Ian Rankin - The Complaints

‘I think maybe it would be wise,’ she said on cue, ‘if I brought forward my interview with DS Breck.’

‘To when?’ Breck asked.

‘Directly after this meeting.’

He offered a shrug. ‘Fine by me.’

‘Wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t,’ Giles snapped back. ‘And afterwards, I’m ordering the pair of you to cease communication.’

‘And how are you going to enforce that?’ Fox asked. ‘Have us tagged, maybe? Or kept under surveillance?’ As he said this, he glanced in McEwan’s direction.

‘I’ll use whatever methods I think necessary,’ Giles growled. Then, for Breck’s benefit: ‘You’re not doing your prospects much good, son – it’s high time you saw sense!’

‘Yes, sir,’ Jamie Breck replied. ‘Thank you, sir.’ Fox gave him a look, but Breck wasn’t about to make eye contact. He was standing with his hands behind his back, feet slightly apart, head bowed in a show of contrition. ‘And just to reiterate, sir,’ Breck went on, ‘I’d be more than happy to pay whatever compensation’s warranted for DS Dickson’s distress.’ He then leaned past Fox, hand stretched out towards Dickson. Dickson stared at the hand as if it might be booby-trapped.

‘Good man,’ Giles said by way of encouragement, leading Dickson to accept the handshake, but with a baleful stare directed at Fox.

‘Well then…’ Giles was half rising to his feet. ‘Unless Chief Inspector McEwan has anything to add?’

But McEwan didn’t, and neither did Stoddart. She was telling Breck she had a car waiting outside. Their little chat would take place at Fettes. Giles had already ordered Hall and Dickson back to work. ‘We’ve a case to clear up,’ he reminded them.

Fox waited to see if there’d be any further admonishment, but Giles was removing some paperwork from his desk drawer. You’re not important enough, he seemed to be telling Fox. Jamie Breck offered him the briefest of nods as he left.

Fox moved swiftly through the station, not knowing if Dickson and Hall might be ready to spring out at him. When he reached the pavement, Bob McEwan was standing there, knotting his coffee-coloured scarf around his neck.

‘You’re a bloody idiot,’ McEwan told him.

‘It’s hard to deny it,’ Fox offered, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. ‘But something’s behind all this – don’t tell me you don’t feel it too.’

McEwan looked at him, then gave a single, slow nod of the head.

‘That time in the interview room,’ Fox pressed on, gesturing towards the police station, ‘there was a moment where we caught sight of it. The Deputy Chief said I’d been under surveillance most of the week. But that means it was in place before any of this other stuff. So I’m asking you, sir…’ Fox planted himself firmly in front of his boss. ‘How much do you know?’

McEwan stared back at him. ‘Not much,’ he eventually conceded, adjusting the knot in his scarf.

‘Not too tight, Bob,’ Fox advised him. ‘If you end up strangling yourself, they’re bound to find a way to pin it on me.’

‘You’ve not done yourself any favours, Malcolm. Look at it from their point of view. You’ve interfered in an inquiry, and when ordered to stop you seemed to push your foot to the pedal that bit harder.’

‘Grampian Complaints already had me in their sights,’ Fox stressed. ‘Is there any way you can look into that?’ He paused. ‘I know I’m asking a lot under the circumstances…’

‘I’ve already set the ball rolling.’

Fox looked at him. ‘I forgot,’ he said, ‘you have friends in Grampian CID.’

‘I seem to remember telling you that I’ve friends nowhere.’

Fox thought for a moment. ‘Say that there is something rotten in Aberdeen. Could they be trying for a pre-emptive strike?’

‘It’s doubtful. The job I mentioned up there has gone to Strathclyde instead of us. And besides – why pick on you? If I were them, I’d have zeroed in on Tony Kaye. He’s the one with the history.’ McEwan paused. ‘Are you going to heed the warning and keep away from Breck?’

‘I’d rather not answer that, sir.’ Fox watched his boss’s face cloud over. ‘I think he’s being set up, Bob. There’s not a shred of evidence that he’s got inclinations that way.’

‘Then how did his name end up on the list?’

‘Someone got hold of his credit card,’ Fox said with a shrug. ‘Maybe you could ask DS Inglis if that’s possible. Could someone have signed up in Breck’s name without his knowledge?’ Fox broke off and held up a cautionary hand. ‘Best if Gilchrist doesn’t know, though.’

McEwan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘The fewer the better,’ Fox offered.

McEwan shuffled his feet. ‘Give me a single good reason why I should go out on a limb for you.’

Fox considered this, then gave another shrug. ‘To be honest, sir, I can’t actually think of one.’

McEwan nodded slowly. ‘That’s the word I was looking for.’

‘What word, sir?’

‘Honest,’ Bob McEwan said as he marched towards his car.

Home felt like a cage. Fox did everything but dismantle the landline to look for bugs. Thing was, that was straight out of The Ipcress File. These days, you eavesdropped in other ways. A couple of months back, the Complaints had attended a series of seminars at Tulliallan Police College. They’d been shown various bits of new technology. A suspect might be making a phone call, but it was software doing the listening, and it would only start to record if certain pre-programmed keywords came up. Same went for computers – the gadgets in the van could isolate an individual laptop or hard drive and withdraw information from it. Fox kept walking over to the windows and peering out. If he heard a car engine, he’d be at the window again. He held his new phone in his hand, wondering who he could call. He’d made toast, but the slices sat untouched on their plate. When had he last eaten something? Breakfast? He still couldn’t summon up any appetite. He’d made a start at replacing the books on the living-room shelves, but had given up after the first few minutes. Even the Birdsong channel had begun to annoy him, and he’d switched the radio off. As night fell, his lights remained off, too. There was a car parked across the street, but it was just a parent picking up her son from a friend’s house. The same thing had happened before, so he decided he could dismiss it. Then again… He tried to recall if any of the houses nearby had come on the market recently. Had any ‘To Let’ signs come and gone? Could a surveillance team be sitting in its own darkened living room, surrounded by the same equipment he’d been shown at Tulliallan?

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he admonished himself.

Making a mug of tea in the unlit kitchen, he poured in too much milk, and ended up tipping the drink down the sink. Drink… now there was a thing. The supermarket was open late. He could almost recite from memory the bottles in its malt whisky display: Bowmore, Talisker, Highland Park… Macallan, Glenmorangie, Glenlivet… Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Glenfiddich…

At half past eight, his phone gave a momentary chirrup. He stared at it. Not a call, but a text. He tried to focus on the screen.

Hunters Tryst 10 mins.

Hunters Tryst was a pub nearby. Fox checked the texter’s identity: Anonymous Caller. Only a handful of people had his new number. The pub was a ten-minute walk, but there was parking. Then again, it might be good to arrive early: reconnaissance and all that. And why was he going anyway?

Well, what else was he going to do?

But when he eventually headed out to the Volvo, he looked up and down the street, then, once in the car, made a circuit of his estate, slowing at every corner and junction, until he was confident no one was following.