Ian Rankin
Mortal Causes
The sixth book in the Inspector Rebus series, 1994
Acknowledgements
A lot of people helped me with this book. I'd like to thank the people of Northern Ireland for their generosity and their `crack'. Particular thanks need to go to a few people who can't be named or wouldn't thank me for naming them. You know who you are.
Thanks also to: Colin and Liz Stevenson, for trying, Gerald Hammond, for his gun expertise; the Officers of the City of Edinburgh Police and Lothian and Borders Police, who never seem to mind me telling stories about them; David and Pauline, for help at the Festival.
The best book on the subject of Protestant paramilitaries is Professor Steve Bruce's The Red Hand (OUP, 1992). One quote from the book: `There is no "Northern Ireland problem" for which there is a solution. There is only a conflict in which there must be winners and losers.’
The action of Mortal Causes takes place in a fictiionallsed summer, 1993, before the Shankill Road bombing and its bloody aftermath.
Perhaps Edinburgh's terrible inability to speak out, Edinburgh's silence with regard to all it should be saying, Is but the hush that precedes the thunder, The liberating detonation so oppressively imminent now? Hugh MacDiarmid
We're all gonna be just dirt in the ground.
Introduction
He could scream all he liked.
They were underground, a place he didn't know, a cool ancient place but lit by electricity. And he was being punished. The blood dripped off him onto the earth floor. He could hear sounds like distant voices, something beyond the breathing of the men who stood around him. Ghosts, he thought. Shrieks and laughter, the sounds of a good night out. He must be mistaken: he was having a very bad night in.