10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘I suppose not. All right then.’ Kilpatrick’s hands were ready for prayer. ‘John, we’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Also, sir,’ Rebus added, just pushing his luck a bit, ‘we might do some digging into the original Sword and Shield. If the name’s been revived, it wasn’t just plucked out of the air.’

  ‘Fair point, John. I’ll put Blackwood and Ormiston onto it.’

  Blackwood and Ormiston: they’d thank him for this, they’d bring him flowers and chocolates.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Rebus.

  11

  Ever since the riot, Father Leary had been trying to contact Rebus, leaving message after message at St Leonard’s. So when he got to St Leonard’s, Rebus relented and called the priest.

  ‘It hasn’t gone too well, father,’ he said gamely.

  ‘Then it’s God’s will.’

  For a second, Rebus heard it as God swill. He stuck in his own apostrophe and said, ‘I knew you’d say that.’ He was watching Siobhan Clarke striding towards him. She had her thumbs up and a big grin spread across her face.

  ‘Got to go, father. Say one for me.’

  ‘Don’t I always?’

  Rebus put down the receiver. ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘Cafferty,’ she said, throwing the file onto his desk. ‘Buried way back.’ She produced a sheet of paper and handed it to him. Rebus read through it quickly.

  Yes, buried, because it was only a suspicion, one of hundreds that the police had been unable to prove over the course of Cafferty’s career.

  ‘Handling dirty money,’ he said.

  ‘For the Ulster Volunteer Force.’

  Cafferty had formed an unholy alliance with a Glasgow villain called Jinky Johnson, and between them they’d offered a service, turning dirty money into clean at the behest of the UVF. Then Johnson disappeared. Rumour had it he’d either fled with the UVF’s cash, or else he’d been skimming a bit and they’d found out and done away with him. Whatever, Cafferty broke his connection.

  ‘What do you think?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘It ties Cafferty to the Protestant paramilitaries.’

  ‘And if they thought he knew about Johnson, it’d mean there was no love lost.’

  But Rebus had doubts about the time scale. ‘They wouldn’t wait ten years for revenge. Then again, Cafferty did know what SaS stood for. He’s heard of it.’

  ‘A new terrorist group?’

  ‘I think so, definitely. And they’re here in Edinburgh.’ He looked up at Clarke. ‘And if we’re not careful, Cafferty’s men are going to get to them first.’ Then he smiled.

  ‘You don’t sound overly concerned.’

  ‘I’m so bothered by it all, I think I’ll buy you a drink.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Siobhan Clarke.

  As he drove home, he could smell the cigarettes and booze on his clothes. More ammo for Patience. Christ, there were those videos to take back too. She wouldn’t do it, it was up to him. There’d be extra to pay, and he hadn’t even watched the bloody things yet.

  To defer the inevitable, he stopped at a pub. They didn’t come much smaller than the Oxford Bar, but the Ox managed to be cosy too. Most nights there was a party atmosphere, or at the very least some entertaining patter. And there were quarter gills too, of course. He drank just the one, drove the rest of the way to Patience’s, and parked in his usual spot near the sports Merc. Someone on Queensferry Road was trying to sing Tie a Yellow Ribbon. Overhead, the streetlighting’s orange glow picked out the top of the tenements, their chimney pots bristling. The warm air smelt faintly of breweries.

  ‘Rebus?’

  It wasn’t dark yet, not quite. Rebus had seen the man waiting across the road. Now the man was approaching, hands deep in jacket pockets. Rebus tensed. The man saw the change and brought his hands out to show he was unarmed.

  ‘Just a word,’ the man said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Mr Cafferty’s wondering how things are going.’

  Rebus studied the man more closely. He looked like a weasel with misshapen teeth, his mouth constantly open in something that was either a sneer or a medical problem. He breathed in and out through his mouth in a series of small gasps. There was a smell from him that Rebus didn’t want to place.

  ‘You want a trip down the station, pal?’

  The man grinned, showing his teeth again. Close up, Rebus saw that they were stained so brown from nicotine they might have been made of wood.

