Ian Rankin: Black Book

It had been that kind of week.

On the Monday evening, he’d had a call from his Arden Street flat. The students he’d rented to had Patience’s number and knew they could reach him there, but this was the first time they’d ever had reason. The reason was Michael Rebus.

‘Hello, John.’

Rebus recognised the voice at once. ‘Mickey?’

‘How are you, John?’

‘Christ, Mickey. Where are you? No, scratch that, I know where you are. I mean — ’ Michael was laughing softly. ‘It’s just I heard you’d gone south.’

‘Didn’t work out.’ His voice dropped. ‘Thing is, John, can we talk? I’ve been dreading this, but I really need to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Shall I come round there?’

Rebus thought quickly. Patience was picking up her two nieces from Waverley Station, but all the sam…‘No, stay where you are. I’ll come over. The students are a good lot, maybe they’ll fix you a cup of tea or a joint while you’re waiting.’

There was silence on the line, then Michael’s voice: ‘I could have done without that.’ The line went dead.

Michael Rebus had served three years of a five-year sentence for drug dealing. During that time, John Rebus had visited his brother fewer than half a dozen times. He’d felt relief more than anything when, upon Rebus: The St Leonard’s Years release, Michael had taken a bus to London. That was two years ago, and the brothers had not exchanged a word since. But now Michael was back, bringing with him bad memories of a period in John Rebus’s life he’d rather not remember.

The Arden Street flat was suspiciously tidy when he arrived. Only two of the student tenants were around, the couple who slept in what had been Rebus’s bedroom. He talked to them in the hallway. They were just going out to the pub, but handed over to him another letter from the Inland Revenue. Really, Rebus would have liked them to stay. When they left, there was silence in the flat. Rebus knew that Michael would be in the living room and he was, crouched in front of the stereo and flipping through stacks of records.

‘Look at this lot,’ Michael said, his back still to Rebus. ‘The Beatles and the Stones, same stuff you used to listen to. Remember how you drove dad daft? What was that record player agai…?’

‘A Dansette.’

‘That’s it. Dad got it saving cigarette coupons.’ Michael stood up and turned towards his brother. ‘Hello, John.’

‘Hello, Michael.’

They didn’t hug or shake hands. They just sat down, Rebus on the chair, Michael on the sofa.

‘This place has changed,’ Michael said.

‘I had to buy a few sticks of furniture before I could rent it out.’ Already Rebus had noticed a few things-cigarette burns on the carpet, posters (against his explicit instructions) sellotaped to the wallpaper. He opened the taxman’s letter.

‘You should have seen them leap into action when I told them you were coming round. Hoovering and washing dishes. Who says students are lazy?’

‘They’re okay.’

‘So when did this all happen?’

‘A few months ago.’

‘They told me you’re living with a doctor.’

‘Her name’s Patience.’

Michael nodded. He looked pale and ill. Rebus tried not to be interested, but he was. The letter from the tax office hinted strongly that they knew he was renting his flat, and didn’t he want to declare the income? The back of his head was tingling. It did that when he was fractious, ever since it had been burned in the fire. The doctors said there was nothing he or they could do about it.

Except, of course, not get fractious.

He stuffed the letter into his pocket. ‘What do you Want, Mickey?’

‘Bottom line, John, I need a place to stay. Just for a week or two, till I can get on my feet.’ Rebus stared stonily at the posters on the walls as Michael ran on. He wanted to find wor…money was tigh…he’d take any jo…he just needed a chance.

‘That’s all, John, just one chance.’

Rebus was thinking. Patience had room in her flat, of course. There was space enough there even with the nieces staying. But no way was Rebus going to take his brother back to Oxford Terrace. Things weren’t going that well as it was. His late hours and her late hours, his exhaustion and hers, his job involvement and hers. Rebus couldn’t see Michael improving things. He thought: I am not my brother’s keeper. But all the same.

‘We might squeeze you into the box room. I’d have to talk to the students about it.’ He couldn’t see them saying no, but it seemed polite to ask. How could they say no? He was their landlord and flats were hard to find. Especially good flats, especially in Marchmont.

‘That would be great.’ Michael sounded relieved. He got up from the sofa and walked over to the door of the box room. This was a large ventilated cupboard off the living room. Just big enough for a single bed and a chest of drawers, if you took all the boxes and the rubbish out of it.

‘We could probably store all that stuff in the cellar,’ said Rebus, standing just behind his brother.

‘John,’ said Michael, ‘the way I feel, I’d be happy enough sleeping in the cellar myself.’ And when he turned towards his brother, there were tears in Michael Rebus’s eyes.

On Wednesday, Rebus began to realise that his world was a black comedy.

Michael had been moved into the Arden Street flat without any fuss. Rebus had informed Patience of his brother’s return, but had said little more than that. She was spending a lot of time with her sister’s girls anyway. She’d taken a few days off work to show them Edinburgh. It looked like hard going. Susan at fifteen wanted to do all the things which Jenny, aged eight, didn’t or couldn’t. Rebus felt almost totally excluded from this female triumvirate, though he would sneak into Jenny’s room at night just to re-live the magic and innocence of a child asleep. He also spent time trying to avoid Susan, who seemed only too aware of the differences between women and men.

He was kept busy at work, which meant he didn’t think about Michael more than a few dozen times each day. Ah, work, now there was a thing. When Great London Road police station had burnt down, Rebus had been moved to St Leonard’s, which was Central District’s divisional HQ.

With him had come Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes and, to both their dismays, Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson and Chief Inspector ‘Fart’ Lauderdale. There had been compensations-newer offices and furniture, better amenities and equipment-but not enough. Rebus was still trying to come to terms with his new workplace. Everything was so tidy, he could never find anything, as a result of which he was always keen to get out of the office and onto the street.

Which was why he ended up at a butcher’s shop on South Clerk Street, staring down at a stabbed man.

The man had already been tended to by a local doctor, who’d been standing in line waiting for some pork chops and gammon steaks when the man staggered into the shop. The wound had been dressed initially with a clean butcher’s apron, and now everyone was waiting for a stretcher to be unloaded from the ambulance outside.

A constable was filling Rebus in.

‘I was only just up the road, so he couldn’t have been here more than five minutes when somebody told me, and I came straight here. That’s when I radioed in.’

Rebus had picked up the constable’s radio message in his car, and had decided to stop by. He kind of wished he hadn’t. There was blood smeared across the floor, colouring the sawdust which lay there. Why some butchers still scattered sawdust on their floors he couldn’t say. There was also a palm-shaped daub of blood on the white-tiled wall, and another less conclusive splash of the stuff below this.