10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘No, look, there’s glass on the road.’ They turned to Rebus. ‘Someone’s broken your windshield.’

  Someone had indeed broken his windshield, as he found when he wandered downstairs and into the street. Other neighbours had gathered at doors and windows to check the scene. But most of them were retreating now. There was a chunk of rock on the passenger seat, surrounded by jewels of shattered glass. Nearby a car was reversing lazily out of its parking spot. It stopped in the road beside him. The passenger side window went down.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a rock through the windscreen.’

  ‘What?’ The passenger turned to his driver. ‘Wait here a second.’ He got out to examine the damage. ‘Who the hell would want to do that?’

  ‘How many names do you want?’ Rebus reached into the car to pull out the rock, and felt something collide with the back of his head. It didn’t make sense for a moment, but by then he was being dragged away from the car into the road. He heard a car reverse and stop. He tried to resist, clawing at the unyielding tarmac with his fingernails. Jesus, he was going to pass out. His head was trying to close all channels. Each thud of his heart brought intense new pain to his skull. Someone had opened a window and was shouting something, some warning or complaint. He was alone in the middle of the road now. The passenger had run back to the car and slammed the door shut. Rebus pushed himself onto all fours, a baby resisting gravity for the first time. He blinked, trying to see out of cloudy eyes. He saw headlights, and knew what they were going to do.

  They were going to drive straight over him.

  Sucker punch, and he’d fallen for it. The offer of help from your attacker routine. Older than Arthur’s Seat itself. The car’s engine roared, and the tyres squealed towards him, dragging the body of the car with them. Rebus wondered if he’d get the licence number before he died.

  A hand grabbed the neck of his shirt and hauled, pulling him backwards out of the road. The car caught his legs, tossing one shoe up off his foot and into the air. The car didn’t stop, or even slow down, just kept on up the slope to the top of the road, where it took a right and disappeared.

  ‘Are you okay, John?’

  It was Michael. ‘You saved my life there, Mickey.’ Adrenalin was mixing with pain in Rebus’s body, making him feel sick. He threw up undigested lentil curry onto the pavement.

  ‘Try to stand up,’ said Michael. Rebus tried and failed.

  ‘My legs hurt,’ he said. ‘Christ, do my legs hurt!’

  The X-rays showed no breaks or fractures, not even a bone chipped. ‘Just bad bruising, Inspector,’ said the woman doctor at the Infirmary. ‘You were lucky. A hit like that could have done a lot of damage.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘I suppose I should have known,’ he said. ‘I’ve been due a visit here as a patient. Christ knows I’ve been here enough recently as a visitor.’

  ‘I’ll just fetch you something,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Wait a second, doctor. Are your labs open in the evening?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She left the room. Michael came closer. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I don’t know which hurts worse, my head or my left leg.’

  ‘No great loss to association football.’

  Rebus almost smiled, but grimaced instead. Any movement of his face muscles sent electric spurts through his brain. The doctor came back into the room. ‘Here you are,’ she said. This should help.’

  Rebus had been expecting painkillers. But she was holding a walking stick.

  It was an aluminium walking stick, hollow and therefore lightweight, with a large rubberised grip and adjustable height courtesy of a series of holes in its shaft, into which a locking-pin could be placed. It looked like some strange wind instrument, but Rebus was glad of it as he walked out of the hospital.

  Back at the flat, however, one of the solicitous students said he had something better, and came back from his bedroom with a black wooden cane with a silver and bone handle. Rebus tried it. It was a good height for him.

  ‘I bought it in a junk shop,’ the student said, ‘don’t ask me why.’

  ‘Looks like it should have a concealed sword,’ said Rebus. He tried twisting and pulling at the handle, but nothing happened. ‘So much for that.’

  The police, who had talked to Rebus at the Infirmary, had also spoken to the students.

  ‘This constable,’ related the walking-stick owner, whose name Rebus was sure was Ed, ‘I mean, he was looking at us like we were squatters, and he was asking, was Inspector Rebus in here with you? And we were nodding, yes he was. And the constable couldn’t figure it out at all.’ He started laughing. Even Michael smiled. Someone else made a pot of herbal tea.

