The Impossible Dead mf-2

by Ian Rankin

‘Arm’s-length, Evelyn. This way no one can accuse you of looking out for your own.’

  ‘You think we’d do that?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be me pointing the finger.’ He paused. ‘If it’s any consolation…’

  ‘I’m not looking for consolation, Malcolm.’ With her free hand she gave his forearm a squeeze, and he knew she was offering herself as ally rather than foe.

  ‘Carter is walking the streets,’ Fox said. ‘Did you know that?’

  She nodded. They were making towards the dock at the Esplanade’s northern end. There was a solitary fishing boat moored there, but no sign of life apart from some fierce-looking gulls.

  ‘We’re thinking it might be nice to hear what he says to Scholes and the others.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Home and mobile phones.’

  ‘Of four detectives?’

  ‘Three: Carter’s appeal – if he starts one – would have a field day if we eavesdropped on him.’

  ‘I’m not sure we can stretch to it, Malcolm.’

  ‘Manpower or resources?’

  She exhaled noisily. ‘Both, if I’m being honest. Basically, you’re looking at Fife’s Complaints department. I’m it. I mean, I can always requisition a few bodies in an emergency…’

  ‘Is that what you did when Alan Carter made the original complaint?’

  She nodded, pushing some hair back from her face. ‘Scholes is the one Carter’s close to. If I was going to look at anybody, it would be him.’

  ‘We saw him leaving Carter’s house yesterday.’

  ‘You mean the surveillance is up and running?’

  Fox shook his head again. ‘We were just passing.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Passing through the Dunnikier Estate?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  She scrutinised his face, then gave a short laugh. ‘God, the things we do,’ she said. He wasn’t sure if she meant their job or was thinking back to that night in Tulliallan; best, he felt, not to risk asking.

  ‘You know I’d need to go to my boss?’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘And he’d have to go to his boss?’

  Fox nodded.

  ‘And I’m allowed to tell them it’s your idea?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘All this, just to prove whether or not some colleagues stuck up for one of their own?’

  ‘Perjuring themselves in the process,’ Fox reminded her.

  She ran her finger down the bridge of her nose, a nose Fox suddenly remembered kissing. She’d had a lot to drink at the bar that night. He’d been the sober one, the one who should have seen her only as far as her bedroom door. But she’d had a kettle in her room. And sachets of instant coffee. And a narrow single bed…

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked her now.

  ‘I think it’s freezing out here.’

  ‘Whatever your answer is, thanks for meeting with me.’

  This time she patted his arm, and they turned to walk back to her car. Having reached it in silence, she asked him where he had parked. He nodded in the vague direction of the town centre. She unlocked her car and got in. It was an Alfa Romeo with a dark-blue interior.

  Fox closed the door for her and watched her start the ignition. The window slid downwards and she peered up at him. ‘I was at Fettes a few months back, running an errand. I considered knocking on your door.’

  ‘You should have.’

  She released the brake, gave him a wave, and was gone. Fox stayed where he was until he couldn’t see the car any more, then crossed the street and headed for the cafe in the Mercat shopping centre. Kaye and Naysmith were waiting there, drinking coffee and reading their chosen newspapers: Guardian for Naysmith, Daily Record for Kaye.

  ‘Don’t order anything,’ Kaye warned Fox. ‘Not a patch on the other place.’

  ‘Closer to the car, though,’ Fox reminded him. Kaye’s eyes were fixed on him, awaiting his report.

  ‘It’s a “maybe”,’ he obliged, squeezing into the booth. Kaye’s nostrils flared and he leaned over to sniff Fox’s coat. ‘Chanel Number 5, unless I’m losing my touch. Your contact’s not a bloke, then.’

  ‘Now who’s Hercule Poirot?’ Joe Naysmith muttered, not bothering to look up from his reading.

  Not the interview room. Teresa Collins had been insistent. In fact, nowhere near ‘that stinking place’, which was why Fox had suggested her home. It was the upper storey of a maisonette in Gallatown. Gary Michaelson had hinted it might not be the town’s most salubrious area. Actually, it looked all right to Fox: there were plenty worse in Edinburgh. Terraced and semi-detached houses, many of them split. Pebble-dashed walls and plenty of satellite dishes. Young mothers, some pregnant again, pushed their baby buggies while talking into their phones. A few teenage lads in baseball caps scowled as the Mondeo drew to a halt kerb-side, and made intuitive grunting noises as the three men stepped out. Fox pressed the bell marked ‘Collins’.

