10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Tickets, please!’ yelled the guard from the other end of the carriage.

  So, with a sigh, and for the third time since leaving Edinburgh, Rebus sought out his ticket. It was never where he thought it was. At Berwick, he’d thought it was in his shirt pocket. It was in the outer top pocket of his Harris tweed jacket. Then at Durham he’d looked for it in his jacket, only to find it beneath one of the magazines on the table. Now, ten minutes out of Peterborough, it had moved to the back pocket of his trousers. He retrieved it, and waited for the guard to make his way forward.

  The Englishman’s ticket was where it had always been: half-hidden beneath a beer can. Rebus, although he knew every word almost by heart, glanced again at the back page of one of his Sunday papers. He had kept it to the top of the pile for no reason other than a sense of devilment, enjoying the thick black letters of the headline – SCOTS WHA HAE! – beneath which was printed the story of the previous day’s Calcutta Cup clash at Murrayfield. And a clash it had been: no day for weak stomachs, but a day for stout hearts and determination. The Scots had triumphed by thirteen points to ten, and now here Rebus was on a late evening Sunday train packed with disappointed English rugby supporters, heading towards London.

  London. Never one of Rebus’s favourite places. Not that he was a frequent visitor. But this was not pleasure. This was strictly business, and as a representative of the Lothian and Borders Police, he was to be on best behaviour. Or, as his boss had put it so succinctly, ‘No fuck-ups, John.’

  Well, he would do his best. Not that he reckoned there was much he could do, right or wrong. But he would do what he could. And if that meant wearing a clean shirt and tie, polished shoes and a respectable jacket, then so be it.

  ‘All tickets, please.’

  Rebus handed over his ticket. Somewhere in the corridor up ahead, in the no-man’s-land of the buffet car between first and second class, a few voices were raised in a verse of Blake’s Jerusalem. The Englishman across from Rebus smiled.

  ‘Only a game,’ he said to the tins in front of him. ‘Only a game.’

  The train pulled in to King’s Cross five minutes late. It was a quarter past eleven. Rebus was in no hurry. A hotel room had been booked for him in central London, courtesy of the Metropolitan Police. He carried a typed list of notes and directions in his jacket pocket, again sent up from London. He had not brought much luggage with him, feeling that the courtesy of the Met would extend only so far. He expected the trip to last two or three days at most, after which time even they would realise, surely, that he was not going to be of much help to them in their investigations. So: one small suitcase, one sports bag and one briefcase. The suitcase contained two suits, a change of shoes, several pairs of socks and underpants and two shirts (with matching ties). In the sports bag were a small washbag, towel, two paperback novels (one partly read), a travel alarm clock, a thirty-five millimetre camera with flashgun and film, a T-shirt, retractable umbrella, sunglasses, transistor radio, diary, Bible, a bottle containing ninety-seven paracetamol tablets and another bottle (protected by the T-shirt) containing best Islay malt whisky.

  The bare essentials, in other words. The briefcase contained notepad, pens, a personal tape recorder, some blank tapes and prerecorded tapes and a thick manila file filled with photocopied sheets of Metropolitan Police paper, ten-by-eight inch colour photographs held together in a small ring-binder affair and newspaper clippings. On the front of this file was a white sticky label with one word typed upon it. The word was WOLFMAN.

  Rebus was in no hurry. The night – what was left of it – was his. He had to attend a meeting at ten on Monday morning, but his first night in the capital city could be spent however he chose. He thought he would probably choose to spend it in his hotel room. He waited in his seat until the other passengers had left the train, then slid his bag and briefcase from the luggage rack and made for the sliding door to the carriage, beside which, in another luggage rack, sat his suitcase. Manoeuvring these out of the train door and onto the platform, he paused for a moment and breathed in. The smell was not quite like any other railway station. Certainly it was not like Waverley Station in Edinburgh. The air wasn’t quite foetid, but it did seem to Rebus somehow overused and tired. He felt suddenly fatigued. And there was something else in his nostrils, something sweet and revolting at the same time. He couldn’t quite think what it reminded him of.

