10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Sooner would be better,’ he told her.

  ‘Sooner isn’t possible,’ she replied.

  That night, after the usual session with Doc and Salty, he drove out to the Forth Road Bridge, parked, and walked on to the bridge itself. For once there was no howling gale, hardly even a breeze. There was no moon, and the temperature was still a degree or two above freezing. The bridge had been reopened, some temporary repairs completed. Initial structural surveys had shown no real damage to the fabric, though if the car had snapped one of the thick metal support cables, it would have been different.

  He stood there shivering after the warmth of the pub and his car. He was a few yards from where the boys had jumped. The area was cordoned off with metal barriers, anchored by sandbags. Two yellow metal lamps marked off the danger area. Someone had climbed over the barriers and laid a small wreath next to the broken rail, weighing it down with a rock so it wouldn’t be blown away. He looked up at the nearer of the two vast supports, red lights blinking at its summit as a warning to aircraft. He didn’t really feel very much, except a bit lonely and sorry for himself. The Forth was down there, as judgmental as Pilate. It was funny the things that could kill you: water, a ship’s hull, steel pellets from a plastic case. It was funny that some people actually chose to die.

  ‘I could never do it,’ Rebus said out loud. ‘I couldn’t kill myself.’

  Which didn’t mean he hadn’t thought of it. It was funny the things you thought about some nights. It was all so funny, he felt a lump forming in his throat. It’s only the drink, he thought. It’s the drink makes me maudlin. It’s only the drink.

  13

  Sometimes people who knew next to nothing about them called Edinburgh’s drop-in centres drop-out centres. Rebus knew that the police weren’t the most welcome guests, so he phoned ahead first.

  He knew the person who ran the centre behind Waverley Station. Rebus had done him a favour once, bringing back a heroin addict who’d suffered sudden cold turkey on Nicolson Street. Some officers would have lifted the hapless wretch and taken him to the station for a knee in the groin and a long sweat. But Rebus had taken him where he wanted to go: the drop-in centre at Waverley. Turned out he was undergoing withdrawal, doing it all on his own.

  ‘How is he?’ Rebus asked Fraser Leitch, the centre’s manager and guiding light.

  Leitch was sitting in his mouldering office, surrounded by the usual mounds of paperwork. The shelves behind his desk were bowed under the weight of files, document boxes, magazines and books. Fraser Leitch scratched his grey-flecked beard.

  ‘He was doing all right, last I heard. Retrained as a chippie and actually found a job. See, Inspector, sometimes the system works.’

  ‘Or he’s the exception that proves the rule.’

  ‘The eternal pessimist.’ Leitch got up and crouched in front of a tray on the floor. He checked there was water in the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’ll make a bet with you. I’ll bet you’re here to talk about Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor.’

  ‘I’d have to be daft to cover a bet like that.’

  Leitch smiled. ‘You know Dixie was a user?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Well, as far as I know, with Willie’s help he’d been clean for a couple of months.’

  ‘His works were still under his bed.’

  Leitch shrugged as he tipped coffee into two mugs. ‘The temptation’s always there. I’ll make another bet with you, I’ll bet you’ve never tried heroin yourself.’

  ‘You’d be right.’

  ‘Me neither, but the way I’ve heard it described . . . Well, like I say, the temptation never goes away. You have to take it one day at a time.’

  Rebus knew Fraser Leitch used to have a drink problem. What the man was saying was that once you had it, you had it for life, because even if you dried out, the cause of your problem was still there, never quite beyond reach.

  ‘There’s a joke I’ve heard,’ Leitch said, as the kettle started to boil. ‘Well, it’s not much of a joke. Here it is: what kind of boat should Dixie have landed on?’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘A sampan, because they’re both close to junk. Like I say, bad joke.’ He poured water and milk into the mugs, stirred them, and handed one to Rebus. ‘Sorry, we don’t stretch to pure Colombian.’

  ‘Is that another joke?’

