When Rebus climbed the stairs to his flat, he found someone huddled in his doorway. It was Sammy. His hand on her shoulder woke her up, and she sprang to her feet.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been phoning you all day. I was worried about you.’ There were dried tearstains down both her cheeks. ‘I thought I’d wait for you here.’
He let her in. She looked around the living room and saw the duvet on the chair. ‘Is this where you sleep?’
‘Some nights,’ Rebus said, lighting the fire.
‘You can’t get much rest there.’
‘It’s all right. Do you want anything to drink?’ She shook her head.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
He puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled. ‘I think so, just about.’ He sank into his chair. ‘I’m a bit scared, that’s all. I’m going to do something tomorrow; it may not turn out the way I want.’
‘One reason I wanted to see you,’ she began. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind, that note … and what happened. I thought maybe if you could tell me the story, it would help.’
Rebus smiled. ‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story.’
His daughter had curled up in front of the fire, and held a cushion against her chest. ‘Tell me anyway,’ she said.
So Rebus told her, leaving nothing out – it was no less than she deserved. And afterwards, she fell asleep still clutching the cushion. Rebus placed the duvet over her, turned the fire down low, and sat down in his chair again, tears falling so softly that he knew he wouldn’t wake her.
He was wearing his best suit.
Flower had phoned first thing to say he wasn’t going. He didn’t explain, didn’t need to. Rebus didn’t need any more from him. Flower was thinking tactically: if it all went wrong – as it well might – Flower would be in the foxhole. He still had Rebus’s promise: chief inspector. If it all worked out.
Sammy had helped him with his grooming. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he didn’t look too bad considering, and the suit definitely helped.
‘Patience chose it for me,’ he told his daughter.
‘She has good taste,’ Sammy agreed.
He phoned first, stressing secrecy and urgency. There were problems, but finally he was given fifteen minutes in the mid-morning. Fifteen precious minutes. He had a bit of time to kill, so paced the flat, emptied the jar and put it back under the radiator, found his dental appointment card and tore it up.
Sammy gave him a good luck kiss as he left the flat.
‘We’re not so very different,’ she told him.
‘Like father and daughter,’ he said, returning the kiss.
He parked at the front of St Andrew’s House, and a guard came out and told him he couldn’t do that. Rebus showed his warrant card, but the guard was adamant, and directed him to the visitors’ parking.
‘Tell me,’ Rebus said, ‘if I was Sir Iain Hunter, would I still have to move the car?’
‘No,’ said the guard, ‘that would be different.’
And Rebus smiled, feeling a little of the tension leaving him. The man was right: that would be different.
He walked up the steps to the building. Close up, it didn’t look so much like a power station or the Reichstag. He was signed in at the desk and given a visitor’s pass. Security had to check the contents of his bag – just some papers and a cassette. Someone came down to escort him upstairs, where he was passed on to someone else who took him to a secretary’s office. On the way, in a short narrow corridor, his escort nearly bumped into Sir Iain Hunter. She apologised, but Sir Iain wasn’t paying her any attention. Rebus winked at him and smiled as he passed. He didn’t look back, but he could feel the eyes boring into him, right between the shoulder-blades.
This, he thought, is for Willie and Dixie, and for Tom Gillespie. And for everyone who doesn’t know the way the system works, the way it makes room for lying and cheating and stealing.
But he knew, above all, that he was doing it for himself.
There was no secretary in the secretary’s office, just Rory McAllister, looking very ill-at-ease but there, as he’d promised. Rebus found another wink to spare. Then the secretary came in and ushered them into an ante-chamber. She knocked on the door in front of them and opened it.
He’d joked with the security man about the contents of his bag – ‘I’d hardly be carrying a bomb in a Spar carrier-bag’ – but now he walked into the room with the booby-trap tucked under his arm.
‘Good of you to find time to see us, sir.’
He meant it, too. Dugald Niven, Secretary of State for Scotland, had a busy schedule. Rebus was sure it would go ahead as usual, no matter what.