  Great, thought Rebus. Another story that would be doing the rounds: Rebus fills his flat with students, then sits around with them of an evening with wine and beer. At the Infirmary, they’d asked if he’d recognised either of the men. The answer was no. It was a mobile profession, after all . . . One of the neighbours had caught the car’s number plate. It was a Ford Escort, stolen only an hour or so before from a car park near the Sheraton on Lothian Road. They would find it abandoned quite soon, probably not far from Marchmont. There wouldn’t be any fingerprints.

  ‘They must’ve been crazy,’ Michael said on the way home, Rebus having got them a lift in the back of a patrol car. ‘Thinking they could pull a stunt like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t a stunt, Michael. Somebody’s desperate. That story in yesterday’s paper has really shaken them up.’ After all, wasn’t that exactly what he’d wanted? He’d sought a reaction, and here it was.

  From the flat he telephoned an emergency windscreen replacement firm. It would cost the earth, but he needed the car first thing in the morning. He just prayed his leg wouldn’t seize up in the night.

  30

  Which of course it did. He was up at five, practising walking across the living room, trying to unstiffen the joints and tendons. He looked at his left leg. A spectacular blood-filled bruise stretched across his calf, wrapping itself around most of the front of the leg too. If the bony front of his leg had taken the impact rather than the fleshy back, there would have been at the very least a clean break. He swallowed two paracetamol – recommended for the pain by the Infirmary doctor – and waited for morning proper to arrive. He’d needed sleep last night, but hadn’t got much. Today he’d be living on his wits. He just hoped those wits would be sharp enough.

  At six-thirty he managed the tenement stairs and hobbled to his car, now boasting a windscreen worth more than the rest of it put together. Traffic wasn’t quite heavy yet coming into town, and non-existent heading out, so the drive itself was mercifully shortened. Pressing down on the clutch hurt all the way up into his groin. He took the coast road out to North Berwick, letting the engine labour rather than changing gears too often. Just the other side of the town, he found the house he was looking for. Well, an estate, actually, and not a housing estate. It must have been about thirty or forty acres, with an uninterrupted view across the mouth of the Forth to the dark lump of Bass Rock. Rebus wasn’t much good at architecture; Georgian, he’d guess. It looked like a lot of the houses in Edinburgh’s New Town, with fluted stone columns either side of the doorway and large sash windows, nine panes of glass to each half.

  Broderick Gibson had come a long way since those days in his garden shed, pottering with homebrew recipes. Rebus parked outside the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened by Mrs Gibson. Rebus introduced himself.

  ‘It’s a bit early, Inspector. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘If I could just speak to your son, please.’

  ‘He’s eating breakfast. Why don’t you wait in the sitting-room and I’ll bring you –’

  ‘It’s all right, mother.’ Aengus Gibson was still chewing and wiping his chin with a cloth napkin. He stood in the dining-room doorway. ‘Come in here, Inspector.’
<
br />   Rebus smiled at the defeated Mrs Gibson as he passed her.

  ‘What’s happened to your leg?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘I thought you might know, sir.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’ Aengus had seated himself at the table. Rebus had been entertaining an image of silver service – tureens and hot-plates, kedgeree or kippers, Wedgewood plates, and tea poured by a manservant. But all he saw was a plain white plate with greasy sausage and eggs on it. Buttered toast on the side and a mug of coffee. There were two newspapers folded beside Aengus – Mairie’s paper and the Financial Times – and enough crumbs around the table to suggest that mother and father had eaten already.

  Mrs Gibson put her head round the door. ‘A cup of coffee, Inspector?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Gibson.’ She smiled and retreated.

  ‘I just thought,’ Rebus said to Aengus, ‘you might have arranged it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Trying to shut me up before I can ask a few questions about the Central Hotel.’

  ‘That again!’ Aengus bit into a piece of toast.

