10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  There was a man at the top of the hill. He was mending a wall.

  Rebus followed the line of the dry-stane dyke, climbing slowly. He was between Edinburgh and Carlops, in the foothills of the Pentland range. There was no escape from the wind and the cold up here, but Rebus was sweating as he neared the top. The man saw him coming, but didn’t stop working. He had three piles of stones close to him, varying in sizes and shapes. He would pick one up, feel it, study it, then either put it back in the pile or else add it to the wall. And with a fresh stone placed in the wall, a new challenge presented itself, and he had to study his mounds of stones all over again. Rebus stopped to catch his breath, and watched the man. It was the most painstaking work imaginable, and at the end of it the wall would be held together by nothing more than the artful arrangement of its constituent parts.

  ‘It must be a dying craft,’ Rebus said, having gained the summit.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ The man seemed amused.

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Electric fences, barbed wire; not many farmers depend on dry-stane dykes.’ He paused. ‘Or dry-stane dykers, come to that.’

  The man turned to look at him. He was ruddy-cheeked with a thick red beard and fair hair turning grey at the temples. He wore a baggy Aran sweater and green combat jacket, cord trousers and black boots. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and kept blowing on his hands.

  ‘I need to keep them bare,’ he explained. ‘I feel the stones better that way.’

  ‘Is your name Dalgety?’

  ‘Aidan Dalgety, at your service.’

  ‘Mr Dalgety, I’m Detective Inspector Rebus.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  ‘In a job like this, you don’t get many visitors. That’s one of the things I like about it. But since I started this wall, it’s been like a main thoroughfare rather than a deserted hillside.’

  ‘I know Councillor Gillespie visited you.’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re not surprised to see a detective?’

  Dalgety smiled to himself and judged another stone, turning it in his hand, weighing it in his palm, feeling for its centre of gravity. He placed it on the wall, then thought better of it and moved it to another spot. The process took a couple of minutes.

  Rebus looked back the way he’d come, following the wall down to the by-road where he’d parked his car. ‘Tell me, how many stones go into a wall like this?’

  ‘Tens of thousands,’ Dalgety said. ‘You could spend years counting them. Men took years building them.’

  ‘It’s a far cry from computers.’

  ‘Do you think so? Maybe it is. But then again, maybe there’s some connection.’

  ‘I understand you were Robbie Mathieson’s partner, back in the early days of PanoTech.’

  ‘It wasn’t called PanoTech in my day. The name belongs to Robbie.’

  ‘But the early designs . . . the early work was yours?’

  ‘Maybe it was.’ Dalgety tossed a stone from one pile to another.

  ‘That’s what I hear. He ran the company, but you designed the circuits. Your ideas made the company work.’ Dalgety didn’t say anything. ‘And then he bought you out.’

  ‘And then he bought me out,’ Dalgety echoed.

  ‘Is that the way it happened?’

  ‘It happened just the way I told it to the councillor. I had a . . . I’d been working too hard for too long. I had a breakdown. And when I came out of it, the company wasn’t mine any longer. Robbie had kissed me goodbye. And all the designs were his, too. The whole company was his. Dalmat, we were called – Dalgety and Mathieson. That was the first thing he changed.’ Dalgety was weighing another stone.

  ‘How did he find the money to buy you out? I take it you were bought out?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was all above board. He had some money invested somewhere: it paid a handsome profit and he used it to buy my share.’ He paused. ‘That’s what the lawyers told me afterwards. I didn’t remember any of it – discussions, signing the papers, none of it.’

  ‘You must have been bitter.’

  Dalgety laughted. ‘I had another breakdown. They put me in a private nursing home. That took care of a lot of the pay-off money. When I came out, I didn’t want anything to do with the industry, or any industry like it. End of story.’

  ‘PanoTech’s grown since.’

