10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  She was nodding.

  ‘Did anyone talk about it? Did they say anything?’

  She was shaking her head. ‘John ...’ Her hands on his lapels. She sniffed, swiped at her nose again. She slid down his jacket, his shirt. She was on her knees, looking up at him, blinking tears, while her damp fingers scored white powder from the tiles. Rebus crouched down in front of her.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you.’ He pointed towards the door, towards the world outside, but she was busy in her own world now, fingers going to her mouth. Someone pushed open the door. Rebus looked up.

  A woman: young, drunk, hair falling into her eyes. She stopped and studied the two people on the floor, then smiled and headed for a cubicle.

  ‘Save some for me,’ she said, sliding the lock.

  ‘Go, John.’ There was powder at the corners of Candice’s mouth. A tiny piece of tablet had lodged between her front two teeth. ‘Please, go now.’

  ‘I don’t want you getting hurt.’ He sought her hands, squeezed them.

  ‘I do not hurt any more.’

  She got to her feet and turned from him. Checked her face in the mirror, wiped away the powder and dabbed at her mascara. Blew her nose and took a deep breath.

  Walked out of the toilets.

  Rebus waited a moment, time enough for her to reach the table. Then he opened the door and made his exit. Walked back to his car on legs that seemed to belong to someone else.

  Drove home, not quite crying.

  But not quite not.

  25

  Four in the morning, the blessed telephone pulled him out of a nightmare.

  Prison-camp prostitutes with teeth filed to points were kneeling in front of him. Jake Tarawicz, in full SS regalia, held him from behind, telling him resistance was useless. Through the barred window, Rebus could see black berets – the maquis, busy freeing the camp but leaving his billet till last. Alarm bells ringing, everything telling him that salvation was at hand ...

  ... alarm becoming his telephone ... he staggered from his chair, picked it up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘John?’ The Chief Super’s voice: Aberdonian, instantly recognisable.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘We’ve got a spot of bother. Get down here.’

  ‘What kind of bother?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get here. Now shift.’

  Night shift, to be precise. The city asleep. St Leonard’s was lit up, the tenements around it dark. No sign of the Farmer’s ‘spot of bother’. The Chief Super’s office: the Farmer in conference with Gill Templer.

  ‘Sit down, John. Coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks, sir.’

  While Templer and the Chief Super were deciding who should speak, Rebus helped them out.

  ‘Tommy Telford’s businesses have been hit.’

  Templer blinked. ‘Telepathy?’

  ‘Cafferty’s offices and taxis got firebombed. So did his house.’ Rebus shrugged. ‘We knew there’d be payback.’

  ‘Did we?’

  What could he say? I did, because Cafferty told me. He didn’t think they’d like that. ‘I just put two and two together.’

  The Farmer poured himself a mug of coffee. ‘So now we’ve got open war.’

  ‘What got hit?’

  ‘The arcade on Flint Street,’ Templer said. ‘Not too much damage: the place has a sprinkler system.’ She smiled: an amusement arcade with a sprinkler system ... not that Telford was careful or anything.

  ‘Plus a couple of nightclubs,’ the Farmer added. ‘And a casino.’

  ‘Which one?’

  The Chief Super looked to Templer, who answered: ‘The Mor vena.’

  ‘Any injuries?’

  ‘The manager and a couple of friends: concussion and bruising.’

  ‘Which they got ...?’

  ‘Falling over each other as they ran down the stairs.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘Funny how some people have trouble with stairs.’ He sat back. ‘So what does all this have to do with me? Don’t tell me: having disposed of Telford’s Japanese partner, I decided to take up fire-raising?’

  ‘John ...’ The Farmer got up, rested his backside against the desk. ‘The three of us, we know you had nothing to do with that. Tell me, we found an untouched half-bottle of malt under your driver’s seat ...’

  Rebus nodded. ‘It’s mine.’ Another of his little suicide bombs.

  ‘So why would you be drinking a supermarket blend?’

  ‘Is that what the screw-top was? The cheap bastards.’

  ‘No alcohol in your blood either. Meantime, as you say, Cafferty’s in the frame for this. And Cafferty and you ...’

  ‘You want me to talk to him?’

