10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s a damned coincidence Gunner’s held off making a decision until now. Whose idea was Galashiels?’

  ‘It happens to be an opening.’

  ‘It happens to be in the middle of nowhere. I can see they’d need a chief inspector down there, what with the farming vendettas and the Saturday night punch-up.’

  ‘For once in your life, John, go easy on yourself, do yourself a favour. Stop beating yourself up like you’re the Salvation Army drum. Just . . .’ The Farmer shrugged.

  ‘Drums don’t beat themselves,’ Rebus said. He was staring at the Farmer’s computer, not listening any more. And then he started to smile, and looked at the Farmer. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘tell Gunner I’ll take it.’

  ‘Good.’

  But the Farmer wasn’t as pleased as he’d expected he’d be. There was something going on, some motive he couldn’t fathom. It was so bloody typical of Rebus to make him feel like a win was a draw, a draw a defeat.

  ‘And, John,’ he said, standing up, stretching out his hand, ‘congratulations.’

  Rebus stared at the hand but didn’t take it. ‘I didn’t say I was accepting the promotion, sir, I just said to tell Gunner I was.’

  And with that he left the Farmer’s office.

  Flower was on night-shift again.

  Rebus didn’t know why or how Flower got so many night-shifts. Maybe because at night he was more likely to see a spot of trouble. Rebus looked like trouble as he strode towards his adversary’s desk, dragging a chair over and sitting astride it.

  ‘Done any good fire-raising lately?’

  Flower just sneered.

  ‘Some good it did you,’ Rebus went on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t mean setting the bin on fire. I mean letting the DCC use your man McAnally like that. Whose idea was it to put him in Charters’ cell?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Humour me.’ Rebus offered Flower a cigarette. Flower took it warily, and even then laid it to one side.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘it was the DCC’s.’

  ‘That’s what I figured. And you went along with it. I mean, who wouldn’t? It meant the DCC owed you a favour – very handy that. But it didn’t work out.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘I mean, the DCC had a hidden agenda. He wanted to use your man to make sure Charters wasn’t talking, because some people on the outside were getting sweaty. Charters was protecting certain people, people like the head of PanoTech, and the Permanent Secretary at the Scottish Office. But a local councillor had started sniffing. Eventually, he would have talked to Charters – maybe he already had. That worried people, they needed to know how safe they were. As it turned out, Charters knew about the councillor and paid McAnally to give him a fright.’

  ‘Shite.’

  ‘Is it? Well, no matter.’ Rebus sucked on his cigarette. He’d got Flower thinking, but that process might take weeks. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘your friend the DCC, he didn’t even get you Lauderdale’s job. Didn’t that make you think?’

  ‘It was too soon. It would have looked suspicious.’

  Rebus laughed, further discomfiting Flower. ‘Is that what he told you?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘Well, bonny lad, I’ve got news for you – the DCC’s just offered me promotion to chief inspector.’

  ‘Away to hell.’

  Rebus just shrugged. Flower picked up the cigarette he’d been given and lit it. Then he called the Farmer at home. They had a bruising conversation during which Flower brought up everything from his years in the force (three more than Rebus) to his charitable works. When he finally put the phone down, he was shaking.

  ‘Know who you should phone now?’ Rebus suggested. ‘Your pal Allan Gunner. Ask him why me instead of you. Know what he’ll say? Well, he might not say it, but it’s the truth. He’s promoting me because I’m dangerous to him. I’m too dangerous for the usual demotion, so instead he’s offering a bribe. And you’re being left behind because he can afford to ignore you. That’s a simple fact.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Flower hissed.

  ‘Believe me, it’s not just for the thrill of seeing you squirm.’

  ‘Why then?’

  Rebus leaned forward. ‘How,’ he asked confidentially, ‘would you like my promotion?’ Flower just sneered. It hurt Rebus to say what he was saying, but he tried not to let that show. He would sacrifice this and much more for a single, risky shot at his quarry. Above all, though, he wouldn’t tell Flower about the move to Galashiels that went along with it . . . ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  Flower saw with deep amazement that he did. ‘What do I have to do?’

