10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  The drive was by turns awe-inspiring and bleak: coastal vistas giving way to interior moorland, scattered settlements, a lot of sheep – many of them on the road – and few trees. Jack was right though, the sky was amazing. Forres had told them this season was ‘simmer dim’ – a time of year without true darkness. But in winter, daylight became a precious commodity. You had to respect people who chose to live miles from everything you took for granted. Easy enough to be a hunter-gatherer in a city, but out here . . . It wasn’t the sort of scenery to inspire conversation. They found their dialogues crumbling into grunts and nods. As close as they were in the speeding car, they were in isolation each from the other. No, Rebus was damned sure he couldn’t survive out here.

  They took a left fork towards Brae, and found themselves suddenly on the island’s west coast. It was still hard to know what to make of the place – Forres was the only born and bred Shetlander they’d met. What architecture they’d seen in Lerwick had been a mix of Scottish and Scandinavian styles, a sort of Ikea baronial. Out in the country, the crofts were the same as any in the Western Isles, but the names of the settlements showed Scandinavian influence. As they drove through Burravoe and into Brae, Rebus realised he felt just about as foreign as he ever had in his life.

  ‘Where to now?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Give me a minute. When I was here before, we came into town the other way . . .’ Rebus got a fix on where they were, and eventually led them to the house Jake Harley shared with Briony. Neighbours looked out at the police car like they’d never seen one before; maybe they hadn’t. Rebus tried Briony’s door – no answer. He knocked harder, the sound echoing emptily. A look in through the living-room window: untidy, but not a mess. A woman’s untidiness, not quite professional enough. Rebus went back to the car.

  ‘She works at the swimming pool, let’s give it a shot.’

  The pool, with its blue metal roof, was hard to miss. Briony was pacing the edge of the pool, watching children at play. She wore the same uniform of singlet and jogging bottoms as when they’d last met, but now had tennis shoes on her feet. Her ankles were bare: lifesavers didn’t bother with socks. She had a referee’s tin whistle strung around her neck, but the kids were behaving themselves. Briony saw Rebus and recognised him. She put the whistle in her mouth and gave three short blasts: a recognised signal – another staff member took her place poolside. She walked up to Rebus and Jack. The temperature was getting on for tropical, with humidity to match.

  ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘Jake’s still not shown up.’

  ‘I know, and you said you weren’t worried about him.’

  She shrugged. She had short dark hair which fell straight most of the way before ending in kiss-curls. The style took half a dozen years off her, turning her into a teenager, but her face was older – slightly hardened, whether by climate or circumstance Rebus couldn’t say. Her eyes were small, as were nose and mouth. He tried not to think of a hamster, but then she twitched her nose and the picture was complete.

  ‘He’s a free agent,’ she said.

  ‘But you were worried last week.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘When you closed the door on me. I’ve seen the look enough times to know.’

  She folded her arms. ‘So?’

  ‘So one of two things, Briony. Either Jake’s in hiding because he’s in fear of his life.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or he’s already dead. Either way, you can help.’

  She swallowed. ‘Mitch . . .’

  ‘Did Jake tell you why Mitch was killed?’

  She shook her head. Rebus tried not to smile: so Jake had been in touch since they’d last spoken.

  ‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’

  She bit her lip, then nodded.

  ‘I’d like to talk to him. I think I can get him out of this mess.’

  She tried to gauge the truth of this, but Rebus’s face was a mask. ‘Is he in trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but not with us.’

  She looked back at the pool, saw everything was under control. ‘I’ll take you,’ she said.

  They drove back through the moorland and down past Lerwick, heading for a place called Sandwick on the eastern side of Mainland, just ten miles north of where their helicopter had originally landed.

  Briony didn’t want to talk during the drive, and Rebus guessed she didn’t know much anyway. Sandwick turned out to be a spread of land taking in older settlements and oil-era housing. She directed them to Leebotten, a nestling of sea-front cottages.

  ‘Is this where he is?’ Rebus asked as they got out of the car. She shook her head and pointed out to sea. There was an island out there, no sign of habitation. Cliffs and rocky approaches. Rebus looked to Briony.

