The Complaints (36 page)

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Authors: Ian Rankin

BOOK: The Complaints
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‘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.
A week night in February: the Tryst was quiet. He walked in and took a good look around. Three drinkers in the whole place: a middle-aged couple who looked as if they’d fallen out a decade before, each still waiting for the other to offer the first apology; and an elderly man whose face was known to Fox. The guy had owned a dog, used to walk it three times a day. When he’d stopped being visible, Fox had assumed he’d croaked, but now it looked as if the dog had been the victim rather than its master. There was a young woman behind the bar. She managed a smile for Fox and asked him what he was having.
‘Tomato juice,’ he said. His eyes lingered on the row of optics as she shook the bottle and prised off its top.
‘Ice?’
‘No thanks.’
‘It’s a bit warm,’ she warned him.
‘It’ll be fine.’ He was reaching into his pocket for some coins when the door opened again. The couple who entered had their arms around one another’s waist. The middle-aged couple gave a disapproving look.
‘Look who’s here,’ the male half of this new couple said. Breck held out his hand for Fox to shake.
‘This is a coincidence,’ Annabel Cartwright added. She wasn’t much of an actress, but then maybe she thought the charade unnecessary.
‘What are you having?’ Fox asked.
‘Red wine for me, white for Annabel,’ Breck said. The barmaid had perked up at the arrival of customers with a bit of life to them. She poured what seemed to Fox’s eye generous measures.
‘Let’s grab a table,’ Breck said, as though chairs were at a premium. They headed for the furthest corner, and got themselves settled, removing coats and jackets. ‘Cheers,’ Breck said, chinking glasses.
‘How was it?’ Fox asked him without preamble.
Breck knew what he was referring to and pretended to give it some thought. ‘DI Stoddart’s a piece of work,’ he told Fox, keeping his voice low, ‘but I didn’t think much of those two blokes she’s saddled with - and I don’t think she reckons them much cop either ... if you’ll pardon the pun.’
Fox nodded and took a sip of his drink. The barmaid had been right: it was like soup that had been left to cool for a few minutes. ‘What’s with the text?’ he asked. ‘You changed your number?’
‘New phone,’ Breck explained, waving the handset in his face. ‘Rental, believe it or not. Visitors from the States and suchlike use them all the time. I’d no idea till I started looking...’
‘What he means is, he asked me and
I
told him.’ Annabel Cartwright gave Breck’s arm a playful punch.
‘So what’s with the pow-wow?’ Fox asked.
‘Again, that was Annabel’s idea,’ Breck said.
She looked at him. ‘I wouldn’t go that far...’
Breck turned to face her. ‘Maybe not, but you’re the one with the news.’
‘What news?’ Fox asked.
Cartwright looked from Fox to Breck and back again. ‘I could get in so much trouble for this.’
‘That’s true,’ Fox said. Then, to Breck: ‘So why don’t
you
tell me, Jamie? That way, we can say hand on heart that the only person Annabel told was her boyfriend.’
Breck thought for a moment and then nodded. He asked Cartwright if she wanted to leave them to it, but she shook her head and said she’d just sit there and finish her drink. Breck leaned a little further over the table, elbows resting either side of his glass.
‘To start with,’ he said, ‘there’s new information on Vince. Another cab-driver’s come forward. This one had been waiting for fares outside the Oliver. He reckons he picked Vince up around one in the morning.’
‘He’s sure it was Vince?’
Breck nodded. ‘The team showed him photos. Plus, he ID’d Vince’s clothes.’
‘So where did he take him?’
‘The Cowgate. Where else are you going to go if you want to keep drinking at that time of night?’
‘It’s a bit...’
‘Studenty?’ Breck guessed. ‘Trendy?’
But Fox had thought of something else. ‘Isn’t the Cowgate closed to traffic at night?’
‘Driver knew all the little short cuts and side streets. Dropped him outside a club called Rondo - do you know it?’
‘Do I look the type?’
Breck smiled. ‘Annabel dragged me there once.’ She jabbed him in the ribs by way of complaint and Breck squirmed a little. ‘Live music in the back room, sticky carpets and plastic glasses in the front.’
‘That’s where he was headed?’
‘Driver wasn’t sure. But it was where he got out.’
‘Meaning he was still alive in the small hours of Sunday morning? ’
Breck nodded. ‘So now the inquiry team’s going to be doing a sweep of the Cowgate - must be about a dozen pubs and clubs; more if they widen the search to the Grassmarket. They’re printing up flyers to hand out to the clubbing fraternity.’
