A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Playback

  The Dean Curse

  Being Frank

  Concrete Evidence

  Seeing Things

  A Good Hanging

  Tit for Tat

  Not Provan

  Sunday

  Auld Lang Syne

  The Gentlemen’s Club

  Monstrous Trumpet

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Praise for Ian Rankin

  ‘Rankin weaves his plots with a menacing ease ... His prose is understated, yet his canvas of Scotland’s criminal underclass has a panoramic breadth. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as a switchblade. This is, quite simply crime writing of the highest order’ Daily Express

  ‘A series that shows no signs of flagging ... Assured, sympathetic to contemporary foibles, humanistic, this is more than just a police procedural as the character of Rebus grows in moral stature ... Rankin is the head capo of the MacMafia’ Time Out

  ‘Rankin has followed one success with another. Sardonic and assured, the novel has a powerful and well-paced narrative. What is striking is the way Rankin uses his laconic prose as a literary paint stripper, scouring away pretensions to reveal the unwholesome reality beneath’ Independent

  ‘Rankin strips Edinburgh’s polite façade to its gritty skeleton’ The Times

  ‘A teeming Ellroy-esque evocation of life at the sharp end in modern Scotland ... Rankin is the finest Scottish crime writer to emerge since William Mcllvanney’ GQ

  ‘Rebus resurgent ... A brilliantly meshed plot which delivers on every count on its way to a conclusion as unexpected as it is inevitable. Eleventh in the series. Still making waves’ Literary Review

  ‘His fiction buzzes with energy ... Essentially he is a romantic storyteller in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson ... His prose is as vivid and terse as the next man’s yet its flexibility and rhythm give it potential for lyrical expression which is distinctly Rankin’s own’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Top notch ... the bleakness is unrelenting, but it quite suits Mr Rankin who does his best work in the dark’ New York Times

  ‘The internal police politics and corruption in high places are both portrayed with bone-freezing accuracy This novel should come with a wind-chill factor warning’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Detective Inspector Rebus makes the old-style detectives with their gentle or bookish backgrounds, Alleyn, Morse, Dalgliesh, look like wimps ... Rankin is brilliant at conveying the genuine stench of seedy places on the dark side of Scotland’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘It’s the banter and the energy the immense carnival of scenes and characters, voices and moods that set Rankin apart. His stories are like a transmission forever in the red zone, at the edge of burnout. This is crime fiction at its best’ Washington Post

  Bom 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 Ghandler-Eulbright 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.

  By lan Rankin

  The Inspector Rebus series

  Knots & Crosses

  Hide & Seek

  Tooth & Nail

  Strip Jack

  The Black Book

  Mortal Causes

  Let It Bleed

  Black & Blue

  The Hanging Garden

  Death Is Not the End (novella)

  Dead Souls

  Set in Darkness

  The Falls

  Resurrection Men

  A Question of Blood

  Fleshmarket Close

  The Naming of the Dead

  Exit Music

  Other novels

  The Flood

  Watchman

  Westwind

  Writing as Jack Harvey

  Witch Hunt

  Bleeding Hearts

  Blood Hunt

  Short stories

  A Good Hanging and Other

  Stories

  Beggars Banquet

  Omnibus editions

  Rebus: The Early Years

  (κnots & Crosses, Hide &

  Seek, Tooth & Nail)

  Rebus: The St Leonard’s Years

  ( Strip Jack, The Black Book,

  Mortal Causes)

  Rebus: The Lost Years

  (Let It Bleed, Black & Blue,

  The Hanging Garden)

  Rebus: Capital Crimes

  (Dead Souls, Set in Darkness,

  The Falls)

  Non-fiction

  Rebus’s Scotland

  All Ian Rankin’s titles are available on audio. Also available: Jackie Leven Said by Ian Rankin and Jackie Leven.

  A Good Hanging

  IAN RANKIN

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  An Orion paperback

  First published in Great Britain in 1992 by Century

  This paperback edition published in 1998

  by Orion Books Ltd,

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Reissued 2008

  Copyright © John Rebus Limited 1992

  The right of Ian Rankin to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Both the author and publisher acknowledge first

  Publication of ‘Playback’ in Writer’s Crimes 22 (Macmillan).

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the copyright owner.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4091 0773 6

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that

  are natural, renewable and recyclable products and

  made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging

  and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to

  the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Playback

  It was the pe
rfect murder.