  ‘Yes, that again.’ Rebus sat down at the table, stretching his left leg out in front of him. ‘You see, I know you were there that night, long after Mr Vanderhyde left. I know you were at a poker game set up by two villains called Tam and Eck Robertson. I know someone shot and killed Tam, and I know you ran into the kitchens covered in blood and screaming for all the gas rings to be turned on. That, Mr Gibson, is what I know.’

  Gibson seemed to have trouble swallowing the chewed toast. He gulped coffee, and wiped his mouth again.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you know, I suggest you don’t know very much.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me the rest, sir?’

  They sat in silence. Aengus toyed with the empty mug, Rebus waiting for him to speak. The door burst open.

  ‘Get out of here!’ roared Broderick Gibson. He was wearing trousers and an open-necked shirt, whose cuffs flapped for want of their links. Obviously, his wife had disturbed him halfway through dressing. ‘I could have you arrested right this minute!’ he said. ‘The Chief Constable tells me you’ve been suspended.’

  Rebus stood up slowly, making much of his injured leg. But there was no charity in Broderick Gibson.

  ‘And stay away from us, unless you have the authority! I’ll be talking to my solicitor this morning.’

  Rebus was at the door now. He stopped and looked into Broderick Gibson’s eyes. ‘I suggest you do that, sir. And you might care to tell him where you were the night the Central Hotel burnt down. Your son’s in serious trouble, Mr Gibson. You can’t hide him from the fact forever.’

  ‘Just get out,’ Gibson hissed.

  ‘You haven’t asked about my leg.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, sir, just wondering aloud . . .’

  As Rebus walked back across the large hallway, with its paintings and candelabra and fine curving stairwell, he felt how cold the house was. It wasn’t just its age or the tiled floor either; the place was cold at its heart.

  He arrived in Gorgie just as Siobhan was pouring her first cup of decaf of the day.

  ‘What happened to your leg?’ she asked.

  Rebus pointed with his stick to the man stationed behind the camera.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m relieving Petrie,’ said Brian Holmes.

  ‘I wonder what any of us is doing here,’ said Siobhan. Rebus ignored her.

  ‘You’re off sick.’

  ‘I was bored, I came back early. I spoke to the Chief Super yesterday and he okayed it. So here I am.’ Holmes looked fine but sounded dour. ‘There was an ulterior motive, though,’ he said. ‘I wanted to hear from Siobhan herself the story of Eddie and Pat. It all sounds so . . . incredible. I mean, I cried at that cemetery yesterday, and the bastard I was crying for was sitting at home playing with himself.’

  ‘He’ll be playing with himself in jail soon,’ said Rebus. Then, to Siobhan: ‘Give me some of that coffee.’ He drank two scalding swallows before passing the plastic cup back. ‘Thanks. Any progress?’

  ‘No one’s arrived yet. Not even our Trading Standards companion.’

  ‘I meant those other things.’

  ‘What did happen to your leg?’ Holmes asked. So Rebus told them all about it.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Holmes said, ‘for getting you into this in the first place.’

  ‘That’s right, it is,’ said Rebus, ‘and as penance you can keep your eyes glued to that window.’ He turned to Siobhan. ‘So?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘So I interviewed Ringan and Calder yesterday afternoon. They’ve both been charged. I also checked and Mrs Cafferty doesn’t have a driving licence, not under her married or her maiden name. Bone’s Mercedes belonged to –’

  ‘Big Ger Cafferty.’

  ‘You already knew?’

  ‘I guessed,’ said Rebus. ‘What about the other half of Bone’s business?’

  ‘Owned by a company called Geronimo Holdings.’

  ‘Which in turn is owned by Big Ger?’

  ‘And sweetly, the word Geronimo includes both his and his wife’s names. So what do you make of it?’

  ‘Looks to me like Ger probably won his half of the business in a bet with Bone.’

  ‘Either that,’ added Holmes, ‘or he got it in lieu of protection money Bone couldn’t afford.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rebus. ‘But the bet’s more likely.’

  ‘After all,’ said Siobhan, ‘Bone won the car in a bet with Cafferty. They’ve gambled together in the past.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Well, it all adds up to a tight connection between the two of them. And there’s a tighter connection too, though I can’t prove it just yet.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Siobhan, ‘if the stabbing and the smashed window are to do with protection or gambling, then they’re to do with Cafferty. Which means, since Cafferty owns half the business, that Cafferty smashed his own window.’