  ‘Robbie Mathieson is good at what he does. Do you know about him?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘His family moved to the States when Robbie was eighteen. He joined one of the big boys, IBM or Hewlett Packard, someone like that. The company had operations in Europe, and Robbie was posted here. He liked Scotland. I was working on my own at the time, designing stuff, messing about with ideas, most of them impractical. We met, got to like one another, and he told me he was resigning and starting up his own computer business right here. He persuaded me along with him. We had a couple of good years . . .’ Dalgety seemed to have forgotten about the stone he was holding. The wind was hurting Rebus’s ears, but he didn’t let it show.

  ‘I’m not telling you the whole truth,’ Aidan Dalgety said at last. ‘I was an alcoholic; or, at least, I was on the verge of becoming one. I think that’s why Robbie wanted rid of me. Seemed to me afterwards that he must have been planning it for a while. I signed away the rights to a couple of components which went on to make PanoTech a lot of money.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But that was then and this is now.’

  ‘This money Mathieson used to buy you out, where did it come from again?’

  ‘There was a man called Derwood Charters. He got to know Robbie early on. I think he wanted to become company secretary, something like that. He had a lot of money-making schemes. Or should I say scams. Robbie told me about a couple of them. Charters would set up paper companies and then screw grants from all over the place – local authority, SDA, European Community. He had a genius for that sort of thing. I think he must have wangled development money for PanoTech somewhere down the line – the company grew so fast so quickly.’

  ‘And you’ve never said anything about any of this?’

  ‘Why should I? Good luck to them.’

  ‘But Mathieson practically robbed you!’

  ‘And now he keeps a lot of people in employment. I’m not such a high price to pay for an outcome like that.’

  Rebus sat down on the cold earth, his back against the wall, and ran his hands over his head.

  ‘You know,’ Dalgety said. ‘I still take an interest in the industry. I don’t mean to, but I do. Thirty-five per cent of all the PCs manufactured in Europe are manufactured here, twenty-four per cent of all semi-conductors. Two million computers a year come out of IBM’s Greenock plant – that includes their world supply of screens and every IBM computer sold in Europe.’ He was laughing. ‘Fifty thousand people in the industry, and it’s growing. The Japanese come here because productivity’s so high – can you believe that?’ He stopped laughing abruptly. ‘But the root system’s shallow, Inspector. We’re big in hardware, but we need software, too, and we need to start sourcing – we source only fifteen per cent of all our components. We’re an assembly line. Maybe PanoTech can change that.’ He shrugged. ‘Good luck to them.’

  ‘So why did you talk to Gillespie?’

  ‘Maybe to get it off my chest.’ He examined the stone in his hand a final time, then threw it far into the distance. ‘Maybe because nothing I say can make any difference. No investigation of PanoTech is going to get very far.’

  ‘The councillor found that out.’ Aidan Dalgety looked at him, but said nothing. ‘You’re not scared?’

  ‘No,’ Dalgety used both hands to lift a larger rock on to the wall. ‘I’m not scared at all. This wall will be here after I’m gone, whether I live to be a hundred or drop dead tomorrow.’ He patted the wall with his hands. ‘I know what lasts.’

  Rebus got to his feet. ‘Well, thanks for
talking to me.’

  ‘No problem. I get bored sometimes just talking to the wall.’ He was laughing again as Rebus headed downhill. ‘You know that old saying about walls having ears . . .?’

  It was a day for open spaces. In the late afternoon, Rebus walked in the Botanic Gardens with Sir Iain Hunter.

  ‘I like this place,’ Sir Iain said, striding gamely with his rolled umbrella across the grass towards Inverleith House. ‘Of course, it’s lost something since they moved the Gallery of Modern Art. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re stalling.’

  Sir Iain smiled. ‘I’ve conducted meetings here before, Inspector. It’s my open-air office. I choose the Botanics for some meetings precisely because they are so open. No chance of being overheard.’ He stopped, looking around. The city centre was a panorama before them. ‘Marvellous view,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody’s listening in on us, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘Well, the thought had crossed my mind. Nowhere is safe in this age of electronic eavesdropping.’

