Exit Music (2007)
Authors: Ian Rankin
| Exit Music (2007) | |
| Rebus [17] | |
| Ian Rankin | |
| Orion Audiobooks (2007) | |
| Rating: | ★★★★☆ |
| Tags: | Fiction, Mystery Fictionttt Mysteryttt |
From Publishers Weekly
Insp. John Rebus has just 10 days to solve the apparently motiveless murder of Alexander Todorov, an expatriate Russian poet, before he reaches 60 and mandatory retirement in Edgar-winner Rankin's rewarding 17th novel to feature the Edinburgh detective (after
The Naming of the Dead
). When the dogged Rebus and Det. Sgt. Siobhan Clarke look into the crime, they find an array of baffling conspiracies involving Russian businessmen, Scottish bankers and local politicians pushing for an independent Scotland. A second murder, of a man who'd taped one of Todorov's poetry readings, ensures the case gets extra resources, and Rebus's own interest is whetted by the possible involvement of Edinburgh crime boss Big Ger Cafferty. Clever, insightful prose more than compensates for the byzantine plot. There's an appropriately wistful tone to this final entry in the series. Fans will miss Rebus and wonder what on earth he'll do in retirement.
(Sept.)
From Bookmarks Magazine
This nostalgic farewell for the aging, rebellious, and popular Rebus raised an all-consuming question for critics: is this really the end to the beloved detective, or will he return? The cliffhanger ending, as well as the general belief that Rankin would never give up his adored character, suggests that Rebus could make a comeback. “_Exit Music _does leave the door open for more Rebus stories as well as a series featuring Siobhan, who has become more of a presence in each novel,” notes the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
. Either way, the novel, framed by the fight for an independent Scotland and another labyrinthine case, is a fitting end to Rebus’s career. A few clichés are unavoidable for this prolific author, and a slow start bothered some critics. Still, most agree with the
New Yorker
: “Rankin’s work is crime fiction at its most consuming, cerebral best.”
Biography From Wikipedia - Ian Rankin
Born: 28 April 1960 (age 51), Fife, Scotland
Pen name: Jack Harvey
Nationality: British
Period: 1984–present
Genres: Crime fiction
Notable work(s): Inspector Rebus, Dark Entries
Ian Rankin, OBE, DL (born 28 April 1960 in Cardenden, Fife), is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.
He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he moved to Tottenham, London for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. He was a Literature tutor at the University of Edinburgh, where he retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
The 'standard biography' of Rankin, a Scot, states that before becoming a full-time novelist he worked as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk musician.
He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Miranda and their two sons Jack and Kit.
Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark (the subject of Rankin's uncompleted Ph.D. thesis). He was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. Scottish novelist Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, reassured him by saying, who would want to be a dry academic writer when "they could be John Buchan?"
Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels are set mainly in Edinburgh. They are considered major contributions to the Tartan Noir genre. Ten of the novels were adapted as a television series on ITV, starring John Hannah as Rebus in Series 1 & 2, with Ken Stott taking on the role for Series 3-5.
In 2009, Rankin donated the short story "Fieldwork" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Rankin's story was published in the Earth collection.
Ian Rankin signing copies of his debut graphic novel Dark Entries in the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet International store.
In 2009 Rankin stated on Radio Five Live that he would start work on a five- or six-issue run on the comic book Hellblazer, although he may turn the story into a stand-alone graphic novel instead. The Vertigo Comics panel at WonderCon 2009 confirmed that the story would be published as a graphic novel called Dark Entries, the second release from the company's new Vertigo Crime imprint.
In 2007, Rankin was criticised for saying, "the people writing the most graphic violence today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting".
Copyright © 2007 by John Rebus Limited
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.
First eBook Edition: September 2008
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Extract from “Hotel Room, 12th Floor” taken from
The Poems of Norman MacCaig
, Third edition © 2005 by Birlinn Ltd. Reproduced by kind permission of Birlinn Ltd. on behalf of the Estate of Norman MacCaig. Extract from
Be Near Me
© 2007 by Andrew O’Hagan. Reproduced by kind permission of Harcourt.
