10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Ah-ha.’ McCall nodded. Everything was starting to make a little bit of sense.

  Rebus handed back the note and went over to the bed. The sheets were rumpled. Three empty pill bottles stood in a neat line on the bedside table. On the floor lay an empty cognac bottle.

  ‘The man went out in style,’ McCall said, pocketing the note. ‘He’d gone through a couple of bottles of wine before that.’

  ‘Yes, I saw them in the living room. Lafite sixty-one. The stuff of a very special occasion.’

  ‘They don’t come more special, John.’

  Both men turned as a third presence became evident in the room. It was Farmer Watson, breathing heavily from the effort of the stairs.

  ‘This is bloody awkward,’ he said. ‘One of the linchpins of our campaign tops himself, and by taking a bloody overdose. How’s that going to look, eh?’

  ‘Awkward, sir,’ replied Rebus, ‘just as you say.’

  ‘I do say. I do say.’ Watson thrust a finger out towards Rebus. ‘It’s up to you, John, to make sure the media don’t make a meal of this, or of us.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Watson looked over towards the bed. ‘Waste of a bloody decent man. What makes someone do it? I mean, look at this place. And there’s an estate somewhere on one of the islands. Own business. Expensive car. Things we can only dream about. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right.’ Watson took a last glance towards the bed, then slapped a hand on Rebus’s shoulder. ‘I’m depending on you, John.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  McCall and Rebus watched their superior go.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ whispered McCall. ‘He didn’t look at me, not once. I might as well have not been there.’

  ‘You should thank your lucky stars, Tony. I wish I had your gift of invisibility.’

  Both men smiled. ‘Seen enough?’ McCall asked.

  ‘Just one more circuit,’ said Rebus. ‘Then I’ll get out of your hair.’

  ‘Whatever you say, John. Just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What the hell were you doing up Calton Hill in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Rebus, blowing a kiss as he headed for the living area.

  It would be big news locally, of course. There was no getting away from the fact. The radio stations and newspapers would have trouble deciding which headline deserved most prominence: Disc Jockey Arrested at Illegal Dog Fight or Suicide Shock of Estate Agent Giant. Well, something along those lines. Jim Stevens would have loved it, but then Jim Stevens was in London and married, by all accounts, to some girl half his age.

  Rebus admired that kind of dangerous move. He had no admiration for James Carew: none. Watson was right in at least one respect: Carew had everything going for him, and Rebus was finding it difficult to believe that he would commit suicide solely because he had been spotted by a police officer on Calton Hill. No, that might have been the trigger, but there had to be something more. Something, perhaps, in the flat, or in the offices of Bowyer Carew on George Street.

  James Carew owned a lot of books. A quick examination showed that they were for the most part expensive, impressive titles, but unread, their spines crackling as they were opened by Rebus for the first time. The top right hand section of the bookcase held several titles which interested him more than the others. Books by Genet and Alexander Trocchi, copies of Forster’s Maurice and even Last Exit to Brooklyn. Poems by Walt Whitman, the text of Torchlight Trilogy. A mixed bag of predominantly gay reading. Nothing wrong in that. But their positioning in the bookshelves – right at the top and separated from the other titles – suggested to Rebus that here was a man ashamed of himself. There was no reason for this, not these days. . . .

  Who was he kidding? AIDS had squeezed homosexuality back into the darker corners of society, and by keeping the truth a secret Carew had laid himself open to feelings of shame, and, therefore, to blackmail of all kinds.

  Yes, blackmail. Suicides were occasionally victims of blackmail who could see no way out of their dilemma. Just maybe there would be some evidence, a letter or a note or something. Anything. Just so Rebus could prove to himself he wasn’t completely paranoid.

  Then he found it.

