10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  On the inside, Pat Calder had done incredible things. (Rebus didn’t doubt that his was the designing and decorating hand.) There were wooden and brass ship’s trunks, black anglepoise lamps, Japanese prints in ornate frames, a dinner table whose candelabra resembled some Jewish icon, and a huge TV/hi-fi centre. But of Elvis there was nary a jot. Rebus, seated in a black leather sofa, nodded towards one of the coffin-sized loudspeakers.

  ‘Neighbours ever complain?’

  ‘All the time,’ admitted Calder. ‘Eddie’s proudest moment was when the guy from four doors down phoned to tell us he couldn’t hear his TV.’

  ‘Considerate, eh?’

  Calder smiled. ‘Eddie’s never been exactly “politic”.’

  ‘Have you known one another long?’

  Calder, lying stretched on the floor with his bum on a beanbag, blew nervous smoke from a black Sobranie cigarette. ‘Two years casually. We moved in together about the time we had the idea for the Heartbreak.’

  ‘What’s he like? I mean, outside the restaurant?’

  ‘Brilliant one minute, a spoilt brat the next.’

  ‘Do you spoil him?’

  ‘I buffer him from the world. At least, I used to.’

  ‘So what was he like when you met?’

  ‘Drinking more than he does now, if you can believe that.’

  ‘Ever tell you why he started?’ Rebus had refused a cigarette, but the smoke was getting to him. Maybe he’d have to change his mind.

  ‘He said he drank to forget. Now you’re going to ask, Forget what? And I’m going to say that he never told me.’

  ‘He never even hinted?’

  ‘I think he told Brian Holmes more than he told me.’

  Jesus, was there a hint of jealousy there? Rebus had a sudden vision of Calder bashing Holmes on the napper . . . and maybe even doing away with Fast Eddie too . . .?

  Calder laughed. ‘I couldn’t hurt him, Inspector. I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘It must be frustrating, though? This genius, you call him, wasting it all for booze. People like that take a lot of looking after.’

  ‘And you’re right, it can become frustrating.’

  ‘Especially when they’re gassed all the time.’

  Calder frowned, peering through the smoke from his nostrils. ‘Why do you say “gassed”?’

  ‘It means drunk.’

  ‘I know it does. So do a lot of other words. It’s just that Eddie used to have these nightmares. About being gassed or gassing people. You know, with real gas, like in the concentration camps.’

  ‘He told you about these dreams?’

  ‘Oh no, but he used to shout out in his sleep. A lot of gays went to the gas chambers, Inspector.’

  ‘You think that’s what he meant?’

  Calder stubbed out the cigarette into a porcelain bedpan beside the fireplace. He got up awkwardly from the floor. ‘Come on, I want to show you something.’

  Rebus had already seen the kitchen and the bathroom, and so realised that the door Calder was leading him towards must be to the only bedroom. He didn’t know quite what to expect.

  ‘I know what you’ve been thinking,’ Calder said, swinging the door wide open. ‘This is all Eddie’s work.’

  And what a work it was. A huge double bed covered with what looked like several zebra-skins. And on the walls, several large paintings of the rhinestone Elvis at work, the face an intentional blur of pink and sheen. Rebus looked up. There was a mirror on the ceiling. He guessed that pretty much any position you took on that bed, you’d be able to watch a white one-piece suit at work with a microphone-hand raised high.

  ‘Whatever turns you on,’ he commented.

  He visited Clarke and Petrie for a couple of hours, just to show willing. Unsurprisingly, Jardine had been replaced by a young man called Madden with a stock of puns not heard since the days of valve radio.

  ‘Madden by name,’ the Trading Standards officer said by way of introduction, ‘mad ’un by nature.’

  Make that steam radio. Rebus began to wonder if it had been such a good idea, phoning Jardine’s boss and swearing exotically at him for twenty minutes.

  ‘I make the jokes around here, son,’ he warned.

  Rebus had spent more exciting afternoons in his life. For example, being taken by his father to watch Cowdenbeath reserves at home to Dundee. He managed to break the monotony only by stepping out to buy buns at a nearby bakery, though this sort of activity was supposed to be verboten. He kept the custard slice for himself, peeling away and discarding the icing. Madden asked if he could have it, and Rebus nodded.

