Ian Rankin: The Impossible Dead

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here this morning,’ she began. ‘I was hoping the two of us might have had this discussion before your work began.’ It sounded like a prepared speech, because that was what it was. Pitkethly probably had friends at HQ in Glenrothes, and had gone there for a bit of advice on dealing with the Complaints. Fox could have written the script for her. Most cases, someone up the chain of command would invite him to their office and tell him the same thing.

This is a good crew here.

We’ve got work to do.

It’s in nobody’s interest that officers are kept back from their duties.

Naturally, no one wants a whitewash.

But all the same…

‘So if any concerns could be brought to me in the first instance

…’ Colour had risen to Pitkethly’s cheeks. Fox wondered how elated she’d been when promotion had come, when she’d been offered her own station to run. And now this.

She’d been told what to say, but hadn’t had time for a rehearsal. Her voice drifted off and she started to clear her throat, almost bringing on a fit of coughing. Fox liked her all the better for this apparent awkwardness. He realised she’d maybe called in no favours, but had been summoned to Glenrothes.

Here’s what you have to get through to him, Superintendent…

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked. ‘Some water?’ But she waved the offer away. He leaned forward a little in his chair. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, ‘we’ll try to be discreet. And quick. That doesn’t mean we’ll be cutting corners – I promise you we’ll be thorough. And we can’t give you any tip-offs. Our report goes to your Chief Constable. It’s up to him what he does with it.’

She had managed to compose herself. She was nodding, her eyes focused on his.

‘We’re not in the business of making waves,’ he went on. This, too, was a speech he’d made many times, in rooms much like this. ‘We just want the truth. We want to know procedures were followed and no one thinks they’re somehow above the law. If you can help us get that message across to your officers, that would be great. If there’s a room we could use as a base, so much the better. It needs to be lockable, and I’ll need all the keys. I’m hoping we’ll be out of your hair in a week.’

He decided not to add ‘or two’.

‘A week,’ she echoed. He couldn’t decide if this was coming as good or bad news to her.

‘I was told this morning that DS Haldane’s on sick leave…’

‘Flu,’ she confirmed.

‘Flu, palsy or plague, we need him for interview.’

She nodded again. ‘I’ll make sure he knows.’

‘A bit of local knowledge might be useful, too – just where we can get a decent lunch or sandwich. But nowhere your officers would go.’

‘I’ll have a think.’ She was getting to her feet, signalling the end of the meeting. Fox stayed in his seat.

‘Did you ever have an inkling about DC Carter?’

It took her a few moments to decide whether she was going to answer, at the end of which she shook her head.

‘None of the women working here…?’ he pressed.

‘What?’

‘Gossip in the toilets… warnings of wandering hands…’

‘Nothing,’ she stated.

‘Never any doubts?’

‘None,’ she said firmly, crossing to the door and holding it open for him. Fox took his time; gave her a little smile as he passed her. Kaye and Naysmith were waiting for him at the end of the corridor.

‘Well?’ Kaye asked.

‘Much as expected.’

‘Michaelson might be around – want him next?’

Fox shook his head. ‘Let’s go back into town, grab a bite, drive around a bit.’

‘Just to get a feel for the place?’ Kaye guessed.

‘Just to get a feel for the place,’ Fox confirmed.

Kirkcaldy boasted a railway station, a football club, a museum and art gallery, and a college named after Adam Smith. There were streets of solid, prosperous-looking Victorian villas, some of which had been turned into offices and businesses. Further out were housing schemes, some of them so recent there were still plots waiting to be sold. A couple of parks, at least two high schools, and some 1960s high-rises. The dialect was not impenetrable, and shoppers stopped to talk to each other outside the bakeries and newsagents.

‘I’m nodding off here,’ Tony Kaye commented at one point. He was in his own car’s passenger seat, Joe Naysmith driving and Fox in the back. Lunch had comprised filled rolls and packets of crisps. Fox had called their boss in Edinburgh to make an initial report. The call had lasted no more than three minutes.

‘So?’ Kaye asked, turning in his seat to make eye contact with Fox.

‘I like it,’ Fox answered, staring at the passing scene.

‘Shall I tell you what I see, Foxy? I see people who should be at work this time of day. Scroungers and the walking wounded, coffin-dodgers, jakeys and ASBOs.’

Joe Naysmith had started humming the tune to ‘What a Wonderful World’.

‘Every car we’ve passed,’ Kaye went on, undeterred, ‘the driver’s either a drug dealer or he’s hot-wired it. The pavements need hosing down and so do half the kids. It tells you all you need to know about a place when the biggest shop seems to be called Rejects.’ He paused for effect. ‘And you’re telling me you like it?’

‘You’re seeing what you want to see, Tony, and then letting your imagination run riot.’

Kaye turned to Naysmith. ‘And as for you, you weren’t even born when that song came out, so you can shut it.’

‘My mum had the record. Well, the cassette anyway. Or maybe the CD.’

Kaye was looking at Fox again. ‘Can we please go back and ask our questions, get whatever answers they want to dump on us, and then vamoose the hell out of here?’

‘When did CDs start appearing? Naysmith asked.

Kaye punched him on the shoulder.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Cruelty to my gearbox. Have you ever even driven a car before?’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘You win. Joe, take us back to the station.’

‘Left or right at the next junction?’

‘Enough’s enough,’ Tony Kaye said, making to open the glove box. ‘I’m plugging in the satnav.’

Detective Sergeant Gary Michaelson had grown up in Greenock but lived in Fife since the age of eighteen. He’d attended Adam Smith College, then done his police training at Tulliallan. He was three years younger than Ray Scholes, married, and had two daughters.

‘Schools here good?’ Fox had asked him.

‘Not bad.’

Michaelson was happy to talk about Fife and Greenock and family, but when the subject turned to Detective Constable Paul Carter, he offered as little as Scholes before him.

‘If I didn’t know better,’ Fox commented at one point, ‘I’d say you’d been put through your paces.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Coached in what not to say – coached by DI Scholes, maybe…’

‘Not true,’ Michaelson had insisted.

It was also untrue that he had altered or deleted notes he had taken during an interview conducted both at the home of Teresa Collins and in the very same interview room where they were now seated. Fox recited part of Teresa Collins’s testimony:

‘You can charge me with anything you like, Paul. Just don’t think you’re putting your hands on me again. She didn’t say that?’

‘No.’

‘Verdict suggests otherwise.’

‘Not much I can do about that.’

‘But there was a bit of personal history between Carter and Ms Collins. You can’t have been unaware of it.’

‘She says there was a history.’

‘Neighbours saw him coming and going.’

‘Half of them known to us, by the way.’