  ‘I don’t need to bug conversations,’ Rebus said. ‘I’ve got Gillespie’s files.’

  ‘Poor Councillor Gillespie.’

  ‘Yes, poor Councillor Gillespie, lured to an alley and then stabbed in the guts by an ex-con hired by Derwood Charters, just as Charters paid McAnally to put a scare into Gillespie. I don’t suppose he knew how far Wee Shug would go, what he’d do . . . He went too far.’

  ‘And brought you scurrying to the scene, Inspector. Yes, perhaps that was a mistake. Well, I’m going to trust you. I’m going to assume you’re not recording this little tête-à-tête.’ Sir Iain tucked his cashmere scarf a little tighter around his neck. ‘Now, why did you want to meet?’

  ‘Because you’re at the centre of it all.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘Like I say, I’ve got –’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’ve got Gillespie’s files, but what do they prove?’

  ‘You should know. The Lord Provost told you everything Gillespie told him. They prove that Charters’ various companies existed only as shells for the most part. The front company was legit, but the others . . . well, if anyone decided to check, Charters would rent short-term office space, pay someone to take in mail addressed to Mensung House . . . that sort of thing. And I’m assuming he had someone at the Scottish Office tipping him off about any forthcoming investigations – he couldn’t have run his scams so well for so long without help. How am I doing so far?’

  Sir Iain was admiring the view. ‘Wild inaccuracies compounded by conjecture.’

  ‘Charters had sleeping partners. See, once the fake companies were running, he could apply for grants and other incentives, but to get the companies going in the first place required cash, working capital, and that’s where the sleeping partners came in. He could guarantee a huge return on investment, provided the grant money came through. He was a wizard at playing the system, running rings around it. He made quick money for a lot of people, including Robbie Mathieson. I’m sure Mathieson wouldn’t want anyone to know that the early money for PanoTech came from ripping off SDA and European Community schemes.

  ‘Then there’s Haldayne at the US Consulate. He’d met Charters socially, and was keen to make money. As an aside, I’d guess that once he was involved, you were able to pressure Haldayne into helping persuade American companies to move here. Same goes for Robbie Mathieson – he had US connections in the computer industry.’

  ‘That’s slanderous,’ Sir Iain remarked, his smile unimpeachable.

  ‘Well, Haldayne’s been to your Royal Circus pied-à-terre plenty of times – we’ve got the parking tickets. You must have had something to talk about. Charters couldn’t have got away with it, not to the same extent, without a network of friends and people he bribed. Civil servants predominantly. I’ve been asking around, Sir Iain. Eight years ago, you weren’t nearly so high up the pecking order. But then you started a string of successes bringing new business into Scotland, and you started your ascent. And Ruthie Estate must have cost a bit. I wonder, did you buy that in the past eight years?

  ‘The whole thing worked brilliantly for a long time. Companies came and went, and sometimes their registration documents disappeared with them. Then the SDA became Scottish Enterprise, accounting procedures changed, and nobody was going to be looking back at old projects financed by a dead organisation. But Charters couldn’t stop, and one time he got sloppy, and was caught early on. He pled guilty, protecting his friends and making sure nothing would come out at a trial, and then Gillespie caught a glimpse of something, and it got him wondering. He started digging, and word got back to Charters.’ Rebus paused. ‘You told me once that you liked a bit of intrigue: how am I doing?’

  Sir Iain just shrugged, looking bemused.

  ‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘I’m just getting to the best bit. Now, who passed the word back to Charters? Because whoever did is partly to blame for Gillespie’s eventual murder. Gillespie had told his story to the Lord Provost – only natural that he’d tell somebody – but he never guessed the Lord Provost would go straight to Mathieson and tell him. But what else was he going to do? Mathieson is the biggest employer in his ward; the Lord Provost thought he’d warn him what was coming.’

  ‘You think Mathieson told Charters?’

  ‘Possibly. It could have been any of you.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘You’re in it up to your cashmere scarf.’

  ‘Careful what you say, Inspector. Be very careful.’