  Perfect, that is, so far as the Lothian and Borders Police were concerned. The murderer had telephoned in to confess, had then panicked and attempted to flee, only to be caught leaving the scene of the crime. End of story.

  Except that now he was pleading innocence. Pleading, yelling and screaming it. And this worried Detective Inspector John Rebus, worried him all the way from his office to the four-storey tenement in Leith’s trendy dockside area. The tenements here were much as they were in any working-class area of Edinburgh, except that they boasted colour-splashed roller blinds or Chinese-style bamboo affairs at their windows, and their grimy stone facades had been power-cleaned, their doors now boasting intruder-proof intercoms. A far cry from the greasy Venetian blinds and kicked-in passageways of the tenements in Easter Road or Gorgie, or even in nearby parts of Leith itself, the parts the developers were ignoring as yet.

  The victim had worked as a legal secretary, this much Rebus knew. She had been twenty-four years old. Her name was Moira Bitter. Rebus smiled at that. It was a guilty smile, but at this hour of the morning any smile he could raise was something of a miracle.

  He parked in front of the tenement, guided by a uniformed officer who had recognised the badly dented front bumper of Rebus’s car. It was rumoured that the dent had come from knocking down too many old ladies, and who was Rebus to deny it? It was the stuff of legend and it gave him prominence in the fearful eyes of the younger recruits.

  A curtain twitched in one of the ground-floor windows and Rebus caught a glimpse of an elderly lady. Every tenement, it seemed, tarted up or not, boasted its elderly lady. Living alone, with one dog or four cats for company, she was her building’s eyes and ears. As Rebus entered the hallway, a door opened and the old lady stuck out her head.

  ‘He was going to run for it,’ she whispered. ‘But the bobby caught him. I saw it. Is the young lass dead? Is that it?’ Her lips were pursed in keen horror. Rebus smiled at her but said nothing. She would know soon enough. Already she seemed to know as much as he did himself. That was the trouble with living in a city the size of a town, a town with a village mentality.

  He climbed the four flights of stairs slowly, listening all the while to the report of the constable who was leading him inexorably towards the corpse of Moira Bitter. They spoke in an undertone: stairwell walls had ears.

  ‘The call came at about 5 a.m., sir,’ explained PC MacManus. ‘The caller gave his name as John MacFarlane and said he’d just murdered his girlfriend. He sounded distressed by all accounts, and I was radioed to investigate. As I arrived, a man was running down the stairs. He seemed in a state of shock.’

  ‘Shock?’

  ‘Sort of disorientated, sir.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’ asked Rebus.

  ‘Yes, sir, he told me, “Thank God you’re here. Moira’s dead.” I then asked him to accompany me upstairs to the flat in question, called in for assistance, and the gentleman was arrested.’

  Rebus nodded. MacManus was a model of efficiency, not a word out of place, the tone just right. Everything by rote and without the interference of too much thought. He would go far as a uniformed officer, but Rebus doubted the young man would ever make CID. When they reached the fourth floor, Rebus paused for breath then walked into the flat.

  The hall’s pastel colour scheme extended to the living-room and bedroom. Mute colours, subtle and warming. There was nothing subtle about the blood though. The blood was copious. Moira Bitter lay sprawled across her bed, her chest a riot of colour. She was wearing apple-green pyjamas, and her hair was silky blonde. The police pathologist was examining her head.

  ‘She’s been dead about three hours,’ he informed Rebus. ‘Stabbed three or four times with a small sharp instrument, which, for the sake of convenience, I’m going to term a knife. I’ll examine her properly later on.’

  Rebus nodded and turned to MacManus, whose face had a sickly grey tinge to it.

  ‘Your first time?’ Rebus asked. The constable nodded slowly. ‘Never mind,’ Rebus continued. ‘You never get used to it anyway. Come on.’

  He led the constable out of the room and back into the small hallway. ‘This man we’ve arrested, what did you say his name was?’

  ‘John MacFarlane, sir,’ said the constable, taking deep breaths. ‘He’s the deceased’s boyfriend apparently.’

  ‘You said he seemed in a state of shock. Was there anything else you noticed?’

  The constable frowned, thinking. ‘Such as, sir?’ he said at last.

  ‘Blood,’ said Rebus coolly. ‘You can’t stab someone in the heat of the moment without getting blood on you.’

