Ian Rankin - The Complaints

‘You were just following orders, is that it? But you were getting something in return, Annie – Gilchrist was going to be removed from the picture. That’s not the way it usually goes with orders.’ Fox was shaking his head. ‘If you didn’t know, you at least suspected… and yet you still went along with it. That day I told Stoddart I was ill, I’m betting you volunteered to call me and check I wasn’t just pulling a fast one. That’s why you offered to come to the house – just to make doubly sure.’ It was Fox’s turn to look her up and down. ‘You’re some piece of work.’

‘I did as I was told.’ Her face showed that even to her own ears, this sounded weak.

‘ Traynor specified that you should get the Complaints to help you nail Jamie Breck. He gave you my name…’ He paused. ‘Traynor, rather than Bob McEwan?’

‘Chief Inspector McEwan?’ Inglis’s eyebrows lifted a little. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’

Fox nodded slowly, then angled his head towards the sky. ‘You helped set two innocent men up for a fall,’ he told her. He lowered his head to stare at her again.

‘I really didn’t know…’

‘Inviting me to your flat – wasn’t that a bit of a risk? Did you just want to string me along, keep me sweet?’

‘Couldn’t it be that I just liked you – maybe wanted to warn you?’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘When I realised you’d looked in my file…’

‘Yes?’

‘How could I know Adam hadn’t pencilled something there – or wouldn’t in future?’

‘Adam?’ Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean Traynor?’

‘There’s a bit of history there.’ She closed her eyes for a second. The silence stretched.

‘History?’ he eventually echoed, but she just shook her head. ‘And you did all of this without questioning, without Traynor needing to explain any of it?’

‘There was the evidence against Breck…’

‘I’m talking about me, Annie. Traynor insisted it had to be me – and when I told you there might be a conflict, he got you to reel me back in again.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You never thought to ask him? My career starts hurtling down the hillside, and you do absolutely nothing?’

‘He told me you were a liability – that your friends in the Complaints were covering up for you…’

‘Did you ever bother asking for proof? He watched her shake her head again. ‘Something to bear in mind for next time, then,’ he went on as he turned away from her. ‘A little bit of proof never hurts…’

Unless it’s on the side of a bottle.

He returned home and managed a couple of hours on the sofa with his eyes closed. He’d bought a roll of bin bags and was going to fill them with the various piles of books. The whole lot could go to a charity shop. After a shower and change of clothes, he felt at least half awake, though still numb. Jamie Breck had left messages on his mobile, but he didn’t feel like responding. Instead, he drove to Saughtonhall and picked up Jude.

‘Notice anything?’ she asked as she got into the car.

‘New jeans?’ he guessed.

‘They’ve taken the cast off,’ she corrected him, waving her arm in his face. ‘Should never have been on in the first place, according to the doctor who removed it.’ She looked at him. ‘Some detective you are.’

‘If only you knew, sis…’

On the way to Lauder Lodge, he told her some of the story. She listened intently, tears leaking from her eyes. When he apologised for upsetting her, she told him it was all right. She needed to hear it.

‘All of it.’

He sat in reception while she visited the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face. The staff were going about their business – just like any other day.

Mitch Fox was waiting for them in Mrs Sanderson’s room, the two of them seated opposite one another as if they’d been friends all their lives. Jude kissed her father on his forehead.

‘Got rid of that cast,’ he commented approvingly.

‘You’re quicker than your son.’

Fox squeezed his father’s shoulder by way of greeting and pecked Audrey Sanderson on her powdered cheek.

‘Your cold’s cleared up,’ she told him.

‘Yours too.’ He turned towards his father. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask – have you still got money in the Dunfermline Building Society? Looks a bit ropy, from what I hear.’

‘The lad worries too much,’ Mrs Sanderson said with a chuckle.

‘You told me three fifteen,’ Mitch chided him, tapping his wrist, even though there was no watch there.

‘Traffic,’ Fox explained. ‘They need to get those roadworks at Portobello roundabout finished. And someone’s taken it into their head that this would be a good time to start replacing gas mains, as if the trams weren’t causing enough chaos. There’s a zebra crossing in the Grassmarket, seems to be taking them months to install it. Tourists will be in town soon, and God knows what they’ll make of it all. Bits of roof keep falling off buildings, according to the Evening News. City’s a deathtrap, the whole of Scotland’s in melt-down, and for all I know the rest of the world’s about to follow…’ He broke off when he realised the other three people in the small room were looking at him.

‘Stop complaining,’ Fox’s father said into the silence, speaking for all of them.

Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, was published in 1987, and his novels have since been translated into more than thirty languages and are bestsellers worldwide.

Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America ’s celebrated Edgar Award for Resurrection Men. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Award in the USA, won Denmark ’s Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University.

A contributor to BBC2’s Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin’s Evil Thoughts. Rankin is a number one bestseller in the UK and has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.