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  Knots And Crosses

  ( The Inspector Rebus series - 1 )

  Ian Rankin

  Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel, Knots & Crosses, was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into over thirty languages and are bestsellers worldwide.

  Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America’s celebrated Edgar award for Resurrection Men. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Awards in the USA, and won Denmark’s Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University

  A contributor to BBC2’s Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin’s Evil Thoughts. He has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh. He has also recently been appointed to the rank of Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons. Visit his website at www.ianrankin.net.

  Ian Rankin

  Knots And Crosses

  To Miranda without whom

  nothing is worth finishing

  INTRODUCTION

  The nineteenth of March 1985 was a big day for me. I was a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, studying the novels of Muriel Spark. My thesis, however, was proving less important to me than my own writing. I’d started with poetry, then found some minor success with short stories. A first novel had failed to find a publisher, but my second attempt had just been given the thumbs-up by a small Edinburgh-based outfit called Polygon. That novel was titled The Flood, and on 19 March I went to the Polygon offices to sign my first ever book contract. I recorded the event in my diary, where, however, it was reduced to second billing after the following: ‘It’s happened. An idea for a novel (crime thriller) which started as one situation and has blossomed into a whole plot. I’ve not written any of it yet, but it’s all there in my head, from page one to circa page 250.’

  By 22 March I was working on this new story, and two days later recorded that ‘it needs a working title; I’m going to give it Knots amp; Crosses’. I certainly remember sitting in a chair in my bedsit, directly in front of the gas fire, and toying with the pun of noughts/knots and crosses. Rebus, it seems to me now, entered as a fully formed character, complete with estranged wife, young daughter and fragile sanity When I started writing, I did so on an electric typewriter, at the table by the window I stared from that window at the tenement opposite, and decided that Rebus would live there, directly across from my own digs at 24 Arden Street, Marchmont, Edinburgh.

  By late October, I had finished the second draft of the book: ‘two hundred and ten pages of sixty per cent satisfactory prose’. I had an agent by this time, and she suggested some changes, the most substantial of which involved cutting a large part of the central flashback section. This I did, making the book leaner, but no less potent.

  Knots amp; Crosses is a pretty nasty book, dealing as it does with a serial killer who preys on children. I’m fairly sure I meant it to be a contemporary reworking of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Having studied Stevenson’s masterpiece as part of my thesis, I was intrigued that he chose to set the story in London. Yet it remains a very Scottish novel, based as it is (at least partially) on the real-life Edinburgh character Deacon William Brodie, who was gentleman by day criminal by night.

  At the time, I had no interest in reading detective fiction, and no knowledge of police procedure. I also had no notion that Knots would be the first book of a series. This led me blithely to give Rebus a complex personal history and a name which was one of many in-jokes in the book (a rebus being a pictorial puzzle). In fact, rereading the book now, I find myself blushing at the number of literary puns and references (including nods to Spark, Mailer, Anthony Burgess and Thomas Pynchon). Rebus himself is too well-read, quoting from Shakespeare and passionate about Dostoevsky He thinks like the student/novelist who created him, rather than as a real cop. The sky is described as being ‘dark as Wagnerian opera’, while the phrase ’the manumission of dreams’ sent me (in 2005) to a dictionary I’m guessing it was a word I’d only just learned in 1985, and I was keen to show it off. I was a young man in love with language, striving for a voice and sometimes overreaching.

  The story is set in 1985. At that time, most of the shops on Princes Street closed on a Sunday There was an ABC cinema (now an Odeon) on Lothian Road and a Mr Boni’s ice-cream parlour (now defunct) at Tollcross. People used telex machines, but no one had a mobile phone. And when Rebus sought out a bar, he tended to choose one with larger quarter-gill measures (since replaced by their metric equivalent). Already Knots amp; Crosses feels like a historical document, written in and about an Edinburgh that no longer exists. As for the book’s hero, well, he’s changed in time as well. In this, his first outing, he listens to jazz mainly, using a Nakamichi cassette deck, probably the same one my girlfriend Miranda had bought for me. Later on, I would switch his preference to rock music. And though I’ve never really described him physically in any of the novels, here we learn that he has brown hair and green eyes (same as me). He’s also meant to be a possible suspect, which is why I make him so troubled, suffering weird flashbacks and with a spare bedroom in his flat that’s kept permanently locked.

