Ian Rankin - Black and Blue

‘Living with myself has never been the problem. Breathing the same air as people like you — that’s my problem.’

‘I’ve already told you, Strathclyde Police and the Squaddies are planning an operation...’

‘One that’ll get nowhere, because for all we know half the Glasgow force is in Uncle Joe’s pocket.’

‘I’m not the one who goes visiting him at home, with a word put in by a certain Morris Cafferty.’

There was a sudden tightening around Rebus’s chest. Coronary, he thought. But it was only Jack Morton, arms holding him, stopping him moving in on Ancram.

‘Tomorrow morning, gentlemen,’ Ancram said, like they’d had a useful session.

‘Yes, sir,’ Jack said, hustling Rebus out of the room.

Rebus told his friend to get them on to the M8.

‘No way, José.’

‘Then park near Waverley, we’ll take the train.’

Jack didn’t like the way Rebus looked: like his wiring was shorting out. You could almost see the sparks behind his eyes.

‘What are you going to do in Glasgow? Walk up to Uncle Joe and say, “Oh, by the way, your woman’s shagging your son”? Even you can’t be that stupid.’

‘Of course I’m not that stupid.’

‘Glasgow, John,’ Jack pleaded. ‘It’s not our territory. I’ll be back in Falkirk in a few weeks, and you...’

Rebus smiled. ‘Where’ll I be, Jack?’

‘God and the Devil know.’

Rebus was still smiling; thought to himself: I’d rather be the devil.

‘You’ve always got to be the hero, haven’t you?’ Jack asked.

‘Time loves a hero, Jack,’ Rebus told him.

On the M8, halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, slowed by syrupy traffic, Jack tried again.

‘This is crazy. I mean really crazy.’

‘Trust me, Jack.’

‘Trust you? The guy who tried to lay me out two nights back? With friends like you...’

‘... you’ll never be short of enemies.’

‘There’s still time.’

‘Not really, you just think there is.’

‘You’re talking out your arse.’

‘Maybe you’re just not listening.’ Rebus felt calmer now they were on the road. To Jack, he looked like someone had pulled the plug on him: no more sparks. He almost preferred the model with the faulty wiring. The lack of emotion in his friend’s voice was chilling, even in the overheated car. Jack slid his window down a little further. The speedometer was steady on forty, and that was them in the outside lane. Traffic to their left was really crawling. If he could find a space, he’d move to the inside — anything to delay their arrival.

He’d oftentimes admired John Rebus — and heard him praised by other officers — for his tenacity, the way he worried at a case terrier-style, more often than not tearing it open, spilling out secret motives and hidden bodies. But that same tenacity could also be a weakness, blinding him to danger, making him impatient and reckless. Jack knew why they were headed for Glasgow, thought he knew pretty well what Rebus would want to do there. And, as ordered by Ancram, Jack would be close by when the crap came tumbling down.

It was a long time since Rebus and Jack had worked together. They’d been an effective team, but Jack had been glad enough of the posting out of Edinburgh. Too claustrophobic — the town and his partner both. Rebus had seemed even then to spend more time living in his own head than in the company of others. Even the pub he chose to haunt was one with fewer than usual distractions: TV, one fruit machine, one cigarette machine. And when group activities were arranged — fishing trips, golf competitions, bus runs — Rebus never signed up. He was an irregular regular, a loner even in company, his brain and heart only fully engaged when he was working a case. Jack knew the score only too well. Work had a way of wrapping itself around you, so you were cut off from the rest of the world. People you met socially tended to treat you with suspicion or outright hostility — so you ended up mixing only with other cops, which bored your wife or girlfriend. They began to feel isolated too. It was a bastard.

There were plenty of people on the force who coped, of course. They had understanding partners; or they could shut work out whenever they went home; or it was just a job to them, a way of keeping up with the mortgage. Jack would guess CID was split fifty-fifty between those for whom it was a vocation, and those who could fit into any other type of office life, anywhere, any time.

He didn’t know what else John Rebus could do. If they kicked him off the force... he’d probably drink his pension dry, become just another old ex-cop hanging on to a fund of stories, telling them too often to the same people, trading one form of isolation for another.

It was important that John should stay on the force. It was therefore important to keep him off Shit Street. Jack wondered why nothing in life was ever easy. When he’d been told by Chick Ancram that he’d be ‘keeping an eye’ on Rebus, he’d been pleased. He’d seen them going out together, reminiscing about cases and characters, haunts and high points. He should have known better. He might have changed — become a ‘yes man’, a pencil-pusher, a careerist — but John was the same as always... only worse. Time had seasoned his cynicism. He wasn’t a terrier now: he was a fighting dog with locking jaws. You just knew that no matter how bloody he got, how much pain there was behind the eyes, the grip was there to the death...

‘Traffic’s beginning to shift,’ Rebus said.

It was true; whatever the problem had been, it was clearing. The speedo was up to fifty-five. They’d be in Glasgow in no time at all. Jack glanced over at Rebus, who winked without moving his eyes from the road ahead. Jack had a sudden image of himself propping up a bar, dipping into his pension for another drink. Fuck that. For his friend’s sake, he’d go the ninety minutes, but no more: no extra time, no penalties. Definitely no penalties.

They made for Partick police station, since their faces were known there. Govan had been another possibility, but Govan was Ancram’s HQ and not a place they could do business on the q.t. The Johnny Bible investigation had picked up some momentum from the most recent murder, but all the Glasgow squad were really doing was reading through and filing material sent from Aberdeen. It made Rebus shiver to think he’d walked past Vanessa Holden in Burke’s Club. For all that Lumsden had been trying to stitch him up, Aberdeen CID had one thing right: quite a string of coincidences tied Rebus to the Johnny Bible inquiry. So much so that Rebus was beginning to doubt coincidence had much to do with it. Somehow, he couldn’t yet say how exactly, Johnny was connected to one of Rebus’s other investigations. At present it was no more than a hunch, nothing he could do anything about. But it was there, niggling him. It made him wonder if he knew more about Johnny Bible than he thought...

Partick, new and bright and comfortable — basically your state of the art cop-shop — was still enemy territory. Rebus couldn’t know how many friendly ears Uncle Joe might have on-site, but he thought he might know a quiet spot, a place they could make their own. As they wandered through the building, a few officers nodded or greeted Jack by name.

‘Base camp,’ Rebus said at last, turning into the deserted office which was temporary home to Bible John. Here he was, spread out across tables and the floor, pinned and taped to the walls. It was like standing in the middle of an exhibition. The last photofit of Bible John, the one compiled by his third victim’s sister, was repeated around the room, along with her description of him. It was as if by repetition, by piling image upon image, they could will him into physical being, turn wood pulp and ink into flesh and blood.