10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘No good then, he’s as yellow as a New York cab.’

  A pause. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it?’

  ‘I don’t ever want to know, understood? Who was the suspect?’

  ‘Mental Minto.’

  ‘Christ, that brewhead knows more law than the procurator-fiscal. OK, let’s go talkies.’

  It was good to be out of the station. He had the car windows rolled down. The breeze was almost warm. The station-issue Escort hadn’t been cleaned in a while. There were chocolate wrappers, empty crisp bags, crushed bricks of orange juice and Ribena. The heart of the Scottish diet: sugar and salt. Add alcohol and you had heart and soul.

  Minto lived in one of the tenement flats on South Clerk Street, first floor. Rebus had been there on occasions past, none of them savoury to the memory. Kerbside was solid with cars, so he double-parked. In the sky, fading roseate was fighting a losing battle with encroaching dark. And below it all, halogen orange. The street was noisy. The cinema up the road was probably emptying, and the first casualties were tearing themselves away from still-serving pubs. Night-cooking in the air: hot batter, pizza topping, Indian spice. Brian Holmes was standing outside a charity shop, hands in pockets. No car: he’d probably walked from St Leonard’s. The two men nodded a greeting.

  Holmes looked tired. Just a few years ago he’d been young, fresh, keen. Rebus knew home life had taken its toll: he’d been there in his own marriage, annulled years back. Holmes’s partner wanted him out of the force. She wanted someone who spent more time with her. Rebus knew all too well what she wanted. She wanted someone whose mind was on her when he was at home, who wasn’t immersed in casework and speculation, mind games and promotion strategies. Often as a police officer you were closer to your working partner than your partner for life. When you joined CID they gave you a handshake and a piece of paper.

  The piece of paper was your decree nisi.

  ‘Do you know if he’s up there?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘I phoned him. He picked up. Sounded halfway to sober.’

  ‘Did you say anything?’

  ‘Think I’m stupid?’

  Rebus was looking up at the tenement windows. Ground level was shops; Minto lived above a locksmith’s. There was irony there for those who wanted it.

  ‘OK, you come up with me, but stay on the landing. Only come in if you hear trouble.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m only going to speak to the man.’ Rebus touched Holmes’s shoulder. ‘Relax.’

  The main door was unlocked. They climbed the winding stairs without speaking. Rebus pushed at the bell and took a deep breath. Minto started to pull the door open, and Rebus shouldered it, propelling Minto and himself into the dimly lit hallway. He slammed the door shut behind him.

  Minto was ready for violence until he saw who it was. Then he just snarled and strode back to the living room. It was a tiny room, half kitchenette, with a narrow floor-to-ceiling cupboard Rebus knew held a shower. There was one bedroom, and a toilet with a doll-house sink. They made igloos bigger.

  ‘Fuck do you want?’ Minto was reaching for a can of lager, high-alcohol. He drained it, standing.

  ‘A word.’ Rebus looked around the room, casually as it were. But his hands were by his sides, ready.

  ‘This is unlawful entry.’

  ‘Keep yapping, I’ll show you unlawful entry.’

  Minto’s face creased: not impressed. He was mid-thirties but looked fifteen years older. He’d done most of the major drugs in his time: Billy Whizz, skag, Morningside speed. He was on a meth programme now. On dope, he was a small problem, an irritation; off dope, he was pure radge. He was Mental.

  ‘Way I hear, you’re fucked anyway,’ he said now.

  Rebus took a step closer. ‘That’s right, Mental. So ask yourself: what have I got to lose? If I’m fucked, might as well make it good and.’

  Minto held up his hands. ‘Easy, easy. What’s your problem?’

  Rebus let his face relax. ‘You’re my problem, Mental. Making a charge against a colleague of mine.’

  ‘He laid into me.’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘I was there, didn’t see a thing. I’d called in with a message for DS Holmes. I stuck around. So if he’d assaulted you, I’d’ve known, wouldn’t I?’

  They stood facing one another silently. Then Minto turned and slumped into the room’s only armchair. He looked like he was going to sulk. Rebus bent down and picked something off the floor. It was the city’s tourist accommodation brochure.

