Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus (16 page)

‘I’ve always been interested by the outsider, the person who doesn’t fit back in to [a conventional lifestyle]. You can’t really leave behind the forces. It doesn’t matter if you’re just an electrician in the RAF or you’re a trained killer in the SAS – when you leave and go back onto civvy street, you don’t just switch off. You’ve
still got a lot of that mentality, that training, a certain amount of baggage you carry around with you. It’s difficult to switch off. And the Army investigators in the book have flagged up Rebus as a potential time bomb because he screwed up big time when he was training for the SAS. And now he’s gone into a stressed job with violent confrontations from time to time, so they’re expecting him to
go off the deep end. He’s looking into the suicide of a guy and the investigators are looking into him! It’s wheels within wheels.

‘Once you start a story, you think it’s quite a small intimate story, but then you say, “Oh, this will be interesting”. When I started plotting the book, I had no idea the Army investigators would come into it until I started plotting it out. It was then that I thought
that the Army would send somebody along; it wouldn’t just be the Police Force. And bringing them in and creating Rebus’s mistrust of them added a whole new dimension to the story, which wasn’t there when it was dreamed up!

‘I think Rebus joined the Police Force because it allowed him to be a voyeur – it allowed him to look into other people’s lives rather than look into his own. So it’s a way
of him warding off his own problems… But somebody who is well balanced and spends their life doing the right thing isn’t very interesting to read about! We’re into villains; the good guys aren’t that interesting. Is there such a thing as evil? Or are people just misguided, or chemically imbalanced? What I try to do with a book is put the reader in the situation where they say, “Shit, would I do that?”
How far would you go to protect your kids? Would you commit murder? Would you go off the rails? How far could you go off the rails? I think the best crime fiction right now is asking very big questions about the world we live in. I think the literary novel is almost totally ignoring major issues; they’re backward-looking books, almost historical. They’re not looking at the here and now.’

There
are many serious issues in
A Question of Blood
. I was interested to learn where the story really started for Rankin. ‘The thing that kicked this book off was a woman who asked me at an event [
Resurrection Men
promotion], “Mr Rankin, why do you never write about private schools?” Now there are tons of private schools in Edinburgh and I didn’t have a Scooby what they were like, so I found out. And
that was the first nugget that started the book. And all through the year I collect little bits of news, put them in a big folder and come October I look through them and see what interests me and where I can take it. And between now and then, somebody could come up to me in a pub and tell me a good story and suddenly I’m away again. But that’s how it happened for
A Question of Blood.
’
⁶⁹

To me,
Siobhan Clarke and the story content seemed more important to Rankin this time round. Rebus is almost treated in a comic way with his damaged fingers. And what is important to us for this book, it seems again that Rebus was moving further away from his creator and Rankin’s energy was being poured more into Siobhan Clarke, the person he seems to – at this stage – empathise with more.

‘“Siobhan!”
he yelled. She raised a hand, waved it… And was picked off the ground by Rebus, his hug enveloping her

“Ow, ow, ow,” she said, causing him to ease off. “Bit bruised,” she explained, her eyes meeting his. He couldn’t help himself, planted his lips on hers. The kiss lingered…’

A Question of Blood

‘Rebus’s eyes narrowed. “You know something, don’t you?”

“Not me, Rebus… I’m happy just sitting here and growing old.”’

Fleshmarket Close

F
leshmarket Close
continued the thread of big issues started with
A Question of Blood.
Illegal immigrants, racial attacks, rape and two skeletons – a woman and an infant – found buried beneath a concrete cellar
in Fleshmarket Close!

It is quite apparent that Rankin wanted to tackle ever bigger themes in his novels. During my
A Question of Blood
interview, he called himself ‘a political writer’ and he probably adopted that style to an increasing extent from around
Let It Bleed
/
Black and Blue
, becoming stronger and stronger and peaking with
A Question of Blood
,
Fleshmarket Close
and
The Naming of the
Dead
. No longer did Rebus have anything to do with Rankin, other than a love of ‘spit and sawdust pubs’, something Rankin expanded upon in my
Fleshmarket Close
interview.

