10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Might have scored you some points.’

  ‘Truth is, I never thought about it.’

  ‘But he made you think about killing?’

  ‘He knew what he was talking about. I mean, you can always tell when someone’s making it up, can’t you?’ Oakes beamed a smile. ‘“Can the world really be like this?” I remember asking myself that as I listened to him. And the answer came back: yes, of course. Why should it be any different?’

  ‘You’re saying Fat Boy made you feel all right about killing?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’

  ‘Just telling you my story, Jim. It’s up to you how you read it.’

  ‘What about in jail, Cary? All that time to yourself, thoughts that you’re thinking . . .?’

  ‘Jim, you get no time to yourself. There’s always noise, disruption, routine. You sit there trying to think, they send you for psychiatric evaluation.’ Oakes took a final sip of orange juice. ‘But I see what you’re getting at.’ He examined his empty glass. ‘How’s the background check going, by the way? Spoken to anyone at Walla Walla?’ Turned the empty glass in his hand. ‘Take away the juice and the ice, you’re left with a lethal weapon.’ He pretended to smash the glass against the edge of the table, and then laughed a laugh which sent a shiver right along Jim Stevens’ arms.

  Climbing back up Salisbury Crags, Rebus kept his hands in his pockets and his thoughts to himself. He knew what the Farmer was thinking. This morning, Darren Rough had been in Rebus’s flat. As far as they knew, Rebus was the last person to have seen him alive.

  And Rebus had been his tormentor, his nemesis. The Farmer wouldn’t make anything of it, but others might: Jane Barbour; Rough’s social worker.

  Radical Road was a stony footpath which led around the Crags. You could start near the student residences at Pollock Halls and end up at Holyrood. Along the way, you had the city skyline for company, stretching from the south and west to the city centre and beyond. All spires and crenellations. Manfred Mann: ‘Cubist Town’. With Greenfield almost directly below.

  ‘You picked him up here, didn’t you?’ the Farmer asked as they walked.

  Rebus shook his head. ‘St Margaret’s Loch.’ Which lay around a long curve in the rock and down an impossibly steep bank. ‘Tell you what, though,’ he added. ‘Jim Margolies jumped from up there.’ And he pointed with his finger, way up to where the rock-face ended in something akin to a clifftop. People took their dogs for walks across the plateau, not straying too close to the edge. Edinburgh was prone to sudden, malevolent gusts, any one of which could have you over the side.

  The Farmer was breathing hard. ‘You still see a connection between Rough and Jim Margolies?’

  ‘Now more than ever, sir.’

  The body lay a little further along the path, cordoned off by warning tape. A few walkers, wrapped up against the weather, had gathered at the cordon, stretching their necks for a view. A white plastic contraption like a windbreak had been placed around the body, so that only those who needed to see it would. A woman with a black springer spaniel was being interviewed: she’d been the one to find the body. Out walking the dog, a daily ritual which both had looked forward to. From now on, she’d find another route, a long way from Salisbury Crags.

  ‘Hard to believe they’re putting our Parliament there,’ the Farmer commented, looking down towards Holyrood Road. ‘A real old backwater. Traffic’s going to be a nightmare.’

  ‘And it’s on our patch.’

  ‘Not my problem, thank God.’ The Farmer sniffed. ‘I’ll have that gold watch on one hand and a golfing glove on the other.’

  They passed through the cordon. The scene-of-crime team was at work, securing the locus and ensuring what they liked to call its ‘purity’. This meant Rebus and the Farmer had to don coveralls and overshoes, so they’d leave no trace elements at the scene.

  ‘The wind up here will probably have scattered them to the four corners anyway,’ Rebus said. But it was a half-hearted grouch: he knew the worth of scene-of-crime work, knew that science and forensics were his friends. A police doctor had declared the victim deceased. Dr Curt was the usual pathologist, but he was in Miami to give a paper at some convention. His superior, Professor Gates, had stepped in, and was examining the body in situ. He was a large man with thick brown hair slicked back from his forehead. He carried a hand-held tape recorder, talking into it as he moved around. He was forced to jostle for space: a photographer and video cameraman both wanted shots of the corpse.

