by Muir, T. F.
JG.
The lighter was his brother’s.
CHAPTER 9
‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad.’
‘This is our secret, Andy. Just you and me.’
Gilchrist’s fingers trembled as he eased his cigarette into the flame.
‘Now suck in.’
The heat from the lighter seemed to fire his mouth, and he almost let go.
‘Now take a deep breath,’ Jack said. ‘Hold it. Then puff it out.’
Gilchrist inhaled as he was told, felt dizziness surge through him, watched his brother’s face shift and shimmer. Then he let it out, but could not hold back a cough.
‘Feel good?’
‘I think so.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it.’
Gilchrist sat back, holding the cigarette deep between his index and middle finger, his hand clasped over his mouth. He took another draw and exhaled through his nose, just the way Jack did.
‘Here,’ said Jack, handing him the lighter.
The silver lighter gleamed as good as new, except . . .
‘It’s scratched,’ said Gilchrist.
Jack nodded, blew smoke from his nostrils. ‘Two nicks. One for me and one for my girlfriend.’ He took a quick draw, pouted it out.
‘Do you like your girlfriend?’
‘She’s special.’
‘Will you get married?’
Jack retrieved his lighter and removed a penknife from his back pocket. He snapped the blade open, gouged another nick on the lighter’s edge. ‘That one’s for you, Andy. You’re special, too.’ He handed the lighter back.
Gilchrist rubbed his finger over the fresh scratch, then said, ‘So, will you?’
Jack inhaled, long and deep, held his breath, as if the answer to the question was being formed through the molecules in his lungs. Then he tilted his head, narrowed his eyes as he looked at the bedroom ceiling and exhaled in one long, steady stream.
‘One day,’ he said.
By the time Gilchrist returned to the bar his mind had already fired a fusillade of questions at him, the most worrying being, how had Jack’s lighter found its way into the woman’s grave? Was Jack in any way involved in her murder? That thought alone had a cold sweat tickling Gilchrist’s neck. But only he knew the nicks could place the lighter with his brother, and he made a pact to keep that to himself. At least for the time being. He could be wrong. There could be some simple explanation. But he found he could give it no further thought, for one other possibility had his mind spinning. Was it possible? Or was he being absurd? After all these years, could he now have a lead to his brother’s hit-and-run driver? And did his ridiculous thoughts on his immediate course of action make any sense?
He picked up his pint, downed it in one.
‘Thirsty all of a sudden,’ Gina said.
‘Let’s go.’
She caught up with him as he was stabbing the key into the Merc’s ignition.
‘Whoa there, big boy,’ she said, folding herself into the passenger seat, showing more tanned cleavage and muscled thigh than could be considered decent.
Gilchrist snapped into Drive, floored the accelerator.
The Merc twitched as it powered forward.
‘Want to tell me what’s going on?’ She removed the Marlboro from her handbag.
Gilchrist snatched the packet from her, stuffed it back into her bag. ‘I’ll make you a deal,’ he said. ‘About the book. I’ll agree to it, on one condition. That you tell me the truth.’
‘Not even one teeny-weeny white lie?’
He glared at her, annoyed that she would choose that moment to try to joke.
‘You’re serious?’
Gilchrist gripped the steering wheel, tightened his fingers until his knuckles whitened. ‘I can drop you at your hotel if you’d like. Your choice.’
She held up both hands in mock surrender. ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’
Gilchrist jerked the wheel and overtook two cars, returning to the safety of the inside lane to the angry blare of a passing horn.
‘Of course, the truth doesn’t matter a damn if we’re both wrapped around a tree,’ she said, slapping both hands on the dashboard as Gilchrist pulled in hard behind a Transit van. ‘Either you slow down, or I’m going to have a cigarette. And that’s the truth.’
Gilchrist eased his foot from the pedal, let some distance grow between his Merc and the Transit van. Gina was right, of course. After all these years, what was the point of rushing?
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s have it. And I promise to tell you the truth.’
He did not like her emphasis, as if she was mocking him. ‘Just how good a psychic are you?’ he asked, and found himself driving on in a heavy silence that had him thinking the truth was about to catch her out. Hedgerows, trees, walled fields, all passed by in blurred silence. Corners came and went. And still no response.
He kept his speed at a steady fifty, determined to wait her out.
‘I believe in what I receive,’ she finally said.
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘How can I answer?’ she said, then added, ‘Truthfully.’
‘I thought the question was straightforward.’
‘That shows how much you don’t know.’ She faced him. ‘I need a cigarette to think straight.’
He depressed a button on the console and her window lowered. He stopped it halfway. ‘Start thinking straight,’ he said. ‘And flick your ash outside.’
She tutted as she dug into her handbag, and a few moments later exhaled out the window. ‘I can’t explain the unexplainable,’ she said. ‘I can only tell you what I see, feel, or even hear.’ She took another draw. ‘After that, it’s all up to you. Maybe I should ask, How good are you at using the unexplainable? How far do you want to push when no one else believes you? How many resources do you want to use at the ridicule of others? That’s what happens. You either believe in what I tell you, or you don’t. But you’ll find most people don’t.’ She sucked in hard. In the dark of the car her cigarette glowed red.
