The Complaints (2 page)

Read The Complaints Online

Authors: Ian Rankin

BOOK: The Complaints
5.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
‘
The Falls
pulses with vitality. Suspense vigorously propels you through its pages. Rankin’s prose is crisp, laconic and witty. So is his tangy dialogue.’
Sunday Times
 
‘An extraordinarily rich addition to crime literature.’
Independent on Sunday
 
‘
The Falls
is an inventive and absorbing book which lives up to the technical term of a rebus as an enigmatic puzzle.’
Scotsman
 
‘The Falls
, the 12th full-length Inspector Rebus story, finds his creator, Ian Rankin, at his brilliant, mordant best, with the dark heart of the city featuring almost as strongly as Rebus himself.’
Sunday Telegraph
 
 
 
SET IN DARKNESS
 
‘Rankin is a master of his craft, handling each twist and turn of the plot with consummate skill as he takes us by the hand and leads us from the sparkling edifices of New Labour-controlled Scotland to the misty, mysterious Edinburgh alleyways, and from hip and trendy restaurants to dank pubs and bars without missing a step . . . Rankin is streets ahead in the British procedural writing field . . . our top crime writer.’
Independent on Sunday
 
‘The book sets off at a cracking rate, with bodies piling up in the first few chapters . . . Running parallel to the excellently paced plot is the theme of Scotland’s national identity, its past and future, its regeneration and re-evaluation ...
Set in Darkness
sees Rankin in impeccable form and will undoubtedly please his legions of fans and increase his appeal even further.’
The List
 
‘This is, astonishingly, the eleventh Inspector Rebus novel by a writer who is still not yet 40, but whose consistent level of excellence is unmatched in the field of British crime fiction.’
The Times
 
‘Rankin’s particular skill is in producing a highly complex plot whose different strands cleverly come together at the end, a setting which brings to life the grim back streets of Edinburgh and a well-drawn cast of characters.’
Sunday Telegraph
DEAD SOULS
 
‘Rebus resurgent . . . A brilliantly meshed plot which delivers on every count on its way to a conclusion as unexpected as it is inevitable.’
Literary Review
 
‘Rankin weaves his plot with a menacing ease ... His prose is understated, yet his canvas of Scotland’s criminal underclass has a panoramic breadth. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as a switchblade. This is, quite simply, crime writing of the highest order.’
Daily Express
 
‘A series that shows no sign of flagging ... Assured, sympathetic to contemporary foibles, humanistic, this is more than just a police procedural as the character of Rebus grows in moral stature . . . Rankin is the head capo of the MacMafia.’
Time Out
 
‘An atmospheric and cleverly plotted tale well up to Rankin’s CWA Gold Dagger standard.’
Books Magazine
 
‘My favourite gritty page-turner was Ian Rankin’s
Dead Souls
.’
Independent
 
‘No one captures the noirish edge of the city as well as Rankin.’
Daily Telegraph
 
‘His fiction buzzes with energy ... His prose is as vivid and terse as the next man’s yet its flexibility and rhythm give it potential for lyrical expression which is distinctively Rankin’s own.’
Scotland on Sunday
 
‘ Rankin strips Edinburgh’s polite façade to its gritty skeleton.’
The Times
Also by Ian Rankin
The Inspector Rebus Series
Knots & Crosses
Hide & Seek
Tooth & Nail
Strip Jack
The Black Book
Mortal Causes
Let it Bleed
Black & Blue
The Hanging Garden
Death is Not the End
Dead Souls
Set in Darkness
The Falls
Resurrection Men
A Question of Blood
Fleshmarket Close
The Naming of the Dead
Exit Music
 
Other Novels
The Flood
Watchman
Westwind
Witch Hunt
Bleeding Hearts
Blood Hunt
Doors Open
 
Short Stories
A Good Hanging and Other Stories
Beggars Banquet
 
Non-Fiction
Rebus’s Scotland
 
 
 
 
The Complaints
 
 
IAN RANKIN
 
 
Orion
An Orion ebook
 
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orion Books,
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
 
An Hachette UK Company
 
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
 
Copyright © 2009 John Rebus Ltd.
 
The moral right of Ian Rankin to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of both the copyright owner and the
above publisher of this book.
 
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead
is purely coincidental.
 
