  ‘I don’t use them.’

  ‘But if you did . . .’

  ‘It’s a closed circle, Inspector. I don’t use, and no one’s offered me any. As far as I’m concerned, people could be shooting up round the corner and I’d never know, because I’m not in the loop.’

  ‘But there is a loop?’

  Ford smiled. ‘Maybe. But on R&R time only. I’d know if I was working beside someone who was wired. They know better than to do that. Working on a platform, you need all the wits you’ve got and any you can borrow.’

  ‘Have there been accidents?’

  ‘One or two, but our safety record’s good. They weren’t drug-related.’

  Rebus looked thoughtful. Ford seemed to remember something.

  ‘You should see what’s happening outside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re bringing the protesters aboard.’

  So they were. Rebus and Ford went out to take a look. Ford donned his hard hat, but Rebus carried his: he couldn’t get it to sit right, and the only thing threatening to fall from the skies was rain. Lumsden and Eric were already there, along with a few other men. They watched the bedraggled figures climb the last few steps. Despite their oilskins, they looked soaked – courtesy of the power hoses. Rebus recognised one of them: it was braid-hair again. She looked glum verging on furious. He moved towards her, until she was looking at him.

  ‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he said.

  But she wasn’t paying him any attention. Instead, she yelled ‘NOW!’ and snaked to her right, bringing her hand out of her pocket. She already had one half of the handcuffs clamped around her wrist, and now attached the other firmly around the top rail. Two of her companions did likewise, and started yelling protests at the tops of their voices. Two others were hauled back before they could complete the process. The cuffs were snapped shut on themselves.

  ‘Who’s got the keys?’ an oil-worker was yelling.

  ‘We left them on the mainland!’

  ‘Christ.’ The oilman turned to a colleague. ‘Go fetch the oxy-acetylene.’ He turned to braid-hair. ‘Don’t worry, the sparks may burn, but we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.’

  She ignored him, kept on chanting with the others. Rebus smiled: you had to admire it. Trojan horse with knobs on.

  The torch arrived. Rebus couldn’t believe they were really going to do it. He turned to Lumsden.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ the policeman warned. ‘Remember what I said about frontier justice. We’re well out of it.’

  The torch was lit, a little flare of its own. There was a helicopter overhead. Rebus had half a mind – maybe more than half – to throw the torch over the side.

  ‘Christ, it’s the telly!’

  They all looked up. The helicopter was hovering low, a video camera pointed straight at them.

  ‘Fucking TV news.’

  Oh great, Rebus thought. That’s just spot on. Really low-key, John. National television news. Maybe he should just send Ancram a postcard . . .

  19

  Back in Aberdeen, he thought he could still feel the deck moving beneath him. Lumsden had headed off home, carrying with him a promise from Rebus that he’d be packed and off the following morning.

  Rebus hadn’t mentioned he might be back.

  It was early evening, cool but bright, the streets busy with last shoppers trudging home and Saturday night revellers starting early. He walked down to Burke’s Club. A different bouncer again, so no grief there. Rebus paid his money like a good boy, waded through the music until he reached the bar. The place hadn’t been open long, only a few punters in, looking like they’d be moving on if things didn’t start happening. Rebus bought an overpriced short loaded with ice, gave the place a once-over in the mirror. No sign of Eve and Stanley. No sign of any obvious dealers. But Willie Ford was right about that: what did dealers look like? Leave aside the junkies and they looked much like anyone else. Their trade was in eye contact, in a shared knowledge with the person whose eyes they were meeting. A cross between a transaction and a chat-up.

  Rebus imagined Michelle Strachan dancing in here, beginning the last movements of her life. As he sloshed the ice around his glass, he decided to walk a route from the club to Duthie Park. It might not be the route she took, and he doubted it would throw up anything like a clue, but he wanted to do it, same as he’d driven down to Leith to pay his respects to Angie Riddell’s patch. He started off down South College Street, saw from his map that if he kept to this route he’d be walking a main thoroughfare alongside the Dee. Lots of traffic: he decided Michelle would have cut through Ferryhill, so did likewise. Here the streets were narrower and quieter; big houses, leafy. A comfortable middle-class enclave. A couple of corner shops were still doing business – milk, ice-lollies, evening papers. He could hear children playing in back gardens. Michelle and Johnny Bible had walked down here at two a.m. It would have been deserted. If they’d been making any noise, it would have been noted behind the net curtains. But no one had reported anything. Michelle couldn’t have been drunk. Drunk, her student friends said, she got loud. Maybe she was a bit merry; just enough to have lost her survival instinct. And Johnny Bible . . . he’d been quiet, sober, his smile failing to betray his thoughts.

  Rebus turned on to Polmuir Road. Michelle’s digs were halfway down. But Johnny Bible had persuaded her to keep walking down to the park. How had he managed it? Rebus shook his head, trying to clear it of jumble. Maybe her digs were strict, she couldn’t invite him in. She liked it there, didn’t want to be kicked out for an infraction of the rules. Or maybe Johnny had commented on the nice mild night, how he didn’t want it to end, he liked her so much. Couldn’t they just walk down to the park and back? Maybe walk through the park, just the two of them. Wouldn’t that be perfect?

