Knots And Crosses tirs-1

by Ian Rankin

  The soft thump in his shoulder turned quickly to a spreading numbness and then to an intense pain, seeming to fill his entire body. He clutched at his jacket, feeling blood soak through the padding, through the lightweight material. Jesus Christ, so that was what it was like to be shot. He felt as though he would be sick, would faint clean away, but then he felt an onrush of something, coming up from his soul. It was the blinding force of anger. He was not about to lose this one. He saw Reeve wiping the mess from his face, trying to stop his eyes from watering, the gun still wavering before him. Rebus picked up a heavy-looking book and swiped at Reeve’s hand, sending the gun flying into a pile of books.

  And then Reeve was gone, staggering through the shelves, pulling them down after him. Rebus ran back to the desk and telephoned for help, his eyes wary for. Gordon Reeve’s return. There was silence in the room. He sat down on the floor.

  Suddenly the door opened and William Anderson came through it, dressed in black like some cliched avenging angel. Rebus smiled.

  ‘How the hell did you find me?’

  ‘I’ve been following you for quite a while.’ Anderson bent down to examine Rebus’s arm. ‘I heard the shot. I take it you’ve found our man?’

  ‘He’s still in here somewhere, unarmed. The gun’s back there.’

  Anderson tied a handkerchief around Rebus’s shoulder.

  ‘You need an ambulance, John.’ But Rebus was already rising to his feet.

  ‘Not yet. Let’s get this finished. How come I didn’t spot you trailing me?’

  Anderson allowed himself a smile. ‘It takes a very good copper to know when I’m trailing them, and you’re not very good, John. You’re just good.’

  They went behind the partition and began to move carefully further and further into the shelves. Rebus had picked up the gun. He pushed it deep into his pocket. There was no sign of Gordon Reeve.

  ‘Look.’ Anderson was pointing to a half open door at the very back of the stacks. They moved towards it, slowly still, and Rebus pushed it open. He confronted a steep iron stairwell, badly lit. It seemed to twist down into the foundations of the library. There was nowhere to go but down.

  ‘I’ve heard about this, I think,’ whispered Anderson, his whispers echoing around the deep shaft as they descended. ‘The library was built on the site of the old Sheriff Court, and the cells which used to be beneath the courthouse are still there. The library stores old books in them. A whole maze of cells and passageways, leading right under the city.’

  Smooth plaster walls gave way to ancient brickwork as they descended. Rebus could smell fungus, an old bitter smell left over from a previous age.

  ‘He could be anywhere then.’

  Anderson shrugged his shoulders. They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and found themselves in a wide passageway, clear of books. But off this passageway were alcoves — the old cells presumably — in which were stacked rows of books. There seemed no order, no pattern. They were just old books.

  ‘He could probably get out of here,’ whispered Anderson. ‘I think there are exits to places like the present-day court-house and Saint Giles Cathedral.’

  Rebus was in awe. Here was a piece of old Edinburgh, intact and undefiled. ‘It’s incredible,’ he said. ‘I never knew about this.’

  ‘There’s more. Underneath the City Chambers there are supposed to be whole streets of the old city which the builders just built right on top of. Whole streets, shops, houses, roads. Hundreds of years old.’ Anderson shook his head, realising, as was Rebus, that you could not trust your own knowledge: you could walk right over a reality without necessarily encroaching on it.

  They worked their way along the passage, thankful for the dim electric lighting on the ceiling, checking each and every cell with no success.

  ‘Who is he then?’ Anderson whispered.

  ‘He’s an old friend of mine,’ said Rebus, feeling a little dizzy. It seemed to him that there was very little oxygen down here. He was sweating profusely. He knew that it had to do with the loss of blood, and that he shouldn’t be here at all, yet he needed to be here. He remembered that there were things he should have done. He should have found out Reeve’s address from the guard and sent a police car round in case Sammy were there. Too late now.

  ‘There he is!’

  Anderson had spotted him, way ahead of them in such shadow that Rebus could not make out a shape until Reeve started to run. Anderson ran after him, with Rebus, swallowing hard, trying to keep up.

  ‘Watch him, he’s dangerous.’ Rebus felt his words fall away from him. He had not the strength to shout. Suddenly everything was going wrong. Ahead, he saw Anderson catch up with Reeve, and saw Reeve lash out with a near-perfect roundhouse kick, learned all those years ago and not forgotten. Anderson’s head swivelled to one side as the kick landed, and he fell against the wall. Rebus had slumped to his knees, panting hard, his eyes hardly able to focus. Sleep, he needed sleep. The cold, uneven ground felt comfortable to him, as comfortable as the best bed he could want. He wavered, ready to fall. Reeve seemed to be walking towards him, while Anderson slid down the wall. Reeve seemed massive now, still in shadow, growing larger with each step until he consumed Rebus, and Rebus could see him grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Now you,’ Reeve roared. ‘Now for you.’ Rebus knew that somewhere above them traffic was probably moving effortlessly across George IV Bridge, people were probably walking smartly home to an evening of television and family comfort, while he knelt at the feet of this nightmare, a poor forked animal at the end of the chase. It would do him no good to scream, no good to fight against it. He saw a blur of Gordon Reeve bend down in front of him, its face pushed awkwardly to one side. Rebus remembered that he had broken Reeve’s nose quite successfully.