  ‘What are the charges?’ the weasel said.

  Rebus looked him up and down. ‘Offence against public decency for a start. They should have kept you in your cage, right at the back of the pet shop.’

  ‘He said you had a way with words.’

  ‘Not just with words.’ Rebus started to cross the road to Patience’s flat. The man followed, so close he might have been on a leash.

  ‘I’m trying to be pleasant,’ the weasel said.

  ‘Tell the charm school to give you a refund.’

  ‘He said you’d be difficult.’

  Rebus turned on the man. ‘Difficult? You don’t know just how difficult I can get if I really try. If I see you here again, you’d better be ready to square off.’

  The man narrowed his eyes. ‘That’d suit me fine. I’ll be sure to mention your co-operation to Mr Cafferty.’

  ‘Do that.’ Rebus started down the steps to the garden flat. The weasel leaned down over the rails.

  ‘Nice flat.’ Rebus stopped with his key in the lock. He looked up at the man. ‘Shame if anything happened to it.’

  By the time Rebus ran back up the steps, the weasel had disappeared.

  12

  ‘Have you heard from your brother?’

  It was next morning, and Rebus was at Fettes, talking with Ken Smylie.

  ‘He doesn’t phone in that often.’

  Rebus was trying to turn Smylie into someone he could trust. Looking around him, he didn’t see too many potential allies. Blackwood and Ormiston were giving him their double-act filthy look, from which he deduced two things. One, they’d been assigned to look into what, if anything, remained of the original Sword and Shield.

  Two, they knew whose idea the job had been.

  Rebus, pleased at their glower, decided he wouldn’t bother mentioning that Matthew Vanderhyde was looking into Sword and Shield too. Why give them shortcuts when they’d have had him run the marathon?

  Smylie didn’t seem in the mood for conversation, but Rebus persisted. ‘Have you talked to Billy Cunningham’s flatmate?’

  ‘She kept going on about his motorbike and what was she supposed to do with it?’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Smylie shrugged. ‘Unless I want to buy a stripped down Honda.’

  ‘Careful, Smylie, I think maybe you’ve caught something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A sense of humour.’

  As Rebus drove to St Leonard’s, he rubbed at his jaw and chin, enjoying the feel of the bristles under his fingertips. He was remembering the very different feel of the AK 47, and thinking of sectarianism. Scotland had enough problems without getting involved in Ireland’s. They were like Siamese twins who’d refused the operation to separate them. Only one twin had been forced into a marriage with England, and the other was hooked on self-mutilation. They didn’t need politicians to sort things out; they needed a psychiatrist.

  The marching season, the season of the Protestant, was over for another year, give or take the occasional small fringe procession. Now it was the season of the International Festival, a festive time, a time to forget the small and insecure country you lived in. He thought again of the poor sods who’d decided to put on a show in the Gar-B.

  St Leonard’s looked to be joining in the fun. They’d even arranged for a pantomime. Someone had owned up to the Billy Cunningham murder. His name was Unstable from Dunstable.

  The police called him that for two reasons. One, he was mentally unstable. Two, he claimed he came from Dunstable. He wa
s a local tramp, but not without resources. With needle and thread he had fashioned for himself a coat constructed from bar towels, and so was a walking sandwich-board for the products which kept him alive and kept him dying.

  There were a lot of people out there like him, shiftless until someone (usually the police) shifted them. They’d been ‘returned to the community’ – a euphemism for dumped – thanks to a tightening of the government’s heart and purse-strings. Some of them couldn’t tighten their shoe laces without bursting into tears. It was a crying shame.

  Unstable was in an interview room now with DS Holmes, being fed hot sweet tea and cigarettes. Eventually they’d turf him out, maybe with a couple of quid in his hand, his technicolor beercoat having no pockets.

  Siobhan Clarke was at her desk in the Murder Room. She was being talked at by DI Alister Flower.

  So someone had forgotten Rebus’s advice regarding the duty roster.

  ‘Well,’ Flower said loudly, spotting Rebus, ‘if it isn’t our man from the SCS. Have you brought the milk?’