  In a drawer. A locked drawer, to be sure, but the keys were in Carew’s trousers. He had died in his pyjamas, and his other clothes had not been taken away with the corpse. Rebus got the keys from the bedroom and headed back to the desk in the living room. A gorgeous writing desk, antique for sure: its surface was barely large enough to accommodate a sheet of A4 paper and an elbow. What had been once a useful piece of furniture now found itself an ornament in a rich man’s apartment. Rebus opened the drawer carefully and drew out a leather-bound desk diary. A page a day, the pages large. Not a diary for appointments, not locked away in darkness like that. A personal diary then. Eagerly, Rebus flipped it open. His disappointment was immediate. The pages were blank for the most part. A line or two of pencil per page was as much as there was.

  Rebus cursed.

  All right, John. It’s better than nothing. He rested at one of the pages with some writing on it. The pencil marking was faint, neatly written. ‘Jerry. 4pm’. A simple appointment. Rebus flipped to the day on which they had all met for lunch at The Eyrie. The page was blank. Good. That meant the appointments weren’t of the business lunch variety. There weren’t many of them. Rebus felt sure that Carew’s diary at his office would be crammed. This was a much more private affair.

  ‘Lindsay, 6.30.’

  ‘Marks, 11am.’ An early start that day, and what about that name: two individuals, each named Mark? Or one individual whose surname was Marks? Maybe even the department store . . .? The other names – Jerry, Lindsay – were androgynous, anonymous. He needed a telephone number, a location.

  He turned another page. And had to look twice at what was written there. His finger ran along the letters.

  ‘Hyde, 10pm.’

  Hyde. What had Ronnie said to Tracy the night he’d died? Hide, he’s after me? Yes, and James had given him the name, too: not hide but H-y-d-e.

  Hyde!

  Rebus whooped. Here was a connection, no matter how tenuous. A connection between Ronnie and James Carew. Something more than a fleeting business transaction on Calton Hill. A name. He hurried through the other pages. There were three more mentions of Hyde, always in the late evening (when Calton Hill was starting its trade), always on a Friday. Sometimes the second Friday of the month, sometimes the third. Four mentions in the course of six months.

  ‘Anything?’ It was McCall, leaning over Rebus’s shoulder for a peek.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebus said. Then he changed his mind. ‘No, not really, Tony. Just an old diary, but the bugger wasn’t much of a writer.’

  McCall nodded and moved away. He was more interested in the hi-fi system.

  ‘The old guy had taste,’ McCall said, scrutinising it. ‘Linn turntable. Know how much one of those costs, John? Hundreds. They’re not showy. They’re just bloody good at what they do.’

  ‘A bit like us then,’ said Rebus. He was thinking of pushing the diary into his trousers. It wasn’t allowed, he knew. And what good would it do him? But with Tony McCall’s back turned so conveniently. . . . No, no, he couldn’t. He threw it noisily back into its drawer, shut the drawer again and locked it. He handed the key to McCall, who was still squatting in front of the hi-fi.

  ‘Thanks, John. Nice piece of equipment this, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were interested in all that stuff.’

  ‘Since I was a kid. Had to get rid of my system when we got married. Too noisy.’ He straightened. ‘Are we going to find any answers here, do you think?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘I think he kept all his secrets in his head. He was a very private man, after all. No, I think he’s taken the answers with him to the grave.’

  ‘Oh, well. Makes it nice and clear-cut then, doesn’t it?’
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  ‘Clear as crystal, Tony,’ said Rebus.

  What was it the old man, Vanderhyde, had said? Something about muddying the water. Rebus had the gnawing feeling that the solution to these many conundrums was a simple one, as crystal clear as one could wish. The problem was that extraneous stories were being woven into the whole. Do I mix my metaphors? Very well then, I mix my metaphors. All that counted was getting to the bottom of the pool, muddied or no, and bringing up that tiny cache of treasure called the truth.

  He knew, too, that the problem was one of classification. He had to break the interlinked stories into separate threads, and work from those. At the moment, he was guilty of trying to weave them all into a pattern, a pattern that might not be there. By separating them all, maybe he’d be in with a chance of solving each.