  ‘It’s open!’ a voice yelled.

  Fox turned the handle and started climbing the steep flight of stairs. Someone on the ground floor was hosting a party.

  ‘Eminem,’ Naysmith stated.

  ‘Just sounds like noise to me,’ Tony Kaye muttered.

  Teresa Collins was seated in an armchair in her uncluttered living room, dangling one leg over the side and with a lit cigarette in her mouth. She wore black Lycra leggings and a purple T-shirt with the words Porn Star picked out in diamante.

  ‘No need to spruce yourself up on our account,’ Kaye told her, examining a 3-D poster of Beyonce above the fireplace. The music from downstairs was causing the windowpanes to vibrate.

  ‘I forgot to ask,’ Collins said. ‘Should I maybe have called my lawyer?’

  ‘You’re the victim here,’ Fox reminded her, introducing himself, Kaye and Naysmith. There was one other armchair, but it was piled high with laundry. When it came to underwear, Teresa Collins seemed to favour the thong.

  ‘Victim is right,’ she said, taking another drag on the cigarette. There was a flat-screen TV and Freeview box in one corner of the room. On an otherwise empty bookcase sat the dock and speakers for an MP3 player. The beige carpet had collected an impressive number of ash burns.

  ‘Everybody needs good neighbours, eh?’ Kaye announced, thumping the floor with the heel of his shoe.

  ‘They’re all right.’ The foot hanging over the arm of the chair was keeping time, while Collins’s other knee pumped furiously.

  ‘Few uppers to counteract the methadone?’ Fox guessed.

  ‘You won’t find anything that’s not prescribed,’ she snapped back.

  ‘We’re not looking for anything. As I said on the phone, it’s Carter’s colleagues we’re checking.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘It’d be nice if you believed me.’

  She looked like she was having trouble focusing on him. ‘Go ahead, then,’ she said at last. ‘Ask me the same bloody questions…’

  ‘DI Carter used to come here?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Some of your neighbours saw him?’

  ‘They said so, didn’t they?’

  ‘Wasn’t very discreet of him. What about his colleagues – they never came in?’

  ‘Scholes did, one time. But that was early days, when they were wanting me to be a grass.’

  ‘Scholes was never here when Carter was after one of these “favours”?’

  She shook her head. ‘Might’ve waited in the car.’ She was looking agitated. ‘When you lot got wise, it was Scholes who phoned me, tried to warn me off.’

  ‘I know it can’t be easy, going back over this.’

  ‘I thought it was done with. Is this what happens now? He’s going down, so you lot keep persecuting me till I go off my head or do myself in?’

  Fox didn’t answer for a moment. ‘You know there are charities that can help, numbers you can phone?’

  ‘Rape Crisis? All that lot?’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘I just want left alone.�
� She exhaled a plume of smoke and brushed flecks of ash from her T-shirt. ‘Now he’s inside, that’s all I’m asking…’

  ‘What if he’s not inside?’ As soon as the words were out of Naysmith’s mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake: the combined glower from Fox and Kaye intimated as much.

  ‘You mean he’s out?’ The pale eyes in the paler face had widened.

  ‘You should have been told,’ Fox said quietly.

  ‘He’s…?’ Collins got to her feet and padded over to the window, staring down on to the street.

  ‘He’s been warned not to come within half a mile of you,’ Fox tried to reassure her. ‘If he does, he’s back inside pronto.’

  ‘Well that’s just dandy,’ she said, voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Carter’s bound to stick to that, isn’t he? Law-abiding prick like him …’

  She spun away from the window. ‘What if I say it’s all a lie? I made it up to get him into bother?’

  ‘Then you’ll be the one under lock and key,’ Fox cautioned her. He placed his business card on the arm of the chair. ‘My number’s there – any sign of him, call me.’

