Let It Bleed Read online

  Praise for Ian Rankin

  ‘As always, Rankin proves himself the master of his own milieu. He brings the dark underside of Edinburgh deliriously to life … Rankin’s skill lies mainly in the confident way he weaves the disparate threads into a cohesive whole’

  Daily Mail

  ‘His novels flow as smoothly as the flooded Forth, and come peppered with three-dimensional characters who actually react to and are changed by events around them … This is Rankin at his raw-edged, page-turning best … With Rankin, you can practically smell the fag-smoke and whisky fumes’

  Time Out

  ‘A first-rate thriller’

  Yorkshire Evening Post

  ‘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

  ‘Real life and fiction blur in this cynical, bleak tale. You’ll love every second of it’

  Daily Mirror

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

  The Times

  ‘Rebus is the kind of detective who enjoys a deep dark mystery with a good moral conundrum’

  New York Times

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

  Scotsman

  ‘First-rate plotting, dialogue and characterisations’

  Literary Review

  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

  Let It Bleed

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Praise for Ian Rankin

  About the Author

  By Ian Rankin

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  One: Bridges

  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

  Two: Shreds

  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

  Three: Zugzwang

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Reading Group Notes

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Grateful thanks to: Ronnie Mackintosh, for helping me with my inquiries; Councillor Devin Scobie, for steering me through local government; John Mathieson, Staff Training Officer, HM Prison Edinburgh, for his advice; The Scottish Office, especially the Publications Department, New St Andrew’s House; staff of Edinburgh City Chambers; staff of LEEL and Scottish Enterprise; staff of Edinburgh Central Lending Library and the Scottish National Library; Jon for the sofa; and the usual nod to everyone at the Oxford Bar.

  All inaccuracies are, of course, my own.

  The lines quoted by Mrs Kennedy are from The New Testament in Scots, translated by W. L. Lorimer (Penguin, 1985).

  Avarice, the spur of industry.

  (David Hume, ‘Of Civil Liberty’)

  The more sophisticated readers simply repeated the Italian proverb, ‘If it isn’t true, it’s to the point.’

  (Muriel Spark, The Public Image)

  Without women, life is a pub.

  (Martin Amis, Money)

  I first heard the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed when I was only ten or eleven years old. I didn’t like the music – at that age I was listening to Marc Bolan and not much else; it was my sister’s boyfriend who was the Stones fan. I did find the lyrics intriguing, however. Even though I barely understood the references, I could tell that there was something ‘dirty’ about them. They hinted at sex, debauchery, violence and drugs. There was even one song (‘Midnight Rambler’) which seemed to be about a real-life serial killer. I eventually had to buy the album for myself.

  By this time, however, I was in my twenties and had already written a couple of books. I was also working as a music journalist and hi-fi equipment reviewer in London. Let It Bleed, with its fantastic studio sound, soon became a constant on m
y Linn Sondek, and when the time came, in 1994, to write the seventh John Rebus novel, I felt emboldened to borrow the album’s title.

  Though the book is set in the depths of an Edinburgh winter, it was written at my house in south-west France, mostly in blazing summer heat. (I’d long since given up the hi-fi job, but still used the Linn record deck.) I’m not sure now if working on the book provided me with some sort of internal air-conditioning, but one thing I knew was that during any cold snap in Edinburgh you would want your central heating to be working. Hence the pun in the title – what Rebus really needs to bleed in the book is a radiator.

  For a little while in the 1990s, I became convinced that in order to make a decent amount of money I would have to transfer my skills to television. I had already made several attempts at scripts for the established cop show The Bill. At meetings with the production team, I learned that each Bill script had to contain three scenarios, and that none of the action could involve the cops’ private lives or show them off-duty. Somehow I couldn’t stick to this formula. At around the same time, television had shown some interest in Rebus. I attended more meetings, this time with the BBC, and tried writing a few scripts (both adaptations and original stories), but seemed to hit a series of walls. Eventually, I started pitching non-Rebus ideas at my TV contacts, but still to no avail. All of which, however, may go some way towards explaining the slam-bang action opening of Let It Bleed. It’s still something I’d love to see on the big screen, done Hollywood-style: a night-time car chase in a blizzard, with the Forth Road Bridge beckoning. Fantastic.

  Let It Bleed was a political novel, in that it used local and national politics for much of its plotting. By this time I had a real-life detective on my side, a fan of the books who had pointed out various procedural errors in previous stories. And with a few published novels under my belt, I was a known commodity in Edinburgh, so could approach complete strangers (council officials, for example) with a view to aiding my research. On my trips back to Edinburgh for Let It Bleed, I slept on a friend’s sofa, asked a lot of questions at the reception desks of various government agencies, and bought a few lunches and rounds of drinks. In some ways, the new book would be a return to the Edinburgh of my second novel, Hide Seek. Both stories are concerned with the changing face of Edinburgh, its attempts to embrace new employment opportunities (meaning new technologies) while still retaining a sense of identity. Structural change to Scotland’s capital was already under way: there was a plan for one of the breweries to open a theme park near the Palace of Holyrood. Eventually, the site would house Our Dynamic Earth and the Scottish Parliament instead, but at the time I was filled with a sense of glee: a theme park built on booze! Well, why not? Several city landmarks, including the Usher Hall, had been built with cash from brewing dynasties. The least we could do in the late twentieth century was celebrate our national relationship with alcohol: hence the use of a favourite Martin Amis line at the very start of the book: ‘Without women, life is a pub.’

