Hand for a Hand (25 page)

“You not being outside.”

“You always were a cheeky bastard. But I’m too old in the
tooth to rise to your petty baiting now.” Bully narrowed his eyes. “Honesty,” he said. “That’s what you get when you’re in here. Honesty.”

Gilchrist puzzled at the words. He could not think of a more dishonest bunch of souls than those incarcerated in Barlinnie. “Now you’ve lost me.”

Bully chuckled, a hacking cackle that came from deep inside his lungs. “No one tells lies in here,” he said. “Why should they? They’ve got nothing to lie for. Not like the world you live in.”

“So you’re trying to tell me that you’ve seen the error of your ways?”

Something dark shifted behind Bully’s eyes at that moment. “Three lawyers’ tongues turned inside out,” he growled, “wi’ lies seamed like a beggar’s clout. Three priests’ hearts, rotten, black as muck, lay stinking, vile in every neuk.” Bully’s lips parted in an ugly smile. “Even back in Burns’ day, lawyers and priests were the same lying fucking shites they are today.”

“And your point is?”

“I would have thought a brainy bastard like you would work it out.”

Work what out? The verses? The reference to lawyers and priests? The lies? The truth? What? But what Gilchrist
had
worked out was that Bully was behind Maureen’s disappearance. Of that he was certain.

He tried again. “Where is my daughter?”

Bully held his gaze for a long moment, then glanced at the door, and Gilchrist felt his hopes soar at the possibility that Bully was about to tell him. Then Bully’s eyes gleamed with victory. “Oh princess, by thy watchtower be, it is the wished, the trysted hour. Those smiles and glances let me see, that makes the miser’s treasure poor,” and with an abruptness that had Gilchrist on full alert, Bully pushed back and stood. He raised his hands, shackles jangling, then brought them down on the table with such force that Gilchrist was sure he must have cracked several bones.

The guard burst in. “
You. Sit
.”

Bully held out his hands, and Gilchrist saw the disfigured fingers of crushed joints.

“Take me.” Bully shuffled towards the guard, as if the act of smashing his hands had drained him of all energy. But at the door, he halted. “Vengeance, Mr. Gilchrist. You put me away eight years ago. And through every second of every minute of every hour of every one of those eight years, vengeance has kept me going.”

Gilchrist saw that Bully had said all he was going to say. But he could not let him just walk away. He had to give it one last shot. “My daughter’s done nothing to harm you,” he tried. “Let her go.” It was pointless negotiating with a psychopath, he knew that, but he tried anyway. “Please,” he added. “What’s she ever done to you?”

Bully glared at him for a full ten seconds, then said, “The wind blew as twad blawn its last. The rattling showers rose on the blast. The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed. Loud, deep and lang the thunder bellowed. That night, a child might understand, the Deil had business on his hand, Mr. Gilchrist.” Then Bully tilted his head back and let out an ear-piercing howl like a demented wolf.

Even the guard looked taken aback.

Gilchrist stared at the man, knowing he was being toyed with. Another howl raised the hairs on his neck, followed by a crazed laugh that cut to the heart of his soul.

Then Bully stepped into the corridor.

The door closed with a metallic clang.

Gilchrist sat stunned, listening to the sound of Bully’s laughter and wolf-howls fade, until all that was left was the silent echo of prison life. He opened his jacket and removed his recorder. He replayed their conversation, recognised some of the words, excerpts from poems by Robert Burns. But what did they mean? Was Bully giving him more clues? Or just playing with him?

On the way out, he checked with the prison doctor, who confirmed Bully was not on medication.

“What about his health? Any sweats, yellow eyes, that sort of thing?”

“We have the occasional viral infection passing through the prison population. Much like the real world. According to my records, Mr. Reid has not had any serious illness for five years.”

“And five years ago, what happened?”

“The flu.” He cocked his head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Inspector, but Mr. Reid has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, excellent health.”

Driving back to St. Andrews, Gilchrist let his thoughts run their convoluted course.

