Ian Rankin: Knots And Crosses

Afterwards, he went to the drawer and took from it a ball of string. He used a pair of sharp nail-scissors, the kind girls always seem to use, to snip off a length of about six inches, then he put the ball of string and the scissors back into the drawer. A car revved up outside, and he went to the window, upsetting a pile of books on the floor as he did so. The car, however, had vanished, and he smiled to himself. He tied a knot in the string, not any special kind of knot, just a knot. There was an envelope lying ready on the sideboard.

It was 28th April. Wet, naturally, the grass percolating water as John Rebus walked to the grave of his father, dead five years to the day. He placed a wreath so that it lay, yellow and red, the colours of remembrance, against the still shining marble. He paused for a moment, trying to think of things to say, but there seemed nothing to say, nothing to think. He had been a good enough father and that was that. The old man wouldn’t have wanted him to waste his words in any case. So he stood there, hands respectfully behind his back, crows laughing on the walls around him, until the water seeping into his shoes told him that there was a warm car waiting for him at the cemetery gates.

He drove quietly, hating to be back here in Fife, back where the old days had never been ‘good old days,’ where ghosts rustled in the shells of empty houses and the shutters went up every evening on a handful of desultory shops, those metal shutters that gave the vandals somewhere to write their names. How Rebus hated it all, this singular lack of an environment. It stank the way it had always done: of misuse, of disuse, of the sheer wastage of life.

He drove the eight miles towards the open sea, to where his brother Michael still lived. The rain eased off as he approached the skull-grey coast, the car throwing up splashings of water from a thousand crevasses in the road. Why was it, he wondered, that they never seemed to fix the roads here, while in Edinburgh they worked on the surfaces so often that things were made even worse? And why, above all, had he made the maniacal decision to come all the way through to Fife, just because it was the anniversary of the old man’s death? He tried to focus his mind on something else, and found himself fantasising about his next cigarette.

Through the rain, falling as drizzle now, Rebus saw a girl about his daughter’s age walking along the grass verge. He slowed the car, examined her in his mirror as he passed her, and stopped. He motioned for her to come to his window.

Her short breaths were visible in the cool, still air, and her dark hair fell in rats-tails down her forehead. She looked at him apprehensively.

‘Where are you going, love?’

‘Kirkcaldy.’

‘Do you want a lift?’

She shook her head, drops of water flying from her coiled hair.

‘My mum said I should never accept lifts from strangers.’

‘Well,’ said Rebus, smiling, ‘your mum is quite right. I’ve got a daughter about your age and I tell her the same thing. But it is raining, and I am a policeman, so you can trust me. You’ve still got a fair way to go, you know.’

She looked up and down the silent road, then shook her head again.

‘Okay,’ said Rebus, ‘but take care. Your mum was quite right.’

He wound his window up again and drove off, watching her in his mirror as she watched him. Clever kid. It was good to know that parents still had a little sense of responsibility left. If only the same could be said of his ex-wife. The way she had brought up their daughter was a disgrace. Michael, too, had given his daughter too long a leash. Who was to blame?

Rebus’s brother owned a respectable house. He had followed in the old man’s footsteps and become a stage hypnotist. He seemed to be quite good at it, too, from all accounts. Rebus had never asked Michael how it was done, just as he had never shown any interest or curiosity in the old man’s act. He had observed that this still puzzled Michael, who would drop hints and red herrings as to the authenticity of his own stage act for him to chase up if he so wished.

But then John Rebus had too many things to chase up, and that had been the position during all of his fifteen years on the force. Fifteen years, and all he had to show were an amount of self-pity and a busted marriage with an innocent daughter hanging between them. It was more disgusting than sad. And meantime Michael was happily married with two kids and a larger house than Rebus could ever afford. He headlined at hotels, clubs, and even theatres as far away as Newcastle and Wick. Occasionally he would make six-hundred quid from a single show. Outrageous. He drove an expensive car, wore good clothes, and would never have been caught dead standing in the pissing rain in a graveyard in Fife on the dullest April day for many a year. No, Michael was too clever for that. And too stupid.

‘John! Christ, what’s up? I mean, it’s great to see you. Why didn’t you phone to warn me you were coming? Come on inside.’

It was the welcome Rebus had expected: embarrassed surprise, as though it were painful to be reminded that one still had some family left alive. And Rebus had noted the use of the word ‘warn’ where ‘tell’ would have sufficed. He was a policeman. He noticed such things.

Michael Rebus bounded through to the living-room and turned down the wailing stereo.

‘Come on in, John,’ he called. ‘Do you want a drink? Coffee perhaps? Or something stronger? What brings you here?’

Rebus sat down as though he were in a stranger’s house, his back straight and professional. He examined the panelled walls of the room — a new feature — and the framed photographs of his niece and nephew.

‘I was just in the neighbourhood,’ he said.

Michael, turning from the drinks cabinet with the glasses ready, suddenly remembered, or did a good impersonation of just having remembered.

‘Oh, John, I forgot all about it. Why didn’t you tell me? Shit, I hate forgetting about Dad.’

‘Just as well you’re a hypnotist then and not Mickey the Memory Man, isn’t it? Give me that drink, or are you two getting engaged?’

Michael, smiling, absolved, handed over the glass of whisky.

‘Is that your car outside?’ asked Rebus, taking the glass. ‘I mean the big BMW?’

Michael, still smiling, nodded.

‘Christ,’ said Rebus. ‘You treat yourself well.’

‘As well as I treat Chrissie and the kids. We’re building an extension onto the back of the house. Somewhere to put a jacuzzi or a sauna. They’re the in thing just now, and Chrissie’s desperate to keep ahead of the field.’

Rebus took a swallow of whisky. It turned out to be a malt. Nothing in the room was cheap, but none of it was exactly desirable either. Glass ornaments, a crystal decanter on a silver salver, the TV and video, the inscrutably miniature hi-fi system, the onyx lamp. Rebus felt a little guilty about that lamp. Rhona and he had given it to Michael and Chrissie as a wedding present. Chrissie no longer spoke to him. Who could blame her?

‘Where is Chrissie, by the way?’

‘Oh, she’s out doing some shopping. She has her own car now. The kids will still be at school. She’ll pick them up on the way home. Are you staying for something to eat?’

Rebus shrugged his shoulders.

‘You’d be welcome to stay,’ said Michael, meaning that Rebus wouldn’t. ‘So how’s the cop-shop? Still muddling along?’

‘We lose a few, but they don’t get the publicity. We catch a few, and they do. It’s the same as always, I suppose.’

The room, Rebus was noticing, smelled of toffee-apples, of penny arcades.

Michael was speaking:

‘This is a terrible business about those girls being kidnapped.’