  Did Johnny Bible know Duthie Park?

  Rebus could hear something approximating music, then silence, then applause. Yes: the protest concert. The Dancing Pigs and friends. Rebus went into the park, passed a children’s play area. Michelle and her beau had come this way. Her body had been found near here, not far from the Winter Gardens and the tea-room . . . There was a huge open space at the heart of the park, and a stage had been erected. Several hundred kids comprised the audience. Bootleggers had spread out their merchandise on the grass, alongside tarot readers, hairbraiders, and herbalists. Rebus forced a smile: it was the Ingliston concert in miniature. People were passing through the crowd, rattling collecting tins. The banner which had adorned the roof of the Conference Centr
e – DON’T KILL OUR OCEANS! – was now flapping atop the stage. Even the inflatable whale was there. A girl in her mid-teens approached Rebus.

  ‘Souvenir T-shirts? Programmes?’

  Rebus shook his head, then changed his mind. ‘Give me a programme.’

  ‘Three pounds.’

  It was a stapled Xerox with a colour cover. The paper was recycled, and so was the text. Rebus flicked through it. Right at the back there was a list of Thank Yous. His eye caught a name a third of the way down: Mitch, ‘with love and gratitude’. Allan Mitchison had played his part organising the gig, and here was his reward – and memorial.

  ‘I’ll see if I can do better,’ Rebus said, rolling the programme into his pocket.

  He made for the area behind the stage, which had been cordoned off by means of arranging lorries and vans into a semi-circle, inside which the bands and their entourages moved like zoo exhibits. His warrant card got him where he wanted to be, as well as a few dirty looks.

  ‘You in charge?’ he asked the overweight man in front of him. The man was in his fifties, Jerry Garcia with red hair and a kilt, sweat showing through a stained white vest. Beads of perspiration dripped from his overhanging brow.

  ‘Nobody’s in charge,’ he told Rebus.

  ‘But you helped organise —’

  ‘Look, what’s your problem, man? The concert’s licensed, the last thing we need is grief.’

  ‘I’m not giving any. I just have a question about the organisation.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Allan Mitchison – Mitch.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hear he was responsible for getting the Dancing Pigs to play.’

  The man thought about it, nodded. ‘Mitch, right. I don’t know him, I mean, I’ve seen him around.’

  ‘Anyone I could ask about him?’

  ‘Why, man, what’s he done?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Bad number.’ He shrugged. ‘Wish I could help.’

  Rebus made his way back to front-of-stage. The sound system was the usual travesty, and the band didn’t sound nearly as good as on their studio album. Notch one up for the producer. The music stopped suddenly, the momentary silence sweeter than any tune. The singer stepped up to the mike.

  ‘We’ve got some friends we’d like to bring on. A few hours back they were fighting the good fight, trying to save our seas. Put your hands together for them.’

  Applause, cheering. Rebus watched two figures walk onstage, still dressed in orange oilskins: he recognised their faces from Bannock. He waited, but there was no sign of braid-hair. When they started their speeches, he turned to go. There was one last collecting tin to be avoided, but he thought better of it, folded a fiver in through the slot. And decided to treat himself to dinner in his hotel: putting it on the room, of course.

  Insistent noise.

  Rebus folded it into his dream, then gave up. One eye open: chinks of light through the heavy curtains. What fucking time was it? Bedside lamp: on. He clawed at his watch, blinked. Six a.m. What? Did Lumsden want rid of him that badly?

  He swung out of bed, walked stiff-legged to the door, working his muscles. He’d washed a great dinner down with a bottle of wine. In itself the wine would have posed no problem, but as a digestif he’d put away four malts, in flagrant disregard of the drinker’s rule: never mix the grape and the grain.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Rebus pulled open the door. Two woolly suits stood there, looking like they’d been up for hours.

  ‘Inspector Rebus?’

  ‘Last time I looked.’

  ‘Will you get dressed, please, sir?’

  ‘You don’t like the outfit?’ Y-fronts and a T-shirt.

  ‘Just get dressed.’

  Rebus looked at them, decided to comply. When he walked back into the room, they followed, looked around the way cops always do.

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘Tell them at the station.’

  Rebus looked at him. ‘Tell me you’re fucking joking.’

  ‘Language, sir,’ the other uniform said.

  Rebus sat on the bed, pulled on clean socks. ‘I’d still like to know what this is all about. You know, on the q.t., officer to officer.’

  ‘Just a few questions, sir. Quick as you can.’

  The second uniform tugged open the curtains, light stabbing Rebus’s eyeballs. He seemed impressed by the view.

  ‘We had a brawl in the gardens a few nights ago. Remember, Bill?’

  His colleague joined him at the window. ‘And someone jumped off the bridge a fortnight back. Whee, smack on to Denburn Road.’

