10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)
Page 69
‘Just this,’ Rebus said calmly: ‘keep away from Sammy. Don’t ever go near her again, don’t even try to talk to her. In fact, your best bet right now is to get on a train or a bus or whatever and get the hell out of London. Don’t worry, we’ll pin Tommy for something sooner or later. Then maybe you can come back.’ He had slipped a hand into his pocket again. It came out holding a fold of ten pound notes, four of which he peeled off and threw onto the mattress. ‘I’m offering you a one-way ticket, and I’m suggesting you take it right now, this morning.’
The eyes and voice were wary. ‘You’re not going to take me in?’
‘Why should I?’
The smile this time was more confident still. He looked at the money. ‘It’s just family, Rebus. That’s all. I can take care of myself.’
‘Can you?’ Rebus nodded, taking in the room with its peeling wallpaper and boarded-up window, the mattress with its single rumpled sheet. ‘Fair enough.’ He turned to go.
‘It wasn’t just me, you know.’
Rebus stopped but didn’t turn. ‘What?’ He tried not to sound interested.
‘There was a copper, too. He was on a cut from the robberies.’
Rebus sucked in air. Did he need to know? Did he want to know? Kenny Watkiss didn’t give him the choice.
‘A detective called Lamb,’ he said. Rebus exhaled silently, but, saying nothing, showing nothing, walked back out of the flat and, pulling open the lift doors, kicking away the milk bottle, pressed the button for the ground floor and waited for the slow descent.
Outside the block, he paused to stub out his cigarette. He rubbed at his stomach again. Stupid not to have brought the painkillers with him. From the corner of his eye, he could see the unmarked transit van in the car park. Six forty-five. There could be a perfectly rational explanation for it, for the fact that two men sat stonily in its front seats. They might be about to go to work, mightn’t they?
In fact, Rebus knew damned fine that’s what they were doing. And he had another choice now. He could let them go to work, or he could stop them. It took him another second or two to decide, but finally, with a picture of Samantha’s face in his head, he walked across nonchalantly to the van and, the men still ignoring his existence, thumped hard on the passenger-side window. The passenger looked at him with undisguised enmity, but, seeing that Rebus was undeterred, rolled down the window.
‘Yeah?’
Rebus stuck his ID so far into the man’s face that the plastic coating brushed against his nose.
‘Police,’ he snapped. ‘Now get the fuck out of here. And tell Tommy Watkiss we’ve got his nephew under twenty-four hour watch. Anything happens, we’ll know where to come and who to charge.’ Rebus stood back and looked carefully at the man. ‘Think you can remember all that, or do you want me to write it down?’
The passenger was growling audibly as he rolled the window back up. The driver was already starting the van. As it began to move off, Rebus gave its side a farewell kick. Maybe Kenny would leave and maybe he’d stay. It was up to him. Rebus had given him a chance. Whether the young man took it or not was out of Rebus’s hands.
‘Like Pontius Pilate,’ he mumbled to himself as he made for the main road. Standing by a lamppost, waiting and praying for a black cab to come along, he saw Kenny Watkiss emerge from the flats, a duffel-bag slung across his shoulder, and, looking around him, start to jog towards the far end of the estate. Rebus nodded to himself. ‘That’s my boy,’ he said, as, with protesting brakes, a cab slowed to a halt beside him.
‘You’re in luck, mate,’ said the driver. ‘I’m just starting my shift.’ Rebus clambered in and gave the name of his hotel, then settled back, enjoying the city at this quiet hour. The driver, though, was in practice for the day ahead.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘did you hear about that rumpus yesterday at Trafalgar Square? I was in a queue for an hour and a half. I mean, I’m all for law and order, but there must’ve been another way of going about it, mustn’t there?’
John Rebus shook his head and laughed.
His suitcase sat closed on the bed beside the little-used briefcase and the bag of books. He was squeezing the last few items into his sports bag when there was a soft tapping at his door.
‘Come in.’
She did. She was wearing a solid-foam neck-brace, but grinned it away.
‘Isn’t it stupid? They want me to wear it for the next few days, but I –’ She saw the cases on the bed. ‘You’re not leaving already?’
Rebus nodded. ‘I came here to help with the Wolfman case. The Wolfman case is finished.’
‘But what about –’
He turned to her. ‘What about us?’ he guessed. She lowered her eyes. ‘That’s a good question, Lisa. You lied to me. You weren’t trying to help. You were trying to get your bloody Ph.D.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Me too. I mean, I can understand why you did it, why you think you had to do it. Really I can. But that doesn’t make it any better.’
She straightened her back and nodded. ‘Fair enough then,’ she said. ‘So, Inspector Rebus, if all I was doing was using you, why did I come here straight from the hospital?’
He zipped shut the bag. It was a good question. ‘Because you got found out,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘That was bound to happen eventually. Try again.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh,’ she said, sounding disappointed. ‘I was hoping you could tell me. I’m not really sure myself.’
He turned towards her again and saw that she was smiling. She looked so stupid in the neck-brace that he had to return the smile eventually. And when she came towards him he returned her hug, too.