  On the concourse, instead of making directly for the Underground, he wandered over to a bookstall. There he purchased an A-Z of London, slipping it into his briefcase. The next morning’s editions were just arriving, but he ignored them. This was Sunday, not Monday. Sunday was the Lord’s day, which was perhaps why he had packed a Bible along with his other possessions. He hadn’t been to a church service in weeks . . . maybe even months. Not since he’d tried the Cathedral on Palmerston Place in fact. It had been a nice place, light and bright, but too far from his home to make for a viable proposition. And besides, it was still organised religion and he had not lost his mistrust of organised religion. If anything, he was warier these days than ever before. He was also hungry. Perhaps he would grab a bite on the way to the hotel. . . .

  He passed two women having an animated discussion.

  ‘I heard it on the radio just twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Done another, has he?’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying.’

  The woman shivered. ‘Don’t bear thinking about. Did they say it was definitely him?’

  ‘Not definitely, but you just know, don’t you?’

  There was a truth in that. So, Rebus had arrived in time for another small piece of the drama to unfold around him. Another murder, making four in all. Four in the space of three months. He was a busy little man, this killer they had named the Wolfman. They had named him the Wolfman and then they had sent word to Rebus’s boss. Lend us your man, they had said. Let’s see what he can do. Rebus’s boss, Chief Superintendent Watson, had handed the letter over to him.

  ‘Better take some silver bullets with you, John,’ he had said. ‘It looks like you’re their only hope.’ And then he had chuckled, knowing as well as Rebus knew himself that he could be of little help in the case. But Rebus had gnawed on his bottom lip, silent in front of his desk-bound superior. He would do what he could. He would do everything he could. Until they saw through him and sent him back home.

  Besides, perhaps he needed the break. Watson seemed glad to be rid of him, too.

  ‘If nothing else, it’ll keep us out of one another’s hair for a while.’

  The Chief Superintendent, an Aberdonian, had earned the nickname ‘Farmer Watson’, a nickname every police officer beneath him in Edinburgh understood. But then one day Rebus, a nip of malt too many beneath his belt, had blurted out the nickname in front of Watson himself, since when he had found himself assigned to more than his fair share of tedious details, desk jobs, lookouts and training courses.

  Training courses! At least Watson had a sense of humour. The most recent had been termed ‘Management for Senior Officers’ and had been a minor disaster – all psychology and how to be nice to junior officers. How to involve them, how to motivate them, how to relate to them. Rebus had returned to his station and tried it for one day, a day of involving, of motivating, of relating. At the end of the day, a DC had slapped a hand onto Rebus’s back, smiling.

  ‘Bloody hard work today, John. But I’ve enjoyed it.’

  ‘Take your hand off my fucking back,’ Rebus had snarled. ‘And don’t call me John.’

  The DC’s mouth fell open. ‘But you said . . .’ he began, but didn’t bother finishing. The brief holiday was over. Rebus had tried being a manager. Tried it and loathed it.

  He was halfway down the steps to the Underground when he stopped, put down his suitcase and briefcase, pulled open the zip on his sports bag and found the transistor radio. Switching it on, he held it to his ear with one hand while the other turned the tuning dial. Eventually, he found a news bulletin, listening as
the other travellers passed him, a few of them staring, but mostly ignoring him. At last he heard what he had been waiting for, then switched off the radio and threw it back into the sports bag. Now, he released the two catches on his briefcase and brought out the A-Z. Flipping through the pages of street names at the back, he remembered just how large London really was. Large and populous. Something like ten million, was it? Wasn’t that twice the population of Scotland? It didn’t bear thinking about. Ten million souls.

  ‘Ten million and one,’ Rebus whispered to himself, finding the name he had been looking for.

  The Chamber of Horrors

  ‘Not a pretty sight.’

