10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  It took him five minutes to engage in conversation with his neighbour, who used to work on the rigs. He was short and wiry, already completely bald in his thirties, and wore Buddy Holly glasses with jam-jar lenses. He had worked in the canteen.

  ‘Best of fucking food every day. Three menus, two shifts. Top quality. The new arrivals always stuffed themselves, but they soon learned.’

  ‘Did you work two weeks on, two off?’

  ‘Everybody did. Seven-day weeks at that.’ The man’s face was pointing down at the bar as he spoke, like his head was too heavy to lift. ‘You got hooked on it. The time I spent on land, I couldn’t settle, couldn’t wait to get back offshore.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Times got tougher. I was surplus to requirements.’

  ‘I hear the rigs are hoaching with dope. Did you ever see any?’

  ‘Fuck aye, all over the place. Just for relaxation, understand? Nobody was daft enough to go out to work wired up. One false move, a pipe can have your hand off – I know, I’ve seen it. Or if you lose your balance, I mean, it’s a two-hundred fucking foot drop to the water. But there was plenty of dope, plenty of booze. And I’ll tell you, there might not have been any women, but we had scud mags and films up to our ears. Never seen the like. All tastes catered for, and some of them were pretty disgusting. That’s a man of the world talking, so you know what I mean.’

  Rebus thought he did. He bought the wee man a drink. If his companion leaned any lower over the bar, his nose would be in the glass. When someone announced that the karaoke would start in five minutes, Rebus knew it was time to leave. Been there, done that. He used his map to guide him back towards Union Street. The night was growing livelier. Groups of teenagers were roaming, police wagons – plain blue Transits – checking them out. There was a strong uniformed presence, but nobody seemed intimidated. People were roaring, singing, clapping their hands. Midweek Aberdeen was like Edinburgh on a bad Saturday night. A couple of woolly suits were discussing something with two young men, while girlfriends stood by chewing gum. A wagon was parked next to them, its back doors open.

  I’m just a tourist here, Rebus told himself, walking past.

  He took a wrong turn somewhere, ended up approaching his hotel from the opposite direction, passing a large statue of William Wallace brandishing a claymore.

  ‘Evening, Mel,’ Rebus said.

  He climbed the hotel steps, decided on a nightcap, one to take up to his room. The bar was full of conventioneers, some of them still wearing their delegate badges. They sat at tables awash with empty glasses. A lone woman was perched at the bar, smoking a black cigarette, blowing the smoke ceiling-wards. She had peroxide hair and wore a lot of gold. Her two-piece suit was crimson, her tights or stockings black. Rebus looked at her and decided they were stockings. Her face was hard, the hair pulled back and held with a large gold clasp. There was powder on her cheeks, and dark gloss lipstick on her lips. Maybe Rebus’s age; maybe even a year or two older – the sort of woman men called ‘handsome’. She’d had a couple of drinks, which was perhaps why she smiled.

  ‘Are you with the convention?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I swear every one of them’s tried chatting me up, but all they can talk about is crude.’ She paused. ‘As in crude oil – dead crude and live crude. Did you know there was a difference?’

  Rebus smiled, shook his head and ordered his drink. ‘Do you want another, or does that count as a chat-up line?’

  ‘It does and I will.’ She saw him looking at her cigarette. ‘Sobranie.’

  ‘Does the black paper make them taste any better?’

  ‘The tobacco makes them taste better.’

  Rebus got out his own pack. ‘I’m a wood-shavings man myself.’

  ‘So I see.’

  The drinks arrived. Rebus signed the chit to charge them to his room.

  ‘Are you here on business?’ Her voice was deep, west coast or thereabouts, working-class educated.

  ‘Sort of. What about you?’

  ‘Business. So what do you do?’

  World’s worst reply to a chat-up: ‘I’m a police officer.’

  She raised one eyebrow, interested. ‘CID?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you working on the Johnny Bible case?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The way the papers tell it, I thought every policeman in Scotland was.’