‘Ouch!’ she said. ‘Not too hard, John.’
So he relaxed his muscles a little, and they kept on hugging. He was actually feeling mellow; the painkillers had seen to that.
‘Anyway,’ he said at last, ‘you weren’t much help.’
She pulled away from him. He was still smiling, but archly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean all that stuff we talked about in the restaurant. All those index cards.’ Rebus recited the list. ‘Thwarted ambition. Victims from a social class above the killer. No confrontation . . .’ He scratched his chin. ‘None of it fits Malcolm Chambers.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. We’ve still got to look at his home life, his background.’ She sounded defiant rather than merely defensive. ‘And I was right about the schizophrenia.’
‘So you’ll still do your project?’
She tried to nod; it wasn’t easy. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of work to be done on Chambers, believe me. There must be clues there somewhere in his past. He must have left something.’
‘Well, let me know what you find out.’
‘John. Before he died, did he say anything?’
Rebus smiled. ‘Nothing important,’ he said. ‘Nothing important.’
After she’d gone, after the promises of return trips and of weekends in Edinburgh, promises of postcards and phone calls, he took his luggage down to reception. George Flight was at the desk. Rebus put his key down next to where Flight was signing his name to several forms.
‘Do you realise how much this hotel costs?’ Flight said, not looking up. ‘Next time you visit, you really will have to bunk at my place.’ Then he glanced towards Rebus. ‘But I suppose you were worth it.’ He finished with the forms and handed them to the receptionist, who checked them before nodding that everything was in order. ‘You know the address to send them to,’ Flight called back as the two men started towards the hotel’s swing-doors.
‘I really must get the lock on the boot fixed,’ Flight said, shutting the car’s back door on Rebus’s luggage. Then: ‘Where to? King’s Cross?’
Rebus nodded. ‘With one slight detour,’ he said.
The detour, in Flight’s words, turned out to be more than slight. They parked across from Rhona’s flat in Gideon Park and Flight pulled on the handbrake.
‘George,’ he said, ‘could you maybe have someone drop in and tell her Kenny’s left London. But stress that he’s okay, that he’s not in trouble. I don’t want him lingering too long in her memory.’
Flight was nodding. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he said. ‘Have you seen him yet?’
‘I went this morning.’
‘And?’
‘And I was just in time. But I reckon he’ll be all right.’
Flight studied the face next to him. ‘I think I believe you,’ he said.
‘Just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Kenny told me one of your men is involved. The baby-faced redneck.’
‘Lamb?’
‘That’s the one. He’s on Tommy Watkiss’s payroll, according to Kenny.’
Flight pursed his lips and was silent for a moment. ‘I think I believe that, too,’ he said at last, very quietly. ‘Don’t worry, John. I’ll deal with it.’
Rebus said nothing. He was still staring out at the windows of Rhona’s flat, willing Sammy to come to one of them and see him. No, not see him, just so that he might see her. But there was no one at home. The ladies were out for the day with Tim or Tony or Graeme or Ben.
And it was none of Rebus’s business anyway.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
So Flight drove him to King’s Cross. Drove him through streets paved with nothing so very different from any other city. Streets ancient and modern, breathing with envy and excitement. And with evil. Not much evil, perhaps. But enough. Evil, after all, was pretty well a constant. He thanked God that it touched so few lives. He thanked God that his friends and family were safe. And he thanked God he was going home.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Flight asked as they idled at yet another set of traffic lights.
‘Nothing,’ said Rebus.
He was still thinking about nothing when he boarded the busy Inter City 125, and sat down with his newspapers and his magazines. As the train was about to move off, someone squeezed into the seat opposite him and deposited four large cans of strong lager on the table. The youth was tall and hard-looking with shorn hair. He glared at Rebus and turned up his personal cassette player. Tscchh-tscchh-tscchh it went, so loud Rebus could almost make out the words. The youth was grasping a ticket denoting Edinburgh as his destination. He put the ticket down and pulled on a ring-pull. Rebus shook his head wearily and smiled. His own personal hell. As the train pulled away, he caught its rhythm and beat that rhythm out silently in his head.
FYTP
FYTP
FYTP
FYTP
FYTP
FYTP
All the way home.
Acknowledgements
Thanks for help with facts, figures, psychopaths and garden paths (viz leading the reader up the . . .) go to the following:
In London: Dr S. Adams, Ms Fiona Campbell, Chris Thomas, Mr Andrew Walker, the officers of Tottenham Police Station
In Newmarket: L. Rodgers
In Edinburgh: Professor J. Curt, Ms Alison Girdwood
In Fife: Mr & Mrs Colin Stevenson
In Glasgow: Alex Blair
In Canada: Mr Tiree Macgregor, Dr D. W. Nichol
In the USA: Dr David Martin, Ms Rebecca Hughes
Suggested further reading:
Elliott Leyton, Hunting Humans (Penguin)
Clive R. Hollin, Psychology and Crime (Routledge)
Professor Keith Simpson, Forty Years of Murder (Grafton)
Martin Fido, Murder Guide to London (Weidenfeld)
R. M. Holmes & J. DeBurger, Serial Murder (Sage)
R. H. C. Bull et al., Psychology for Police Officers (Wiley)
David Canter, ‘To Catch a Rapist’, New Society, 4 March 1988
David Canter, ‘Offender Profiles’, The Psychologist, Vol 2, No 1, January 1989
Discussion points for Tooth & Nail
Rebus believes that the police in London will ‘see through him’; how does he respond?