  Some of the secondary characters in Knots would become useful to me in future books. The journalist Jim Stevens would play a role in a non-Rebus novel (Watchman) before reappearing in the series. Rebus’s brother would return, as would his fellow detective Jack Morton. And Gill Templer is still around, her relationship with Rebus coloured, even after all these years, by the events of this first novel. In later books, of course, I take Rebus into real police stations and real pubs. But the Edinburgh of Knots is altogether more fictive: Rebus’s police station is sited on a non-existent street, and bars such as the Sutherland remain figments of my imagination.

  One other thing about Rebus: he dies at the end. Not in the final draft, obviously but that was my original plan. If I’d stuck to it, I don’t know what I’d be doing now. The book climaxes in some tunnels beneath the Central Library on George IV Bridge. There may or may not be tunnels there. However, beneath the National Library (right across the street from the Central) there are certainly tunnels — I know because we postgraduate students were given a tour of them … and, as Muriel Spark says, nothing is ever lost to an author.

  Since I had no idea how the police went about investigating a murder, I did what any good research student would have done: wrote to the Chief Constable. He took pity on me and directed me to Leith police station, where two wary detectives answered my questions, and added my name to their database, just in case I had some darker ulterior motive. In my duffel coat and Doc Marten boots, a Dr Who scarf wrapped around me, I probably wasn’t their idea of a novelist. Sometimes even now I look in the mirror and am forced to agree.

  Knots was finally published in London by The Bodley Head (now also defunct) on 19 March 1987, exactly two years to the day since I’d had the initial idea. The cover was a drawing of a game of noughts and crosses, played with knotted pieces of twine and crosses made from matchsticks. As for the author photo, the less said the better. By this time, I was married, living in London, and working at Middlesex Polytechnic. I went into work as usual, and saw no reviews of the book in any of the day’s
newspapers. Forty-eight hours later, I headed to Edinburgh to spend some weeks at a writers’ retreat. There seemed no great fuss about the book. Sales would continue to be poor, with few reviews. I said as much in my diary: ‘Knots has had less publicity than Flood.’ So much for my fledgling career as a crime writer. I was by this time working on a London-based spy novel called Watchman, and had plans to be the next le Carre. Rebus was history, as far as I was concerned.

  But that would change.

  April 2005

  PROLOGUE

  1

  The girl screamed once, only the once.

  Even that, however, was a minor slip on his part. That might have been the end of everything, almost before it had begun. Neighbours inquisitive, the police called in to investigate. No, that would not do at all. Next time he would tie the gag a little tighter, just a little tighter, just that little bit more secure.

  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.

  2

  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.’

  Rebus nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it is. But we can’t strictly call it kidnapping, not yet. There hasn’t been a demand note or anything. It’s more likely to be a straightforward case of sexual assault.’

  Michael started up from his chair.

  ‘Straightforward? What’s straightforward about that?’

  ‘It’s just the terminology we use, Mickey, that’s all.’ Rebus shrugged again and finished his drink.

  ‘Well, John,’ said Michael, sitting, ‘I mean, we’ve both got daughters, too. You’re so casual about the whole thing. I mean, it’s frightening to think of it.’ He shook his head slowly in the world-wide expression of shared grief, and relief, too, that the horror was someone else’s for the moment. ‘It’s frightening,’ he repeated. ‘And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you?’

  ‘There’s more happening in Edinburgh than anyone knows.’

  ‘Yes.’ Michael paused. ‘I was across there just last week playing at one of the hotels.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  It was Michael’s turn to shrug his shoulders.

  ‘Would you have been interested?’ he said.