The Complaints

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too hard - if nothing else, he’ll remember the kicking his cab got.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Breck seemed to make up his mind, slapping his hands against his knees. ‘I really do fancy a drink, Malcolm - are you allowed to join me?’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘I meant, can you come out to the pub?’

  ‘Sure,’ Fox said after a moment’s hesitation. He checked his watch. They’d have picked up the van by now . . . checked its equipment. They’d be discussing tactics before heading out. ‘But it’s getting pretty late.’

  Breck looked at his own watch and raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not even ten.’

  ‘All I meant was, just a quick one.’

  ‘A quick one,’ Breck agreed. ‘Is it all right if we take your car?’

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’

  ‘The Oliver. I’m guessing it’ll have a bar.’

  Fox’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t thinking about options now, but consequences. ‘Why there?’

  ‘Maybe we can ask if Vince Faulkner visited on Saturday night.’

  ‘That’s not exactly going by the rules, Jamie. Your boss’ll have a fit if he finds out.’

  ‘Rules are there to be broken, Malcolm.’

  Fox wagged a finger. ‘Careful who you say that to.’

  Breck just smiled and got to his feet. ‘Are you game?’ he asked.

  ‘Long way to go for one drink . . .’ Breck was neither budging nor about to say anything. With a sigh, Fox placed his hands on the arms of his chair and began to rise.

  The area around Ocean Terminal was an odd amalgam of dockside wasteland, warehouse conversions and new buildings. Ocean Terminal itself was a shopping centre and cinema complex, with the royal yacht Britannia berthed permanently as a tourist attraction in a marina to the far side of the building. Nearby a vast, shiny construction housed the city’s army of civil servants - or at least a few battalions of them. A handful of lauded restaurants had opened up, perhaps with one eye on the cruise ships that occasionally docked in Leith. The Oliver was rotunda-shaped, and liked to think that it had been the harbourmaster’s residence at some time. Fox wasn’t even sure they’d be allowed inside - Breck was wearing trainers - but Breck had waved his objection aside and reached for his warrant card.

  ‘Accepted nationwide,’ he’d said, waving it in Fox’s face. So they’d parked between a Mercedes and a sporty Toyota in the car park. Liveried doormen stood guard at the well-lit entrance. Breck pointed out the CCTV camera to Fox, though Fox had already spotted it. He was wondering if he should text Kaye to let him know there was no point in tonight’s stakeout. On the other hand, if they did only stay for the one drink . . .

  ‘Good evening,’ one of the doormen said. It sounded more warning than greeting.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Breck asked. ‘Busy, is it?’

  ‘Just starting to be.’ The man looked him up and down, eyes lingering on the denim jacket. ‘Sightseeing trip, is it?’

  Breck patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got some cash burning a hole.’

  The other man was staring at Fox. ‘This one’s a cop,’ he informed his colleague. ‘I’d bet my life on it.’

  ‘Are cops not allowed a night off?’ Fox asked him, taking a step forward so he was in the man’s face.

  ‘Long as you’re not looking for freebies,’ the first doorman said.

  ‘We can pay our way,’ Breck assured him.

  ‘You better,’ the man warned him. And then they were in. Breck left his jacket at the cloakroom, which helped him blend in a little. At first glance the place offered glitz, but it was fairly casual: businessmen playing some tables, their wives and girlfriends the others. A few onlookers stood around, sizing things up. One of them looked to Fox like the waiter who’d taken his order earlier at the Chinese restaurant - confirmed when the man grinned and waved and gave him a little bow.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ Breck asked.

  There were slot machines as well as the tables for cards, dice and roulette, plus a well-lit bar. Each croupier had someone from the house staff watching over them, just to be on the safe side. Fox had heard stories of croupiers who were too regular in their actions; meant the players could work out which quadrant of the wheel the roulette ball was most likely to stop, cutting the odds. Down the years, a few cops had got into trouble over gambling debts, entering the orbit of the Complaints as a result - not everyone was good at reading cards and roulette wheels.

  A curving staircase, each step artfully illuminated, led to the mezzanine level. Fox followed Breck up. There was another bar here, and the casino’s restaurant off to one side. The restaurant itself was just half a dozen booths and three or four extra tables, doing no business at all tonight. All the stools at the bar were taken, and other drinkers were watching the action beneath from the relative safety of the balcony.

  ‘What can I get you?’ Breck asked.

  ‘Tomato juice,’ Fox said. Breck nodded and squeezed between two of the bar stools. The barman was pouring a cocktail into an old-fashioned champagne glass. Fox joined the other drinkers and peered down towards the floor below. The added attraction seemed to be that you could occasionally catch a glimpse down the front of a woman’s dress, but the tables had been angled and lit so that it was impossible to make out the contents of any hand of cards. The man nearest Fox nodded a half-greeting. He looked to be in his early sixties, his face deeply lined, eyes rheumy.