Bully was not being prescribed medication. Was he having drugs smuggled in? Hard to do, but not impossible. He could not say. But one thing he could say was that Bully’s gibberish had to mean something. Of that, he was certain.

But what?

And if he found out, could he save Maureen?

M
AUREEN GROANED FROM
a dull pain at the nape of her neck.

That was where he had hit her, knocked her unconscious.

Since coming to, she had spent the last thirty minutes kicking the wooden door that was the only exit from her chamber. But her efforts had resulted only in bruised and bloodied feet. Her mouth was gagged with duct tape that ran around the back of her head, pulled her hair tight, made breathing difficult. Her ankles were bound with the same tape. Behind her back, her hands were, too. Every joint in her body seemed to ache.

She shuffled across the concrete floor on her rump until her back hit the stone wall. As best she could work out in the pitch darkness, the chamber was no more than six feet square. The ceiling was low, barely high enough to allow her to sit. The air smelled dusty and dry, and she worried that the oxygen might run
out. The tape was wound four or five times around her limbs, letting her know she was not meant to escape.

And she knew, too, that he was not coming back.

She was all alone. No water. No food.

She was going to die. This chamber was to be her final resting place. And it pained her to think that no one would find her, no one would visit her once she was gone.

The tears came then, racking sobs that threatened to steal the air from her lungs. Thoughts of all she had done wrong in her life—the indifference she had shown her parents, the disregard she had shown her brother, the recklessness she had developed of late—swirled around her mind in dizzying waves. Oddly, it was the thought of dying that stopped her crying. She sniffed, tried to blink her eyes dry. She was not dead yet.

She would not lie down and die. She would not let that happen.

She wriggled to the door, turned her back to it, felt her fingers fumble over the wooden surface, work their way around the edge, searching for a splinter of wood that might have broken off during her attempts to break free. But the door was solid. She twisted her body, tried to reach higher, the fire in her shoulders and arms forcing a gasp from her aching throat. She fought to ignore the pain, and pressed harder, pushing, pushing, until—

She scraped against something.

An edge of the concrete wall, a bit that was chipped, maybe sharp enough to cut.

She gritted her teeth, pressed the tape to the wall.

She would not die. She would not let him win.

She rubbed her wrists up and down.

Up and down.

Chapter 29

J
ACK SAID
, “T
HAT’S
scary, man. What the hell does it mean?” Gilchrist had asked that same question a hundred times. And a hundred times he had come up with the same answer.
I don’t know
. On the drive back to St. Andrews, the word
watchtower
had prompted him to call Stan to initiate a search of the West Port, St. Rules Tower, St. Salvator’s, and any other tower-like structure in the St. Andrews area. But so far, no one had found a damn thing. Maureen no longer lived in Fife, so how many other towers were there in Glasgow, or Scotland, or the British Isles for that matter? A similar call to Dainty had resulted in a curt lack of manpower response, and a snide remark that left Gilchrist wondering if it was all just a hoax. Had Bully been teasing him, letting him think he was giving him clues, knowing they meant nothing? Now that would be Bully, devious and cruel to the point of mental sickness.

Bully’s voice came back to him.

I’m smarter than the whole fucking lot of you piled together
.

And because Bully believed he was smarter, he had left clues. Gilchrist was certain of that. If Bully’s recitals had not been intended as clues, then what the hell did they mean?

Which brought him full circle.

He fingered the recorder. “Let’s go through it again.”

Jack seemed to have come to terms with Chloe’s murder, and had offered to help in Maureen’s disappearance. Trying to decipher Bully’s madness was a good start. He stared at the recorder, hand poised with pencil. Bully’s metallic voice whispered at them.

Jack hit the button, scribbled on his notepad.

“Wee, sleekit, cowerin, timorous beastie,” he said. “That’s the start of
To a Mouse
. Right?” He clicked the recorder on, then off again. “Which one’s that from?”

“
To a Haggis
.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Maybe the clues are in the following lines, or something.”

Gilchrist had already thought of that, and more. Perhaps the clues were in the number of the verses within the poem, or in the date the poem was written, or in the number of words in the verse. Or in any other millions of different ways a nutcase like Bully could screw with your brain. But in the end he had come to see that Bully had wanted his body-part clues to be worked out, so that Gilchrist would come to him. So whatever clues he was giving needed to be tricky, not impossible—

“And this one?”

“Don’t know.”

Another click of the recorder. “This?”

“
Tam O’Shanter
.”

When Jack had all the verses down, he read them out, line after line.

Then he handed them over. “Any clearer?”

Gilchrist stared at the verses. No, God damn it. He was not any clearer. He was less clear. And what if the clues were in the next verses? That would be typical Bully. Plant the seed, and grow the wrong crop. But that would be too complicated. Whatever Bully was trying to tell him had to be in these verses.

His gaze returned to
Oh princess, by thy watchtower be
, the first verse Bully recited after Gilchrist asked where Maureen was. Was the secret to her disappearance hidden within that single line? He read it again. But he could think of nothing.

“I could search the Internet,” Jack said.

“Please do.”

“Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t have a computer.”

Gilchrist blinked. For Christ’s sake. He’d never had a computer at home because he used one at the Office. He reached for his mobile phone and got through in seconds.

“Nance,” he said. “Where are you?”

“At the other end of this line.”

“I need assistance.”

Serious now. “Shoot.”

“Can you get onto the Internet and download Robert Burns’ poems ‘To a Mouse,’ ‘To a Haggis,’ and ‘Tam O’Shanter’?”

“Can I ask why?”

“It’s important.”

“I gathered that.”

“And also the poem that contains the verse
Oh princess, by thy watchtower be
. And another that contains the verse
Inhuman man! Curse on thy barb’rous art
.”

“ ‘The Wounded Hare’?”

“The what?”

“
Inhuman man!
It’s the opening line of ‘The Wounded Hare.’ ”

Was Bully trying to scare him into believing Maureen was in some way wounded? But if so, how wounded? Before he could stop himself, he said, “Does it die?”

“The hare? Not that I remember. More like it was about to die.”

Gilchrist felt his breath leave him. That was it. Bully was telling him Maureen was about to die and there was bugger all he could do to prevent it—

“Hang on. Let me look it up.”

“You on the Internet?”

“Yep,” she said. “Ah, here we are. The second verse is,
Go live poor wand’rer of the wood and field!
”

Go live
? Hope swelled—

“
The bitter little that of life remains
.”

Something slumped deep in the pit of his stomach. Well, there he had it. The hare will die. So would Maureen. And he could do nothing to stop it.

“I’m sorry, Andy,” Nance said. “Is it to do with Maureen?”

“Afraid so.”

“We’ll find her, Andy. We have to.”

Gilchrist puzzled at how close he felt to Nance. She seemed to be able to reach him with barely a murmur. “Can you read out the whole poem, while I write it down?”

When he hung up he read it from start to finish, returning to
Ah, helpless nurslings, who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow?

He felt his lips tighten, his eyes nip. Would Maureen ever become a mother? Would she survive to have children of her own? He read the poem again, but came up with nothing new. Did he have it all wrong? Were there really clues in the verses? Or was Bully setting him off on the wrong track?

But his sixth sense was stirring.

Bully had been expecting him. And he had turned up at Barlinnie. Which meant that Bully’s scheme was working to plan. The notes on Chloe’s body parts, sent to Gilchrist, and from which Bully knew Gilchrist would work out that Maureen was next. But were these lines now Bully’s clue for Gilchrist to save Maureen?

They had to be. Why else would Bully have recited them?

Then he realised that he could read these verses until he was blue in the face. He needed help. He dialled Nance’s number again.

“This is becoming a habit I could enjoy,” she said.

“Do you know if Hammie’s still around?” he asked her. “I need him to decipher some of this stuff.”

“I’m a detective. Not a psychic. Care to explain?”

Gilchrist gave her a rundown of his meeting with Bully, asked her to write down the lines Bully had recited, then said, “Maybe
Hammie can make some sense of them. He was one of the best cryptologists I ever worked with.”