The Complaints (57 page)

Read The Complaints Online

Authors: Ian Rankin

BOOK: The Complaints
4.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
‘He’s admitted it? Just like that?’
The Chief Constable offered a shrug. ‘On the understanding that we keep a few details to ourselves.’
‘In other words, we don’t go shouting from the rooftops that Traynor offered him a deal - if Grampian kept tabs on me, the Complaints in Edinburgh wouldn’t take on the Aberdeen inquiry?’
‘Something along those lines ... Look, I can appreciate you’re upset ...’
‘Not half as upset as me,’ McEwan interrupted, eyes on Fox. ‘You really thought I was behind all this?’
‘You’re not the one who was left out there as cannon-fodder,’ Fox muttered. He slumped back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. He was remembering something his father had said to him -
You’ve got to be careful ... Machinery ... it’s not to be trusted ...
Maybe the old boy hadn’t been so confused after all. The police force consisted of a series of connected mechanisms, any one of which could be tampered with, or become misaligned, or need patching up ...
‘Why did Traynor pull the Breck surveillance?’ he eventually asked. It was McEwan who answered.
‘Best guess is, he already had enough on both of you to kick you out of the park. The longer the Breck thing went on, the more suspicions it was bound to raise.’
‘Breck’s credit card payment to SEIL went back five weeks,’ Fox commented.
McEwan nodded. ‘This whole thing had been a while in the planning. Probably they were waiting to see if he’d notice it and query it.’
‘Or it could be that all they needed,’ Fox added, ‘was for Wishaw to know Jamie Breck
would
be kicked out of the park at some time, and so wouldn’t keep on nipping at his heels ...’ He thought for a moment. ‘Breck’s credit card details ...’
‘He worked alongside Glen Heaton,’ McEwan reminded him. ‘Heaton likes to know everything there is to know - no telling when it’ll come in handy.’
‘He copied out the details?’
McEwan offered a shrug. ‘Best guess,’ he offered. The Chief Constable looked from one man to the other, then pressed his hands to his knees, readying to rise to his feet.
‘It was Traynor?’ Fox asked. McEwan nodded.
‘Traynor,’ he agreed. ‘Heaton asked a favour, and Traynor saw a way to kill two birds.’
‘But when I accused you just now ... before you hauled the Chief in ... why didn’t you say something?’
‘Can’t a man have a bit of fun?’ Bob McEwan said. But then his face darkened. ‘Although you and me
will
be having words about those conclusions you jumped to.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Fox managed to reply, watching the Chief Constable head towards the door. ‘One thing, sir,’ he called out to him. ‘I think I’m owed ...’
Jim Byars paused. ‘
Owed?
’
‘Owed,’ Fox repeated. ‘I want Dickson and Hall taken down a peg.’
Byars looked to McEwan for an explanation. ‘They’re Billy Giles’s men,’ McEwan obliged.
‘They gave me a doing,’ Fox added, indicating what remained of the damage to his face.
‘I see,’ the Chief Constable said. Then, after a moment’s thought: ‘There
are
channels, you know?’
Fox made no answer, and it was left to McEwan to step in.
‘I think Malcolm knows that, sir,’ he told Byars. ‘He is the Complaints, after all ...’
32
Fox stopped for a double espresso at a Starbucks near Annie Inglis’s street. He hadn’t had any sleep at all. The café seemed to comprise students with essay deadlines and mothers who’d just dropped their children at day-care. The background music was 1980s electro-pop. Fox took a stool next to the door and watched cars queuing at the Holy Corner junction. The caffeine didn’t seem to be having any immediate effect, but he decided against a refill. Besides, it was time.
He drove his car the hundred yards to Inglis’s tenement and sat there, waiting. As before, Duncan was the first to leave. Fox watched him trudge sleepily schoolwards, then got out of the Volvo and made for the tenement’s main door. He was about to press the buzzer marked Inglis when he heard footsteps descending the stone stairwell. He bided his time, and when the door was opened from within, Annie Inglis herself was standing there. Her eyebrows shot up when she saw him.
‘Malcolm!’ she gasped. ‘What in hell’s name ...?’
‘Have you heard?’ he asked.
‘Heard what?’ She looked him up and down. ‘Have you started sleeping rough?’
He ignored this, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Traynor’s career’s on its way to the knacker’s yard,’ he stated. ‘You need to be careful he doesn’t take you with him.’
She stared at him, saying nothing.
‘When Gilchrist got that call,’ Fox went on, repeating words he’d rehearsed time and again in his head, ‘the call telling him to pull the Breck surveillance ... it was you on the other end, wasn’t it?’
‘Malcolm ...’
‘You owe me this, Annie.’ He’d taken a step towards her so that their faces were only inches apart. She played with her bag’s shoulder strap. ‘You really do,’ he nudged her.
‘I didn’t know it was a set-up, Malcolm - you’ve got to believe that. Would I have given you that contact in the Melbourne police if I hadn’t trusted you?’
‘You were just following orders, is that it? But you were getting something in return, Annie - Gilchrist was going to be removed from the picture. That’s not the way it usually goes with orders.’ Fox was shaking his head. ‘If you didn’t know, you at least suspected ... and yet you still went along with it. That day I told Stoddart I was ill, I’m betting you volunteered to call me and check I wasn’t just pulling a fast one. That’s why you offered to come to the house - just to make doubly sure.’ It was Fox’s turn to look her up and down. ‘You’re some piece of work.’
‘I did as I was told.’ Her face showed that even to her own ears, this sounded weak.
‘ Traynor specified that you should get the Complaints to help you nail Jamie Breck. He gave you my name ...’ He paused. ‘Traynor, rather than Bob McEwan?’
‘Chief Inspector McEwan?’ Inglis’s eyebrows lifted a little. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’
Fox nodded slowly, then angled his head towards the sky. ‘You helped set two innocent men up for a fall,’ he told her. He lowered his head to stare at her again.
‘I really didn’t know...’
‘Inviting me to your flat - wasn’t that a bit of a risk? Did you just want to string me along, keep me sweet?’
‘Couldn’t it be that I just liked you - maybe wanted to warn you?’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘When I realised you’d looked in my file ...’
‘Yes?’
‘How could I know Adam hadn’t pencilled something there - or wouldn’t in future?’
‘Adam?’ Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean Traynor?’
‘There’s a bit of history there.’ She closed her eyes for a second. The silence stretched.
‘History?’ he eventually echoed, but she just shook her head. ‘And you did all of this without questioning, without Traynor needing to explain any of it?’
‘There was the evidence against Breck ...’
‘I’m talking about
me
, Annie. Traynor insisted it had to be
me
- and when I told you there might be a conflict, he got you to reel me back in again.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You never thought to ask him? My career starts hurtling down the hillside, and you do absolutely nothing?’
‘He told me you were a liability - that your friends in the Complaints were covering up for you ...’
‘Did you ever bother asking for proof? He watched her shake her head again. ‘Something to bear in mind for next time, then,’ he went on as he turned away from her. ‘A little bit of proof never hurts ...’
Unless it’s on the side of a bottle
.
 
