Arcadia Scotland

Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin

“We are all racist, Inspector. . . even me. It is how we deal with that ugly fact that is important.”

For our book club this semester we picked Fleshmarket Close, a novel by Ian Rankin, that deals with the intersection between racism, illegal immigration, asylum seekers, exploitation and criminality. It explores how the system, both corporate and state, works hand in hand with the criminals, usually unintentionally, to create a culture that exaggerates the worst in human nature that results in a terrible exploitation pushing these individuals into slavery, vice - and ultimately as potential victims of murder. It is in this context that the rather embittered and nearing retirement Inspector Rebus has a case to solve.

Rebus confronts his own racism and support for the system as both a police detective investigating the murder of an escaped refugee and at times working in parallel with a customs official up from London who is trying to crack an illegal immigrant smuggling operation that has led him to Scotland. Rebus’ assistant Siobhan is working two other cases that will eventually interweave with his own through some brilliantly complex and intricate plot twists worthy of a Muriel Spark novel.

The plot centres around an immigrant detention facility called “Whitemire” funded by a US corporation. It is from this place that the murdered individual (a Kurdish refugee and journalist) escaped and was trying to talk to a newspaper. The victim has a detained wife and child in the detention facility. Rebus’ conscience is pricked when he meets an immigration lawyer who is working to defend these individuals. Rebus also starts a relationship with a campaigner and artist who keeps lonely vigil outside the facility to protest against the immigrants treatment by the detention center.  

However, this book is not a polemic. Both the characters of the lawyer and the protester encourage Rebus and the reader to reflect on his and our broader attitudes to race and immigration. Ultimately, Rebus’ romantic relationship with the campaigner is threatened by his job working for the police, with the customs official, and by his methods which are at times unorthodox and certainly not always within the ‘rules of the game.’

The novel clearly locates this activity in Scotland and around Edinburgh using multiple real locations. The detention center is based on a real center called Dungavel which is funded by a private US company called GEO that operates many centers across the US including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Dungavel was supposed to be closed in 2017 partly due to a controversy concerning their treatment of their detainees and the length of detentions, but is currently still open. 

In many ways this is a deeply bleak and pessimistic book that predicts a lot of the political discourse we currently face in terms of attitudes towards race, and the movements of people across borders - many fleeing terrible situations. Do we build walls and prisons detaining or separating families and children, or do we acknowledge that the systems we put in place will only divide? Do we attempt to withdraw our political identity from a sense of global solidarity and humanity, or do we embrace and support global institutions like the European Union or the United Nations that emphasise broader human rights and a commonality of empathy and feeling?    

Ian Rankin in an interview stated that he wanted to explore this topic to really acknowledge that despite the consistent messaging about how friendly Scotland is to foreigners, all the same issues around the world such as bigotry, racism and attitudes to immigrants and refugees  sit very much locally to us all. The fear of the 'other' is universal and this ‘other’ may be defined in a variety of manners. But as the lawyer who defends the immigrants puts it - it is how we deal with our own racism that matters.