Ian Rankin Rebus: The Lost Years (Let it Bleed, Black & Blue, The Hanging Garden)
From the start of Rebus #7, Let It Bleed, we're back amid the upper echelons of the Scots socioeconomic ladder, though as usual there's a substantial section of plot line stemming from much further down.
That's not quite so obvious at the start, with Rebus and Frank Lauderdale in a high speed car chase that brings them onto the Forth Road Bridge and results in a car crash, serious injuries for Lauderdale and a double suicide when the two kids they're chasing throw themselves off the bridge, landing on a passing warship.
The pursuit attempted to catch the presumed kidnappers of Kirstie Kennedy, the Lord Provost's daughter and no one's impressed by the outcome. The girl's still missing, and it's impossible to be sure she was actually kidnapped. The only thing the investigation had to work from has ended up splattered across the deck of HMS Descant.
They've got enough to identify the bodies, but nothing to connect the two of them to the alleged offence.
With Lauderdale hospitalised and no guarantee he'll be back, there's a vacancy that could be filled by promoting Rebus or his arch-rival Alister Flower, but his superiors solve the issue by moving Rebus' ex-flame Gill Templer into the slot with things to prove and ambitions to make the appointment a permanent position.
Internal politics becomes a major issue when terminally ill ex-convict ‘Wee Shug’ McAnally suicides in front of local government councillor Tom Gillespie.
There's no obvious link between McAnally, convicted of raping the next door neighbour's daughter but somehow managing to get out of jail relatively unscathed, and the councillor, and another detective may well have shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
As far as Rebus is concerned, however, the act is a little too spectacular, so he starts sniffing around and ends up dealing with issues more important than he'd imagined.
In the process of questioning Councillor Gillespie, Rebus notes that he's busy shredding a large stack of documents and a check on the flat where the bridge jumpers lived reveals evidence linking an ambitious computer project and the Scottish Development Agency to issues that the Lord Provost and the highest levels of government would prefer were kept quiet.
The best way to do that would involve dissuading Rebus from continuing to dig around, and when political pressure on his superiors doesn't achieve the desired result (as far as Rebus is concerned he doesn't have much to lose, so the threat of losing his job isn’t going to work) he's bundled off on leave, presumably on the basis that once he's not clocking on at the office he'll be off on a bender that'll render him unable to pursue his inquiries any further.
Predictably, it doesn't work out that way, and Rebus plugs away with covert assistance from Brian Holmes and Siobhan Clarke, who've supposedly been diverted onto duties that'll keep them away from matters that the political and economic elite want left under the carpet.
There's an attempt at friendly persuasion with Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the country estate belonging to the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary and when that doesn't succeed a plea to the man's better nature painting a picture of hundreds of families affected by the fallout from the investigation, which threatens Scotland's ‘Silicon Glen’ home of an emerging computer industry and, by extension, the wider economy of Scotland.
Given Rebus' moralistic mien, you wouldn't like their chances, which aren't helped when shredded documents he'd liberated from Councillor Gillespie and entrusted to a colleague are destroyed. Gillespie ends up the victim of a stabbing in a dark alley outside his council constituency which isn’t going to be much help in the efforts to persuade Rebus to change his mind unless it’s taken as an indication of how far those involved are prepared to go.
Moving from ransoms and suicides through embezzlement, murder and conspiracy at the highest levels of government Rankin keeps Rebus moving briskly through the developing plot with some charming twists along the way, including the motivation behind the rape charge that sent ‘Wee Shug’ behind bars and the means by which he manages to spend a couple of years behind bars without the other prisoners learning that he's a sex offender.
The glimpses of a smug self satisfied elite have the reader (or at least this reader) firmly on Rebus' side and when Rebus tracks down the missing girl you can definitely see what she's running away from though you'd still question some of her choices en route.
