The Complaints

‘What can I get you?’ Breck asked.

‘Tomato juice,’ Fox said. Breck nodded and squeezed between two of the bar stools. The barman was pouring a cocktail into an old-fashioned champagne glass. Fox joined the other drinkers and peered down towards the floor below. The added attraction seemed to be that you could occasionally catch a glimpse down the front of a woman’s dress, but the tables had been angled and lit so that it was impossible to make out the contents of any hand of cards. The man nearest Fox nodded a half-greeting. He looked to be in his early sixties, his face deeply lined, eyes rheumy.

‘Table three’s the lucky one tonight,’ he offered in an undertone. Fox puckered his mouth, as if considering this.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He had three twenty-pound notes in his pocket, and knew he would have to offer to break one of them to buy Breck back a drink. Hopefully Breck wouldn’t accept, and they’d go home instead. Fox certainly had no intention of handing any of the cash to the tables, even lucky number three.

‘Virgin Mary,’ Breck said, handing him his drink. Fox thanked him and took a sip. It was spiced to the hilt: Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco, black pepper. Fox felt his lips go numb.

‘Reckoned that’s how you’d like it. Cheers.’

Breck was holding a chunky glass filled with ice and a dark concoction. ‘Rum and Coke?’ Fox guessed, receiving a nod of confirmation.

‘Used to be my dad’s drink,’ Breck said.

‘Used to be?’

‘He’s like you – off the booze. Being a doctor, he’s seen more than his fair share of damaged livers.’

The man next to them had been listening in. ‘What doesn’t kill you,’ he said, offering it up as a toast, the iced remains rattling in his whisky glass as he tipped it to his mouth.

‘Gentleman here,’ Fox informed Breck, ‘thinks table three’s the good one.’

‘That right?’ Breck peered over the balcony. Table three was hosting blackjack, and Breck turned back towards Fox. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’m enjoying my drink,’ Fox replied, taking another fiery sip. ‘But don’t let me stop you…’

It was after Fox bought them their second – ‘and final’ – round that Breck decided he might ‘have a flutter’. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, he lost the best part of thirty quid, while Fox watched from the wings.

‘Ouch,’ was all Breck said as he ended the experiment.

‘Ouch indeed,’ Fox agreed. They retreated to a spot near the machines. ‘Why did we come here, Jamie?’ Fox asked.

Breck studied his surroundings. ‘Not exactly sure,’ he appeared to admit. Then, spotting that Fox’s glass was empty: ‘One for the road?’

But Fox shook his head. ‘Home,’ was all he said.

On the drive back, Breck started talking about chance and how he didn’t really believe in it. ‘I think we decide how things are going to be, and we make those things happen.’

‘You reckon?’

‘You don’t agree?’

Fox shrugged. ‘Far as I’m concerned, stuff just happens and goes on happening and there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

Breck studied him. ‘Have you heard of a band called Elbow? They’ve got a song about how when we’re drunk or just happy we can start to believe that we’ve created the whole world around us.’

‘But that’s an illusion.’

‘Not necessarily, Malcolm. I think we shape each and every moment. We choose the way our lives are going to go. That’s why I get such a buzz from games.’

‘Games?’

‘Online games. RPGs. There’s one called Quidnunc that I play a lot. I’ve got an avatar who roams the galaxy having adventures.’

‘How old are you?’

Breck just laughed.

‘I don’t believe we have any control over the world,’ Fox went on. ‘My dad’s in a care home – he has almost no control over his daily life. People just come and do things around him, making decisions for him – same as politicians and even our bosses do for us. They’re the ones who run our lives. Adverts tell us what to buy, government tells us how to live, technology tells us when we’ve done something wrong.’ In demonstration, Fox undid his seat belt. A warning light came on, accompanied by the ping-ping-ping of an alarm. He slotted the buckle home again and glanced in Breck’s direction. ‘Ever managed to use a computer without it asking if you need help?’

Breck was smiling broadly. ‘Free will versus determinism,’ he stated.

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘I’m betting you don’t have a Facebook page or anything like that?’

‘Christ, no.’

‘Friends Reunited?’

Fox shook his head. ‘It’s getting hard enough to hold on to any sort of private life.’

‘My girlfriend likes to Twitter – know what that is?’

‘I’ve heard of it and it sounds like hell.’

‘You’re one of life’s spectators, Malcolm.’

‘And that’s the way I like it…’ Fox paused. ‘You didn’t ask the staff about Vince Faulkner.’

‘Another time,’ Breck said with a shrug.

Fox knew he had a decision to make. Ideally, he would drop Breck on the main road and let him walk the final few hundred yards home. That way, the three residents of the surveillance van wouldn’t spot him. But if he failed to take Breck all the way home, would Breck himself become suspicious of his motives? And once his suspicions had been aroused, might he spot the van? In the end, it was Breck who made the decision. They’d just turned on to Oxgangs Road when he asked if Fox could pull over and let him out.

‘You don’t want me to drop you nearer home?’

Breck shook his head. Fox was already signalling to stop at the kerb. ‘I want to finish that walk I was taking,’ Breck explained. When Fox pulled on the handbrake, he saw that Breck had his hand outstretched for him to shake.

‘Thanks,’ Breck said.

‘No, Jamie, thank you.’

Breck smiled and opened the door, but once outside, he stuck his head back into the car again.

‘This stays strictly between us, right? Wouldn’t do either of us any good otherwise.’

Fox nodded slowly, and watched as Breck drew himself upright. But then the head dipped back into the car again.

‘One thing you need to know,’ the younger man said. ‘We’re not all like Glen Heaton – or Bad Billy Giles, come to that. Plenty of us at Torphichen were cheering when you nailed him. So thanks for that, Malcolm.’

The passenger door was pushed closed. A hand slapped twice against the car roof. Fox signalled back out into the road and released the handbrake. He drove home with his thoughts swirling and eddying, refusing to coalesce.

Thursday 12 February 2009

9

Fox had been in the office three hours when Tony Kaye arrived, looking bleary.

‘Well,’ Kaye said, ‘that’s a chunk of my life I’m not getting back.’

‘What happened?’ Fox paused in his typing. He was making a record of a meeting he’d just had with two lawyers from the Procurator Fiscal’s office. They’d warned him that the case against Glen Heaton would take ‘no little time to prepare’. The pair had been young – one male, one female. They could almost have been brother and sister, the way they dressed, moved and spoke. It was as if they’d spent their whole life together, to the point where Fox had asked if they were an item.

‘An item?’ The female lawyer hadn’t seemed to understand the term.

‘We’re not,’ her colleague had stated, blood colouring his neck.

‘What happened?’ Tony Kaye was saying now, mimicking Fox’s question as he sloughed off his overcoat. ‘Nothing happened, Malcolm. The sod didn’t get home until midnight. He’d left a light on upstairs, so we didn’t know. Then, when he finally arrives, he logs on to the computer straight off. That’s when we think we’ve got him. Know what he does?’ Kaye had hung up his coat and placed his leather satchel on the floor next to his desk.

‘What?’

‘He starts looking at some online RPG. Know what that is?’