10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  On Sunday afternoon, dress smart but casual, he went to start his car and found it recalcitrant. Probably a loose connection. He looked under the bonnet, but was no mechanic. He was alone on the street, no one around to give him a jump-start, so he went back indoors and called for a cab, noticing too late that he had oil on his hands, a smudge of which had transferred itself to his trouser leg.

  He was not in the best of moods as his driver took him north across the city.

  Sammy answered the door. She was wearing thick black tights with a short jumble-sale dress falling over them. Under the dress she wore a white T-shirt.

  ‘You’re almost on time,’ she said. ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon.’

  ‘Did Patience teach you that one?’

  He followed his daughter down the hall into the living room. Lucky the cat took one look at Rebus, seemed to remember him, and stalked off into the conservatory. Rebus heard the catflap rattle shut. Now it was only two against one; the odds were improving in Rebus’s favour.

  He knew there were things fathers said to their daughters, little criticisms they were expected to make to show they cared. But Rebus knew what his little criticisms would sound like: they’d sound like criticisms. So he kept his counsel. Patience came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish-towel.

  ‘John.’

  ‘Hello, Patience.’ They kissed the way friends did, a peck on the cheek, a hand on the shoulder.

  ‘Be about two minutes,’ she said, turning back into the kitchen. He didn’t think she’d really looked at him. ‘Go into the conservatory.’

  Sammy again led the way. The table had a clean white cloth on it, with some dishes already laid. Patience had brought her potted plants indoors for the winter, leaving not much room for anything or anyone else. The Sunday papers were heaped on the window-ledge. Rebus chose the chair nearest the garden door. Looking out of the conservatory window, he could see in through the kitchen window. Patience was busy at the sink, her face lacking emotion. She didn’t look up.

  ‘Liking it all right?’ Rebus asked his daughter.

  She nodded. ‘It’s great, and so’s Patience.’

  ‘How’s the job?’

  ‘Very stimulating; not easy, but stimulating.’

  ‘What do you do exactly?’

  ‘SWEEP’s pretty small, we all muck in. I’m supposed to be developing communication skills in my clients.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘You mean so they can be a bit more polite next time they mug their granny?’

  She glowered at him and he raised his hands. ‘Just a joke,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you need some communication skills yourself.’

  ‘He’s as blunt as a butt to the head,’ Patience said, bringing in the teapot.

  ‘Can I help?’ Sammy offered.

  ‘You sit there, I’ll be back in a second.’

  She was away far longer than a second; there was no conversation between times. Rebus watched Lucky the cat staring at him from the garden path. Patience returned with plates of cakes and biscuits. His mouth was imploring him: no hot drinks, no cakes or biscuits, no sugar, no crunching.

  ‘I’ll pour,’ Sammy said. There was a clatter as Lucky came back in, seeking tidbits.

  ‘Cake, John?’ Patience said, offering him the pick from the plate. He took the smallest item he could find, a thin end-slice of madeira. Patience regarded his choice with suspicion: he’d always preferred ginger sponge, and she, who hated it, had bought one specially.

  ‘Sammy,’ Patience said, ‘try the ginger.’

  ‘It’s a bit sweet for me,’ Sammy replied. ‘I’ll just have a biscuit.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘This outfit of yours,’ Rebus began.

  ‘It’s called SWEEP,’ Sammy reminded him.

  ‘Yes, SWEEP, who funds it?’

  ‘We’ve charitable status. We get some donations, but spend more time than we ought to thinking up fund-raising schemes. The bulk of the money drips down from the Scottish Office.’ She turned to Patience. ‘We’ve this brilliant guy, he knows just how to word an application for funding, knows what grants are available . . .’

  Patience looked interested. ‘Is he nice?’

  Sammy blushed. ‘He’s great.’

