The Impossible Dead - By Ian Rankin Page 0,1

Fife HQ and eventually something would happen – the equivalent of a wee boy running to his daddy when the big kid’s done something.

Or …

Fox looked at Kaye again. Kaye smiled and batted Naysmith’s leaflet with the back of his hand.

‘Break out the pith helmets, young Joe,’ he said. ‘We’re heading into the wild.’

They parked the car on the seafront and stood for a few moments staring out across the Firth of Forth towards Edinburgh.

‘Looks sunny over there,’ Kaye complained, buttoning his coat. ‘Bet you wish you’d worn more than a donkey jacket.’

Joe Naysmith had become inured to comments about his latest designer buy, but he did turn the collar up. There was a fierce wind blowing in from the North Sea. The water was choppy, and puddles along the promenade offered evidence that the tide was prone to break over the sea wall. The gulls overhead looked to be working hard at staying airborne. There was something odd about the design of this waterfront: almost no use had been made of it. Buildings tended to face away from the view and towards the town centre. Fox had noted this elsewhere in Scotland: from Fort William to Dundee, the planners seemed to deny the existence of any shoreline. He’d never understood it, but doubted Kaye and Naysmith would be able to help.

Joe Naysmith’s suggestion had been a beach walk, but Tony Kaye was already heading for one of the wynds leading uphill towards Kirkcaldy’s shops and cafés, leaving Naysmith to dig out eighty-five pence in change for the parking. The narrow main street had roadworks on it. Kaye crossed to the other side and kept climbing.

‘Where’s he going?’ Naysmith complained.

‘Tony has a nose,’ Fox explained. ‘Not just any old café will do.’

Kaye had stopped at a doorway, made sure they could see him, then headed inside. The Pancake Place was light and spacious and not too busy. They took a corner table and tried to look like regulars. Fox often wondered if it was true that cops the world over tended to act the same. He liked corner tables, where he could see everything that was happening or might be about to happen. Naysmith hadn’t quite learned that lesson yet and seemed happy enough to sit with his back to the door. Fox had squeezed in next to Kaye, eyes scanning the room, finding only women intent on their conversations, past being interested in the three new arrivals. They studied their menus in silence, placed an order, and waited a few minutes for the waitress to return with a tray.

‘Good-looking scone,’ Naysmith commented, getting to work with his knife and the pat of low-fat spread.

Fox had brought the folder with him. ‘Don’t want you getting too comfortable,’ he said, emptying its contents on to the table. ‘While the tea’s cooling, you can be refreshing your memories.’

‘Is it worth the risk?’ Tony Kaye asked.

‘What risk?’

‘A smear of butter on the cover sheet. Won’t look exactly professional when we’re doing the interviews.’

‘I’m feeling reckless today,’ Fox countered. ‘I’ll take a chance …’

With a sigh from Kaye, the three men started reading.

Paul Carter was the reason they’d come to Fife. Carter held the rank of detective constable and had been a cop for fifteen years. He was thirty-eight years old and came from a family of cops – both his father and an uncle had served in Fife Constabulary. The uncle, Alan Carter, had actually made the original complaint against his nephew. It involved a drug addict, sexual favours, and turning a blind eye. Two other women then came forward to say that Paul Carter had arrested them for drunken behaviour, but offered to drop any charges if they would be ‘accommodating’.

‘Does anybody actually ever say “accommodating”?’ Kaye muttered, halfway down a page.

‘Courtroom and newspapers,’ Naysmith replied, brushing crumbs from his own copy of the case notes.

Malcolm Fox had some of those newspaper reports in front of him. There were photos of Paul Carter leaving court at the end of a day’s testimony. Pudding-bowl haircut; face pitted by acne. Giving the photographer a hard stare.

It was four days since the guilty verdict had been delivered, along with the sheriff’s comment that Detective Constable Carter’s own colleagues seemed ‘either wilfully stupid or wilfully complicit’. Meaning: they’d known for years Carter was a bad cop, but they’d protected him, lied for him, maybe even attempted to falsify witness statements and put pressure on witnesses not to come forward.

All of which had brought the Complaints to