  40

  Winter mornings could sap you of good intentions and foolhardy schemes. Rebus and Flower wanted to be in their separate beds, tucked beneath a nice heavy woman, but instead were sitting in Rebus’s car, across the street from Allan Gunner’s house. It was still dark. A milk van passed, and a bread van, and a few bleak souls on their way to catch the first bus of the day.

  ‘So this is morning,’ Flower said.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’

  ‘You think this will work?’

  ‘Have faith.’ Rebus looked towards the house. ‘He’s up.’

  Flower peered out through the windscreen. A light had come on upstairs in the Gunner household.

  ‘We’ll give him five minutes,’ said Rebus.

  But only two minutes later, the downstairs lights came on.

  ‘Could be the wife,’ Flower suggested, ‘cooking a hearty breakfast for her deserving husband.’

  ‘Have you ever heard the phrase “New Man”?’

  ‘It’s a shop, isn’t it? What do you reckon, a couple more minutes? Let him get his feet under the breakfast table?’

  ‘My legs are blocks of ice,’ Rebus said, opening the car door. ‘Let’s do it now.’

  They rang the doorbell, and heard Gunner’s voice calling, ‘I’ll get it!’ Then the door opened, revealing the deputy chief constable in shirt but not yet necktie or cufflinks, a mug of coffee in his hand. He took a step back into the hall.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Canvassing for the Natural Law Party,’ Rebus said, stepping into the centrally heated house.

  Gunner ran upstairs to have a word with his wife, and Rebus and Flower walked uninvited into the kitchen. Smoke was pouring from the electric grill. Flower lifted the grill-pan out and blew on the cremated bread. ‘New Man, eh?’

  Rebus switched the kettle back on and lifted two mugs from the draining-board. He was unscrewing the lid from the coffee-jar when Gunner returned. Gunner snatched the jar from him.

  ‘Christ, you’ve got some gall.’ He switched the kettle off. ‘Why are you here?’ He checked his watch, saw he hadn’t put it on yet, and glanced instead at the wall-clock. ‘Half a minute, then you’re on your way.’

  ‘We want the file you’ve compiled,’ Rebus said, ‘and the tape Sir Iain made. I think that’ll do for now.’

  Gunner looked to Flower. ‘He’s roped you in, eh? You must be mad. I could have you both up before the chief constable.’

  ‘We’d like nothing better,’ Flower said. He threw the remains of the toast into the bin. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘If we don’t get the file and the tape,’ Rebus said, ‘we take it further anyway. We’re going to kick up such a stink, you’ll think your drains have backed up. It’ll be everywhere, believe me. There won’t be enough clothes-pegs to go round.’

  ‘You are mad. I’m not going to give you anything.’

  ‘We’ll start with the chief constable and the newspapers.’

  Gunner folded his arms. ‘Be my guests. You’ve just dug yourselves a very deep hole.’

  ‘Holes have their uses,’ Rebus said, ‘when the bullets start to fly.’

  ‘Get out!’ Gunner snarled.

  They got out.

  ‘Think we wer
e too obliging?’ Flower muttered as they walked back down the path. ‘We could have been harder on him.’

  ‘It went fine. It’s down to him now. Is he watching?’

  Flower glanced back. ‘Bedroom window.’

  ‘Right.’

  They walked to Rebus’s car, got in and drove off.

  A hundred yards along the road, Rebus stopped long enough to let Flower out. Flower’s own car was parked there, and he got into it quickly. Rebus checked in his rearview, but Gunner hadn’t come out of the house to check their departure, not on a morning like this. He drove on, went around the block, and ended up on the other side of Gunner’s house.

  They daren’t trust to police frequencies, so had borrowed a couple of on-line cellular phones from a dealer who’d owed Rebus a favour. Rebus’s phone rang, and he picked it up.

  ‘Any sign of him?’ Flower said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Maybe he’s on the mark-two toast.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll have much of an appetite.’

  It was five minutes more before Rebus heard a door bang shut. Then Gunner’s gate opened. His Rover 800 was directly outside, and he unlocked it, got in, and started the engine.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Rebus.