Gilchrist gritted his teeth. A few minutes earlier his plan had seemed unequivocal and clear. Now he was not so sure. ‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ he pressed.
She took another draw, this time facing him as she exhaled. ‘The best.’
The rust on the cigarette lighter had been descaled in places, the silver plating long corroded. Gilchrist remembered it looking as expensive as solid silver to his twelve-year-old eyes, shiny and gleaming, its perfection marred only by three nicks on its base. He ran his fingers over them, and an image of Jack cupping the lighter in his hands hit him with such clarity that he had to close his eyes.
‘Care to share your thoughts?’ Mackie said.
Gilchrist shook his head. ‘You don’t want to know, Bert.’ He handed the lighter to Gina Belli, watched her finger it. ‘Anything?’ he asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be so goddamned dumb. It’s nothing like that.’ She turned the lighter over, touched the nicks he had described to her on the drive to Dundee. ‘I’d like to have a look at the cold-case files again.’
‘You’ve seen them before?’
‘When I thought I was going to need something to persuade you to let me do your biography.’
Mackie said, ‘Would someone care to tell me what’s going on?’
Gilchrist took Gina by the arm. ‘I’m about to find out,’ he said, and led her from the room.
Back behind the wheel, Gilchrist said, ‘How did you get access to the cold-case files?’ But even as that question aired, he saw that with her high-profile police contacts in the States, she could probably gain access to cold-case files anywhere in the world. Even if you thought it was nothing more than witchcraft, what harm would it do to let a psychic with an impressive record sift through your local cold-case files?
As if in tune, she said, ‘It’s amazing what a simple telephone call can do.’
‘Why do you need to see the files again?’
‘I now have something that belonged to your brother,’ she said. ‘It could make all the difference.’
‘I can’t get hold of them tonight.’
She shook her head. ‘How about tomorrow?’
Tomorrow? Tomorrow was too long. He needed to know tonight, right now. He struggled with the rationale. This psychic business made no sense. Everyone knew that. It was nothing more than a hoax, a scam, a way to make money at the expense of others. But he still needed to push as far as he could. He did not have the cold-case files. Not tonight. But having come this far, what did he have to lose by going one step further?
‘I can give you a photograph,’ he heard himself say.
By the time Gilchrist retrieved three photographs of Jack from his cottage in Crail, it was after 1 a.m. when they pulled up under the portico of the St Andrews Bay Hotel. Like the star attraction she thought she had now become, Gina Belli waited for Gilchrist to open the passenger door and help her out.
‘Don’t push it,’ he said, as she took hold of his hand.
‘Charming to the last.’ She left him to close the door.
Her room was on the third floor with a view of the sea, its presence noticeable only by a vast and utter darkness that stretched before him like a starless sky. In the distance, the lights of Carnoustie flickered through the night haze, helping him define the limits of the estuary’s northern shoreline.
He turned from the window and watched her clear a space on the writing desk. With her tanned skin and designer clothing she seemed ready-made for the surroundings.
‘This place is expensive,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’ She lit a cigarette.
‘Isn’t this non-smoking?’
‘As you said, it’s expensive.’ She exhaled from the side of her mouth and switched on a table lamp, adjusting the dimmer until it cast a dull glow over the desk. She took a hard draw of her cigarette, stubbed its lengthy remains into her empty whisky glass and held out her hand. ‘Photographs.’
Without looking at them, she laid all three face-down on the writing desk, taking care to line them up in a row. She placed the lighter next to one, taking her time selecting its exact position. Then she placed an envelope on the table – where had that come from? – and removed a dozen or so handwritten pages, which she placed on one corner of the desk with careful deliberation.
‘Lights?’
Gilchrist obliged by turning them off.
The room fell into darkness, except for a dim penumbra on the writing desk.
Gina turned over the handwritten pages, one by one, moving them from one corner of the desk to the other.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sshh.’
Gilchrist tightened his lips like a chastised schoolboy, and could not help but think that all the fiddly palaver, the precise alignment, the photographs, the lighter, the turning of the pages, the silence and the dimmed lighting were all an act of showmanship to impress him.
She seemed to find the page she was looking for, which she removed from the sheaf and laid next to the lighter. Then she placed her hand over one of the photographs before moving to the next, then on to the last one, until her fingers brushed the cigarette lighter. She closed her eyes, inhaled slow and deep, let it out.
It felt like several minutes, but could have been less, when she opened her eyes and brushed her fingers down the single sheet of handwritten notes from top to bottom, then again, this time stopping about one third of the way down. With her other hand, she turned over the first photograph. Jack with shorn hair, collar and school tie, grinned up at her, teeth and gums sparkling. She flipped over the other two – Jack with flared hipsters, shoulder-length hair and a guitar slung over his shoulder, fretboard down-pointing, Johnny Cash style – Jack stripped to the waist, broad shoulders and ripped stomach muscles making Gilchrist wonder how they could ever have come from the same parents. She brushed Jack’s features with one hand, while her other tapped the page with a pen. Another surprise. Where had that come from? Then, with a suddenness that startled him, she pushed her chair back and stood.