  So did Reeve. He stood back and swung a heaving kick at John Rebus’s chin. Rebus managed to move slightly, something still working away inside him, and the blow caught him on the cheek, sending him sideways. Lying in a half-protective foetal position he heard Reeve laugh, and watched the hands as they closed around his throat. He thought of the woman and his own hands around her neck. This was justice then. So be it. And then he thought of Sammy, of Gill, of Anderson and Anderson’s murdered son, of those little girls, all dead. No, he could not let Gordon Reeve win. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. He felt his tongue and eyes bulging, straining. He slipped his hand into his pocket, as Gordon Reeve whispered to him: ‘You’re glad it’s all over, aren’t you, John? You’re actually relieved.’

  And then another explosion filled the passage, hurting Rebus’s ears. The recoil from the gunshot tingled through his hand and his arm, and he caught the sweet smell again, something like the smell of toffee-apples. Reeve, startled, froze for a second, then folded like paper, falling across Rebus, smothering him. Rebus, unable to move, decided it was safe to go to sleep now …

  EPILOGUE

  They kicked down the door of Ian Knott’s small bungalow, a tiny, quiet suburban house, in full view of his curious neighbours, and found Samantha Rebus there, petrified, tied to a bed, her mouth taped shut, and with pictures of the dead girls for company. Everything became very professional after that, as Samantha was led weeping from the house. The driveway was hidden from the neighbouring bungalow by a tall hedge, and so nobody had seen anything of Reeve’s comings and goings. He was a quiet man, the neighbours said. He had moved into the house seven years ago, at the time when he had started work as a librarian.

  Jim Stevens was happy enough with the conclusion of the case. It made for a full week’s stories. But how could he have been so wrong about John Rebus? He couldn’t work that one out at all. Still, his drugs story had been completed too, and Michael Rebus would go to jail. There was no doubt about that.

  The London press came in search of their own versions of the truth. Stevens met one journalist in the bar of the Caledonian Hotel. The man was trying to buy Samantha Rebus’s story. He patted his pocket, assuring Jim Stevens that he had his
editor’s cheque-book with him. This seemed to Stevens to be part of some larger malaise. It wasn’t just that the media could create reality and then tamper with that creation whenever they liked. There was something beneath the surface of it all, something different to the usual dirt and squalor and mess, something much more ambiguous. He didn’t like it at all, and he didn’t like what it had done to him. He talked with the London journalist about vague concepts such as justice and trust and balance. They talked for hours, drinking whisky and beer, but still the same questions remained. Edinburgh had shown itself to Jim Stevens as never before, cowering beneath the shadow of the Castle Rock in hiding from something. All the tourists saw were shadows from history, while the city itself was something else entirely. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like the job he was doing, and he didn’t like the hours. The London offers were still there. He clutched at the biggest straw and drifted south.

  Acknowledgements

  The writing of this novel was aided hugely by the help given to me by the Leith CID in Edinburgh, who were patient about my many questions and my ignorance of police procedures. And although this is a work of fiction, with all the faults of such, I was aided in my research into the Special Air Service by Tony Geraghty’s excellent book Who Dares Wins (Fontana, 1983).

  READING GROUP NOTES

  KNOTS & CROSSES

  ABOUT IAN RANKIN

  Ian Rankin, OBE, writes a huge proportion of all the crime novels sold in the UK and has won numerous prizes, including in 2005 the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger. His work is available in over 30 languages, home sales of his books exceed one million copies a year, and several of the novels based around the character of Detective Inspector Rebus — his name meaning ’enigmatic puzzle’ — have been successfully transferred to television.

  Introduction to DI John Rebus

  The first novels to feature Rebus, a flawed but resolutely humane detective, were not an overnight sensation, and success took time to arrive. But the wait became a period that allowed Ian Rankin to come of age as a writer, and to develop Rebus into a thoroughly believable, flesh-and-blood character straddling both industrial and post-industrial Scotland; a gritty yet perceptive man coping with his own demons. As Rebus struggled to keep his relationship with daughter Sammy alive following his divorce, and to cope with the imprisonment of brother Michael, while all the time trying to strike a blow for morality against a fearsome array of sinners (some justified and some not), readers began to respond in their droves. Fans admired Ian Rankin’s re-creation of a picture-postcard Edinburgh with a vicious tooth-and-claw underbelly just a heartbeat away, his believable but at the same time complex plots and, best of all, Rebus as a conflicted man trying always to solve the unsolvable, and to do the right thing.

  As the series progressed, Ian Rankin refused to shy away from contentious issues such as corruption in high places, paedophilia and illegal immigration, combining his unique seal of tight plotting with a bleak realism, leavened with brooding humour.