  Leitch sat down again. ‘I knew Dixie,’ he said. ‘I only met Willie a couple of times.’

  ‘Willie wasn’t a user?’

  ‘He probably toked up, maybe dropped some E.’

  ‘Pretty clean-living then? Were you surprised when you learned what they’d done?’

  ‘Surprised? I don’t know. How’s your coffee?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Terrible or not, it’s still twenty pence.’ Leitch pointed to a box on the desk. Rebus found a one-pound coin and dropped it in.

  ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘Giving a quid qualifies you as a patron.’ Leitch stuck his feet up on the edge of the desk, knees bent. He was wearing moccasins, their stitched seams coming undone. The bottoms of his denims were frayed too. He usually described himself as ‘just another old hippy’.

  ‘How’s the centre doing?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.’

  ‘You get district council funding?’

  ‘Some.’ Leitch frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘What happens when the district council is replaced?’

  ‘We pray the new authority keeps up our funding.’

  Rebus nodded thoughtfully. ‘I was asking if you were surprised about Willie and Dixie.’

  Leitch thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose I was, except that it was a dafter stunt than I would have expected from them.’

  ‘Because Willie was smarter than that?’

  ‘He must have known they’d never get away with it. Dixie was a different proposition, crazy at times, a real heid-the-ba’, but Willie could keep him under control.’

  ‘Like Keitel and DeNiro in Mean Streets.’

  ‘That’s not a bad comparison. Dixie would do something daft, and Willie would slap him about the head. Dixie wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else. You realise a lot of what I’m telling you is second-hand? Like I said, I only met Willie a couple of times.’ He paused. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was there,’ Rebus said quietly. He shifted in his chair. ‘They just . . . Willie put his arm around Dixie and then leaned back over the rail, and Dixie went with him. There was no resistance. They didn’t jump, they just slipped away.’

  ‘Christ.’ Leitch took his feet off the desk.

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  Leitch got up and walked around the desk. ‘I think you know the answer to that, or at least you have an inkling. They couldn’t go to jail.’

  ‘I know,’ Rebus said. Two people die rather than go to jail; another dies rather than be out. Rebus touched his mouth with a finger, feeling the pain, the pressure, almost enjoying it.

  Leitch landed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have you seen a counsellor?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t the police have counselling?’

  ‘Why would I want counselling?’

  Leitch squeezed Rebus’s shoulder and withdrew his hand. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said, going back to his chair. They sat in silence for a while.

  ‘Ever come across a guy called Paul Duggan?’ Rebus asked at last.

  ‘Name rings a bell. I can’t put a face to it. Maybe I’ve just heard him mentioned around the centre.’

  ‘He loaned Willie and Dixie his car. He was their landlord.’

  ‘Oh, right, yes. A couple of guys who sometimes come in are tenants of his.’

  ‘Any idea where they live?’

  ‘Abbey Hill, somewhere round there.’

  ‘What about the name Dalgety – does it mean anything to you?’ Leitch thought about it and shook his head. Rebus dug into his pocket and brought out
the photo of Kirstie Kennedy. ‘I know it’s a long shot,’ he said, ‘but have you seen her around the centre?’

  ‘This is the Lord Provost’s daughter. A couple of uniforms came asking about her just after she went missing.’

  ‘The photo’s a bit out of date, she’d look different now.’

  ‘Then bring me a more recent photo. Don’t tell me an out-of-date picture’s the best her parents can do?’

  Rebus thought about that as he left Fraser Leitch’s office. The man had a point. Then again, how many photos did Rebus have of his own daughter? Precious few after age twelve. He was standing in the short dark hallway, half its walls taken up with noticeboards, the other half with marker-pen graffiti. Rebus studied the notices. One card was recent, its edges not yet dog-eared. It was printed, unlike its ballpoint neighbours. Altogether a very superior card.

  ROOMS TO LET CHEAP.

  There was a phone number and a name. The name was Paul. Rebus removed the card and put it in his pocket next to Kirstie Kennedy’s photo.

