Hand for a Hand (14 page)

“Changed jobs about six months back. Works in some big-shot agency in the city centre. Don’t ask me where. Got the job through her latest boyfriend.”

“Chris?”

“That’s the one.”

“And you’ve never met him?” he tried.

“Just the once. Utter plonker. Wads of cash. Buys every round. You know the kind. I hated him the instant I set eyes on his alligator-skin wallet.”

Gilchrist felt himself deflate. Jack knew as little about Maureen’s personal life as he did, which only compounded his feelings of failure. When he stumbled across Gail’s affair with Harry, all he had wanted to do as a father was to convince Gail to stay with him.
Stay together for the sake of the children
. Is that not what parents did? But not Gail. At the first confrontation, she rushed off to Glasgow with Harry and the kids faster than a skelped cat.

“Mum wouldn’t know where Mo works, would she?” Gilchrist asked.

“Not a chance, Andy. Sorry.”

Well, that was that. He closed his phone. “No one knows where she is,” he said.

“Maybe she’s out shopping. You know, that thing women like to do.”

Gilchrist tried a smile. But what was the point of faking despair? He should have acted sooner, instead of waiting for the next body part to turn up.

Murder. Massacre.

Even with those two words, he had seen something, been suspicious of the letters M and A being first and second in their respective notes. But two letters were not enough for a
progression. And that was his mistake. He had known, God damn it. He had known.

But had failed to act.

And now he was acting, he was terrified he was too late.

On the unlikely off-chance that Maureen had phoned the Office, he called for his messages. None. Not from Maureen, not from Watt, not from anyone else. He asked for Chief Super Greaves, but was told he was unavailable. Jesus, he felt as if he was becoming obsolete. He drove on in silence, deep in the pit of his misery.

D
ARKNESS AGAIN, BUT
this time not total.

Wooden floorboards, rough and grainy, pressed against her face.

Even lying on her side, she could make out the dark shape of a curtained window next to a narrow door rimmed with grey light. Dark shadows of four walls told her the room was small. She lay still, let her eyes adjust, worried at pulsing cramps in her stomach. If no one came soon, she would have to.…

She forced her mind off the body’s natural urge, shifted her weight—

And froze at the rattle of a chain.

She choked back a gasp, and realised her mouth was gagged.

A cold frisson chilled her neck, ran the length of both arms, and turned into a tremor that shivered her body and caused tears to sting her eyes.

She held her breath, concentrated on catching the slightest sound.

Was she not alone?

M
AUREEN LIVED IN
a modernised apartment building in Glasgow’s Merchant City. Once derelict and soot-covered, the brick and sandstone tenements had been refurbished and converted into low-tech office space and luxury residential flats.

Gilchrist parked his Roadster on a double yellow line.

He stepped into a grey Glasgow drizzle, and upped his collar to ward off the cold. The upmarket area surprised him. What had he expected? He eyed the sand-blasted façade, the pedestrianised streets, the painted bollards, the shining pub sign at the end of the road, all painted, all new. Even the cobbled walkway seemed to glisten in the rain.

“You never told me your daughter was a high earner.”

“I never knew.”

“What does she do for a living?”

“Last I heard she was studying to be a physiotherapist,” he said, and puzzled once more at his failure to follow her career. He was about to push the entrance door open when he noticed it lay ajar. “Not as upmarket as we thought,” he said, then felt a cold rush as he saw the lock was damaged, the wood splintered where it had been jimmied off.

His peripheral vision sensed movement to the side. He turned, watched a red Mini Cooper pull up with a sharp stop at the far end of the street. Something about the driver’s look, a furtive glance his way, told Gilchrist he was watching out for someone.

And waiting?

On instinct, he walked towards the car. From that angle he could not read the number plate. He was halfway across the road when the Cooper’s engine burst into life with a growl.

“Nance.” He started running. “The number plate.”

Nance surprised him by sprinting ahead.

The Cooper took off, front wheels spinning, and bullied its way down Candleriggs. He caught up with Nance in time to see its disappearing tail-end as it zipped from sight into Argyle Street. Nance had her mobile phone in her hand.

“Got it.” She poked at the pad of her phone.