Silent, Gilchrist faced her. Was he supposed to switch the lights back on? Say something? But she stood immobile, and stared at him in silence. In the shadowed lighting the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips added a sexual charge to the macabre image. He returned her stare, not sure what he had just witnessed, and even less sure of what he was expected to do next.
She broke the spell by pushing her hands through her hair. ‘I’ve not been altogether honest with you,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s a start.’
She lit another cigarette, inhaled as if her life depended on it, then sat on the edge of the bed. She eyed him through a shadowed cloud of smoke. ‘I received a name.’
‘Voices whispering in your ear?’
‘In my head.’ Her cheeks pulled in for another draw. ‘It’s the same name.’
‘The same name as what?’
‘As before. Only this time stronger.’
‘Louder?’
‘No. Clearer.’
‘You’ve not been altogether honest with me?’
She looked away from him then, her gaze settling on some spot on the wall, as if she could see beyond it and was counting the night stars. ‘I read the accident report earlier. Worked through the cold files.’ She faced him. ‘I also visited the scene of the accident.’
‘When?’
‘Four or five months back.’
About the same time she approached Gail, he thought.
‘That’s when the name came to me.’ She drew in, inhaled hard and swallowed. ‘It was only a whisper.’ Her breath rushed in a white fog. ‘I couldn’t understand what I was hearing. I didn’t even think it was a name. It sounded like fake love.’ She grinned up at him. ‘How often is that true?’ She pushed herself to her feet, found her empty whisky glass, took another draw and stubbed the stem into it. Then she walked to the window. With her back to him, she stood silhouetted against the night beyond.
Gilchrist waited.
‘So I started digging.’
‘Digging?’
‘Research. I write biographies. It’s what I’m good at.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought I was on to something. I could feel it. I just didn’t know what it meant. So I tried another route. I contacted DVLA in Swansea, eventually found someone who would search their database for me—’
‘Who?’
She turned from the window and faced him. ‘That’s not important.’
‘Go on.’
‘I wanted a printout of the names and addresses of all owners of MGs registered in the UK for 1969.’
Gilchrist felt his eyebrows lift. ‘That’s quite a task.’
‘It was,’ she agreed. ‘It took me five weeks to get it, and four days to go through it.’
‘What were you looking for?’
She shrugged again. ‘Anything that came to me.’ She strode to the bedside table, removed a fresh packet of Marlboro from her handbag. She stripped it open, removed one and lit it with her diamond-studded lighter. Watching her addiction on full display seemed to douse Gilchrist’s own urges. Or maybe his dread of the outcome of her psychic show was killing his desire.
She sat on the bed again, closed her eyes and exhaled. ‘When I started going through the printout, I realized that the fake love I’d been hearing was really a name. I found seven in total.’ She glanced at the writing desk. ‘I wrote them down.’
Gilchrist thought he saw where she was going. ‘And one of these seven names came back to you tonight. Only clearer.’
‘Yes.’
He was almost afraid to ask. ‘Whose name?’ he tried.
She looked up at him, and something in the shape of her mouth, the glint in her eyes, told him she had not wanted to go this far.
‘It’s the name of the driver.’
Hearing those words had him struggling with the urge to walk
to the door and leave her to play her silly psychic games. But he stood rooted. After all, was this not what he had hoped for, that her psychic powers might somehow give him a lead? But he had not thought it through, had not imagined what she could give him. Not the name of the driver.
He had not expected that.
‘On the writing desk,’ she said, ‘next to the lighter, is the list of seven names. I’ve underlined the name that came to me tonight.’
Gilchrist strode to the desk, snatched up the sheet.
James Matthew Fairclough.
He scanned the other names, mostly close variations.
Only one was underlined.
James Matthew Fairclough.
He scowled down at her, could not keep the sarcasm from his voice. ‘You expect me to believe this?’ he said. ‘When the entire police force failed to come up with any suspects in their investigation?’
She took a long draw. ‘We’re going back thirty-plus years here. Forensic science was in its infancy. The east coast of Scotland was a long way from Scotland Yard, if you get my drift. Fairclough was drunk when he killed your brother. Way over the limit.’
‘Who have you shown this to?’
‘Only you.’
He glared at the name again, his logic screaming that it was all a con, a way for the psychic author, Gina Belli, to land another book on the New York Times bestseller list. It would not be the first time he had crossed someone intent on conning him for some ulterior motive.
He stared into eyes as black as oil. ‘This is unbelievable.’
‘I won’t argue with you on that.’ She inhaled long and deep, then let it out with a rush. ‘But I’m seldom wrong.’
‘Which also means you’re not always right.’
‘But I’m right on this one.’
Silent, Gilchrist waited.
‘I knew you would be hard to convince,’ she went on. ‘So I dug deeper still.’
Now they were coming down to it, he knew, her moment of dishonesty.
‘There was a passenger in the car.’
Passenger? Even as the word chilled his skin, his logic was firing two steps ahead, his nervous system twitching at the sudden possibility of a witness to the accident. ‘You mean, a woman?’