‘There’s one scene in the book where Rebus takes a girlfriend to The Oxford Bar, because she has insisted on seeing what it is like, because she thinks she can tell what he is like from what his local is like. And when they
get there, Siobhan is there and Rebus is mortified because Siobhan has taken over the bar. She is the one with all the people around her, she’s the one making people laugh and doing all the chatting, and that’s his job, it’s his bar. There’s a lot of tension in that scene, because he’s pitched up with a girlfriend and Siobhan doesn’t like the idea that he has a girlfriend and he doesn’t like the fact
that she is in his pub.’
⁷⁰

All of this happens not because Siobhan fancies Rebus, but because Rebus’s girlfriend is an outsider. The police go around in little gangs and suddenly a woman comes in who is not part of the group and that’s why Siobhan doesn’t like her.

Another hurdle Rebus – and ostensibly Rankin – had to face in
Fleshmarket Close
was leaving St Leonard’s. In real life, St Leonard’s
ceased to have a CID unit in 2003. Rankin found this out during his promotion round for
A Question of Blood
and told me at the time that he had received a text from a policeman of his acquaintance who told him about it, so instantly that had to be worked into the next novel. This allowed the prospect of retirement to raise its head but despite his trusty sidekick outplaying him in his local bar
and the many other jokes that hit Rebus since at least
Resurrection Men
(being sent to boot camp, having his fingers burned – things that provoked laughter and/or ridicule), he stuck tenaciously to the cases that came to his desk like a barnacle to the underside of an ancient barge. His tenaciousness, his single-minded determination throughout, smacks of that displayed by his creator: the single-mindedness
to become a writer in the first place, the tenaciousness, the never-say-die attitude, and the quality of the writing of the series – especially during the early days – when Rankin had to do other jobs to subsidise his living.

So although there was little to make comparisons of between Rebus and Rankin in the text, the overall mind-set was still there. Maybe that’s endemic in all writers and their
creations: fiction is dictated by the personality of the writer. Where an Oscar Wilde character will stop in the park and smell a rose on the way to work, a Rankin character will stop off at the local pub. Some of the genetic make-up will rub off. Taking this analogy further, it is strange how many siblings who haven’t seen each other since childhood grow up and follow similar career paths, or
make the same decisions with regard to relationships – it’s in their genetic make-up.

With
Fleshmarket Close
, Rebus is feeling his age somewhat. To a degree this is forced upon him as he enters the new police station at Gayfield Square:

‘I’m one of the lucky ones, Detective Sergeant Clarke was thinking to herself, by which she meant that she at least had been given a desk of her own. John
Rebus – senior in rank to her – hadn’t been so fortunate. Not that fortune, good or bad, had had anything to do with it. She knew Rebus saw it as a sign from on high: we’ve no place for you; time you thought of chucking it in.’

Rebus doesn’t let the buggers grind him down and tells Siobhan on the phone that he quite likes the new station really, especially when everyone has gone home, because
he can have any desk he wants! The workaholic in Rebus wins through, but the retirement issue comes up again through his taste in music. His new batch of CDs include Jackie Leven, Lou Reed and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, while Siobhan’s choice includes the sprightly Snow Patrol and Grant-Lee Philips!

Another interesting scene is where Rebus turns up at Cafferty’s house, a large detached house
on a dimly lit suburban street. Cafferty has an outside jacuzzi and although it is quite late, he is still lounging in it, listening to music, without a care in the world. Although Rebus doesn’t admit it, he must be jealous. He is roughly the same age as Cafferty, has worked hard on the right side of the law, even put this gangster away, but here he is with more creature comforts than he damn well
deserves and, just to rub it in, he tells Rebus: ‘I love it out here, this time of night. Hear the wind in the trees, Rebus? They’ve been here longer than any of us, those trees. Same with these houses. And they’ll still be here when we’ve gone.’ Cafferty is enjoying his life and Rebus is working his backside off. Cafferty rams this down Rebus’s throat: he notes that he gives generously to charity
and is happy, but Rebus – once retired – will be sitting in his flat with a scrap book of Cafferty cuttings.

