Ian Rankin - The Complaints

‘How do I know you won’t go calling chat lines on my tab?’ was his reasoning.

There was a uniform in the room with him, standing to one side of the door. Doubtless this man would have been chosen for his gift of recall – every station had one. So Fox pretended to be texting instead of making calls. Thing was… who was he supposed to tell? Who could help him clamber out of the midden he’d nosedived into? So he just pushed buttons at random, hoping he was getting on the uniform’s nerves. It was a further ten minutes before the door opened. Giles was followed into the room by two other detectives. One of them was a woman in her thirties; Fox seemed to remember seeing her around the place when he’d been working on Heaton, but couldn’t recall if he was supposed to know her name.

The male detective was Jamie Breck.

It was the woman’s job to make sure the tapes were spooling, the recorder picking up their voices. She also checked that the camera’s little red light was flashing, then gave Giles the nod. He had seated himself opposite Fox. He placed a folder and a large envelope on the table between them. Fox resisted looking interested in either.

‘DS Breck,’ Giles said with a nod of the head. The nod was directed towards the empty chair next to Fox. Breck seated himself slowly, avoiding eye contact, and Fox realised that the pair of them were in the selfsame mess. They sat side by side, with Giles across the desk from them like a headmaster with a pair of truants, and the woman officer replacing the uniform by the door.

‘Where do I start?’ Giles muttered, almost to himself. He was running his fingers over the folder and the envelope. Then he looked up, as though he’d just had an idea. ‘How about the pictures? Camera never lies and all that…’ He tipped the contents of the envelope on to the table. There were dozens of photos. They’d come from a desktop printer, and weren’t of the best quality.

But good enough, all the same.

‘You’ll see the time and date on each one,’ Giles was saying, turning them around so Fox and Breck could view them more clearly. ‘That one’s you, DS Breck. You’re visiting Inspector Fox at his home. The two of you then took a little trip to a casino.’ Giles paused for effect. ‘Happens to be the same one Vince Faulkner visited the night he disappeared.’ He held up the appropriate photo. It was grainy, shot with a telephoto lens from some distance. Fox and Breck were depicted having their little word with the two doormen, prior to entering the Oliver. ‘What else have we got here?’ Giles made show of sifting through the photos again. ‘The pair of you at Salamander Point. DS Breck was there to gather information on our murder victim.’ Another pause. ‘Not sure why you were there, Inspector Fox. Hardly part of your remit as a member of Complaints and Conduct.’ Giles gave a little sniff. The man was loving every second, playing up to the camera and the microphone both. Fox thought back to the car – the two cars. He had his answer now. Even if you’re paranoid, he said to himself, it doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

‘Trying to influence the investigation, Inspector Fox?’ Giles was asking. ‘Barging in on the locus at your sister’s house?’

‘Her house isn’t a crime scene,’ Fox snapped back.

‘Until I say otherwise, that’s exactly what it is.’ The huge man’s voice was so calm, he could have been inhaling Prozac rather than oxygen.

‘That’s because you’re an arrogant prick.’ Fox decided a pause of his own was in order. ‘For the record,’ he concluded.

Giles took a few moments to shepherd his emotions back into the pen. ‘What were you doing when you were apprehended, Inspector?’

‘I was being a cop.’

‘You were in the office of the Oliver casino, viewing that venue’s CCTV footage for the night Vince Faulkner went missing.’

Fox could sense Jamie Breck’s disquiet at this news.

‘On whose authority did you go there?

‘Nobody’s.’

‘Did DS Breck tell you it would be all right? The pair of you had already been to that establishment not once, but twice.’ Giles sifted out another photo – Breck and Fox in daylight, standing beside Breck’s car just seconds before Joanna Broughton turned up.

‘This has nothing to do with DS Breck,’ Fox argued. ‘I went to Salamander Point on my own. It was coincidence he was there at the same time.’

Giles had turned his attention to Breck. ‘But you let the Inspector sit in on your interview with Mr Ronald Hendry?’

‘Yes,’ Breck admitted.

‘I outrank him,’ Fox began to explain. ‘I ordered him…’

‘Whether you did or you didn’t, here’s the thing…’ Giles opened the folder and produced a typed sheet. ‘DS Breck left that particular detail out of his account of the interview.’ Giles let the piece of paper fall on to the table. ‘And the night he came to your home – had you ordered him to put in an appearance?’ Giles allowed the silence to run its course. ‘Seems to me the two of you have become a bit too pally.’ He glared at Breck, while his finger stabbed in Fox’s direction. ‘He’s a suspect! You knew that! Since when do we get cosy with suspects?’

‘Glen Heaton did it often enough,’ Fox commented in an undertone.

Giles’s eyes were full of fire, his voice just about under control.

‘Listen to the hypocrisy of the man,’ he growled. Then he leaned back in his chair, rolling his shoulders and neck. ‘None of this looks good. Time was, maybe the force would have dealt with it in its own way…’ He pretended a rueful sigh. ‘But with all the checks and balances these days, the need to be whiter than white…’ He was staring straight at Fox. ‘Well… you of all people, Inspector, you know how it is.’ And he offered a shrug. Almost on cue, there was a knock at the door. The woman officer opened it, and two men entered. One was Chief Inspector Bob McEwan. The other was in uniform, carrying his peaked hat tucked beneath one arm.

‘A bloody disgrace!’ were the man’s opening words. Giles had risen to his feet, as had Breck and Fox. It was what you did when the Deputy Chief Constable announced his presence. And he did have presence. He’d stuck it out at Lothian and Borders while rejecting the advances of other forces; stuck it out while several Chief Constables had been promoted over him or drafted in from outside. His name was Adam Traynor and he was ruddy-cheeked, steely-eyed, tall and barrel-chested. ‘A copper’s copper’ was the consensus; admired by the lower ranks as well as the higher-ups. Fox had met the man several times. Minor cases of misconduct could be dealt with by the DCC. Only the more serious cases had to go to the Procurator Fiscal.

‘Disgrace,’ Traynor was repeating to himself, while McEwan had eyes only for his errant employee. Fox remembered their conversation of that morning. Have things been quiet in my absence? McEwan had asked. As the grave, Fox had answered. Now Traynor’s attention turned to McEwan and Giles. ‘Your men,’ he was telling them, ‘will have to be suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry.’

‘Yes, sir,’ McEwan muttered.

‘Sir,’ Giles agreed.

‘Don’t fret,’ Traynor went on, half turning his head in the direction of Fox and Breck. ‘You’ll be on full pay.’

Giles’s eyes were on Fox too, and Fox knew what his nemesis was thinking: Just like Glen Heaton…

‘Excuse me,’ the woman officer interrupted. ‘We’re still taping…’

‘Then switch it off!’ Traynor roared. She did so, having first informed the microphone that the interview was ending at two fifty-seven p.m.

‘Internal inquiry, sir?’ Bob McEwan was asking.

‘Bit late for that, Bob – Grampian have had your man under surveillance these past four days.’ Traynor was sifting through the photographs on the table. ‘They’ll be the ones sorting it all out, same as we’d do for them if the tables were turned.’