  Gill Templer leaned forward in her chair. ‘We don’t want war.’

  ‘Takes two to make a ceasefire.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Telford,’ she said.

  ‘He’s a sharp little bugger, watch out for him.’

  She nodded. ‘Will you talk to Cafferty?’

  Rebus didn’t want a war. It would take Telford’s mind off the Maclean’s heist. He’d need all the troops he could get; the shop might even have to close. No, Rebus didn’t want a war.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said.

  Breakfast-time at Barlinnie.

  Rebus jangling after the drive, knowing a whisky would smooth out his nerve-endings. Cafferty waiting for him, same room as before.

  ‘Top of the morning, Strawman.’ Arms folded, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘You’ve had a busy night.’

  ‘On the contrary, I slept as well as I ever have done in this place. What about you?’

  ‘I was up at four o’clock, checking damage reports. I could have done without driving all the way here. Maybe if you gave me the number of your mobile ...?’

  Cafferty grinned. ‘I hear the nightclubs were gutted.’

  ‘I think your boys are making themselves look good.’ Cafferty’s grin tightened. ‘Telford’s premises seem to have state of the art fire prevention. Smoke sensors, sprinklers, fire-doors. The damage was minimal.’

  ‘This is just the start,’ Cafferty said. ‘I’ll have that little arse-wipe.’

  ‘I thought that was supposed to be my job?’

  ‘I’ve seen precious little from you, Strawman.’

  ‘I’ve got something in the pipeline. If it comes off, you’ll like it.’

  Cafferty’s eyes narrowed. ‘Give me details. Make me believe you.’

  But Rebus was shaking his head. ‘Sometimes, you just have to have faith.’ He paused. ‘Deal?’

  ‘I must have missed something.’

  Rebus spelled it out. ‘Back off. Leave Telford to me.’

  ‘We’ve been through this. He hits me and I do nothing, I look like something you’d step around on the pavement.’

  ‘We’re talking to him, warning him off.’

  ‘And meantime I’m supposed to trust you to get the job done?’

  ‘We shook hands on it.’

  Cafferty snorted. ‘I’ve shaken hands with a lot of bastards.’

  ‘And now you’ve met an exception to the rule.’

  ‘You’re an exception to a lot of rules, Strawman.’ Cafferty looked thoughtful. ‘The casino, the clubs, the arcade ... they weren’t badly hit?’

  ‘My guess is the sprinklers will have done as much damage as anything.’

  Cafferty’s jaw hardened. ‘Makes me look even more of a mug.’

  Rebus sat in silence, waiting for him to finish whatever chess-game was being played inside his head.

  ‘Okay,’ the gangster said at last, ‘I’ll call off the troops. Maybe it’s time to do some recruiting anyway.’ He looked up at Rebus. ‘Time for some fresh blood.’

  Which reminded Rebus of another job he’d been putting off.

  Danny Simpson lived at home with his mother in a terraced house in Wester Hailes.

  This bleak housing-scheme, designed by sadists who’d never
had to live anywhere near it, had a heart which had shrivelled but refused to stop pumping. Rebus had a lot of respect for the place. Tommy Smith had grown up here, practising with socks stuffed into the mouth of his sax, so as not to disturb the neighbours through the thin walls of the high-rise. Tommy Smith was one of the best sax players Rebus had ever heard.

  In a sense, Wester Hailes existed outside the real world: it wasn’t on a route from anywhere to anywhere. Rebus had never had cause to drive through it – he only went there if he had business there. The city bypass flew past it, offering many drivers their only encounter with Wester Hailes. They saw: high-rise blocks, terraces, tracts of unused playing field. They didn’t see: people. Not so much concrete jungle as concrete vacuum.

  Rebus knocked on Danny Simpson’s door. He didn’t know what he was going to say to the young man. He just wanted to see him again. He wanted to see him without the blood and the pain. Wanted to see him whole and of a piece.

  Wanted to see him.

  But Danny Simpson wasn’t in, and neither was his mother. A neighbour, lacking her top set of dentures, came out and explained the situation.

