Mortal Causes Read online

  Praise for Ian Rankin

  ‘Arguably no Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott has had the commercial and critical success that Ian Rankin now enjoys. He may even be said to have invented modern Scotland, or at least modern Edinburgh, for his readers, just as Scott did in his time … Rebus lives. So does Rankin’s Edinburgh’

  Allan Massie, Spectator

  ‘Rankin captures, like no one else, that strangeness that is Scotland at the end of the twentieth century. He has always written superb crime fiction … but what he’s also pinning down is instant history’

  Literary Review

  ‘Rankin writes laconic, sophisticated, well-paced thrillers’

  Scotsman

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

  The Times

  ‘The real strength of Ian Rankin’s work … is that it’s a good deal more than a crime novel. The genre is simply the wrapper in which a complex story of human flaws and frailty is contained’

  Herald

  ‘Rankin proves himself the master of his own milieu … There cannot be a better crime novelist writing’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Arguably Scotland’s finest living writer’

  The 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

  ‘A brutal but beautifully written series … Rankin pushes the procedural form well past conventional genre limits’

  New York Times

  ‘Ian Rankin’s Inspector John Rebus is one of the most realistic creations in crime fiction … [he] builds his story layer by layer until it reaches a gripping climax. This is a terrific read’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Ian Rankin is widely, and rightly, regarded as the leading male crime writer in Britain’

  TLS

  ‘No other writer in his chosen genre is producing books as rich and comprehensive as this: Dickensian, you might say’

  Literary Review

  ‘Rebus is a masterful creation … Rankin has taken his well-earned place among the top echelon of crimewriters’

  Observer

  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 and 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 and in 2009 was inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame. 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 Ian Rankin

  The Inspector Rebus series

  Knots & Crosses – paperback – ebook

  Hide & Seek – paperback – ebook

  Tooth & Nail – paperback – ebook

  Strip Jack – paperback – ebook

  The Black Book – paperback – ebook

  Mortal Causes – paperback – ebook

  Let it Bleed – paperback – ebook

  Black & Blue – paperback – ebook

  The Hanging Garden – paperback – ebook

  Death Is Not The End (novella)

  Dead Souls – paperback – ebook

  Set in Darkness – paperback – ebook

  The Falls – paperback – ebook

  Resurrection Men – paperback – ebook

  A Question of Blood – paperback – ebook

  Fleshmarket Close – paperback – ebook

  The Naming of the Dead – paperback – ebook

  Exit Music – paperback – ebook

  Other Novels

  The Flood – paperback – ebook

  Watchman – paperback – ebook

  Westwind

  A Cool Head (Quickread) – paperback – ebook

  Doors Open – paperback – ebook

  The Complaints – paperback – ebook

  Writing as Jack Harvey

  Witch Hunt – paperback – ebook

  Bleeding Hearts – paperback – ebook

  Blood Hunt – paperback – ebook

  Short Stories

  A Good Hanging and Other Stories – paperback – ebook

  Beggars Banquet – paperback – ebook

  Non-Fiction

  Rebus’s Scotland – paperback

  Ian Rankin

  Mortal Causes

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Praise for Ian Rankin

  About the Author

  By Ian Rankin

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Reading Group Notes

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  A lot of people helped me with this book. I’d like to thank the people of Northern Ireland for their generosity and their ‘crack’. Particular thanks need to go to a few people who can’t be named or wouldn’t thank me for naming them. You know who you are.

  Thanks also to: Colin and Liz Stevenson, for trying; Gerald Hammond, for his gun expertise; the officers of the City of Edinburgh Police and Lothian and Borders Police, who never seem to mind me telling stories about them; David and Pauline, for help at the Festival.

  The best book on the subject of Protestant paramilitaries is Professor Steve Bruce’s The Red Hand (OUP, 1992). One quote from the book: ‘There is no “Northern Ireland problem” for which there is a solution. There is only a conflict in which there must be winners and losers.’

  The action of Mortal Causes takes place in a fictionalised summer, 1993, before the Shankill Road bombing and its bloody aftermath.

  Perhaps Edinburgh’s terrible inability to speak out,

  Edinburgh’s silence with regard to all it should be saying,

  Is but the hush that precedes the thunder,

  The liberating detonation so oppressively imminent now?

