10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  Outside, they were taking final photographs of the chair and the bonds around it, before separating chair from body. The chair would be bagged, too, along with any splinters they found. Funny how orderly it all became; order out of chaos. Dr Curt said he’d do the post mortem in the morning. That was fine by Rebus. He got back into the patrol car, wishing it were his own: the Saab had a half bottle of whisky tucked under the driver’s seat. Many of the pubs would still be open: midnight licences. Instead, he drove back to the station. It was less than a mile away. Maclay and Bain looked like they’d just got in, but they’d already heard the news.

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Something like it,’ Rebus said. ‘He was tied to a chair with a plastic bag over his head, mouth taped shut. Maybe he was pushed, maybe he jumped or fell. Whoever was with him left in a rush – forgot to take their carry-out.’

  ‘Junkies? Dossers?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘New jeans by the look of them, and new Nikes on his feet. Wallet with plenty of cash, bank card and credit card.’

  ‘So we’ve got a name?’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Allan Mitchison, address off Morrison Street.’ He shook a set of keys. ‘Anybody want to tag along?’

  Bain went with Rebus, leaving Maclay to ‘hold the fort’ – a phrase overused at Fort Apache. Bain said he didn’t make a good passenger, so Rebus let him drive. DS ‘Dod’ Bain had a rep; it had followed him from Dundee to Falkirk and from there to Edinburgh. Dundee and Falkirk weren’t exactly spa towns either. He sported a nick in the skin beneath his right eye, souvenir of a knife attack. Every so often, his finger strayed to the spot; it wasn’t something he was conscious of. At five-eleven he was a couple of inches shorter than Rebus, maybe ten pounds lighter. He used to box middleweight amateur, southpaw, leaving him one ear which hung lower than the other and a nose which covered half his face. His shorn hair was salt-and-pepper. Married, three sons. Rebus hadn’t seen much at Craigmillar to justify Bain’s hardman rep; he was a regular soldier, a form-filler and by-the-book investigator. Rebus had just dispatched one nemesis – DI Alister Flower, promoted to some Borders outpost, chasing sheep-shaggers and tractor racers – and wasn’t looking to fill the vacancy.

  Allan Mitchison’s flat was in a designer block in what wanted to be called ‘the Financial District’. Scrapland off Lothian Road had been transformed into a conference centre and ‘apartments’. A new hotel was in the offing, and an insurance company had grafted its new headquarters on to the Caledonian Hotel. There was room for more expansion, more road-building.

  ‘Desperate,’ Bain said, parking the car.

  Rebus tried to remember the way the area had looked before. He only had to think back a year or two, but found the process difficult nonetheless. Was it just a big hole in the ground, or had they knocked things down? They were half a mile, maybe less, from Torphichen cop-shop; Rebus thought he knew this whole hunting-ground. But now he found that he didn’t know it at all.

  There were half a dozen keys on the chain. One of them opened the main door. In the well-lit lobby there was a whole wall of letter-boxes. They found the name Mitchison – flat 312. Rebus used another key to open the box and remove the mail. There was some junk – ‘Open Now! You Could Have Scooped Life’s Jackpot!’ – and a credit-card statement. He opened the statement. Aberdeen HMV, an Edinburgh sports shop – £56.50, the Nikes – and a curry house, also in Aberdeen. A gap of just under two weeks, then the curry house again.

  They took the narrow lift to the third floor, Bain shadow-boxing the full-length mirror, and found flat 12. Rebus unlocked the door, saw that an alarm panel was flashing on the wall in the small hallway, and used another key to disable it. Bain found the light-switch and closed the door. The flat smelled of paint and plaster, carpets and varnish – new, uninhabited. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, just a telephone on the floor beside an unrolled sleeping-bag.

  ‘The simple life,’ Bain said.

  The kitchen was fully equipped – washing machine, cooker, dishwasher, fridge – but the seal was still across the door of the washer-drier and the fridge contained only its instruction manual, a spare lightbulb, and a set of risers. There was a swing-bin in the cupboard beneath the sink. When you opened the door, the lid of the bin opened automatically. Inside, Rebus saw two crushed beer cans and the red-stained wrappings from what smelled like a kebab. The flat’s solitary bedroom was bare, no clothes in the built-in wardrobe, not even a coat-hanger. But Bain was dragging something out of the tiny bathroom. It was a blue rucksack, a Karrimor.