  ‘And he deals with the Scottish Office?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Sammy couldn’t see where this was leading. She worked with people who were mistrustful of police officers and other authority figures, mistrustful of their motives. Her colleagues were careful what they said in front of her. She’d been open with them from the start; she’d stated on the application form that her father was in Edinburgh CID. But there were some people who still didn’t trust her entirely.

  She knew one problem was the media. When the media learned who her father was, they sought her out for a quote – her background made it more interesting. They called it ‘personalising the issues’. There were some people in SWEEP who felt resentful of the attention she got.

  She didn’t really blame them. It was the system.

  ‘More cake, John?’

  The catflap clacked again as Lucky went back outside.

  ‘No, thanks, Patience,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I think maybe I’ll try the madeira,’ Sammy said. Which left an awful lot of ginger cake.

  ‘You haven’t touched your tea, John.’

  ‘I’m waiting ’til it cools.’ In the past, he’d always liked it scalding.

  ‘Why are you so interested in SWEEP all of a sudden?’ Sammy asked him.

  ‘I’m not, but I might be interested in the Scottish Office.’

  Sammy looked like she didn’t believe him. She started to defend SWEEP, going on at length, her cheeks colouring with conviction. Rebus envied her that sense of conviction.

  Then he said a couple of things, and an argument started. He couldn’t help himself; he’d just had to take a contrary point of view. He tried drawing Patience into the debate, but she only shook her head slowly and sadly. Finally, when Sammy had collapsed into a sulk, Patience was ready with her summing-up.

  ‘You see, Sammy, your father is the Old Testament type: retribution rather than rehabilitation. Isn’t that right, John?’

  Rebus just shrugged, drank some lukewarm tea, and absent-mindedly chewed on a slice of buttered ginger cake.

  ‘And he’s the classic Calvinist, too,’ Patience went on. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime, and then some.’

  ‘That’s not Calvinism,’ Rebus said. ‘It’s Gilbert and Sullivan.’ He sat forwards in his chair. ‘Besides, the problem is that sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Sometimes there’s punishment and no crime at all. Other times there’s crime but no punishment; and worst of all –’ he paused – ‘nearly all of the time there’s unfairness.’ He looked at Sammy, wondering what SWEEP would have done for Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor, wondering if anything at all, anything worth a candle, would have been left of them after prison.

  Eventually, they found other things to talk about. Sammy didn’t contribute much; she just kept staring at her father, as if seeing him afresh. The sky outside conceded defeat and collapsed from slate-grey to late-afternoon black. While Patience and Sammy were clearing the table, Rebus stared at Lucky through the window, then went over to the catflap and locked it shut. The cat saw what he had done. It miaowed at him once, registering its protest. Rebus waved it cheerio.

  They sat in the living room, and Patience handed over a few things he’d left behind after the move: his second-best razor, some clean handkerchiefs, a pair of shoelaces, a tape of Electric Ladyland. He stuffed everything into his jacket pockets.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Sammy saw him back to the door and waved him off.

  That evening, back at the flat, Rebus sat listening to Hendrix with a lined pad of paper in front of him. There were some words on it.

  SDA/SE (Scottish Office?)

  A C Haldayne (US Consulate?)
/>   Mensung (?? – not in phonebook)

  Gyle Park West (industrial estate)

  He knew about Gyle Park West because he’d driven out there that morning. It was a low-rise sprawl of smallish industrial and commercial units, sited next to the imposing PanoTech electronics company. At the entrance to the estate there was a sign listing the various companies on the site, including Deltona. He remembered that Salty Dougary worked for Deltona, and that Deltona provided microchips for PanoTech, the PanoTech factory being more of an assembly line, constructing computers from components sourced elsewhere.

  None of which seemed to tie Councillor Gillespie to Wee Shug McAnally. None of which was in itself suspicious. The councillor was on an industrial planning committee, which was excuse enough for owning files on the SDA and Scottish Enterprise and on Gyle Park West. But then why the panic, the hurry to destroy those files? That was what interested Rebus.

