by Ian Rankin
We deserved a break.
It came – of sorts – in the shape of that letter, telling me I’d won the Chandler-Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction. The reward was a chunk of money (courtesy of Raymond Chandler’s estate), with the stipulation that it be spent during the course of a six-month stay in the United States. This was fine with me. I showed my wife Miranda the letter, and she showed me a little strip of card and asked me if I thought the tip was a blueish sort of colour. I said I thought it was, and she said she thought she was pregnant. And so it came to pass that my short-lived dream of a drug-and-drink-fuelled orgy of classic car-driving across America was replaced with something more wholesome. In May 1992, with Jack three months old (the minimum age at which British Airways would carry him), we set out for Seattle. We had friends there, and they gave us time (and space) to get acclimatised. Eventually, with the purchase of a 1969 VW camper van, we were ready for a drive which would last for the next five months and put another 15,000 miles on the VW’s already well-worn clock.
It was as I drove through the USA (and bits of Canada), that I started thinking of my next Rebus novel. The Black Book was the result. In it, there’s an Elvis-themed restaurant, situated near Edinburgh’s Haymarket Station. I would find the real thing, however, in a New Orleans backstreet. That place was a dive, but I liked the idea of it, and had a lot of fun thinking up menu items such as the Love Me Tenderloin. I also had the opportunity to do a lot of thinking about the series. I was sure in my mind now that it was a series, and there were changes I wanted to make. At the end of the previous Rebus novel, Strip Jack, I had burned down the fictitious police station where my hero had been based since book one. In The Black Book, I moved him to a real-life station on St Leonard’s Street. I also, for the first time, mentioned where he lived – a real street – and took him to the site of the authentic Edinburgh mortuary.
I had also learned lessons in economy. If there was a need for a certain character type in the story, and such a character had been used in one of the previous books, then why not bring them back to life, rather than go to the trouble of inventing some brand-new personality? So it is that people like Matthew Vanderhyde and Jack Morton come back into Rebus’s life. Rebus’s brother Michael reappears, sleeping at Rebus’s flat while Rebus himself has moved in with Dr Patience Aitken. However, I also had room for a new character, a foil for Rebus: Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke. Rebus already had a sidekick of sorts in the shape of Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes, and Siobhan entered the book as just another of Rebus’s colleagues, and someone who might work well beside Holmes. By story’s end, however, and by sheer force of character, she had usurped Holmes. I had found Rebus’s perfect working partner: someone who respected him but could still be infuriated by his reluctance to stick to the rules; someone confident enough in their own abilities to be able to give as good as they got. It was not in Siobhan’s nature to remain ‘just another colleague’; she seemed to have other ideas entirely.
Another, different kind of foil for Rebus had already announced his readiness in a previous book. Morris Gerald Cafferty – Big Ger – was Edinburgh’s premier gangster. Having existed for the length of a cameo in Tooth & Nail, Cafferty was to emerge in The Black Book as a fully formed presence, the epitome of moral and spiritual corruption. He may not enter proceedings until halfway through, but the effect is chilling. What I find most intriguing about Cafferty is the ambiguity he brings with him. He is very like Rebus in some ways, something he can acknowledge but Rebus never will. Both men are ageing fast, finding the changing landscape unsympathetic. They remind me of Cain and Abel, or two sides of the same coin.
Or Jekyll and Hyde.
In previous books, I had made copious use of Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark masterpiece, going so far as to use Hyde’s surname as a pun in the title of my novel Hide & Seek. However, it seems to me now that The Black Book owes a greater debt to another Scots gothic chiller: James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner. In that book, an innocent is cajoled and seduced and psychologically cudgelled into committing a murder. Is his tormentor the Devil, or a cruel and devious psychopath? Maybe the malevolent voice is his own, the ravings of a man possessed. The issue is never settled: it’s left to the reader to decide.
I’ll leave readers of The Black Book to decide how closely I follow my predecessor’s course.
One last thing: you need to know that ‘lum’ is a Scottish word for a chimney. It’ll help you get one of my favourite bad puns in the series . . .
April 2005
‘To the wicked, all things are wicked; but to the just, all things are just and right.’
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Prologue
There were two of them in the van that early morning, lights on to combat the haar which blew in from the North Sea. It was thick and white like smoke. They drove carefully, being under strict instructions.
‘Why does it have to be us?’ said the driver, stifling a yawn. ‘What’s wrong with the other two?’
The passenger was much larger than his companion. Though in his forties, he kept his hair long, cut in the shape of a German military helmet. He kept pulling at the hair on the left side of his head, straightening it out. At the moment, however, he was gripping the sides of his seat. He didn’t like the way the driver screwed shut his eyes for the duration of each too-frequent yawn. The passenger was not a conversationalist, but maybe talk would keep the driver awake.
‘It’s just temporary,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s not as if it’s a daily chore.’
‘Thank God for that.’ The driver shut his eyes again and yawned. The van glided in towards the grass verge.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ asked the passenger. Then he smiled. ‘You could always kip in the back.’
