Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

by Muir, T. F.

  His day sank into darkness.

  But not before his dying sight caught tartan turn-ups and brown brogues.

  CHAPTER 31

  When Gilchrist came to, he was trussed and gagged and naked.

  And lying on a sheet of plastic that crinkled with every move.

  A dull pain burned the nape of his neck. The taste of oil and dirt lay thick on his tongue. A piece of sacking was jammed into his mouth, held in place by a rough rope that cut into his face and crushed his ears. His hands were twisted behind his back. When he tried to move, something tugged at his ankles, telling him he was hog-tied.

  For a second, panic swept through him in an acid attack that threatened to heave bile from his stomach and choke him to death. He tried to still his heart, take long breaths through his nose, force his mind away from even the thought of throwing up.

  Just keep breathing. Deep and slow. Deep and slow.

  He could not tell how long he had been out, only that it was dark. Despite the cold, sweat tickled the corner of one eye. He felt light-headed from lack of air, and fought off the overpowering need to have the gag removed. He tried to force his thoughts awake, work out what had happened, or more to the point, what was about to happen.

  His legs felt cramped, and a deep ache worked its way through his thighs and buttocks and into his back and shoulders. He tried to ease the pain, rolled on to his side and cursed when the cartilage of his ear hit something hard and metallic. He held still for several seconds while the pain faded.

  Where was he? What time was it? It felt cold enough to be night.

  He lifted his head to the metal thing that had cut his ear, and tried to feel it with his nose. He could not tell what it was, only that it seemed to form part of the lid of whatever box he was in, and that it had a hard, straight edge. He twisted his body, pressed his cheek against the metal bar, felt the rope that held his gag catch, then slip off.

  He tried again, pressed harder, ignored the pain in his cheek as he eased back, hoping he was not tearing skin from his face. The rope slipped from the edge of the bar, but it felt different, not so tight, and cut across his cheeks at a different angle.

  Four attempts later, he was able to shake the rope free and spit the sacking and oiled dirt from his mouth. He breathed in long cool gulps of fresh air that brought life back to his body. It took him a few seconds longer to work out that he was locked in the boot of some car. The smell of petrol and oil, musty and unclean, reminded him of Megs’ old Vauxhall.

  Was he in Megs’ garage?

  He worked his way around the confined space, contorting his body to probe the tiniest of corners with his fingers, touch some wires, lift the edge of some boot covering, search for anything sharp enough to cut the rope.

  As he struggled, his powers of reasoning came back to him.

  Dougie and Megs were in it together. Of that he was certain. Between them they had concocted a string of events that had delayed the discovery of Kelly’s disappearance and even had the wrong police force searching for her. But which of them had killed her, Gilchrist could not say.

  Perhaps Dougie. With his fear of flying, he would have needed someone he could trust, someone he knew would keep his secret, someone who would fly to Mexico for him and send the postcard to Kelly’s parents, that single piece of evidence that would clear the crime from the shores of Scotland. Who better than his soulmate, Megs?

  Or maybe Megs had caught Dougie and Kelly in flagrante delicto and, in a fit of rage, the stirrings of which Gilchrist had witnessed earlier, had decided to put a permanent stop to their sexual liaison. Or perhaps Megs and Dougie had done it together, taken advantage of Kelly’s inquisitive sexual nature, maybe convinced her to engage in a threesome and, at the moment of truth, or penetration, or whatever, one of them changed their mind and—

  He stilled.

  His fingers gripped a plastic cover on the side of the boot, with a knob that released it and gave access to what felt like a plastic toolbox. He battled against the pain of the rope as he groped in the darkness, worked at the toolbox latch, opened it and felt inside.

  His hand landed upon a socket with a bent handle, for loosening wheel bolts. He searched for a blade-headed screwdriver, one he might use to cut through the rope, but from the way he was trussed, he worried he could not twist his wrists sufficiently to cut himself free.

  The sound of a padlock being unclasped and a garage door opening stopped him. He listened to the screech of the door-spring and the rattle of the wheels as the garage door rolled overhead, then puzzled as the noise seemed to reverse and it closed again.