  He glanced into the two open rooms. In one, a couple of rows of plastic chairs were positioned in front of a TV. The TV was a twelve-inch black and white. One lad was in there, holding the indoor aerial above his head as he stared at the screen from a distance of about thirty inches. Another kid sat on one of the chairs, sleeping. In the other room, three more teenagers, two boys and a girl, were trying to play table tennis with one cracked ball, two rubberless bats, and a paperback book. Their net was a row of upended cigarette packets. They played quietly, without enthusiasm or hope.

  On the steps outside, two more clients of the centre tried to bum first money and then cigarettes off him. He handed out a couple of ciggies, and even lit them.

  ‘Shame about Dixie, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Fuck off, porker,’ they said, moving back indoors.

  Back at his flat, Rebus finally bled the central heating system, catching the water in empty coffee jars. One thing about the flat when he moved back in: plenty of empty coffee jars. He’d meant to ask the students why there were cupboards and boxes full of them.

  He refilled the system, wondering what the pressure gauges on the front of the boiler should read. When he turned the system back on, there was a gushing, gurgling sound from the pipes, and the boiler shuddered as the gas jets burst into life.

  He went through to the living room and stood with his hand on the radiator. It got warm, but stayed only warm, even with the thermostat all the way up. And there was a drip from the bleedcock. He twisted the key as hard as he could, but the drip remained. He tied a kitchen-cloth to it and let the cloth run down into one of the coffee jars. That would collect the drips, and stop them making a noise.

  Yes, John Rebus had been here before.

  He sat in his chair, lights out, and looked out of his window on to Arden Street, thinking of Maisie Finch, thinking of her mother and his own mother. There was frost on the roofs and bonnets of the parked cars. A group of students were laughing their way back to their digs. Rebus poured himself a whisky and told the students how lucky they were. Everybody out there was lucky. All the people sleeping rough, and bumming cigarettes, and plotting and scheming how to get ahead. Alister Flower, twisting and gnawing in his sleep; Gill Templer, still and unperturbed in hers; Frank Lauderdale, with an itch beneath his cast; Tresa McAnally, feet up in front of the TV; Kirstie Kennedy . . . wherever she was. They were all of them lucky.

  Edinburgh was a lucky fucking town.

  Two

  SHREDS

  14

  The following Tuesday, Rebus was at work uncharacteristically early.

  But not so early as to be the first to arrive. Gill Templer was already there, her door ajar, fighting her way through paperwork. Rebus knocked and pushed the door open a little further.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘What about you? Have you been here all night?’

  ‘It feels like it. That coffee smells good.’

  ‘Want me to fetch you one?’

  ‘No, just give me half of yours.’ She handed him a clean mug, and he poured half the contents of his beaker into it. Standing over the wastebasket, he was able to see what she’d been working on. She was trying to acquaint herself with every ongoing case, everything Frank Lauderdale had left behind.

  ‘Tall order,’ he said.

  ‘You can help.’

  ‘How’s that, boss?’

  ‘You’re slow to type up your notes. The McBrane case and the Pettiford especially. I’d like to see them this morning.’

  ‘Do you know how fast I type?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  ‘Would you settle for one out of two? I’ve a funeral on.’

  ‘I want them both by lunchtime, Inspector.’

  Rebus looked back at the open door. There was still no one else around. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m going to start taking this personally.’

  She looked up from her work. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The way you’ve been treating me ever since you got here. Frankly, it stinks. At first I thought it was just for show, but I’m not so sure. I know you’ve got something to prove to everybody, but that doesn’t –’

  ‘Tread carefully, Inspector.’

  Rebus stared at her. Finally she looked down at the work in front of her. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said quietly. ‘I still want those case-notes by lunchtime.’

  So he went to his desk and worked on them. He didn’t like typing up case-notes, the hard slog of always using the right words, of getting everything right. No police officer liked it when a report which had been painstakingly prepared was sent back by the Procurator-fiscal because of some tiny flaw in the surface of the whole. You were waiting for news that the precognition was being prepared, and instead the case came back to you with a note – ‘unable to proceed as stands’.

