Watchman

by Ian Rankin

Genres: General Fiction; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Miles Flint is a low-level operative in the world of espionage, with a watching brief that satisfies him perfectly; he's not a man who craves more active duty. But IRA bombs are wreaking havoc on the British mainland, and Miles finds himself with all kinds of problems. He is sent to Belfast, where he finds that his job is much more than merely watching people. And the stakes are high...

Release date: December 11, 2007

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 272

Sample

INTRODUCTION

FROM THE AGE OF TWELVE until I was nearly thirty, I kept a page-a-day diary, and reading through the years 1986–88 has allowed me to place Watchman in its historical context. I got the idea for the book just before my wedding day, and took a bunch of research stuff on my honeymoon. The entry for June 14, 1986, records: “I’m itching to start a new novel, either Rebus 2 or The Watcher.” By July 14 (nine days after the wedding ceremony) I’d decided to concentrate on what was still called Watcher, and I was able to state in my diary that “the plot’s beginning to gel.” I then started writing the first draft a week later, and finished it on Sunday, November 2. (Well, it’s a pretty short book . . .)

Watchman is a spy novel. My previous novel, Knots & Crosses, had involved a fairly cynical, worldly-wise cop, who’d been in the job the best part of fifteen years. Miles Flint, my hero this time around, happens to be a fairly cynical, worldly-wise spy, who’s spent twenty years or so in that world. (I wish I could explain what attracts me to my jaded elders.) The difference between the two men is that while Rebus is a man of action, preferring confrontation to rumination, Miles starts out just the opposite: he’s a professional voyeur, and my job would be to change his role gradually from one of professional passivity to real ruthless activity.

I think I was influenced largely by the antiheroes of le Carré and Graham Greene, and especially the Greene of The Human Factor. Greene’s best characters tend to be men who are forced to become involved in the world, to take a stand—something they’d much rather not do. The books I took on my honeymoon included nonfiction works on British espionage (by Chapman Pincher and others) and a few on entomology. My partner had paid for me to adopt a dung beetle at London Zoo (it was the cheapest option), and I’d decided that Miles should be an expert on beetles, finding human equivalents for each kind among his colleagues.

Back to the diary . . .During that first attempt, I had no job. We newlyweds were living in London, and my partner was supporting me while I tried, fresh out of the swaddling that was university, to become a writer. So it was that by January 13, 1987, I’d finished the second draft. Four days later I started work as an “assistant” at the National Folktale Centre in Tottenham (we needed the money). This gave me a lot of free time and access to a word processor, allowing me to write the third draft. By April 1987, I was ensconced at Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, where fellow scribes included the poets George MacBeth and Ruth Fainlight and the novelist Alasdair Gray. There, between hangovers, I put the finishing touches to the book’s final version. (Another diary entry: “Since I found out that Jeffrey Archer writes six drafts of everything, I’ve begun to look more seriously at perfecting my own stories.”)

Watchman was announced in the catalog for Bodley Head (who’d published Knots & Crosses) in November of that year, and finally appeared on June 9, 1988. My diary for that day reads: “Watchman published; world unmoved.” A few reviews appeared, some of them positive, and people approached me with a view to doing a spec film script, or maybe to write some episodes of The Bill. It was clear that writing a book a year was not going to keep the wolf from the door, so by this time I’d found a full-time job on a magazine called Hi-Fi Review. Watchman was failing to find a publisher in the USA, while my new editor at Bodley Head was hinting fairly heavily that I’d soon be needing to seek a new UK publisher, too.

I’d finished another novel, Westwind, but no one was buying that either. Things seemed desperate indeed. I had a full-time job that entailed three hours of commuting a day; I was reviewing one or two books a week for Scotland on Sunday newspaper; and somewhere in the margins, I was trying to write. My partner meantime was attempting to move us to France, but she wouldn’t manage that for another eighteen months or so, and before then, I’d have started work on the long-deferred Rebus 2 . . .

I changed Watcher to Watchman after discovering Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen. I’m guessing that Miles Flint took his surname from the character in the spoof 1960s spy films In Like Flint and Our Man Flint. Rereading the book recently, I was struck by how fast it moves, cutting quickly from one scene to another, its elliptical, breathless style marking it as a young man’s work, a story by someone in thrall to the possibilities of narrative. Strange, too, that it should be such a period piece: almost no one owns a mobile phone, and Miles doesn’t even own a computer. I was pleased to see so many in-jokes along the way. There’s an oblique reference to the events of Knots & Crosses, and Jim Stevens, the journalist from that book, reappears. There’s a pub called the Tilting Room (actually a collection of stories by my friend Ron Butlin), and a gay club called the Last Peacock (title of an Allan Massie novel). There’s also a character called the Organ Grinder, whom we’d see again in a later Rebus novel, The Black Book.