  ‘Looks like he came in, had a wash, changed clothes and buggered off out again pronto.’

  They started emptying the rucksack. Apart from clothing, they found a personal stereo and some tapes – Soundgarden, Crash Test Dummies, Dancing Pigs – and a copy of Iain Banks’s Whit.

  ‘I meant to buy that,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Take it now. Who’s watching?’

  Rebus looked at Bain. The eyes seemed innocent, but he shook his head anyway. He couldn’t go handing anyone any more ammunition. He pulled a carrier bag out of one of the side pockets: new tapes – Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Dancing Pigs again. The receipt was from HMV in Aberdeen.

  ‘My guess,’ Rebus said: ‘he worked in Furry Boot town.’

  From the other side pocket, Bain produced a pamphlet, folded in four. He unfolded it, opened it, and let Rebus see what it was. There was a colour photograph of an oil platform on the front, beneath a headline: ‘T-BIRD OIL – STRIKING THE BALANCE’, and a sub-head: ‘Decommissioning Offshore Installations – A Modest Proposal’. Inside, besides a few paragraphs of writing, there were colour charts, diagrams and statistics. Rebus read the opening sentence:

  ‘“In the beginning there were microscopic organisms, living and dying in the rivers and seas many millions of years ago.”’ He looked up at Bain. ‘And they gave their lives so that millions of years on we can tank around in cars.’

  ‘I get the feeling Spike maybe worked for an oil company.’

  ‘His name was Allan Mitchison,’ Rebus said quietly.

  It was getting light when Rebus finally arrived home. He turned the hi-fi on so that it was just audible, then rinsed a glass in the kitchen and poured an inch of Laphroaig, adding a dribble of water from the tap. Some malts demanded water. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the newspapers laid out there, cuttings from the Johnny Bible case, photocopies of old Bible John stuff. He’d spent a day in the National Library, fast-tracking the years 1968–70, winding a blur of microfilm through the machine. Stories had leapt out at him. Rosyth was to lose its Royal Navy Commander; plans were announced for a £50 million petrochemical complex at Invergordon; Camelot was showing at the ABC.

  A booklet was advertised for sale – ‘How Scotland Should be Governed’ – and there were letters to the editor concerning Home Rule. A Sales and Marketing Manager was wanted, salary of £2,500 p.a. A new house in Strathalmond cost £7,995. Frogmen were searching for clues in Glasgow, while Jim Clark was winning the Australian Grand Prix. Meantime, members of the Steve Miller Band were being arrested in London on drug charges, and car parking in Edinburgh had reached saturation point . . .

  1968.

  Rebus had copies of the actual newspapers – purchased from a dealer for considerably more than their sixpenny cover price. They continued into ’69. August. The weekend that Bible John claimed his second victim, the shit was hitting the fan in Ulster and 300,000 pop fans were turning up (and on) at Woodstock. A nice irony. The second victim was found by her own sister in an abandoned tenement . . . Rebus tried not to think of Allan Mitchison, concentrated on old news instead, smiled over an August 20 headline: ‘Downing Street Declaration’. Trawler strikes in Aberdeen . . . an American film company seeking sixteen sets of bagpipes . . . dealings in Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon suspended. Another headline: ‘Big drop in Glasgow crimes of violence’. Tell that to the victims. By November, it was reported that the murder rate in Scotland was tw
ice that of England and Wales – a record fifty-two indictments in the year. A debate on capital punishment was taking place. There were anti-war demos in Edinburgh, while Bob Hope entertained the troops in Vietnam. The Stones did two shows in Los Angeles – at £71,000 the most lucrative one-night stand in pop.

  It was November 22 before an artist’s impression of Bible John appeared in the press. By then he was Bible John: the media had come up with the name. Three weeks between the third murder and the artist’s impression: the trail grown good and cold. There’d been an artist’s drawing after the second victim too, but only after a delay of almost a month. Big, big delays. Rebus wondered about them . . .