  Siobhan Clarke looked like she’d stepped under a gardyloo bucket. She tried not to show it, and smiled whenever she saw him looking in her direction, but there was definitely something up with her. Rebus couldn’t be bothered asking what. He got the idea it was to do with Brian . . . maybe Brian and Nell. He told her about Bone’s window.

  ‘Make some time,’ he said. ‘Track down Kintoul, if not at home then at the Infirmary. He works in the labs there, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Definitely something up with her.

  As was his prerogative, Rebus eventually made his excuses and left. Back at St Leonard’s, there was a message for him to call Mairie Henderson at work.

  ‘Mairie?’

  ‘Inspector, that didn’t take long.’

  ‘You’re about the only lead I’ve got.’

  ‘It’s nice to feel wanted.’ She had one of those accents that could sound sarcastic without really flexing any muscle. ‘Don’t get too excited, though.’

  ‘Your Chief Sub didn’t remember?’

  ‘Only that it was around August, making it three months after the Central burnt down.’

  ‘Could mean something or nothing.’

  ‘I did my best.’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Mairie.’

  ‘Hold on, don’t hang up!’ Rebus wasn’t about to. ‘He did tell me something. Apparently some snippet that’s stuck with him.’ She paused.

  ‘In your own time, Mairie.’

  ‘This is my time, Inspector.’ She paused again.

  ‘Are you drawing on a fag?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘Since when did you start smoking?’

  ‘It beats chewing the ends off pencils.’

  ‘You’ll stunt your growth.’

  ‘You sound like my dad.’

  Well, that brought him back to earth. Here he’d thought they were . . . what? Chatting away? Chatting one another up? Aye, in your dreams, John Rebus. Now she’d reminded him of the not insignificant age gap between them.

  ‘Are you still there, Inspector?’

  ‘Sorry, my hearing aid slipped out. What did the Chief Sub say?’

  ‘Remember that story about Aengus Gibson entering the wrong flat?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, the woman whose flat he broke into was called Mo Johnson.’

  Rebus smiled. But then the smile faded. ‘That name almost rings a bell.’

  ‘He’s a football player.’

  ‘I know he’s a football player. But a female Mo Johnson, that’s what rings bells.’ But they were faint, too faint.

  ‘Let me know if you come up with anything.’

  ‘I will, Mairie. And Mairie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t stay out too late.’ Rebus terminated the call.

  Mo Johnson. He supposed it must be short for Maureen. Where had he come across that name? He knew how he might check. But if Watson found out, it would mean more trouble. Ach, to hell with Watson anyway. He wasn’t much more than slave to a coffee bean. Rebus went to the computer console and punched in the details, bringing up Aengus Gibson’s record. The anecdote was there, but no charges had ever been pressed. The woman was not mentioned by name, and there was no sign of her address. But, since Gibson was involved, CID had taken an interest. You couldn’t always depend on the lower ranks to hush things up properly.

  And look who
the investigating officer was: DS Jack Morton. Rebus closed the file and got back on the phone. The receiver was still warm.

  ‘You’re in luck, he got back from the pub five minutes ago.’

  ‘Away, ya gobshite,’ Rebus heard Morton say as he grabbed at the receiver. ‘Hello?’ Two minutes later, thanks to what was left of Jack Morton’s memory, Rebus had an address for Mo Johnson.

  A day of contrasts. From bakery to butchery, from The Colonies to Gorgie Road. And now to the edge of Dean Village. Rebus hadn’t been down this way since the Water of Leith drowning. He had forgotten how beautiful it was. Tucked down a steep hill from Dean Bridge, the Village gave a good impression of rural peace. Yet it was a five-minute walk from the West End and Princes Street.

  They were spoiling it, of course. The developers had squeezed their hands around vacant lots and decaying buildings and choked them into submission. The prices asked for the resultant ‘apartments’, prices as steep as Bell’s Brae, boggled Rebus’s mind. Not that Mo Johnson lived in one of the new buildings. No, her flat was a chunk of an older property at the bottom of the brae, with a view of the Water of Leith and Dean Bridge. But she no longer lived there, and the people who did were reluctant to allow Rebus in. They didn’t think they had a new address for her. There had been another owner between her moving out and their moving in. They might still have that owner’s new address, though it would go back a couple of years.