  Looking around him, Detective Inspector George Flight wondered whether the sergeant had been referring to the body or to the surrounding area. You could say what you liked about the Wolfman, he wasn’t choosy about his turf. This time it was a riverside path. Not that Flight had ever really thought of the Lea as a ‘river’. It was a place where supermarket trolleys came to die, a dank stretch of water bordered on one side by marshland and on the other by industrial sites and lo-rise housing. Apparently you could walk the course of the Lea from the Thames to up past Edmonton. The narrow river ran like a mottled black vein from east central London to the most northerly reaches of the capital and beyond. The vast majority of Londoners didn’t even know it existed.

  George Flight knew about it though. He had been brought up in Tottenham Hale, not far from the Lea. His father had fished on the Navigation section, between Stonebridge and Tottenham Locks. When he was young he had played football on the marshes, smoked illicit cigarettes in the long grass with his gang, fumbled with a blouse or a brassiere on the wasteland just across the river from where he now stood.

  He had walked along this path. It was popular on warm Sunday afternoons. There were riverside pubs where you could stand outside supping a pint and watching the Sunday sailors plying their crafts, but at night, only the drunk, the reckless and the brave would use the quiet and ill-lit path. The drunk, the reckless, the brave . . . and the locals. Jean Cooper was a local. Ever since the separation from her husband, she had lived with her sister in a small, recently-built estate just off the towpath. She worked in an off-licence on Lea Bridge Road, and finished work at seven. The riverside path was a quick route home.

  Her body had been found at nine forty-five by a couple of young lads on their way to one of the pubs. They had run back to Lea Bridge Road and flagged down a passing police car. The operation thereafter had about it a fluid, easy movement. The police doctor arrived, to be met by detectives from Stoke Newington police station, who, recognising the modus operandi, contacted Flight.

  By the time he arrived, the scene was organised but busy. The body had been identified, questions asked of nearby residents, the sister found. Scene of Crime Officers were in discussion with a couple of people from Forensics. The area around the body had been cordoned off and nobody crossed the tape without first of all donning polythene cover-alls for their feet and hair. Two photographers were busy taking flash photographs under portable lighting powered by a nearby generator. And next to the generator stood an operations van, where another photographer was trying to fix his jammed video camera.

  ‘It’s these cheap tapes,’ he complained. ‘They look like a bargain when you buy them, but then halfway through you find there’s a twist or a snag in them.’

  ‘So don’t buy cheap tapes,’ Flight had advised.

  ‘Thank you, Sherlock,’ had been the cameraman’s ill-meant response, before once again cursing the tapes, the seller of the tapes and the seller’s market stall in Brick Lane. He’d only bought the tapes that day.

  Meantime, having discussed their plan of attack, the forensic scientists moved in towards the body armed with sticky tape, scissors and a pile of large polythene bags. Then, with extraordinary care, they began to ‘tape’ the body in the hope of lifting hairs and fibres from the clothing. Flight watched them from a distance. The portable lights cast a garish white glow over the scene, so that, standing further back in unlit gloom, Flight felt a bit like someone in a theatre, watching a distant play unfold. By God, you had to have patience for a job like this. Everything had to be done by the book and had to be done in meticulous detail. He hadn’t gone near the body yet himself. His chance would come later. Perhaps much later.

  The wailing started again. It was coming from a police Ford Sierra parked on Lea Bridge Road. Jean Cooper’s sister, being comforted in the back of the car by a WPC, being told to drink the hot sweet tea, knowing she would never see her sister alive again. But this was not the worst. Flight knew the worst was still to come, when the sister would formally identify Jean’s body in the mortuary.

  Jean Cooper had been easy enough to identify. Her handbag lay beside her on the path apparently untouched. In it were letters and house keys with an address tag attached. Flight couldn’t help thinking about those house keys. It wasn’t very clever to put your address on your keys, was it? A bit late for that now though. A bit late for crime prevention. The crying started again, a long plaintive howl, reaching into the orange glow of the sky above the River Lea and its marshes.

