Doors Open

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Reviews for Ian Rankin

  EXIT MUSIC

  ‘Rankin has an unparalleled ability to draw in the reader and make us feel every knock and setback in Inspector Rebus’s red-raw life. Rarely has that talent been better displayed than in Exit Music which sees the flawed but redeemingly honest central character staggering towards the finishing line of an inglorious career that has utterly defined his life.’

  Scotland on Sunday

  ‘The main theme of the book is civic corruption by the power of money, money from whatever source. Always up to the minute, Rankin has Russian oligarchs or something similar lurking on the streets of Edinburgh and the murder of a Russian poet is directly counterpointed to the death throes of the real life Russian, Litvinenko . . . As Rankin percipiently observes, the problem is the overworld not the underworld - words which might well sum up the philosophy of Rankin’s whole oeuvre.’

  The Spectator

  ‘The last scene bringing together Rebus and Cafferty, is a sly, ingenious reworking of Holmes’s apparently fatal tussle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls - another Scottish author attempting to retire his detective but failing, you can’t help but notice. The possibility of Rebus returning is conspicuously left open.’ Sunday Times

  ‘The title Exit Music serves a dual meaning - not just Rebus’s exit from the police but also the possibility of Scotland’s wishing to leave the Union with England after the recent election results . . . Exit Music is a fitting end to the career of one of the most beguiling characters in the history of crime fiction - not because the lowering of the final curtain finds the audience satisfied but because it leaves them gasping for more.’ The Times

  ‘It would, of course, be criminally bad form to reveal the precise manner of John Rebus’s final exit - but I think most readers will find the music more or less note-perfect.’ Daily Mail

  THE NAMING OF THE DEAD

  ‘Masterly . . . Ian Rankin’s finest novel. It is more than a crime novel, or rather, Rankin’s achievement is to show, convincingly, how crime permeates society.’ Scotsman

  ‘Rebus may seem to be running on something very near empty, but there is no sign that Rankin has lost any of the energy to continue this consistently impressive series.’ Sunday Times

  ‘Rankin deftly inserts Rebus into the true story of that week, culminating, as it did, in the London bombings of July 7. An excellent performance, for a cop on the verge of extinction.’ Marcel Berlins, The Times

  ‘Politics crashes head on into Inspector Rebus’s usual interests (solving grisly murders and supping pints) in the latest of this award-winning series. The Naming of the Dead, set against the 2005 G8 Summit, is yet another irresistible page-turner from the UK’s best crime novelist.’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘The plot is another Rankin corker, complex yet convincing, and played out on this occasion over only nine days against the backdrop of last year’s G8 summit at Gleneagles, with its retinue of concerts and marches against poverty . . . The best crime novel you’ll read this year.’

  Sunday Telegraph

  FLESHMARKET CLOSE

  ‘Rankin’s best novel yet and that’s saying something.’ Observer

  ‘As always, Rankin proves himself the master of his own milieu. He brings the dark underside of Edinburgh deliciously to life . . . Rankin never puts a foot wrong.’ Daily Mail

  ‘Rankin at his best, recalling Dickens both in the vigour and ambition of their social portraiture and in their campaigning thrust.’ Sunday Times

  ‘No one writes more gripping stories than Rankin; his imagination peoples Edinburgh the way Balzac’s fantasy did Paris. The scenes which emerge ... are the product of a troubling imagination and a probing intellect which uses the crime genre to examine aspects of life, especially contemporary Scottish life, that politicians prefer to ignore.’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Another year and another surefire bestseller for Britain’s No.1 crime writer, Ian Rankin.’ Daily Mirror

  ‘Ironic, exciting and immediate. The plot is resourceful; characterisation sharp; humour as unexpected as a rug jerked from under your feet. Despite the wear and tear, Rebus has never looked in better shape; a long, long way, I’d have thought, from retirement.’ Literary Review

  A QUESTION OF BLOOD

  ‘He writes with a natural rhythm which exerts an almost hypnotic effect.’

