Ian Rankin: The Impossible Dead

Just under an hour later, he was in his car and heading for his home in Oxgangs. There was a supermarket almost on his doorstep, and he stopped long enough to grab a microwave curry and a bottle of Appletiser, plus the evening paper. The story on the front page concerned a drug dealer who had just been found guilty and sent to jail. Fox knew the detective who had led the inquiry – he’d been the subject of a Complaints investigation two years back. Now he was smiling for the cameras, job done.

How come you hate cops so much? The question Scholes had asked. Time was, CID could cut corners and be sure of getting away with it. Fox’s task was to stop them doing that. Not for ever and a day – in a year or two he would be back in CID himself, rubbing shoulders with those he had scrutinised; trying to put drug dealers behind bars without bending the rules, fearful of the Complaints and coming to despise them. He had begun to wonder if he could do that – work with officers who knew his past; work what everyone regarded as ‘proper’ cases…

He stuffed the newspaper into the bottom of his basket, covered by his other purchases.

The bungalow was in darkness. He’d thought of buying one of those timers that brought a light on at dusk, but knew this was no real deterrent to housebreakers. He had little enough worth stealing: TV and computer, after which they’d be looking around in vain. A couple of homes near him had been broken into in the past month. He’d even had a police constable on his doorstep, asking if he’d seen or heard anything. Fox hadn’t bothered identifying himself as a fellow officer. He’d just shaken his head and the constable had nodded and headed elsewhere.

Going through the motions.

Six minutes, the curry took. Fox found a news channel on the TV and turned the sound up. The world seemed to be filled with war, famine and natural disasters. An earthquake here, a tornado there. A climate-change expert was being interviewed. He was warning that viewers needed to get used to these phenomena, to floods and droughts and heatwaves. The interviewer managed somehow to hand back to the studio with a smile. Maybe once he was off air, he would start running around pulling out clumps of his hair and screaming, but Fox doubted it. He pressed the interactive button on the remote and scanned the Scottish headlines. There was nothing new on the explosion outside Lockerbie; the Alert Status at Fettes had been MODERATE, same as at Kirkcaldy. Lockerbie: as if that benighted spot hadn’t seen enough in its history… Fox flipped to a sports channel and watched the darts as he ate the remainder of his meal.

He was just finishing when his phone started ringing. It was his sister Jude.

‘What’s up?’ he asked her. They took it in turns to call. It was his turn, not hers.

‘I’ve just been to see Dad.’ He heard her sniff back a tear.

‘Is he okay?’

‘He keeps forgetting things.’

‘I know.’

‘One of the carers told me he didn’t make it to the toilet in time this morning. They’ve put him in a pad.’

Fox closed his eyes.

‘And sometimes he forgets my name or what year it is.’

‘He has good days too, Jude.’

‘How would you know? Just because you pick up the bills doesn’t mean you can walk away!’

‘Who’s walking away?’

‘I never see you there.’

‘You know that’s not true. I visit when I can.’

‘Not nearly enough.’

‘We can’t all lead lives of leisure, Jude.’

‘You think I’m not looking for a job?’

Fox squeezed his eyes shut again: walked into that one, Malc. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘It’s exactly what you meant!’

‘Let’s not get into this, eh?’

There was silence on the line for a few moments. Jude sighed and began speaking again. ‘I took him a box of photographs today. Thought maybe the pair of us could go through them. But they just seemed to upset him. He kept saying, “They’re all dead. How can everyone be dead?”’

‘I’ll go see him, Jude. Don’t worry about it. Maybe the thing to do is phone ahead, and if the staff don’t think it’s worth a visit that day-’

‘That’s not what I’m saying!’ Her voice rose again. ‘You think I mind visiting him? He’s our dad.’

‘I know that. I was just…’ He paused, then asked the question he felt was expected of him. ‘Do you want me to come over?’

‘It’s not me you need to go see.’

‘You’re right.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Even though you’re busy?’

‘Soon as I’m off the phone,’ Fox assured her.

‘And you’ll get back to me? Tell me what you think?’

‘I’m sure he’s fine, Jude.’

‘You want him to be – that way he’s not on your conscience.’

‘I’m putting the phone down now, Jude. I’m putting the phone down and heading out to see Dad…’

The staff of Lauder Lodge, however, had other ideas.

It was past nine when Fox got there. He could hear a TV blaring in the lounge. Lots of people coming and going – looked like a shift changeover.

‘Your father’s in bed,’ Fox was told. ‘He’ll be asleep.’

‘Then I won’t wake him. I just want to see him for a minute.’

‘We try not to disturb clients once they’re in bed.’

‘Didn’t he used to stay up for the ten o’clock news?’

‘That was then.’

‘Is he on any new medication? Anything I don’t know about?’

The woman took a moment to weigh up whether an accusation was being made, then gave a resigned sigh. ‘Just a minute, you say?’ Fox nodded, and she nodded back. Anything for a quiet life…

Mitch Fox’s room was in a new annexe to the side of the original Victorian property. Fox walked past a room that had, until a couple of months back, been home to Mrs Sanderson. Mrs Sanderson and Fox’s father had become firm friends during their time in Lauder Lodge. Fox had helped Mitch attend her funeral, no more than a dozen people in the crematorium chapel. No one had come from her family, because no family had been traced. There was a new name next to the door of her old room: D. Nesbitt. Fox got the feeling that if he peeled away that sticker, there’d be another underneath bearing Mrs Sanderson’s name, and maybe another beneath that.

He didn’t bother knocking on his father’s door, just turned the handle and crept in. The curtains were closed and the light was off, but there was a good amount of illumination from the street lamp outside. Fox could make out his father’s form under the duvet. He had almost reached the bedside chair when a dry voice asked what time it was.

‘Twenty past,’ Fox told his father.

‘Twenty past what?’

‘Nine.’

‘So what brings you here, then?’ Mitch Fox turned on the lamp and started to sit up. His son moved forward to help him. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Jude was a bit worried.’ Fox saw that the shoebox full of old family photos was on the chair. He lifted it and sat down, resting it on his knees. His father’s hair, wispy, almost like a baby’s, had a yellowish tinge. His face was thinner than ever, the skin resembling parchment. But the eyes seemed clear and untroubled.

‘We both know your sister likes her little dramas. What’s she been telling you?’

‘Just that your memory’s not what it was.’

‘Whose is?’ Mitch nodded towards the shoebox. ‘Because I couldn’t tell her the exact spot where some photo was taken fifty-odd years ago?’

Fox opened the lid of the box and lifted out a handful of snaps. Some had writing on the back: names, dates, places. But there were question marks, too. Lots of question marks… and something that looked like a tear stain. Fox rubbed a finger across it, then turned the photo over. His mother dandled a child on either knee. She was seated on the edge of a rockery.