10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus)

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Last time I spoke to him, he was going to look into Oakes’s past.’

  ‘Wonder what he found.’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Bringing in Oakes has to be the priority.’

  ‘After his attack on you, it already was.’

  Rebus stared down at the lifeless body of Jim Stevens. Stevens, who had been Rebus’s shadow for so long, and who had come back into his life only recently.

  ‘I’d only just started liking him,’ Rebus said. ‘That’s the funny thing.’ He looked at Davidson. ‘I get the feeling the game’s not over, Shug. Not by a long chalk.’

  One of Davidson’s officers sprinted towards them. ‘Car’s been found,’ he called.

  ‘Where?’ Rebus was first to ask.

  The officer blinked, shook his head. ‘You’re not going to like it . . .’

  Jim Stevens’ Astra sat on a single yellow line on a street called St Leonard’s Bank, just round the corner from St Leonard’s cop shop. St Leonard’s Bank boasted a single row of higgledy-piggledy houses, all of them facing a wrought-iron fence behind which sat Holyrood Park and Salisbury Crags. The car was parked outside a double-fronted three-storey house painted a vivid pink. The key was in the ignition. This was what had first alerted one of the neighbours. They’d gone next door to ask if anyone there had left their keys in their car. Heading out to investigate, they’d found the doors to be unlocked. On opening the driver’s side, they’d noticed how wet and stained the seat seemed to be. Pressing fingers down into the fabric, lifting them away to find them stained viscous red . . .

  ‘Is he taking the piss or what?’ Roy Frazer said. A crowd from St Leonard’s had gathered, though more, it seemed, out of curiosity than from a desire to help. Rebus started shooing most of them away. He’d brought three of the forensics team with him; the rest would follow when they’d finished at the construction site. Chief Superintendent Watson came to gawp, and to make sure everything was ‘under control’.

  ‘It’s Shug Davidson’s call really, sir,’ Rebus informed him. ‘He’s on his way.’

  The Farmer nodded. ‘Fair enough, John. But let’s get the car moved ASAP, even if only into our car park. It’s already been on Lowland Radio. Leave it much longer, we can start selling tickets.’

  It was true that the crowd around the car was swelling. Rebus recognised a few faces from Greenfield. The estate was only a short walk away.

  Roy Frazer was repeating his question.

  ‘He’s taunting us,’ Rebus answered. He went to see how the forensics team was doing.

  ‘Found this on the floor under the driver’s seat,’ one of them said. Inside a plastic bag he had a cassette tape, unlabelled. There was a single bloody thumb print clearly visible on its casing.

  ‘I need this,’ Rebus said.

  ‘We need to print it.’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘The print belongs to the victim.’ He was managing to smile. You clever bugger, Jim, he was thinking. He didn’t get your tape . . .

  At least, that was what he hoped.

  ‘Something else,’ another of the team said, pointing to show Rebus a spread of tiny spots on the windscreen. ‘These are on the inside. The way the pattern is . . . it’s like someone coughed or sneezed. If it was the killer . . .’

  ‘Is there enough for DNA?’

  ‘It’s a hell of a long shot, but you never know. Don’t know if this is relevant.’ Now he pointed to a notebook on the floor of the passenger side. It had a tin spiral holding the loose-leaf pages in place. Shreds of paper clung to the spiral, showing where pages had been torn out.

  Rebus patted the man’s shoulder. He didn’t like to say It doesn’t matter. I know who killed him . . . I may even know why . . . When he turned away, he was carrying the cassette tape in its little poly-bag, for all the world like a solemn kid who’d won a goldfish at the fair.

  Because it was quieter there, Rebus used one of the interview rooms. He’d slotted the tape into one of the recorders, being careful to hold it by its edges. No point destroying trace evidence. He had a pair of Sennheiser headphones on, and spread out in front of him the contents of Cary Oakes’s file, as well as cuttings of his recent newspaper interviews. He’d telephoned Stevens’ old employer, and they were faxing over the unused portions of transcript. Every now and then, a uniform would stick his or her head round the door and hand him the latest fax sheets, so that the table became covered.