  The situation took Rebus to the Infirmary, where, in a small, gloomy ward not easily found, Danny Simpson lay in bed, head bandaged, sweating like he’d just played a full ninety minutes. He wasn’t conscious. His mother sat beside him, stroking his wrist. A nurse explained to Rebus that a hospice would be the best place for Danny, supposing they could find him a bed.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We think infection must have set in. When you lose your resistance ... the world’s a lethal place.’ She shrugged, looked like she’d been through it all once too often. Danny’s mother had seen them talking. Maybe she thought Rebus was a doctor. She got up and came towards him, then just stood there, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘I came to see Danny,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The night he ... the night of his accident, I was the one who brought him here. I just wondered how he was doing.’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Her voice was breaking.

  Rebus thought: a five-minute walk from here, he’d be in Sammy’s room. He’d thought her situation unique, because it was unique to him. Now he saw that within a short radius of Sammy’s bed, other parents were crying, and squeezing their children’s hands, and asking why.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I wish ...’

  ‘Me, too,’ the woman said. ‘You know, he’s never been a bad laddie. Cheeky, but never bad. His problem was, he was always itching for something new, something to stop him getting bored. We all know where that can lead.’

  Rebus nodded, suddenly not wanting to be here, not wanting to hear Danny Simpson’s life story. He had enough ghosts to contend with as it was. He squeezed the woman’s arm.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go.’

  She nodded distractedly, wandered off in the direction of her son’s bed. Rebus wanted to curse Danny Simpson for the mere possibility that he’d passed on the virus. He realised now that if they’d met on the doorstep, that’s the way their conversation would have gone, and maybe Rebus would have gone further.

  He wanted to curse him ... but he couldn’t. It would be every bit as efficacious as cursing the Big Man. A waste of time and breath. So instead he went to Sammy’s room, to find that she was back on her own. No other patients, no nursing staff, no Rhona. He kissed her forehead. It tasted salty. Sweat: she needed wiping down. There was a smell he hadn’t noticed before. Talcum powder. He sat down, took her warm hands in his.

  ‘How are you doing, Sammy? I keep meaning to bring in some Oasis, see if that would bring you round. Your mum sits here listening to classical. I wonder if you can hear it. I don’t even know if you like that sort of stuff. Lots of things we’ve never got round to talking about.’

  He saw something. Stood up to be sure. Movement behind her eyelids.

  ‘Sammy? Sammy?’

  He hadn’t seen her do that before. Pushed the button beside her bed. Waited for a nurse to come. Pushed it again.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  Eyelids fluttering ... then stopping.

  ‘Sammy!’

  Door opening, nurse coming in.

  ‘What is it?’

  Rebus: ‘I thought I saw ... she was moving.’

  ‘Moving?’

  ‘Just her eyes, like she was trying to open them.’

  ‘I’ll fetch a doctor.’

  ‘Come on, Sammy, try again. Wakey-wakey, sweetheart.’ Patting her wrists, then her cheeks.

  The doctor arrived. He was the same one Rebus had shouted at that first day. Lifted her eyelids, shone a thin torch into them, pulling it away, checking her pupils.

  ‘If you saw it, I’m sure it was there.’

  ‘Yes, but does it mean anything?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Try anyway.’ Eyes boring into the doctor’s.

  ‘She’s asleep. She has dreams. Sometimes when you dream you experience REM: Rapid Eye Movement.’

  ‘So it could be ...’ Rebus sought the word ‘... involuntary?’

  ‘As I say, it’s hard to tell. Latest scans show definite improvement.’ He paused. ‘Minor improvement, but certainly there.’

  Rebus nodding, trembling. The doctor saw it, asked if he needed anything. Rebus shaking his head. The doctor checking his watch, other places to be. The nurse shuffling her feet. Rebus thanked them both and headed out.

  HOGAN: You agree to this interview being taped, Dr Colquhoun?

  COLQUHOUN: I’ve no objections.

  HOGAN: It’s in your interests as well as ours.

  COLQUHOUN: I’ve nothing to hide, Inspector Hogan. (Coughs.)

  HOGAN: Fine, sir. Maybe we’ll just start then?

  COLQUHOUN: Might I ask a question? Just for the record, you want to ask me about Joseph Lintz – nothing else?

  HOGAN: What else might there be, sir?

