10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘John.’

  And I could feel only pity for the two of us, stinking, besmirched, barren in our cell. I could feel only the frustration of the thing, the poor tears of a lifetime’s indignation. Gordon, Gordon, Gordon.

  ‘John . . .’

  The cell-door burst open, as though it had never been locked.

  A man stood there. English, not foreign, and of high rank. He looked in on the spectacle with some distaste; no doubt he had been listening to it all, if not watching it. He pointed to me.

  ‘Rebus,’ he said, ‘you’ve passed. You’re on our side now.’

  I looked at his face. What did he mean? I knew full well what he meant.

  ‘You’ve passed the test, Rebus. Come on. Come with me. We’ll get you kitted up. You’re on our side now. The interrogation of your . . . friend . . . continues. You’ll be helping us with the interrogation from now on.’

  Gordon jumped to his feet. He was directly behind me still. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. My mouth and stomach were dry. Looking at this crisply starched officer, I became painfully aware of my own filth. But then it was all his fault. ‘This is a trick,’ I said. ‘It must be. I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going with you. I’ve not given away any information. I’ve not cracked. You can’t fail me now!’ I was shouting now, delirious. Yet I knew there was truth in what he was saying. He shook his head slowly.

  ‘I can understand your suspicion, Rebus. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. A hellish lot of pressure. But that’s past. You’ve not failed, you’ve passed; passed with flying colours. I think we can say that with certainty. You’ve passed, Rebus. You’re on our side now. You’ll be helping us now to try to crack Reeve here. Do you understand?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s a trick,’ I said. The officer smiled sympathetically. He’d dealt with the like of me a hundred times before.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just come with us and everything will be made clear.’

  Gordon jumped forward at my side.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘He’s already told you that he’s not fucking well going! Now piss off out of here.’ Then to me, a hand on my shoulder: ‘Don’t listen to him, John. It’s a trick. It’s always a trick with these bastards.’ But I could see that he was worried. His eyes moved rapidly, his mouth slightly open. And, feeling his hand on me, I knew that my decision had been made already, and Gordon seemed to sense as much.

  ‘I think that’s for Trooper Rebus to decide, don’t you?’ the officer was saying.

  And then the man stared at me, his eyes friendly.

  I didn’t need to look back at the cell, or at Gordon. I just kept thinking to myself: it’s another part of the game, just another part of the game. The decision had been made a long time ago. They were not lying to me, and of course I wanted out of the cell. It was preordained. Nothing was arbitrary. I had been told that at the start of my training. I started forwards, but Gordon held onto the tatters of my shirt.

  ‘John,’ he said, his voice full of need, ‘don’t let me down, John. Please.’

  But I pulled away from his weak grip and left the cell.

  ‘No! No! No!’ His cries were huge, fiery things. ‘Don’t let me down, John! Let me out! Let me out!’

  And then he screamed, and I almost crumpled on the floor.

  It was the scream of the mad.

  After I had been cleaned up and seen by a doctor, I was taken to what they euphemistically called the debriefing-room. I’d been through hell – was still going through hell – and they were about to discuss it as though it had been nothing more than a school exercise.

  There were four of them there, three captains and a psychiatrist. They told me everything then. They explained that a new, elitist group was about to be set up from within the SAS, and that its role would be the infiltration and destabilization of terrorist groups, starting with the Irish Republican Army, who were becoming more than a mere nuisance as the Irish situation deteriorated into civil war. Because of the nature of the job, only the best – the very best – would be good enough, and Reeve and I had been judged the best in our section. Therefore, we had been trapped, had been taken prisoner, and had been put through tests the like of which had never been tried in the SAS before. None of this really surprised me by now. I was thinking of the other poor bastards who were being put through this whole sick bloody thing. And all so that when we were being kneecapped, we would not let on who we were.

  And then they came to Gordon.

