Free The Complaints by Ian Rankin

screen.

    ‘I’ve got to take this,’ she said. ‘It’s my son.’ She held the phone to her ear. ‘Hey, Duncan.’ She listened for the best part of a minute, eyes fixed on the world outside the window. ‘Okay, but I want you home by seven. Understood? Bye then.’ She placed the phone back on the table, her fingers resting against it.

    ‘I didn’t think you were married,’ Fox said.

    ‘I’m not.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But what made you . . .?’

    He swallowed before answering. There was stuff about her he wasn’t supposed to know. ‘No wedding ring,’ he eventually said. Then, a little too quickly: ‘How old is Duncan?’

    ‘Fifteen.’

    ‘You must’ve been young.’

    ‘My last year at school. Mum and Dad were furious, but they looked after him.’

    Fox nodded slowly. There’d been no mention of a son in Inglis’s personnel file. An oversight? He took a sip of his drink.

    ‘He’s headed to a friend’s,’ Annie Inglis explained.

    ‘Can’t be easy - single mum, teenage boy ...’

    ‘It’s fine,’ she stated, her tone telling him things could be left at that.

    Fox held the mug to his mouth and blew across it. ‘You were telling me,’ he said, ‘that you’d been talking with Gilchrist . . .’

    ‘That’s right. We’re thinking that this could work out for us.’

    ‘Me and Breck, you mean?’

    She nodded. ‘You’re not involved in the inquiry, so it’s not really a conflict of interest.’

    ‘What you’re saying is, while Breck investigates the murder, I busy myself keeping an eye on him ?’

    ‘The two of you have already met ... and you’ve got the perfect excuse for keeping in touch with him.’

    ‘And it’s not a conflict of interest?’

    ‘We’re only asking you for background, Malcolm, gen we can pass on to London. Nothing you do is going to come to court.’

    ‘How can we be sure?’

    She thought for a moment and shrugged. ‘Gilchrist’s checking with your boss and the Deputy Chief.’

    ‘Shouldn’t that be your job?’

    She shrugged and made eye contact. ‘I wanted to see you instead. ’

    ‘I’m touched.’

    ‘Are you up to the task, Malcolm? That’s what I need to know.’

    Fox thought back to the piece of waste ground. We’ll be doing all we can ...

    ‘I’m up to it,’ Malcolm Fox said.

    Back upstairs, the Complaints office was empty. He sat at his desk for a good five minutes, gnawing on a cheap ballpoint pen, thinking of Vince Faulkner and Jude and Jamie Breck. The door, already ajar, was pushed all the way open by Bob McEwan. He was wearing a trenchcoat and carrying a briefcase.

    ‘You all right, Foxy?’ he asked, standing in front of the desk, feet planted almost a yard apart.

    ‘I’m fine.’

    ‘Heard about your brother-in-law ... compassionate leave if you want it.’

    ‘He wasn’t a relation,’ Fox corrected his boss. ‘Just a guy my sister fell in with.’

    ‘All the same ...’

    ‘I’ll look in on her when I can.’ The words, as they emerged from his mouth, made him think of his father. Mitch needed to be told.

    ‘And about the Chop Shop,’ McEwan began. ‘Reckon you can still help them out?’

    ‘You don’t think there’s a problem?’

    ‘Traynor doesn’t see one.’ Adam Traynor - Deputy Chief Constable. ‘I’ve just been speaking with him.’

    ‘Then that’s that,’ Fox said, placing the pen back on the desk.

     
     
    At work’s end, he headed over to Lauder Lodge. One of the staff told him he’d find his father in Mrs Sanderson’s room. Fox stood in front of her door and couldn’t hear anything. He knocked and waited until the woman’s voice invited him in. Mitch was seated facing Mrs Sanderson. The two chairs were positioned either side of the room’s fireplace. This fireplace was for show only. A vase of dried flowers sat in the unused grate. He’d been in Mrs Sanderson’s room once before, when his father had introduced him to his ‘new, dear friend’. The