  ‘Has he anything with him?’

  ‘A briefcase.’

  ‘Well, here’s hoping.’

  Rebus had parked away from the street-lighting, and was careful not to start his engine until Gunner was already on the move. Smoke billowed from his exhaust, hanging in the sub-zero air. Gunner’s back windscreen was frosted over, and he hadn’t taken time to scrape it.

  ‘Fall in behind me,’ Rebus told Flower, just before passing his stationary car.

  Soon they joined a slow-moving stream of commuter traffic heading into town. The Rover’s rear de-mister had taken care of the frost. When they came to a section of dual carriageway, Flower overtook Rebus.

  ‘Where’s he headed?’

  ‘Not to work,’ Rebus said. ‘Not this way.’

  They’d discussed routes he might take, places he might go. Princes Street hadn’t figured in their calculations. There was light in the sky now, a deep bruise hanging over the Castle and the Old Town. Rebus’s heater wasn’t working properly – it only did that in the summer – and he curled his toes inside his shoes.

  ‘He’s signalling,’ Flower said. ‘Turning left on to Waverley Bridge. Maybe he’s got a train to catch.’

  Rebus thought he knew. ‘No, but he’s headed for the station.’

  A long line of black taxis crept up from the subterranean concourse of Waverley Station, waiting their turn to take the commuters to business appointments and power breakfasts. They headed past the taxis, down the steep slope until they were underground. Gunner drove past the pick-up/drop-off point, and looked for a moment as if he was going to head up the exit ramp and back on to Waverley Bridge. But he took a left instead, and found a parking bay towards the back of the station.

  ‘Find yourself a space,’ Rebus told Flower, ‘and follow on foot.’

  ‘What if he sees me?’

  ‘Get on to the platform, walk down it.’

  ‘What if he goes on to the platform?’

  ‘He hasn’t come here for the trains. Hey, and take your phone with you.’

  Rebus parked and headed round the other side of the concourse, anti-clockwise to Gunner’s clockwise. He managed a light jog, as if he was fighting a tight schedule. He walked down a platform towards the rear of the station, the telephone up to his face, as much for camouflage as anything.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Flower said. And then Rebus was in position. In the distance, he could see Flower, and halfway between them Allan Gunner. He was where Rebus had guessed he’d be – at the Left Luggage counter. Rebus stood half-hidden by a billboard advertising industrial space to let. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he watched Gunner hand over the briefcase and accept a ticket. When Gunner headed back the way he’d come, Rebus came from around the advertising hoarding and walked briskly towards Left Luggage, just in time to see the employee place the case on a rack right at the front.

  ‘Well?’ Flower said.

  ‘Let him go.’

  ‘Is it there?’

  ‘Sweet as a nut, Flower. Sweet as a nut.’

  Rico Briggs took some persuading.

  Between them, in their many and various ways, Rebus and Flower were expert at the art of persuasion. Well, hadn’t they panicked – persuaded – Gunner into getting rid of the evidence? If he’d had time to think, if it hadn’t been early morning, he might have thought of a better hiding place. Left Luggage was a stop-gap – he just didn’t want the stuff in his house. Rebus had read him just right, and in fact a Left Luggage office wasn’t bad, not as a stop-gap.

  Rebus and Flower took turns keeping the office under surveillance. Surveillance was easy in a railway station: there were so many people just hanging around. They didn’t want Gunner coming back and lifting the case without them knowing, though Rebus’s guess was that it would stay there overnight. Gunner would work the day like any other, then go home and think about it, maybe make a few telephone calls – calls he wouldn’t want to make from his own office. With the briefcase and its contents out of the way, he’d feel more confident. He’d want to use that time to think things through.

  So the briefcase would be there overnight.

  Rebus called Rico and got him to come down to the station. They met in the bar. Rebus had already consumed too much coffee and junk food, and the smell of stale alcohol in the bar almost did for him. The bar smelt the way bars always did at the start of a new day’s business – of the previous day, of accumulation; too much smoke and spilt beer.