  ‘Going somewhere nice?’ He flicked through the lists of hotels, B&Bs, self-catering. Then he waved the magazine at Minto. ‘If one single place in here gets turned, you’ll be our first stop.’

  ‘Harassment,’ Minto said, but quietly.

  Rebus dropped the brochure. Minto didn’t look so mental now; he looked done in and done down, like life was sporting a horseshoe in one of its boxing gloves. Rebus turned to go. He walked down the hall and was reaching for the door when he heard Minto call his name. The small man was standing at the other end of the hall, only twelve feet away. He had pulled his baggy black T-shirt up to his shoulders. Having shown the front, he turned to give Rebus a view of the back. The lighting was poor – forty-watt bulb in a flyblown shade – but even so Rebus could see. Tattoos, he thought at first. But they were bruises: ribs, sides, kidneys. Self-inflicted? It was possible. It was always possible. Minto dropped the shirt and stared hard at Rebus, not blinking. Rebus let himself out of the flat.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Brian Holmes said nervously.

  ‘The story is, I came by with a message. I sat in on the interview.’

  Holmes exhaled noisily. ‘That’s it then?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  Perhaps it was the tone of voice that alerted Holmes. He met John Rebus’s stare, and was the first to break contact. Outside, he put out a hand and said, ‘Thanks.’

  But Rebus had turned and walked away.

  He drove through the streets of the empty capital, six-figure housing huddled either side of the road. It cost a fortune to live in Edinburgh these days. It could cost you everything you had. He tried not to think about what he’d done, what Brian Holmes had done. The Pet Shop Boys inside his head: ‘It’s a Sin’. Segue to Miles Davis: ‘So What?’

  He headed in the vague direction of Craigmillar, then thought better of it. He’d go home instead, and pray there were no reporters camped outside. When he went home, he took the night home with him, and had to soak and scrub it away, feeling like an old paving slab, walked on daily. Sometimes it was easier to stay on the street, or sleep at the station. Sometimes he drove all night, not just through Edinburgh: down to Leith and past the working girls and hustlers, along the waterfront, South Queensferry sometimes, and then up on to the Forth Bridge, up the M90 through Fife, past Perth, all the way to Dundee, where he’d turn and head back, usually tired by then, pulling off the road if necessary and sleeping in his car. It all took time.

  He remembered he was in a station car, not his own. If they needed it, they could come fetch it. When he reached Marchmont, he couldn’t find a parking space on Arden Street, ended up on a double yellow. There were no reporters; they had to sleep some time, too. He walked along Warrender Park Road to his favourite chip shop – huge portions, and they sold toothpaste and toilet-rolls too, if you needed them. He walked back slowly, nice night for it, and was halfway up the tenement stairs when his pager went off.

  2

  His name was Allan Mitchison and he was drinking in a hometown bar, not ostentatiously, but with a look on his face that said he wasn’t worried about money. He got talking to these two guys. One of them told a joke. It was a good joke. They bought the next round, and he bought one back. They wiped tears from their eyes when he told his only gag. They ordered three more. He was enjoying the company.

  He didn’t have many pals left in Edinburgh. Some of his one-time friends resented him, the money he still made. He didn’t have any famil
y, hadn’t had for as long as he could remember. The two men were company. He didn’t quite know why he came home, or even why he called Edinburgh ‘home’. He had a flat with a mortgage on it, but hadn’t decorated it yet or put in any furniture. It was just a shell, nothing worth coming back for. But everyone went home, that was the thing. The sixteen days straight that you worked, you were supposed to think about home. You talked about it, spoke of all the things you’d do when you got there – the booze, the minge, clubbing. Some of the men lived in or near Aberdeen, but a lot still had homes further away. They couldn’t wait for the sixteen days to end, the fourteen-day break to begin.

  This was the first night of his fourteen days.

  They passed slowly at first, then more quickly towards the end, until you were left wondering why you hadn’t done more with your time. This, the first night, this was the longest. This was the one you had to get through.

  They moved on to another bar. One of his new friends was carrying an old-style Adidas bag, red plastic with a side pocket and a broken strap. He’d had one just like it at school, back when he was fourteen, fifteen.

  ‘What have you got in there,’ he joked, ‘your games kit?’

  They laughed and slapped him on the back.