  In Rebus the reader is presented with a rich and constantly evolving portrait of a complex and troubled man, irrevocably tinged with the sense of being an outsider and, potentially, unable to escape being a ’justified sinner’ himself. Rebus’s life is intricately related to his Scottish environs too, enriched by Ian Rankin’s attentive depiction of locations, and careful regard to Rebus’s favourite music, watering holes and books, as well as his often fraught relationships with colleagues and family And so, alongside Rebus, the reader is taken on an often painful, sometimes hellish journey to the depths of human nature, always rooted in the minutiae of a very recognisable Scottish life.

  The Oxford Bar — Rebus and many of the characters who appear in the novels are regulars of the Ox — as is Ian Rankin himself. The pub is now synonymous with the Rebus novels to the extent that one of the regular medical examiners called in to assist with investigations is named after the pub’s owner, John Gates.

  Edinburgh plays an important role throughout the Rebus novels; a character itself, as brooding and as volatile as Rebus. The Edinburgh depicted in the novels is far short of the beautiful city that tourists in their thousands flood to visit. Hidden behind the historic buildings and elegant facades is the world that Rebus inhabits.

  For general discussion regarding the Rebus series

  How does Ian Rankin reveal himself as an author interested in using fiction to ‘tell the truths the real world can’t’?

  There are similarities between the lives of the author and his protagonist — for instance, both Ian Rankin and Rebus were born in Fife, lost their mothers at an early age, have children with physical problems — so is it useful therefore to think of John Rebus and Ian Rankin as each other’s alter egos?

  Could it be said that Rebus is trying to make sense in a general way of the world around him, or is he seeking answers to the ‘big questions’? And is it relevant therefore that he is a believer in God and comes from a Scottish Presbyterian background? Would Rebus see confession in both the religious and the criminal sense as similar in any way?

  How does Ian Rankin explore notions of Edinburgh as a character in its own right? In what way does he contrast the glossy public and seedy private faces of the city with the public and private faces of those Rebus meets?

  How does Ian Rankin use musical sources — the Elvis references in The Black Book, for instance, or the Rolling Stones allusions in Let It Bleed — as a means of character development through the series? What does Rebus’s own taste in music and books say about him as a person?

  What do you think about Rebus as a character? If you have read several or more novels from the series, discuss how his character is developed.

  If Rebus has a problem with notions of ‘pecking order’ and the idea of authority generally, what does it say about him that he chose careers in hierarchical institutions such as the Army and then the police?

  How does Rebus relate to women: as lovers, flirtations, family members and colleagues?

  Do the flashes of gallows humour as often shown by the pathologists but sometimes also in Rebus’s own comments increase or dissipate narrative tension? Does Rebus use black comedy for the same reasons the pathologists do?

  Do Rebus’s personal vulnerabilities make him understanding of the frailties of others?

  How does the characterisation of Rebus compare to other long-standing popular detectives from British authors such as Holmes, Poirot, Morse or Dalgleish? And are there more similarities or differences between them?

  KNOTS & CROSSES

  Things aren’t going well for John Rebus, a Detective Sergeant when we first meet him: he’s smoking and drinking too much as he smarts from the break-up of his marriage to Rhona, who has taken their daughter Sammy with her to London. And work is a trial, as someone is seizing and killing young girls and taunting the police with their deaths, as a journalist becomes intent on exposing Rebus as being implicated in his brother Michael’s drugs scam.

  And after a series of peculiar letters, each containing some knotted string and a tiny cross made of matches, arrives at his home Rebus’s antennae begin to twitch uncontrollably. Although this could be more because he’s heading for a physical breakdown that necessitates a brief hospital sojourn. But it’s only after someone phones in with an acrostic clue that the game starts to unfold, and Rebus realises that this series of murders is in fact intensely personal: the direct result of an SAS training exercise many years earlier that went disastrously wrong. Even worse, Sammy’s life is now in peril as part of a frantic contest played out in the network of foetid tunnels that lie beneath the streets of Edinburgh.

  Ian Rankin intended Knots amp; Crosses to be in part a reworking of the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, with an additional nod towards the real-life Edinburgh character Deacon William Brodie, a gentleman by day but a criminal by night. In this debut, already many of the themes appear that will be expanded on in later books: the grimy underside of Edinburgh; Rebus isolated and ill at
ease as he remains dogged in his determination to track down a variety of troublesome killers, characters who will return in later novels. But scant reviews and modest sales of Knots amp; Crosses did little to suggest how popular Rebus would become.

  Discussion points for Knots & Ctosses

  In what ways does Knots amp; Crosses reveal the passage of time since it was written?

  Rebus’s relationship with his brother Michael isn’t easy; is this a metaphor for the difficulties Rebus faces regarding other sorts of ‘brotherhood’, such as within the police force or the army?

  Ian Rankin refers several times to ‘practical jokes’; in Knots amp; Crosses how does he explore themes of jokes, games and linguistic trickery?

  Are the skills of journalist Jim Stevens mirrored by those of Rebus? Do the two men respect the similarities between them? And what do they each feel about drawing close to the ‘big fish’? Does the act of reading a crime story put the reader in a similar role to that of either detective or investigative journalist and, if so, in what way?