  Flight looked towards the body, then retraced the route Jean had taken from Lea Bridge Road. She had walked less than fifty yards before being attacked. Fifty yards from a well-lit and busy main thoroughfare, less than twenty from the back of a row of flats. But this section of path depended for light upon a street lamp which was broken (the council would probably get round to fixing it now) and from whatever illumination was given from the windows of the flats. It was dark enough for the purpose all right. Dark enough for murder most foul.

  He couldn’t be sure that the Wolfman was responsible, not completely and utterly sure at this early stage. But he could feel it, like a numbing injection in his bones. The terrain was right. The stab wounds reported to him seemed right. And the Wolfman had been quiet for just under three weeks. Three weeks during which the trail had gone stone cold, as cold as a canal path. The Wolfman had taken a risk this time however, striking in late evening instead of at the dead of night. Someone might have seen him. The need for a rapid escape might have led him to leave a clue. Please, God, let him have left a clue. Flight rubbed at his stomach. The worms were gone, consumed by acid. He felt calm, utterly calm, for the first time in days.

  ‘Excuse me.’ The voice was muffled, and Flight half-turned to let the diver past him. This diver was followed by another, both of them holding powerful torches. Flight did not envy the police frogmen their job. The river was dark and poisonous, chilled and most probably the consistency of soup. But it had to be searched now. If the killer had dropped something into the Lea by mistake, or had thrown his knife into the river, it had to be recovered as soon as possible. Silt or shifting rubbish might cover it before daybreak. Simply, they couldn’t afford the time. And so he had ordered a search just after hearing the news, before he had even left his warm and comfortable home to hurry to the scene. His wife had patted him on the arm. ‘Try not to be late.’ Both knew the words were meaningless.

  He watched the first frogman slip into the water and stared entranced as the water began to glow from the torchlight. The second diver followed the first into the water and disappeared from view. Flight checked the sky. A thick layer of cloud lay still and silent above him. The weather report was for early morning rain. It would dissolve footprints and wash fibres, bloodstains and hair into the hard-packed soil of the path. With any luck, they would complete the initial scene of crime work without the need for plastic tents.

  ‘George!’

  Flight turned to greet the newcomer. The man was in his mid-fifties, tall with cadaverous features lit up by a wide grin, or as wide as the long and narrow face would allow. He carried a large black bag in his left hand, and stretched out his right for Flight to shake. By his side walked a handsome woman of Flight’s own age. In fact, as far as he could recall she was exactly one month and a day younger than him. Her name was Isobe
l Penny, and she was, in a euphemistic phrase, the cadaverous man’s ‘assistant’ and ‘secretary’. That they had been sleeping together these past eight or nine years was something nobody really discussed, though Isobel had told Flight all about it, for no other reason than that they had been in the same class together at school and had kept in touch with one another ever since.

  ‘Hello, Philip,’ said Flight, shaking the pathologist’s hand.

  Philip Cousins was not just a Home Office pathologist: he was by far the best Home Office pathologist, with a reputation resulting from twenty-five years’ worth of work, twenty-five years during which, to Flight’s knowledge, the man had never once ‘got it wrong’. Cousins’s eye for detail and his sheer bloody doggedness had seen him crack, or help crack, several dozen murder investigations, ranging from stranglings in Streatham to the poisoning of a government official in the West Indies. People who did not know him said that he looked the part, with his dark blue suits and cold grey features. They could not know about his quick and ready humour, his kindness, or the way he thrilled student doctors at his packed lectures. Flight had attended one of those lectures, something to do with arterial sclerosis and hadn’t laughed so much in years.

  ‘I thought you two were in Africa,’ he said now, pecking Isobel on the cheek by way of greeting.

  Cousins sighed. ‘We were, but Penny got homesick.’ He always called her by her surname. She gave him a playful thump on his forearm.

  ‘You liar!’ Then she turned her pale blue eyes to Flight. ‘It was Philip,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t bear to be away from his corpses. The first decent holiday we’ve had in years and he says he’s bored. Can you believe that, George?’

  Flight smiled and shook his head. ‘Well, I’m glad you were able to make it. Looks like another victim of the Wolfman.’