Hand for a Hand (17 page)

Then she pulled away from him.

He lay there, confused for a moment as to what he had done wrong, then felt his desire surge to a new high as he heard the soft rustle of her thong being slipped off.

When she returned to him, she slid a leg over his thigh, and straddled him. Her fingers took hold of him, guided him, and he opened his mouth to afford her one last opportunity to stop.

We shouldn’t
, his mind whispered.

She set herself down on him and he slid into the depths of her. She eased herself up, as if riding the lazy waves of a Caribbean surf. With each slow mounting, she leaned farther forward, falling closer to him, until her arms reached around his neck and he took hold of her breasts.

Her wetness ran onto his aching sac and down and over the top of his thighs. He took control then, placed his hands on her buttocks, pulled her onto him, her rhythmic surfing more frantic with each rising thrust.

Still, his personal turmoil persisted.

Please stop
, he wanted to say.
No, make love to me. Let me make love to you. No. You. Me. Please. No
.

Yes
.…

His breath caught in his throat, gave out tiny gasps that hardened as she impaled herself onto him again and again. The waves
rose and fell, the seas roughened, the swell deepened, falling lower, rising higher, climbing, peaking, then crashing onto the warm shores of their drenched bodies to ebb and flow with a force that almost sucked the heart out of him.

She lay on top of him, her body writhing, squeezing every last ounce of pleasure from the moment. And Gilchrist wanted to thank her for what she had given him, but could not find the words. Instead, he drifted off and dreamed the dream of the dead.

Chapter 19

G
ILCHRIST WAKENED TO
the whisper of rain on glass, then realised it was Nance having a shower. He raised the white-cotton Roman blinds to the pale grey of a Glasgow morning, then tried Maureen’s mobile, but got no connection. He called Dainty for an update, only to be told they had uncovered nothing overnight.

The unequivocal fact that his daughter was missing hit him like a blow to the gut. A cold sweat came over him, and he brushed his forehead surprised to see his fingers tremble. He had never felt such helplessness. He forced his mind to think, to come up with something, some intangible clue that might lead him to her, or at least point him in the right direction.

But what? And how?

He powered up her laptop, then entered
My Documents
and tried the
Research
folder, and into more subfolders, working through one branch, then back out and down another, but coming up with nothing, until an idea stopped him. Was Maureen’s laptop wi-fi enabled? Even if it was, Jack would not have wireless Internet, of that he felt certain. A short search located the Ethernet cable, but plugging it in gave him no connection, and he had to switch the power off. Within four minutes of restarting, he had an Internet connection and found himself at the BBC home page—another surprise. He typed
hotmail.com
and in the Sign In page entered Maureen’s email address. For her password, he typed
Blackie 1980
—the name of her first cat and the year of her birth—and prayed she had not changed it since she last told
him. He held his breath while the screen opened to her Hotmail account.

He was in.

He read the folders listed in a column that ran down the left side of the screen, searching for something that might lead him to Ronnie Watt, until his eye tripped up on Topley. He had heard that name somewhere before. Topley. But where, he could not recall.

He opened it to a screen that contained no emails, and wondered why Maureen had emptied that folder. He eyed the column list again and stopped at
Chris
.

Was this Maureen’s boyfriend?

He opened that folder, surprised to find a list of emails that ran to five pages and dated back to January two years earlier.

Two years? But was Chris not Maureen’s latest boyfriend? Despite the distancing in their relationship, Gilchrist knew Maureen well enough to know that two years was too long for her to keep any romance secret. Ergo, Chris could not be her latest boyfriend.

Or could he?

He chose the most recent email, dated six weeks ago.

The screen opened to a short message from Maureen Gilchrist to Chris—no second name—titled Incoming.

As requested, written confirmation has been sought for incoming order expected to arrive within the week.

How harmless was that? It was so harmless it rattled alarm bells.

Then the Topley name came to him with a chill that iced his spine. Was the message recipient Chris Topley?

And what was the
incoming order
?

He clicked through several older emails, but at first glance they offered nothing more.

He exited and eyed the column of folders, this time focusing on
Kevin
.