© Rankin
ABOUT IAN RANKIN
Ian Rankin, OBE, writes a huge proportion of all the crime novels sold in the UK and has won numerous prizes, including in 2005 the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger. His work is available in over 30 languages, home sales of his books exceed one million copies a year, and several of the novels based around the character of Detective Inspector Rebus – his name meaning ‘enigmatic puzzle’ – have been successfully transferred to television.
Introduction to DI John Rebus
The first novels to feature Rebus, a flawed but resolutely humane detective, were not an overnight sensation, and success took time to arrive. But the wait became a period that allowed Ian Rankin to come of age as a writer, and to develop Rebus into a thoroughly believable, flesh-and-blood character straddling both industrial and post-industrial Scotland; a gritty yet perceptive man coping with his own demons. As Rebus struggled to keep his relationship with daughter Sammy alive following his divorce, and to cope with the imprisonment of brother Michael, while all the time trying to strike a blow for morality against a fearsome array of sinners (some justified and some not), readers began to respond in their droves. Fans admired Ian Rankin’s re-creation of a picture-postcard Edinburgh with a vicious tooth-and-claw underbelly just a heartbeat away, his believable but at the same time complex plots and, best of all, Rebus as a conflicted man trying always to solve the unsolvable, and to do the right thing.
As the series progressed, Ian Rankin refused to shy away from contentious issues such as corruption in high places, paedophilia and illegal immigration, combining his unique seal of tight plotting with a bleak realism, leavened with brooding humour.
In Rebus the reader is presented with a rich and constantly evolving portrait of a complex and troubled man, irrevocably tinged with the sense of being an outsider and, potentially, unable to escape being a ‘justified sinner’ himself. Rebus’s life is intricately related to his Scottish environs too, enriched by Ian Rankin’s attentive depiction of locations, and careful regard to Rebus’s favourite music, watering holes and books, as well as his often fraught relationships with colleagues and family. And so, alongside Rebus, the reader is taken on an often painful, sometimes hellish journey to the depths of human nature, always rooted in the minutiae of a very recognisable Scottish life.
The Oxford Bar – Rebus and many of the characters who appear in the novels are regulars of the Ox – as is Ian Rankin himself. The pub is now synonymous with the Rebus novels to the extent that one of the regular medical examiners called in to assist with investigations is named after the pub’s owner, John Gates.
Edinburgh plays an important role throughout the Rebus novels; a character itself, as brooding and as volatile as Rebus. The Edinburgh depicted in the novels is far short of the beautiful city that tourists in their thousands flood to visit. Hidden behind the historic buildings and elegant façades is the world that Rebus inhabits.
For general discussion
regarding the Rebus series
How does Ian Rankin reveal himself as an author interested in using fiction to ‘tell the truths the real world can’t’?
There are similarities between the lives of the author and his protagonist – for instance, both Ian Rankin and Rebus were born in Fife, lost their mothe
rs at an early age, have children with physical problems – so is it useful therefore to think of John Rebus and Ian Rankin as each other’s alter egos?
Could it be said that Rebus is trying to make sense in a general way of the world around him, or is he seeking answers to the ‘big questions’? And is it relevant therefore that he is a believer in God and comes from a Scottish Presbyterian background? Would Rebus see confession in both the religious and the criminal sense as similar in any way?
How does Ian Rankin explore notions of Edinburgh as a character in its own right? In what way does he contrast the glossy public and seedy private faces of the city with the public and private faces of those Rebus meets?
How does Ian Rankin use musical sources – the Elvis references in The Black Book, for instance, or the Rolling Stones allusions in Let It Bleed – as a means of character development through the series? What does Rebus’s own taste in music and books say about him as a person?
What do you think about Rebus as a character? If you have read several or more novels from the series, discuss how his character is developed.
If Rebus has a problem with notions of ‘pecking order’ and the idea of authority generally, what does it say about him that he chose careers in hierarchical institutions such as the Army and then the police?
How does Rebus relate to women: as lovers, flirtations, family members and colleagues?
Do the flashes of gallows humour as often shown by the pathologists but sometimes also in Rebus’s own comments increase or dissipate narrative tension? Does Rebus use black comedy for the same reasons the pathologists do?