  ‘Mousa,’ she said.

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘Boat, always supposing somebody’s willing to take us.’ She knocked on a cottage door. It was opened by a middle-aged woman.

  ‘Briony,’ the woman said simply, more statement of fact than greeting.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Munroe. Is Scott in?’

  ‘He is.’ The door opened a little wider. ‘Come in, won’t you?’

  They entered one decent-sized room which seemed kitchen and living room both. A large wooden table took up most of the space. By the fireplace were two armchairs. A man was rising from one of them, unhooking wire reading-glasses from his ears. He folded them and put them in his waistcoat pocket. The book he’d been reading lay open on the floor: it was a family-sized Bible, black leather cover and brass clasps.

  ‘Well now, Briony,’ the man said. He was middle-aged or a little after, but his weatherbeaten face was that of an old man. His hair was silver, cut short with the careful simplicity of a home barber. His wife had gone to the sink to fill the kettle.

  ‘No thanks, Mrs Munroe,’ Briony said, before turning back to the man. ‘Have you seen Jake lately, Scott?’

  ‘I was over there a couple of days back, he seemed fine.’

  ‘Could you take us across?’

  Scott Munroe looked to Rebus, who stuck out a hand.

  ‘Detective Inspector Rebus, Mr Munroe. This is DI Morton.’

  Munroe shook both hands, putting no power into it: what had he to prove?

  ‘Well, the wind’s dropped a bit,’ Munroe said, rubbing the grey stubble on his chin. ‘So I suppose that’s all right.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Meg, what about some bread and ham for the lad?’

  Mrs Munroe nodded and silently set about her work, while her husband readied himself. He found oilskins for all of them and waterproof boots for himself, by which time a parcel of sandwiches and flask of tea sat waiting. Rebus stared at the flask, knowing Jack was doing the same, both gasping for a drink.

  But there was no time for that. They were off.

  It was a small boat, freshly painted and with an outboard motor. Rebus had had visions of them rowing across.

  ‘There’s a jetty,’ Briony said when they were underway, rising and falling against the choppy water. ‘A ferry usually takes visitors across. We’ll have a bit of a hike, not much.’

  ‘It’s a bleak spot to choose,’ Rebus yelled above the wind.

  ‘Not that bleak,’ she said with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jack said, pointing.

  It stood on the edge of the island, next to where sloping strata of rock eased down into the dark water. Sheep grazed on the grass around the structure. To Rebus, it looked like some gigantic sandcastle or upturned flower-pot. As they got closer he saw it had to be over forty feet high, maybe fifty feet in diameter at its base, and was constructed from large flat stones, thousands of them.

  ‘Mousa Broch,’ Briony said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Like a fort. They lived there, it was easy to defend.’

  ‘Who lived there?’

  She shrugged. ‘Settlers. Maybe a hundred years BC.’ There was a low-walled area behind the broch. ‘That was the Haa; it’s just a s
hell now.’

  ‘And where’s Jake?’

  She turned to him. ‘Inside the broch, of course.’

  They landed, Munroe saying he’d circle the island and be back for them in an hour. Briony carried the bag of provisions, and struck out towards the broch, watched by the slow-chewing sheep and a few strutting birds.

  ‘You live in a country all your life,’ Jack was saying, the hood of his oilskin up to protect him from the wind, ‘and you never even know stuff like this is out there.’

  Rebus nodded. It was an extraordinary place. The feel of his feet on the grass wasn’t like walking across lawn or field; it was like he was the first person ever to walk there. They followed Briony through a passageway and into the heart of the broch itself, sheltered from the wind but with no roof to protect them from threatening rain. Munroe’s ‘one hour’ was a warning: any later and they’d be in for a rough if not dangerous crossing.

  The blue nylon one-man tent looked incongruous pitched in the broch’s central court. A man had risen out of it to hug Briony. Rebus bided his time. Briony handed over the bag of tea and sandwiches.