  While there is an abundance of action in Let It Bleed, it is also, to my mind, rather a soulful book. We are allowed access to Rebus’s thoughts as never before. We learn why he likes music, and why he turns so frequently to the bottle. Memories from his childhood are revealed, adding to our sense of him as a three-dimensional human being. The book contains some of my favourite scenes and images (for example, Rebus’s visit to a dry-stane dyker, or his invitation to a Perthshire shooting party), and ends with a few loose ends left straggling. Those loose ends seemed realistic to me, but irritated my American publishers to such an extent that they asked me to consider contributing an extra final chapter for US publication. This I eventually did, though I didn’t feel it added anything to the sum of the book (which is why it’s not being reprinted here). Between times, some old friends return to the series (Rebus’s daughter Sammy; his ex-lover Gill; the reporter Mairie Henderson). This, plus the fact that Rebus is back in his old flat, having jettisoned the students he’d been renting the place to, gives the book a solid, comfortable feel. By now I was confident in my ability to write a decent crime story, and to recreate Rebus’s world … which probably explains why I would be at pains to make my next book so different, providing me with a fresh set of challenges.

  But for now, I was happy. I knew the inside of Rebus’s head. And he was happy, too, happy with his booze, cigarettes and music:

  ‘After a drink he liked to listen to the Stones. Women, relationships and colleagues had come and gone, but the Stones had always been there. He put the album on and poured himself a last drink. The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith’s tireless repertoire, kicked the album off. I don’t have much, Rebus thought, but I have this …’

  On the album Let It Bleed there’s a song about the Boston Strangler. Mick Jagger had written about a real-life crime. And what was good enough for Mick was surely good enough for me, as my next novel would demonstrate.

  May 2005

  One

  BRIDGES

  1

  A winter night, screaming out of Edinburgh.

  The front car was being chased by three others. In the chasing cars were police officers. Sleet was falling through the darkness, blowing horizontally. In the second of the police cars, Inspector John Rebus had his teeth bared. He gripped the doorhandle with one hand, and the front edge of his passenger seat with the other. In the driver’s seat, Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale seemed to have shed about thirty years. He was a youth again, enjoying the feeling of power which came from driving fast, driving a wee bit crazy. He sat well forward, peering through the windscreen.

  ‘We’ll get them!’ he yelled for the umpteenth time. ‘We’ll get the bastards!’

  Rebus couldn’t unlock his jaw long enough to form a reply. It wasn’t that Lauderdale was a bad driver … Well OK, it wasn’t just that Lauderdale was a bad driver; the weather bothered Rebus too. When they’d taken the second roundabout at the Barnton Interchange, Rebus had felt the car’s back wheels losing all grip on the slick road surface. The tyres weren’t brand new to start with; probably retreads at that. The air temperature was near zero, the sleet lying treacherously in wait. They were out of the city now, leaving traffic lights and junctions behind. A car chase here should be safer. But Rebus didn’t feel safe.

  In the car in front were two young, keen uniforms, with a DS and a DC in the car behind. Rebus looked into the wing mirror and saw headlights. He looked out of the passenger-side window and saw nothing. Christ, it was dark out there.

  Rebus thought: I don’t want to die in the dark.

  A telephone conversation the previous day.

  ‘Ten grand and we let your daughter go.’

  The father licked his lips. ‘Ten? That’s a lot of money.’

  ‘Not to you.’

  ‘Wait, let me think.’ The father looked at the pad, where John Rebus had just scribbled something. ‘It’s short notice,’ he told the caller. Rebus was listening on an earpiece, staring at the tape recorder’s silently turning spools.

  ‘That attitude could get her hurt.’

  ‘No … please.’

  ‘Then you’d better get the money.’

  ‘You’ll bring her with you?’

  ‘We’re not cheats, mister. She’ll be there if the money is.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We’ll phone tonight with details. One last thing, no police, understand? Any sign, even a distant siren, and next time you see her’ll be the Co-op funeral parlour.’

  ‘We’ll get them!’ Lauderdale shouted.

  Rebus felt his jaw unlock. ‘All right, we’ll get them. So why not ease off?’

  Lauderdale glanced at him and grinned. ‘Lost your bottle, John?’ Then he jerked the wheel and pulled out to overtake a transit van.

  The phone caller had sounded young, working-class. In his mouth, ‘understand’ had become unnerstaun. He’d spoken of the Co-op. He’d used the word ‘mister’. Young working class, maybe a bit naïve. Rebus just wasn’t sure
.

  ‘Fife Police are waiting the other side of the bridge, right?’ he persisted, shouting above the engine whine. Lauderdale had the poor gearbox pounding away in third.

  ‘Right,’ Lauderdale agreed.

  ‘Then what’s our hurry?’

  ‘Don’t be soft, John. They’re ours.’

  Rebus knew what his superior meant. If the front car made it over the Forth Road Bridge, then it was in Fife, and Fife Constabulary were waiting, a roadblock erected. It would be a Fife collar.

  Lauderdale was on the radio, talking to the car ahead. His one-handed driving was only a little worse than his two-handed, shaking Rebus from side to side. Lauderdale put the radio down again.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he said. ‘Will they come off at Queensferry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Well, those two L-plates in front think we’ll catch them at the toll booths if they decide to go all the way.’

  They probably would go all the way, too, driven by fear and adrenaline. The combination tended to put blinkers on your survival mechanism. You ran straight ahead, without thought or deviation. All you knew was flight.

  ‘You could at least put on your seatbelt,’ Rebus said.

  ‘I could,’ said Lauderdale. But he didn’t. Boy racers didn’t wear seatbelts.

  The final slip-road was coming up. The front car sped past it. There was nowhere to go now but the bridge. The roadlighting high overhead grew thick again as they neared the toll booths. Rebus had a crazy notion of the fugitives stopping to pay their toll, just like everyone else. Winding down the window, fumbling for the coins …