  ‘Woman in the car got an awful fright.’

  They smiled at the memory.

  Rebus stood up, looked around him, wondering what to take.

  ‘Shouldn’t be too long, sir.’

  They were smiling at him now. Rebus’s stomach did a back-flip. He tried not to think about timbale of haggis . . . cranachan with a fruit coulis . . . wine and whisky . . .

  ‘Feeling a bit rough, sir?’

  The uniform looked about as solicitous as a razor blade.

  20

  ‘My name’s Chief Inspector Edward Grogan. We’ve a few questions for you, Inspector Rebus.’

  So everyone keeps telling me, Rebus thought. But he didn’t say anything, just sat there with arms folded and a wronged man’s smouldering look. Ted Grogan: Rebus had heard of him. Hard bastard. He looked it, too: bull-necked and bald, his physique more Frazier than Ali. Thin eyes and thick lips; a street-taught fighter. Jutting forehead; simian.

  ‘You already know DS Lumsden.’ Sitting over by the door, head bowed, legs apart. He looked exhausted, embarrassed. Grogan sat down opposite Rebus at the table. They were in a biscuit-tin, though they probably had another name for it in Furry Boot Town.

  ‘No point beating around the bush,’ Grogan said. He looked about as comfortable on the chair as a prize Aberdeen Angus. ‘How did you get the bruises?’

  ‘I told Lumsden.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was mugged by a couple of message-boys. Their message was a pistol whipping.’

  ‘Any other scars?’

  ‘They pushed me over a wall, I hit a thorn-bush on the way down. My side’s scratched.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it. Look, I appreciate your concern, but —’

  ‘But that’s not our concern, Inspector. DS Lumsden says he dropped you off down by the docks, night before last.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I believe he offered you a lift to your hotel.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘But you didn’t want that.’

  Rebus looked over at Lumsden. What the fuck is going on? But Lumsden’s gaze was still concentrated floorwards. ‘I felt like a walk.’

  ‘Back to your hotel?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And on the way, you were beaten up?’

  ‘With a pistol.’

  A smile, mixing sympathy with disbelief. ‘In Aberdeen, Inspector?’

  ‘There’s more than one Aberdeen. I don’t see what this has to do with anything.’

  ‘Bear with me. So you walked home?’

  ‘To the very expensive hotel Grampian Police provided for me.’

  ‘Ah, the hotel. We’d pre-booked for a visiting Chief Constable, only he cancelled at the last minute. We’d have ended up paying anyway. I believe DS Lumsden used his initiative and decided you might as well stay there. Highland courtesy, Inspector.’

  Highland fabrication more like.

  ‘If that’s your story.’

  ‘It’s not my story that’s important here. On this walk home of yours, did you see anyone, speak to anyone?’

  ‘No.’ Rebus paused. ‘I saw a crew of your finest in discussion with a couple of teenagers.’

  ‘You spoke to them?’

  Rebus shook his head.
‘Didn’t want to interfere. This isn’t my patch.’

  ‘From what DS Lumsden tells me, you’ve been acting like it was.’

  Rebus caught Lumsden’s eyes. They stared right through him.

  ‘Did a doctor look at your injuries?’

  ‘I fixed myself up. Hotel reception had a first aid kit.’

  ‘They asked you if you wanted a doctor.’ A statement.

  ‘I said it wasn’t necessary. Lowland self-reliance.’

  A cool smile from Grogan. ‘You spent yesterday on an oil rig, I believe.’

  ‘With DS Lumsden at my heels.’

  ‘And last night?’

  ‘I had a drink, went for a walk, ate dinner at the hotel. I put it on the tab, by the way.’

  ‘Where did you drink?’

  ‘Burke’s Club, a dope-dealer’s paradise on College Street. My bet is, my attackers started life there. What’s the going rate up here for hiring hard men? Fifty for a duffing? Seventy-five per broken limb?’

  Grogan sniffed, rose to his feet. ‘Those prices might be a wee bit on the high side.’

  ‘Look, with respect, I’m about two hours from out of here. If this is some kind of warning, it’s too much too late.’

  Grogan spoke very quietly. ‘It’s not a warning, Inspector.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘You say when you left Burke’s you went for a walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Duthie Park.’

  ‘A fair hike.’

  ‘I’m a big Dancing Pigs fan.’

  ‘Dancing Pigs?’

  ‘A band, sir,’ Lumsden said, ‘they were playing a concert last night.’

  ‘It talks.’

  ‘No need for that, Inspector.’ Grogan was standing behind Rebus. The invisible interrogator: did you turn to face him, or did you stare at the wall? Rebus had played the trick himself many a time. Objective: unnerve the prisoner.

  Prisoner – Jesus.

  ‘You’ll remember, sir,’ Lumsden said, voice almost atonal, ‘that’s the route Michelle Strachan took.’

  ‘That’s true, isn’t it, Inspector? I expect you knew that.’

  ‘How do you mean?’