Consider the narrative devices that Ian Rankin employs to suggest how alien London feels to Rebus.
Both Flight and Rebus listen to their gut feelings as much as they mull over the physical evidence – are they right to do so? They are literally unable to understand each other at first; does this change, and how does Ian Rankin portray their shifting attitudes to one another?
Rebus's relationships with Rhona and Sammy come once more under scrutiny; discuss the ways these have developed from previous books. How does Rebus cope with the fact that Sammy may be sexually active? Does Sammy realise the enormity of what she asks from her father when Kenny disappears?
Rebus has packed a Bible. But later he thinks, ‘Where was the religion for those who did not feel guilty, did not feel shame, did not regret getting angry or getting even, or, better yet, getting more than even? Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God but not in God's religion?’ Does Rebus find any sort of answer to these questions?
Rebus's experiences are portrayed in the past tense, while the sections portraying the killer's interior monologues are in the present tense. What effect does this have?
Rebus gets Lisa Frazer very wrong; is he a victim of his own vanity in getting involved with her?
When Rebus and Lisa Frazer discuss whether policemen are born pessimists or optimists, are any conclusions drawn?
Is the sandwich-dropped-television-and-dog incident buying into the urban myth tradition?
Ian Rankin very much enjoyed reading Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs. Are there any apparent echoes of that type of thriller here?
Rebus has a clearly defined alcoholic blackout – does he attempt to justify this in any way?
Ian Rankin says he learned a valuable lesson while writing this novel, that sex and violence can be suggested without going into ‘graphic and voyeuristic detail’. So how does he deal here with sex and violence?
In a brief cameo Big Ger Cafferty is introduced to the reader for the first time. Why might Ian Rankin have wanted to come back to him in future books?
Discuss whether the clear identification of gender with the Wolfman from the opening line has the effect of alerting the reader or of lulling them into a false sense of security.
STRIP JACK
To the only Jack I’ve ever stripped
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Shaw, Major Barbara
The habit of friendship is matured by constant intercourse.
Libianus, 4th century AD, quoted in Edinburgh,
by Charles McKean
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
1. The Milking Shed
2. Scratching the Surface
3. Treacherous Steps
4. Tips
5. Up the River
6. Highland Games
7. Duthil
8. Spite and Malice
9. Within Range
10. Brothel Creepers
11. Old School Ties
12. Escort Service
13. Hot-Head
Acknowledgements
Discussion Points
INTRODUCTION
Strip Jack was the first of the Rebus novels to be written entirely in the rundown French farmhouse which I’d moved to with my wife in 1990. Our first couple of years there, we put most of our effort into doing the place up: rewiring, putting up ceilings, and trying to cultivate the acre of brambled wilderness around us. The attic became my office. It was accessed by a rickety wooden ladder and a trapdoor. The floor was so badly warped that any pens placed on the desk would roll off with frightening
speed. The decor consisted of bus maps of central Edinburgh, postcards of the city’s monuments, and a list of police regions in Scotland.
Yet little of our French idyll seeped into the book. Quite the opposite: it’s one of my most Scottish works, perhaps in reaction to the previous novel’s London setting. Words such as ‘brae’, ‘keech’, ‘birl’, and ‘haar’ creep in. Whisky is referred to as ‘the cratur’, while ‘ba-heid’ is used as a term of insult. Many of the words, such as ‘shoogly’ and ‘peching’, were favourites of my father: it’s possible I was thinking of him as I wrote. This was my first book since his funeral in 1990. Certainly, he was the only person I’d ever heard say, ‘If shit was gold, ye’d have a tyke at yer erse,’ words I would now give to Rebus’s own father.
To reinforce the book’s Scottishness, I suggested its original jacket design – a lion rampant flying cheekily from the Houses of Parliament. But as well as being very Scottish in its language, Strip Jack also seems to me a less savage and biting book than my three previous efforts in the series. This could be due to a change in family circumstances. My wife Miranda became pregnant in 1991, and our son Jack was born in February 1992. This is why Strip Jack is dedicated to ‘the only Jack I’ve ever stripped’ – something which now makes my teenage son cringe, of course.
The title came from a compendium of card games. I’d been looking for something which would reflect the playfulness of Knots & Crosses and Hide & Seek, and had compiled lists of children’s and adults’ games and pastimes. The card game ‘Strip Jack Naked’ appealed to me: I could give my chief suspect in the book the surname Jack. It seemed, after all, that someone was out to strip him of his standing, his good name – maybe even his life. The three-word title seemed clumsy, however, so I shortened it to two.