Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus (18 page)

Exit Music

‘Y
ou asked me
right at the beginning of this interview: how many more books are left? Well, the time to finish the series realistically is when I haven’t got anything new to find out about Rebus, when he’s got nothing new to show me, or he becomes tedious to write about and I’ve got nothing new to say about Edinburgh through his eyes.’

Rankin told me this during my
Fleshmarket Close
interview. At the time
I thought he was cranking himself up for a Rebus in retirement set of books but he kept assuring me that he didn’t know – never knew in fact – what the next book was going to be about until he started it. In August 2009, shortly after the proofs of
The Complaints
had gone off and the hardback was awaiting release, he told me that he still didn’t know what the next book would be. He was determined
to have a year off: he wasn’t going to write another graphic novel (because he didn’t enjoy the experience much), he still didn’t know if he was going to continue with Siobhan, but the new character – Inspector Malcolm Fox – intrigued him and as Rankin told me in July 2009, there were enough skeletons in Rebus’s closet to warrant investigation…

In truth, there were probably too many avenues open
to Rankin. He wanted to do a funny 18th-century Edinburgh novel (an extension of a radio play he had written). He had told me – or rather teased me – that he could dust off
Summer Rites
and make it fit for publication (his wife did think it one of his best novels)! He could even find the original manuscript of
Westwind
– so radically different from the published version – and release that for
the first time (although that didn’t cross his mind, it crossed mine!). Again, so many options. A real literary mid-life crisis, i.e. did he want to tie himself down for another 20 years with a new character? Or did he want to go back over old ground and continue Rebus through a series about Siobhan?

The subject was so broad we had to discuss it:

‘I had an irate woman come up to me at a signing in Edinburgh and she said, “Don’t you dare get rid of Rebus! Don’t you dare! I don’t like that Siobhan, so don’t you dare,” and for some people the characters are very real to them. It’s almost like they’d be losing a friend if he died. In fact the characters are probably more real to them than I am to them!’

‘He did indeed. He killed him off at the Reichenbach Falls and had to bring him back because the fans demanded it. So perhaps I’ll put Rebus over the Reichenbach Falls!’

‘Yeah, good move wasn’t it? Commercially it was good, but was it good for his soul?’

(It may
be a bit of literary banter but Rankin nearly gave Rebus a Reichenbach ending towards the end of
Strip Jack
. There is a scene where Rebus is running through a forest in the dead of night when suddenly the moon breaks through clouds and he notices that he is about to plummet off a plateau into a river. Then suddenly the murderer comes out of nowhere, hurtling towards him… well, there was the opportunity!)

‘I honestly don’t know what is going to happen next. When I had five books to go before Rebus retired, I didn’t know if I was going to kill him off in the very next one!’

In August 2003 Rankin told me that if Rebus retired when Rankin was 48, then he would have plenty of time to write other things that interested him. It was then that he told me about his historical
novel.

‘I’ve got plenty of time to write comedies, historical novels – I would love to write about 18th-century Edinburgh – it was a fascinating time, lots of men of genius running around, and people escaping the guillotine in France running around. A real hotchpotch – there was a judge who kept a pig as a pet, Sir Walter Scott running around, just mad, mad times in Edinburgh and that would be
interesting to do as a comedy. I’ve done something similar for radio with a private eye and it was good fun.’

Rankin could write an historical novel next. He is after all a frustrated historian anyway: books such as
Strip Jack
have characters by the name of Knox (as in John Knox) and his Rebus series started with homages to Robert Louis Stevenson, as did his new series.
The Complaints
brings
Stevenson’s classic
Kidnapped
to mind with character names such as Breck and Fox (Red Fox) and a location of Queensferry (OK, Rankin uses Queensferry a lot but the comparison is there if you want it) and Heriot Row is suggested very early on too.

‘I’ll keep writing. It’s how I make sense of the world. People think you’re in it for the money, but there gets to a stage where
you’ve got all the money you need. J K Rowling, she’ll keep writing and it’s not just audience pressure – it’s almost like a therapy. You’re giving shape to chaos, the chaos around you.’

‘I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a noble deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble but both more intelligent and nearer home. Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom we feed… there must be something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.’

Robert Louis Stevenson, January 1886

L
ike most writers, Ian
Rankin tantalises and teases his audience with little snippets of his own life within his famous character John Rebus, but Rebus isn’t Rankin. The author had no flirtation with National Service, although family and childhood friends would. He didn’t join the Police Force, although his imagination very early on took him into the insalubrious world of crime and social comment.

Rankin says that
he sympathises with the character Siobhan Clarke more than Rebus, stating that he was closer in age to that character so therefore had more in common. I think there is more to it than that. What I see in Rankin – in his impressionable High School and university years – is a respect for the older, wiser man. As Conan Doyle looked up to his Sherlock Holmes, Rankin looked up to his Rebus. But Rebus was
not one person as Dr Joseph Bell was the single prototype for Holmes. He was a pastiche, no, a puzzle – a rebus – made up, not of pictures of symbols, but of several English teachers and authors he knew in his formative years, perhaps those mentioned at the beginning of this book, who guided and shaped his literary talents. As Siobhan Clarke is tutored in her profession by Rebus, Rankin was tutored
in his trade by his mentors.

‘“Justice never sleeps, Siobhan. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Anything I can get you before I go?”

“A sense of having achieved something, maybe?”’