  He couldn’t quite explain why Bible John was getting to him. Perhaps he was using one old case as a way of warding off another – the Spaven case. But he thought it went deeper than that. Bible John meant the end of the sixties for Scotland; he’d soured the end of one decade and the beginning of another. For a lot of people, he’d all but killed whatever dribble of peace and love had reached this far north. Rebus didn’t want the twentieth century to end the same way. He wanted Johnny Bible caught. But somewhere along the road, his interest in the present case had taken a turning. He’d started to concentrate on Bible John, to the point where he was dusting off old theories and spending a small fortune on period newspapers. In 1968 and ’69, Rebus had been in the army. They’d trained him how to disable and kill, then sent him on tours – including, eventually, Northern Ireland. He felt he’d missed an important part of the times.

  But at least he was still alive.

  He took glass and bottle through to the living room and sank into his chair. He didn’t know how many bodies he’d seen; he just knew it didn’t get any easier. He’d heard gossip about Bain’s first post mortem, how the pathologist had been Naismith up in Dundee, a cruel bastard at the best of times. He’d probably known it was Bain’s first, and had really done a job on the corpse, like a scrap merchant stripping a car, lifting out organs, sawing the skull open, hands cradling a glistening brain – you didn’t do that so lightly these days, fear of hepatitis C. When Naismith had started unpeeling the genitals, Bain had dropped deadweight to the floor. But credit where due, he’d stuck around, hadn’t bolted or hughied. Maybe Rebus and Bain could work together, once friction had smoothed their edges. Maybe.

  He looked out of the bay window, down on to the street. He was still parked on a double yellow. There was a light on in one of the flats across the way. There was always a light on somewhere. He sipped his drink, not wanting to rush it, and listened to the Stones: Black and Blue. Black influences, blues influences; not great Stones, but maybe their mellowest album.

  Allan Mitchison was in a fridge in the Cowgate. He’d died strapped to a chair. Rebus didn’t know why. Pet Shop Boys: ‘It’s a Sin’. Segue to the Glimmer Twins: ‘Fool to Cry’. Mitchison’s flat hadn’t been so different from Rebus’s own in some respects: under-used, more a base than a home. He downed the rest of his drink, poured another, downed that too, and pulled the duvet off the floor and up to his chin.

  Another day down.

  He awoke a few hours later, blinked, got up and went to the bathroom. A shower and shave, change of clothes. He’d been dreaming of Johnny Bible, getting it all mixed up with Bible John. Cops on the scene wearing tight suits and thin black ties, white bri-nylon shirts, pork-pie hats. 1968, Bible John’s first victim. To Rebus it meant Van Morrison, Astral Weeks. 1969, victims two and three; the Stones, Let It Bleed. The hunt went on into 1970, John Rebus wanting to go to the Isle of Wight Festival, not managing it. But of course Bible John had disappeared by then . . . He hoped Johnny Bible would just sod off and die.

  There was nothing in the kitchen to eat, nothing but newspapers. The nearest corner shop had closed down; it wasn’t much more of a walk to the next grocer’s along. No, he’d stop somewhere on route. He looked out of the window and saw a light-blue estate double parked outside, blocking three resident cars. Equipment in the back of the estate, two men and a woman standing on the pavement, supping coffee from take-away beakers.

  ‘Shit,’ Rebus said, knotting his tie.

  Jacketed, he walked outside and into questions. One of the men was hoisting a video camera up to his shoulder. The other man was speaking.

  ‘Inspector, could we have a word? Redgauntlet Television, The Justice Programme.’ Rebus knew him: Eamonn Breen. The woman was Kayleigh Burgess, the show’s producer. Breen was writer/presenter, loved himself, RPIA: Royal Pain in Arse.

  ‘The Spaven case, Inspector. A few minutes of your time, that’s all we need really, help everybody get to the bottom —’

  ‘I’m already there.’ Rebus saw the camera wasn’t ready yet. He turned quickly, his nose almost touching the reporter’s. He thought of Mental Minto breathing the word ‘harassment’, not knowing what harassment was, not the way Rebus had grown to know.

