Ian Rankin - The Complaints

‘Got the charger?’ he asked his sister.

‘Upstairs landing.’

He gave the soup a stir, then headed for the stairs and brought the charger down, plugging it into the spare socket next to the kettle. When he attached it to the phone, a tiny pulsing green light came on. Fox left it while he poured the soup into a bowl and found a clean spoon. There was bread in a bag, but it had begun to go mouldy. He cut away the green bits and laid what was left on the edge of the bowl.

‘You’ll have to sit at the table for this,’ he said, sliding the coffee table closer to Jude’s chair. She swung her legs on to the floor and put her mug on the table.

‘I’m not really hungry,’ she warned him.

‘But you’re going to eat anyway.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’m grounding you, young lady.’ It was a passable imitation of their father, and Jude smiled again before picking up her spoon.

‘What’s so important about Vince’s phone?’

‘Just wondering if there’s anyone we’ve not talked to yet.’

‘The other ones… Giles and his lot… they went through all that.’

‘Maybe I just don’t think they’re as good as I am.’

She took her first mouthful of soup, savouring its aftertaste. ‘Know what this reminds me of?’ she said.

He nodded. ‘I was just thinking the same thing myself.’ He went back to the kitchen and switched on the phone.

‘His pass number’s four zeros,’ Jude called to him.

Figured: Vince was too lazy to change the default setting. On the other hand, maybe it also proved that he had little – if anything – to hide from Jude. Fox punched in the numbers. Vince’s screen-saver was a photograph from 1966. It showed Bobby Moore hoisting the World Cup. It took Fox a few moments to figure out how to navigate the phone, but eventually he got the call log. There were almost two hundred entries. He reckoned that Giles’s team would have been interested only in the most recent additions, but Fox went back further. He got a notepad from his pocket and started jotting down the numbers that recurred, adding date, time and duration. Some were listed by name – Jude, Ronnie, garage, Marooned, Oliver – but many weren’t.

‘How’s the soup?’ he asked Jude.

‘I ate it all up like a good girl.’ She had risen from her chair, bringing the empty bowl into the kitchen and depositing it in the sink. Then she leaned across and pecked him on the cheek.

‘What’s that for?’

‘I just felt like it.’ She studied the numbers on his pad.

‘Any of them look familiar?’ he asked.

‘Not really. You think maybe the person who…?’ She broke off, unable to finish the sentence. She cleared her throat and found a different form of words. ‘You think it was someone he knew?’

Fox shrugged. Some of the numbers appeared only once. He decided to try one at random and took out his own phone. The call was answered by a woman.

‘Wedgwood,’ she said in a sing-song voice.

‘Sorry?’

‘Wedgwood Restaurant.’

Fox ended the call and turned to Jude. ‘Wedgwood?’ he prompted.

She nodded. ‘We had dinner there in December.’ She smiled at the memory.

‘Just the two of you, or were the Hendrys in tow?’

‘Just the two of us – we did manage a social life without Sandra and Ronnie.’

Fox acknowledged this with a grunt. There was one number that appeared eleven times between October and January. He asked Jude again if she recognised it and she shook her head, so he made the call.

‘Hello?’ The voice was quiet, hesitant. It was a woman again, but not a stranger.

‘Ms Broughton?’ Fox asked. There was no answer. ‘This is Inspector Fox. I gave you a lift from Leith Police Station…’ It was a few more moments before she spoke.

‘Gordon Lovatt wasn’t very happy about that, Inspector. Did Charlie’s diary reach its destination?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did you take a peek?’

Fox took a deep breath. ‘Ms Broughton, I’m calling you from Vince Faulkner’s phone.’

‘Yes?’

‘You remember the name?’

‘You mentioned him. Then you went to my casino to watch the CCTV footage.’

‘From the Saturday night, yes. But what I’m wondering now is, why does he have your number, and why did the two of you speak on eleven separate occasions between October and January?’ The silence at the other end stretched past twenty seconds. Fox gave Jude a look to gauge her reaction. She placed her hand on his arm, as if to reassure him.

‘Ms Broughton?’ Fox prompted.

‘It’s not my phone,’ he heard her state. ‘It’s Charlie’s. The two of them must have been discussing work.’

Fox stared at his sister again. ‘Mr Faulkner was pretty low down the food chain.’

‘It’s the only explanation,’ Broughton said. Fox thought for a moment.

‘You’re keeping your husband’s phone switched on…’ There was another lengthy pause on the line.

‘In case people call. He had very many business contacts, Inspector. There’s a chance some of them don’t know what’s happened. ’

‘That makes sense, I suppose.’

‘You suppose?’

‘But there’s one thing that doesn’t,’ Fox went on. The silence stretched again.

‘And what’s that?’ Broughton eventually asked.

‘Why wasn’t the phone on the boat?’

‘It was on the boat,’ she growled. ‘It was returned to me afterwards. You understand that I’ll be telling Gordon Lovatt about this conversation? He’s bound to interpret it as further harassment.’

‘Tell him he can interpret it any way he likes. And thanks for speaking to me, Ms Broughton.’ Fox ended the call and placed the phone on the worktop.

‘So that’s what you’re like when you’re working,’ Jude commented. Fox gave a shrug. ‘Broughton as in Joanna Broughton?’ she went on. ‘The one who owns the Oliver?’

‘That’s her. Vince seems to have known her husband pretty well.’

‘He sent over champagne one night…’

‘Yes, he did. Did you ever see him talk to Vince?’

Jude nodded. ‘They spoke that night. And I think there was another time we bumped into him there…’ She looked at her brother. ‘Where do you think that money came from, Malcolm? Was Vince mixed up in something?’

Fox gave Jude’s good arm a squeeze, offering a smile but no words. She lingered a moment, then headed back to the living room and the television. Fox was thinking of his meeting with Joanna Broughton… the penthouse and its bare white walls… meeting Jack Broughton and Gordon Lovatt at the lift… sitting in the car with Charlie Brogan’s diary…

And did you take a peek?

Maybe not thoroughly enough. Pretty much all that he remembered were the TV shows Brogan kept tabs on. Jude was watching something on the television involving houses and warmer climes. Television… TV for short…

TV.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Fox said suddenly. Jude turned towards him.

‘Are you all right?’

He’d placed a hand to his head and his knees were just about holding. His other hand was grasping the edge of the worktop.

‘Bloody idiot,’ he muttered.

‘Malcolm?’

‘I’m an idiot, Jude – that’s all there is to it.’

‘Not better than Giles and his team?’

Fox shook his head, then wished he hadn’t. The room swam and he had to steady himself.

‘You look terrible,’ Jude was saying. ‘Can I do anything? When was the last time you ate?’

But Fox was making for the living-room door. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to go now.’

‘Is it about Vince? Tell me, Malcolm – is it?’

‘Maybe,’ was as much as Fox could manage to say.