  He thought he caught the soft shuffle of shoes on concrete, then the unseen presence of someone close by, the click of the boot lid—

  The burst of light blinded him.

  Ewart stood over him like some colossus, the closed garage door in the background.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see you’ve been busy.’ He reached inside the boot for the oiled rag and discarded rope. ‘And this, too.’ He removed the toolbox. ‘I’m going to have to tie it tighter.’ He leaned forward, grabbed the rope that secured Gilchrist’s wrists to his ankles and gave a hard tug.

  ‘There’s no need for this, Dougie,’ Gilchrist gasped. ‘Think of what you’re doing—’

  ‘What I’m doing is making sure we don’t go to prison.’

  ‘You could strike a deal, work something out with—’

  ‘Premeditated murder is what you told Megs. We won’t be working anything out. But I’m surprised you found the postcards,’ he said. ‘What did you do with them?’

  ‘What postcards?’ Gilchrist tried.

  Ewart shook his head. ‘We’ll find them. And if we don’t? Well, after tonight, it won’t matter a damn.’ He leaned forward, placed one gloved hand behind Gilchrist’s head, pushed the oily rag into his mouth with the other. He tried to work the rope around Gilchrist’s head, but Gilchrist spat out the rag.

  Ewart stood back and smiled down at him. ‘Your choice,’ he said, dangling the rope with one hand, removing a syringe filled with clear fluid from his pocket with the other.

  Gilchrist stared at the needle, fighting back the rising panic. If Ewart injected him with whatever concoction the syringe contained, he would be unconscious in seconds, never to be revived, of that he was certain. Why had Ewart not already done that? His hesitation gave Gilchrist the answer.

  ‘A post-mortem would reveal drugs in my blood,’ he said, ‘which could point to someone in the medical profession.’

  ‘A detective to your dying breath, Andy. I’m impressed.’

  ‘And you don’t want to take that chance. Do you?’

  ‘As I said, it’s your choice.’

  Gilchrist eyed Ewart, stunned that he had never before seen the killer in him. Dead eyes belied a beguiling smile. A career as a doctor had made him immune to the feelings of the dying. But it seemed surreal to be having a conversation with his executioner-to-be. Like choosing from which side he would like his throat slit. Oh, from the right, please.

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  Gilchrist really had no decision to make. An injection ended it there and then. An oily rag in the mouth kept him alive, at least for the time being.

  ‘I won’t shout,’ he tried.

  ‘I know you won’t,’ Ewart agreed.

  Gilchrist opened his mouth to accept the rag, and Ewart leaned down and pressed it in with gloved hands. The rag was pushed in deeper than before and that, along with the stench of petrol and oil, nearly brought up the contents of his stomach. He worked his tongue and pushed the gag behind his teeth as Ewart, true to his word, tied the rope tighter around his face with a roughness intended to confirm he was not fooling around.

  ‘You won’t get out of that so easily,’ Ewart said, and left Gilchrist to stare out of the opened boot.

  The sound of chains rattling and something being dragged across the concrete floor caused the hairs on the back of Gilchrist’s neck to rise. He needed no explanation as a
length of chain was lugged with some effort into the boot, the car settling on to its suspension springs from the added weight of an anchor.

  ‘You’re going for an eight-hundred-metre swim,’ Ewart said. ‘Straight down.’

  The boot lid slammed shut.

  Gilchrist lay still in the darkness, listening to the sound of the garage door opening, the crunch of Ewart’s shoes across gravel. The rope tight around his face brought tears to his eyes. Or was he really crying, knowing he was trapped, knowing he would never see his children again, and knowing that whatever Dougie and Megs had in store for him, this time no one would ever find the body?

  Eight hundred metres. Straight down.

  Was that any way to leave this world?

  He recalled the murder cases he had been involved in over his lifetime. How many other poor souls had left it the same way? How many innocent victims had lived their last minutes petrified with fear, helpless with despair and crying at the futility of it all?

  He felt his eyes burn, blinked away his own tears.

  Christ, he could not die. Not now. Not like this.

  He had to find a way out.

  By not giving him an injection, was that Ewart’s mistake? By keeping him trussed and alive, was Ewart giving him false hope of escape? Or had Ewart kept him alive because he needed Gilchrist to help him in the final act, by walking towards whatever death awaited him—

  The crunching sound of gravel again, the lopsided beat of the different steps of two people, and he sensed someone walk past the boot to the front of the car. The door opened, and the suspension settled as the driver took his seat.

  The engine started with the recognizable rattle of Megs’ old Vauxhall, and his head hit the boot lid as the car pulled from the garage and jerked to a halt.

  The suspension settled again, a bit more to the left side, he thought. So, Ewart was driving, with Megs as his passenger. The Vauxhall accelerated down the drive and lunged on to the road with a hard bump that cracked his head on the boot floor.

  Where were they going? Somewhere far from St Andrews, of that he was certain. If one of Fife Constabulary’s detective chief inspectors went missing, teams of experts would scour the countryside, starting at his last known position, spreading wider until his body was found, or his case eventually closed and filed, unsolved. The irony of it all did not escape him. He would end up just like Kelly.

  No, he thought, he would be dumped in some little-known spot at sea. Eight hundred metres deep. He wondered why Ewart had been so precise. As best he could recall, Dougie had never been a sailor, so bathymetrical details would be of no interest to him. Gilchrist had no idea if Megs was sea-wise, and he struggled to pull up a memory of anything in her house or garage that would suggest so. Other than the anchor, his mind remained blank.

  Were they taking him out on the North Sea? Or to some loch? Many of Scotland’s lochs were hundreds of metres deep. But eight hundred? Or maybe they would throw his body into some long-abandoned quarry pit.

  The car’s motion threw him around the boot, jarring limbs that were already burning from being hog-tied. His thighs cramped, his back ached, his shoulder muscles screamed for release. He twisted and turned, contorting himself in the tight confines, trying to work into a position that would lock his body in place, stop the reckless rolling about. He forced his head back, and found that doing so slackened the rope that tied his wrists to his ankles and relieved the pain, if only for just a moment—

  The car pulled to an abrupt halt that forced a curse from Dougie, and threw Gilchrist hard against the side.

  Hope soared in his heart.

  For one fleeting moment he had felt it.

  He forced his head back some more, put pressure on his neck, twisting more and more until his fingers just managed to touch the one thing that could set him free.

  The rope around his ankles.

  CHAPTER 32

  By the time the car stopped, they had been travelling for two hours, the last ten minutes of which had thrown Gilchrist around the boot as they weaved and splashed along what felt like a potholed dirt track.

  He estimated they were a couple of miles deep off the beaten track.

  When the boot opened, he blinked against the glare of a torch that wavered over his nude body, then settled on his groin.

  ‘I see I wasn’t missing much,’ Megs quipped.

  Gilchrist groaned from behind his gag.

  Ewart bustled in beside Megs. ‘Give me a hand,’ he said, and leaned into the boot space. ‘Come on. We don’t have much time.’

  ‘You mean you don’t have much time. You’ve got to get back to that stuck-up wife of yours. I’ve got all night.’

  ‘You take his ankles. I’ll take his arms.’

  Gilchrist waited until Ewart’s gloved hands touched him.

  Then he rolled over, gripped the anchor with both hands and swung it up and into Ewart’s shocked face. His stiff joints and aching muscles caused him to miss with full force, but Ewart still slumped to the ground with a hard grunt. Gilchrist snatched the rope from his mouth, spat out the gag and scrambled out of the boot to confront Megs, who stood transfixed as he heaved the anchor to shoulder height.

  They stood no more than three feet apart.

  ‘Don’t make me hit you with this,’ he said to her. ‘Chain him to the bumper.’

  Ewart groaned.