  ‘You’re here to threaten me,’ Teresa Collins stated, pointing a trembling finger. ‘Three of you – that’s intimidation enough. Plus your story about him being out… This is me being told, isn’t it? Scholes and Haldane and Michaelson, and now you three.’

  ‘I can assure you we’re-’

  ‘I’ll go to the papers! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll scream blue murder.’

  ‘Will you calm down, Teresa?’ Fox had his hands held up in a show of surrender. He took a step forwards, but she had spun round again and pulled the window open.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Somebody help me!’

  Fox saw that Kaye was looking at him, waiting for a decision.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ Fox told Collins, raising his voice in the hope she might hear. ‘Later, when you’ve had a chance to…’

  He signalled to Kaye and Naysmith that they were leaving. The neighbours upstairs were looking down at them from the landing.

  ‘She’s hysterical,’ Fox explained, starting his descent. Nobody from the ground-floor party had heard – or if they had, they couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. But the kids were outside on the pavement, facing Fox and his colleagues as they emerged. Fox had his warrant card out for them to see.

  ‘Back off,’ he told them.

  ‘Youse’ve raped her,’ one voice said accusingly.

  ‘She’s just upset.’

  ‘Aye, and who did that, eh? Youse did…’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Tony Kaye burst out. ‘Look at my car!’

  The contents of a waste bin had been tipped over the bonnet and windscreen: fast-food cartons, cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, and what looked like the remains of a dead pigeon.

  ‘Car wash down the road, only three quid,’ one of the gang suggested.

  ‘Five if you tell them you’re a pig,’ another added.

  There was laughter, for which Fox was grateful. The situation was being defused – and Teresa Collins had stopped yelling and closed her window.

  Tony Kaye, however, looked furious. He lunged at the youths, Fox hauling him back by his arm.

  ‘Easy, Tony, easy. Let’s just get out of here, eh?’

  ‘But these wee wankers-’

  ‘In the car,’ Fox commanded. Kaye waited another couple of beats before complying, using the wipers to brush aside some of the debris, and reversing hard to dislodge more from the bonnet.

  ‘Swear to God I’m coming back here with a bat,’ he muttered, as the gang jogged along by the side of the car, giving it the occasional kick or slap. He revved the engine and shot away in first, doing a U-turn that got rid of almost all the remaining rubbish.

  ‘Forget it, Kaye,’ Joe Naysmith said. ‘It’s Gallatown.’

  ‘Think you’re funny, eh?’ Tony Kaye leaned over and gave him a hard punch to the side of his head. ‘Laugh now, ya wee shite-bag…’

  9

  ‘That was quick,’ Malcolm Fox said into his phone. Evelyn Mills was on the other end of the line. The eavesdropping operation had been given the green light.

  ‘My boss decided we didn’t need to refer it upwards,’ she explained.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My guess is, he reckons it might have been knocked back.’

  ‘I like the sound of your boss.’

  ‘He reminds me a bit of you, actually.’

  ‘Then I’m flattered. How long till you’re operational?’

  ‘Need a telephone engineer to help us with the landline.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘I’ve got help: two youngsters from CID. Mobile phone will take longer – first things we’ll have access to are numbers called and calls received…’ She broke off. ‘You know all this already.’

  ‘True.’

  He heard her give a short sigh. ‘It’ll be end of play today for the landline; some time tomorrow for everything else. Unlikely Scholes would bother e-mailing Carter, so I was going to skip the key-stroke surveillance.’

  ‘Fine by me. And thanks again, Evelyn.’

  ‘It’s what neglected friends are for, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Just one thing, though – Scholes isn’t an idiot. Might explain why he went to Carter’s house. It keeps their conversation private. Could be all we end up with are texts to arrange more meetings.’

  ‘I know.’

  She gave another sigh. ‘Of course you do. I keep forgetting how much alike we are. Maybe that’s why we hit it off that time.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to say any more? This may not be as secure a line as we’d like.’

  She was chuckling as Fox wrapped up the call.

  ‘Sounds like a result,’ Kaye commented. All three of them were crammed into the storeroom, door slightly ajar, Joe Naysmith keeping watch for spies and dawdlers.

  ‘Everything should be up and running by tomorrow. Home phone could even be tonight.’