  ‘I’m the exception.’

  ‘I remember Bible John,’ she said, sucking on the cigarette. ‘I was brought up in Glasgow. For weeks my mum wouldn’t let me out of the house. It was like being in the clink.’

  ‘He did that to a lot of women.’

  ‘And now it’s all happening again.’ She paused. ‘When I said I remembered Bible John, your line should have been, “You don’t look old enough”.’

  ‘Which proves I’m not chatting you up.’

  She stared at him. ‘Pity,’ she said, reaching for her drink. Rebus used his own glass as a prop, too, buying time. She’d given him all the information he needed. He had to decide whether to act on it or not. Ask her up to his room? Or plead . . . what exactly? Guilt? Fear? Self-loathing?

  Fear.

  He saw the way the night could go, trying to extract beauty from need, passion from a certain despair.

  ‘I’m flattered,’ he said at last.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said quickly. His move again, an amateur chess player thrown against a pro.

  ‘So what do you do?’

  She turned to him. Her eyes said that she knew every tactic in this game. ‘I’m in sales. Products for the oil industry.’ She angled her head towards the rest of the men in the bar. ‘I may have to work with them, but nobody says I have to share my time off with them.’

  ‘You live in Aberdeen?’

  She shook her head. ‘Let me get you another.’

  ‘I’ve an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘One more won’t hurt.’

  ‘It might,’ Rebus said, holding her gaze.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘bang goes the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  He felt her eyes on him as he walked out of the bar towards reception. He had to force his feet up the stairs towards his room. Her pull was strong. He realised he didn’t even know her name.

  He switched on the TV while he got undressed. Some sub-Hollywood garbage: the women looked like skeletons with lipstick; the men acted with their necks – he’d seen barbers with more Method. He thought of the woman again. Was she on the game? Definitely not. But she’d hit on him quick. He’d told her he was flattered; in truth, he was bemused. Rebus had always found relationships with the opposite sex difficult. He’d grown up in a mining village, a bit behind the times when it came to things like promiscuity. You stuck your hand in a girl’s blouse and next thing her father was after you with a leather belt.

  Then he’d joined the army, where women were by turns fantasy figures and untouchables: slags and madonnas, there seemed no middle ground. Released from the army, he’d joined the police. Married by then, but his job had proved more seductive, more all-consuming than the relationship – than any relationship. Since then, his affairs had lasted months, weeks, mere days sometimes. Too late now, he felt, for anything more permanent. Women seemed to like him – that wasn’t the problem. The problem lay somewhere inside him, and it hadn’t been eased by things like the Johnny Bible case, by women abused and then killed. Rape was all about power; killing, too, in its way. And wasn’t power the ultimate male fantasy? And didn’t he sometimes dream of it, too?

  He’d seen the post mortem photos of Angie Riddell, and the first thought that had come to him, the thought he’d had to push past, was: good body. It had bothered him, because in that instant she’d been just another object. Then the pathologist had got to work, and she had stopped being even that.

  He was asleep as s
oon as his head touched the pillow. His prayer, as every night, was that there would be no dreams. He woke up in darkness, his back drenched in sweat, and to a ticking noise. It wasn’t a clock, not even his watch. His watch was on the cabinet. This was closer, much more intimate. Was it coming from the wall? The headboard? He switched the light on, but the sound had stopped. Woodworm maybe? He couldn’t find any holes in the headboard’s wooden surround. He switched the lamp off and closed his eyes. There it was again: more geiger counter than metronome. He tried to ignore it, but it was too close. It was inescapable. It was the pillow, his feather pillow. There was something inside, something alive. Would it want to crawl into his ear? Lay its eggs there? Mutate or pupate or just enjoy a snack of wax and eardrum? Sweat cooled on his back and on the sheet beneath him. There was no air in the room. He was too tired to get up, too nervy to sleep. He did what he had to do – tossed the pillow towards the door.

  No more ticking, but still he couldn’t sleep. The ringing phone came as a relief. Maybe it was the woman from the bar. He’d tell her, I’m an alcoholic, a fuck-up, I’m no good for any other human being.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Ludo here, sorry to wake you.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep. What’s the problem?’

  ‘A patrol car’s coming to pick you up.’ Rebus grimaced: had Ancram tracked him down already?

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A suicide in Stonehaven. Thought you might be interested. The name appears to be Anthony Ellis Kane.’

  Rebus shot out of bed. ‘Tony El? Suicide?’

  ‘Looks like. The car should be there in five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Now that John Rebus was in Aberdeen, things were more dangerous.

  John Rebus.

  The librarian’s list had first thrown up the name, along with an address in Arden Street, Edinburgh EH9. With a short-term reader’s ticket, Rebus had consulted editions of The Scotsman from February 1968 to December 1969. Four others had consulted the same sets of microfilm during the previous six months. Two were known to Bible John as journalists, the third was an author – he’d written a chapter on the case for a book on Scottish murderers. As for the fourth . . . the fourth had given his name as Peter Manuel. It would have meant nothing to the librarian writing out another short-term reader’s ticket. But the real Peter Manuel had killed up to a dozen people in the 1950s, and been hanged for it at Barlinnie Prison. It became clear to Bible John: the Upstart had been reading up on famous murderers, and in the course of his studies had come across both Manuel and Bible John. Narrowing his search, he’d decided to concentrate his research on Bible John, learning more about the case by reading newspapers from the period. ‘Peter Manuel’ had requested not only Scotsmans from 1968–70, but Glasgow Heralds too.

  His was to be thorough research. And the address on his reader’s ticket was as fictitious as his name: Lanark Terrace, Aberdeen. The real Peter Manuel had carried out his killing spree in Lanarkshire.

  But though the address be false, Bible John wondered about Aberdeen. His own investigations had already led him to site the Upstart in the Aberdeen area. This seemed a further connection. And now John Rebus was in Aberdeen, too . . . Bible John had been pondering John Rebus, even before he knew who he was. He was at first an enigma, and now a problem. Bible John had scanned some of the Upstart’s most recent cuttings into the computer, and browsed through them while he wondered what to do about the policeman. He read another policeman’s words: ‘This person needs help, and we would ask him to come forward so that we can help him.’ Followed by more speculation. They were whistling in the dark.

  Except that one of them was in Aberdeen.

  And Bible John had given him his business card.

  He’d always known that it would be dangerous, tracking down the Upstart, but he could hardly have expected to bump into a policeman along the way. And not just any officer, but someone who’d been looking at the Bible John case. John Rebus, policeman, based in Edinburgh, address in Arden Street, currently in Aberdeen . . . He decided to open a new file on his computer, dedicated to Rebus. He had looked through some recent papers, and thought he’d found why Rebus was in Aberdeen: an oil-worker had fallen from a tenement window in Edinburgh, foul play suspected. Reasonable to conclude that Rebus was working that case rather than any other. But there was still the fact that Rebus had been reading up on the Bible John case. Why? What business was it of his?

  And a second fact, more problematical still: Rebus now had his business card. It wouldn’t mean anything to him, couldn’t, not yet. But there might come a time . . . the closer he came to the Upstart, the more risks he would face. The card might mean something to the policeman sometime down the road. Could Bible John risk that? He seemed to have two options: quicken his hunt for the Upstart.

  Or take the policeman out of the game.

  He would think it over. Meantime, he had to concentrate on the Upstart.

  His contact at the National Library had informed him that a reader’s ticket required proof of identity: driver’s licence, something like that. Maybe the Upstart had forged himself a whole new identity as ‘Peter Manuel’, but Bible John doubted it. More likely he had managed to talk himself past proving his identity. He would be good at talking. He’d be ingratiating, wheedling. He wouldn’t look like a monster. His would be a face women – and men – could trust. He was able to walk out of night clubs with women he’d met only an hour or two before. Getting round a security check would have posed him few problems.