  As he drove out of Gyle, an area of the city he didn’t really know, he realised something else. Gyle itself had boomed in the eighties, gaining new homes, industries, even its own railway station. Before then, it had just been a place near the airport. The airport had been its big advantage in the eighties, making for good fast communications. These days Gyle had an identity, and a lot of that was down to the injection of cash into the place. But there was something else in Gyle’s favour.

  Its district councillor just happened to be the Lord Provost, Cameron McLeod Kennedy.

  The telephone rang, bringing him out of his reverie. He snatched the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello yourself.’ It was Mairie Henderson.

  ‘I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I’ve only finally managed to track down LABarum.’ Rebus picked up his pen and moved the pad closer. ‘The reason I had trouble was, it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not yet at any rate. It’s a PanoTech project. Do you know who they are?’

  ‘The computer company?’

  ‘That’s right. LABarum is something they’ve been toying with. See, the problem with Silicon Glen, with the whole Scottish electronics industry, is that it’s a manufacturer. It puts bits and pieces together, but that’s about all. Everything’s sourced elsewhere.’

  ‘Not everything, there’s Deltona.’

  ‘A very small cog in the machine. What we need in Scotland is a software giant, a Microsoft, somebody researching, developing and producing software to go into the machines.’

  ‘LABarum?’

  ‘That’s right. But my source tells me it’s not up and running yet. There’s a question of funding. The talent’s there, but to keep it in Scotland is going to cost money, lots and lots of money.’ She paused. ‘My source was curious, how did you hear about it?’

  ‘I saw a business plan.’

  ‘You did? Where? At PanoTech?’

  ‘No.’ What could he tell her? In a sub-let council house in Stenhouse? Hiding behind a teenager’s paperback collection?

  ‘Where then? The City Chambers?’

  Rebus started. ‘Why do you . . .?’ Then he thought about it. A plan to start up a computer software company, presumably in Gyle Park West . . . He looked at the writing on his pad. The district council would want to discuss it, they’d need to be aware of it. Tom Gillespie’s committee would certainly know about it. And if it was to be sited in Gyle Park West, if it had anything to do with the district council at all, then the Lord Provost would know about it. Cameron McLeod Kennedy.

  Rebus picked the business plan off the floor and looked at the initials on the front page. Mairie was telling him she’d drawn a blank with Dalgety, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘CK,’ he said quietly. Cameron Kennedy. ‘Jesus, Mairie, those two kids did know Kirstie Kennedy after all!’

  20

  On Monday morning, Rebus went to the National Library on George IV Bridge. He passed through the security barrier and climbed the imposing staircase. At the main desk, he explained what he was looking for and was issued with a one-day reader’s card. Then he found a spare computer console and sat down at it, reading the instructions for using the on-line system.

  His search didn’t take long. There was desperately little on the Scottish Development Agency; even less on Scottish Enterprise. He was sure that before its demise the SDA had been under the aegis of the Scottish Office, so tapped ‘Scottish Office’ into the computer. There were a lot of entries; he went through screen after screen of them: welfare, road-widening schemes, grants to the fishing industry, corporal punishment . . . But nothing new on either the SDA or Scottish Enterprise.

  Across the road in the Central Library he met with similar results. The Edinburgh Room directed him to the Scottish Library downstairs, and the Scottish Library’s microfiches were every bit as unhelpful as the high-tech facilities across the way. Finally, Rebus approached one of the librarians. She sat at a desk, sorting newspaper cuttings into five distinct piles.

  ‘Yes?’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m looking for information on the Scottish Development Agency.’

  ‘Have you checked the fiches?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, those are our holdings.’ She thought for a moment. ‘You might try the Scottish Office direct.’

  Yes, he might at that. He walked down the High Street and across North Bridge, then made down the side of the St James Centre – noting that Anthony wasn’t on his usual pitch – to where the Scottish Office had hidden itself in a concrete box called New St Andrew’s House. He told the guard on the door what he wanted, and was pointed in the direction of the reception desk. The woman there was very pleasant, but couldn’t help. She phoned up to the Library and Publications Room, who couldn’t help either. Rebus found it hard to believe that there was no history of the SDA available.