  Independent

  ‘Exemplifies the enhanced craftsmanship of the author’s recent work; the sheer number of handicaps Rebus overcomes and of the puzzles he solves evinces a relishable virtuosity.’ Sunday Times

  ‘A rich absorbing narrative in which the focus is not on who did it - that we know - but why. Artful, moving and entertaining.’ Observer

  ‘An exceptionally well-plotted book, which is guaranteed to hook you and keep you hooked.’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Recent crime writers ... have at their disposal all the openings for alienation afforded by the modern world - and, if one of them has to be singled out as being especially attuned to contemporary murder and social malaise, it is Ian Rankin.’ Times Literary Supplement

  RESURRECTION MEN

  ‘What is impressive in Resurrection Men is not just the deftness of the links between disparate crimes, but the fluency of the fugue-like counterpoint between investigations … On this form, nothing is beyond him.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Rankin’s Rebus novels should be required reading for anyone whose knowledge of Edinburgh has been derived from visits to the festival … Rankin conveys the visceral fears and hatreds lurking just below the smart Georgian surface of the “you’ll have your tea” New Town.’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Bears all the qualities that have established Rankin as one of Britain’s leading novelists in any genre: a powerful sense of place; a redefinition of Scotland and its past; persuasive characters and a growing compassion among its characters.’ New Statesman

  THE FALLS

  ‘Rankin masterfully pulls his fascinating plot together, and his sense of place casts a powerful shadow over this subtle tale of the recurrence of evil.’ Guardian

  ‘The Falls pulses with vitality. Suspense vigorously propels you through its pages. Rankin’s prose is crisp, laconic and witty. So is his tangy dialogue.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘An extraordinarily rich addition to crime literature.’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘The Falls is an inventive and absorbing book which lives up to the technical term of a rebus as an enigmatic puzzle.’ Scotsman

  ‘The Falls, the 12th full-length Inspector Rebus story, finds his creator, Ian Rankin, at his brilliant, mordant best, with the dark heart of the
city featuring almost as strongly as Rebus himself.’ Sunday Telegraph

  SET IN DARKNESS

  ‘Rankin is a master of his craft, handling each twist and turn of the plot with consummate skill as he takes us by the hand and leads us from the sparkling edifices of New Labour-controlled Scotland to the misty, mysterious Edinburgh alleyways, and from hip and trendy restaurants to dank pubs and bars without missing a step … Rankin is streets ahead in the British procedural writing field … our top crime writer.’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘The book sets off at a cracking rate, with bodies piling up in the first few chapters … Running parallel to the excellently paced plot is the theme of Scotland’s national identity, its past and future, its regeneration and re-evaluation … Set in Darkness sees Rankin in impeccable form and will undoubtedly please his legions of fans and increase his appeal even further.’ The List

  ‘This is, astonishingly, the eleventh Inspector Rebus novel by a writer who is still not yet 40, but whose consistent level of excellence is unmatched in the field of British crime fiction.’ The Times

  ‘Rankin’s particular skill is in producing a highly complex plot whose different strands cleverly come together at the end, a setting which brings to life the grim back streets of Edinburgh and a well-drawn cast of characters.’ Sunday Telegraph

  DEAD SOULS

  ‘Rebus resurgent … A brilliantly meshed plot which delivers on every count on its way to a conclusion as unexpected as it is inevitable.’

  Literary Review

  ‘Rankin weaves his plot with a menacing ease … His prose is understated, yet his canvas of Scotland’s criminal underclass has a panoramic breadth. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as a switchblade. This is, quite simply, crime writing of the highest order.’ Daily Express

  ‘A series that shows no sign of flagging … Assured, sympathetic to contemporary foibles, humanistic, this is more than just a police procedural as the character of Rebus grows in moral stature … Rankin is the head capo of the MacMafia.’ Time Out

  ‘An atmospheric and cleverly plotted tale well up to Rankin’s CWA Gold Dagger standard.’ Books Magazine

  ‘My favourite gritty page-turner was Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls.’

  Independent

  ‘No one captures the noirish edge of the city as well as Rankin.’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘His fiction buzzes with energy … His prose is as vivid and terse as the next man’s yet its flexibility and rhythm give it potential for lyrical expression which is distinctively Rankin’s own.’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Rankin strips Edinburgh’s polite façade to its gritty skeleton.’