  He stood up and examined his face in the mirror. The police had issued a series of photofits, computer generated, ageing the original photofit of Bible John. One of them wasn’t a bad likeness, but it was one amongst many. Nobody had so much as looked at him twice; none of his colleagues had remarked on any resemblance. Not even the policeman had seen anything. He rubbed his chin. The bristles showed through red where he hadn’t shaved. The house was silent. His wife was elsewhere. He’d married her because it had seemed expedient, one more lie to the profile. He unlocked the study door, walked to the front door and made sure it was locked. Then he climbed the stairs to the upstairs hall, and pulled down the sliding ladder which led up into the attic. He liked it up here, a place only he visited. He looked at a trunk, on top of which sat a couple of old boxes – camouflage. They hadn’t been moved. He lifted them off now and took a key from his pocket, unlocked the trunk and snapped open the two heavy brass clasps. He listened again, hearing only silence past the dull beat of his own heart, then lifted the lid of the trunk.

  Inside, it was filled with treasure: handbags, shoes, scarves, trinkets, watches and purses – nothing with any means of identifying the previous owner. The bags and purses had been emptied, checked thoroughly for telltale initials or even blemishes and distinguishing marks. Any letters, anything with a name or address, had been incinerated. He settled on the floor in front of the open trunk, not touching anything. He didn’t need to touch. He was remembering a girl who’d lived on his street when he’d been eight or nine – she’d been a year younger. They’d played a game. They would take it in turns to lie very still on the ground, eyes closed, while the other one tried to remove as much of their clothing as they could without the one being stripped feeling anything.

  Bible John had been quick to feel the girl’s fingers on him – he’d played by the rules. But when the girl had lain there, and he’d started working at buttons and zips . . . her eyelids had fluttered, a smile on her lips . . . and she’d lain there uncomplaining, even though he knew she must be able to feel his clumsy fingers.

  She’d been cheating, of course.

  Now his grandmother came to him, with her constant warnings: beware women who wear too much perfume; don’t play cards with strangers on trains . . .

  The police hadn’t said anything about the Upstart taking souvenirs. No doubt they wanted to keep it quiet; they’d have their reasons. But the Upstart would be taking souvenirs. Three so f
ar. And he’d be hoarding them in Aberdeen. He’d slipped just a little, giving Aberdeen as his address on the reader’s card . . . Bible John stood up suddenly. He saw it now, saw the transaction between the librarian and ‘Peter Manuel’. The Upstart claiming that he needed the use of a reference library. The librarian asking for details, for proof of identity . . . The Upstart flustered, saying he’d left all that sort of thing at home. Could he go and fetch it? Impossible, he’d come down from Aberdeen for the day. A long way to travel, so the librarian had relented, issued the ticket. But now the Upstart was obliged to give Aberdeen as his address.

  He was in Aberdeen.

  Revived, Bible John locked the trunk, replaced the boxes exactly as they had been, and went back downstairs. It grieved him that with John Rebus so close, he might have to move the trunk . . . and himself with it. In his study, he sat at his desk. Have the Upstart based in Aberdeen but mobile. Have him learn from his first mistakes. So now he plans each cull well in advance. Are the victims chosen at random, or is there some pattern there? Easier to choose prey that wasn’t random; but then easier, too, for the police to establish a pattern and eventually catch you. But the Upstart was young: maybe that was one lesson he hadn’t yet learned. His choice of ‘Peter Manuel’ showed a certain cockiness, teasing anyone who was able to track him that far. He either knew his victims or he didn’t. Two routes to follow. Route one: say he did know them, say there existed some pattern linking all three to the Upstart.

  One profile: the Upstart was a travelling man – lorry driver, company rep, a job like that. Lots of travel throughout Scotland. Travelling men could be lonely men, sometimes they used the services of a prostitute. The Edinburgh victim had been a prostitute. Often they stayed in hotels. The Glasgow victim had worked as a chambermaid. The first victim – the Aberdeen cull – failed to fit that pattern.