  The reporting officer – whose job was to liaise with the Crown – took most of the flak, and Rebus was RO on both the McBrane and Pettiford cases. It was his job to make a case that the Procurator-fiscal would accept. He supposed it was Gill Templer’s job to make sure he did the work, but her attitude still rankled. As far as he could gather, she’d been a far from popular choice as Frank Lauderdale’s replacement. If Lauderdale hadn’t been universally respected, at least he’d been a man; and more than that, he’d been ‘one of them’. Gill Templer had been brought in from Fife. And she was a woman. And she didn’t even play golf.

  The female officers seemed happy enough – the ill-feeling was among the males only. Siobhan Clarke, Rebus had noticed, had a new spring in her step, working under a woman. Maybe she saw in Gill Templer a future that could be hers. But Gill would have to step carefully. Traps would be laid for her. She’d have to be careful who she trusted. Rebus had so far given her the benefit of the doubt, reckoning she was being hard on him because she couldn’t afford to be soft.

  So far it looked like a one-way street.

  He took his finished notes to her office, only to discover she was in conference with Farmer Watson. He left them prominently on her desk instead, and went to the washroom to change his tie, removing the blue one and replacing it with black. Brian Holmes came in as Rebus was checking himself in the mirror.

  ‘Off to a party then?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, Brian. In a manner of speaking.’

  Certainly, there was enough booze in the kitchenette to start a fair old hootenanny, but this was a wake rather than a celebration.

  By the time Rebus got to Tresa McAnally’s flat, the place was bursting at the seams with middle-aged men and women and their disgruntled offspring, plus a few older souls who had the honour of being given chairs to sit on. And in the middle of the living room, dressed top to toe in black but with red gloss fingernails, sat the widow. The curtains were closed, as were those of the neighbouring flats – a sign of solidarity. The Scots always rallied round for a send-off.

  Rebus squeezed his way through the
whispering throng, and held out his hand. ‘Mrs McAnally,’ he said.

  She took his hand and exerted the minimum of pressure. ‘Good of you to come.’

  Then he was off again, backpedalling before she could turn to someone and say, ‘This is the policeman who went to the school, he saw Wee Shug flat out on the floor and missing half his head.’ Normally at these occasions the men retreated to the kitchen and got stuck into the whisky. But here there was only the kitchenette, separated from the living area by nothing more than a breakfast-bar. So the men had crammed themselves into the kitchenette, for all the world like a rush-hour busful. They passed around clean glasses, and then the whisky. Tumblers of sweet and dry sherry were passed out to the ladies. Soft drinks for the younger mourners, though you didn’t have to be too old to qualify for a nip of the harder stuff.

  Rebus took a glassful and toasted the small man next to him. The man was in his seventies, and wore a wartime charcoal-and-chalkine suit. He had a pinched face and kept moving his lips, pursing and puckering them. When he spoke, it was in an undertone.

  ‘Here’s to you then, son.’

  ‘Slàinte.’ They drank for a moment, savouring the cheap whisky. Savouring was better than having to talk, one reason why so much whisky was consumed at funerals.

  ‘The hearse gets here in ten minutes,’ the man informed Rebus.

  ‘Right.’ A closed casket of course; Tresa McAnally had been denied a final peek at her husband’s blasted remains.

  ‘Here’s the minister.’

  There was nothing wrong with the old guy’s eyesight, despite the thick smeary lenses in his glasses. Rebus watched the minister as he moved through the room towards Tresa McAnally. He wore black, with the white dog-collar, and as he moved the crush of mourners parted before him. Ministers didn’t make friends, not easily; they were like cops that way. People were always afraid they’d say the wrong thing in front of them. They had a skill though, these men of the cloth: they could conduct a conversation while remaining inaudible to all but the person they addressed.