The Complaints (46 page)

Authors: Ian Rankin

BOOK: The Complaints

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‘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.

‘Slow down,’ Jamie Breck said. He was dressed as if for jogging and his hair was wet from the shower. ‘You look like you’ve just bitten through a mains cable.’

They had reached Breck’s living room. There was ambient music on the hi-fi. Breck sat down and used a remote control to lessen the volume. Malcolm Fox was pacing up and down.

‘How can you be so laid-back?’ Fox asked, accusingly.

‘What else am I supposed to do?’

‘Someone’s tried setting you up as a paedophile.’

‘True - and if I start complaining, everyone knows
you
told me.’

‘You should do it anyway.’

But Breck was shaking his head. ‘We find out
why
it happened - after that, everything falls into place.’

Fox paused in his walking. ‘You think you know?’

Breck folded his arms. ‘It’s both of us. They brought us together knowing we’d get along ... start to trust one another. You’d see it was a set-up and maybe tell me. Meantime, I’d be letting you walk all over the Faulkner case. Once that was established, we could both be kicked into touch.’

‘It’s other cops, then? Has to be.’ Fox had started pacing again.

‘What’s on your mind, Malcolm?’

‘Vince and Brogan kept phoning one another; means they weren’t just boss and employee. The day I took Joanna Broughton home, she gave me Brogan’s diary to hand in at Leith. There were a lot of mentions of programmes he wanted to watch. TV - 7.45 ... TV - 10.00 ... that sort of thing.’ Fox stopped pacing again and stared at Breck. ‘Remember what Mark Kelly said? Bull Wauchope’s side-kick? ’

‘Terry Vass,’ Breck said quietly, nodding to himself. ‘Same initials.’

‘They weren’t TV shows, Jamie. Brogan must have been meeting Vass. Now why would that be? Why would Wauchope keep sending his enforcer down to Edinburgh?’

‘Brogan owed him money.’

‘Brogan owed him money,’ Fox echoed. ‘And here’s another thing - Joanna Broughton keeps her hubby’s phone next to her, even now. I called and it took her about five seconds to answer.’

‘So?’

‘She says it’s because people might call who don’t know what’s happened.’

‘Seems plausible,’ Breck said with a shrug. Fox gnawed at his bottom lip, then got out his phone and called Max Dearborn.

‘Max, it’s Malcolm Fox.’

‘Linda says you talked to her.’

‘This morning. I’m going to help her if I can, but listen ... I’ve got a quick question - was Charlie Brogan’s phone on the boat?’

‘We had it checked, then gave it back to the wife.’

Fox’s shoulders slumped. He placed his palm over the mouthpiece. ‘It was on the boat,’ he told Breck.

‘Why do you want to know?’ Dearborn was asking.

‘It’s probably nothing, Max. In fact, it
is
nothing.’ But Breck was clicking his fingers, trying to get Fox’s attention. ‘Hang on a sec,’ Fox said, placing his hand over the mouthpiece again.

‘Wouldn’t someone like Brogan have more than one phone?’ Breck asked, voice just above a whisper. Fox took a moment to digest this, then spoke to Dearborn again.

‘Max ... do you happen to know the number of the phone?’

‘It’ll take me a minute.’ Dearborn was obviously in the inquiry room. There was a rustling sound as he cupped the phone between shoulder and chin, then a clacking sound as he worked at a keyboard.

‘How are things anyway?’ Fox decided to ask.

‘Still no trace of the sod, one way or the other.’

‘You keeping a watch on the widow?’

‘We’re thinking about it.’

‘She’d know it was happening.’

‘Maybe ... Okay, here’s the number.’ Dearborn reeled it off.

‘Thanks, Max,’ Fox said, ending the call and looking at Breck. ‘Good tip,’ he said with a nod.

‘The numbers don’t match?’ Breck guessed.

‘No.’

‘So the phone she’s keeping beside her isn’t the one that was left on the boat?’

‘No.’

‘Yet she told you it was?’