  ‘You’ll think you’re in childbirth,’ he said.

  Breen blinked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When the surgeons are taking that camera out of your arse.’ Rebus tore a parking ticket from his windscreen, unlocked the car, and got in. The video camera was finally up and running, but all it got was a shot of a battered Saab 900 reversing at speed from the scene.

  Rebus had a morning meeting with his boss, Chief Inspector Jim MacAskill. The boss’s office looked as chaotic as any other part of the station: packing cases still waiting to be filled and labelled, half-empty shelves, ancient green filing cabinets with their drawers open, displaying acre upon acre of paperwork, all of which would have to be shipped out in some semblance of order.

  ‘The world’s hardest jigsaw puzzle,’ MacAskill said. ‘If everything gets to the other end unscathed, it’ll be a miracle on a par with Raith Rovers winning the UEFA Cup.’

  The boss was a Fifer like Rebus, born and raised in Methil, back when the shipyard had been making boats rather than rigs for the oil industry. He was tall and well-built and younger than Rebus. His handshake was not masonic, and he’d not yet married, which had caused the usual gossip that maybe the boss was a like-your-loafers. It didn’t worry Rebus – he never wore loafers himself – but he hoped that if his boss was gay there was no guilt involved. It was when you wanted a secret kept that you fell prey to blackmailers and shame merchants, destructive forces both interior and exterior. Jesus, and didn’t Rebus know about that.

  Whatever, MacAskill was handsome, with plenty of thick black hair – no grey, no sign of dyeing – and a chiselled face, all angles, the geometry of eyes, nose and chin making it look like he was smiling even when he wasn’t.

  ‘So,’ the boss said, ‘how does it read to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. A party gone wrong, a falling out – literally in this case? They hadn’t started on the booze.’

  ‘Question one in my mind: did they come together? The victim could have come alone, surprised some people doing something they shouldn’t —’

  Rebus was shaking his head. ‘Taxi driver confirms dropping off a party of three. Gave descriptions, one of which matches the deceased pretty well. The driver paid him most attention, he was behaving the worst. The other two were quiet, sober even. Physical descriptions aren’t going to get us far. He picked up the fare outside Mal’s Bar. We’ve had a word with the staff. They sold them the carry-out.’

  The boss ran a hand down his tie. ‘Do we know anything more about the deceased?’

  ‘Only that he had Aberdeen connections, maybe worked in the oil business. He didn’t use his Edinburgh flat much, makes me think he used to work heavy shifts, two weeks on, two off. Maybe he didn’t always come home between times. He was earning enough to pay off a mortgage in the Financial District, and there’s a two-week gap between his latest credit-card transactions.’

  ‘You think he could have been offshore during that time?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that’s the way it still works, but in the early days I had friends who went to seek their fortune on the r
igs. The stints lasted two weeks, seven days a week.’

  ‘Well, it’s worth following up. We need to check family, too, next of kin. Priority for the paperwork and formal ID. Question one in my mind: motive. Are we sticking with an argument?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘There was too much premeditation, way too much. Did they just happen to find sealing-tape and a polythene bag in that tip? I think they brought them. Do you remember how the Krays got to Jack “the Hat” McVitie? No, you’re too young. They invited him to a party. He’d been paid to do a contract, but bottled it and couldn’t pay them back. It was in a basement, so down he comes crying out for birds and booze. No birds, no booze, just Ronnie grabbing him and Reggie stabbing him to death.’

  ‘So these two men lured Mitchison to the derelict flat?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘Well, first thing they did was tie him up and wrap a bag around his head, so they didn’t have any questions to ask. They just wanted him crapping himself and then dead. I’d say it was straight assassination, with a bit of malicious cruelty thrown in.’

  ‘So was he thrown or did he jump?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Very much, John.’ MacAskill stood up, leaned against the filing cabinet with his arms folded. ‘If he jumped, that’s tantamount to suicide, even if they had been planning to kill him. With the bag over his head and the way he was trussed up, we’ve got maybe culpable homicide. Their defence would be that they were trying to scare him, he got too scared and did something they hadn’t been expecting – jumped through a window.’