Rebus: Long Shadows
Ian Rankin
Praise for Long Shadows
Ian Rankin
The International Number One Bestseller
‘Unsurpassed among living British crime writers’
The Times
‘Worthy of Agatha Christie at her best’
Scotsman
‘Britain’s best crime novelist’
Express
‘Rankin is a master storyteller’
Guardian
‘One of Britain’s leading novelists in any genre’
New Statesman
‘Britain’s finest detective novelist’
Scotland on Sunday
Rona Munro
Giles Cooper Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Evening Standard Award, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award
‘A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships’
Observer
‘Rona Munro’s triptych of historical dramas both informs and transcends Scotland’s independence debate’
Financial Times on The James Plays
‘Powerfully involving’
Independent on Iron
‘Unnervingly good British drama’
New York Times on Iron
‘Rona Munro’s thrilling trilogy could be the finest history plays ever penned’
Telegraph on The James Plays
THE REHEARSAL SCRIPT
Contents
Praise for Long Shadows
Title Page
Introduction
Characters
Act One
The stairwell at Arden Street
Rebus’s Arden Street flat/dream
Rebus’s Arden Street flat
Stairwell Jackdaw pub
Granton high rise
A pub
Stairwell, Arden Street
Rebus’s Arden Street flat
Stairwell, Arden Street
Act Two
Rebus’s Arden Street flat/dream
Rebus’s Arden Street flat/dawn
Forensic lab, Fettes Police H.Q.
Stairwell Police H.Q.
Rebus’s Arden Street flat
Quartermile penthouse, stairwell/flat
Stairwell, Quartermile
Outside court
Stairwell, Police H.Q.
Stairwell, Arden Street
Ian Rankin and Rona Munro In Conversation
Roxana Silbert on Bringing Rebus to the Stage
Set Design Photos by Ti Green
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Also by Ian Rankin
About the Authors
Copyright
REBUS:
LONG SHADOWS
THE REHEARSAL SCRIPT
INTRODUCTION
It was theatre producer Daniel Schumann who first mooted to me the idea of putting John Rebus on the stage. I’d be lying, however, if I said the notion hadn’t crossed my mind from time to time. I’ve never been in the same room with Rebus, you see, never watched him in three dimensions as he wrestles with a problem or wrangles with his (considerable) demons. I had co-written one stage play in the recent past, Dark Road, working alongside the Lyceum Theatre’s artistic director Mark Thomson, who also happens to be a hugely talented playwright. That play was a psychodrama set in contemporary Edinburgh and featuring a senior police officer at the end of her career, looking back on the one case from her early years that had never been resolved to her satisfaction while also coping with her demanding teenage daughter.
The challenge there had been, in part, to satisfy audiences that they weren’t just watching Rebus with a sex change. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I was anxious not to pen a drama about a character who had been such a large part of my writing life. I wanted to break from Rebus, to write an original story rather than an adaptation.
I’m still not one for adaptation.
Early on, as Daniel and I discussed the project, we decided that this would hopefully be an all-new story, set at a slight remove from the universe of the Rebus novels. Rona Munro’s name cropped up very early in our conversations as someone who might work in partnership to bring Rebus to the stage, and to life. I’d been a fan of Rona’s writing for many years, not least her vast undertaking for the National Theatre of Scotland, The James Plays. I was really keen for her ‘take’ on Rebus. At our first meeting, she stressed that the story ahead of us would have to be one that could only be told by means of a stage play. We wanted something that would satisfy fans of the books, but also work on its own merits for theatregoers not acquainted with the characters.
We met for long brain-storming sessions in my living-room, fuelled by hot drinks and the occasional lunch at a nearby bistro. We talked about Rebus, about what sort of man he was and how he had become that man. We analysed Cafferty and Cafferty’s relationship with Rebus. And Rebus’s relationship with Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke. We also touched on the city which surrounded all three, Edinburgh, a city with its own secrets and foibles and ghosts. Rebus, of course, has always been a haunted man – haunted by victims, by unsolved cases, by his inability to deal satisfactorily with his nemesis Cafferty. But haunted, too, by his own self-perceived failings as husband, father and friend.
The play we were feeling our way towards – Long Shadows – would be a character study, a whodunit, and a piece of choreography in which the central trio dance around each other as allegiances shift and hidden truths eventually reach the spotlight.
Talking, of course, is one thing, creating quite another.