  ‘Our attitude towards Trooper Reeve is rather ambivalent.’ This was the man in the white coat talking. ‘He’s a bloody fine soldier, and give him a physical job to do and he’ll do it. But he has always worked as a loner in the past, so we put the two of you together to see how you would react to sharing a cell, and, more especially, to see how Reeve would cope once his friend had been taken away from him.’

  Did they know of that kiss then, or did they not?

  ‘I’m afraid,’ went on the doctor, ‘that the result may be negative. He’s come to depend upon you, John, hasn’t he? We are, of course, aware that you have not been dependent upon him.’

  ‘What about the screams from the other cells?’

  ‘Tape-recordings.’

  I nodded, tired suddenly, uninterested.

  ‘The whole thing was another bloody test then?’

  ‘Of course it was.’ They had a little smile between them. ‘But that needn’t bother you now. What matters is that you’ve passed.’

  It did worry me, though. What was it all about? I’d exchanged friendship for this informal debriefing. I’d exchanged love for these smirks. And Gordon’s screams were still in my ears. Revenge, he was crying, revenge. I laid my hands on my knees, bent forward, and started to weep.

  ‘You bastards,’ I said, ‘you bastards.’

  And if I’d had a Browning pistol with me at that moment, I’d have put large holes into their grinning skulls.

  They had me checked again, more thoroughly this time, in a military hospital. Civil war had indeed broken out in Ulster, but I stared past it towards Gordon Reeve. What had happened to him? Was he still in that stinking cell, alone because of me? Was he falling apart? I took it all on my shoulders and wept again. They had given me a box of tissues. That seemed to be the way of things.

  Then I started to weep all day, sometimes uncontrollably, taking it all on, taking everything on my conscience. I suffered from nightmares. I volunteered my resignation. I demanded my resignation. It was accepted, reluctantly. I was, after all, a guinea-pig. I went to a small fishing-village in Fife and walked along the pebbled beach, recovering from my nervous breakdown and putting the whole thing out of my mind stuffing the most painful episode of my life into drawers and attics in my head, locking it all away, learning to forget.

  So I forgot.

  And they were good to me. They gave me some compensation money and they pulled a lot of strings when I decided that I wanted to join the police force. Oh yes, I could not complain about their attitude towards me, but I wasn’t allowed to find out about my friend, and I wasn’t ever to get in touch with them again. I was dead, I was strictly off their records.

  I was a failure.

  And I’m still a failure. Broken marriage. My daughter kidnapped. But it all makes sense now. The whole thing makes sense. So at least I know that Gordon is alive, if not well, and I know that he has my little girl and that he’s going to kill her.

  And kill me if he can.

  And to get her back, I’m going to have to kill him.

  And I would do it now. God help me, I would do it now.

  Part Five

  KNOTS & CROSSES

  23

  When John Rebus awoke from what had seemed a particularly deep and dream-troubled sleep, he found that he was not in bed. He saw that Michael was standing over him, a wary smile on his face, and that Gill was pacing to and fro, sniffing back tears.


  ‘What happened?’ said Rebus.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Michael.

  Then Rebus recalled that Michael had hypnotised him.

  ‘Nothing?’ cried Gill. ‘You call that nothing?’

  ‘John,’ said Michael, ‘I didn’t realise that you felt that way about the old man and me. I’m sorry we made you feel bad.’ Michael rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder, the brother he had never known.

  Gordon, Gordon Reeve. What happened to you? You’re all torn and dirty, whirling around me like grit on a wind-swept street. Like a brother. You’ve got my daughter. Where are you?

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Rebus let his head fall, screwing his eyes shut. Gill’s hand stroked his hair.

  It was growing light outside. The birds were back into their untiring routine. Rebus was glad that they were calling him back into the real world. They reminded him that there might be someone out there who was feeling happy. Perhaps lovers awakening in each other’s arms, or a man who was realising that today was a holiday, or an elderly woman thanking God that she was alive to see the first hints of reawakening life.

  ‘A real dark night of the soul,’ he said, beginning to shake. ‘It’s cold in here. The pilot-light must have blown out.’

  Gill blew her nose and folded her arms.

  ‘No, it’s warm enough in here, John. Listen,’ she spoke slowly, deferentially, ‘we need a physical description of this man. I know that it will have to be a fifteen-year-old description, but it’ll be a start. Then we need to check up on what happened to him after you des . . . after you left him.’

  ‘That will be classified, if it exists at all.’

  ‘And we need to tell the Chief about all of this.’ Gill went on as if Rebus had said nothing. Her eyes were fixed in front of her. ‘We need to find that creep.’

  The room seemed very quiet to Rebus, as though a death had occurred, when really it had been a birth of sorts, the birth of his memory. Of Gordon. Of walking out of that cold, merciless cell. Of turning his back . . .

  ‘Can you be sure that this Reeve character is your man?’ Michael was pouring more whisky. Rebus shook his head at the proffered glass.

  ‘Not for me thanks. My head feels all fuzzy. Oh yes, I think we can be pretty certain who’s behind it. The messages, the knots and the crosses. It all makes sense now. It’s been making sense all along. Reeve must think I’m really thick. He’s been sending me clear messages for weeks, and I’ve failed to realise . . . I’ve let those girls die . . . All because I couldn’t face the facts . . . the facts . . .’

  Gill bent down behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. John Rebus shot out of his chair and turned to her. Reeve. No, Gill, Gill. He shook his head in mute apology. Then burst into tears.

  Gill looked towards Michael, but Michael had lowered his eyes. She hugged Rebus hard, not allowing him to break away from her again, all the time whispering that it was she, Gill, beside him, and not any ghost from the past. Michael was wondering what he had got himself into. He had never seen John cry before. Again, the guilt flooded him. He would stop it all. He didn’t need it any more. He would lie low and just let his dealer get tired of looking for him, let his clients find new people. He would do it, not for John’s sake but for his own.

  We treated him like shit, he thought to himself, it’s true. The old man and me treated him as though he were an intruder.

  Later, over coffee, Rebus seemed calm, though Gill’s eyes were still on him, wondering, fearing.

  ‘We can be sure that this Reeve is off his chump,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Rebus. ‘One thing is for sure, he’ll be armed. He’ll be ready for anything. The man was a Seaforths regular and a member of the SAS. He’ll be hard as nails.’

  ‘You were too, John.’

  ‘That’s why I’m the man to track him down. The Chief must be made to understand that, Gill. I’m back on the case.’

  Gill pursed her lips.

  ‘I’m not sure he’ll go for that,’ she said.

  ‘Well, sod him then. I’ll find the bastard anyway.’

  ‘You do that, John,’ said Michael. ‘You do that. Don’t care what any of them say.’

  ‘Mickey,’ said Rebus, ‘you are absolutely the best brother I could have had. Now, is there any food on the go? I’m starved.’

  ‘And I’m whacked,’ said Michael, feeling pleased with himself. ‘Do you mind if I lie down for an hour or two here before I drive back?’

  ‘Not at all, go through to my room, Mickey.’

  ‘Goodnight, Michael,’ said Gill.

  He was smiling as he left them.

  Knots and crosses. Noughts and crosses. It was so blatant, really. Reeve must have taken him for a fool, and in a way he had been right. Those endless games they had played, all those tricks and manoeuvres, and their talk about Christianity, those reef knots and Gordian knots. And The Cross. God, how stupid he had been, allowing his memory into tricking him that the past was a cracked and useless vessel, emptying its spirit. How stupid.

  ‘John, you’re spilling your coffee.’

  Gill was bringing in a plateful of cheese on toast from the kitchen. Rebus roused himself awake.

  ‘Eat this. I’ve been on to HQ. We’ve to be there in two hours’ time. They’ve already started running a check on Reeve’s name. We should find him.’

  ‘I hope so, Gill. Oh God, I hope so.’