ISBN: 978-0-316-03982-6
Contents
DAY ONE: Wednesday 15 November 2006
DAY TWO: Thursday 16 November 2006
DAY THREE: Friday 17 November 2006
DAY FOUR : Monday 20 November 2006
DAY FIVE: Tuesday 21 November 2006
DAY SIX: Wednesday 22 November 2006
DAY SEVEN: Thursday 23 November 2006
DAY EIGHT: Friday 24 November 2006
The Inspector Rebus Series
Knots & Crosses
Hide & Seek
Tooth & Nail
A Good Hanging and Other Stories
Strip Jack
The Black Book
Mortal Causes
Let It Bleed
Black & Blue
The Hanging Garden
Death Is Not the End (A Novella)
Dead Souls
Set in Darkness
The Falls
Resurrection Men
A Question of Blood
Fleshmarket Alley
The Naming of the Dead
Other Novels
Witch Hunt
Blood Hunt
Bleeding Hearts
Watchman
The frontier is never
somewhere else. And no stockades
can keep the midnight out.
Norman MacCaig, “Hotel Room, 12th Floor”
My father always said a policeman’s knock is unmistakable,
and so it is, the rap on the paintwork a very public
command, feasting on the hearer’s capacity for guilt.
Andrew O’Hagan,
Be Near Me
Wednesday 15 November 2006
T
he girl screamed once, only the once, but it was enough. By the time the middle-aged couple arrived at the foot of Raeburn Wynd, she was kneeling on the ground, hands over her face, shoulders heaving with sobs. The man studied the corpse for a moment, then tried shielding his wife’s eyes, but she had already turned away. He took out his phone and called the emergency number. It was ten minutes before the police car arrived, during which time the girl tried to leave, the man explaining calmly that she should wait, his hand rubbing her shoulder. His wife was seated curbside, despite the nighttime chill. November in Edinburgh, not quite cold enough for a frost but heading that way. King’s Stables Road wasn’t the busiest of thoroughfares. A No Entry sign prevented vehicles using it as a route from the Grassmarket to Lothian Road. At night it could be a lonely spot, with not much more than a multistory car park on one side, Castle Rock and a cemetery on the other. The street lighting seemed underpowered, and pedestrians kept their wits about them. The middle-aged couple had been to a carol service in St. Cuthbert’s Church, helping raise money for the city’s children’s hospital. The woman had bought a holly wreath, which now lay on the ground to the left of the corpse. Her husband couldn’t help thinking: a minute either way and we might not have heard, might be heading home in the car, the wreath on the back seat and Classic FM on the radio.
“I want to go home,” the girl was complaining between sobs. She was standing, knees grazed. Her skirt was too short, the man felt, and her denim jacket was unlikely to keep out the cold. She looked familiar to him. He had considered—briefly considered—lending her his coat. Instead, he reminded her again that she needed to stay put. Suddenly their faces turned blue. The police car was arriving, lights flashing.
“Here they come,” the man said, placing his arm around her shoulders as if to comfort her, removing it again when he saw his wife was watching.
Even after the patrol car drew to a halt, its roof light stayed on, engine left running. Two uniformed officers emerged, not bothering with their caps. One of them carried a large black torch. Raeburn Wynd was steep and led to a series of mews conversions above garages that would once have housed the monarch’s carriages and horses. It would be treacherous when icy.
“Maybe he slipped and banged his head,” the man offered. “Or he was sleeping rough, or had had a few too many . . .”
“Thank you, sir,” one of the officers said, meaning the opposite. His colleague had switched the torch on, and the middle-aged man realized that there was blood on the ground, blood on the slumped body’s hands and clothes. The face and hair were clotted with it.
“Or someone smashed him to a pulp,” the first officer commented. “Unless, of course, he slipped repeatedly against a cheese grater.”
His young colleague winced. He’d been crouching down, the better to shine light onto the body, but he rose to his feet again. “Whose is the wreath?” he asked.
“My wife’s,” the man stated, wondering afterwards why he hadn’t just said “mine.”
“Jack Palance,” Detective Inspector John Rebus said.
“I keep telling you, I don’t know him.”
“Big film star.”
“So name me a film.”
“His obituary’s in the
Scotsman
.”
“Then you should be clued up enough to tell me what I’ve seen him in.” Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke got out of the car and slammed shut the door.
“He was the bad guy in a lot of Westerns,” Rebus persisted.