  ‘They say nobody’d be interested,’ she explained, putting down the telephone.

  ‘Well, I’m interested.’

  ‘You could ask at the HMSO Bookshop.’

  ‘On Lothian Road?’

  ‘Yes.’ She saw the look on his face. ‘I’ve some other literature here you could take away with you.’

  Desperate for something to show for his morning, Rebus picked out a few leaflets, one of which was an introduction to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary. Rebus wondered if it would mention anything about bribery.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ he told the receptionist. There was a display in the reception area and he went over to look at it. New St Andrew’s House was about to relocate to Leith. The move was costing millions. Rebus didn’t feel any better for knowing where his taxes were headed. Sleet was coming down as he left the building.

  Which gave him the excuse he needed to drop into the Café Royal. It was eleven-fifteen and he was the second customer of the day. He liked the place when it was empty. It was one of the few bars he knew which had less atmosphere the busier it got. His feet were tingling from the walk. He’d left his car at home, only expecting to walk as far as George IV Bridge.

  The sleet had stopped by the time he left the bar. He walked along George Street, in order to avoid the shoppers on Princes Street, then headed up Lothian Road. A Lothian Road wind was one of nature’s wonders; people were walking into it at an angle close to forty-five degrees. The headwind could exhaust you in minutes. Rebus kept his eyes to the pavement and concentrated on putting one foot after the other, like he was getting the hang of false legs.

  The new Convention Centre was up. There was a lot of recent building work around the city: the Festival Theatre, Convention Centre, court annexe, National Library annexe, not to mention the new Scottish Office HQ. He stopped in a doorway to catch his breath and to consider the scale of the building programme: new roads, new developments . . . There was talk of building another road bridge across the Forth. But where was the money coming from? He walked on, deep in thought, and entered the HMSO shop. He’d been explaining his needs to the counter assistant for about thirty seconds when th
e man started to shake his head.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Rebus snapped.

  The man listened in silence, and when Rebus was finished he advised: ‘You could try Scottish Enterprise direct.’ He brought out the phonebook to find its address. The HQ_ was in Glasgow, but there was a branch in Edinburgh: LEEL, Lothian and Edinburgh Enterprise Limited, had offices in Haymarket Terrace, which wasn’t that far to walk, not compared to the distance he’d come.

  The smart new building which housed LEEL boasted two very bored-looking receptionists and no guard at all on the door. He explained that he wanted general background information.

  ‘Agatha will bring down what we’ve got,’ he was told with a pleasant professional smile. ‘If you’d like to take a seat . . .?’

  He sat down and read the bumf spread across the table in front of him. He noticed that his calves were aching. This, he thought, is called exercise. Some people did it every day.

  The lift opened and a young woman walked towards him. She too had a Stepford-wifely smile for the public as she handed over a lavish folder, inside which was a set of glossy documents.

  ‘This is all we’ve got at the moment,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Agatha, this is fine.’

  Since he was so close, he dropped into Torphichen for a coffee. Davidson wasn’t around, but DC Robert Burns was, so Rebus chewed the cud with him, enjoying the feel of being back inside a cop shop. Then he asked Burns for a favour.

  ‘I need a lift home, Rab,’ he said. ‘Medical reasons.’

  Back in his flat, Rebus read through what little he had. He hadn’t found anything on Gyle Park West or anyone or anything called Mensung. The sum total of his recent discoveries had nothing to do with Councillor Gillespie at all. But what he did know was that Kirstie Kennedy had known Willie and Dixie in some capacity: how else to explain a document belonging to the Lord Provost turning up in Willie’s bedroom? What he didn’t yet know was why it was there. He assumed Kirstie had taken it from her parents’ house, but why? Had it meant something to her? And why had Willie hidden it?