The name niggled at him. He had come across it last year on a visit to Jack’s flat in Hillhead. Chloe’s paintings had struck him as not only vivid and colourful, but tempestuous and wild, verging on the surreal. Chloe told him she had painted that series to work through the sudden death of her friend, Kevin.

Didn’t Chris Topley have a brother called Kevin? He seemed to remember that. But the likelihood of Chloe’s Kevin and Maureen’s Kevin being Kevin Topley, or even the same Kevin, was almost laughable. Still, the name would not leave. He opened the folder to a single email, dated about four weeks ago, and stared in disbelief at the screen, at an untitled message from Maureen Gilchrist to Ronald Watt. Had Maureen mistakenly filed this in the wrong folder after deleting all emails to Kevin? He gritted his teeth and read on.

Hi Ron,

I’m sorry I haven’t written since before Christmas, but I’ve been busy. Work is hectic. You know how it is. And Chris can be a real slave-master. But you know that, too. I’ve missed you, and I look forward to seeing you again at Glenorra, if only to say farewell. I’m sorry things haven’t worked out between us the way you would have liked, but that’s life. You have yours, and I have mine. Let’s live and let live. And let bygones be bygones. Love. M xx

He was not sure if he was angered by Maureen’s feelings for Watt, or embarrassed at reading her personal correspondence. However he felt, he could not dispute the fact that she had resurrected her relationship with DS Ronald Watt, transferred from Fife Constabulary’s Crime Management Department to some outpost in the city of Glasgow all those years ago.

And now Watt was back in Fife, and Maureen was seeing him. Again.

Gilchrist seethed. This was betrayal at its worst. Maureen had lost her virginity one month after her fifteenth birthday, had since renewed her affair with the culprit, a man ten years her senior. Now after eight years, after all that time, here was written proof that she had reneged on the promise she made to her father.

He eyed the email.

I’ve missed you
.

Gilchrist squeezed the bridge of his nose. Christ, Mo, what were you thinking? How could you let the man back into your life? He grimaced at the screen.

I’m sorry things haven’t worked out between us the way you would have liked
.

He read that line again, then once more, and felt his heart grasp onto that slice of hope and cling to it. Watt wanted to keep the relationship alive. Not Maureen.

 … let bygones be bygones
.

Gilchrist clenched his jaw. How could she ever forgive the man? And in his mind’s eye, Watt pulled himself from bed and staggered to the bathroom, crumpled bed-sheets pressed to his bloodied face.

Gilchrist had moved towards Maureen then.

Stay away from me
.

The words had been screamed. Even now, he flinched at the memory.

He remembered his breath rushing in and out in short hits, as if his body had forgotten how its lungs worked. He was as fit as he had ever been, but his burst of anger had carried him beyond some physical limit.

“You
hit
him,” she shouted. “You beat him up.”

“What did you expect?” he shouted back at her.

“Not that.”

At fifteen, Maureen had the verbal alacrity to argue with her elders. Rationale and logic were not necessary prerequisites, of
course, and even Gail had a tough time withstanding the occasional verbal lashing.

It seemed surreal to be talking to his naked daughter, her eyes defiant, her clothes clutched to her body.

“He raped you.”

“He didn’t rape me.”

“That’s not what it looked like to me.”

“Was I screaming for help?”

“That’s not the point,” he shouted. “Having sex with a minor is against the law.”

“Not if I wanted to.”

Gilchrist felt a pain stab his chest. “It doesn’t matter if you wanted to or not. You’re fifteen. It’s against the law.”

“I don’t care what the law—”

“You’re
underage
.”

She turned her back to him then, took hold of her knickers, and he had to avert his eyes from the swell of her vulva as she leaned forward and stepped into them, one leg, two legs, then up. And something about the way she did that reminded him of Gail all those years ago. “So?” she said.

“So you could be charged,” he tried.

“Charge me.”

Gilchrist remembered feeling stunned. It seemed such a challenging thing for any daughter to say. “You don’t understand what—”

“I understand perfectly well. You hit him. You hit a defenceless man who—”

“He was having sex with a minor, for God’s sake. That is rape. It is against the law. Can I make it any clearer than that?”

She slipped her bra over her tight breasts. “Minor?”

“Yes. Minor. Now get dressed.” He had turned then, not knowing what to do, what to say. His knuckles were bloodied from battering Watt. The sound of water running in the bathroom had him fighting off the ridiculous urge to apologise to the man. But his dilemma was clear. Charge Watt with rape, and
Watt would reciprocate by charging him with assault. Which was why Watt had not fought back. He had been caught breaking the law, could lose his job in a heartbeat, and had egged Gilchrist on simply by smiling at—

The door clicked.

Gilchrist exited the file.

Nance walked into the bedroom, her hair a glistening mass of blackened curls, a cream cotton bath towel around her body. She gave a white smile, and Gilchrist tried to reciprocate.

“What’s got you upset?” she asked.

“Maureen’s seeing Ronnie Watt.”

“Tell me you’re joking.” She slipped off the bath towel and dried her hair as she walked towards him, firm breasts bouncing from the effort. Her pubic hair stood at the joint of her thighs, as trim and tidy as a black exclamation mark. “What’ve you got?”

Gilchrist struggled to concentrate. “Some emails,” he said.

“From Watt?”

Gilchrist bit his tongue. Just the thought of Watt contacting his daughter riled him. He should have charged Watt for all he was worth, taken his chances with his own assault charges. Instead he had let Gail talk him out of it.

What would the gossip do, for goodness sake? She’s only a child. And there’s your career to think about. You might lose your pension. And what about the mortgage? Think about someone other than yourself for once in your life. Damn you to hell if you do this
.

So he had not pressed charges, instead worked a deal with the powers that be to have Watt transferred out of St. Andrews. Now eight years on, Watt had the audacity to be seeing Maureen behind his back. And back in St. Andrews. It did not bear thinking about—

His mobile rang. He turned from Nance’s nudity. “Bad news, Boss. We got an arm this morning.”

“Left arm, Stan?”

“Correct, Boss.”

The left arm was significant, because whoever was feeding Chloe to him needed to keep the sequence in order. Left right, left right. Like marching, he thought. Was that significant? Was the killer in the military? Was that part of the message?

“Any note?”

“Yes, Boss. Felt-tip pen printed along its length.”

Thank God for small mercies.

“Dismember, Boss.”

The fifth note. He spelled it in his head to the fifth letter—E.

M A U R E. Christ, how clear could it be?

“Where was it found?”

“Lying on Grannie Clark’s Wynd on the eighteenth fairway, wrapped in plastic.”

“Close to the boundary fence?”

“About ten yards in.”

“Thrown there?”

“Bert thinks it was placed, Boss.”

Gilchrist puzzled over the killer’s fascination with the Old Course. But it was open to the public and almost impossible to monitor around the clock. At night, it would be the simplest thing to drop an amputated limb in the passing.

But surely someone somewhere must have seen something.

“Tell me we’ve got a witness, Stan.”

“Afraid not, Boss.”

“Don’t we have the place flooded with uniforms?”

“No one saw a thing.”

How could someone drop an arm on a golf course in the middle of the night and not be seen? They were supposed to be patrolling the place, for God’s sake.

“Where’s Ronnie Watt?” he demanded.

“Haven’t seen him today.”

“When was the last time anyone saw him?” he asked.

“Yesterday afternoon, Boss.”

Gilchrist’s mind crackled with possibilities. Maureen had been
corresponding with Watt, ending their affair. The logic seemed improbable, but Maureen’s recent email would have given Watt time to set things in motion, if that had been his intention. First Chloe, then Mo. Revenge for Gilchrist kicking him out of St. Andrews, and for Maureen dumping him? Was that possible? Had the man they chased from her flat been searching for Maureen’s laptop so he could delete any reference to
Ronnie
?

Gilchrist decided to take the beast by the balls. If he had acted on his hunch sooner, Maureen might be safe. Now he could no longer afford to wait. “Stan,” he ordered. “Get a warrant for Watt’s arrest.”