“I don’t like this,” he said, and jogged back towards Maureen’s flat. Nance jogged alongside him, and he was surprised by how fit she seemed, how fluid her movement was.

“Run a check on PNC for me,” she ordered into her mobile. “One of the new Mini Coopers. Red with a white roof.” She recited the registration number.

Through the entrance door the clamour of their feet echoed off the walls. Maureen’s flat was on the top floor, and Gilchrist took the stairs three at a time, Nance so close behind him that he swore he felt the heat of her breath on his neck.

They reached the landing together.

Gilchrist gasped for breath, tried to still the pounding in his chest. He thought he kept himself fit, but Nance was barely breathing.

“Is this it?” she asked.

He could only nod.

She gripped the handle. “Locked.”

For a moment he thought he had screwed up, that the Mini was nothing to do with Maureen’s flat, that he had it all wrong. Then an image of Maureen as a child crying flashed into his mind, and he remembered promising to do whatever it took to protect her.

He thudded his shoulder to the door. Solid. He tried again. It barely budged.

He stood back, lifted his foot, and heeled it hard against the lock.

The door rattled, maybe moved. But not much.

He kicked again.

“Almost there,” Nance said, and kicked at the door in time with Gilchrist.

The lock burst open, and Nance beat him inside.

“
Police
,” she shouted, and raced down the short hallway.

Gilchrist followed, opened a door on the left. Bedroom. No curtains. No furniture.

Ahead, Nance crashed through the door at the end of the hallway.

Gilchrist watched her fall off to her right, then leap backwards
in a move that defied the laws of physics. Glass smashed. He rushed to her aid, burst into the room, and charged at the body as a foot lifted and caught him a fraction too high to threaten his manhood.

He grunted from the blow, pulled his handcuffs out, whipped them like a chain at a gloved fist that caught him on the chin and snapped his head back. He hit the edge of the door as his knees cracked the floor, and he reached out at the departing figure. His fingers touched fabric, caught it, gripped tight. A black leather boot buried its toe into his shoulder. It swung again, connected with his chin.

He felt his teeth crack and his grip slip free, and he grunted in despair as long legs strode off and slipped through the door. He pulled himself to his feet, flapped a hand at the wall, missed it, and stumbled across the room. By the time he reached the window and fumbled with the blinds, the figure, a tall man dressed all in black, was running across the cobbled street, phone to his ear. At the corner, he waved an outstretched arm as the Mini Cooper pulled level. He opened the door and jumped in as the Cooper sped away.

Gilchrist retreated from the window, relieved to feel his teeth intact.

Nance had her hand to her stomach. “Caught me where it would hurt if I was a man,” she grimaced. “Wasn’t expecting it.” She reached over her shoulder. “And my back hurts.”

“Let me look.”

She surprised him by lifting her blouse. Her skin looked white, her waist slim, her physique more athletic than he imagined. “See anything?”

He eased her blouse up her back to reveal a black sports bra.

She twisted an arm behind her and tapped with her finger. “Just about there.”

He eyed an angry welt at the base of her shoulder blade, already darkening to a bruise. “The skin’s not broken,” he said,
“but it could hurt for a while.” He thumbed the bruise, felt her body jerk. “Sorry,” he said.

“Remind me never to come back to your surgery.”

“Nothing’s broken,” he said, and noticed a short-legged coffee table twisted askew on the rug, the remains of a glass tumbler in the corner near the stereo set. “I’d say you hit the corner of the table.” He let her blouse drop, and she surprised him once more by unzipping and tucking it in, giving him a glimpse of skimpy underwear.

Then she lifted her hand to his temple. “You’re bleeding.”

He almost pulled away. “Will I live?”

“Regrettably.” Then she stepped back. “Just a graze.” She looked around the tidy room and grimaced. “I’d say we got here before he had time to steal anything.”

“Who said anything about stealing?”

“What do you think he was doing? Choosing furniture?”

“Looking for something.”

Nance raised an eyebrow. “Looking for something?”

Gilchrist moved through the room, fingered a pile of CDs on a shelf, an eclectic mix of old and new—Marti Pellow, Elton John, Nelly Furtado, Lionel Ritchie—and he saw in Maureen’s collection the wants and longings of a young woman searching for love.