Clarke showed her warrant card to one of the uniforms and took a proffered torch from the younger of the two. The Scene of Crime Unit was on its way. Spectators had started gathering, drawn to the scene by the patrol car’s blue beacon. Rebus and Clarke had been working late at Gayfield Square police station, hammering out a theory—but no prime suspect—in an unsolved investigation. Both had been glad of the break provided by the summons. They’d arrived in Rebus’s wheezing Saab 900, from the boot of which he was now fetching polythene overshoes and latex gloves. It took him half a dozen noisy attempts to slam shut the lid.
“Need to trade it in,” he muttered.
“Who’d want it?” Clarke asked, pulling on the gloves. Then, when he didn’t answer: “Were those hiking boots I glimpsed?”
“As old as the car,” Rebus stated, heading towards the corpse. The two detectives fell silent, studying the figure and its surroundings.
“Someone’s done a job on him,” Rebus eventually commented. He turned towards the younger constable. “What’s your name, son?”
“Goodyear, sir . . . Todd Goodyear.”
“Todd?”
“Mum’s maiden name, sir,” Goodyear explained.
“Ever heard of Jack Palance, Todd?”
“Wasn’t he in
Shane
?”
“You’re wasted in uniform.”
Goodyear’s colleague chuckled. “Give young Todd here half a chance, and it’s
you
he’ll be grilling rather than any suspects.”
“How’s that?” Clarke asked.
The constable—at least fifteen years older than his partner and maybe three times the girth—nodded towards Goodyear. “I’m not good enough for Todd,” he explained. “Got his eyes set on CID.”
Goodyear ignored this. He had his notebook in his hand. “Want us to start taking details?” he asked. Rebus looked towards the pavement. A middle-aged couple were seated curbside, holding hands. Then there was the teenage girl, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered against a wall. Beyond her the crowd of onlookers was starting to shuffle forward again, warnings forgotten.
“Best thing you can do,” Rebus offered, “is hold that lot back till we can secure the scene. Doctor should be here in a couple of minutes.”
“He’s not got a pulse,” Goodyear said. “I checked.”
Rebus glowered at him.
“Told you they wouldn’t like it,” Goodyear’s partner said with another chuckle.
“Contaminates the locus,” Clarke told the young constable, showing him her gloved hands and overshoes. He looked embarrassed.
“Doctor still has to confirm death,” Rebus added. “Meantime, you can start persuading that rabble to get themselves home.”
“Glorified bouncers, that’s us,” the older cop told his partner as they moved off.
“Which would make this the VIP enclosure,” Clarke said quietly. She was checking the corpse again. “He’s well enough dressed, probably not homeless.”
“Want to look for ID?”
She took a couple of steps forward and crouched beside the body, pressing a gloved hand against the man’s trouser and jacket pockets. “Can’t feel anything,” she said.
“Not even sympathy?”
She glanced up at Rebus. “Does the suit of armor come off when you collect the gold watch?”
Rebus managed to mouth the word “ouch.” Reason they’d been staying late at the office so often—Rebus only ten days from retirement, wanting loose ends tied.
“A mugging gone wrong?” Clarke suggested into the silence.
Rebus just shrugged, meaning he didn’t think so. He asked Clarke to shine the torch down the body: black leather jacket, an open-necked patterned shirt that had probably started out blue, faded denims held up with a black leather belt, black suede shoes. As far as Rebus could tell, the man’s face was lined, the hair graying. Early fifties? Around five feet nine or ten. No jewelry, no wristwatch. Bringing Rebus’s personal body count to . . . what? Maybe thirty or forty over the course of his three-decades-plus on the force. Another ten days, and this poor wretch would have been somebody else’s problem—and still could be. For weeks now he’d been feeling Siobhan Clarke’s tension: part of her, maybe the best part of her, wanted Rebus gone. It was the only way she could start to prove herself. Her eyes were on him now, as if she knew what he was thinking. He offered a sly smile.
“I’m not dead yet,” he said, as the Scene of Crime van slowed to a halt on the roadway.
