Ian Rankin - The Complaints

Fox paused with his hand on the handle.

‘Said he was looking for Vince,’ Jude went on. ‘I told him I didn’t know where he was. Closed the door on him and that was that.’

‘You didn’t know him?’

Jude shook her head. ‘Tall guy, dark hair. I went to the window and watched him leave, but all I saw was his back.’

‘Did he get into a car?’

‘Maybe…’

‘You told Giles this?’

She shook her head again. ‘Mad as it seems, I wasn’t in the mood. Maybe you could tell him instead?’

‘Sure. One thing, though, Jude…’

‘What?’

‘Was Vince in any sort of trouble? Maybe he’d been on a shorter fuse than usual?’

She considered this, holding the shirt up to her nose. ‘He was just Vince,’ she told Fox. ‘Always will be. But Malcolm…?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you know about the convictions?’ She watched him as he gave a slow nod of the head. ‘You never told me.’

‘By the time I found out, he was already dead.’

‘You could still have told me. Better to hear it from you than that vile man.’

‘Yes,’ Fox agreed. ‘Sorry, sis. But how about you? Did you really not know?’

It was Jude’s turn to shake her head. ‘Doesn’t matter now,’ she said, her attention drifting back to her dead lover’s shirt. ‘Nothing matters now…’

At Fettes, there was a message that DS Inglis wanted to see him.

‘She delivered it herself,’ Tony Kaye teased as Fox read the note. ‘Tidy body on her…’

‘Where’s the boss?’ Fox asked.

‘Knocked off early; says he’s got a speech to write.’ When Fox looked at him, Kaye just shrugged. ‘Some conference in Glasgow.’

‘Methods of Policing an Expected Surge in Civil Unrest,’ Joe Naysmith recited. ‘All down to the credit crunch, apparently.’

Kaye tutted. ‘They’ll be lynching bankers next.’

‘What’s that got to do with the Complaints?’ Fox asked.

‘If our lads go in a bit too hard at the protesters,’ Kaye explained, ‘might end up coming to us.’ He had risen from his desk and was moving towards Fox’s. ‘Good to see you escaped unscathed – kept you there long enough.’

‘Bad Billy Giles was doing his Torquemada impression.’

‘Only to be expected. How’s your sister bearing up?’

‘Fine, so far. I went to see her after Torphichen.’

‘Did you learn anything?’

‘Faulker had a run-in with some rugby fans Saturday night.’

‘Oh?’

‘Seemed to peter out.’

‘All the same… Is that the last sighting?’ Kaye watched his colleague nod. ‘And Jude’s been interviewed?’

‘By both Giles and Jamie Breck.’

‘Did she have anything to tell them?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Fox was pinching the bridge of his nose. He wished the head cold would either explode into life or else burn itself out. At the moment, all it was doing was shadowing him like a stalker.

‘Are you going to go see the talent?’

‘What?’ Fox looked up at Kaye.

‘The Chop Shop glamour puss.’ Kaye gestured towards the note. ‘I can always nip along on your behalf, pass on a message.’

‘It’s fine,’ Fox said, getting back to his feet. Kaye shrugged and turned away.

‘Hey, Starbuck,’ he called to Joe Naysmith, ‘get the coffee on…’

Fox walked the short distance to the CEOP office and pressed the buzzer. Annie Inglis herself opened the door. Just an inch at first, checking it was him. She beamed a smile and ushered him inside. DC Gilchrist nodded a greeting. The blinds were drawn against the low mid-afternoon sun.

‘I haven’t got long,’ Fox warned Inglis.

‘Just wondered how things were.’ She held her hand out towards the same chair he’d taken on his first visit. He sat down opposite her, their knees brushing for a moment. She was dressed in a skirt and black tights, and an open-necked white blouse with a string of pearls around her neck. The pearls looked old; maybe some sort of heirloom.

‘Things are fine,’ he said. Gilchrist, his back to them, was lifting the casing from a hard drive, peering inside for anything of interest.

‘Our opposite numbers in Melbourne are readying to jump the gun,’ Inglis said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘The cop down there, the one I showed you…’ She indicated her desk monitor. ‘They’re worried he has friends on the force, meaning he’ll find out we’re on to him.’

‘They’re getting ready to question him?’

Inglis nodded. ‘We might lose any number of his UK clients.’

‘The ones who’ve coughed up the cash,’ Gilchrist added without looking up, ‘but not the rest of the joining fee. They’ll have to be let off with a caution.’

‘Breck still hasn’t sent any pictures?’

Inglis shook her head. ‘Hasn’t posted anything on the group’s message board either.’ She paused. ‘This has happened before – information gets leaked, leaving plenty of time for evidence to disappear or be tampered with.’

‘But you’ve got the evidence.’ It was Fox’s turn to gesture towards the monitor.

‘We’ve just scratched the surface, Malcolm.’

‘Tip of the iceberg,’ Gilchrist agreed as he started to dismantle the drive unit. ‘What we could really do with…’ he seemed to be talking to himself, ‘…is access to the suspect’s home computer.’

Fox looked at Inglis. She was staring back at him. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘we’d have to apply for a search-and-seize. Breck’s bound to have a friend somewhere in the system who might be tempted to alert him.’

‘You on the other hand,’ Gilchrist added, still seemingly intent on his task, ‘can do a bit of breaking and entering – and all of it above board. The Complaints have got powers beyond us mere mortals.’

‘I thought it was general background you wanted?’

‘A bit of evidence would be nice,’ Inglis mused.

‘We’d get a gold star from London,’ her colleague continued.

‘Is that what this is about?’ Fox asked. ‘Impressing the big kids?’

‘You want them to think we’re all amateurs north of the border?’ Inglis waited for a response, which didn’t come. ‘He’ll have a store of images at home – either on his hard drive or a memory stick,’ she continued quietly but determinedly. ‘Even if he’s transferred them, they’ll have left traces.’

‘Traces?’ Fox echoed.

She nodded slowly. ‘It’s like forensics, Malcolm – everyone leaves a bit of a trail.’

‘Or a trail of bits,’ Gilchrist added, in what Fox assumed was a private joke. Inglis certainly offered her colleague a smile. Fox leaned back in his chair, thinking of the trail Tony Kaye had left on the PNC.

‘Nice line of patter the two of you have got. All for my benefit, or is it a tried and tested routine?’

‘Whatever it takes,’ Inglis said.

‘Thing is, though,’ he told her, ‘we don’t just go breaking into people’s homes without okaying it first.’

‘But permission can be granted retrospectively,’ Inglis stated.

‘It has to be justified to the Surveillance Commissioner,’ Fox cautioned.

‘Eventually,’ Inglis agreed. ‘As far as I understand it, in emergencies you’re allowed to act first and consult later.’

‘But this isn’t my case,’ Fox said quietly. ‘I’m not the one investigating Jamie Breck. In point of fact, he could argue that he’s investigating me. And how’s that going to look?’

There was silence in the room for a moment. ‘Not great,’ Inglis eventually conceded. The glimmer of hope had vanished from her eyes. She looked to Gilchrist, and received a shrug in reply.

‘We had to try,’ she told Fox.

‘We hate to lose one,’ Gilchrist added, tossing a small screwdriver on to the desk.