  Siobhan Clarke went so far as to bring him a mug of coffee and a BLT, but otherwise left him to it, which was just what he wanted. His mind was on nothing but the interview he was listening to.

  ‘Little bugger came to us with his mum . . . my wife’s sister, she was. Right little runt he was.’ The man’s voice sounded old, wheezy.

  ‘You didn’t get on with him?’ Jim Stevens’ voice, making the hairs rise on Rebus’s arms. He looked around but Stevens’ ghost was nowhere to be seen; not yet . . . Occasional background noises: coughs, voices, a television playing. An audience . . . no, spectators. Spectators at what sounded like a football match. Rebus went through to CID and dug in bins, looked through the papers sitting folded and forgotten on window ledges, until he found one for the previous day. Seven thirty: UEFA Cup action. That seemed to fit the bill. He tore out the TV page, took it back with him to the interview room, turned the tape on again.

  ‘I hated him, to be frank with you. Bloody disruption, that’s all it was. I mean, we had ourselves sorted out, everything going smoothly, everything just so . . . and then the two of them come waltzing in. Couldn’t very well kick them out, being family and all, but I made sure they knew I wasn’t happy. Oi, I’m watching that!’

  Someone had changed channels. Studio laughter. Rebus checked the paper: a sitcom on the BBC.

  Back to the sound of crowd and commentator.

  ‘We had some high old ding-dongs, him and me.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Everything: him staying out, him thieving. Money kept disappearing. I laid a few traps, but I never caught him, he was too canny for that.’

  ‘Did your fights ever become physical?’

  ‘I should say so. Tough little runt, I’ll give him that. You see me the way I am now, but back then I was fighting fit.’ He coughed loudly; sounded like his lungs were being turned inside out. ‘Give me that water, will you?’ The old man took a drink, then broke wind. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, not bothering to apologise, ‘I made sure he knew who was boss. It was my house, remember.’ As if Stevens were accusing him.

  ‘You were the boss,’ Stevens reassured him.

  ‘I was and all. Take my word for it.’

  ‘And if you thumped him, it was just so he’d understand.’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you. And he was no angel, believe you me. Mind you, try telling the women that.’

  ‘His mother and her sister?’

  ‘My wife, aye. She never saw any harm in anyone, did Aggie. But I’d have to say, even back then I knew there was badness in him. Deep-rooted badness.’

  ‘You tried knocking it out of him.’

  ‘I’d have needed a sledgehammer, son. Did use a hammer on him once, as it happens. Bastard was tough by then, ready to give as good as he got.’ Rebus thinking: The poison passed from one generation to the next. As with abuse, so with violence.

  ‘Did he run with a gang?’

  ‘Gang? Nobody would have him, son. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘And you’re with the papers? I spoke to some of your lot when he was put away.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That he should’ve had the electric chair. We could do a lot worse ourselves than bring back hanging.’

  ‘You think it’s a deterrent?’

  ‘Once they’re dead, son, they don’t do it again, do they? What more proof do you want?’

  There were sounds of someone bringing Stevens a cup of coffee or tea.

  ‘Aye, they’re good to me in here.’


  Nursing home . . . Cary Oakes’s uncle . . . What was his name? Rebus found it in the notes: Andrew Castle. Alongside it, the name of his nursing home. Rebus got on the phone, found a number for the home and rang them.

  ‘You’ve got a resident called Andrew Castle.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He had a visitor last night.’

  ‘He did, yes.’

  ‘Did you see him leave?’

  ‘I’m sorry, who is this?’

  ‘My name’s Detective Inspector Rebus. Only Mr Castle’s visitor has turned up dead, and we’re trying to trace his last movements.’

  There was a tapping at the door. Shug Davidson came in. Rebus nodded for him to sit.

  ‘Gracious,’ the woman at the nursing home was saying. ‘You mean the reporter?’

  ‘That’s who I mean. What time did he leave?’

  ‘It must have been . . .’ She broke off. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He was stabbed, madam. Now, what time did he leave?’

  Davidson, seated across the table from Rebus, turned some of the fax sheets round so he could read them.

