Life For a Life (28 page)

‘Bottom of the Tay. Destroyed. Does it matter?’

‘Do you think it odd that Bill never used his mobile for three hours before calling me?’ he asked.

‘What’s odd about that? Bill had Eilidh beside him. They were too busy shagging each other senseless. Check Eilidh’s mobile records and see if they match.’

Gilchrist did that, and the records matched, with Eilidh’s last call being one to Bill at 20.14, which in turn matched Bill’s records. Feeling as if the mobile records were getting them nowhere, he called Cooper and put her on speaker.

Cooper confirmed that Bill and Eilidh’s throats had been cut from left to right, which suggested a right-handed person, probably male because of the depth of the cut and the strength needed to slice through the spinal cord.

‘Strong female?’ Jessie tried.

‘Could be but I doubt it.’

‘Any sexual interference?’ Gilchrist asked, cutting off the argument before it started.

‘I’ve recovered seminal remains from Eilidh’s vaginal tract, but no sign of rough play, all pointing to consensual sex. Interestingly,’ she added, ‘I also found semen in her mouth—’

‘Never heard of a blow job?’ Jessie fired.

‘I won’t dignify that with an answer. But if the semen isn’t Bill’s then it might be the killer’s—’

‘It was too cold last night to fool around with blow jobs,’ Jessie said. ‘By the time they chopped off their heads and ripped out Bill’s eye, they would have been bloody freezing.’

‘Just check out the DNA, Becky,’ Gilchrist said, ‘and let me know what you find.’

‘Already doing that.’

He ended the call and said to Jessie, ‘It would be helpful if you gave Becky and your dead colleague a bit more professional respect.’

‘Becky? Not Dr Cooper?’

‘Becky,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Unless you want to start addressing me as DCI Gilchrist.’

‘Got it,’ she said, but Gilchrist doubted it.

By the time Gilchrist finished his debriefing – a difficult meeting because of Bill and Eilidh’s murders – it was almost 8.00 p.m. He waited until the bulk of his team left the room then said to the remaining few – Jessie, Mhairi, Dan, Nance – ‘I’m done for the day. Anyone fancy a pint?’

They all declined, except for Nance who said, ‘I’ll stay for a quickie,’ which brought a snorted chuckle from Jessie.

Gilchrist chose the Dunvegan Hotel.

He had not been there for a couple of weeks, and when he pulled up a stool by the bar, Sheena caught his eye with that welcoming white smile of hers and said, ‘The usual, Andy?’

‘You talked me into it.’

Nance ordered a Corona, and poked the lime down the neck.

Gilchrist took a sip of his pint then said, ‘Give Jessie time. She’ll grow on you.’

‘Yeah, like fungus.’

‘She’s a good addition to the team. Brings a lot with her.’

‘Particularly where weight’s concerned.’

‘Ouch,’ Gilchrist said, and thought it best just to take a sip. He waited until Nance returned her Corona to the bartop. ‘Just tell me to shut up if I’m becoming too personal,’ he said, ‘but do you ever see John now?’

‘Trying not to.’

The last Gilchrist had heard of Nance’s fiancé was that he had transferred to Northern Constabulary, which policed the Highlands and Islands, only to be suspended within six months. Once an adulterer, always an adulterer, he supposed.

‘A bit acrimonious in the end, wasn’t it?’ he said.

‘The understatement of the decade.’ She tilted her bottle his way. ‘How about you? How’s your love life?’

Well, he supposed he never should have started asking personal questions. ‘Mostly non-existent,’ he said.

‘I shouldn’t think Jessie would be your type.’

‘Other than the fact that she’s also a member of my team?’

‘Didn’t stop you before.’ Nance took a long swig, then shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Andy. That was out of order. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Forget it, Nance. No offence taken.’

She turned to face him then, and he found his face flushing under the directness of her stare. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.

‘I said forget—’

‘No, Andy. I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I’ve never apologised to you before. For the way I treated you. The way I just . . . it was . . . unkind of me.’ She held his gaze. ‘I’m sorry for that. You didn’t deserve it. You were always a gentleman to me, not . . .’ She took another sip.

‘Not like John?’

‘Definitely not like John,’ she said, and finished her Corona.

‘Would you like another?’

‘Only if you’re having one.’