  Rebus was too slow getting the reference, so Flower obliged.

  ‘The Scottish Co-Operative Society. SCS, same letters as the Scottish Crime Squad.’

  ‘Wasn’t Sean Connery a milkman with the Co-Op,’ said Siobhan Clarke, ‘before he got into acting?’ Rebus smiled towards her, appreciating her effort to shift the gist of the conversation.

  Flower looked like a man who had comebacks ready, so Rebus decided against a jibe. Instead he said, ‘They think very highly of you.’

  Flower blinked. ‘Who?’

  Rebus twitched his head. ‘Over at SCS.’

  Flower stared at him, then narrowed his eyes. ‘Do tell.’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘What’s to tell? I’m serious. The high hiedyins know your record, they’ve been keeping an eye on you . . . that’s what I hear.’

  Flower shuffled his feet, relaxing his posture. He almost became shy, colour showing in his cheeks.

  ‘They told me to tell you . . .’ Rebus leaned close, Flower doing likewise, ‘. . . that as soon as there’s a milk round to spare, they’ll give you a call.’

  Flower showed two rows of narrow teeth as he growled. Then he stalked off in search of easier prey.

  ‘He’s easy to wind up, isn’t he?’ said Siobhan Clarke.

  ‘That’s why I call him the Clockwork Orangeman.’

  ‘Is he an Orangeman?’

  ‘He’s been known to march on the 12th.’ He considered. ‘Maybe Orange Peeler would be a better name for him, eh?’ Clarke groaned. ‘What have you got for me from our teuchter friends?’

  ‘You mean the Orkneys. I don’t think they’d appreciate being called teuchters.’ She tried hard to pronounce the word, but being mostly English, she just failed.

  ‘Remember,’ said Rebus, ‘teuch is Scots for tough. I don’t think they’d mind me calling them tough.’ He dragged a chair over to her desk. ‘So what did you get?’

  She flicked open a paper pad, finding the relevant page. ‘Zabriskie House is actually a croft. There’s a small cottage, one bedroom and one other room doubling as –’

  ‘I’m not thinking of buying the place.’

  ‘No, sir. The current owners didn’t know anything about its past history, but neighbours remembered a chap renting the place for a year or two back in the ’70s. He called himself Cuchullain.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A mythical warrior, Celtic I think.’

  ‘And that was all he called himself?’

  ‘That was all.’

  It fitted with the tone of the Floating Anarchy Factfile: Celtic hippy. Rebus knew that in the early ’70s a lot of young Scots had emulated their American and European cousins by ‘dropping out’. But then years later they tended to drop back in again, and did well for themselves in business. He knew because he’d almost dropped out himself. But instead he’d gone to Northern Ireland.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Bits and pieces. A description that’s twenty-odd years old now from a woman who’s been blind in one eye since birth.’

  ‘This is your source, is it?’

  ‘Mostly, yes. A police constable went sniffing. He also talked to the man who used to run the sub-post office, and a couple of boatmen. You need a boat to get provisions across to Rousay, and the postman comes by his own boat. He kept himself to himself, grew his own food. There was talk at the time, because people used to come and go at Zabriskie House, young women with no bras on, men with beards and long hair.’

  ‘The locals must’ve been mortified.’

  Clarke smiled. ‘The lack of bras was mentioned more than once.’

  ‘Well, a place like that, you have to make your own entertainment.’

  ‘There’s one lead the constable is still following up. He’ll get back to me today.’

  ‘I won’t hold my breath. Have you ever been to the Orkneys?’

  ‘You’re not thinking of –’ She was interrupted by her telephone. ‘DC Clarke speaking. Yes.’ She looked up at Rebus and pulled her notepad to her, starting to write. Presumably it was the Old Policeman of Hoy, so Rebus took a stroll around the room. He was reminded again just why he didn’t fit, why he was so unsuited to the career life had chosen for him. The Murder Room was like a production line. You had your own little task, and you did it. Maybe someone else would follow up any lead you found, and then someone else after that might do the questioning of a suspect or potential witness. You were a small part of a very large team. It wasn’t Rebus’s way. He wanted to follow up every lead personally, cross referencing them all, taking them through from first principle to final reckoning. He’d been described, not unkindly, as a terrier, locking on with his jaws and not letting go.