‘Very funny. That’s another thing, Jimmy, the stink!’
‘Meat always smells after a while.’
‘Got an answer for everything, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we nearly there?’
‘I thought you knew the way.’
‘On the main roads I do. But with this mist.’
‘If we’re hugging the coast it can’t be far.’ The passenger was also thinking: if we’re hugging the coast, then two wheels past the verge and we’re over a cliff face. It wasn’t just this that made him nervous. They’d never used the east coast before, but there was too much attention on the west coast now. So it was an untried run, and that made him nervous.
‘Here’s a road sign.’ They braked to peer through the haar. ‘Next right.’ The driver jolted forwards again. He signalled and pulled in through a low iron gate which was padlocked open. ‘What if it had been locked?’ he offered.
‘I’ve got cutters in the back.’
‘A bloody answer for everything.’
They drove into a small gravelled car park. Though they could not see them, there were wooden tables and benches to one side, where Sunday families could picnic and do battle with the midges. The spot was popular for its view, an uninterrupted spread of sea and sky. When they opened their doors, they could smell and hear the sea. Gulls were already shrieking overhead.
‘Must be later than we thought if the birds are up.’ They readied themselves for opening the back of the van, then did so. The smell really was foul. Even the stoical passenger wrinkled his nose and tried hard not to breathe.
‘Quicker the better,’ he said in a rush. The body had been placed in two thick plastic fertiliser sacks, one pulled over the feet and one over the head, so that they overlapped in the middle. Tape and string had been used to join them. Inside the bags were also a number of breeze blocks, making for a heavy and awkward load. They carried the grotesque parcel low, brushing the wet grass. Their shoes were squelching by the time they passed the sign warning about the cliff face ahead. Even more difficult was the climb over the fence, though it was rickety enough to start with.
‘Wouldn’t stop a
bloody kid,’ the driver commented. He was peching, the saliva like glue in his mouth.
‘Ca’ canny,’ said the passenger. They shuffled forwards two inches at a time, until they could all too clearly make out the edge. There was no more land after that, just a vertical fall to the agitated sea. ‘Right,’ he said. Without ceremony, they heaved the thing out into space, glad immediately to be rid of it. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Man, but that air smells good.’ The driver reached into his pocket for a quarter-bottle of whisky. They were halfway back to the van when they heard a car on the road, and the crunch of tyres on gravel.
‘Aw, hell’s bells.’
The headlights caught them as they reached the van.
‘The fuckin’ polis!’ choked the driver.
‘Keep the heid,’ warned the passenger. His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned ahead of him. They heard a handbrake being engaged, and the car door opened. A uniformed officer appeared. He was carrying a torch. The headlights and engine had been left on. There was no one else in the car.
The passenger knew the score. This wasn’t a set-up. Probably the copper came here towards the end of his night shift. There’d be a flask or a blanket in the car. Coffee or a snooze before signing off for the day.
‘Morning,’ the uniform said. He wasn’t young, and he wasn’t used to trouble. A Saturday night punch-up maybe, or disputes between neighbouring farmers. It had been another long boring night for him, another night nearer his pension.
‘Morning,’ the passenger said. He knew they could bluff this one, if the driver stayed calm. But then he thought, I’m the conspicuous one.
‘A right pea-souper, eh?’ said the policeman.
The passenger nodded.
‘That’s why we stopped,’ explained the driver. ‘Thought we’d wait it out.’
‘Very sensible.’
The driver watched as the passenger turned to the van and started inspecting its rear driver-side tyre, giving it a kick. He then walked to the rear passenger-side and did the same, before getting down on his knees to peer beneath the vehicle. The policeman watched the performance too.
‘Got a bit of trouble?’
‘Not really,’ the driver said nervously. ‘But it’s best to be safe.’
‘I see you’ve come a ways.’
The driver nodded. ‘Off up to Dundee.’
The policeman frowned. ‘From Edinburgh? Why didn’t you just stick to the motorway or the A914?’
The driver thought quickly. ‘We’ve a drop-off in Tayport first.’
‘Even so,’ the policeman started. The driver watched as the passenger rose from his inspection, now sited behind the policeman. He was holding a rock in his hand. The driver kept his eyes glued to the policeman’s as the rock rose, then fell. The monologue finished mid-sentence as the body slumped to the ground.
‘That’s just beautiful.’
‘What else could we do?’ The passenger was already making for his door. ‘Come on, vamoose!’
‘Aye,’ said the driver, ‘another minute and he’d have spotted your . . . er . . .’
The passenger glowered at him. ‘What you mean is, another minute and he’d’ve smelt the booze on your breath.’ He didn’t stop glowering until the driver shrugged his agreement.
They turned the van and drove out of the car park. The gulls were still noisy in the distance. The police car’s engine was turning over. The headlights picked out the prone unconscious figure. But the torch had broken in the fall.
1
It all happened because John Rebus was in his favourite massage parlour reading the Bible.