  At the new place, they moved to shorts. The pub was heaving, wall-to-wall minge.

  ‘You must think about it all the time,’ one of his friends said, ‘on the rigs. Me, I’d go off my head.’

  ‘Or blind,’ said the other.

  He grinned. ‘I get my share.’ Downed another Black Heart. He didn’t used to drink dark rum. A fisherman in Stonehaven had introduced him to the stuff. OVD or Black Heart, but he liked Black Heart best. He liked the name.

  They needed a carry-out, keep the party going. He was tired. The train from Aberdeen had taken three hours, and there’d been the paraffin budgie before that. His friends were ordering over the bar: a bottle of Bell’s and one of Black Heart, a dozen cans, crisps and smokes. It cost a fortune, buying that way. They split it three ways even, so they weren’t after his cash.

  Outside, there was trouble finding a taxi. Plenty about, but already taken. They had to pull him out of the road when he tried to flag one down. He stumbled a bit and went down on one knee. They helped him back up.

  ‘So what do you do exactly on the rigs?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Try to stop them falling down.’

  A taxi had stopped to let a couple out.

  ‘Is that your mother or are you just desperate?’ he asked the male passenger. His friends told him to shut up, and pushed him into the back. ‘Did you see her?’ he asked them. ‘Face like a bag of marbles.’ They weren’t going to his flat, there was nothing there.

  ‘We’ll go back to our place,’ his friends had said. So there was nothing to do but sit back and watch all the lights. Edinburgh was like Aberdeen – small cities, not like Glasgow or London. Aberdeen had more money than style, and it was scary, too. Scarier than Edinburgh. The trip seemed to take for ever.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Niddrie,’ someone said. He couldn’t remember their names, and was too embarrassed to ask. Eventually the taxi stopped. Outside, the street was dark, looked like the whole fucking estate had welshed on the lecky bill. He said as much.

  More laughter, tears, hands on his back.

  Three-storey tenements, pebble-dashed. Most of the windows were blocked with steel plates or had been infilled with breeze blocks.

  ‘You live here?’ he said.

  ‘We can’t all afford mortgages.’

  True enough, true enough. He was lucky in so many ways. They pushed hard at the main door and it gave. They went in, one friend either side of him with a hand on his back. Inside, the place was damp and rotten, the stairs half-blocked with torn mattresses and lavatory seats, runs of piping and lengths of broken skirting-board.

  ‘Very salubrious.’

  ‘It’s all right once you get up.’

  They climbed two storeys. There were a couple of doors off the landing, both open.

  ‘In here, Allan.’

  So he walked in.

  There was no electricity, but one of his friends had a torch. The place was a midden.

  ‘I wouldn’t have taken youse for down and outs, lads.’

  ‘The kitchen’s OK.’

  So they took him through there. He saw a wooden chair which had once been padded. It sat on what was left of the linoleum floor. He was sobering up fast, but not fast enough.

  They hauled him down on to the chair. He heard tape being ripped from a roll, binding him to the chair, around and around. Then around his head, covering his mouth. His legs next, all the way down to the ankles. He was trying to cry out, gagging on the tape. A blow landed on the side of his head. His eyes and ears went fuzzy for a moment. The side of his head hurt, like it had just connected with a girder. Wild shadows flew across the walls.

  ‘Looks like a mummy, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Aye, and he’ll be crying for his daddy in a minute.’

  The Adidas bag was on the floor in front of him, unzipped.

  ‘Now,’ one of them said, ‘I’ll just get out my games kit.’

  Pliers, claw-hammer, staple-gun, electric screwdriver, and a saw.

  Night sweat, salt stinging his eyes, trickling in, trickling out again. He knew what was happening, but still didn’t believe it. The two men weren’t saying anything. They were laying a sheet of heavy-duty polythene out on the floor. Then they carried him and the chair on to the sheet. He was wriggling, trying to scream, eyes screwed shut, straining against his bonds. When he opened his eyes, he saw a clear polythene bag. They pulled it down over his head and sealed it with tape around his neck. He breathed in through his nostrils and the bag contracted. One of them picked up the saw, then put it down and picked up the hammer instead.