  Did they know when Ms Johnson herself moved out?

  Four years ago, maybe five.

  Which brought Rebus back to the fire at the Central Hotel. Everything he did in this case seemed to bounce straight back to a period five years ago, when something had happened which had changed a lot of people’s lives, and taken away at least one life too. He sat in his car wondering what to do next. He knew what to do, but had been putting it off. If tangling with the Gibsons could earn him minus points, he dreaded to think what he might earn by talking with the only other person he could think of who might be able to help.

  Help? That was a laugh. But Rebus wanted to meet him all the same. Christ, Flower would have a field day if he found out. He’d hire tents and food and drink and invite everyone to the biggest party in town. Right up from Lauderdale to the Chief Constable, they’d be blowing fuses that could have run hydro stations.

  Yes, the more Rebus thought about it, the more he knew it was the right thing to do. The right thing? He had so few openings left, it was the only thing. And looking on the bright side, if he did get caught, at least the celebration would bankrupt Little Weed . . .

  20

  He telephoned first, Morris Cafferty not being a man you just dropped in on.

  ‘Will I need my lawyer?’ Cafferty growled, sounding amused. ‘I’ll answer that for you, Strawman, no I fucking won’t. Because I’ve got something better than a lawyer here, better than a fucking judge in my pocket. I’ve got a dog that’ll rip your oesophagus out if I tell it to lick your chops. Be here at six.’ The phone went dead, leaving Rebus dry-mouthed and persuading himself all over again that this jumped-up bastard didn’t scare him.

  What scared him more was the realisation that someone somewhere in the ranks of the Lothian and Borders Police was probably listening in to Cafferty’s telephone conversations. Rebus felt like he was in a corridor with doors locking behind him all the time. He saw a gas chamber in his mind and shivered, changing the picture.

  Six o’clock wasn’t very far away. And at least in dentists’ waiting rooms they gave you magazines to pass the time.

  Morris Gerald Cafferty lived in a mansion house in the expensive suburb of Duddingston. Duddingston was a ‘suburb’ by dint of having Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags between it and central Edinburgh. Cafferty liked living in Duddingston because it annoyed his neighbours, most of whom were lawyers, doctors and bankers, and also because it wasn’t far from his actual and spiritual birthplace, Craigmillar. Craigmillar was one of the tougher Edinburgh housing schemes. Cafferty grew up there, seeing his first trouble there and in neighbouring Niddrie. He’d led a gang of Craigmillar youths into Niddrie to sort out their rivals. There was a stabbing . . . with an uprooted iron railing. Police discovered that the teenage Cafferty had already been in trouble at school for ‘accidentally’ jamming a ballpoint pen into the corner of a fellow pupil’s eye.

  It was the quiet start to a long career.

  The wrought iron gates at the bottom of the driveway opened automatically as Rebus approached. He drove his car along a well-gritted private road with mature trees either side. You caught a glimpse of the house from the main road, nothing more. But Rebus had been here before; to ask questions, to make an arrest. He knew there was another smaller house behind the main house, linked by a covered walkway. This smaller house had been staff quarters in the days when a city merchant might have lived here. The gravel road forked to the front and back of the main house. A man directed Rebus towards the back: the servants’ entrance. The man was very big with a biker helmet haircut, cut high at the fringe but falling over the ears. Where did Cafferty get them, these throw-backs?

  The man followed him to the back of the house. Rebus knew where to park. There were three spaces, two vacant and one taken up by a Volvo estate. Rebus thought he recognised the Volvo, though it wasn’t Cafferty’s. Cafferty’s collection of cars was kept in the vast garage. He had a Bentley and a cherry-red ’63 T-Bird, neither of which he ever drove. For daily use, there was always the Jag, an XJS-HE. And for weekends there was a dependable Roller which Cafferty had owned for at least fifteen years.

  The man opened Rebus’s door for him, and pointed towards the small house. Rebus got out.

  ‘Vidal Sassoon was booked up then,’ he said.

  ‘Uh?’ The man turned his head right-side towards Rebus.

