Beggars Banquet
Authors: Ian Rankin
Facing the Music - AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
Unlucky in Love, Unlucky at Cards
Talk Show - AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
Castle Dangerous - AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
In the Frame - AN INSPECTOR REBUS STORY
Time Out
Independent on Sunday
Daily Express
Scotsman
Allan Massie
Sunday Telegraph
Independent
Scotland on Sunday
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 (
novella
)
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
A Good Hanging and Other
Stories
Beggars Banquet
Rebus: The Early Years
(Knots & Crosses, Hide &
Seek, Tooth & Nail)
Rebus: The St Leonard’s Years
(Strip Jack, The Black Book,
Mortal Causes)
Rebus: The Lost Years
(Let It Bleed, Black & Blue,
The Hanging Garden)
Rebus: Capital Crimes
(Dead Souls, Set in Darkness,
The Falls)
Non-fiction
Rebus’s Scotland
Also available:
Jackie Leven Said
by Ian Rankin and Jackie Leven.
Knots & Crosses
, was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into over thirty languages and are bestsellers worldwide.
Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America’s celebrated Edgar award for
Resurrection Men
. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Awards in the USA, and won Denmark’s
Palle Rosenkrantz
Prize, the French
Grand Prix du Roman Noir
and the
Deutscher Krimipreis
. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University.
A contributor to BBC2’s
Newsnight Review
, he also presented his own TV series,
Ian Rankin’s Evil Thoughts
. He has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh. He has also recently been appointed to the rank of Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons. Visit his website at
www.ianrankin.net
.
First published in Great Britain in 2002
by Orion
This paperback edition published in 2003
by Orion Books Ltd,
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette Livre UK company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Reissued 2008
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
More detailed copyright information
can be found on pages 375-6.
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 the copyright owner.
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.
The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that
are natural, renewable and recyclable products and
made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging
and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to
the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
The thing about my poems was, they told stories. They were about people going to places and the consequences of their actions. I think that’s why I started writing short stories. I wrote several while still at school, aided by an English teacher called Mr Gillespie, who seemed to think I had ‘something’. At that time, in our English class we were given topics and had to construct a weekly short story. In one instance, Mr Gillespie gave us the phrase ‘Dark they were and golden-eyed’. The rest was up to us. My contribution concerned worried parents searching a busy squat for their drug-addict son. A lot of my stories were in this - ahem - vein. At home, I wrote about kids running away from their small-town existences, only to end up committing suicide in London. One longer story took place in my own school, where a poster of Mick Jagger took on devilish powers and persuaded the kids to go on a rampage. (Influenced by
Lord of the Flies
? Maybe more than a smidge . . .)
At university, I wrote poems and short stories both. My first ‘proper’ short story, about a shipyard closure, came second in a national competition. My next, based on a real family event, won another prize. The first story of mine to appear in a collection was ‘An Afternoon’. It was about a seasoned copper patrolling a Hibs football match. (It wasn’t good enough for the collection you’re about to read, so don’t bother looking.)
The stories collected here span a decade or more. Some first appeared on radio, others in American magazines. They comprise my first short story collection since 1992’s
A Good Hanging
. Not all of them are Rebus stories. There’s a good reason for this: I tend to write short stories in between books, as a way of getting the good Inspector out of my system for a while. This was certainly true of ‘A Deep Hole’, featured here and one of the collection’s most successful stories, in that it won a Dagger for Best Story of the Year, and was also shortlisted for the prestigious Anthony award. The really curious thing about ‘A Deep Hole’ is that it started life set entirely in Edinburgh. Then an editor called and asked if I had anything set in London for a book he was compiling. I tweaked ‘A Deep Hole’ and sent it off. Not a bad move, as it turned out. Another story here, ‘Herbert in Motion’, also won a Dagger for Best Short Story. Its genesis was an off-hand comment by my partner about how government ministers in Whitehall could borrow works of art from various galleries and museums. This is the beauty of the short story: all you need is a single good idea. No convolutions or sub-plots. Well, not many. Not as many as in a novel, certainly. Stories are also good ways of experimenting with narrative voice, structure and methods of economy. I’ve managed to whittle stories down from 800 words to 200 - a struggle, but useful in that I came to learn just how much it is possible to leave out. There’s no place for fat on a story: it has to be lean and fit. ‘Glimmer’ started life as a novella, until I realised I was indulging myself. Whittling away, I found the real story peering out at me. It’s still an indulgence, giving me a chance to create a mythology around one of my favourite Rolling Stones songs, but now it’s as lean as it is mean.
A couple of the stories here - ‘The Confession’ and ‘The Hanged Man’ - started life as pieces for radio. Another, ‘Principles of Accounts’, began as a treatment for a TV drama which never came to be. Strangest of all, perhaps, is ‘The Only True Comedian’, which began as a monologue for radio. Eventually, changed out of all recognition and renamed ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’, it appeared as a short TV drama as part of Scottish Television’s ‘Newfoundland’ series. I think I was credited as co-writer, but when I sat down to watch the finished product, I don’t think I heard more than two lines which I’d written. The rest had been altered to suit the medium. It seemed to work: the actor picked up an award for his performance. But all told, I was much happier with my short story.
I like short stories. I enjoy reading other people’s, as well as writing them myself. For a time, I mistakenly thought it might even be possible to make a living as a short story writer. After all, in this jump-cut, fast-paced, bite-sized urban world, short stories offer convenience - you can start and finish one on a short bus ride or train journey. You can read one in your lunch break. It might even be possible to write one in your lunch break. Look around you. The ideas are out there. Sometimes they’re close enough to touch.
In closing, and before you begin I should thank my editor for this collection, Jon Wood. The title
Beggars Banquet
was his idea. A great Stones album. I hope you enjoy tucking into these morsels.