  Ronnie committed suicide. So did Carew. That gave them a second thing in common to add to the name of Hyde. Some client of Carew’s perhaps? Buying a substantial piece of property with money made through the dealing of hard drugs? That would be a link, for sure. Hyde. The name couldn’t be real. How many Hydes were there in the Edinburgh directory? It could always be an assumed name. Male prostitutes seldom used their own names, after all. Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde. Another coincidence: Rebus had been reading Stevenson’s book the night Tracy had visited. Maybe he should be looking for someone called Jekyll? Jekyll, the respectable doctor, admired by society; Hyde, his alter ego, small and brutish, a creature of the night. He remembered the shadowy forms he’d encountered by Calton Hill. . . . Could the answer be so obvious?

  He parked in the only vacant bay left outside Great London Road station and climbed the familiar steps. They seemed to grow larger with the passing years, and he could swear there were more of them now than there had been when he’d first come to this place, all of – what was it? – six years ago? That wasn’t so long in the span of a man’s life, was it? So why did it feel so bloody Sisyphean?

  ‘Hello, Jack,’ he said to the desk sergeant, who watched him walk past without the usual nod of the head. Strange, Rebus thought. Jack had never been a cheery bugger, but he’d usually had the use of his neck muscles. He was famous for his slight bow of the head, which he could make mean anything from approbation to insult.

  But today, for Rebus, nothing.

  Rebus decided to ignore the slight, and went upstairs. Two constables, in the act of coming down, fell quiet as they passed him. Rebus began to redden, but kept walking, sure now that he had forgotten to zip his fly, or had somehow contrived to get a smudge on his nose. Something like that. He’d check in the privacy of his office.

  Holmes was waiting for him, seated in Rebus’s chair, at Rebus’s desk, some property details spread across the tabletop. He began to rise as Rebus entered, gathering together the sheets of paper like a kid caught with a dirty book.

  ‘Hello, Brian.’ Rebus took off his jacket, hanging it on the back of the door. ‘Listen, I want you to get me the names and addresses of all Edinburgh inhabitants whose names are Jekyll or Hyde. I know that may sound daft, but just do it. Then –’

  ‘I think you should sit down, sir,’ said Holmes tremulously. Rebus stared at him, saw the fear in the young man’s eyes, and knew that the worst had happened.

  Rebus pushed open the door of the interview room. His face was the colour of pickled beetroot, and Holmes, following, feared that his superior was about to suffer a coronary. There were two CID men in the room, both in their shirtsleeves as though after a hard session. They turned at Rebus’s entrance, and the one who was seated rose as if for combat. On the other side of the table, the weasel-faced teenager known to Rebus as ‘James’ actually squealed, and flew to his feet, knocking the chair with a clatter onto the stone floor.

  ‘Don’t let him near me!’ he yelled.

  ‘Now, John –’ started one detective, a Sergeant Dick. Rebus held up a hand to show that he was not here to cause violence. The detectives eyed one another, not sure whether to believe him. Then Rebus spoke, his eyes on the teenager.

  ‘You’re going to get what’s coming to you, so help me.’ There was calm, lucid anger in Rebus’s voice. ‘I’m going to have you by your balls for this, son. You better believe that. Really, you better.’

  The teenager saw now that the others would restrain Rebus, that the man himself presented an empty physical threat. He sneered.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said dismissively. Rebus lurched forward, but Holmes’s hand was rigid against his shoulder, pulling him back.

  ‘Leave it be, John,’ the other detective, DC Cooper, cautioned. ‘Just let the wheels grind round. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Too long though,’ Rebus hissed, as Holmes pulled him out of the room, closing the door after them. Rebus stood in the shadowy corridor, all rage spent, head bowed. It was so very hard to believe. . . .

  ‘Inspector Rebus!’

  Rebus and Holmes both jerked their heads towards the voice. It belonged to a WPC. She looked scared, too.

  ‘Yes?’ Rebus managed, swallowing.

  ‘The Super wants to see you in his office. I think it’s urgent.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Rebus, walking towards her with such menace that she retreated hurriedly, back towards the reception area and daylight.

  ‘It’s a bloody set-up, with all due respect, sir.’