‘I think I can be persuaded.’ He nodded to Sheena, indicated another round, then back to Nance. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t offended in the least. I enjoyed our time together but I always knew it would be short-lived.’

‘Why?’

‘Age difference for one, I suppose.’

‘And for two?’

He sipped his beer, returned it to the bar, and shook his head. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose there really wasn’t a two.’

Nance smiled, a clean smile that sent a surge of radiance through her, making him realise he had not seen her happy for weeks, maybe even months.

‘You should smile more often,’ he said. ‘It suits you.’

That comment seemed to knock both of them into silence, until the second round was served, and Nance said, ‘Did you ever think of leaving the force?’

‘When?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a hell of a job we do. It’s not for the fainthearted.’ She gripped her beer. ‘In any normal day at the office, we’re exposed to things no human being should ever be exposed to. Sometimes it all seems too much.’

He did not want to say,
You get used to it
, but to survive as a detective you had to view murder victims with a dispassion verging on the inhuman. He eyed Nance over the rim of his glass. ‘Is that how you feel?’ he asked her. ‘That it’s all too much?’

She stared at the gantry. ‘I can’t believe Bill’s dead. Eilidh, too. He was only twenty-three. We had a drink in Lafferty’s last weekend, and Eilidh came along too.’ She dabbed a hand to her eyes. ‘And to see the pair of them on the beach with their . . . like that . . . I don’t know. It just seems . . .’ She shook her head, then buried her thoughts in her Corona.

Gilchrist said nothing, just turned his attention to his own pint.

Nance had not been herself the last several months. He had put it down to the demise of her relationship with John. Secretly, he had been pleased to learn of their break up, not because John had been the reason Nance ended her affair with him – in a strange way, he had been happy that it had ended – but because he had always seen John as a user of women, someone who never put into a relationship what he got out of it. But now Gilchrist realised that Nance’s break up with John had been only a part of her problems, and he worried that the job, or rather the gruesome aspect of it, was becoming too much for her.

‘I don’t mean to sound so morbid,’ she said, and eased closer so that her thigh slid along his. Then she smiled. ‘Would you like to come back for a nightcap?’ But something in his look must have surprised her, for she added, ‘I don’t mean in any . . . I’m sorry . . . it’s . . . it’s not appropriate . . . I shouldn’t have—’

‘Nance,’ he said, and waited until she returned his gaze. ‘If any over-keen journalist just happened to snap a picture of the two of us going back to yours, particularly after the day we’ve just had, it wouldn’t look good, would it?’

She gave a tight smile, shook her head.

He had never been one for slamming his doors, preferring to close them quietly, even leave them ajar – just a touch. ‘How about sharing a sandwich,’ he said, ‘and we can take a rain check on that nightcap.’ He raised his pint.

She nodded, sipped her Corona.

But if the truth be told, he really thought he had put his foot, probably both of them, smack dab in the middle of it.

On the A917 to Crail, Gilchrist pushed the Merc up to eighty.

Fields either side glinted white under a clear sky. The road ploughs and gritters had been out earlier, and the road ahead lay clear and black under his headlights. Kinkell Braes Caravan Park zipped past on his left, a bit too fast, he thought, and he eased his speed back to a sensible sixty. The clock on his dash told him it was 11.37.

He turned up the radio when he caught the guitar strains of a song he had not heard for the longest time. His taste in music tended to be eclectic, and he preferred the sixties and seventies eras – the Eagles, the Kinks, Sade, Cream – rather than the mindnumbing disco beat of modern day. He tried to refocus on the murders of Bill and Eilidh.

But try as he might, his thoughts kept tugging him back to Nance.

It turned out that Nance’s fiancé, John, had been calling and texting as often as twenty times a day. He had even turned up on her doorstep one Sunday morning, about three months ago, begging her to take him back. Nance told him in her own way – she was known for the occasional string of expletives that could redden the cheeks of even the most time-hardened policeman – and the next day she had the locks changed, her Santander bank accounts moved to RBS, and even inquired about having a panic alarm installed in her bedroom.

Not what Gilchrist wanted to hear. Not at all.

‘And has John stayed away?’ he had asked her.

‘He’s getting the message.’