  ‘Never mind.’ He was about to walk away, but paused. ‘Ever been in a fight with a man called Dougary?’

  ‘Nane i’ your business.’

  Rebus shrugged. The big man closed the car door and stood watching Rebus walk away. So there was no chance to check the tax disc or anything else about the Volvo; nothing to do except memorise the number plate.

  Rebus pulled open the door to the small house and was greeted by a wave of heat and steam. The whole structure had been gutted, so that a swimming pool and gymnasium could be installed. The pool was kidney-shaped, with a small circular pool off it – a Jacuzzi, presumably. Rebus had always hated kidney pools: it was impossible to do laps in them. Not that he was much of a swimmer.

  ‘Strawman! About bastardin’ time!’

  He didn’t see Cafferty at first, though he had no trouble seeing who was standing over him. Cafferty lay on a massage table, head resting on a pile of towels. His back was being kneaded by none other than the Organ Grinder, who just happened to own a Volvo estate. The Organ Grinder sensibly pretended not to know Rebus; and when Cafferty wasn’t looking, Rebus nodded almost imperceptibly his agreement with the pretence.

  Cafferty had spun around on his backside and was now easing himself into a standing position. He tested his back and shoulders. ‘That’s magic,’ he said. He removed the towel from around his loins and padded towards Rebus on bare feet.

  ‘See, Strawman, no concealed weapons.’ His laughter was like an apprentice with a rasp-file.

  Rebus looked around. ‘I don’t see the –’

  But suddenly there it was, pulling itself massively out of the swimming pool. Rebus hadn’t even noticed it in there, retrieving a bone. Not a plastic bone either. The black beast dropped the bone at Cafferty’s feet, sniffed at Rebus’s legs, then shook itself dry onto him.

  ‘Good boy, Kaiser,’ said Cafferty. The parking attendant had joined them in the sticky heat. Rebus nodded nowhere in particular.

  ‘I hope you got planning permission for this.’

  ‘All above board, Strawman. Come on, you’d better get changed.’

  ‘Changed for what?’

  Laughter again. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not stayin
g to dinner. I’m going for a run, and so are you – if you want to talk to me.’

  A run, Jesus! Cafferty turned and walked away towards what looked like a changing cubicle. He slapped the Organ Grinder as he passed him.

  ‘Magic. Same time next week?’

  He was hairily muscular, with a chest a borders farmer would be proud to own. There was flab, of course, but not as much as Rebus would have guessed. There was no doubt: Big Ger had got himself in shape. The backside and upper thighs were pockmarked, but the gut had been tightened. Rebus tried to remember when he’d last seen Cafferty. Probably in court . . .

  Rebus would have enjoyed a quiet word with the Organ Grinder, but now that the parking attendant gorilla was in spying distance, it just wasn’t feasible. You couldn’t be sure how much the one-eared man could hear.

  ‘There’s some stuff here, it should fit.’

  The ‘stuff’ consisted of sweatshirt, running shorts, socks and trainers . . . and a headband. There was no way Rebus was going to wear a headband. But when Cafferty emerged from his cubicle, he was wearing one, along with a white running vest and immaculate white shorts. He started to limber up while Rebus entered the cubicle to change.

  What the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He had imagined a lot of things, but not this. Some things might be painful in life, but this, he had no doubt, was going to be torture.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked when they emerged from the overheated gym into the cool twilit evening. He wasn’t wearing the headband. And he had put the sweatshirt on inside out. The legend across its front had read ‘Kick me if I stop’. He supposed it represented Cafferty’s idea of a joke.

  ‘Sometimes I run to Duddingston Loch, sometimes up to the top of the Seat. You choose.’ Big Ger was bouncing on the spot.

  ‘The loch.’

  ‘Right,’ said Big Ger, and off they set.

  Rebus spent the first few minutes checking that his body could take this sort of thing, which was why he was slow to spot the car following them. It was the Jag, driven by the parking attendant at a steady 0–5 mph.

  ‘Remember the last time you gave evidence against me?’ Big Ger said. As a conversational opening, it had its merits. Rebus merely nodded. They were running side by side, the pavements being all but deserted. He wondered if any undercover officers would be snapping photographs of this. ‘Over in Glasgow, it was.’