Ian Rankin - The Naming of the Dead

“It is our most basic duty as human beings,” he’d said in one of his parliamentary speeches, “to aid sustainable development wherever and whenever possible in the poorest and harshest regions of the world.” It was a point he’d hammered home elsewhere-to various committees, on public platforms, and in media interviews.

My brother was a good man…

Rebus didn’t doubt it. Nor could he think of any reason that someone would have pushed him from those ramparts onto the rocks below. Hardworking as he was, Ben Webster still hadn’t posed much of a threat to Pennen Industries. Rebus was coming back round to the suicide option. Maybe Webster had been made depressed by all those conflicts and famines and catastrophes. Maybe he’d known in advance that little progress would be made at the G8, his hopes of a better world stalled once again. Leaping into the void to bring attention to the situation? Rebus couldn’t really see that. Webster had sat down to dinner with powerful and influential men, diplomats and politicians from several nations. Why not voice his concerns to them? Make a fuss, kick up a stink. Shout and scream…

That scream flying into the night sky as he launched himself into the dark.

“No,” Rebus said to himself, shaking his head. It felt to him as though the jigsaw was complete enough for him to make out the image, but with some of the pieces wrongly placed.

“No,” he repeated, going back to his reading.

A good man…

After a further twenty minutes, he found an interview from one of the Sunday supplements of twelve months back. Webster was being questioned about his early days as an MP. He’d had a mentor of sorts, another Scottish MP and Labor highflier called Colin Anderson.

Rebus’s own member of parliament.

“Didn’t see you at the funeral, Colin,” Rebus said quietly, underlining a couple of sentences.

Webster is quick to credit Anderson for the help he gave the tyro MP: “He made sure I avoided the obvious pratfalls, and I can’t thank him enough for that.” But the sure-footed Webster is more reticent by far when questioned about the allegation that it was Anderson who propelled him into his current role as parliamentary private secretary, placing him where he could be of future assistance to the minister for trade in any leadership contest…

“Well, well,” Rebus said, blowing across the surface of his cup, even though the liquid within was tepid at best.

“I’d completely forgotten,” Rebus said, dragging a spare chair over to the table, “that my own member of parliament was minister for trade. I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep this short.”

He was in a restaurant on Edinburgh’s south side. Early evening, but the place was busy. The staff were making up a place setting for him, trying to hand him a menu. The Right Honorable Colin Anderson, MP, was seated across from his wife at a table meant for two.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Rebus was handing the menu back to the waiter. “I’m not eating,” he explained. Then, to the MP: “My name’s John Rebus. I’m a detective inspector. Did your secretary not say?”

“Can I see some identification?” Anderson was asking.

“Not really her fault,” Rebus was telling him. “I exaggerated a little, said it was an emergency.” He’d opened his ID for inspection. While the MP studied it, Rebus smiled in his wife’s direction.

“Should I…?” She motioned to rise from the table.

“Nothing top secret,” Rebus assured her. Anderson was handing back Rebus’s ID.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Inspector, this isn’t exactly conve nient.”

“I thought your secretary would have told you.”

Anderson lifted his cell from the table. “No signal,” he stated.

“You should do something about that,” Rebus commented. “Lots of the city still like that.”

“Have you been drinking, Inspector?”

“Only when off-duty, sir.” Rebus fussed in his pocket until he found the pack.

“There’s no smoking in here,” Anderson warned him.

Rebus looked at the cigarette pack as though it had crawled unnoticed into his hand. He apologized and put it away again. “Didn’t see you at the funeral, sir,” he told the MP.

“Which funeral?”

“Ben Webster. You were a good friend to him in his early days.”

“I was otherwise engaged.” The MP made a show of checking his watch.

“Ben’s sister told me that once her brother was dead, Labor would soon forget about him.”

“I think that’s unreasonable. Ben was a friend of mine, Inspector, and I did want to attend the funeral…”

“But you’ve been busy,” Rebus said, all understanding. “And here you are, trying to catch a quick, quiet meal with your wife, and I come barging in unannounced.”

“It happens to be my wife’s birthday. We managed-God knows how-to keep a window free-”

“And I’ve gone and smudged it.” Rebus turned to the wife. “Many happy returns.”

The waiter was placing a wineglass in front of Rebus. “Maybe some water instead?” Anderson suggested. Rebus nodded.

“Have you been busy with the G8?” the MP’s wife leaned forward to ask him.

“Busy despite the G8,” Rebus corrected her. He saw husband and wife exchange a glance, knew what they were thinking. A hungover cop, wired from all the demonstrations and the chaos and now the bombings. Damaged goods, to be handled with care.

“Can this really not wait till morning, Inspector?” Anderson asked quietly.

“I’m looking into Ben Webster’s death,” Rebus explained. His voice sounded nasal, even to his own ears, and there was a creeping mist at the edges of his vision. “Can’t seem to find a reason for him to take his own life.”

“More likely an accident, surely,” the MP’s wife offered.

“Or he was given a hand,” Rebus stated.

“What?” Anderson’s hands stopped arranging the cutlery in front of him.

“Richard Pennen wants to link overseas aid to arms sales, doesn’t he? How’s it going to work-he donates a chunk of money in exchange for looser controls?”

“Don’t be absurd.” The MP allowed his voice to betray his irritation.

“Were you at the castle that night?”

“I was busy at Westminster.”

“Any chance that Webster had words with Pennen? Maybe at your behest?”

“What sort of words?”

“Cutting back the arms trade…turning all those guns into plow-shares.”

“Look, you can’t just go around defaming Richard Pennen. If there’s any evidence, I’d like to see it.”

“Me, too,” Rebus agreed.

“Meaning there’s none? And you’re basing this witch hunt on what exactly, Inspector?”

“On the fact that Special Branch wants me to butt out, or at the very least toe the line.”

“While you’d prefer to cross that same line?”

“Only way of getting anywhere.”

“Ben Webster was an outstanding member of parliament and a rising star in his party.”

“And he’d have supported you to the hilt in any leadership contest,” Rebus couldn’t help adding.

“Now you’re just being bloody scurrilous!” Anderson snarled.

“Was he the sort to get up the nose of big business?” Rebus asked. “The sort who couldn’t be bribed or bought off?” His head was feeling even muzzier.

“You seem exhausted, Officer,” the MP’s wife said, voice sympathetic. “Are you sure this really can’t wait?”

Rebus was shaking his head, aware of its sheer mass. Felt like he might crash through the floor, his body was so heavy…

“Darling,” the MP’s wife was telling her husband, “here’s Rosie.”

A flustered-looking young woman was squeezing her way between the tables. The staff looked worried that they might be asked to sit four at a table intended for two.