  ‘Just before bedtime . . . say, nine o’clock.’

  ‘Did he have a car with him?’

  ‘I think so, yes. He parked it outside.’

  ‘Was anyone seen hanging around?’

  She sounded puzzled. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Any suspicious sightings the past day or two?’

  ‘Gracious me, Inspector, what’s this about?’

  Rebus thanked her for her time, said someone would be coming to get her statement. Then he put down the phone, checked the home’s address against an A–Z.

  ‘Shug,’ he said, ‘I’ve got Stevens at a nursing home near the Maybury roundabout, probably from around seven thirty last night till nine.’

  ‘Maybury’s on the road out to the airport.’

  Rebus nodded. ‘I think Oakes was already there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The nursing home.’

  ‘Who was Stevens seeing there?’

  ‘Oakes’s uncle. The questions Jim used on the tape . . . I think he’d already talked to the uncle, already made up his mind about him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The questions were angled a certain way, letting the uncle show himself as a sadist.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me this uncle turned Cary Oakes into a psychopath?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘That’s you talking, not me. What I do think is, Oakes has a grudge.’ He thought for a moment. I have a date with my past. A date with destiny . . . with someone who wouldn’t listen . . . Oakes’s words to Stevens at the end of their last interview . . . ‘Alan Archibald lives out that way.’ He opened the A–Z again, pointed to Archibald’s street, then the cul-de-sac which housed the nursing home. They were barely half a dozen streets apart. ‘I thought Oakes went there to scope out Alan Archibald.’

  ‘Now you think different?’

  ‘He came back to Edinburgh to settle old scores. There’s none older than his uncle.’ He looked up at Davidson. ‘I think he’ll try to kill him.’

  Davidson rubbed a palm over his jaw. ‘And Jim Stevens?’

  ‘Was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Oakes thought Jim was on to his plan, he’d have to deal with him. Oakes took the tape from Jim’s recorder, only Jim had switched tapes. Then Oakes tore out the pages from Jim’s notebook. He didn’t want us knowing.’

  ‘But we were bound to find out where Stevens had been.’

  ‘Eventually, yes.’ Rebus tapped the tape machine. ‘But without this, it would have taken a while.’

  Davidson was starting to rise. ‘Long enough to let him carry out his plan?’

  ‘Which means it’s got to be soon.’ Rebus was on his feet too.

  As Davidson reached for the phone, Rebus sprinted from the room.

  47

  They had undercover officers on the scene. It was difficult to blend in: most of the staff were middle-aged women. Young, wary-looking men with CID haircuts looked out of place. The officers came from the Scottish Crime Squad. Andrew Castle was confined to his room. There were two men in there with him: one participating in a game of cards – twopenny bets – while the other sat in the corner, affording the best view of door and window. The window was curtained. There was another man in a parked car outside.

  ‘Would he try a sniper shot?’ had been one of the questions at the briefing. Rebus had doubted it: he’d no known access to guns, and besides, it was personal with him. His uncle would have to know the why and the who before any killing could be done.

  One of the other officers was pushing a mop up and down the corridor outside. Rebus and Davidson were satisfied.

  Another question from the briefing: ‘What if all we do is scare him off?’

  Rebus’s response: ‘Then we’ve saved an old man’s life . . . for now.’

  He’d listened once more to the whole tape, and didn’t doubt that Oakes’s uncle had been – and probably still was – rotten to the marrow, despite his senility and frailty. Now he had questions.

  If Cary had ended up in a home where he’d been loved, would everything have been changed? Were people programmed from birth to become killers, or did other people – and sets of circumstances – conspire to make killers of them, turning the potential that was in most people into something more tangible?

  They weren’t new questions, certainly not to him. He thought of Darren Rough, the abused becoming abuser. Not all abuse victims took that road, but plenty did . . . And what about Damon Mee? What had made him leave home? His parents’ failing marriage? Fear of getting married himself? Or had he been coerced away, forcibly stopped from returning?

  And why had Jim Margolies died?

  And would Cary Oakes walk into the trap?