  ‘Table three’s the lucky one tonight,’ he offered in an undertone. Fox puckered his mouth, as if considering this.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He had three twenty-pound notes in his pocket, and knew he would have to offer to break one of them to buy Breck back a drink. Hopefully Breck wouldn’t accept, and they’d go home instead. Fox certainly had no intention of handing any of the cash to the tables, even lucky number three.

  ‘Virgin Mary,’ Breck said, handing him his drink. Fox thanked him and took a sip. It was spiced to the hilt: Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco, black pepper. Fox felt his lips go numb.

  ‘Reckoned that’s how you’d like it. Cheers.’

  Breck was holding a chunky glass filled with ice and a dark concoction. ‘Rum and Coke?’ Fox guessed, receiving a nod of confirmation.

  ‘Used to be my dad’s drink,’ Breck said.

  ‘Used to be?’

  ‘He’s like you - off the booze. Being a doctor, he’s seen more than his fair share of damaged livers.’

  The man next to them had been listening in. ‘What doesn’t kill you,’ he said, offering it up as a toast, the iced remains rattling in his whisky glass as he tipped it to his mouth.

  ‘Gentleman here,’ Fox informed Breck, ‘thinks table three’s the good one.’

  ‘That right?’ Breck peered over the balcony. Table three was hosting blackjack, and Breck turned back towards Fox. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m enjoying my drink,’ Fox replied, taking another fiery sip. ‘But don’t let me stop you . . .’

  It was after Fox bought them their second - ‘and final’ - round that Breck decided he might ‘have a flutter’. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, he lost the best part of thirty quid, while Fox watched from the wings.

  ‘Ouch,’ was all Breck said as he ended the experiment.

  ‘Ouch indeed,’ Fox agreed. They retreated to a spot near the machines. ‘Why did we come here, Jamie?’ Fox asked.

  Breck studied his surroundings. ‘Not exactly sure,’ he appeared to admit. Then, spotting that Fox’s glass was empty: ‘One for the road?’

  But Fox shook his head. ‘Home,’ was all he said.

  On the drive back, Breck started talking about chance and how he didn’t really believe in it. ‘I think we decide how things are going to be, and we make those things happen.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  Fox shrugged. ‘Far as I’m concerned, stuff just happens and goes on happening and there�
�s not a lot we can do about it.’

  Breck studied him. ‘Have you heard of a band called Elbow? They’ve got a song about how when we’re drunk or just happy we can start to believe that we’ve created the whole world around us.’

  ‘But that’s an illusion.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Malcolm. I think we shape each and every moment. We choose the way our lives are going to go. That’s why I get such a buzz from games.’

  ‘Games?’

  ‘Online games. RPGs. There’s one called Quidnunc that I play a lot. I’ve got an avatar who roams the galaxy having adventures.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  Breck just laughed.

  ‘I don’t believe we have any control over the world,’ Fox went on. ‘My dad’s in a care home - he has almost no control over his daily life. People just come and do things around him, making decisions for him - same as politicians and even our bosses do for us. They’re the ones who run our lives. Adverts tell us what to buy, government tells us how to live, technology tells us when we’ve done something wrong.’ In demonstration, Fox undid his seat belt. A warning light came on, accompanied by the ping-ping-ping of an alarm. He slotted the buckle home again and glanced in Breck’s direction. ‘Ever managed to use a computer without it asking if you need help?’

  Breck was smiling broadly. ‘Free will versus determinism,’ he stated.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘I’m betting you don’t have a Facebook page or anything like that?’

  ‘Christ, no.’

  ‘Friends Reunited?’

  Fox shook his head. ‘It’s getting hard enough to hold on to any sort of private life.’

  ‘My girlfriend likes to Twitter - know what that is?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it and it sounds like hell.’

  ‘You’re one of life’s spectators, Malcolm.’

  ‘And that’s the way I like it . . .’ Fox paused. ‘You didn’t ask the staff about Vince Faulkner.’

  ‘Another time,’ Breck said with a shrug.

  Fox knew he had a decision to make. Ideally, he would drop Breck on the main road and let him walk the final few hundred yards home. That way, the three residents of the surveillance van wouldn’t spot him. But if he failed to take Breck all the way home, would Breck himself become suspicious of his motives? And once his suspicions had been aroused, might he spot the van? In the end, it was Breck who made the decision. They’d just turned on to Oxgangs Road when he asked if Fox could pull over and let him out.

  ‘You don’t want me to drop you nearer home?’

  Breck shook his head. Fox was already signalling to stop at the kerb. ‘I want to finish that walk I was taking,’ Breck explained. When Fox pulled on the handbrake, he saw that Breck had his hand outstretched for him to shake.

  ‘Thanks,’ Breck said.

  ‘No, Jamie, thank you.’

  Breck smiled and opened the door, but once outside, he stuck his head back into the car again.

  ‘This stays strictly between us, right? Wouldn’t do either of us any good otherwise.’