  Hugh MacDiarmid

  We’re all gonna be just dirt in the ground.

  Tom Waits

  I grew up in a small coal-mi
ning town in east-central Scotland, a long way from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yet each Saturday night of my childhood I would be awakened by some drunk at the end of our cul-de-sac, pausing on his route home in order to offer up a tuneless rendition of ‘The Sash’. As far as I know, no one ever left their home to remonstrate with him. Even now I wonder: was it the same man every time? Who was he? When sober, did he share his workplace with Catholics, and were they aware of his hatred? Did that hatred even exist during his periods of sobriety, or did it only come bubbling up after a long night’s imbibing? There were only one or two Catholic families in our whole street. One of the kids was my best friend until we started our separate educations, after which we drifted apart, finding other friends who shared our daily routines.

  I met my future wife at university. She had grown up in Belfast during the worst of the Troubles. Over time I got to know the place, visiting her family two or three times a year, but still not fully comprehending the soul of the conflict there. It is hard to grow up working-class in many parts of Scotland without taking sides. In fact, you don’t even have to take sides: they’re pretty much preordained. Now that I had five Rebus novels under my belt, I decided it was time to tackle some of my own questions about sectarianism and religious division in Scotland. But to make things interesting, I decided that this new story would take as its backdrop the Edinburgh Festival. That way, I could show the Scots at play, as opposed to the uglier truths about my home nation’s tribal instincts.

  One of my favourite jobs as a writer is coming up with titles. Previous books had been easy, but I struggled with Mortal Causes. The thing is, I need to have a title down on paper before I can start writing the story. It was my wife Miranda who came up with Mortal Causes, after a brainstorming session and countless dismissed suggestions on both sides. I liked the pun inherent in the title. The Scottish vernacular is rich in colourful euphemisms for inebriation: stocious, stotting, guttered, steaming, steamboats, wellied and hoolit are just a few. Another is ‘mortal’, as in: ‘I was fair mortal last night’ (meaning ‘I was very drunk indeed’). So Mortal Causes evoked, in my mind, the demon drink, just as surely as it did any darker and more violent imagery.

  In this book, the relationship between Rebus and Edinburgh’s premier gangster, ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, would become more complex, partly as a result of my fondness for New York writer Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels. I’d discovered these during a six-month stint in the USA in the latter half of 1992. I liked the way Scudder (an ex-cop and a man with his own strict moral code) related to a tough-guy hoodlum called Mick Ballou. It was as if they understood one another, maybe even respected one another … yet if either got in the other’s way, only one of them would emerge standing. If you’ve yet to read Mortal Causes, I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say, by the end of the book the relationship between Rebus and Cafferty has changed markedly, and in ways which would continue to resonate throughout the series.

  I’d moved to France in 1990 and was still living there when I wrote Mortal Causes. I visited Edinburgh several times a year for research purposes (and because there wasn’t a decent pub anywhere near my dilapidated farmhouse). Thanks to a couple of friends called Pauline and David, I was able to stay in the city during the Festival in 1993. On a previous trip that year, however, I’d decided to visit a street known as Mary King’s Close. I’d heard about the place from locals down the years, and knew that to gain entry you had to ask at the council headquarters on the High Street and hope that a tour would be forthcoming. This is because Mary King’s Close exists underground – the City Chambers has been built on top of it. These days, Mary King’s Close has been revivified as a successful tourist amenity, but back then the only way to get access was to ask the council and then wait patiently for news of a day and time when you’d be allowed in.

  The evening I went down there, there were about ten of us, led by a council official. I found the unlit maze of alleys and corridors both eerie and fascinating. One room in particular startled me, with its array of rusted iron hooks hanging from a whitewashed vaulted ceiling. Call me twisted, but I could visualise a body hanging there, and came out of Mary King’s Close knowing I’d found the opening to my novel. (I left early, actually, peeling away from the group so I could do some exploring of my own: it’s possible they think I’m still down there …)

  When Mortal Causes was published, I received an angry and anonymous letter saying I should be ashamed for lingering on the darker side of Protestantism, when everyone knew the real bad guys were the IRA. The writer ended his or her tirade with the heartfelt wish that I had died in one of the (many) IRA atrocities committed on mainland Britain. I felt that the author had missed the point, but that may indicate a failing on my part. Or maybe there are just people out there who are happiest wearing blinkers.

  It was quite an unusual letter, in that most of my other correspondents had a question which did not in the least refer to my use (or misuse) of sectarianism. What they wanted to know was: what’s the punchline of the joke? If you have yet to read the book, you’ll understand this question by the time you reach the end. And if you didn’t watch the TV adverts for Fairy Liquid in the 1970s, you’ll still be bamboozled by the punchline I’m about to give. My only defence is that it’s a real joke, told to me by a school and university friend called George. Here it is:

  For Hans that does dishes can feel soft as Gervase, with mild green hairy-lipped squid.

  Sorry.

  April 2005

  He could scream all he liked.

  They were underground, a place he didn’t know, a cool ancient place but lit by electricity. And he was being punished. The blood dripped off him onto the earth floor. He could hear sounds like distant voices, something beyond the breathing of the men who stood around him. Ghosts, he thought. Shrieks and laughter, the sounds of a good night out. He must be mistaken: he was having a very bad night in.

  His bare toes just touched the ground. His shoes had come off as they’d scraped him down the flights of steps. His socks had followed sometime after. He was in agony, but agony could be cured. Agony wasn’t eternal. He wondered if he would walk again. He remembered the barrel of the gun touching the back of his knee, sending waves of energy up and down his leg.

  His eyes were closed. If he opened them he knew he would see flecks of his own blood against the whitewashed wall, the wall which seemed to arch towards him. His toes were still moving against the ground, dabbling in warm blood. Whenever he tried to speak, he could feel his face cracking: dried salt tears and sweat.

  It was strange, the shape your life could take. You might be loved as a child but still go bad. You might have monsters for parents but grow up pure. His life had been neither one nor the other. Or rather, it had been both, for he’d been cherished and abandoned in equal measure. He was six, and shaking hands with a large man. There should have been more affection between them, but somehow there wasn’t. He was ten, and his mother was looking tired, bowed down, as she leaned over the sink washing dishes. Not knowing he was in the doorway, she paused to rest her hands on the rim of the sink. He was thirteen, and being initiated into his first gang. They took a pack of cards and skinned his knuckles with the edge of the pack. They took it in turns, all eleven of them. It hurt until he belonged.

  Now there was a shuffling sound. And the gun barrel was touching the back of his neck, sending out more waves. How could something be so cold? He took a deep breath, feeling the effort in his shoulder-blades. There couldn’t be more pain than he already felt. Heavy breathing close to his ear, and then the words again.

  ‘Nemo me impune lacessit.’

  He opened his eyes to the ghosts. They were in a smoke-filled tavern, seated around a long rectangular table, their goblets of wine and ale held high. A young woman was slouching from the lap of a one-legged man. The goblets had stems but no bases: you couldn’t put them back on the table until they’d been emptied. A toast was being raised. Those in fine dress rubbed s
houlders with beggars. There were no divisions, not in the tavern’s gloom. Then they looked towards him, and he tried to smile.

  He felt but did not hear the final explosion.

  1

  Probably the worst Saturday night of the year, which was why Inspector John Rebus had landed the shift. God was in his heaven, just making sure. There had been a derby match in the afternoon, Hibs versus Hearts at Easter Road. Fans making their way back to the west end and beyond had stopped in the city centre to drink to excess and take in some of the sights and sounds of the Festival.

  The Edinburgh Festival was the bane of Rebus’s life. He’d spent years confronting it, trying to avoid it, cursing it, being caught up in it. There were those who said that it was somehow atypical of Edinburgh, a city which for most of the year seemed sleepy, moderate, bridled. But that was nonsense; Edinburgh’s history was full of licence and riotous behaviour. But the Festival, especially the Festival Fringe, was different. Tourism was its lifeblood, and where there were tourists there was trouble. Pickpockets and housebreakers came to town as to a convention, while those football supporters who normally steered clear of the city centre suddenly became its passionate defenders, challenging the foreign invaders who could be found at tables outside short-lease cafes up and down the High Street.