“Notice anything?” he asked Nance.

“Like what?”

“The walls.” He looked around the room. “And the shelves.”

“I’m not sure I’d choose the colour scheme.”

“No photographs,” he said.

“Is that odd?”

“Maureen was a keen photographer. I bought her a camera for her thirteenth birthday. Back then she was going to be a photojournalist.”

“What happened?”

“She met men.”

“Figures.”

It struck Gilchrist then that he had never been invited to Maureen’s flat. He would meet her in Glasgow on the odd occasion, take her out for a drink and a meal, but she would never invite him back.
You wouldn’t want to see it. It’s too messy
. So he never pushed.

Other than an archway into a modern kitchen-dining room, one other door opened off the living room, to the hallway. The flat was small, probably too small to share. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Maureen say that one day she would have a place of her own, no one to pick up her dirty knickers, tell her what to do, how to run her life. He wondered if this was it.

“It’s not too messy,” Nance said.

Gilchrist was not sure if she meant Maureen kept her place tidy, or the intruder had not done much damage. He chose the latter. “We caught him in the act,” he said. “But what’s odd about the break-in? What do you see?”

“I don’t get it.”

He let his silence do the asking.

“This place isn’t crawling with people,” she tried. “Did you notice anybody checking out the commotion? We weren’t exactly quiet breaking in here.”

Gilchrist nodded. The flats were probably owned by young professionals with careers and money, who worked hard and socialised harder still. No time for kids. During the day the building would be deserted. But something else did not fit.

“The outside door was jimmied,” he said. “But the door to Maureen’s flat wasn’t.”

“So he let himself in?”

“Maybe.”

“With a key?”

“Maybe.”

Nance eyed him. “Maybe he was an expert lock-picker?”

“So why jimmy the outside door?”

“It takes time to pick a lock. He couldn’t risk being seen fiddling with it.”

“So he jimmied it instead?” Gilchrist eyed the CDs, the shelves, the walls. And why no photographs? What was he missing?

Nance’s mobile rang. She took the call, then said, “Mini Cooper belongs to a Tony Brenton. Lives with his mother in Edinburgh.”

“Right,” said Gilchrist. “Let’s pay him a visit.”

“Won’t help. Yesterday morning he reported it stolen.”

As Gilchrist’s mind worked through the rationale, he struggled to keep his emotions in check. The stakes had just been raised. If he had any doubts about the danger Maureen was in, they were dispelled at that moment. The fact that someone stole a car in Edinburgh to break into a flat in Glasgow put the crime in a different league. He was no longer dealing with local criminals, but with someone higher up the food chain, with money and contacts and power, and crews who worked the streets, and the criminal wherewithal to lead Gilchrist by the nose and make sure he would never find his daughter.

Even though this was Maureen’s flat, and he was standing on her rug, looking at her tables and chairs and shelves filled with CDs, personal effects she had touched and listened to and sat upon, he did not feel close to her. At that moment he felt farther from her than at any time in his life. He thought he caught a glimpse of what his life would be like without his daughter in it.

And it felt lonely and cold and dark.

Chapter 17

G
ILCHRIST CALLED FOR
a Lookout Request for the Mini Cooper. It was stolen, almost certain to be abandoned now, but you could never tell. He elected not to report the break-in to Dainty, deciding instead to do some investigation of his own first. This was his daughter’s home, after all.

The flat had two bedrooms; one unfurnished that smelled of fresh paint and plaster. Surprisingly, he thought, Maureen’s room was clean, with the Queen-sized bed made. He pulled back the duvet cover and confirmed only one side had been slept in.

Sweaters, jeans, socks, lay folded on open Formica shelves that took up most of one wall. In a fitted cupboard, he found a selection of silk blouses, mostly white, and expensive-looking jackets hanging on cedar coat-hangers. A dozen pairs of shoes sat in formation on the floor. Again, expensive-looking.

One thing continued to trouble him. Maureen had a computer. But other than a plug in a socket close to the bed, the flat seemed devoid of all things electrical.