  Fox nodded slowly, and watched as Breck drew himself upright. But then the head dipped back into the car again.

  ‘One thing you need to know,’ the younger man said. ‘We’re not all like Glen Heaton - or Bad Billy Giles, come to that. Plenty of us at Torphichen were cheering when you nailed him. So thanks for that, Malcolm.’

  The passenger door was pushed closed. A hand slapped twice against the car roof. Fox signalled back out into the road and released the handbrake. He drove home with his thoughts swirling and eddying, refusing to coalesce.

  Thursday 12 February 2009

  9

  Fox had been in the office three hours when Tony Kaye arrived, looking bleary.

  ‘Well,’ Kaye said, ‘that’s a chunk of my life I’m not getting back.’

  ‘What happened?’ Fox paused in his typing. He was making a record of a meeting he’d just had with two lawyers from the Procurator Fiscal’s office. They’d warned him that the case against Glen Heaton would take ‘no little time to prepare’. The pair had been young - one male, one female. They could almost have been brother and sister, the way they dressed, moved and spoke. It was as if they’d spent their whole life together, to the point where Fox had asked if they were an item.

  ‘An item?’ The female lawyer hadn’t seemed to understand the term.

  ‘We’re not,’ her colleague had stated, blood colouring his neck.

  ‘What happened?’ Tony Kaye was saying now, mimicking Fox’s question as he sloughed off his overcoat. ‘Nothing happened, Malcolm. The sod didn’t get home until midnight. He’d left a light on upstairs, so we didn’t know. Then, when he finally arrives, he logs on to the computer straight off. That’s when we think we’ve got him. Know what he does?’ Kaye had hung up his coat and placed his leather satchel on the floor next to his desk.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He starts looking at some online RPG. Know what that is?’

  ‘A role-playing game.’

  Kaye gave him a look, surprised by his colleague’s breadth of knowledge. ‘Joe Naysmith had to tell me,’ Kaye admitted. ‘Playing his game takes him over an hour, after which he catches up on e-mails - really exciting stuff like one to his brother in the US and another to his niece and nephew.’

  ‘I thought the brother was gay.’

  Kaye looked at him again. ‘What makes you say that?’

  He told me, Fox thought to himself. But he didn’t want Kaye to know how intimate some of his chats with Breck had become, so he shifted in his chair and explained that the info had been in Breck’s personnel file.

  ‘Now that’s what I call full disclosure . . . The guy from the Chop Shop says maybe he’s grooming them, but that’s just paranoia talking.’ Kaye paused. ‘And that’s something else you and me will be having words about, old friend.’ Kaye nodded in Fox’s direction, to reinforce the point. ‘No sign of DS Inglis. She’s got a son to tuck in, so she swaps with the world’s most boring man. And surprise surprise - he gets on like a house on fire with Naysmith. Take a guess why.’

  ‘They like computer games?’

  ‘They love computer games. And gadgets, new technology, blah blah blah . . . Ten minutes in and they’re showing one another their mobiles. Another ten after that, it’s modems and streaming and God knows what. I had four hours of it.’ Kaye gave a sigh and stared in the direction of the lifeless coffee machine. ‘Don’t tell me Naysmith’s still in bed.’

  Fox blew his nose. ‘Haven’t seen him,’ he admitted.

  ‘And McEwan’s still at his conference,’ Kaye added. ‘Maybe I’ll just tuck a duvet around myself at my desk.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Breck went to bed around two. We waited to see if he’d maybe taken his laptop with him, but there was nothing, so we left it at that.’

  ‘Does the Chop Shop want another try?’

  Kaye shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me, if only so Gilchrist and Naysmith can compare Freeview boxes.’ Kaye sighed again. He wasn’t yet seated; in fact had taken a couple of steps in the direction of Fox’s desk and was looking at him.

  ‘What?’ Fox prompted.

  ‘One other thing, compadre . . . He Googled your name.’

  Fox’s eyebrows dipped. ‘He did what?’

  Kaye shrugged by way of reply. ‘And that took him to some media websites. He wasn’t long, so we reckon he was printing stuff off rather than reading it online.’

  ‘He won’t have found much.’

  ‘Except that he Googled “Complaints and Conduct”, too. Pretty much everything we’ve done in the media eye this past couple of years.’ Kaye paused. ‘Including Heaton, of course.’

  ‘Why would he be doing that?’

  Kaye shrugged again. ‘Maybe he just likes you.’

  Fox was considering telling his colleague about Breck’s unannounced visit to his home, and their little jaunt to the Oliver. But Kaye was speaki
ng again.

  ‘On the other hand . . . the guy who beat up your sister has just found himself deceased. Billy Giles is on the hunt for suspects.’

  ‘Using Breck as his bloodhound?’ Fox was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I got the feeling there wasn’t much love between those two.’

  ‘Could be a front. Breck wanting you to think that . . .’

  Fox nodded slowly.