  ‘God,’ Jake Harley said, ‘I’ve got too much food here as it is.’

  He didn’t look surprised to see Rebus. ‘I thought she’d crack under pressure,’ he said.

  ‘No pressure necessary, Mr Harley. She’s worried about you, that’s all. I was worried too for a while there – thought you might have had an accident.’

  Harley managed a smile. ‘By which you don’t really mean “accident”?’ Rebus nodded. He was staring at Harley, trying to see him as ‘Mr H.’, the person who had ordered Allan Mitchison’s execution. But that seemed way off the mark.

  ‘I don’t blame you for going into hiding,’ Rebus said. ‘Probably the safest thing you could have done.’

  ‘Poor Mitch.’ Harley looked down at the ground. He was tall, well built, with short, thinning black hair and metal-rimmed glasses. His face had retained a touch of the schoolboy, but he was badly needing a shave and to wash his hair. The tent’s flaps were open, showing ground-mat, sleeping bag, a radio and some books. Leaning against the interior wall of the broch was a red rucksack, and nearby a camping-stove and carrier bag filled with rubbish.

  ‘Can we talk about it?’ Rebus asked.

  Jake Harley nodded. He saw that Jack Morton was more interested in the broch itself than in their conversation. ‘Isn’t it incredible?’

  ‘Bloody right,’ Jack said. ‘Did it ever have a roof?’

  Harley shrugged. ‘They built lean-tos in here, so maybe they didn’t need a roof up there. The walls are hollow, double-thick. One of the galleries still leads to the top.’ He looked around. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know.’ Then he looked at Rebus. ‘It’s been here two thousand years. It’ll be here long after the oil’s gone.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that.’

  ‘Some people can’t see it. Money’s made them short-sighted.’

  ‘You think this is all about money, Jake?’

  ‘Not all of it, no. Come on, I’ll show you the Haa.’

  So they walked back out into the wind, crossing the grazing land and coming to the low wall around what had been a good-sized stone-built house, only the shell of which remained. They circuited the boundary, Briony walking with them, Jack further back, reluctant to leave the broch.

  ‘Mousa Broch has always been lucky for the hunted. There’s a story in the Orkneyinga Saga, an eloping couple took shelter here . . .’ He smiled at Briony.

  ‘You found out Mitch was dead?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I phoned Jo.’

  ‘Jo?’

  ‘Joanna Bruce. Mitch and her had been seeing one another.’ So at last Braid-Hair had a name.

  ‘How did she know?’

  ‘It was in the Edinburgh paper. Jo’s a media checker – she reads all the papers first thing every morning to see if there’s anything the various pressure groups should know.’

  ‘You didn’t tell Briony?’

  Jake took his girlfriend’s hand and kissed it. ‘You’d only have worried,’ he told her.

  ‘Two questions, Mr Harley: why do you think Mitch was killed, and who was responsible?’

  Harley shrugged. ‘As to who did it . . . I’d never be able to prove anything. But I know why he was killed – it was my fault.’

  ‘Your fault?’

  ‘I told him what I suspected about the Negrita.’

  The ship Sheepskin had mentioned on the flight to Sullom Voe; afterwards clamming up.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was a few months back. You know Sullom Voe has some of the strictest procedures going? I mean, time was tankers would swill out their dirty bilges as they approached the coast – it saved pumping them ashore at the terminal . . . saved time, which meant money. We used to lose black guillemots, great northern divers, shags, eider ducks, even the otters. That doesn’t happen now – they tightened up. But mistakes still happen. That’s all the Negrita was, a mistake.’

  ‘An oil spill?’

  Harley nodded. ‘Not a big one, not by the standards we’ve managed to set with Braer and Sea Empress. The first mate, who should have been in charge, was in the sick bay – bad hangover apparently. A crew member who hadn’t done the job before hit the wrong sequence of levers. The thing was, the crew member didn’t have any English. That’s not unusual these days: the officers might be British, but the hired help is the cheapest the company can get, which usually means Portuguese, Filipino, a hundred other nationalities. My guess is, the poor sod just didn’t understand the instructions.’