With Let It Bleed as the first part of Rebus: The Lost Years there's a fair indication of what's in store as heavy consumption of alcohol, a fair bit of windmill-tilting and semi-dysfunctional personal relationships impinge on the pursuit of truth and justice, and those elements are there in spades again in Black and Blue, where the main plot line (if there is a main plot line in something like this) involves someone who bears a remarkable resemblance to the 1960s’ serial killer Bible John, though the reader learns soon enough that the actual Bible John is back on the ground looking to eliminate an unwanted imitator.
Those matters bubble along as one of a number of intertwined threads that has Rebus shuttling between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, dodging internal investigators and interacting with a now-sober former colleague who’s keen to get Rebus on the wagon as well.
Separating and enumerating those strands, there's the death of North Sea oil worker Allan Mitchison, who may have been tied to a chair in a derelict building but chose to end it by jumping through the window rather than submitting to the threatened torture of a stanley-knife wielding sadist.
At the same time attention from the media after the suicide in prison of convicted murder turned author Lenny Spaven has prompted a re-examination of his case.
With Rebus the sole surviving figure closely involved in the investigation they're camped on his doorstep looking for a statement. Rebus had worked on the Spaven case with his former boss, Lawson Geddes and they'd gained a conviction on the basis of the victim’s handbag in Spaven's lockup, though there's a strong possibility the evidence was planted by Geddes and Spaven had continued to protest his innocence through two volumes of his best-selling autobiography. Geddes, having retired to the Canary Islands has apparently committed suicide, depressed after the loss of his wife, though on-going guilt seems a strong possibility.
Rebus has his ex-colleague Brian Holmes going over his old notes from the Spaven case just in case while he investigates Mitchison’s death and continues to dig around the Bible John files. The oil worker's death seems to have all the trademarks of a Glasgow thug, and Rebus arranges a meeting with the city's Mr Big through his jailed arch-rival Big Ger Cafferty, learns that his suspect, Tony El, allegedly no longer works for Uncle Joe Toal, and manages to accuse Glasgow CI Ancram of taking bribes from Uncle Joe shortly before learning that Ancram has been appointed to head the internal inquiry into the Spaven case.
Given the fact that Rebus isn't too keen on answering questions about the Spaven case, and is convinced that Mitchison was killed because of something to do with his work environment, Rebus commutes between Edinburgh, Aberdeen and then the Shetland Slands and a North Sea oil rig, and in the process unknowingly encounters the real Johnny Bible, who's convinced the latter day Upstart is linked to the oil industry in Aberdeen.
Bible John has also been keeping tabs on anyone who's been researching him, figuring that may well lead him to the Upstart, which it duly does, but his chance encounter with Rebus is a problem since he's handed over a business card before he realised who he was.
And while Rebus is in Aberdeen rubbing up the local constabulary the wrong way Johnny Bible strikes again, in circumstances that bring Rebus into the frame for the killings since he was in the area at the time. Flights to the Shetlands and the platform where Mitchison’s worked reveals an environmentalist leaning, to the extent where he was actively involved in a Save Our Oceans charity concert.
Along the way, he manages to figure out the real identities of Bible John and the Upstart Johnny Bible, but it's not really possible to go into more detail without giving things away,is it?
And, also along the way, he picks up a health kick thanks to his old mate Jack Morton, set in place to monitor Rebus after his superiors decide not to suspend him from duty. There's a bit of home redecorating in Rebus' flat as well, with those elements artfully intertwined with the three plot lines, with an abundance of intrigue as things tie themselves together. It's probably the best of the Rebus stories up to this point, with Rankin really starting to hit his straps as he realises the possibilities in the cast of characters he's managed to come up with.
Sure, you can look at these as crime thrillers, or an ongoing series of police procedurals but from the start Rankin was using the genre to tackle issues he really wanted to write about rather than producing a series of genre exercises.
Looking back over the preceding couple of titles, we've got politicians, actors and the offspring of the well-heeled elite in Strip Jack, a nexus between those elements and organized crime in The Black Book, Scots nationalists and Irish paramilitaries intersecting with the crims in Mortal Causes, the offspring of the well-heeled and rorting government funds for economic development in Let It Bleed and, this time around, issues with North Sea oil and gas, ecology and what you do when drilling platforms are decommissioned.