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 1 4091 0729 3
 
 This ebook produced by Jouve, France
 
Friday 6 February 2009
1
There was a smattering of applause as Malcolm Fox entered the room.
‘Don’t strain yourselves,’ he said, placing his scuffed briefcase on the desk nearest the door. There were two other Complaints in the office. They were already getting back to work as Fox slipped out of his overcoat. Three inches of snow had fallen overnight in Edinburgh. A similar amount had stopped London dead a week ago, but Fox had managed to get into work and so, by the look of it, had everyone else. The world outside felt temporarily cleansed. There had been tracks in Fox’s garden - he knew there was a family of foxes somewhere near his estate; the houses backed on to a municipal golf course. His nickname at Police HQ was ‘Foxy’, but he didn’t think of himself that way. ‘A bear of a man’ - that was the way one of his previous bosses had described him. Slow but steady, and only occasionally to be feared.
Tony Kaye, a bulging folder tucked beneath one arm, walked past the desk and managed to squeeze Fox’s shoulder without dropping anything.
‘Nice one all the same,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Tony,’ Fox said.
Lothian and Borders Police HQ was on Fettes Avenue. From some windows there was a view towards Fettes College. A few of the officers in the Complaints had been to private schools, but none to Fettes. Fox himself had been educated largely free of charge - Boroughmuir, then Heriot Watt. Supported Hearts FC though seldom managed even a home fixture these days. Had no interest in rugby, even when his city played host to the Six Nations. February was Six Nations month, meaning there’d be hordes of the Welsh in town this weekend, dressed up as dragons and toting oversized inflatable leeks. Fox reckoned he would watch the match on TV, might even rouse himself to go down the pub. Five years now he’d been off the drink, but for the past two he’d trusted himself with occasional visits. Only when he was in the right frame of mind though; only when the willpower was strong.
He hung up his coat and decided he could lose the suit jacket, too. Some of his colleagues at HQ reckoned the braces were an affectation, but he’d lost the best part of a stone and didn’t like belts. The braces weren’t the shouty kind - dark blue against a plain light-blue shirt. His tie today was a deep dark red. He draped his jacket over the back of his chair, smoothed it at the shoulders and sat down, sliding the locks of the briefcase open, easing out the paperwork on Glen Heaton. Heaton was the reason the Complaints had summoned up the brief round of applause. Heaton was a result. It had taken Fox and his team the best part of a year to compile their case. That case had now been accepted by the Procurator Fiscal’s office, and Heaton, having been cautioned and interviewed, would go to trial.
Glen Heaton - fifteen years on the force, eleven of them in CID. And for most of those eleven, he’d been bending the rules to his own advantage. But he’d stepped too far over the line, leaking information not only to his pals in the media but to the criminals themselves. And that had brought him once more to the attention of the Complaints.
Complaints and Conduct, to give the office its full title. They were the cops who investigated other cops. They were the ‘Soft Shoe Brigade’, the ‘Rubber Heels’. Within Complaints and Conduct was another smaller grouping - the Professional Standards Unit. While Complaints and Conduct worked the meat-and-potatoes stuff - grievances about patrol cars parked in disabled bays or cop neighbours who played their music too loud - the PSU was sometimes referred to as the Dark Side. They sniffed out racism and corruption. They looked at bungs received and blind eyes turned. They were quiet and serious and determined, and had as much power as they needed in order to do the job. Fox and his team were PSU. Their office was on a different floor from Complaints and Conduct, and a quarter of the size. Heaton had been under surveillance for months, his home phone tapped, mobile phone records scrutinised, computer checked and checked again - all without his knowledge. He’d been tailed and photographed until Fox had known more about the man than his own wife did, right down to the lap-dancer he’d been dating and the son from a previous relationship.
A lot of cops asked the Complaints the same question: how can you do it? How can you spit on your own kind? These were officers you’d worked with, or might work with in future. These were, it was often said, ‘the good guys’. But that was the problem right there - what did it mean to be ‘good’? Fox had puzzled over that one himself, staring into the mirror behind the bar as he nursed another soft drink.
It’s us and them, Foxy . . . you need to cut corners sometimes or nothing ever gets done ... have you never done it yourself? Whiter than white, are you? The pure driven?
Not the pure driven, no. Sometimes he felt swept along - swept into PSU without really wanting it. Swept into relationships ... and then out again not too long after. He’d opened his bedroom curtains this morning and stared at the snow, wondering about phoning in, saying he was stuck. But then a neighbour’s car had crawled past and the lie had melted away. He had come to work because that was what he did. He came to work and he investigated cops. Heaton was under suspension now, albeit on full pay. The paperwork had been passed along to the Procurator Fiscal.
‘That’s that, then?’ Fox’s other colleague was standing in front of the desk, hands bunched as usual in trouser pockets, easing back on his heels. Joe Naysmith, six months in, still keen. He was twenty-eight, which was young for the Complaints. Tony Kaye’s notion was that Naysmith saw the job as a quick route towards management. The youngster flicked his head, trying to do something about the floppy fringe he was always being teased about.
‘So far, so good,’ Malcolm Fox said. He’d pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and was blowing his nose.
‘Drinks on you tonight, then?’
Over at his own desk, Tony Kaye had been listening. He leaned back in his chair, establishing eye contact with Fox.
‘Mind it’s nothing stronger than a milkshake for the wean. He’ll be after long trousers next.’
Naysmith turned and lifted a hand from its pocket just long enough to give Kaye the finger. Kaye puckered his lips and went back to his reading.
‘You’re not in the bloody playground,’ a fresh voice growled from the doorway. Chief Inspector Bob McEwan was standing there. He sauntered in and grazed his knuckles against Naysmith’s forehead.
‘Haircut, young Joseph - what’ve I told you?’
‘Sir,’ Naysmith mumbled, heading back to his desk. McEwan was studying his wristwatch.
‘Two bloody hours I was in that meeting.’
‘I’m sure a lot got done, Bob.’
McEwan looked at Fox. ‘Chief thinks there’s the whiff of something septic up in Aberdeen.’

Other books

Crucible by S. G. MacLean
A Breed of Heroes by Alan Judd
Athena's Ordeal by Sue London
The Amateurs by David Halberstam
Call of the Vampire by Twist, Gayla
Panic by Nick Stephenson
Wicked Little Sins by Holly Hood