The Complaints
Page 46
‘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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.