Having workshopped ideas and even storyboarded the arc, much of the hard work then fell to Rona. She knows only too well what works and doesn’t work on a stage. As a novelist, I can shovel into a book all the pages, scene-changes and characters I need. This is impossible to replicate on the stage. Rona had to take my story and make it work within a very tight framework. Drafts began to bounce between us, as difficulties emerged and were dealt with, problems and niggles ironed out. But the real heart of the play didn’t change much. There stood Rebus and Cafferty, two men of advanced years whose world is no longer what it was. Faced by change and decay in all they see, their empathy is matched only by their antipathy. They understand one another – might even actually respect certain aspects of one another – and yet each would gladly take the other down. Indeed, no other ending would seem satisfactory.
This was another decision that we took early on: the play would feature the ‘older’ Rebus, the one readers of today have got to know. I began the series when I was twenty-five and Rebus was forty. He is now in his mid-sixties, retired, and yet unable to slough off the skin of the detective he once and for so long was. He has an itch, too, represented by Cafferty – the one who got away. Cafferty stands for every villain Rebus has encountered, every act of unfeeling cruelty fuelled by greed and anger. While Rebus seethes quietly in his tenement flat, music and alcohol keeping him company, Cafferty keeps watch over the city from his penthouse eyrie, fearful that all he has gained can still be snatched from him if he makes one single mistake.
All of this will be familiar to readers of the novels, but incidents and characters occur in Long Shadows which won’t be found in the books. We have played with elements of Rebus’s history – and Cafferty’s – to make for an engrossing two hours of theatre, even if it means stepping out of the universe of the books into a parallel world that is almost identical. I agreed wholeheartedly with Rona that the play had to work within its own system and on its own merits. Over the course of our collaboration she dug deep into the characters’ psyches and motivations, making me consider difficult questions and bringing me to a more rounded understanding of the interior lives of Rebus, Cafferty and Siobhan Clarke. I have said in the past that I k
eep writing about Rebus because I haven’t got to the heart of what makes him tick. Working with Rona took me closer than ever before.
One thing I know from my previous play, however, is that the writing is only one part of the whole. As I pen these words, rehearsals have yet to start. The main casting has been done, but minor roles remain to be filled. I have not seen the stage design or the costumes, nor heard the actors speak the lines. In rehearsal, the lines begin to lift from the page and take flight, becoming closer to music than to ink. They flit around the actors until the actors begin to fade and become the characters themselves. It’s a magical process. And when rehearsals are done and the action shifts to the stage, scenery completed, lighting devised, music ready . . . Well, that’s when Long Shadows truly becomes a thing in itself, independent of the authors who were there at its conception.
Rebus has cast a long shadow in the thirty years since he sprang to life between the pages of that first adventure, Knots and Crosses. He seems, however, more fully alive to me with each passing year and in each new episode of his career. He is complex, stubborn, intelligent, driven, and hard-edged. And in Long Shadows he needs to be at his sharpest, because forces are massing against him and both past and present are about to deal him blows heavier than any he has previously experienced. In Edinburgh, that most spectral of cities, Rebus knows the dead don’t always rest quietly, while the living remain troubled and – just occasionally – deadly dangerous.
Welcome to the world of Rebus. Welcome to Long Shadows . . .
Ian Rankin
CHARACTERS
John Rebus Retired detective
Heather Ross Daughter of unsolved murder victim Maggie Towler
Andy Neighbour to John Rebus
Maggie Towler Heather Ross’s mother
Siobhan Clarke Detective Inspector
Angela Simpson Cold case murder victim
Barman A barman
Charlie Informant
Big Ger Cafferty Crime boss of Edinburgh, long-term nemesis to John Rebus
Mordaunt Suspected murderer of Angela Simpson
Detective A police detective
Technician A police technician
Act One
The stairwell at Arden Street
HEATHER, a very young woman, is slumped on the stair. She’s dressed for a night out, revealing but not startling clothes, typical Saturday night girl out clubbing with mates. She’s plugged into her music. Now she sings along, a few lines, pure and accapella. The track she hears is audible only to her. She stops singing, moving gently to the song. She’s mellow and relaxed with something but not obviously under the influence. REBUS is coming up the stairs. He sees HEATHER. He checks for a moment. Looking at her.
REBUS
Comfy there are you?
HEATHER doesn’t seem to have heard him, lost in her music. He carries on past her. HEATHER sings again, just the one line, pure and beautiful. REBUS stops dead. He walks slowly back down to HEATHER.
REBUS
You’re too young to know that one.
She can’t hear him, he mimes for her to pull out her earphones. She does.
REBUS
You’re too young to know that one.
HEATHER
(Frampton Comes Alive, ‘Show Me the Way’) 1976. It’s my family heirloom.