  Remember the golden rule, John, Rebus thought to himself: never swear at a superior without adding that ‘with all due respect’. It was something he’d learned in the Army. As long as you added that coda, the brass couldn’t have you for insubordination.

  ‘John.’ Watson interlaced his fingers, studying them as if they were the latest craze. ‘John, we’ve got to investigate it. That’s our duty. I know it’s daft, and everyone else knows it’s daft, but we’ve got to show that it’s daft. That’s our duty.’

  ‘All the same, sir –’

  Watson cut him off with a wave of his hand. Then started twining fingers again.

  ‘God knows, you’re already “suspended” from duty as it is, until our little campaign gets into full swing.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but this is just what he wants.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Some man called Hyde. He wants me to stop poking about in the Ronnie McGrath case. That’s what this is all about. That’s why it’s a set-up job.’

  ‘That’s as maybe. The fact remains, a complaint has been made against you –’

  ‘By that little bastard downstairs.’

  ‘He says you gave him money, twenty pounds, I believe.’

  ‘I did give him twenty quid, but not for a shag, for Chrissake!’

  ‘For what then?’

  Rebus made to answer, but was defeated. Why had he handed the teenager called James that money? He’d set himself up, all right. Hyde couldn’t have done it better himself. And now James was downstairs, spilling his carefully rehearsed story to CID. And say what you liked, mud stuck. By Christ, it didn’t half. No amount of soap and water would clean it off. The little toerag.

  ‘This is playing right into Hyde’s hands, sir,’ Rebus tried: one last shot. ‘If his story’s true, why didn’t he come in yesterday? Why wait till today?’

  But Watson was decided.

  ‘No, John. I want you out of here for a day or two. A week even. Take a break. Do whatever you like, but leave well alone. We’ll clear it up, don’t worry. We’ll break his story down into pieces so small he won’t be able to see them any more. One of those pieces will snap, and with it, his whole story. Don’t you worry.’

  Rebus stared at Watson. What he said made sense; more than that, it was actually fairly subtle and shrewd. Maybe the Farmer wasn’t so agricultural in his ways after all. He sighed.

  ‘Whatever you say, sir.’

  Watson nodded, smiling.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Remember that fellow Andrews, ran a club called Finlay’s?’

  ‘We had lunch with him, sir.’

  ‘That’s right. He’s invited me to apply for membership
.’

  ‘Good for you, sir.’

  ‘Apparently the waiting list’s about a year long – all these rich Sassenachs coming north – but he said he could do a bit of pruning in my case. I told him not to bother. I seldom drink, and I certainly don’t gamble. Still, a nice gesture all the same. Maybe I should ask him to consider you in my place. That’d give you something to do with your time off, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus seemed to consider the suggestion. Booze and gambling: not a bad combination. His face brightened. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘That would be very kind of you.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do then. One last thing.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Are you intending to go to Malcolm Lanyon’s party tonight? Remember, he invited us at The Eyrie?’

  ‘I’d forgotten all about it, sir. Would it be more . . . proper for me to stay away?’

  ‘Not at all. I may not manage along myself, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t attend. But not a word about. . . .’ Watson nodded towards the door, and by implication to the interview room beyond.

  ‘Understood, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and John?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Don’t swear at me. Ever. With respect or otherwise. Okay?’

  Rebus felt his cheeks reddening, not in anger but in shame. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, making his exit.

  Holmes was waiting impatiently in Rebus’s office.

  ‘What did he want then?’

  ‘Who?’ Rebus was supremely nonchalant. ‘Oh, Watson you mean? He wanted to tell me that he’s put my name forward for Finlay’s.’

  ‘Finlay’s Club?’ Holmes’ face was quizzical; this wasn’t what he’d been expecting at all.

  ‘That’s right. At my age, I think I deserve a club in town, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, and he also wanted to remind me about a party tonight at Malcolm Lanyon’s place.’

  ‘The lawyer?’

  ‘That’s him.’ Rebus had Holmes at a disadvantage, and knew it. ‘I hope you’ve been busy while I’ve been having a chinwag.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Hydes and Jekylls, Brian. I asked you for addresses.’