  Rebus was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t say they were to do with protection or gambling.’

  ‘And where does the cousin fit in?’ Holmes interrupted.

  ‘My my,’ commented Rebus, ‘you are keen to be back, aren’t you? I’m not sure exactly where Kintoul fits in, but I’m getting a fair idea.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Holmes, ‘here we are.’

  They all watched as a battered purple mini drove up to the taxi offices. When the driver’s door opened, the man mountain squeezed himself out.

  ‘Like toothpaste from the tube,’ said Rebus.

  ‘Christ,’ added Holmes, ‘he must’ve taken out the front seats.’

  ‘All alone today,’ Siobhan noted.

  ‘I’ll bet Cafferty drops in sometime, though,’ said Rebus, ‘just to check. He’s been ripped off badly in the past, he won’t want it happening again.’

  ‘Ripped off badly?’ Siobhan echoed. ‘How do you know that?’

  Rebus winked at her. ‘It’s an odds-on bet,’ he said.

  He had to wait till after lunch for the information he needed. He had it faxed to him at a local newsagent’s. During the long wait in Gorgie, he’d discussed the case with Holmes and Siobhan. They both were of the same mind in one particular: nobody would testify against Cafferty. And of like minds in another: they couldn’t even be sure Cafferty had anything to do with it.

  ‘I’ll find out this afternoon,’ Rebus told them, heading out to pick up the fax.

  He was getting used to walking with the cane, and as long as he kept moving, the leg itself didn’t stiffen up. But he knew the drive to Cardenden wouldn’t do him much good. He considered the train, but ruled it out in short order. He might want to escape from Fife in a hurry; and Scotrail’s timetables just didn’t fit the bill.

  It was just after two-thirty when he pushed open the door of Hutchy’s betting shop. The place was airless, smelling old and undusted. The cigarette butts on the floor were p
robably last week’s. There was a two-thirty-five race, and a few punters lined the walls waiting for the commentary. Rebus didn’t let the look of the place put him off. Nobody wanted to bet in a plush establishment: it meant the bookie was making too much money. These tawdry surroundings were all psychology. You might not be winning, the bookmaker was saying, but look at me, I’m not doing any better.

  Except that he was.

  Rebus noticed a half-familiar face studying the form on one of the newspapers pinned to the wall. But then this town was full of half-familiar faces. He approached the glass-partitioned desk. ‘I’d like a word with Mr Greenwood, please.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  But Rebus was no longer talking to the woman. His attention was on the man who’d looked up from a desk behind her. ‘Mr Greenwood, I’m a police officer. Can we have a word?’

  Greenwood thought about it, then got up, unlocked the door of the booth, and came out. ‘Round here,’ he said, leading Rebus to the rear of the shop. He unlocked another door, letting them into a much cosier and more private office.

  ‘Any trouble?’ he asked immediately, sitting down and reaching into his desk drawer for a bottle of whisky.

  ‘Not for me, sir,’ Rebus said. He sat down opposite Greenwood and stared at him. Christ, it was difficult after all these years. But Midge’s portrait wasn’t so far off the mark. A chess player would be making ready to play a pawn; Rebus decided to sacrifice his queen. ‘So, Eck,’ he said, getting comfortable, ‘how’ve things been?’

  Greenwood looked around. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘I suppose I must be. My name’s not Eck. Do you want to keep playing games? Fine then, let’s play games.’ Greenwood was pouring himself a large whisky. ‘Your name is Eck Robertson. You fled from the Cafferty gang taking with you quite a lot of Big Ger’s money. You also took another man’s identity – Thomas Greenwood. You knew Tommy wouldn’t complain because he was dead. Another one of Big Ger’s incredible disappearing acts. You took his name and his identity, and you set up for yourself in the arse-end of Fife, living out of a suitcase full of money till you got this place in profit.’ Rebus paused. ‘How am I doing?’