‘Shall I tell you what I see, Foxy? I see people who should be at work this time of day. Scroungers and the walking wounded, coffin-dodgers, jakeys and ASBOs.’
Joe Naysmith had started humming the tune to ‘What a Wonderful World’.
‘Every car we’ve passed,’ Kaye went on, undeterred, ‘the driver’s either a drug dealer or he’s hot-wired it. The pavements need hosing down and so do half the kids. It tells you all you need to know about a place when the biggest shop seems to be called Rejects.’ He paused for effect. ‘And you’re telling me you like it?’
‘You’re seeing what you want to see, Tony, and then letting your imagination run riot.’
Kaye turned to Naysmith. ‘And as for you, you weren’t even born when that song came out, so you can shut it.’
‘My mum had the record. Well, the cassette anyway. Or maybe the CD.’
Kaye was looking at Fox again. ‘Can we please go back and ask our questions, get whatever answers they want to dump on us, and then vamoose the hell out of here?’
‘When did CDs start appearing? Naysmith asked.
Kaye punched him on the shoulder.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Cruelty to my gearbox. Have you ever even driven a car before?’
‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘You win. Joe, take us back to the station.’
‘Left or right at the next junction?’
‘Enough’s enough,’ Tony Kaye said, making to open the glove box. ‘I’m plugging in the satnav.’
Detective Sergeant Gary Michaelson had grown up in Greenock but lived in Fife since the age of eighteen. He’d attended Adam Smith College, then done his police training at Tulliallan. He was three years younger than Ray Scholes, married, and had two daughters.
‘Schools here good?’ Fox had asked him.
‘Not bad.’
Michaelson was happy to talk about Fife and Greenock and family, but when the subject turned to Detective Constable Paul Carter, he offered as little as Scholes before him.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Fox commented at one point, ‘I’d say you’d been put through your paces.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Coached in what not to say – coached by DI Scholes, maybe…’
‘Not true,’ Michaelson had insisted.
It was also untrue that he had altered or deleted notes he had taken during an interview conducted both at the home of Teresa Collins and in the very same interview room where they were now seated. Fox recited part of Teresa Collins’s testimony:
‘You can charge me with anything you like, Paul. Just don’t think you’re putting your hands on me again. She didn’t say that?’
‘No.’
‘Verdict suggests otherwise.’
‘Not much I can do about that.’
‘But there was a bit of personal history between Carter and Ms Collins. You can’t have been unaware of it.’
‘She says there was a history.’
‘Neighbours saw him coming and going.’
‘Half of them known to us, by the way.’
‘You’re saying they’re liars?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Doesn’t really matter what I think. How about the missing page from your notebook?’
‘Spilled coffee on it.’
‘Pages underneath seem fine.’
‘Not much I can do about that.’
‘So you keep saying…’
Throughout the interview, Fox knew better than to make eye contact with Tony Kaye. Kaye’s infrequent contributions to the questioning showed his growing irritation. They were getting nowhere and would almost certainly continue to get nowhere. Scholes, Michaelson and the allegedly flu-ridden Haldane had not only had plenty of time to choreograph their answers, they’d also already premiered the routine in the courtroom.
Teresa Collins was lying.
The other two complainants were chancers.
The judge had helped the prosecution at every available turn.
‘Thing is,’ Fox said, slowly and quietly, making sure he had Michaelson’s attention, ‘when your own force’s Professional Standards team looked into the allegations, they reckoned there might be something to them. And don’t forget: it wasn’t Ms Collins who started the whole process…’
He let that sink in for a moment. Michaelson’s focus remained fixed to a portion of the wall over Fox’s left shoulder. He was wiry and prematurely bald and his nose had been broken at some point in his life. Plus there was an inch-long scar running across his chin. Fox wondered if he’d done any amateur boxing.
‘It was another police officer,’ he continued, ‘Paul Carter’s uncle. Are you calling him a liar too?’
‘He’s not a cop, he’s an ex-cop.’
‘What difference does it make?’
Michaelson offered a shrug and folded his arms.
‘Battery change,’ Naysmith broke in, switching off the camera. Michaelson stretched his back. Fox heard the clicking of vertebrae. Tony Kaye was on his feet, shaking each leg as if trying to get the circulation going.
‘Much longer?’ Michaelson asked.
‘That’s up to you,’ Fox told him.
‘Well we all still get paid at the end of the day, eh?’
‘Not in a rush to get back to your desk?’
‘Doesn’t really matter, does it? You tidy up one crime, another two or three are just around the corner.’
Fox saw that Joe Naysmith was going through the pockets of the equipment bag. Naysmith knew he was being watched, looked up, and had the good sense to look contrite.
‘The spare’s still charging,’ he said.
‘Where?’ Tony Kaye asked.
‘The office.’ Naysmith paused. ‘In Edinburgh.’
‘Meaning we’re done?’ Gary Michaelson’s eyes were on Malcolm Fox.
‘So it would seem,’ Fox answered, grudgingly. ‘For now…’
‘What a complete and utter waste of a day,’ said Tony Kaye, not for the first time. They had retraced their route back to Edinburgh, still mainly in the outside lane. This time, the bulk of the traffic was heading into Fife, the bottleneck on the Edinburgh side of the Forth Road Bridge. Their destination was Police HQ on Fettes Avenue. Chief Inspector Bob McEwan was still in the office. He pointed to the battery charger next to the kettle and mugs.
‘Wondered about that,’ he said.
‘Wonder no more,’ Fox replied.
The room wasn’t large, because Counter Corruption comprised a small team. Most Complaints officers worked in a larger office along the corridor where Professional Ethics and Standards handled the meat-and- potatoes workload. This year, McEwan seemed to be spending most of his time in meetings to do with restructuring the whole department.
‘Basically, writing myself out of a job,’ as he had put it himself. ‘Not that you should worry your pretty little heads…’
Kaye had thrown his coat over the back of his chair and was seated at his desk, while Naysmith busied himself switching the batteries in the charger.
‘Two interviews conducted,’ Fox told McEwan. ‘Both somewhat curtailed.’
‘I take it there was a bit of resistance.’
Fox gave a twitch of his mouth. ‘Tony thinks we’re talking to the wrong people anyway. I’m beginning to