Do Rebus’s personal vulnerabilities make him understanding of the frailties of others?
How does the characterisation of Rebus compare to other long-standing popular detectives from British authors such as Holmes, Poirot, Morse or Dalgleish? And are there more similarities or differences between them?
LET IT BLEED
Two teenagers in a Cortina lead the police a merry dance one snowy night, but Rebus is shocked when they fall or, more probably leap to their deaths from the Forth Road Bridge right before his eyes. And immediately he knows that this is going to make looking into the disappearance of the Lord Provost’s daughter, 17-year-old Kirstie Kennedy, impossible to keep quiet. Has she been kidnapped, or is Rebus right in thinking it’s all a hoax?
Rebus discovers he has a new boss and that she is former lover Gill Templer, but any thoughts of how this might pan out are pushed aside by the grisly suicide of an unknown constituent in front of Councillor Tom Gillespie, who had previously been most preoccupied with the thought of the upcoming council elections only seven weeks away. Rebus finds shady business ventures and evidence of backhanders, but soon he’s ordered to cool his heels elsewhere, or else his blundering about may end up costing much-needed Scottish jobs. Meanwhile, a rash action from daughter Sammy means she becomes implicated in the investigation.
Rebus’s response to this personal zugzwang? To rub shoulders with those in high places and stomp on their toes, while trying to ensure that his jousting with DI Flower goes his way. But when Rebus unravels a web of corruption that reaches to the highest level, he finds himself faced with a moral dilemma to which he just doesn’t feel equal.
Casting a cynical eye on Scottish Enterprise – or should this be Scottish enterprise, Rebus jokes – Ian Rankin offers his most revealing and intimate portrait yet of Rebus, allowing the reader a further insight into what makes him tick.
Discussion points for Let It Bleed
‘Rebus looked out of the window. It had started snowing. “Weather like this,” he said, “there’s never much trouble in Edinburgh, trust me.”’ To what extent should the reader trust Rebus?
The silent actions of the two youths who died suggest to Rebus ‘something fatalistic; something agreed between them’. What does Rebus feel in response? Could it be said that he’s so interested in these and other suicides generally because, aside from the very different motivations of murderers from suicides, he plays with his own well-being through the precarious way he looks after himself? Has he ever contemplated suicide himself?
Referring to the Rolling Stones, Rebus thinks, ‘What a shambles the band were, yet sometimes they could get it so right that it hurt.’ Could the same be said of Rebus’s police work?
Daughter Sammy is now back from London and living with Patience Aitken. How does this make Rebus behave? And how does Sammy’s involvement with SWEEP further affect her relationship with her father?
Rebus is ordered to take some time off. How does Ian Rankin detail his response? What happens to Rebus’s ‘Protestant work ethic’?
What lesson does Rebus learn at the hands of Rico Briggs? Why don’t Wee Shug’s actions in the surgery make sense to Rebus?
How lucky is Lucky?
Rebus feels that this case draws on connections and coincidences. Could the same be said for Ian Rankin’s intricate plotting in Let It Bleed?
‘That’s your problem, Inspector – you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike.’ Do these words from the Farmer strike a chord with Rebus, or does he brush them aside?
Ian Rankin says that in some ways Let It Bleed is a return to the Scotland of his second novel, Hide & Seek. Would you agree?
Does Let It Bleed, as Ian Rankin claims, ‘celebrate our national relationship with alcohol’? If so, what is the reader supposed to make of Rebus’s signs of alcoholism? Why does he believe he drinks? And what does Rebus actually feel about his excessive drinking?
Is much of what Rebus discovers really a crime, or could it be considered instead just a sharp way of doing business?
The US edition has a different ending that ties up some of the loose ends, although this alternative dénouement isn’t offered here. What are the loose ends left hanging? And do they worry the reader?
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook form in 2008 by Orion Books.
This updated ebook published in 2011 by Orion Books.
Copyright © John Rebus Limited 1995
Introduction copyright © John Rebus Limited 2005
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.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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 without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0765 1
Orion Books
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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Ian Rankin, Let It Bleed
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