Ian Rankin: Let It Bleed

I first heard the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed when I was only ten or eleven years old. I didn’t like the music — at that age I was listening to Marc Bolan and not much else; it was my sister’s boyfriend who was the Stones fan. I did find the lyrics intriguing, however. Even though I barely understood the references, I could tell that there was something ‘dirty’ about them. They hinted at sex, debauchery, violence and drugs. There was even one song (‘Midnight Rambler’) which seemed to be about a real-life serial killer. I eventually had to buy the album for myself.

By this time, however, I was in my twenties and had already written a couple of books. I was also working as a music journalist and hi-fi equipment reviewer in London. Let It Bleed, with its fantastic studio sound, soon became a constant on my Linn Sondek, and when the time came, in 1994, to write the seventh John Rebus novel, I felt emboldened to borrow the album’s title.

Though the book is set in the depths of an Edinburgh winter, it was written at my house in south-west France, mostly in blazing summer heat. (I’d long since given up the hi-fi job, but still used the Linn record deck.) I’m not sure now if working on the book provided me with some sort of internal air-conditioning, but one thing I knew was that during any cold snap in Edinburgh you would want your central heating to be working. Hence the pun in the title — what Rebus really needs to bleed in the book is a radiator.

For a little while in the 1990s, I became convinced that in order to make a decent amount of money I would have to transfer my skills to television. I had already made several attempts at scripts for the established cop show The Bill. At meetings with the production team, I learned that each Bill script had to contain three scenarios, and that none of the action could involve the cops’ private lives or show them off-duty Somehow I couldn’t stick to this formula. At around the same time, television had shown some interest in Rebus. I attended more meetings, this time with the BBC, and tried writing a few scripts (both adaptations and original stories), but seemed to hit a series of walls. Eventually I started pitching non-Rebus ideas at my TV contacts, but still to no avail. All of which, however, may go some way towards explaining the slam-bang action opening of Let It Bleed. It’s still something I’d love to see on the big screen, done Hollywood-style: a night-time car chase in a blizzard, with the Forth Road Bridge beckoning. Fantastic.

Let It Bleed was a political novel, in that it used local and national politics for much of its plotting. By this time I had a real-life detective on my side, a fan of the books who had pointed out various procedural errors in previous stories. And with a few published novels under my belt, I was a known commodity in Edinburgh, so could approach complete strangers (council officials, for example) with a view to aiding my research. On my trips back to Edinburgh for Let It Bleed, I slept on a friend’s sofa, asked a lot of questions at the reception desks of various government agencies, and bought a few lunches and rounds of drinks. In some ways, the new book would be a return to the Edinburgh of my second novel, Hide Seek. Both stories are concerned with the changing face of Edinburgh, its attempts to embrace new employment opportunities (meaning new technologies) while still retaining a sense of identity Structural change to Scotland’s capital was already under way: there was a plan for one of the breweries to open a theme park near the Palace of Holyrood. Eventually the site would house Our Dynamic Earth and the Scottish Parliament instead, but at the time I was filled with a sense of glee: a theme park built on booze! Well, why not? Several city landmarks, including the Usher Hall, had been built with cash from brewing dynasties. The least we could do in the late twentieth century was celebrate our national relationship with alcohol: hence the use of a favourite Martin Amis line at the very start of the book: ‘Without women, life is a pub.’

While there is an abundance of action in Let It Bleed, it is also, to my mind, rather a soulful book. We are allowed access to Rebus’s thoughts as never before. We learn why he likes music, and why he turns so frequently to the bottle. Memories from his childhood are revealed, adding to our sense of him as a three-dimensional human being. The book contains some of my favourite scenes and images (for example, Rebus’s visit to a dry-stane dyker, or his invitation to a Perthshire shooting party), and ends with a few loose ends left straggling. Those loose ends seemed realistic to me, but irritated my American publishers to such an extent that they asked me to consider contributing an extra final chapter for US publication. This I eventually did, though I didn’t feel it added anything to the sum of the book (which is why it’s not being reprinted here). Between times, some old friends return to the series (Rebus’s daughter Sammy; his ex-lover Gill; the reporter Mairie Henderson). This, plus the fact that Rebus is back in his old flat, having jettisoned the students he’d been renting the place to, gives the book a solid, comfortable feel. By now I was confident in my ability to write a decent crime story and to recreate Rebus’s world … which probably explains why I would be at pains to make my next book so different, providing me with a fresh set of challenges.

But for now, I was happy I knew the inside of Rebus’s head. And he was happy, too, happy with his booze, cigarettes and music:

‘After a drink he liked to listen to the Stones. Women, relationships and colleagues had come and gone, but the Stones had always been there. He put the album on and poured himself a last drink. The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith’s tireless repertoire, kicked the album off. I don’t have much, Rebus thought, but I have this …’

On the album Let It Bleed there’s a song about the Boston Strangler. Mick Jagger had written about a real-life crime. And what was good enough for Mick was surely good enough for me, as my next novel would demonstrate.

May 2005

A winter night, screaming out of Edinburgh.

The front car was being chased by three others. In the chasing cars were police officers. Sleet was falling through the darkness, blowing horizontally. In the second of the police cars, Inspector John Rebus had his teeth bared. He gripped the doorhandle with one hand, and the front edge of his passenger seat with the other. In the driver’s seat, Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale seemed to have shed about thirty years. He was a youth again, enjoying the feeling of power which came from driving fast, driving a wee bit crazy. He sat well forward, peering through the windscreen.

‘We’ll get them!’ he yelled for the umpteenth time. ‘We’ll get the bastards!’

Rebus couldn’t unlock his jaw long enough to form a reply. It wasn’t that Lauderdale was a bad driver … Well OK, it wasn’t just that Lauderdale was a bad driver; the weather bothered Rebus too. When they’d taken the second roundabout at the Barnton Interchange, Rebus had felt the car’s back wheels losing all grip on the slick road surface. The tyres weren’t brand new to start with; probably retreads at that. The air temperature was near zero, the sleet lying treacherously in wait. They were out of the city now, leaving traffic lights and junctions behind. A car chase here should be safer. But Rebus didn’t feel safe.