Ian Rankin - Tooth And Nail

Tooth & Nail

Ian Rankin

How many wolves do we feel on our heels, while our real enemies go in sheepskin' Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

I lived in London for four years, from 1986 to 1990, during which time my home was a maisonette in Tottenham, not far from the River Lea. When I left for France in the summer of 1990, some friends took on the maisonette. We kept in touch. Tooth & Nail was eventually published in the spring of 1992, only it wasn't called Tooth & Nail it was called Wolfman, the name of the serial killer who stalks the book. A few months after publication, -my friends in Tottenham sent me a photo they'd taken of a subway between my old home and the river (where-the-first murder in the book takes place). The subway's, gloomy interior comprised white tiles, and on this surface, in six foot-high black capitals, someone- had painted the name 'Wolfman.

I keep the, photo close at hand even now, to remind myself that there are some fans an author just doesn't want to meet.

Ever.

It was my editor in the USA who mentioned that Wolfman made my story sound like a horror novel, and it was his idea to rename the book Tooth & Nail for the American- audience. The title seemed resonant, and chimed with my first two Rebus adventures. When my current publisher Orion got hold of the rights to the book, I persuaded them that it should become Tooth & Nail in the UK too.

The book is set in London, the only Rebus novel so far to take place outside Scotland. Basically I wanted Rebus to be more of an outsider than ever. In London, he's a fish out of water. He can't begin to comprehend the city, doesn't even know what a bagel is, and no one around him understands his accent and dialect (to such an extent that passages from the book have become teaching aids in some Scottish primary schools). In essence, I was using Rebus to explore my own feelings about the London I had known, just at a time when I was preparing to leave the place:

From the early 1970s until May 1990, I'd kept a page-a-day diary. For whatever reason, I stopped soon after arriving in France. However, an entry for 11 March that year reads: 'I've started, half-heartedly, a new Rebus novel, though I .know I should plan more and research more before I really get into it. It's going to be called Wolfman, if it ever gets off the ground.' I think some of the impetus for the book came from the spectacular success of the American author Thomas Harris. I'd spent a sleepless night reading The Silence of the Lambs from cover to cover. The man had a huge talent and sales to match, and I wanted some of the latter. The serial killer was in vogue and there seemed an endless fascination with the psychology and pathology of evil. It was fortunate for me that my, editor, Euan Cameron, was not as easily seduced by trends. I remember that when I sent him the first version of the manuscript, he told me there was far too much sex and violence; in the story and asked for cuts in both departments. I'd learned a valuable lesson: that the two can be suggested without having to show either graphic and voyeuristic detail.

During my time in London, I'd served jury duty at the Old Bailey, a bizarre and unsatisfactory experience which was to provide me with an abundance of detail and anecdotes for the Old Bailey scenes in Tooth -& Nail. The trial I'd attended had been full of farcical moments, starting with an arresting officer called De'Ath, a prosecutor who didn't know the difference between 180 and 360, and a juror who said, 'I think he done it, but I don't want him going to prison for it', then voted Not Guilty, leading to the prisoner escaping sentence. (The police foul-up in the book which allows Tommy Watkiss to go free actually happened during my trial, but in real life no one noticed except we jurors.)

I took lots of notes about the Old Bailey its interior layout security issues; the route from the courtroom to the jury room - and was stopped one day by a security guard as I left the building. He asked to see my notes, seemed horrified by them, and tore them up in front of me. I thanked him and stepped outside, where I proceeded to write them all down again as he watched helplessly through a window

Tooth & Nail is notable for introducing the character of Morris Gerald Cafferty - aka 'Big Ger' - the gangster-who runs Edinburgh. In this book, he has a cameo only, but it was enough to persuade me that I could do more with him. I also started to introduce Scottish words into the text, perhaps to ensure that I wouldn't lose them entirely. After all, living in rural south-west France; I had few opportunities to say things like 'wersh'- (meaning sour), 'winching' (going steady) and 'hoolit' (drunk). In time, some of these words would even start to creep into the Oxford English Dictionary, with the Rebus novels cited for reference.

Criwens.

Having said in the diary entry quoted above that I should plan more and research more, I should confess here that the lengthy list of acknowledgements at the end of Tooth & Nail is actually an extended joke. Each recipient is a friend of mine, and I just wanted to sneak as many of their names into the book as I could. Steve Adams and Fiona Campbell, for example, were our next-door neighbours in Tottenham, while Tee Macgregor and Don Nichol had been literature postgrads during my own time at the University of Edinburgh. Professor J. Curt, however, deserves special mention. He's my mate Jon Curt. I shared a flat with him for an intensely boozy year when I was a postgrad and he was finishing his MA. As well as being a student, Jon was part-time barman at the Oxford Bar. Without him, I might never have found what was to become Rebus's favourite watering-hole. I rewarded Jon with a professorship in Tooth & Nail, and would later turn him into Dr Curt, pathologist and friend of Rebus in many of the later novels.

The book also contains one of my favourite one-liners, in any of my novels. I won't give the game away here, but watch out for the mention of a 'nudist beach' .

Contents

She drives home the knife.

The moment, she knows from past experience, is a very intimate one. Her hand is gripped around the knife's cool handle and the thrust takes the blade into the throat up to the hilt until her hand meets the throat itself. Flesh upon flesh. Jacket first, or woollen jersey, cotton shirt or T-shirt, then flesh. Now rent. The knife is writhing, like an animal sniffing. Warm blood covering hilt and hand. (The other hand covers the mouth, stifling screams.) The moment is complete. A meeting. Touching. The body is hot, gaping, warm with blood. Seething inside, as insides become outsides. Boiling. The moment is coming to an end all too soon.

And still she feels hungry. It isn't right, isn't usual, but she does. She removes some of the clothing; in fact, removes quite a lot of it, removes more, perhaps, than is necessary. And she does what she must do, the knife squirming again. She keeps her eyes screwed tightly shut. She does not like this part. She has never liked this part, not then, not now. But especially not then.

Finally, she brings out her teeth and sinks them into the white stomach, until they grind together in a satisfying bite, and, whispers, as she always does, the same four words.

'It's only a game.'

It is evening when George Flight gets the call. Sunday evening. Sunday should be his blessed relief, beef and Yorkshires, feet up in front of the television, papers falling from his lap. But he's had a feeling all day. In the pub at lunchtime he'd felt it, a wriggling in, his gut like there were worms in there, tiny blind white worms, hungry worms, worms he could not hope to satisfy. He knew what they were and they knew what they were. And then he'd won third prize in the pub raffle: a three-foot high orange and white teddy bear. Even the worms had laughed at him then and he'd known the day would end badly.