  ‘Why? So I don’t get a knife in the guts?’

  Hunter’s cheeks coloured. ‘That was . . .’ He swallowed back the rest.

  ‘Charters’ doing?’ Rebus guessed. ‘Well, someone had to tell Charters in the first place, and they did so knowing he’d do something about it, something they were scared to do themselves.’

  Sir Iain’s eyes were watering, but it was from the breeze, not contrition.

  ‘What are you going to do, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m going to nail as many of you as I can.’

  Finally Hunter turned to him. ‘Do you recall what I said to you that day on my estate? Jobs are at risk, lives are at risk.’ He sounded grotesquely sincere.

  ‘It’s all just policy to you, isn’t it?’ Rebus said. ‘No right and wrong, legal and illegal, no fair and corrupt, just politics.’

  ‘Listen to yourself, man,’ Sir Iain Hunter spat. ‘Who are you, some Old Testament prophet? What gives you the right to hold the scales?’ He dug the tip of his umbrella into the ground, and waited for his breathing to ease. ‘If you’d look into your heart, you’d see we’re not on opposite sides.’

  ‘But we are,’ Rebus said determinedly.

  ‘If this ever became public, there’d be more than a scandal – there’d be a crisis. Trust would be lost, overseas investors and corporations would turn away from Scotland. Don’t tell me you want that.’

  Rebus thought of Aidan Dalgety, busying himself with an endless wall – his only answer to frustration and anger. ‘None of it’s worth a single human life,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I think it is,’ Hunter said. ‘I really do think it is.’

  Rebus turned to walk away.

  ‘Inspector? I’d like you to talk with some people.’

  It was the invitation Rebus had been waiting for. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight if at all possible. I’ll phone you with the details.’

  ‘I’ll be at St Leonard’s till six,’ Rebus said, leaving the old man to his view.

  But Rebus couldn’t face the police station, so went home instead.

  And found, slowly but with growing confidence, that his flat had been broken into in his absence. It was a clean, meticulous job. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing had been taken, almost nothing looked out of place. But his books had been moved. He had them in what looked like unplanned towers, but were actually the order in which he’d bought them and intended to read them. One of
the towers had been knocked over and put back up again out of order. His drawers had been closed, too, though he always left them open. And his record collection had been rifled – as if he could hide sacks of shredded paper inside album sleeves . . .

  He sat down with a glass of whisky and tried not to think any thoughts. If he thought, he might not act. He might drop out, like Dalgety, and let them get on with it. He loathed Sir Iain Hunter for the way he used people. But then Paul Duggan used people too, if it came down to it. Kirstie, too, had used and abused her friends. Everybody used someone. The difference was, Sir Iain and his kind had everything – heart, soul, silver and gold – only nobody knew it, never even gave it a thought.

  What was more, probably nobody cared.

  His phone rang at seven.

  ‘I did try St Leonard’s,’ Sir Iain said. ‘They told me you’d not been back this afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t worry, your friends had left before I got back.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nothing, forget it. But hear this: Gillespie’s files are in a safe place, and I mean safe.’

  ‘You’re not making much sense, Inspector.’

  ‘Is that for the benefit of anyone listening in?’

  ‘I only called to remind you of our meeting. Nine tonight, would that suit?’

  ‘Let me just check my social calendar.’

  ‘You know Gyle Park West?’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘The PanoTech factory. You’ll be expected at nine.’

  37

  PanoTech had won awards for the design of its Gyle Park West factory, with its automated shopfloor delivery system (a series of robot fork-lifts on a network of rails), and its bulbous shape with optimised interior light. The reception area was chrome and grey metal with a black rubberised floor.

  There was a security guard on the desk, but Rebus was expected. As he walked through the automatic doors, an automatic voice telling him he was entering a ‘Positively No Smoking Zone’, he saw Sir Iain Hunter standing by a display case. There was a sheet over the case, but Sir Iain had lifted it, the better to inspect the model beneath.