Gilchrist had made a mental note to call an old friend of his, DCI Tommy Coulson of Northern Constabulary, and have loverboy John stuffed back into his box. Their evening had ended with Nance thanking him for listening to her tales of misery and woe, then leaning forward and giving him a surprise peck on the cheek.

‘Later,’ she had said.

Not quite the come-on
ciao
of Rebecca Cooper, although Gilchrist had not failed to catch the temptress gleam in her eye. But Nance was one of his team, a valuable member at that, and he did not want to take, or be seen to be taking, advantage of her. He saw, too, how she was not the Nance of old – the occasional nervous giggle, the way she picked at her nails – and he came to understand that her psyche was more fragile than he had ever—

His phone rang.

He felt his heart leap to his mouth when he recognised the number.

DC Bill McCauley’s.

He slammed on his brakes.

The car’s tyres crunched and slid on the frosted grit as he jerked to a stop next to a farm gateway that could have been waiting for him. A quagmire of thoughts pulsed through his mind as he made the connection, his most immediate being that he did not want to scare the caller off – Bill’s mobile could have been picked up by a civilian who was calling the last recorded number in an attempt to return it. They might be able to lift prints off it, if it had not been handled too much.

Well, he had to live in hope, he supposed.

‘Andy Gilchrist here,’ he said.

Silence filled the line long enough for Gilchrist to think he had been cut off. He was about to ask again, when a voice said, ‘Detective Chief Inspector Andrew James Gilchrist?’

Ice fingered Gilchrist’s neck. But as he tried to work out how the caller knew his full name and rank, his subconscious was telling him that Bill would have had his number and full name logged into his mobile – another one of Bill’s quirks – and that the caller was reading the ID from the screen.

‘Speaking,’ he said. ‘Who’s this?’

‘You already know my name.’ A man’s voice, deep and clear, the words pronounced with the deliberation of a foreigner trying not to be misunderstood. ‘You and I need to meet.’

‘Who’s speaking?’ Gilchrist repeated.

‘You will remember the house in Kingsbarns,’ the man said, then gave Gilchrist the correct street address in case he pretended to have forgotten it.

Gilchrist stared at the phone, now in no doubt who he was talking to – Kumar.

‘You will park your Mercedes at the corner of Back Stile and North Carr. And you will walk to—’

‘Why?’

‘We need to discuss how to minimise interference from Fife Constabulary, as well as . . . how do I say it . . . find some way to keep you sweet—’

‘I don’t do bribes,’ Gilchrist said.

Kumar chuckled. ‘Everyone has a price, Mr Gilchrist.’

The fact that Kumar knew he drove a Mercedes suggested he had been on Kumar’s radar for some time, probably since the discovery of the body on the Coastal Path. Knowing everything about your enemy was one way of staying ahead. And Kumar was a master – Bill and Eilidh’s bodies were evidence of that. Gilchrist was being toyed with, but he had to press, keep Kumar on the line, see if he could find something he could use to his advantage.

‘Why don’t I just hang up?’

‘That is your prerogative, of course. But it would be foolish to do so. You first need to hear what I can give you,’ Kumar said, with barely a change in tone. ‘But only you. No one else. Once you’ve parked your Mercedes, you will walk to the house. We will be watching you, and if I suspect that you have not come alone, or that you have told someone about this call, then you will lose out on a financial arrangement that—’

‘You’re not listening. I don’t do bribes.’

‘Everyone can be bought, Mr Gilchrist.’

Gilchrist’s mind was racing, trying to work out what to do once the call ended. Kumar was a killer, a hunter, someone who knew how wild animals selected their prey, by separating the weak from the pack. Kumar wanted to meet him, not to discuss some sweetheart deal that would have him turn a blind eye while Kumar continued to kidnap, rape, sell or murder young girls at whim. That was not going to happen. No, Kumar had a different plan: he wanted to kill him, plain and simple.

Lights in the rearview mirror brightened the cabin for a dazzling moment as a van approached from behind, then faded as it passed. Just that momentary burst of light seemed to clear Gilchrist’s thinking, and tell him that he needed to hear all Kumar had to say before he could work out a plan.

‘And what do you think my price will be?’ Gilchrist said.

‘That is why we need to meet.’

‘We can do this over the phone.’

‘Then it would not become, how do I say it . . . personal.’

Gilchrist waited several beats, then said, ‘Where do you want to meet?’