  DS George Silvers came over. He nodded a greeting to his Chief Superintendent, but took it further, so that it turned into something more akin to a ceremonial bow. That was typical of Silvers, whose station nickname was ‘Hi-Ho’. He was in his late thirties, always smartly dressed and coiffed, always on the eye for promotion without the necessary concomitant of hard work. His black hair and deep-set eyes gave him the look of football pundit Alan Hansen.

  ‘We think we’ve got the murder weapon, sir. A rock with some blood and hair on it.’ He pointed up the path. ‘Forty yards or so that way.’

  ‘Who found it?’

  ‘A dog, sir.’ One eye twitching. ‘Licked most of the blood off before we could get to it.’

  Professor Gates looked up from his work. ‘So if the lab gets a match,’ he said, ‘and tells you the victim had a lovely shiny coat, you’ll know what the problem is.’

  He laughed, and Rebus laughed with him. It was like that at the locus, everyone pretending nothing was out of the ordinary, erecting barriers to separate them from the glaring fact that everything was out of the ordinary.

  ‘I’m told you might manage an informal ID,’ Gates said. Rebus nodded, took a deep breath and stepped forward. The body was lying where it had fallen, the back of the skull smashed open and caked with blood. The face rested against the jagged path, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight. One arm was trapped beneath the body, the other stretching so the fingers could claw at the cold earth. Rebus could tell from the clothes, but crouched down to study what could be seen of the face. Gates lifted it a little to help. Light had died behind the eyes; the three-day growth of beard would need to be shaved by the undertaker. Rebus nodded.

  ‘Darren Rough,’ he said, his voice growing thick.

  Having taken a break from recording, Jim Stevens sat naked on the edge of his bed, discarded clothes strewn around him, two empty miniatures of whisky on his bedside cabinet. The empty glass was clutched in one hand, and he stared at it and through it, focusing on things the world couldn’t see . . .

  Part Two

  Found

  I invite you to examine more closely your duty and the obligations of your earthly service because that is something which all of us are only dimly aware of, and we scarcely . . .

  27

  One of Rough’s shoes had come off at some point, about halfway between the spot where his body had fallen and where the rock had been found. One early theory: someone had thumped him hard. He’d stumbled, staggered on, trying to get away from his attacker. His shoe had come off and been discarded. Finally, he’d fallen to the ground, where he’d died from the earlier blows. A barking dog approaching had alerted the attacker to the need to flee.

  Another theory: after being hit, Rough had died instantly. His attacker had then dragged him along the path, the shoe coming free. Maybe intending to set things up so it looked like Rough had jumped or fallen from the Crags. But the dog-walker had come along, scaring off the killer.

  ‘What was he doing up there anyway?’ someone back at the station asked.

  ‘I think he liked it there,’ Rebus said. He was now officially the St Leonard’s expert on Darren Rough. ‘It was like a sanctuary, somewhere he felt safe. And he could look down on Greenfield from there, see what was happening.’

  ‘So someone followed him? Sneaked up on him?’

  ‘Or persuaded him to go there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make it look
like suicide. Maybe they read about Jim Margolies in the paper.’

  ‘It’s a thought . . .’

  There were plenty of thoughts, plenty of theories. One thought was: good riddance to the bastard. A week ago, it would have been Rebus’s view, too.

  The murder room was being prepared, computers moved from other parts of the building into the room set aside for such work. The Farmer had put Chief Inspector Gill Templer in charge. Rebus had been her lover for a time, so long ago now it might have been in some past life. Her hair was a dark-streaked feather-cut. Her eyes were emerald green. She moved confidently across the room, checking preparations.

  ‘Good luck,’ Rebus told her.

  ‘I want you on the team,’ she said.

  Rebus thought he could understand. She was circling the wagons, and it was better to have him in the ring shooting out, than outside shooting in.

  ‘And I want a report on my desk: everything you can tell me about you and the deceased.’

  Rebus nodded, got to work on one of the computers. Everything you can tell me: Rebus liked her wording, it gave him an escape clause – not everything he knew necessarily, but all he felt able to divulge. He looked across to where Siobhan Clarke was compiling a wall-mounted duty roster. She saw him and made a T sign with her hands. He nodded, and five minutes later she was back with two scalding beakers.

  ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. She was looking over his shoulder at the screen.

  ‘Nothing but the truth?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She blew on her cup. ‘Any idea who’d want him dead?’

  ‘I can’t think of many who didn’t. We’ve got half the population of Greenfield to start with.’ Especially Cal Brady, with his previous convictions; and not forgetting his mother . . .

  ‘Chasing him out and killing him aren’t quite in the same league.’

  ‘No, but something like that can escalate. Maybe Billy Horman was all it took.’

  She rested against the corner of the desk. ‘Hit with a rock . . . doesn’t sound premeditated, does it?’

  Hit with a rock . . . Deirdre, Alan Archibald’s niece, had been killed in a similar way: smashed over the head with a rock and then strangled. Clarke could read his mind.

  ‘Cary Oakes?’

  ‘Have we got a time of death yet?’ Rebus asked, reaching for a telephone.

  ‘Not that I know of. Body was found at eleven thirty.’

  ‘And we’re guessing the killer heard someone coming and ran for it.’ Rebus had pressed the digits and was waiting. Connected. ‘Hello, could you put me through to James Stevens, please?’

  Clarke looked at him. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I want to know what happened after breakfast.’ He listened again, took his hand away. ‘Could you try Cary Oakes’s room for me?’ Shook his head to let Clarke know Stevens wasn’t in his own room. This time the call was answered.

  ‘Oakes, is that you? It’s Rebus here, put Stevens on.’ He waited a moment. ‘One question: what happened after breakfast?’ Listened again. ‘Was he out of your sight? You’ve been there all morning?’ Listened. ‘No, it’s all right. You’ll find out soon enough.’

  Replaced the receiver.

  ‘They’ve been working all morning.’

  ‘No chance it was Oakes then.’ She looked at the computer screen. ‘What would be his motive anyway?’

  ‘Christ knows. But he was at my flat. He took the patrol car. Maybe he saw Rough leave, worked out he was connected to me.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then all he has to do is deny it.’

  Rebus exhaled noisily. ‘It’s all games with him.’

  Gill Templer was staring at them from across the room.

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ Clarke said, taking her tea with her. Rebus finished his report, printed it out, handed it personally to Gill Templer.

  ‘When’s the post-mortem?’

  She checked her watch. ‘I was just about to head over there.’

  ‘Need a driver?’

  She studied him. ‘Has your driving improved?’

  ‘I’ll let you be the judge, ma’am.’

  The city mortuary wasn’t in business. Health and Safety; changes needed to be made. Meantime, they were using the Western General Hospital. Because they couldn’t find any relatives or friends, Andy Davies had been called to verify Rebus’s identification. The social worker was waiting when Rebus and Gill Templer arrived. He made the ID, said nothing to Rebus but shot him a cold look before leaving.

  ‘Bad blood?’ Templer asked.

  ‘Better than none at all, Gill.’

  Professor Gates was already at work by the time they’d got their gowns and masks on. For the official ID, Rough’s corpse had worn a shroud. Now, lying on the stainless-steel bench, it wore nothing at all. Prominent ribs, Rebus noted. He was thinking of the meal he’d made for Rough. Grudgingly made. Beans on toast. Probably the man’s last meal ever. And eventually, Gates would reveal it to the world again. Rebus half-turned his face.

  ‘Seasick, Inspector?’ Gates asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine so long as we keep out of the bilges.’

  Gates chuckled. ‘But below decks is the most interesting part.’ He was measuring, muttering his findings to his assistant, a young man with a face the colour of a cancer bed.

  ‘And how are you, Gill?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Overworked.’

  Gates glanced up. ‘Fine lassie like you should be at home, bringing up strong healthy bairns.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  Gates chuckled again. ‘Don’t tell me you lack suitors?’

  She chose to ignore the remark.

  ‘What about you, John?’ Gates persisted. ‘Love life satisfactory? Maybe I should play Cupid, put the two of you together. What do you say to that now, eh?’

  Rebus and Templer shared a look.

