by Craig Cabell
Rebus is the archetypical professional copper, overworked and underpaid, who lives in a flat he detests and not just because of the student parties next door. He is forever searching for fulfilment in life: love, home, lifestyle and job, but is destined – or determined – never to achieve it. Although clichéd, this situation is typical of a large proportion of working people, not just civil servants and people in the emergency services. The unfulfilment of life is there throughout society and exposing that, discussing that and seeing people try to wriggle out of that is one of the main strengths of the Rebus series. Rankin’s audience can identify with that. It is this accessibility that is key to the commercial success of the series.
Rebus gets under the skin of life. He looks under the stone and examines what wriggles beneath. Then he gives it a prod to irritate it and this is where readers delight in the character’s exploits. When Rebus is confronted with a lawyer representing a gangland victim in The Hanging Garden, he quickly sees through the facade, understanding straight away that he is only there to ensure the victim doesn’t give any secrets away. ‘We’re here to listen to whatever bunch of shite the two of you eventually concoct for our delectation…’ Rebus says. This hard-nosed approach to his work is unconventional but effective, but it has made Rebus as many enemies as friends during his working life. Interestingly, The Hanging Garden introduces us to another side of Rebus’s personality, when he suddenly finds himself looking at his daughter unconscious on a bed, the victim of a hit-and-run.
The shock, anger and despair of a loving parent are suddenly brought to the fore. Rebus forgets momentarily that he is a policeman. He is now a victim’s father and he pounds a wall and demands immediate justice. When he calms down he realises that Rhona – his ex-wife – is exclusively responsible for his daughter’s good upbringing. A memory of his fatherly responsibilities on a family holiday vindicates this: he was left in charge of his baby daughter as she buried his feet in the sand. He fell asleep and woke up with her missing. Rhona was distraught. They found Sammy in a hollow in a sand dune. They pulled her out. Rebus punched the roof of the dune and the whole thing collapsed; his daughter could have been killed or buried alive and it would have been his fault. But was it his fault now? Was the accident a deliberate stab at Rebus from someone with a grudge?
If ever the Jekyll and Hyde side to Rebus’s personality was exposed in a novel, this is it. There is the normal everyday love for his daughter and dedication to his work; then there is the ex-SAS man who seeks revenge for a ‘too professional’ hit-and-run on his daughter. Rebus will play unfair in order to bring the criminal to justice – his personal version of justice – but one has to be careful what one wishes for when looking for justice…
The Hanging Garden succeeds on many levels. To begin with it’s a strong, gritty story about the power struggle between gangs. It’s also about the tolerance level between the Police Force and organised crime. Then it’s about John Rebus, who cuts through all that bullshit to get at the criminals he wants but tries desperately to protect his vast assortment of women – estranged friendships – at the same time; it would be comical if not so bloody sad.
I’m making Rebus sound like Dirty Harry here, but he doesn’t need a 44 Magnum – he’s got his bare hands and perceptive mind to pin his victim to the wall. No bullets are required. He’s a tough, broad, middle-aged man with a lot of baggage but somehow he gets the job done, albeit not in the most considered way.
The Hanging Garden takes on other dark themes too, such as refugee prostitution and consequently racialism on a wide scale. It brings the north of England – Newcastle – together with Scotland’s capital city in order to show the scope of the criminal underworld’s networking scene and just what depth of corruption the Police Force have to deal with. But Rebus is prepared to meet that corruption head on, if only to take his revenge on the person who hurt his daughter.
He explains to a colleague that there is no line to cross when doing his duty. This probably explains why he is so poor in personal relationships: Rebus is too good at his job to have a deep and meaningful relationship and this is clearly illustrated in The Hanging Garden. Once he breaks a suspect down and follows up another lead, his day is already overlong. So he calls his already estranged girlfriend, Patience, to ask how late he is permitted to be before she disowns him once more! He gets deeply embroiled in the characters that conspire against each other – and him. When Telford – a rival of Cafferty – tells Rebus to get in a car because he wants to show him something, Rebus, ‘world’s craziest cop’, does. That’s where he steps over the invisible line between the good guys and bad. He’s not afraid of the baddies, he knows they wouldn’t do anything stupid – and there lies a mutual respect.
Rebus pin-balls between Telford and Cafferty in The Hanging Garden and he is happy to do so: he needs to know who is lying to him and who is telling him the truth. Rebus sets things in motion by leaving his desk and making things happen. He then drops into the unfolding events to analyse and solve the case. In that respect he is a little like Sherlock Holmes with Siobhan as his ever-astute but still-marvelling sidekick. It’s only towards the end that all the ends get tied together and the truth becomes clear. Some could argue that that is a little too neat but let us remember that wasn’t necessarily the outcome of either Let It Bleed or Black and Blue.
All of this really showed how far away from his creator Rebus had grown.