It all happened because a man walked in through the door in the mistaken belief that any massage parlour sited so close to a brewery and half a dozen good pubs had to be catering to Friday night pay packets and anytime drunks; and therefore had to be bent as a paperclip.
But the Organ Grinder, God-fearing tenant of the setup, ran a clean shop, a place where tired muscles were beaten mellow. Rebus was tired: tired of arguments with Patience Aitken, tired of the fact that his brother had turned up seeking shelter in a flat filled to the gunwales with students, and most of all tired of his job.
It had been that kind of week.
On the Monday evening, he’d had a call from his Arden Street flat. The students he’d rented to had Patience’s number and knew they could reach him there, but this was the first time they’d ever had reason. The reason was Michael Rebus.
‘Hello, John.’
Rebus recognised the voice at once. ‘Mickey?’
‘How are you, John?’
‘Christ, Mickey. Where are you? No, scratch that, I know where you are. I mean –’ Michael was laughing softly. ‘It’s just I heard you’d gone south.’
‘Didn’t work out.’ His voice dropped. ‘Thing is, John, can we talk? I’ve been dreading this, but I really need to talk to you.’
‘Okay.’
‘Shall I come round there?’
Rebus thought quickly. Patience was picking up her two nieces from Waverley Station, but all the same . . . ‘No, stay where you are. I’ll come over. The students are a good lot, maybe they’ll fix you a cup of tea or a joint while you’re waiting.’
There was silence on the line, then Michael’s voice: ‘I could have done without that.’ The line went dead.
Michael Rebus had served three years of a five-year sentence for drug dealing. During that time, John Rebus had visited his brother fewer than half a dozen times. He’d felt relief more than anything when, upon release, Michael had taken a bus to London. That was two years ago, and the brothers had not exchanged a word since. But now Michael was back, bringing with him bad memories of a period in John Rebus’s life he’d rather not remember.
The Arden Street flat was suspiciously tidy when he arrived. Only two of the student tenants were around, the couple who slept in what had been Rebus’s bedroom. He talked to them in the hallway. They were just going out to the pub, but handed over to him another letter from the Inland Revenue. Really, Rebus would have liked them to stay. When they left, there was silence in the flat. Rebus knew that Michael would be in the living room and he was, crouched in front of the stereo and flipping through stacks of records.
‘Look at this lot,’ Michael said, his back still to Rebus. ‘The Beatles and the Stones, same stuff you used to listen to. Remember how you drove dad daft? What was that record player again . . .?’
‘A Dansette.’
‘That’s it. Dad got it saving cigarette coupons.’ Michael stood up and turned towards his brother. ‘Hello, John.’
‘Hello, Michael.’
They didn’t hug or shake hands. They just sat down, Rebus on the chair, Michael on the sofa.
‘This place has changed,’ Michael said.
‘I had to buy a few sticks of furniture before I could rent it out.’ Already Rebus had noticed a few things – cigarette burns on the carpet, posters (against his explicit instructions) sellotaped to the wallpaper. He opened the taxman’s letter.
‘You should have seen them leap into action when I told them you were coming round. Hoovering and washing dishes. Who says students are lazy?’
‘They’re okay.’
‘So when did this all happen?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘They told me you’re living with a doctor.’
‘Her name’s Patience.’
Michael nodded. He looked pale and ill. Rebus tried not to be interested, but he was. The letter from the tax office hinted strongly that they knew he was renting his flat, and didn’t he want to declare the income? The back of his head was tingling. It did that when he was fractious, ever since it had been burned in the fire. The doctors said there was nothing he or they could do about it.
Except, of course, not get fractious.
He stuffed the letter into his pocket. ‘What do you want, Mickey?’
‘Bottom line, John, I need a place to stay. Just for a week or two, till I can get on m
y feet.’ Rebus stared stonily at the posters on the walls as Michael ran on. He wanted to find work . . . money was tight . . . he’d take any job . . . he just needed a chance.
‘That’s all, John, just one chance.’
Rebus was thinking. Patience had room in her flat, of course. There was space enough there even with the nieces staying. But no way was Rebus going to take his brother back to Oxford Terrace. Things weren’t going that well as it was. His late hours and her late hours, his exhaustion and hers, his job involvement and hers. Rebus couldn’t see Michael improving things. He thought: I am not my brother’s keeper. But all the same.
‘We might squeeze you into the box room. I’d have to talk to the students about it.’ He couldn’t see them saying no, but it seemed polite to ask. How could they say no? He was their landlord and flats were hard to find. Especially good flats, especially in Marchmont.
‘That would be great.’ Michael sounded relieved. He got up from the sofa and walked over to the door of the box room. This was a large ventilated cupboard off the living room. Just big enough for a single bed and a chest of drawers, if you took all the boxes and the rubbish out of it.
‘We could probably store all that stuff in the cellar,’ said Rebus, standing just behind his brother.
‘John,’ said Michael, ‘the way I feel, I’d be happy enough sleeping in the cellar myself.’ And when he turned towards his brother, there were tears in Michael Rebus’s eyes.