  COLQUHOUN: I just wanted to check.

  HOGAN: You wish to have a solicitor present?

  COLQUHOUN: No.

  HOGAN: Right you are, sir. Well, if I can begin ... it’s really just a question of your relationship with Professor Joseph Lintz.

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: Only, when we spoke before, you said you didn’t know Professor Lintz.

  COLQUHOUN: I think I said I didn’t know him very well.

  HOGAN: Okay, sir. If that’s what you said ...

  COLQUHOUN: It is, to the best of my recollection.

  HOGAN: Only, we’ve had some new information ...

  COLQUHOUN: Yes?

  HOGAN: That you knew Professor Lintz a little better than that.

  COLQUHOUN: And this is according to ...?

  HOGAN: New information in our possession. The informant tells us that Joseph Lintz accused you of being a war criminal. Anything to say to that, sir?

  COLQUHOUN: Only that it’s a lie. An outrageous lie.

  HOGAN: He didn’t think you were a war criminal?

  COLQUHOUN: Oh, he thought it all right! He told me to my face on more than one occasion.

  HOGAN: When?

  COLQUHOUN: Years back. He got it into his head ... the man was mad, Inspector. I could see that. Driven by demons.

  HOGAN: What did he say exactly?

  COLQUHOUN: Hard to remember. This was a long time ago, the early 1970s, I suppose.

  HOGAN: It would help us if you could ...

  COLQUHOUN: He came out with it in the middle of a party. I believe it was some function to welcome a visiting professor. Anyway, Joseph insisted on taking me to one side. He looked feverish. Then he came out with it: I was some sort of Nazi, and I’d come to this country by some circuitous route. He kept on about it.

  HOGAN: What did you do?

  COLQUHOUN: Told him he was drunk, babbling.

  HOGAN: And?

  COLQUHOUN: And he was. Had to be taken home in a taxi. I said no more about it. In academic circles, one b
ecomes used to a certain amount of ... eccentric behaviour. We’re obsessive people, it can’t be helped.

  HOGAN: But Lintz persisted?

  COLQUHOUN: Not really, no. But every few years ... there’d ... he’d say something, allege some atrocity ...

  HOGAN: Did he approach you outside the university?

  COLQUHOUN: For a time, he telephoned my home.

  HOGAN: You moved?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: To an unlisted phone number?

  COLQUHOUN: Eventually.

  HOGAN: To stop him calling you?

  COLQUHOUN: I suppose that was part of it.

  HOGAN: Did you speak to anyone about Lintz?

  COLQUHOUN: You mean the authorities? No, no one. He was a nuisance, nothing more.

  HOGAN: And then what happened?

  COLQUHOUN: Then these stories started appearing in the papers, saying Joseph might be a Nazi, a war criminal. And suddenly he was on my back again.

  HOGAN: He phoned you at your office?

  COLQUHOUN: Yes.

  HOGAN: You lied to us about that?

  COLQUHOUN: I’m sorry. I panicked.

  HOGAN: What was there to panic about?

  COLQUHOUN: Just ... I don’t know.

  HOGAN: So you met him? To straighten things out?

  COLQUHOUN: We had lunch together. He seemed ... lucid. Only what he was saying, it was the stuff of madness. He had a whole history mapped out, only it wasn’t mine. I kept saying to him, ‘Joseph, when the war ended I wasn’t out of my teens.’ Besides, I was born and raised here. It’s all on record.

  HOGAN: What did he say to that?

  COLQUHOUN: He said records could be faked.

  HOGAN: Faked records ... one way Josef Linzstek could have gone undetected.

  COLQUHOUN: I know.

  HOGAN: You think Joseph Lintz was Josef Linzstek?

  COLQUHOUN: I don’t know. Maybe the stories got to him ... he started to believe ... I don’t know.

  HOGAN: Yes, but these accusations, they began before the media circus – decades before.

  COLQUHOUN: That’s true.

  HOGAN: So he was hounding you. Did he say he would go to the media with his version of events?

  COLQUHOUN: He may have ... I can’t remember.

  HOGAN: Mmm.

  COLQUHOUN: You’re looking for a motive, aren’t you? You’re looking for reasons why I’d want him dead.