10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘We’ve got to keep this away from the papers,’ said Chief Superintendent Watson. ‘For as long as we can.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Lauderdale, while Rebus stayed silent. They were not talking about Gregor Jack, they were discussing a suspect in the Water of Leith drowning. He was in an interview room now with two officers and a tape recorder. He was helping with inquiries. Apparently, he was saying little.

  ‘Could be nothing, after all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was an afternoon smell of strong mints in the room, and perhaps this was why Chief Inspector Lauderdale sounded and looked more starched than ever. His nose twitched whenever Watson wasn’t looking at him. Rebus all of a sudden felt sorry for his Chief Superintendent, in the way that he felt sorry for the Scotland squad whenever it was facing defeat at the hands of third-world part-timers. There but for the grace of complete inability go I . . .

  ‘Just a bit of bragging, perhaps, overheard in a pub. The man was drunk. You know how it is.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  All the same, they had a man in the interview room, a man who had told anyone who’d listen in a packed Leith pub that he had dumped that body under Dean Bridge.

  ‘It wis me! Eh? How ’bout that, eh? Me! Me! I did it. She deserved worse. They all do.’

  And more of the same, all of it reported to the police by a fearful barmaid, nineteen next month and this was her first bar job.

  Deserved worse, she did . . . they all do . . . Only when the police had come into the pub, he’d quietened down, gone all sulky in a corner, standing there with head bent under the weight of a cigarette. The pint glass seemed heavy, too, so that his wrist sagged beneath it, beer dripping down on to his shoes and the wooden floor.

  ‘Now then, sir, what’s all this you’ve been telling these people, eh? Mind telling us about it? Down at the station, eh? We’ve got seats down there. You can have a seat while you tell us all about it . . .’

  He was sitting, but he wasn’t telling. No name, no address, nobody in the pub seemed to know anything about him. Rebus had taken a look at him, as had most of the CID and uniformed men in the building, but the face meant nothing. A sad, weak example of the species. In his late thirties, his hair was already grey and thin, the face lined, bristly with stubble, and the knuckles had grazes and scabs on them.

  ‘How did you get them then? Been in a fight? Hit her a few times before you chucked her in?’

  Nothing. He looked scared, but he was resilient. Their chances of keeping him in were, to put it mildly, not good. He didn’t need a solicitor; he knew he just had to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Been in trouble before, eh? You know the score, don’t you? That’s why you’re keeping quiet. Much good will it do you, pal. Much good.’

  Indeed. The pathologist, Dr Curt, was now being harried. They needed to know: accident, suicide, or murder? They desperately needed to know. But before any news arrived, the man began to talk.

  ‘I was drunk,’ he told them, ‘didn’t know what I was saying. I don’t know what made me say it.’ This was the story he stuck to, repeating it and refining it. They pressed for his name and address. ‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘That’s all there is to it. I’m sober now, and I’d like to go. I’m sorry I said what I did. Can I go now?’

  Nobody at the pub had been keen to press charges, not once the offending body was removed from the premises. Unpaid bouncers, thought Rebus, that’s all we are. Was the man going to walk? Were they going to lose him? Not without a fight.

  ‘We need a name and address before we can let you go.’

  ‘I was drunk. Can I go now, please?’

  ‘Your name!’

  ‘Please, can I go?’

  Curt still wasn’t ready to pronounce. An hour or two. Some results he was waiting for . . .

  ‘Just give us a name, eh? Stop pissing about.’

  ‘My name’s William Glass. I live at 48 Semple Street in Granton.’

  There was silence, then sighs. ‘Check that, will you?’ one officer asked the other. Then: ‘Now that wasn’t so painful, was it, Mr Glass?’

  The other officer grinned, then had to explain why. ‘Painful . . . Glass . . . pane of glass, see?’

  ‘Just do that check, eh?’ said his colleague, rubbing at a headache which, these days, never seemed to leave him.

  ‘They’ve let him go,’ Holmes informed Rebus.

  ‘About time. A wild haggis chase and no mistake.’

  Holmes came into the office and made himself comfortable on the spare chair.

  ‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ said Rebus from his desk, ‘just because I’m the senior officer. Why not take a seat, Sergeant?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Holmes from the chair. ‘I don’t mind if I do. He gave his address as Semple Street, Granton.’

  ‘Off Granton Road?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Holmes looked around. ‘It’s like an oven in here. Can’t you open a window?’

  ‘Jammed shut, and the heating’s –’

  ‘I know, either on full blast or nothing. This place . . .’ Holmes shook his head.

  ‘Nothing a bit of maintenance wouldn’t fix.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Holmes, ‘I’ve never seen you as the sentimental sort . . .’

  ‘Sentimental?’

  ‘About this place. Give me St Leonard’s or Fettes any day.’

  Rebus wrinkled his nose. ‘No character,’ he said.

  ‘Speaking of which, what news of the male member?’

  ‘That joke’s worn as thin as my hair, Brian. Why not part-ex it against a new one?’ Rebus breathed out noisily through his nose and threw down the pen he’d been playing with. ‘What you mean,’ he said, ‘is what news of Mrs Jack, and the answer is none, nada, zero. I’ve put out the description of her car, and all the posh hotels are being checked. But so far, nothing.’

  ‘From which we infer . . .?’

  ‘Same answer: nothing. She could still be off at some Iona spiritual retreat, or shacked up with a Gaelic crofter, or doing the Munros. She could be pissed-off at her hubby, or not know a thing about any of it.’

  ‘And all that kit I found, the sex-shop stock clearance?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Holmes seemed stuck for an answer. ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘And there you’ve put your finger on it, Sergeant. Nothing really. Meantime, I’ve got work enough to be getting on with.’ Rebus laid a solemn hand on the pile of reports and case-notes in front of him. ‘How about you?’

  Holmes was out of his chair now. ‘Oh, I’ve plenty keeping me busy, sir. Please, don’t worry yourself about me.’

  ‘It’s natural for me to worry, Brian. You’re like a son to me.’

  ‘And you’re like a father to me,’ Holmes replied, heading for the door. ‘The fa-ther I get from you, the easier my life seems to be.’

  Rebus screwed a piece of paper into a ball, but the door closed before he had time to take aim. Ach, some days the job could be a laugh. Well, okay, a grin at least. If he forgot all about Gregor Jack, the load would be lighter still. Where would Jack be now? At the House of Commons? Sitting on some committee? Being fêted by businesses and lobbyists? It all seemed a long way from Rebus’s office, and from his life.

  William Glass . . . no, the name meant nothing to him. Bill Glass, Billy Glass, Willie Glass, Will Glass . . . nothing. Living at 48 Semple Street. Hold on . . . Semple Street in Granton. He went to his filing cabinet and pulled out the file. Yes, just last month. Stabbing incident in Granton. A serious wounding, but not fatal. The victim had lived at 48 Semple Street. Rebus remembered it now. Bedsits carved from a house, all of them rented. A rented bedsit. If William Glass was living at 48 Semple Street, then he was staying in a rented bedsit. Rebus reached for his telephone and called Lauderdale, to whom he told his story.

  ‘Well, someone there vouched for him when the patrol car dropped him off. The
officers were told to be sure he did live there, and apparently he does. Name’s William Glass, like he said.’

  ‘Yes, but those bedsits are short-let. Tenants get their social security cheque, hand half the cash over to the landlord, maybe more than half for all I know. What I’m saying is, it’s not much of an address. He could disappear from there any time he liked.’

  ‘Why so suspicious all of a sudden, John? I thought you were of the opinion we were wasting our time in the first place?’

  Oh, but Lauderdale always knew the question to ask, the question to which, as a rule, Rebus did not have an answer.

  ‘True, sir,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d let you know.’

  ‘I appreciate it, John. It’s nice to be kept informed.’ There was a slight pause there, an invitation for Rebus to join Lauderdale’s ‘camp’. And after the pause: ‘Any progress on Professor Costello’s books?’

  Rebus sighed. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Oh well. Mustn’t keep you chatting then. Bye, John.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir.’ Rebus wiped his palm across his forehead. It was hot in here, like a dress rehearsal for the Calvinist hell.