In the above quote from
A Question of Blood
, Siobhan is in hospital, not Rebus, but although she has made sacrifices and ended up hurt, she still needs the reassurances of her mentor. So does Rankin need those
reassurances too? Not in a physical sense, no. But he has adopted Edinburgh as his hometown nowadays and that comes with baggage: the statues, homes and myths of novelists past are the altar he preaches at. The history, mixed with the crime, intrigue and legend of Scotland’s capital city, is what thrills Rankin. He analyses the legends of Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare – all true-life villains –
and then wallows in the literary legends of yesteryear too. He will speak of Spark, Welsh, Stevenson, Scott, Hogg, Conan Doyle and Burns in his interviews, as he told me, ‘because I have a fascination for books. I was just fascinated by them, and writing.’
⁷²

It’s all good stuff but if that is the final conclusion to this book, then I think we’re missing the magic. Let us dig a little deeper into
the light of our findings.

Rebus is an exploration into Rankin’s alternative careers. The author is simply exorcising the ghosts of his subconscious close escape. Too deep? Let’s rationalise: the young lad from Cardenden who felt different, didn’t want the natural career path of the Armed Forces or Police Force, so he became the first person in his family ever to go to university. Not only did
he go there, he did well and worked hard on his fiction to make it his livelihood, and as his fame became greater, so did his desire to write about Rebus and exorcise any semblance of those beckoning careers. But then he begins to distance himself from Rebus, making him deliberately different from him.

To take it further, Rebus is the older, dissatisfied Rankin from a parallel world, the man
who didn’t escape.

Rebus will only see a never-ceasing wave of crime extending beyond his retirement. He comes to realise by
Exit Music
that he wasn’t as important to the system as he initially felt. All those self-sacrifices to his personal life meant little. New Detective Inspectors are made and he is destined to go the way of all flesh once retired: as insignificant but as beautifully tragic
as any other human being throughout history. Everybody has their flaws – even Bono – and everyone has to finally call it a day and let the young (and sometimes innovative) take over.

Rebus has kept Rankin focused on what has gone right in his life. Unlike Rebus, Rankin is still married, close to his children, thankful for his success, and shares his stories and perceptions with fans and journalists
alike, sometimes over a beer or coffee.

‘I suppose I’m a bit like Rebus,’ Rankin explained, ‘but not as street smart. However, I would have made a lousy cop – I get too involved in things, so the nature of the work would get to me.’
⁷³

Rankin appears egoless, but he cherishes his status and home life, because those are the true ingredients that success is based upon. His constant analysis of
Edinburgh is as cynical as Stevenson’s
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes
. Like Stevenson, Rankin moved south to England and then overseas, but unlike Stevenson, Rankin returned. Perhaps he saw more worth in his home country than his predecessor, or perhaps it’s just a sign of the times – the restless spirit returns home.

The growth of the welfare state has taken people out of the gutter but crime
– grime – homelessness and violence are still endemic everywhere and Scotland is no exception. Rankin has almost seen it as his quest to break through the veneer of the picturesque tartan tin to expose this underbelly, which lives and breathes outside the small protective bubble of tourist Edinburgh. The Rebus series took the sting out of
Trainspotting
but not the cynicism.

Many things are changing
in Scotland and Rankin is at the forefront of the literary change inspired by the cultural changes. He has a right to be xenophobic, or at least be deeply wrapped up and proud of his adopted city, because he has an important job to do: to raise the literary profile of the country and by doing so, expose and tackle its many social issues.

Scotland isn’t just a location for one’s holidays. It’s
a place with good and bad history (like everywhere else), with people funny and sad, good and bad, and above all, hearts and souls with important things to say.

Maybe, if the many branches of Waterstones in London had a section dedicated to Scottish literature, then part of Rankin’s inner quest would be fulfilled. I say this because he – quite rightly in my opinion – always searches to justify
every aspect of Scottish literature, but it’s got to be modern literature, not just the classics.
Trainspotting
should sit next to
Heart of Midlothian
,
The Wasp Factory
with
The Confessions of a Justified Sinner
,
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
with
Knots and Crosses
,
All That Really Matters
with
Burns Poetry
, and
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
with
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. And so it
goes on…

Ian Rankin acknowledges the Scots’ denial of all things good or bad in their lives because his worldwide fame dictates that he must (any denial on Rankin’s part would be churlish to say the least). And that’s another important point: Rebus is the underbelly of Rankin, the cynic that keeps him so well balanced.

‘Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and
clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life.’

The Hanging Garden

And it is the latter things in the above quote that Rankin has made a success of.

So finally, what part of the 20 Rebus books do we conclude makes Ian Rankin John Rebus? None. He was just an
exploration. An unplanned bit of this and bit of that. The answer is in the name: Rebus. A picture puzzle but still only a snap shot. Rebus drank a little too much and Rankin did himself for a while – no crime or revelation there. They both love rock music – namely The Rolling Stones – and perhaps just like their rock ‘n’ roll heroes, they can’t get no satisfaction.

So what
is
my final conclusion?
Simply that Rebus is a character we’ve all had a lot of fun with – including his creator – and has allowed us all to look at the real Edinburgh, the city that lies beneath the veneer. Rebus has been our tour guide on a Beatles-like magical mystery tour and, along with his creator Ian Rankin, we’ve all enjoyed the ride. But once Rankin knew he had fulfilled his dream of becoming an international
bestselling writer, he moved away from identifying with Rebus, or giving him some of the same memories as his creator, and that was because Ian Rankin was a different man. He wasn’t the working class boy from Cardenden any more – he was the author from Edinburgh.

‘[The police station is] a damn sight quieter since you-know-who retired.’

Doors Open

D
uring March 2001 I interviewed Ian Rankin to promote his novel
The Falls.
During this interview he spoke very openly about his childhood ambition to become a writer and how he dismissed the Armed Forces and Police Force as a career, which was the usual career path for a lad from Cardenden. Rankin was certainly on form during this interview, as he explained to me
how Rebus came out of this mix as his alter ego!