  They hugged. She suggested that they lie on the couch. They did so, tight in a warming embrace. Rebus couldn’t help wondering whether his dark night had been an exorcism of sorts, whether the past would still haunt him sexually. He hoped not. Certainly, it was neither the time nor the place to try it out.

  Gordon, my friend, what did I do to you?

  24

  Stevens was a patient man. The two policemen had been firm with him. No one could see Detective Sergeant Rebus for the moment. Stevens had returned to the newspaper office, worked on a report for the paper’s three-a.m. print-run, and then had driven back to Rebus’s flat. There were still lights on up there, but also there were two new gorillas by the door of the tenement. Stevens parked across the street and lit another cigarette. It was tying together nicely. The two threads were becoming one. The murders and the drug-pushing were involved in some way, and Rebus was the key by the look of things. What were his brother and he talking about at this hour? A contingency plan perhaps. God, he would have given anything to be a fly on the living-room wall just now. Anything. He knew reporters in Fleet Street who went in for sophisticated surveillance techniques – bugs, high-powered microphones, telephone-taps – and he wondered if it might not be worthwhile to invest in some of that equipment himself.

  He formulated new theories in his head, theories with hundreds of permutations. If Edinburgh’s drug-racketeers had gone into the abduction-and-murder business to put the frights on some poor bastards, then things were taking a very grim turn indeed, and he, Jim Stevens, would have to be even more careful in future. Yet Big Podeen had known nothing. Say, then, that a new gang had broken into the game, bringing with it new rules. That would make for a gang-war, Glasgow-style. But things, surely, were not done that way today. Maybe.

  In this way, Stevens kept himself awake and alert, scribbling his thoughts into a notebook. His radio was on, and he listened to the half-hourly news reports. A policeman’s daughter was the new victim of Edinburgh’s child-murderer. In the most recent abduction, a man was killed, strangled in the house of the child’s mother. And so on. Stevens went on formulating, went on speculating.

  It had not yet been revealed that all the murders were linked to Rebus. The police were not about to make that public, not even to Jim Stevens.

  At seven-thirty, Stevens managed to bribe a passing newspaper-boy into bringing him rolls and milk from a nearby shop. He washed the dry, powdery rolls down with the icy milk. The heating was on in his car, but he felt chilled to the marrow. He needed a shower, a shave, and some sleep. Not necessarily in that order. But
he was too close to let this go now. He had the tenacity – some would call it madness, fanaticism – of every good reporter. He had watched other hacks arriving in the night and being sent away again. One or two had seen him sitting in his car and had come across for a chat and to sniff out any leads. He had hidden away his notebook then, feigning disinterest, telling them that he would be going home shortly. Lies, damned lies.

  That was part of the business.

  And now, finally, they were emerging from the building. A few cameras and microphones were there, of course, but nothing too tasteless, no pushing and shoving and harassing. For one thing, this was a grieving father; for another, he was a policeman. Nobody was about to harass him.

  Stevens watched as Gill and Rebus were allowed to disappear into the back of an idling Rover police-car. He studied their faces. Rebus looked washed-out. That was only to be expected. But, behind that, lay a grimness of look, something about the way his mouth made a straight line. That bothered Stevens a little. It was as if the man were about to enter a war. Bloody hell. And then there was Gill Templer. She looked rough, rougher even than Rebus. Her eyes were red, but here too there was something a little out of the ordinary. Something was not quite as it should be. Any respecting reporter could see that, if he knew what he was looking for. Stevens gnawed at himself. He needed to know more. It was like a drug, his story. He needed bigger and bigger injections of it. He was a bit startled, too, to find himself admitting that the reason he needed these injections was not for the sake of his job, but for his own curiosity. Rebus intrigued him. Gill Templer, of course, interested him.

  And Michael Rebus . . .

  Michael Rebus had not appeared from the flat. The circus was leaving now, the Rover turning right out of the quiet Marchmont street, but the gorillas remained. New gorillas. Stevens lit a cigarette. It might be worth a try at that. He walked back to his car and locked it. Then, taking a walk round the block, formed another plan.