  MacManus said nothing. Definitely not CID material and perhaps realising it for the very first time. Rebus turned from him and entered the living-room. It was almost neurotically tidy. Magazines and newspapers in their rack beside the sofa. A chrome and glass coffee table bearing nothing more than a clean ashtray and a paperback romance. It could have come straight from an Ideal Home exhibition. No family photographs, no clutter. This was the lair of an individualist. No ties with the past, a present ransacked wholesale from Habitat and Next. There was no evidence of a struggle. No evidence of an encounter of any kind: no glasses or coffee cups. The killer had not loitered, or else had been very tidy about his business.

  Rebus went into the kitchen. It, too, was tidy. Cups and plates stacked for drying beside the empty sink. On the draining-board were knives, forks, teaspoons. No murder weapon. There were spots of water in the sink and on the draining-board itself, yet the cutlery and crockery were dry. Rebus found a dishtowel hanging up behind the door and felt it. It was damp. He examined it more closely. There was a small smudge on it. Perhaps gravy or chocolate. Or blood. Someone had dried something recently, but what?

  He went to the cutlery drawer and opened it. Inside, amidst the various implements was a short-bladed chopping knife with a heavy black handle. A quality knife, sharp and gleaming. The other items in the drawer were bone dry, but this chopping knife’s wooden handle was damp to the touch. Rebus was in no doubt: he had found his murder weapon.

  Clever of MacFarlane though to have cleaned and put away the knife. A cool and calm action. Moira Bitter had been dead three hours. The call to the police station had come an hour ago. What had MacFarlane done during the intervening two hours? Cleaned the flat? Washed and dried the dishes? Rebus looked in the kitchen’s swing-bin, but found no other clues, no broken ornaments, nothing that might hint at a struggle. And if there had been no struggle, if the murderer had gained access to the tenement and to Moira Bitter’s flat without forcing an entry ... if all this were true, Moira had known her killer.

  Rebus toured the rest of the flat, but found no other clues. Beside the telephone in the hall stood an answering machine. He played the tape, and heard Moira Bitter’s voice.

  ‘Hello, this is Moira. I’m out, I’m in the bath, or I’m otherwise engaged.’ (A giggle.) ‘Leave a message and I’ll get back to you, unless you sound boring.’

  There was only one message. Rebus listened to it, then wound back the tape and listened again.

  ‘Hello, Moira, it’s John. I got your message. I’m coming over. Hope you’re not “otherwise engaged”. Love you.’

  John MacFarlane: Rebus didn’t doubt the identity of the caller. Moira sounded fresh and fancy-free in her message. But did MacFarlane’s response hint at jealousy? Perhaps she had been otherwise engaged when he’d arrived. He lost his temper, blind rage, a knife lying handy. Rebus had seen it before. Most victims knew their attackers. If that were not the case, the police wouldn’t solve so many crimes. It was a blunt fact. You double bolted your door against the psychopath with the chainsaw, only to be stabbed in the back by your lover, husband, son or neighbour.

  John MacFarlane was as guilty as hell. They would find blood on his clothes, even if he’d tried cleaning it off. He had stabbed his girlfriend, then calmed down and called in to report the crime, but had grown frightened at the end and had
attempted to flee.

  The only question left in Rebus’s mind was the why? The why and those missing two hours.

  Edinburgh through the night. The occasional taxi rippling across setts and lone shadowy figures slouching home with hands in pockets, shoulders hunched. During the night hours, the sick and the old died peacefully, either at home or in some hospital ward. Two in the morning until four: the dead hours. And then some died horribly, with terror in their eyes. The taxis still rumbled past, the night people kept moving. Rebus let his car idle at traffic lights, missing the change to green, only coming to his senses as amber turned red again. Glasgow Rangers were coming to town on Saturday. There would be casual violence. Rebus felt comfortable with the thought. The worst football hooligan could probably not have stabbed with the same ferocity as Moira Bitter’s killer. Rebus lowered his eyebrows. He was rousing himself to fury, keen for confrontation. Confrontation with the murderer himself.

  John MacFarlane was crying as he was led into the interrogation room, where Rebus had made himself look comfortable, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other. Rebus had expected a lot of things, but not tears.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’ he asked. MacFarlane shook his head. He had slumped into the chair on the other side of the desk, his shoulders sagging, head bowed, and the sobs still coming from his throat. He mumbled something.