While Rebus has his banter with Cafferty – and anyone else who comes down the pipe – the story continues. The discovery of the bodies at Fleshmarket Close is just another dark adventure from Edinburgh past; more important is the theme of racial tension. In fact it is the
vehemence
of the
hatred within the racial tension that is important, and allows me to make a comparison to
Knots and Crosses.
Where I had criticised Rankin for underplaying the bad language of the SAS flashback scenes, I can’t do the same for the racial tension scenes in
Fleshmarket Close
. They are powerful and full of tension and showcase the incredible journey as a writer Rankin had made throughout the Rebus
series.

Rankin’s success had allowed him to give up the day job and work full time on the novels. As the Rebus series came towards its conclusion – two books left to go at the time of
Fleshmarket Close
– Rankin told me that he had signed a two-book contract that would see him complete the series with one book a year. Yes, time was indeed running out for Detective Inspector John Rebus. Obscurity
was just around the corner, while Rankin had progressed to having his own jacuzzi – although not purchased through ill-gotten gains – and living in a large, loving house.

Could Rebus change his predictable outcome? Perhaps not. Perhaps the old adage was true: a policeman’s lot is not a happy one, and the poor Fifer who moved to Edinburgh for a better life retires lonely.

‘By the way, Cafferty
in
Fleshmarket Close
lives in my house… and last night I disturbed six intruders in the back garden. They were pissing about with Cafferty’s jacuzzi – but not pissing in it, thank God!’

Author interview 5 November 2004

‘I need to write a short story and a long essay before
I commence the next Rebus. It’ll have G8 as its backdrop, and that’s about as much as I know.’

Author interview, 11 August 2005

A
s the books are set in real time, real events will inevitably be included to add to the reality, such as the 7/7 London bombings, the 2012 Olympic bid and George W. Bush falling
off his bicycle whilst waving at police officers (Siobhan asking,‘Did we just do that?’).

The title of
The Naming of the Dead
refers to the ceremony that Clarke’s ageing left-wing parents attend, where a sampling of the names of the dead from the Iraq War is read out. But there are other lists too: the list of victims created by Rebus and Clarke as they try to unravel the crime and also to John
Rebus’ evocation of grief in naming the many of his own friends and family who have died in the course of his life (particularly his brother Michael, whose death overshadows the opening chapter).

So the ‘naming of the dead’ is a body count conveniently placed near the end of the series? No, nothing so bland, but it does provide a pause for thought on a much larger canvas: loss in its many guises
– loss of love, friendship, youth, anger, hope. The facades of the characters melt away. They let their barriers down, so the reader can see who’s really dead: those who fought in wars, in the Police Force, and our own families. For me personally, it is one of the very best novels in the Rebus series, because ‘the naming of the dead’ is there if you want it – and most of us do – but it is not
rammed down one’s throat. The writing is brilliantly understated. It normally is, but this one just hits all the right buttons for me. The main story is not hampered with over-sentimentality and Rebus is as off the wall as he always has been.

By the end of the book, Clarke realises that she has grown closer to understanding Rebus:

‘“It’s not enough, is it?” she repeated. “Just… symbolic… because
there’s nothing else you can do.” “What are you talking about?” he asked, with a smile. “The naming of the dead,” she told him, resting her head against his shoulder.’

Siobhan increasingly fears that she is becoming more like him and consequently doomed to a similar fate:

‘“Obsessed and sidelined, thrawn and distrusted. Rebus had lost family and friends. When he went out drinking, he did
so on his own, standing quietly at the bar, facing the row of optics.”’

Siobhan knows her time with Rebus is coming to an end. And Rebus? Rebus is becoming more inward-looking, perhaps worrying a little more about his inevitable retirement. But no, no, Siobhan is not like Rebus. She wouldn’t allow that to happen, but she may have picked up a few of his bad habits and how that will finally affect
her future career remains to be seen.