‘Doormen might remember him,’ Fox mused. ‘He probably wasn’t typical of their clientele. Did the cabbie say what sort of state he was in?’
‘Slurring his words and a bit agitated. Plus he didn’t tip.’
‘Why was he agitated?’
‘Maybe he was wondering what was waiting for him back home,’ Breck offered. ‘Maybe he was just the type who gets that way after a skinful.’
‘I’d like to listen to the interview with the cabbie...’
‘I could probably get you a transcript,’ Cartwright offered.
Fox nodded his thanks. ‘The first cab would have dropped him at the Oliver around ten - means he was in there three hours.’
‘A fair amount of time,’ Breck agreed.
‘Well, it’s progress, I suppose. Cheers, Annabel.’
Cartwright gave a shrug. ‘Tell him the rest,’ she commanded Breck.
‘Well, this is just something Annabel picked up when she was talking to a colleague based at D Division...’
‘Meaning Leith and Charlie Brogan?’ Fox guessed.
‘The inquiry team’s beginning to wonder why no body’s been washed ashore. They’re digging a bit deeper into the whys and wherefores.’
‘And?’
‘Brogan had recently sold a large chunk of his art collection.’
Fox nodded again. ‘Worth about half a million.’
Annabel Cartwright took up the story. ‘Nobody seems to know where that money is. And Joanna Broughton’s not exactly being cooperative. She’s got her lawyers setting up their wagons in a circle. She’s also got Gordon Lovatt reminding everyone involved that it won’t look good if we start harassing a “photogenic widow” - his very words.’
‘Leith think the suicide was staged?’
‘As Jamie says, they’re definitely beginning to wonder.’
‘Has any other cash gone AWOL?’
‘Hard to know until the lawyers stop denying access. We’d need a judge to issue a warrant, and that means convincing him it’s right and proper.’
‘There’s no way of knowing if any of Brogan’s accounts or credit cards are still being used?’ Fox didn’t expect an answer. He lifted his glass, but paused with it halfway to his mouth. ‘When I was in her flat, I saw the spaces on the wall where those paintings had been.’
‘You’ve been to her house?’ Cartwright asked.
‘There wasn’t any paperwork lying around, but then she had to fetch Brogan’s diary from elsewhere. Must be a room he uses as an office.’
‘He could always have siphoned some cash off from CBBJ,’ Breck added. ‘We’ve got specialist accountants for that kind of digging.’
‘But there still needs to be a judge’s signature,’ Cartwright cautioned.
Fox shrugged. ‘If Joanna Broughton’s being obstructive,’ he argued, ‘I’d have thought that might be reason enough.’
‘I’m sure they’ll fight their corner,’ Breck said, running his finger down the wine glass.
‘Any more revelations?’ Fox’s eyes were on Annabel.
‘No,’ she said.
‘I really do appreciate this.’ Fox got to his feet. ‘So much so that I’m going to buy you another drink.’
‘This one’s on us,’ Breck said, but Fox was having none of it. When he placed the order, the barmaid smiled and nodded towards the table.
‘Nice when you bump into friends, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Malcolm Fox replied. ‘Yes, it really is.’
20
At midnight, he was standing at the foot of Blair Street, staring towards the illuminated doorway of Rondo. There was just the one doorman. They usually operated in pairs, so the partner was either inside or on a break of some kind. The street was almost deserted, but wouldn’t have been at the same sort of time on a Saturday. Plus the Welsh rugby fans had been in town the night Vince died, gearing up for Sunday’s encounter - some of them would have known that the Cowgate was the late-licence district.
Fox stood at the corner, hands in pockets. This was where Vince had been dropped. Access to the main thoroughfare was curtailed between ten at night and five in the morning. Fox knew that this was because the Cowgate boasted narrow pavements. Drunks kept stumbling from them into the path of oncoming traffic. Cars had been banned because people were stupid. But then no one surely would pass this way sober at dead of night. It was a dark, dank conduit. There were homeless hostels and rubbish-strewn alleys. The place reeked of rat piss and puke. But there were plenty of little oases like Rondo. Lit by neon and radiating warmth (thanks to the heaters above their doors), they coaxed the unwary inside. As Fox crossed to the other side of the road, the doorman sized him up, loosening his shoulders under his three-quarter-length black woollen coat.
‘Evening, Mr Fox,’ the man said. Fox stared at him. There was a smile playing at the edges of the mouth. Stubble on the scarred chin. Shaven head and piercing blue eyes.
‘Pete Scott,’ the man eventually said, having decided that Fox needed help.
‘You’ve shaved your hair off,’ Fox replied.

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