And Miles’s son is called Jack. I’d forgotten that, though my own son, born four years after the publication of Watchman, has the same name. As to the book’s dedicatee . . .well, he went on to win a lot of money on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Funny old world, innit?

Ian Rankin

Edinburgh, 2003

PROLOGUE

IT WAS SAID THAT HIS ancestors had come from Donegal, and for that reason if no other he had decided to spend a holiday in Ireland. The lush countryside, so quiet after London, and the little villages around the coast delighted him, and the people were polite and, he supposed, as friendly as they would ever be to an Englishman. Ah, but he was quick to point out to them that his roots were in Donegal; that in spirit if not in body he was as they were, a blood-hot Celt.

Having spent long enough in the west, he traveled east, driving through Fermanagh and Monaghan until he reached the coast, just south of Dundalk. The days were balmy and clear, and he breathed it all in, resisting the occasional temptation to telephone back to London with news of his trip. He could wait for all that.

A few of the men along the coast were fishermen, but not many, not now that the economy was dragging itself, along with the country’s social problems, into the twentieth century. The north was a ferment of naive idealism and brutish anger, the whole concoction spiked by foreign meddling of the most malign nature.

In particular there was one young man, his hair wild and with a beard to match, whom he met in Drogheda, and who had spoken to him of the fishing industry and the village pubs and of politics. Politics seemed to pervade life in Ireland as though the very air carried whispered reminders of bloodshed and injustice. He had listened with an unjaundiced ear, explaining in his turn that he was on holiday, but that really he was recovering from a broken heart. The young man nodded, seeming to understand, his eyes keen like a gull’s.

In one of the pubs they sat for night after night, though he could feel, through his happiness, the end of the holiday approaching. They drove into the countryside one day, so that the young man, Will, could spend some time away from the gutting of fish and the rank posturing of the boats. They ate and drank, and, with Will’s directions, approached a quayside as dusk was falling. He pointed over to a small boat. The air was rich with the smells of fish and the endless screeching of the herring gulls. The boat, Will told his companion, was his own.

“Shall we take her out?”

As they did, out past the green-stained walls of the quay, out past the bristling rocks and the wrack, into the choppy Irish Sea, the older man trailed his hand in the bitter-cold water, feeling the salt cling to his wrist. Will explained why the wind was slightly warm, and spoke of the hunt for some legendary giant fish, a shadowy monster that had never been caught. People still caught sight of it, he said, on moonlit nights with a tot of rum inside them, but if it was still alive, then it would be hundreds of years old, since the first such tales had been told centuries before. The sky gaped above them, the soft spray like an anointing. Perhaps, thought the Englishman, he was the outdoor type after all. He would return to London, give up his job (which was, in any case, about to dump him), and drift, seeing the world through rechristened eyes.

The engine stopped, and the lapping of the water became the only sound around him. It seemed a pure and a miraculous peace. He looked back in the direction of the shore, but it was out of sight.

“We’re a long way out,” he said, one hand still paddling the water, though it was growing numb with cold.

“No,” said the younger man, “it’s only you that’s a long way out. You’re way too far out of your territory.”

And when he turned, the gun was already aimed, and his mouth had opened in the merest fraction of a cry when it went off, sending him flying backward out of the boat, so that his body rested in the water, his legs hanging over the edge, caught on a rusty nail.

The younger man’s hand shook only slightly as he placed the gun on the floor of the boat. From a bag concealed beneath one seat he brought out a load of stones, which he hoped would be sufficient for his purpose. He tried to pull the corpse back into the boat, but it had become sodden and as heavy as the deadweight it was. The sweat dripped from him as he heaved at his catch, growing tired quickly as though after a full day on the boats.

Then he caught sight of the face and he retched, bringing up a little of the dead man’s gifts of food and wine. But the job had to be done, and so he gathered up new strength. He had done it, after all, he had killed his first man. They would be pleased with him.

ONE

MILES FLINT WORE GLASSES: they were his only distinguishing feature. Billy Monmouth could not help smiling as he watched Miles leave the club and head off toward his car, which would be parked some discreet distance away. Miles and Billy had joined the firm around the same time, and it had seemed inevitable that, over the years, they would become friends, though friends, in the strictest sense of the word, were never made in their world.