The Hanging Garden was really the first book Rankin wrote as a bestselling writer and he really delivered a no-holds-barred story that worked on different moral levels. The theme of exploitation of Eastern European women in international prostitution was played against the search for ex-Nazis and the truth behind the Rat Run (the exodus of Nazis from Germany at the conclusion of the war via underground tunnels). Moral dilemmas, racialism, exploitation, the corruption of groups – gangs, political parties – and individuals are all part of the jigsaw of evil that Rankin explores in The Hanging Garden, but he never over-eggs it. He unfolds each layer carefully until he is prepared to bring in his satisfying conclusion.
But with The Hanging Garden, Rankin’s conclusion harks back to the book’s opening quote from T S Eliot: ‘If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable.’ It was General Patton who was convinced that in order to win a war you had to study history and see where the current conflict was repeating itself and then learn by history’s mistakes. What Rankin – T S Eliot – tells us is that the same or similar things will happen time and again and the outcome will be different enough to be repeated throughout the whole of future history. History is a self-replicating process that has as many repeat performances as any given Shakespearean play. And like Shakespearian plays the world remembers war. In his Afterword to The Hanging Garden, Rankin stated that a Nazi-inflicted extermination of a whole village depicted in the story actually happened. It was Saturday 10 June 1944 that 3rd Company, Das Reich, killed up to one thousand people in Oradour-sur-Glane in France, and Oradour still stands as a shrine. ‘The village has been left just the way it was on that day in June 1944,’ Rankin said.
Right at the end of the book Rankin reminds the reader of the racial issues tackled in the book. He shows disgust at the 12,000 foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS who were still receiving pensions from the Federal German government in 1998 and marvelling why nobody was really held accountable for the holocaust at Oradour. Perhaps that is one aspect of his time in France that wasn’t so pleasant to learn about, but he made a point of highlighting it, Rebus-style, when he got the chance.
‘… who would bare the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressors wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office… The undiscovered country,
From whose bourn no traveler returns…’
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WRITING IN REALITY
Rankin has al
ways stated that Rebus lives in real time, so there was always a time bomb ticking towards his natural retirement, which the author couldn’t do anything about. That said, Rankin explained that fans had come up with many ways in which the series could continue after the inevitable retirement: Rebus could unofficially assist Siobhan, or Rankin could go back to Rebus’s early cases, i.e. those that occurred before Knots and Crosses, and write about them.
When Rankin was winding Rebus down he didn’t want to consider any of the above options. The copper had to retire and that was the reality of the situation – just as in real life. And it is this association with reality that brings credibility – inevitability – to the series. Everything, after all, must come to an end. However, a line from The Hanging Garden does give interesting pause for thought. When Rebus has written an account of his whereabouts over the past 24 hours, it is stated: ‘Back at his desk, he started on his memoirs…’
Surely in retirement the methodical Detective Inspector could make some sense – justification for his own piece of mind – by writing his memoirs? It could probably allow Rankin to re-write one of his previous Rebus books from Rebus’s point of view – and have a completely different outcome! It would also allow Rankin to explore the character’s army days and formative time on the Police Force. But maybe there is cold comfort from the fact that we know Rebus did the best job he could and that is the final epitaph – the only epitaph – that anyone is left with when contemplating their prime and the work they did throughout their lifetime.
‘They learned what troubles in her career Miss Brodie had encountered on their behalf. “It is for the sake of you girls – my influence, now, in the years of my prime.” This was the beginning of the Brodie set.’
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
There is a similarity in philosophy of life between Rankin’s work and that of Spark. Clearly, something would have rubbed off on Rankin after studying the authoress’s work at university. But there is something more: that familiarity with Edinburgh past, from Deacon Brodie to the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s almost as if Rankin has taken the Brodie set – that little clique of like-minded people – one step further and into the 21st century.
In a Book and Magazine Collector interview (issue 221), Rankin mentioned a whole bunch of Scottish writers as influences, or important to Scottish literature. You won’t find him talking too much about Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare: frankly, there are too many people who could do this. No, Rankin wants to explore his own country’s talent, and he is right to do so. As Bono would joyously shout out at Slane Castle ‘This is our tribe!’ there is the same level of pride when Ian Rankin gives away copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped to the youth of Edinburgh to try and encourage them to read more. And like every U2 fan who wants to experience Ireland through their favourite band’s music, Rankin allows you to explore the real Scotland through its/his fiction.
When Arthur Freed, producer of Brigadoon, stated, ‘I went to Scotland and found nothing there that looks like Scotland,’ he was expecting only the shortbread-tin pictures that make up a tiny piece of the history and character of the country. More importantly, he didn’t get to grips with the psyche of the place, its people today and their so ordinary lives.
And that’s why Rebus lived in real time: to remind the world that unfulfilment and disillusionment are fundamental parts of everyday life on the council estates around the inner bubble of Edinburgh. If you really want to explore the underbelly of Scottish society, wander in to a youth club or job centre and count how many kilts and bagpipes you find.