  ‘Pint of lager,’ Rico told the barman. The barman tried not to stare too hard at his customer’s tattooed cheeks. Rico gave them a brisk rub while his drink was poured. When he saw there was a gaming machine in the bar, he walked over to it and fed in some coins. Rebus paid for the drink and carried it over to Rico. He had his cellphone in his free hand. I look like a businessman on the way down, he thought.

  Maybe he was, at that.

  Rebus explained the situation to Rico while Rico played the machine. When Rico ran out of coins, Rebus gave him more. Then his cellphone beeped.

  ‘What does he say?’ Flower asked.

  ‘So far, he says no.’

  ‘Let me talk to him.’

  So Rebus relieved Flower. He let twenty minutes pass, then phoned the bar.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s just about cleaned me out of money,’ Flower reported. And in the end it was the gaming machine that was the real persuader. It persuaded Rico to borrow money from Flower – real money – and suddenly Rico owed the policeman twenty pounds.

  For the promise of more money, and a clean slate on his debt, Rico said he’d meet them at one in the morning.

  Which was only thirteen hours away . . .

  Rebus and Flower spent the rest of the day watching Left Luggage, reading newspapers and magazines purchased from the station stall, eating overpriced sandwiches, drinking weak coffee, and generally learning a lot about the life of a mainline railway station.

  The security cameras bothered Rebus, so he paid a visit to ScotRail’s security office and spoke to the staff, on the pretext of alerting them to a gang of pickpockets just up from Newcastle. It was warm in the security chief’s office, and the man was ex-CID, friendly. They traded stories, Rebus asked for a tour. Which was how he saw everything would be all right. The camera trained on Left Luggage was hazy, distant: they’d see anyone going in, but they wouldn’t get a good description. This was very much to Rico’s advantage.

  Besides, no one watched after midnight. The camera would record, but that was all.

  The station was locked overnight, but still open at one o’clock. There were weird night trains to deal with, freight-haulers, a sleeper bound for London. Rebus thought he’d probably caught something, he kept shivering at his core. He didn’t t
hink it could just be nerves.

  True to his word, but ten minutes late, Rico turned up.

  ‘I brought some balaclavas,’ he said.

  ‘We won’t need them.’ Rebus explained about the cameras. They’d taken their cars into Cockburn Street, parked them there. They had a quick discussion as they walked down Platform One towards Left Luggage. Rico had checked the office out earlier, and now carried the tools he needed, tiny picklocks which reminded Rebus of dental instruments. Instinctively, his tongue sought the hole, but there was no hole there, Dr Keene had seen to that.

  It took Rico a very long minute, but at last they were in.

  With the shutters down, the place was in utter darkness, but Rebus had a couple of torches and handed one to Flower.

  ‘Keep listening at the door, Rico,’ he ordered. Then they went to work.

  There wasn’t much luggage to choose from, and the briefcase was just where Rebus knew it would be. Locked, but that didn’t matter. He lifted it up and walked to the door.

  ‘Here, Rico, see what you can do with this.’

  He stood with his torch pointed at the case, while Rico brought out his picklocks. Flower, meantime, was moving luggage around, switching tags.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Rebus hissed.

  ‘Maximising confusion.’

  ‘Well stop it. Put everything back. We don’t want anyone knowing we’ve been in here.’

  Rico made a clucking sound with his tongue. They switched the torches off and stood very still in the darkness, listening. Slow footsteps, coming nearer. A whistled pop tune. Rico rested his weight against the door. Someone tried the door, pushing it a couple of times. Then the shutters jumped a quarter-inch and fell back, then jumped again. If someone shone a torch through the crack, they’d see Flower standing not three feet from them like the last dummy in the shop window. The shutters clattered down again. The footsteps moved away.

  Rebus started breathing again.

  ‘I’m glad I thought to wear my brown underwear,’ Rico whispered. Rebus shone the light back down on to the briefcase, and Rico tried the locks. They flipped open against his fingers.

  Rebus lifted the lid of the case. Inside was a single fat document file and an audio cassette. Rebus lifted both out and instructed Rico to lock the case again.