  The fan had been installed and turned on, and an hour or so later Doctor Curt provided the shit to toss at it.

  ‘Murder, yes,’ he said. ‘Almost definitely murder. I’ve discussed my findings with my colleagues, and we’re of a mind.’ And he went on to explain about froth and unclenched hands and diatoms. About problems of differentiating immersion from drowning. The deceased, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, had imbibed a good deal of drink prior to death. But she had been dead before she’d hit the water, and the cause of death was probably a blow to the back of the head, carried out by a right-handed attacker (the blow itself having come from the right of the head).

  But who was she? They had a photograph of the dead woman’s face, but it wasn’t exactly breakfast-time viewing. And though her description and a description of her clothes had been given out, nobody had been able to identify her. No identification on the body, no handbag or purse, nothing in her pockets . . .

  ‘Better search the area again, see if we can come up with a bag or a purse. She must have had something.’

  ‘And search the river, sir?’

  ‘A bit late for that probably, but yes, better give it a shot.’

  ‘The alcohol,’ Dr Curt was telling anyone who would listen, had ‘muddied the water, you see’, after which he smiled his slow smile. ‘And the fish had eaten their fill: fish fingers, fish feet, fish stomach . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir. I see, sir.’

  All of which Rebus mercifully avoided. He had once made the mistake of making a sicker pun than Dr Curt, and as a result found himself in the doctor’s favour. One day, he knew, Holmes would make a better pun yet, and then Curt would have himself a new pupil and confidant . . . So, skirting around the doctor, Rebus made for Lauderdale’s office. Lauderdale himself was just getting off the phone. When he saw Rebus, he turned stony. Rebus could guess why.

  ‘I just sent someone round to Glass’s bedsit.’

  ‘And he’s gone,’ Rebus added.

  ‘Yes,’ Lauderdale said, his hand still on the receiver. ‘Leaving little or nothing behind him.’

  ‘Should be easy enough to pick him up, sir.’

  ‘Get on to it, will you, John? He must still be in the city. What is it? – an hour since he left here. Probably somewhere in the Granton area.’

  ‘We’ll get out there right away, sir,’ said Rebus, glad of this excuse for a little action.

  ‘Oh, and John . . .?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘No need to look so smug, okay?’

  So the day filled itself, evening coming upon him with surprising speed. But still they had not found William Glass. Not in Granton, Pilmuir, Newhaven, Inverleith, Canonmills, Leith, Davidson’s Mains . . . Not on buses or in pubs, not by the shore, not in the Botanic Gardens, not in chip shops or wandering on playing fields. They had found no friends, no family, just bare details so far from the DHSS. And at the end of it all, Rebus knew, the man might be innocent. But for now he was their straw, to be clutched at. Not the most tasteful metaphor under the circumstances, but then, as Dr Curt himself might have said, it was all water under the bridge so far as the victim was concerned.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Rebus reported to Lauderdale at the end of play. It had been one of those days. Nothing was the sum total of Rebus’s endeavours, yet he felt weary, bone and brain weary. So that he turned down Holmes’ kindly offer of a drink, and didn’t even debate over his destination. He headed for Oxford Terrace and the ministrations of Dr Patience Aitken, not forgetting Lucky the cat, the wolf-whistling budgies, the tropical fish, and the tame hedgehog he’d yet to see.

  Rebus telephoned Gregor Jack’s home first thing Wednesday morning. Jack sounded tired, having spent yesterday in Parliament and the evening at some ‘grotesque function, and you can quote me on that’. There was a new and altogether fake heartiness about him, occasioned, Rebus didn’t doubt, by the shared knowledge of the contents of that dustbin.

  Well, Rebus was tired, too. The real difference between them was a question of pay scales . . .

  ‘Have you heard anything from your wife yet, Mr Jack?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  There was that word again. Nothing.

  ‘What about you, Inspector? Any news?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, no news is better than bad news, so they say. Speaking of which, I read this morning that that poor woman at Dean Bridge was murder.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Puts my own troubles into perspective, doesn’t it? Mind you, there’s a constituency meeting this morning, so my troubles may just be starting. Let me know, won’t you? If you hear anything, I mean.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Jack.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir.’