Miles was feeling a little heavy from the drinks. Billy had insisted on buying—“the prerogative of the bachelor’s paycheck, old boy”—and Miles had not refused. He fumbled now at the buttons of his coat, feeling a slight and unseasonal chill in the London air, and thought of the evening ahead. He had one more visit to pay, a few telephone calls to make, but apart from that, Sheila and he would have their first full evening together for a whole week.

He did not relish the prospect.

As suspected, his car had collected a parking ticket. He ripped it from the windscreen, walked around the car once as though he were a potential and only half-informed buyer, and bent down as if checking for a bald tire or broken muffler. Then, satisfied, he unlocked the passenger door. The Jaguar’s interior, pale hide complementing the cream exterior, looked fine. He slid across into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition, turning it quickly. The engine coughed once, then roared into life. He sat back, letting it idle, staring into space.

That was that, then. He was not about to be blown up today. He knew that the younger men in the firm, and even the likes of Billy Monmouth, smiled at him behind his back, whispering words like “paranoia” and “nerves,” going about their own business casually and without fear, as though there were invisible barriers between them and some preordained death. But then Miles was a cautious man, and he knew that in this game there was no such thing as being too careful.

He sat for a few more minutes, reflecting upon the years spent inspecting his car, checking rooms and telephones and even the undersides of restaurant tables. People thought him clumsy because he would always drop a knife or a fork before the meal began, bowing his head beneath the tablecloth to pick it up. All he was doing was obeying another of the unwritten rules: checking for bugs.

The car was sounding good, though it was a luxury much detested by Sheila. She drove about in a battered Volkswagen Beetle, which had once been orange but was now a motley patchwork of colors. Sheila did not think it worthwhile paying a garage to do repairs, when all one needed was a handbook and some tools. Miles forgave her everything, for he too had a quiet liking for her car, not so much for its performance as for its name.

Miles Flint’s hobby was beetles, not the cars but the insects. He loved to read about their multifarious lifestyles, their ingenuity, their incalculable species, and he charted their habitats on a wall map in his study, a study filled with books and magazine articles, and a few glass cases containing specimens that he had caught himself in earlier days. He no longer killed beetles, and had no desire to exhibit anyone else’s killings. He was content now to read about beetles and to look at detailed photographs and diagrams, for he had learned the value of life.

He had one son, Jack, who built up tidy overdrafts during each term at the university, then came home pleading poverty. Miles had flipped through the stubs in one of Jack’s famished checkbooks: payments to record stores, bookshops, restaurants, a wine bar. He had returned the checkbook to Jack’s secondhand tweed jacket, replacing it carefully between a diary and a letter from a besotted (and jilted) girlfriend. Later, he had asked Jack about his spending and had received honest answers.

Miles knew that his kind did not deal in honesty. Perhaps that was the problem. He examined the large-paned windows along the quiet street, the car’s interior warming nicely. Through one ground-floor window he could watch the silent drama of a man and a woman, both on the point of leaving the building, while by running the car forward a yard or two, he might glance into another lit interior. The choice was his. For once, and with a feeling of abrupt free will, he decided to drive away completely. He had, after all, to visit the watchmen.

Somewhere behind him, in the early-evening twilight, came the sound of an explosion.

Miles stopped outside the Cordelia, a popular nouveau riche hotel off Hyde Park. The receptionist was listening to her pocket radio.

“Has there been a news flash?” he asked.

“Yes, isn’t it awful? Another bomb.”

Miles nodded and headed for the lifts. The lift was mirrored, and riding it alone to the fifth floor, he tried not to catch a glimpse of himself. Another bomb. There had been one last week, in a car parked in Knightsbridge, and another had been defused just in time. London had taken on a siege mentality, and the security services were running around like so many ants in a glass case. Miles could feel a headache coming on. He knew that by the time he reached home, he would be ready for a confrontation. It was not a good sign, and that was part of the reason for this short break in his journey. He also wanted to make a few phone calls on the firm’s bill. Every little bit helped.

He knocked twice on the door of room 514, and it was opened by Jeff Phillips, looking tired, his tie hanging undone around his neck.

“Hello, Miles,” he said, surprised. “What’s up?”

Inside the room, Tony Sinclair was busy listening to something on a headset. The headset was attached to a tape recorder and a small receiver. He nodded in greeting at Miles, seeming interested in the conversation on which he was eavesdropping.

“Nothing,” said Miles. “I just wanted to check, that’s all. There’s been another bomb.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I heard it go off as I was driving here. Somewhere near Piccadilly.”