  The Times

  Also by Ian Rankin

  The Inspector Rebus Series

  Knots & Crosses

  Hide & Seek

  Tooth & Nail

  Strip Jack

  The Black Book

  Mortal Causes

  Let it Bleed

  Black & Blue

  The Hanging Garden

  Death is Not the End

  Dead Souls

  Set in Darkness

  The Falls

  Resurrection Men

  A Question of Blood

  Fleshmarket Close

  The Naming of the Dead

  Exit Music

  Other Novels

  The Flood

  Watchman

  Westwind

  Witch Hunt

  Bleeding Hearts

  Blood Hunt

  Short Stories

  A Good Hanging and Other Stories

  Beggars Banquet

  Non-Fiction

  Rebus’s Scotland

  Doors Open

  IAN RANKIN

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  An Orion ebook

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Orion Books,

  an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © 2008 John Rebus Ltd.

  The moral right of Ian Rankin to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  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, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of both the copyright owner and the

  above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious,

  and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead

  is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4091 0674 6

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  The open door was only yards away, and beyond it lay the outside world, eerily unaffected by anything happening inside the abandoned snooker hall. Two thickset men had slumped bloodily to the floor. Four more figures were seated on chairs, hands tied behind them, ankles bound. A fifth was wriggling like a snake towards the doorway, straining with the effort. His girlfriend was yelling encouragement as the man called Hate stepped forward and slammed the door shut on all their hopes and dreams, hauling the chair and its occupant back to the original line.

  ‘I’m going to kill you all,’ the man spat, face smeared with his own blood. Mike Mackenzie didn’t doubt him for a second. What else was someone called Hate going to do? Mike was staring at the door, reminded that this chain of events had begun - so innocently - with a party and with friends.

  And with greed.

  And desire.

  But above all, with doors opening and closing.

  A few weeks earlier

  1

  Mike saw it happen. There were two doors next to one another. One of them seemed to be permanently ajar by about an inch, except when someone pushed at its neighbour. As each liveried waiter brought trays of canapés into the saleroom, the effect was the same. One door would swing open, and the other would slowly close. It said a lot about the quality of the paintings, Mike thought, that he was paying more attention to a pair of doors. But he knew he was wrong: it was saying nothing about the actual artworks on display, and everything about him.

  Mike Mackenzie was thirty-seven years old, rich and bored. According to the business pages of various newspapers, he remained a ‘self-made software mogul’, except that he was no longer a mogul of anything. His company had been sold outright to a venture capital consortium. Rumour had it that he was a burn-out, and maybe he was. He’d started the software business fresh from university with a friend called Gerry Pearson. Gerry had been the real brains of the operation, a genius programmer, but shy with it, so that Mike quickly became the public face of the company. After the sale, they’d split the proceeds fifty-fifty and Gerry then surprised Mike by announcing that he was off to start a new life in Sydney. His emails from Australia extolled the virtues of nightclubs, city life and surfing (and not, for once, the computer kind). He would also send Mike JPEGs and mobile-phone snaps of the ladies he encountered along the way. The quiet, reserved Gerry of old had disappeared, replaced by a rambunctious playboy - which didn’t stop Mike from feeling like a bit of a fraud. He knew that without Gerry, he’d have failed to make the grade in his chosen field.

  Building the business had been exciting and nerve-racking - existing on three or four hours’ sleep a night, often in hotel rooms far away from home, while Gerry preferred to pore over circuit boards and programming issues back in Edinburgh. Ironing the glitches out of their best-known software application had given both of them a buzz that had lasted for weeks. But as for the money
. . . well, the money had come flooding in, bringing with it lawyers and accountants, advisers and planners, assistants, diary secretaries, media interest, social invites from bankers and portfolio managers . . . and not much else. Mike had grown tired of supercars (the Lambo had lasted barely a fortnight; the Ferrari not much longer - he drove a second-hand Maserati these days, bought on impulse from the small ads). Tired, too, of jet travel, five-star suites, gadgets and gizmos. His penthouse apartment had featured in a style magazine, much being made of its view - the city skyline, all chimneypots and church spires until you reached the volcanic plug on top of which sat Edinburgh Castle. But occasional visitors could tell that Mike hadn’t made much of an effort to adjust his life to fit his new surroundings: the sofa was the same one he’d brought from his previous home; ditto the dining table and chairs. Old magazines and newspapers sat in piles either side of the fireplace, and there was little evidence that the vast flat-screen television with its surround-sound speakers ever got much use. Instead, guests would fix their attention on the paintings.