  All very formal and correct, as their relationship had to be. Not even room for a ‘Good luck with the meeting’. He knew what the meeting would be about. People didn’t like it when their MP got himself into a scandal. There would be questions. There would need to be answers . . .

  Rebus opened his desk drawer and lifted out the list of Elizabeth Jack’s friends, her ‘circle’. Jamie Kilpatrick the antique dealer (and apparent black sheep of his titled family); the Hon. Matilda Merriman, notorious for her alleged night of non-stop rogering with a one-time cabinet member; Julian Kaymer, some sort of artist; Martin Inman, professional landowner; Louise Patterson-Scott, separated wife of the retail millionaire . . .

  The ‘names’ just kept on coming, most of them, as Jack himself had put it while making out the list, ‘seasoned dissolutes and hangers-on’. Mainly old money, as Chris Kemp had said, and a long way away from Gregor Jack’s own ‘pack’. But there was one curio among them, one seeming exception. Even Rebus had recognized it as Gregor Jack scratched it on to the list.

  ‘What? The Barney Byars? The original dirty trucker?’

  ‘The haulier, yes.’

  ‘A bit out of place in that sort of company, isn’t he?’

  Jack had owned up. ‘Actually, Barney’s an old school-pal of mine. But as time’s gone on, he’s grown friendlier with Liz. It happens sometimes.’

  ‘Still, somehow I can’t see him fitting in with that lot –’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Inspector Rebus. Believe me, you would be surprised.’ Jack gave each word equal weight, leaving Rebus in no doubt that he meant what he said. Still . . . Byars was another fly Fifer, another famous son. While at school, he’d made his name as a hitchhiker, often claiming he’d spent the weekend in London without paying a penny to get there. After school, he made the news again by hitching his way across France, Italy, Germany, Spain. He’d fallen in love with the lorries themselves, with the whole business of them, so he’d saved, got his HGV licence, bought himself a lorry . . . and now was the largest independent haulier that Rebus could
think of. Even on last year’s trip to London, Rebus had been confronted by a Byars Haulage artic trying to steer its way through Piccadilly Circus.

  Well, it was Rebus’s job to ask if anyone had seen hide or hair of Liz Jack. He’d gladly let others do the hard work with the likes of Jamie Kilpatrick and the grim-sounding Julian Kaymer; but he was keeping Barney Byars for himself. Another week or two of this, he thought, and I’ll have to buy an autograph book.

  As it happened, Byars was in Edinburgh, ‘drumming up custom’, as the girl in his office put it. Rebus gave her his telephone number, and an hour later Byars himself called back. He would be busy all afternoon, and he’d to go to dinner that evening ‘with a few fat bastards’, but he could see Rebus for a drink at six if that was convenient. Rebus wondered which luxury hotel would be the base for their drink, and was stunned, perhaps even disappointed, when Byars named the Sutherland Bar, one of Rebus’s own watering holes.

  ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Six o’clock.’

  Which meant that the day stretched ahead of him. There was the Case of the Lifted Literature, of course. Well, he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for a result there. They would turn up or they would not. His bet would be that by now they’d be on the other side of the Atlantic. Then there was William Glass, suspect in a murder inquiry, somewhere out there in a back close or a cobbled side street. Well, he’d turn up come giro day. If, that is, he was more stupid than so far he’d proved to be. No, maybe he was full of cunning. In which case he wouldn’t go near a DHSS office or back to his digs. In which case he would have to get money from somewhere.

  So – go talk to the tramps, the city’s dispossessed. Glass would steal, or else he would resort to begging. And where he begged, there would be others begging, too. Put his description about, maybe with a tenner as a reward, and let others do your work for you. Yes, it was definitely worth mentioning to Lauderdale. Except that Rebus didn’t want to do the Chief Inspector too many good turns, otherwise Lauderdale would think he was currying favour.

  ‘I’d rather curry an alsatian.’ he said to himself.

  With a nice sense of timing, Brian Holmes came into the office carrying a white paper bag and a polystyrene beaker.