  ‘That’s efficient. Care to share the secret of your success?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just her name, then.’

  ‘Plus,’ Naysmith added, turning towards his colleagues, ‘whatever it was you thought she shouldn’t be saying over a non-secure line.’ He jumped as someone thumped on the door, pushing it open. Superintendent Pitkethly stood there, face like thunder.

  ‘Would I be right in thinking the three of you just paid Teresa Collins a visit?’

  Fox rose to his feet. ‘She’s made a complaint?’ he guessed.

  ‘In a manner of speaking. They found your name on a business card on her chair – when they went in with the stretcher.’

  She saw immediately the effect her words had had, and kept quiet for a moment, the better to savour the discomfort on the three faces.

  ‘A passer-by saw her at her window, smearing blood on it from her wrists. He called the paramedics.’

  All three men were standing now, eyes on Pitkethly. Kaye was the first to speak.

  ‘Is she…?’

  ‘She’s in hospital. Wounds don’t look too bad. Question is: what drove her to it? From the look of you, I’d say I’ve got my answer.’

  ‘She was hysterical,’ Naysmith blurted out. ‘We left her to it…’

  ‘Having calmed her down first, obviously,’ Pitkethly said, twisting the knife. ‘I mean, this is a woman who’s had a traumatic experience. Fragile enough to begin with, and with a history of drug use. I’m assuming you didn’t just walk away?’

  ‘We don’t answer to you,’ Fox stated, regaining a little of his composure.

  ‘You might have to, though.’

  ‘We’ll make our report.’

  ‘And will there be conferring beforehand?’ This question came from DCI Peter Laird, who had just arrived at Pitkethly’s shoulder. Fox sensed that there were other spectators in the corridor. He pushed past Pitkethly and saw that he was right. Laird wasn’t bothering to suppre
ss his pleasure at this turn of events.

  ‘I mean,’ Laird went on, folding his arms, ‘you’ll want to make sure you’ve got your stories straight.’

  ‘She’s going to be all right, though?’ Joe Naysmith was asking Pitkethly.

  ‘Bit late to be showing concern,’ she answered him. Fox got right into her face.

  ‘Enough,’ he said. Then, to Kaye and Naysmith: ‘We’re out of here.’

  ‘Going so soon?’ Laird was waving with the fingers of one hand as they stalked down the corridor.

  ‘I’ll need those statements,’ Pitkethly called after them.

  As Fox pushed open the door to the outside world, he saw Scholes hurrying in from the car park.

  ‘Looks like I missed the fun,’ he said with a grin. Fox ignored him, but Kaye gave him a shoulder-charge that almost felled him. Scholes didn’t react. His laughter followed them to the Mondeo.

  ‘Where to?’ Kaye asked.

  ‘Home,’ Fox stated.

  They didn’t say anything for the first few miles. It was Naysmith who broke the silence. ‘Poor woman.’

  Kaye just nodded.

  ‘Reckon we should have stayed?’

  Kaye looked to Fox, but saw he wasn’t going to answer. He was staring out of the passenger-side window, forehead almost touching it.

  ‘I can’t see that we did anything wrong,’ Kaye announced, trying for more certainty than he felt. ‘We were the ones making her frantic, so we left.’

  ‘But it was me, wasn’t it? Telling her Carter was out…’

  ‘Wasn’t our job to keep the facts from her, Joe.’

  ‘You sound,’ Fox interrupted, ‘as if you’ve already got your report off-pat.’

  ‘It was her way of crying out for help,’ Kaye persisted. ‘We’ve all seen them.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Naysmith corrected him.

  ‘You know the type, though. If she’d really wanted to top herself, she wouldn’t have stood at the window like that, showing all and sundry what she’d done.’

  ‘What if nobody’d been passing, though?’

  ‘Then she’d have phoned herself an ambulance. Like I say, it happens.’

  ‘I can’t help thinking-’

  ‘Then don’t think!’ Kaye snapped at Naysmith. ‘Let’s just get back to civilisation and write up what happened.’ He looked towards Fox again. ‘Come on, Malcolm, back me up here. She could have snapped any time, just our bad luck it happened when it did.’