  My, my, my, said the spider to the fly . . .

  Oakes had been the spider for far too long.

  Rebus dropped into hospital to check on Alan Archibald. There was nothing for him to do at the nursing home. In fact, as one of the Crime Squad officers had succinctly put it, he was ‘a positive hindrance’. Meaning that because Oakes knew Rebus, his presence on the scene could spoil everything.

  ‘Soon as anything happens, we’ll call.’

  Rebus had made the officer write his mobile number on the back of his hand. Then had handed him a business card anyway: ‘Just in case you wash it off by mistake.’

  Archibald was at the far end of an open ward, with a screen around his bed. Bobby Hogan from Leith CID was sitting bedside, flicking through a copy of Mass Hibsteria.

  ‘Your team’s going down, Bobby,’ Rebus told him.

  Hogan looked up. ‘It’s not mine.’ He waved the football fanzine at Rebus. ‘Someone left it on the ward.’

  The two men shook hands, and Rebus went to fetch another chair. Alan Archibald was snoring gently, head propped up on three pillows.

  ‘How is he?’ Rebus asked. Archibald’s head was bandaged and there was a gauze compress taped to one ear.

  ‘Thumping headache.’

  ‘Well, his head did take a thumping.’

  ‘They did some tests, say he’ll be fine.’ Hogan smiled. ‘They tried testing his memory, but as Alan said, at his age he’s lucky to remember which day it is, dunt on the heid or no’.’

  Rebus smiled too. ‘You know him then?’

  ‘Worked together years ago. That’s why I asked for this detail.’

  ‘Were you with him when his niece was murdered?’

  Hogan stared at the sleeping figure. ‘It took all the juice out of him, like his batteries were flat after that.’

  ‘He wanted it to be Cary Oakes.’

  Hogan nodded. ‘I think anyone would have done as far as Alan was concerned, but Oakes was the obvious choice.’

  ‘Still could be.’

  Hogan looked at him. ‘Not according to Alan.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust anything Oakes said. Everything in his world has t
o be twisted round.’

  ‘But he thought he was going to kill Alan . . . why bother lying to him?’

  ‘To amuse himself.’ Rebus crossed one leg over the other. ‘That seems to be what he’s been doing ever since he hit town, spinning stories . . .’ And now Rebus was surplus to requirements; other officers would bring in Cary Oakes.

  ‘Did you ever get anywhere with Jim’s suicide?’

  Rebus looked at Hogan. ‘I was beginning to. I got sidetracked.’

  ‘So what can you tell me?’

  Alan Archibald grunted, and his lips started moving as though savouring something. Slowly his eyes opened. He looked to his left and saw his two visitors.

  ‘Any sign of him?’ he asked, voice dry and brittle. Hogan poured him some water.

  ‘Do you want any more tablets, Alan?’

  Archibald made to shake his head, then screwed shut his eyes with the sudden pain. ‘No,’ he said instead. As Hogan trickled the water into his mouth, it dribbled either side of the plastic cup and down his chin. Hogan dabbed it with a napkin.

  ‘He’d make a great nurse.’ Archibald winked at Rebus. His eyes looked unfocused; Rebus wondered what kind of painkillers they had him on. ‘They haven’t caught him?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Rebus admitted.

  ‘But he’s been busy, hasn’t he?’

  Rebus didn’t know if it was pure instinct or whether something in his voice had alerted Archibald. He nodded, told Archibald about Jim Stevens, about the nursing home and Oakes’s uncle.

  ‘I remember the uncle,’ Archibald said. ‘I interviewed him a while back. I think he hated Oakes almost more than I did.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to mention him to Oakes, did you?’

  Archibald was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Not for a while. He might have been in one of the letters I sent.’ His eyes widened. ‘How did Oakes know where he was? You think I . . .?’ Pain coursed across his face. ‘I should have twigged. But I wasn’t thinking like a copper, that’s the bottom line. I had my own motives. I wasn’t really interested in the uncle, only in what he could tell me about Oakes. There was that one question always at the back of my mind . . . that one question I needed the answer to.’