 
He returned home and managed a couple of hours on the sofa with his eyes closed. He’d bought a roll of bin bags and was going to fill them with the various piles of books. The whole lot could go to a charity shop. After a shower and change of clothes, he felt at least half awake, though still numb. Jamie Breck had left messages on his mobile, but he didn’t feel like responding. Instead, he drove to Saughtonhall and picked up Jude.
‘Notice anything?’ she asked as she got into the car.
‘New jeans?’ he guessed.
‘They’ve taken the cast off,’ she corrected him, waving her arm in his face. ‘Should never have been on in the first place, according to the doctor who removed it.’ She looked at him. ‘Some detective you are.’
‘If only you knew, sis ...’
On the way to Lauder Lodge, he told her some of the story. She listened intently, tears leaking from her eyes. When he apologised for upsetting her, she told him it was all right. She needed to hear it.
‘All of it.’
He sat in reception while she visited the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face. The staff were going about their business - just like any other day.
Mitch Fox was waiting for them in Mrs Sanderson’s room, the two of them seated opposite one another as if they’d been friends all their lives. Jude kissed her father on his forehead.
‘Got rid of that cast,’ he commented approvingly.
‘You’re quicker than your son.’
Fox squeezed his father’s shoulder by way of greeting and pecked Audrey Sanderson on her powdered cheek.
‘Your cold’s cleared up,’ she told him.
‘Yours too.’ He turned towards his father. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask - have you still got money in the Dunfermline Building Society? Looks a bit ropy, from what I hear.’
‘The lad worries too much,’ Mrs Sanderson said with a chuckle.
‘You told me three fifteen,’ Mitch chided him, tapping his wrist, even though there was no watch there.
‘Traffic,’ Fox explained. ‘They need to get those roadworks at Portobello roundabout finished. And someone’s taken it into their head that this would be a good time to start replacing gas mains, as if the trams weren’t causing enough chaos. There’s a zebra crossing in the Grassmarket, seems to be taking them months to install it. Tourists will be in town soon, and God knows what they’ll make of it all. Bits of roof keep falling off buildings, according to the
Evening News
. City’s a deathtrap, the whole of Scotland’s in melt-down, and for all I know the rest of the world’s about to follow ...’ He broke off when he realised the other three people in the small room were looking at him.
‘Stop complaining,’ Fox’s father said into the silence, speaking for all of them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel,
Knots and Crosses
, was published in 1987, and his novels have since been translated into more than thirty languages and are bestsellers worldwide.
Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America’s celebrated Edgar Award for
Resurrection Men
. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Award in the USA, won Denmark’s
Palle Rosenkrantz
Prize, the French
Grand Prix du Roman Noir
and the
Deutscher Krimipreis
. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University.
A contributor to BBC2’s
Newsnight Review
, he also presented his own TV series,
Ian Rankin’s Evil Thoughts
. Rankin is a number one bestseller in the UK and has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.

Other books

The Circuit by Shepherd, Bob
Mourner by Richard Stark
Changing Teams by Jennifer Allis Provost
TherianPrey by Cyndi Friberg
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary