Ian Rankin: Set in Darkness

Ure’s breathing sounded even more laboured this close, hot rasps against Rebus’s neck. Grey bristles on the man’s cheeks and throat. Hair oily. When washed, it would be soft and fluffy like a baby’s. Talcum powder, that sweet masking smell: his wife probably used it on him, stopping bed sores.

Lips close to his ear, grazing it at one point. Then the words, louder than a whisper, words everyone was meant to hear.

‘Nice fucking try.’

And then wheezing laughter, rising in volume, filling the room with sudden, violent energy, drowning out the doctor’s advice, the machine’s staccato arrhythmia, the wife’s pleas. The lawyer’s glasses were knocked flying as she lunged at her husband, sensing something. As Whyte leaned down to retrieve them, Isla Ure half clambered across his back. The doctor was studying the machine, pushing Archie Ure back down on to the bed. Rebus stood back. The laughter was for him. The defiance was for him. The red-veined eyes, bulging from their sockets, were for him. All that was demanded of Rebus was that he play the part of spectator.

For now the laughter had a choked, rending sound to it, disappearing in a white noise of gargled froth as the face turned puce, the chest falling and refusing to rise. Isla Ure shrieking now.

‘ Not again, Christ! Not again! ’

Cameron Whyte was rising to his feet, glasses back in place. His teacup had been knocked over, a brown stain spreading across the pale pink carpet. The doctor was speaking, Siobhan springing forward to help: she’d had the training. So had Rebus, come to that, but something held him back: the audience didn’t clamber on to the stage. The performance had to belong to the actor.

While the doctor issued instructions, he was sliding his body atop his patient, readying himself for CPR. Siobhan was ready to administer mouth-to-mouth. Pyjama shirt wide open, fists flattened one on the other, right at the centre of the chest...

The doctor started, Siobhan counting for him.

‘One, two, three, four... one, two, three.’ She pinched the nose, blew into the mouth. Then the doctor started pushing again, almost lifting himself off the bed with the effort.

‘ You’ll break his ribs! ’

Isla Ure was sobbing, knuckles to her mouth. Siobhan’s mouth locked on to the dying man’s. Breath of life.

‘Come on, Archie, come on!’ the doctor roared, as if decibels could counter death. Rebus knew, or feared he knew: if you wished for death, it came for you all too easily. Every step you took, it shadowed your thoughts, waiting for that invitation. It sensed despair, and tiredness and resignation. He could almost sense it in the room. Archie Ure had willed death upon himself, consumed it readily and with that final relished bellow, because it was the only possible victory.

Rebus couldn’t despise him for it.

‘Come on, come on!’

‘. . three, four... one, two...’

The lawyer stood pale-faced, one arm missing from his glasses, snapped underfoot. And Isla Ure, head down by her husband’s ear, voice cracked to the point of unintelligibility.

‘ Allu... archmon... allu-yoosweess ...’

For all the noise, the sweeping chaos of the room, it was an echo of laughter which filled Rebus’s ears. The final, stripped-down laughter of Archie Ure. His eyes gazed past the bed, caught movement behind the window. The bird table, a robin clinging to its underside, head turned towards the human pantomime within. First robin he’d seen this winter. Someone had told him once they weren’t seasonal, but if that were the case, then why did you only ever see them in the cold months?

One more question to add to the list.

Two, three minutes had passed. The doctor was tiring. He checked for a pulse in the throat, then put his ear to the chest cavity. The wires were hanging dislodged. The monitor making no sound at all; just three red LED letters where numbers had previously been:

ERR

Now flashing to a new message:

RESET

The doctor slid his feet off the bed and on to the floor. Cameron Whyte had picked up the teacup. His spectacles sat at the wrong angle on his face. The doctor was pushing his hair back from his forehead, sweat gleaming in his eyelashes and dripping from his nose. Siobhan Clarke’s lips looked dry and pale, as if some of the life had been sucked from them. Isla Ure was lying across her husband’s face, shoulders juddering. The robin had flown off, its spirit unfettered by doubt.

John Rebus bent down, retrieved the microphone from the floor. ‘Interview ends at...’ He checked his watch. ‘Eleven thirty-eight a.m.’

Eyes turned to him. When he stopped the tapes, it was as if he’d switched off Archie Ure’s life-support.

Fettes HQ, the office of the Assistant Chief Constable. Colin Carswell, the ACC (Crime), listened to the jumble of noises which made up the last five minutes of the recording.

You had to be there , Rebus felt like telling him. He identified: the moment when Ure sat up, beckoning him closer... the moment flecks of foam had appeared at the corners of his twisted mouth... the sound of the doctor climbing on to the bed... and that dull static was the mike hitting the floor. From then on, everything was muffled. Rebus turned the bass down, upped the treble and volume. Even so, most of the sounds were indistinct.

Carswell had the two reports — Rebus’s and Siobhan Clarke’s — on the desk in front of him. He’d moistened his thumb before perusing them, lifting each page by a corner. Between them, they’d put together a second-by-second account of Archie Ure’s demise, their timings matched to the tape.

There was one other copy of the tape, of course. It had been handed over to Cameron Whyte. Whyte said that Ure’s widow was considering a claim against the police. That’s why they were here in the ACC’s office. Not just Rebus, but Siobhan and the Farmer, too.

More static: that was the mike being picked up. Interview ends at... eleven thirty-eight a.m .

Rebus stopped the tape. Carswell had listened to it twice now. After the first listen, he’d asked a couple of questions. Now he sat back, hands pressed together in front of his nose and lips. The Farmer made to mimic him, saw what he was doing and lowered his hands, pressing them between his legs instead. Then, seeing this as an unflattering pose to strike, he removed them quickly, laid them on his knees.

‘Prominent local politician dies under police questioning,’ Carswell commented. He might have been repeating a newspaper headline, but in fact so far they’d managed to keep the truth away from the newshounds. The lawyer had seen the sense of it, and had prevailed with the widow: a headline like that, and people would begin asking questions. Why had police wanted to talk to the recent heart-attack victim? She had enough to cope with without all that.

And she had concurred, while at the same time urging Whyte to ‘sue the bastards for every penny’.

Words which acted like a frozen sword to the spines of the High Hiedyins at the Big House. So, just as Cameron Whyte and his team were doubtless poring over the tape, looking to build their case, the lawyers for Lothian and Borders Police were already seated in a room along the corridor, ready to take delivery of the evidence.

‘A fatal error of judgement, Chief Superintendent,’ Carswell was telling the Farmer. ‘Sending someone like Rebus into a situation like that. I had my doubts all along, of course, and now I find myself vindicated.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘I wish I could take some pleasure in that.’ He paused. ‘A fatal error,’ he repeated.

Fatal error, Rebus was thinking. ERR RESET.

‘With respect, sir,’ the Farmer said, ‘we could hardly be expected to know...’