I have always liked to read what Ian Rankin writes. I like thrillers/procedurals/crime fiction in general, because it (the good stuff) pays attention to plot and character and narrative without numbing the soul and exhausting the patience with all the pretentious worthiness eg found in most Booker Prizewinners. Kiran Desai? I tried. I did. Please give me Fred Vargas instead. Anyway, Rankin, despite concentrating too much – for my tastes – on Rebus's musical taste, knows how to write a fine book. And now I know that according to Scotland's finest, he also knows how to write a realistic copper. Yesterday I took a train to Edinburgh (for the godawful price of £76.50 return from Wakefield Westgate) and sat next to a largeish man with a green iPod shuffle and 22 years service in the Scottish police force. Of course the talk as usual turned to toilets, because it's all about me, me, me, so I learned first that Leith police station, which is housed in the old Leith Town Hall, had some magnificent old toilets, including a gents that had a boiler made of glass and copper so you could see the water bubbling. It also had cells so cold and horrid, when an inspector – health and safety – came to call and asked to see the cells, she was told “oh no, you don't want to go to the cells. They're damp and cold and horrible.” So she promptly closed them down. Leith prisoners now have to go elsewhere.
Then my seat neighbour told me that his best mate, Ronnie, was Rankin's police advisor. And that Rankin is “pretty spot on” and Scottish coppers think he's alright. “He does book signings for us and everything.” Then I hoped we would move onto tales of horror and underworld crime, but instead he gave me a tour-by-train-window of all the notable sights between Berwick and Edinburgh. Apart from the gorgeous coastal scenery and low-lying islands in the near distance, there was a volcanic plug here, a monastery there. A nuclear power station for which “they” spent millions of pounds trying to mix a colour to paint it that would blend into both sky and sea until someone pointed out that that's what Royal Navy battleships have to do, so now it's Royal Navy battleship pale grey and I attest that the colour works. He pointed out also his home town of Preston Pans, so named because Priesttown, where the priests lived, and the next town, where they made a living from extracting salt from the coastal salt pans, came together and lost a vowel and a consonant. I do like an informative copper, even if he can't bake a cake. Though probably he can. I didn't ask. As we crossed Princes Street and as my legs nearly fell off in the cold, he made up for his sensitive tourism side by telling me about the heroin addict who died in an automated public toilet the other week, but wasn't found for a whole night because he went into the toilet just before it closed (no, neither of us knew why an automated toilet would close), then the bloke who monitors the toilet from Gloucestershire (no, we don't know why that is either) went off shift and the addict wasn't found until 9.20 the following morning, when the alarm sounded that the door had not been opened for 20 minutes.
For my dinner, I had for the first time ever the famous Scottish dish “chips and cheese.” I didn't know what to expect – a cheese sauce? chips with cheez whiz? – and I wasn't about to do a Peter “are those mushy peas guacamole?” Mandelson, so I ordered it and hoped it would be edible, then watched as the wee lady ladled some chips into one part of a container, then some grated cheese into the other part of the container. Then she closed the lid. That was it. I said to her, “is this is a Scottish dish?” “Aye. It's really nice. You'll love it.” That is overconfident enough to be arrogant. Or Scottish nationalism gone nuts. But cheese and chips was edible. Just.