  ‘It was hushed up?’

  Harley shrugged. ‘Never really news in the first place, not a big enough spill.’

  Rebus frowned. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Like I say, I told Mitch the story . . .’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘The crew landed at the terminal. They were in the canteen. I got talking to one of them, he looked awful – I can speak a bit of Spanish. He told me he did it.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘And Mitch?’

  ‘Well, Mitch found out something that had been covered up. Namely the tanker’s real owners. It’s not easy with these boats – they’re registered here, there and everywhere, leaving a real paper trail in their wake. Not always easy to get details from some of the registration ports. And sometimes the name on the papers doesn’t mean much – companies own other companies, more countries are involved . . .’

  ‘A real maze.’

  ‘Purposely so: a lot of the tankers out there are in shocking condition. But maritime law is international – even if we wanted to stop them landing, we couldn’t, not without the say-so of all the other signatories.’

  ‘Mitch found out that T-Bird Oil owned the tanker?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘An educated guess.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he told me.’

  ‘And you think someone at T-Bird had him killed? But why? Like you say, it wasn’t a newsworthy spill.’

  ‘It would be with T-Bird in the frame. They’re going all out to persuade the government to let them dump their platforms at sea. They’re talking up the environment and their record in that area. We’re Mr Clean, so let us do what we want.’ Harley showed bright white teeth as he spoke, the words almost a sneer. ‘So tell me, Inspector, am I being paranoid? Just because Mitch gets thrown out of a window doesn’t mean he was assassinated, right?’

  ‘Oh, he was assassinated all right. But I’m not sure the Negrita had much to do with it.’ Harley stopped walking and looked at him. ‘I think you’d be quite safe going back home, Jake,’ Rebus said. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it. But first, there’s something I need.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An address for Joanna Bruce.’

  30

  The trip back was a real follicle transplant – hairier even than the trip out. They’d taken Jake and Briony back to
Brae, then dropped the car off at Lerwick and begged a lift to Sumburgh. Forres was still in the huff, but relented eventually and checked the flights back, one of which gave them enough time for a Cup-a-Soup at the station.

  At Dyce, they climbed back into Jack’s car and sat there for a couple of minutes, adjusting to being back on the ground. Then they headed south on the A92, using the directions Jake Harley had given them. It was the same road Rebus had been taken on the night Tony El had been killed. They had Stanley for that – no matter what. Rebus wondered what else the young psychopath might spill, especially now he’d lost Eve. He’d know she’d flown; he’d know she wouldn’t have left the loot behind. Maybe Gill would have twisted more stories out of him.

  It could be the making of her.

  They saw signposts to Cove Bay, followed Harley’s instructions and came to a lay-by, behind which were parked a dozen vans, caravans, buses and campers. Bumping over ineffectual earth mounds, they came into a clearing in front of a forest. Dogs were barking, kids out playing with a punctured football. Clothes-lines hung between branches, and someone had lit a bonfire. A few adults had parked themselves around the fire, passing joints, one woman strumming a guitar. Rebus had been to travellers’ camps before. They came in two designs. There was the old-style gypsy camp, with smart caravans and builders’ lorries, the inhabitants – Romanies – olive-skinned and lapsing into a tongue Rebus couldn’t understand. Then there were the ‘New Age travellers’: usually with buses which had passed their last MOT on a wing and a prayer. They were young and savvy, cut dead wood for fuel, and worked the social security system, despite government attempts to render it unworkable. They gave their kids names the kids would kill them for when they grew up.

  Nobody paid Rebus and Jack any heed as they walked towards the camp-fire. Rebus kept his hands in his pockets, and tried not to make fists of them.

  ‘Looking for Jo,’ he said. He recognised the guitar chords: ‘Time of the Preacher’. He tried again. ‘Joanna Bruce.’

  ‘Bummer,’ someone said.

  ‘That could be arranged,’ Jack cautioned.

  The joint went from hand to hand. ‘Decade from now,’ someone else said, ‘this won’t be illegal. It might even be on prescription.’