REBUS
How’s that?
HEATHER
My Mum loved it. It was her favourite song when she was a tiny tiny wee girl.
REBUS
Is that right? I know you don’t I? I know your face.
HEATHER
Don’t think so.
REBUS
Waiting for someone?
HEATHER
I was just having a wee think.
REBUS
Who’re you after? Which flat?
HEATHER
He’s no in. I’m freezing. Can I wait in yours?
REBUS
No.
HEATHER
How no?
REBUS
Because you shouldny be sitting about on the stairs at 2 a.m. dressed like that and you definitely shouldny be asking to get into strange men’s flats.
HEATHER
Who are you? My Grandad?
REBUS
Apparently I could be.
HEATHER
So . . . what? You’re a murdering rapist that’ll cut me up with a steak knife?
REBUS
Well I could be that too. How do you know?
HEATHER
Are you?
REBUS
No . . . but . . .
HEATHER
So what do you do then?
REBUS
I was a policeman. Which makes me a bit of an expert on the kind of trouble wee lassies can get into on a Friday night.
HEATHER
A policeman? Wow. Aye, now you say it I can see it. You, have got the shiniest shoes I’ve ever, ever seen.
REBUS
Ah, that’s an army habit. I was in the paras once . . .
HEATHER
Seriously? So did you like kill people with floss tape? Gouge out their eyes with your thumbs?
REBUS
No. I’ll get you a cab home.
HEATHER
I’m staying here.
REBUS
Not an option.
HEATHER
Aye come on, I’ve got police protection.
REBUS
I’m retired. And I never did waste time protecting folk from their own stupidity.
HEATHER
You think I don’t know the worst that could happen?
REBUS
I think you imagine it’ll never happen to you.
HEATHER
It happened to my Mum. Strangled and dumped on a building site beside the Jackdaw pub in Newhaven. So there you go. I do know.
REBUS
When?
HEATHER
2001. I don’t remember her, I was a baby. Gran brought me up. Mum got killed ‘cause she went out on the raz. A good Mummy wouldny be out with a wee bairn at hame eh? She was always falling into trouble, first me, then death . . . She was just my age. Can you imagine it? I’m no getting lumbered with a bairn till I’ve made my money. Money first. Then we’ll see about getting domestic.
REBUS has placed the memory.
REBUS
Maggie Towler.
HEATHER
Aye! Jeez you really are polis eh? Aw Christ . . . was it . . . did you . . .?
REBUS
No, I wasn’t lead on that case. Remember it though.
HEATHER
That’s nice. That she’s remembered. When I play that song I tell myself I’m talking to her. It’s about the only thing I’ve got that’s hers.
REBUS
I thought you looked familiar. That must be why. Maggie Towler’s daughter.
HEATHER
You remember her face?
REBUS
I remember all the faces. And most of the names. What’s your name?
HEATHER
Heather. Heather Ross.
REBUS
Not Towler?
HEATHER
I got Gran’s name. What’s yours?
REBUS
John Rebus. So what about your Dad?
HEATHER
I don’t know. Gran said she didny know either but that was lies. She didny want me thinking about him. ‘Your mother thought she could take on the world. Then she met a man she couldny handle.’
REBUS
Every Granny’s warning.
HEATHER
Can you do me a favour John?
REBUS
I try to avoid them. Go on, what?
HEATHER
You’ve still got all my Mum’s stuff. The police have, I mean. Her clothes, the jewellery she was wearing . . .
REBUS
It’s evidence.
HEATHER
How can it be evidence when she’s been dead seventeen years?
REBUS
It’s an unsolved murder. So we . . . (corrects himself) . . . they, try and keep the evidence. Forensics get better all the time. DNA testing gets better all the time. One day we might be able to nail the bastard.
HEATHER
You’re still trying to catch him?
REBUS
Never close an unsolved killing.
HEATHER
What if he’s dead? The guy that did it to her?
REBUS
Then he got away with murder.
HEATHER
That’d shred me. I’d rather never know than that . . .
REBUS
Where do you need to get back to Heather?
HEATHER
What?
REBUS
Where do you live?
HEATHER
Och around and about.
REBUS
Where does Gran live?
HEATHER
You ask a lot of questions eh?
REBUS
Canny seem to break the habit.
HEATHER
My Gran’s dead. Home was Newhaven, the scuzzy bit that’s still scuzzy.
REBUS
The Jackdaw pub.
HEATHER
Aye, that’s still there. It’s a club now. Techno grunge every Friday. They get artists in from all over. Have you been?