The duty doctor had duly declared death. The SOCOs had taped off Raeburn Wynd at top and bottom. Lights had been erected, a sheet pinned up so that onlookers no longer had a view of anything except the shadows on the other side. Rebus and Clarke were suited up in the same white hooded disposable overalls as the SOCOs. A camera team had just arrived, and the mortuary van was standing by. Beakers of tea had materialized from somewhere, wisps of steam rising from them. In the distance: sirens headed elsewhere; drunken yelps from nearby Princes Street; maybe even the hooting of an owl from the churchyard. Preliminary statements had been taken from the teenage girl and the middle-aged couple, and Rebus was flicking through these, flanked by the two constables, the elder of whom, he now knew, was called Bill Dyson.
“Rumor is,” Dyson said, “you’ve finally got your jotters.”
“Weekend after next,” Rebus confirmed. “Can’t be too far away yourself.”
“Seven months and counting. Nice wee taxi job lined up for afterwards. Don’t know how Todd will cope without me.”
“I’ll try to maintain my composure,” Goodyear drawled.
“That’s one thing you’re good at,” Dyson was saying, as Rebus went back to his reading. The girl who had found the body was called Nancy Sievewright. She was seventeen and on her way home from a friend’s house. The friend lived in Great Stuart Street and Nancy in Blair Street, just off the Cowgate. She had already left school and was unemployed, though hoping to get into college some day to study as a dental assistant. Goodyear had done the interview, and Rebus was impressed: neat handwriting and plenty of detail. Turning to Dyson’s notebook was like turning from hope to despair—a mess of hastily scrawled hieroglyphs. Those seven months couldn’t pass quickly enough for PC Bill Dyson. Through guesswork, Rebus reckoned the middle-aged couple were Roger and Elizabeth Anderson and that they lived in Frogston Road West, on the southern edge of the city. There was a phone number, but no hint of their ages or occupations. Instead, Rebus could make out the words “just passing” and “called it in.” He handed the notebooks back without comment. All three would be interviewed again later. Rebus checked his watch, wondering when the pathologist would arrive. Not much else to be done in the meantime.
“Tell them they can go.”
“Girl’s still a bit shaky,” Goodyear said. “Reckon we should drop her home?”
Rebus nodded and turned his attention to Dyson. “How about the other two?”
“Their car’s parked in the Grassmarket.”
“Spot of late-night shopping?”
Dyson shook his head. “Carol concert at St. Cuthbert’s.”
“A conversation we could have saved ourselves,” Rebus told him, “if you’d bothered to write any of it down.” As his eyes drilled into the constable’s, he could sense the question Dyson wanted to ask:
What would be the bloody point of that?
Luckily, the old-timer knew better than to utter anything of the kind out loud . . . not until the other old-timer was well out of earshot.
Rebus caught up with Clarke at the Scene of Crime van, where she was quizzing the team leader. His name was Thomas Banks—“Tam” to those who knew him. He gave a nod of greeting and asked if his name was on the guest list for Rebus’s retirement do.
“How come you’re all so keen to witness my demise?”
“Don’t be surprised,” Tam said, “if the suits from HQ come with stakes and mallets, just to be on the safe side.” He winked towards Clarke. “Siobhan here tells me you’ve wangled it so your last shift’s a Saturday. Is that so we’re all at home watching telly while you take the long walk?”
“Just the way it fell, Tam,” Rebus assured him. “Any tea going?”
“You turned your nose up at it,” Tam chided him.
“That was half an hour ago.”
“No second chances here, John.”
“I was asking,” Clarke interrupted, “if Tam’s team had anything for us.”
“I’m guessing he said to be patient.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Tam confirmed, checking a text message on his mobile phone. “Stabbing outside a pub at Haymarket,” he informed them.
“Busy night,” Clarke offered. Then, to Rebus: “Doctor reckons our man was bludgeoned and maybe even kicked to death. He’s betting blunt force trauma at the autopsy.”
“He’s not going to get any odds from me,” Rebus told her.
“Nor me,” Tam added, rubbing a finger across the bridge of his nose. He turned to Rebus: “Know who that young copper was?” He nodded towards the patrol car. Todd Goodyear was helping Nancy Sievewright into the back seat, Bill Dyson drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.
“Never seen him before,” Rebus admitted.
“You maybe knew his granddad, though . . .” Tam left it at that, wanting Rebus to do the work. It didn’t take long.
“Not Harry Goodyear?”
Tam was nodding in confirmation, leaving Clarke to ask who Harry Goodyear was.
“Ancient history,” Rebus informed her.
Which, typically, left her none the wiser.