  Somehow, fuelled by sheer terror, Allan Mitchison got to his feet, still tied to the chair. The kitchen window was in front of him. It had been boarded up, but the boards had been torn away. The frame was still there, but only fragments of the actual window panes remained. The two men were busy with their tools. He stumbled between them and out of the window.

  They didn’t wait to watch him fall. They just gathered up the tools, folded the plastic sheet into an untidy bundle, put everything back in the Adidas bag, and zipped it shut.

  ‘Why me?’ Rebus had asked when he’d called in.

  ‘Because,’ his boss had said, ‘you’re new. You haven’t been around long enough to make enemies on the estate.’

  And besides, Rebus could have added, you can’t find Maclay or Bain.

  A resident walking his greyhound had called it in. ‘A lot of stuff gets chucked on to the street, but not like this.’

  When Rebus arrived, there were a couple of patrol cars on the scene, creating a sort of cordon, which hadn’t stopped the locals gathering. Someone was making grunting noises in imitation of a pig. They didn’t go much for originality around here; tradition stuck hard. The tenements were mostly abandoned, awaiting demolition. The families had been relocated. In some of the buildings, there were still a few occupied flats. Rebus wouldn’t have wanted to stick around.

  The body had been pronounced dead, the circumstances suspicious to say the least, and now the forensic and photography crews were gathering. A Fiscal Depute was in conversation with the pathologist, Dr Curt. Curt saw Rebus and nodded a greeting. But Rebus had eyes only for the body. An old-fashioned spike-tipped set of railings ran the length of the tenement, and the body was impaled on the fence, still dripping blood. At first, he thought the body grossly deformed, but as he stepped closer he saw what it was. A chair, half of it smashed in the fall. It was attached to the body by runs of silver tape. There was a plastic bag over the corpse’s head. The bag, once translucent, was now half-filled with blood.

  Dr Curt walked over. ‘I wonder if we’ll find an orange in his mouth.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

  ‘I�
��ve been meaning to phone. I was sorry to hear about your . . . well . . .’

  ‘Craigmillar’s not so bad.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I know you didn’t.’ Rebus looked up. ‘How many storeys did he fall?’

  ‘Looks like a couple. That window there.’

  There was a noise behind them. One of the woolly suits was vomiting on to the road. A colleague had an arm around his shoulders, encouraging the flow.

  ‘Let’s get him down,’ Rebus said. ‘Get the poor bastard into a body bag.’

  ‘No electricity,’ someone said, handing Rebus a torch.

  ‘Are the floors safe to walk on?’

  ‘Nobody’s fallen through yet.’

  Rebus moved through the flat. He’d been in dens like it a dozen times. Gangs had been in and sprayed their names and their urine around the place. Others had stripped out anything with even a whiff of monetary value: floor coverings, interior doors, wiring, ceiling roses. A table, missing one leg, had been turned upside down in the living room. There was a crumpled blanket lying on it, and some sheets of newspaper. A real home from home. There was nothing in the bathroom, just holes where the fittings had been. There was a large hole, too, in the bedroom wall. You could look right through into the adjoining flat, and see an identical scene.

  The SOCOs were concentrating on the kitchen.

  ‘What have we got?’ Rebus asked. Someone shone their torch into a corner.

  ‘Bag full of booze, sir. Whisky, rum, some tinnies and nibbles.’

  ‘Party time.’

  Rebus walked to the window. A woolly suit was standing there, looking down on to the street, where a team of four were trying to manoeuvre the body from the railings.

  ‘That’s just about as potted heid as you can get.’ The young constable turned to Rebus. ‘What’s the odds, sir? Alky commits suicide?’

  ‘Get used to that uniform, son.’ Rebus turned back into the room. ‘I want prints from the bag and its contents. If it’s from an off-licence, you’ll probably find price stickers. If not, could be from a pub. We’re looking for one, more likely two people. Whoever sold them the hooch might give a description. How did they get here? Their own transport? Bus? Taxi? We need to know. How did they know about this place? Local knowledge? We need to ask the neighbours.’ He was walking through the room now. He recognised a couple of junior CID from St Leonard’s, plus Craigmillar uniforms. ‘We’ll split the tasks later. It could all be some hideous accident or joke gone wrong, but whatever it was the victim wasn’t here on his tod. I want to know who was here with him. Thank you and good night.’