  Gilchrist’s effort to free himself, twist his body to reach the rope, then hold that position while his fingers worked the knot behind his back had almost exhausted him. It had taken him the best part of an hour to free his ankles, and the pain when he at last straightened his legs brought tears to his eyes. He then worked the rope around his wrists, slackening it enough to let him bump and shuffle his tied hands under his backside. Slipping his legs free had almost cost him a broken wrist, but he persevered, and when he slid the rope from his head and pulled the gag from his mouth, he had cried with relief.

  The anchor felt like it was doubling in weight, and his legs begged him to sit. If they put up a fight now, he knew he could not take on both of them. Perhaps not even one.

  Ewart pressed his hands to the ground.

  ‘Stay put,’ Gilchrist ordered.

  Ewart spat out blood, pushed himself to his knees.

  Gilchrist brought the anchor down on his shoulder with a force that broke bone.

  Ewart slumped to the ground, moaning as he gripped his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll break the other one if you make a move.’ He flashed a look at Megs. ‘Now tie him up.’

  Silent, Megs reached for the chain and pulled it rattling over the rim of the boot where it slinked to the ground like a living thing.

  ‘How do you expect me to tie him up with this?’ she complained.

  Here we go again, Gilchrist thought. He needed to be careful around Megs. ‘Just wrap it round him and loop it to the bumper.’

  She gathered in the chain. ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ she pleaded. ‘I only mailed the postcard from—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Ewart glared up at her.

  ‘It’s all your fault—’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman—’

  ‘If you’d kept your cock in your pants, none of it would have happened—’

  ‘Don’t say anything—’

  ‘You didn’t have to get rid of her. You didn’t have—’

  ‘Shut up—’

  ‘—to kill her.’

  Gilchrist thudded the anchor into the ground.

  Ewart and Megs flinched into silence.

  ‘Tie him up. Just get on with it.’ If Gilchrist had not been so exhausted, he could have listened to them argue all night, each accusation bringing him one step closer to the truth of what happened all those years ago. And standing naked in the cold night air did not help. A tremor gripped his legs, and a shiver rattled his upper body.

  Megs laid the chain on the ground, doubled it over. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’

  ‘That’s for others to decide,’ he
said.

  She pulled a doubled-up length of chain to her, moved in front of Ewart, her back to Gilchrist. ‘I don’t want to go to prison,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘You’ll get a fair trial.’

  She stood still for a moment, as if working out the logic of his words, then twisted her hand around and through a length of doubled-up chain and, like a hammer-thrower at the moment of release, spun around and swung it at Gilchrist in a slicing arc.

  Gilchrist had time only to lift his arm as the chain whistled towards his head like a scythe. He cried out in pain as a heavy blow caught him on the wrist, and back-stepped in panic as a second caught his other arm. It was all he could do to hold on to the anchor. He backed up, stumbled, fell to the ground on his back, managed to roll to the side as the chain thudded by his head with a force that brought up dirt and grass.

  Up and over and on to his feet, one hand dangling useless by his side, the other gripping the anchor for all he was worth.

  He pulled back in time to miss another scything blow. And another.

  The next one caught him on his knee, sending a flash of pain the length of his body.

  Any thoughts of making a run for it were killed there and then.

  She came at him like a crazed demon, hissing and spitting and scything.

  ‘I warned Dougie about you . . .’

  Gilchrist backed away, stumbling over rock and grass in his bare feet, just managing to stay out of reach of the whistling chain. If he tripped, it was over.

  ‘But would he listen . . . ?’

  The chain scythed left then right.

  ‘Would he fuck . . .’

  He stepped to the right. Megs cut him off.

  Then to the left. She did likewise.

  But he saw some logic in her missing swings. She was backing him up, guiding him to some point where he would be trapped, left to face the onslaught head on, his back to the wall, so to speak. It did not matter that her blows were not connecting. It mattered only that he kept back-stepping into the night.

  A quick glance behind him left him none the wiser and had the chain whistling past his throat, a warning to keep his eyes to the front, on Megs. Another swing scythed past his thighs, close enough to feel the draught of its passing.