‘“… Depend on it, the advice of the great preacher is genuine: ‘What thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for none of us knows what a day may bring forth?’ That is, none of us knows what is pre-ordained, but whatever is pre-ordained we must do, and none of these things will be laid to our charge.”’
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Rankin and Rebus have aged together. Rebus is approximately 15 years senior to his creator but they have both lived through the same technological advances (within the Police Force) and that keeps us looking at the comparisons between creator and creation. However, as both get older, they appear to drift further away from each other too…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JIGSAW PUZZLE
‘My life has been a life of trouble and turmoil; of change and vicissitude; of anger and exultation; of sorrow and of vengeance. My sorrows have all been for a slighted gospel, and my vengeance has been wreaked on its adversaries.’
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
When one reads the basic story for Set in Darkness, one marvels at how such a bizarre story is made plausible. Rebus and DI Derek Linford are seconded to the police liaison team for the new Scottish parliament. Rebus senses that ‘Farmer’ Watson is behind all this – yet again – but the Farmer isn’t without his justification. Linford is by-the-book from the off, while Rebus is his usual off-the-wall self and this clearly means that Rebus’s patience will be severely tested before they even start. A corpse is found behind a fireplace in a parliament building. Suddenly Roddy Grieve, Labour MP, is found dead and, bizarrely, Rebus begins to suspect there is a connection between Grieve’s murder and the body in the fireplace. Add Siobhan Clarke witnessing the suicide of a homeless man who just happens to have £400,000 in the bank in the same name as the corpse in the fireplace and you have the interlocking story from hell. And then ‘Big Ger’ is released from prison and things get even more involved.
Yes, I’m being slightly flippant but not without good cause. As we know, every novel from Let It Bleed/Black and Blue onwards has a series of threads that are all entwined to make a bigger picture of Edinburgh’s intricate life-in-crime, and Set in Darkness is no exception.
The story is made more credible when one learns of the bizarre chain of serendipity that led to the writing of it. Rankin was flying between cities during a publicity tour in America. While on the plane he picked up the in-flight magazine and found an article about walking tours in Edinburgh. Thinking that he knew all that there was to know about such things, he was surprised to learn about Queensberry House, where there is a grisly legend about the master of the house spit-roasting and eating one of the servants (later bricking up the remains in the fireplace).
When back in Edinburgh, Rankin decided to check out the building, taking along a film crew who were keen to find out how Rankin constructed storylines for his Rebus series. Once at the house, which was part of the new parliament complex, Rankin found to his amazement some archaeologists who had just excavated the old kitchen, which had a big metal facade in front of it. Rankin asked for the doorway to be opened, which it was, but no old corpse lay anywhere behind it. But that’s not to say that he couldn’t invent a complex story based around the legend.
OK, so we can see where the idea came from but, more so, we can clearly see where Rankin’s ‘obsessive’ need to find the full story of an historic snippet of Edinburgh’s past comes from. He explores – investigates – in a similar way to Rebus himself: pulling the threads together, visiting the sights, meeting the locals – the people working in the building – until he makes the ultimate discovery. (Note: he was the one who asked for the ancient seal to be opened and then the first to glimpse inside.) Rankin’s thirst for the story is as keen as a journalist looking for their scoop. And here lies a very important observation regarding Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus: the way Rebus follows a path of inquiry is the same as way as his creator. Indeed, before he was aware of how the police carried out their investigations, Rankin followed what he thought was a logical path of inquiry for Rebus. He later found that he wasn’t far wrong with his assumptions.
So the methodical way of investigating ‘stories’ became Rebus’s police procedure? Absolutely, and when the red-tape of police logging/reporting, etc. etc. came in, Rankin just ignored the whole thing
and made Rebus a maverick, conducting his investigations in the same manner as the ordinary man on the street might examine something that interested him.
So if Rankin is actually his creation Rebus, does that mean Rankin is a maverick too? Well, what is a maverick? Someone who refuses to play by the rules; someone who isn’t scared to cross the line of conformity.
Have we just described Rankin? Many would say no. Rankin is the academic wordsmith who searches Edinburgh and Scottish literature for interesting stories and legends and creates something of a legend with his maverick cop John Rebus. But is that just the kindly Dr Jekyll side of Ian Rankin? Is Mr Hyde moving in and out of the darkness behind that pleasant exterior? Don’t forget, Rebus followed the normal career path of a boy from Cardenden, not Rankin. Rankin followed his dream of becoming a novelist, flying in the face of the academic world he was plunged into at university. Every step of the way, he isn’t doing things by the book. He is slightly left of field each time. And would you say writing a bestselling series of books about a Scottish cop is the norm? No, it isn’t. It breaks the mould, it rewrites the annals of crime fiction, it makes us look again at the great crime novels and see where Rebus – that multifaceted picture-puzzle of a man – comes from. And the answer is simple: from the natural instincts of the man who created him, Ian Rankin.
‘“Maybe,” Rebus replied, putting the bottle back to his mouth.’