  Some dogs, you had to break the jaw to get them off.

  Siobhan Clarke came up to him. ‘Something?’ he asked.

  ‘My constable friend found out Cuchullain used to keep a cow and a pig, plus some chickens. Part of the self-sufficiency thing. He wondered what might have happened to them when Cuchullain moved away.’

  ‘He sounds bright.’

  ‘Turns out Cuchullain sold them on to another crofter, and this crofter keeps records. We got lucky, Cuchullain had to wait for his money, and he gave the crofter a forwarding address in the Borders.’ She waved a piece of paper at him.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ warned Rebus. ‘We’re still talking a twenty year old address for a man whose name we don’t know.’

  ‘But we do know. The crofter had a note of that too. It’s Francis Lee.’

  ‘Francis Lee?’ Rebus sounded sceptical. ‘Wasn’t he playing for Manchester City in the ’70s? Francis Lee . . . as in Frank Lee? As in Frank Lee, my dear, I don’t give a damn?’

  ‘You think it’s another alias?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s get the Borders police to take a look.’ He studied the Murder Room. ‘Ach, no, on second thoughts, let’s go take a look ourselves.’

  13

  Whenever John Rebus had cause or inclination to drive through any town in the Scottish Borders, one word came to his mind.

  Neat.

  The towns were simply laid out and almost pathologically tidy. The buildings were constructed from unadorned stone and had a square-built no-nonsense quality to them. The people walking briskly from bank to grocer’s shop to chemist’s were rosy cheeked and bursting with health, as though they scrubbed their faces with pumice every morning before sitting down to farmhouse fare. The men’s limbs moved with the grace of farm machinery. You could present any of the women to your own mother. She’d tell them you weren’t good enough for them.

  Truth be told, the Borderers scared Rebus. He couldn’t understand them. He understood though, that placed many more miles from any large Scottish conurbation than from the English border, there was bound to be some schizophrenia to the towns and their inhabitants.

  Selkirk however was definably Scots in character, architecture, and language. Its annual Lammas Fai
r was not yet just a memory to see the townfolk through the winter. There were still rows of pennants waiting to be taken down, flapping in the slightest breeze. There were some outside the house which abutted the kirkyard wall. Siobhan Clarke checked the address and shrugged.

  ‘It’s the manse, isn’t it?’ Rebus repeated, sure that they had something wrong.

  ‘It’s the address I’ve got here.’

  The house was large with several prominent gables. It was fashioned from dull grey stone, but boasted a lush and sweet-smelling garden. Siobhan Clarke pushed open the gate. She searched the front door for a bell but found none, so resorted to the iron knocker which was shaped like an open hand. No one answered. From nearby came the sound of a manual lawnmower, its pull and push as regular as a pendulum. Rebus looked in through the front window of the house, and saw no sign of movement.

  ‘We’re wasting our time,’ he said. A waste of a long car journey too. ‘Let’s leave a note and get out of here.’

  Clarke peered through the letterbox, then stood up again. ‘Maybe we could ask around, now we’re here.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rebus, ‘let’s go talk to the lawnmower man.’

  They walked round to the kirkyard gate and took the red gravel path around the perimeter of the church itself. At the back of the soot-blackened building they saw an old man pushing a mower which in Edinburgh might have graced a New Town antique shop.

  The gentleman stopped his work when he saw them crossing the trimmed grass towards him. It was like walking on a carpet. The grass could not have been shorter if he’d been using nail scissors. He produced a voluminous handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his suntanned brow. His face and arms were as brown as oak, the face polished with sweat. The elderly skin was still tight across the skull, shiny like a beetle’s back. He introduced himself as Willie McStay.

  ‘Is it about the vandalism?’ he asked.

  ‘Vandalism? Here?’

  ‘They’ve been desecrating the graves, daubing paint on the headstones. It’s the skinheads.’