Jeff Phillips shook his head. He poured some coffee from a thermos, gesturing with the cup toward his superior, but Miles waved away the offer.

He flicked through his tiny notebook, which was filled with telephone numbers and initials, nothing more. Yes, he did have a couple of calls to make, but they were not that important. He realized now that his reason for coming here was simply to defer his going home. There did not seem to be any good nights at home now, and mostly, he supposed, that was his fault. He would be irritable, persnickety, finding fault with small, unimportant things, and would store up his irritation deep within himself like the larva of a dung beetle, warm and quickening within its womb of dung. Jack had given him a year’s adoption of a dung beetle at London Zoo as a birthday present, and Miles had never received a more handsome gift in his life. He had visited the glass case, deep in the subdued light and warmth of the insect house, and had watched the beetle for a long time, marveling at the simplicity of its life.

What his colleagues did not know was that Miles Flint had found counterparts for them all in the beetle world.

He felt the pulse of the headache within him. A few whiskeys often did that. So why did he drink them? Well, he was a Scot after all. He was supposed to drink whiskey.

“Do you have any aspirin, Jeff?”

“Afraid not. Been on the bottle, have we?”

“I’ve had a couple, yes.”

“Thought I could smell it.” Phillips sipped his tepid coffee.

Miles was thinking of James Bond, who was a Scot but drank martinis. Not very realistic, that. The resemblance between Miles and James Bond, as Miles was only too aware, stopped at their country of origin. Bond was a comic book hero, a superman, while he, Miles Flint, was flesh and blood and nerves.

And headache.

“It’s been quiet here,” said Phillips. “A few phone calls to his embassy, made in Arabic, just asking about the situation back home and if they had any of this week’s newspapers, and a call to Harrods, made in English, to ask what time they close. He went out for an hour and a half. Bought the Telegraph, would you believe, and a dirty magazine. Tony knows the name of it. I don’t go in for them myself. He also purchased two packets of Dunhill’s and one bottle of three-star brandy. That’s about it. Came back to his room. Telephoned to the States, to one of those recorded pornographic message services. Again Tony has the details. You can listen to the recording we made if you like. Tony reckons our man got the number from the magazine he bought.”

“Who’s he speaking to just now?”

Phillips went across to check the notepad that lay on Tony Sinclair’s knees.

“To Jermyn Street. Arranging a fitting. These people.” Phillips shook his head in ironic disbelief.

Miles knew what he meant. The watchmen seemed to spend half their lives trailing men and women who did little more than buy expensive clothes and gifts for their families back home.

“He’s making another call,” said Tony Sinclair, the section’s most recent recruit. Miles was watching him for any signs of weakness, of hesitation or misjudgment. Tony was still on probation.

“Speaking Arabic again,” he said now, switching on the tape recorder. As he began to scribble furiously with his ballpoint pen, Jeff Phillips went to his shoulder to watch.

“He’s arranging a meeting,” Phillips murmured. “This looks a little more promising.”

Miles Flint, attuned to such things, doubted it, but it gave him a good excuse not to go home just yet. He would phone Sheila and tell her.

“Mind if I come along on this one?” he asked. Phillips shrugged his shoulders.

“Not at all,” he said. “Your Arabic is as good as mine, I’m sure. But isn’t this supposed to be your night off?”

“I’d like to stick with this one,” lied Miles. “I’ll just make a quick call home.”

“Fine,” said Phillips. “I’ll go downstairs and fetch the car.”

TWO

HAVING PUT HIS CAR INTO the hotel’s basement garage, Miles began to unwind in the firm’s gleaming Rover.

Miles Flint was a watchman. It was his job to look and to listen, and then report back to his section chief, nothing more. He did not mind such a passive role in life, but was aware that others did not share his meticulous pleasure in sifting through the daily affairs of those he was sent to watch. Once or twice, to his certain knowledge, Billy Monmouth had tried to induce his promotion laterally through a word in the right ear. Miles did not want promotion. It suited him to be a watchman.

Billy and he had been invited to join the firm back in 1966, when it was just beginning to recover from a devastating few years of defection, rumor, and counter-rumor. It was said that a super-mole had confessed to wartime subversion, but was being kept under wraps, and that a more dangerous double agent had been active, too, in later years. Much soul-searching and navel-gazing had been taking place back then, and really, that sense of suspicion had never blown away, like rotting leaves left too long in a garden.

And now there were new scandals, new stories to be foisted on the same old public. One could choose to ignore it all, of course, and get on with life. Nevertheless, Bil. . .