  ‘Professions like ours,’ Gates drawled on, ‘aren’t the same as being a lawyer or a novelist, are they? Not much of an ice-breaker at parties.’ He nodded towards his assistant. ‘Bear that in mind, Jerry. No nookie unless you lie about what you do.’ Gates’s final chuckle turned into a choking bark, a bronchial cough which almost doubled him over. He wiped his eyes afterwards.

  ‘Time to stop smoking,’ Templer warned him.

  ‘I can’t do that. It would spoil the bet.’

  ‘What bet?’

  ‘Dr Curt and myself: who’ll live the longer on twenty a day.’

  ‘That’s . . .’ Templer had been about to say ‘sick’, but then she saw that the body had been opened up almost without her noticing, and she realised why Gates kept the conversation going: it was to take everyone’s mind off the task at hand. And for a few moments, it had worked.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing straight off,’ the pathologist said. ‘His clothes were damp, and to me that means rain. I’ve checked: we had a short shower early this morning and nothing since.’

  ‘Could he have got wet lying on the path?’

  ‘He was lying on his front. The back of his clothing was damp. So he was out in that shower, whether alive or dead I can’t say. But his hair was wet, too. Now, if you’re caught in a sudden downpour, wouldn’t you usually pull your jacket up over your head?’

  ‘Depends on your state of mind,’ Rebus said.

  Gates shrugged. ‘I’m only surmising. But one thing I’m sure of.’ He ran a finger along the body, tracing patches of pale bluish markings. ‘Livor mortis. It was present at the scene. I arrived forty-five minutes after the body was discovered.’

  ‘But lividity starts . . .?’

  ‘Well, it starts from the moment the heart stops pumping, but it becomes visible somewhere between half an hour and an hour after death. This was well-established by the time I arrived.’

  ‘What about rigor mortis?’

  ‘Eyelids had stiffened, as had the jaw. I�
��ll take a potassium sample from the eye, to get a better idea of timing, but right now I’d guess the body had been lying there for three hours, maybe more.’

  Rebus took a step forward. If Gates was right – and he invariably was – the dog-walker had not disturbed the killer. The killer had been long gone by the time the spaniel and its owner had arrived, and Darren Rough had died around seven or eight in the morning. At five he’d been asleep on Rebus’s couch; by six he’d gone . . .

  ‘Did he die where we found him?’ Rebus asked, wanting to be sure.

  ‘Judging by the patterns of lividity, I’d say it’s a racing certainty.’ The pathologist paused. ‘Of course, I’ve lost a few pounds on horses in my time.’

  ‘We need a more specific time of death.’

  ‘I know you do, Inspector. You always do. I’ll do what tests the budget will stretch to.’

  ‘And ASAP.’

  Gates nodded. He was about ready to begin removing the inner organs. Jerry was fussing with the necessary tools.

  Rebus was thinking: three, maybe four hours.

  Thinking: Cary Oakes was back in the running.

  28

  They took him in for questioning, Rebus keeping out of the way, listening to the tapes afterwards. Stevens’ paper had provided their client with a solicitor from one of the city’s top firms, despite Templer’s insistence that all they had were a few questions, easily cleared up. But Oakes was saying nothing. Templer was good, and she had Pryde with her: their routine was well-honed, but Rebus got the feeling Oakes had seen all the moves before. He’d been examined and cross-examined and called to the stand again, he’d been through all that in an American courtroom. He just sat there and said he knew nothing about the patrol car, nothing about where Rebus lived, and nothing about any dead paedophile. His final comment:

  ‘What’s all the fuss about a kiddie-fucker?’

  Pryde, listening to the tape, folded his arms at that and puckered his lips, most of him agreeing with the sentiment. When Pryde asked if Rebus was heading outside for a smoke, Rebus, inwardly gasping for one, shook his head. Later, he went out into the car park alone, pacing as he sucked hungrily on first one Silk Cut and then a second. Ten a day, he was keeping to ten a day. And if he went as high as twelve today, that meant only eight tomorrow. Eight was fine, he could handle that. It gave him a margin for today, a margin he reckoned he’d need.