Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

by Muir, T. F.

  ‘The Molotov cocktail?’

  Stan nodded. ‘If the DNA tests from the MGB are positive, we have a connection and enough evidence to throw the book at him.’

  Gilchrist reached out for Stan, felt strong arms clamp his own.

  ‘You all right, boss?’

  Gilchrist shook his head. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ Something clamped his chest, like a steel band that squeezed and tightened until the light went out of his world and he felt the hard wooden seat of a chair hit the back of his thighs.

  ‘Boss?’

  Gilchrist waited until Stan’s face reappeared in a shimmering haze. ‘Fingerprints?’

  Stan nodded. ‘Plain old-fashioned fingerprints.’

  Gilchrist dabbed his eyes, sniffed his running nose. ‘We did it,’ he whispered. ‘We got him, Stan. We got him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stan said. ‘You did—’

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  The American accent had Stan and Gilchrist turning their heads like a choreographed act. Gilchrist thought Gina Belli looked softer somehow, as if the passing of a few days had helped her shed an outer layer of skin. As she neared, he thought less severe might be more appropriate. She surprised him by leaning forward and pecking him once, twice on the cheeks, leaving behind a fragrance that teased his senses.

  ‘Believe me now?’ she asked.

  Upright again, she removed a Marlboro and lit it up, her penetrating stare never wavering from his, as if she were trying to speak to him through her psychic thoughts. She took a couple of deep breaths, exhaled from the side of her mouth.

  ‘Here,’ she said to him, ‘you look as if you could use this.’

  He inhaled, hard, the heat and acrid taste hitting his throat with a force that had him coughing. But he stuck it out, fought off the dizziness that threatened to overpower him and took another draw, pulling in for all he was worth.

  She grinned at him as she lit another. ‘I know you better than you know yourself,’ she said, and removed a small blackened metal case from her bag and handed it to him.

  Jack’s cigarette lighter. Gilchrist nodded, half-closing his eyes against the nip of smoke, an overwhelming sense of relaxation flowing through his being. If he closed his eyes, he could be floating through air. He took another draw, long and deep and hot.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said to her. ‘Maybe you do.’

  Stan and Gilchrist took the CalMac ferry to Rothesay, and found the flat in Bishop Street without any difficulty. They reached the top floor of the refurbished tenement building and confirmed the number on the door.

  Gilchrist shivered off the cold air and gave a hard rap.

  It took a full minute before the door opened. A stocky woman eyed them with suspicion from beneath a mass of blonde tousled hair. She tightened her bathrobe.

  ‘Mrs Clarke?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We understand a Mr James Fairclough is living here.’

  ‘Says who?’

  Gilchrist flashed his warrant card, but she showed no interest in it. ‘We need to talk to him. Is he here?’

  ‘Naw, he’s no.’

  The smell of bacon drifted along the hallway, followed by the clatter of a metal pan sliding on a stove.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  That was enough for Gilchrist. He pushed her aside, marched down the hallway and burst into the kitchen. Fairclough jerked his head in surprise, and Gilchrist managed to pin him to the wall before he could swing the frying pan at him. Fat and bacon strips splashed the tiles and dripped on to the cheap linoleum floor.

  ‘A dog,’ Gilchrist growled into Fairclough’s ear. ‘That’s what you compared my brother to.’ He spun Fairclough around, pressed his face against the wall with more force than was necessary and twisted his arm up his back, hard. ‘A dog.’

  Fairclough gasped from the pain.

  ‘The good news for you is that Betson’s out of intensive care.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who,’ Gilchrist said, and cuffed Fairclough’s wrists with a hard click. ‘Betson’s going to live,’ he growled.

  ‘My arm—’

  ‘So you’re only going to be charged with the one—’

  ‘Boss.’

  Gilchrist gave Fairclough’s arms a parting jerk up his back, heard the hard crunch of gristle tearing and stood aside as Fairclough slid down the wall with a groan and slumped to the floor. For a moment, Gilchrist puzzled as to why Stan’s face was so tight. From the hallway, Fairclough’s secretary stared at the scene with white eyes. ‘Read this fat piece of shite his rights,’ he said to Stan, and bruised his way from the kitchen.

  Outside, wet streets sparkled like glass. The sky shone blue-white.

  Gilchrist raked his hair. His chest heaved as if he had sprinted a hundred yards. He removed a packet of Marlboro, took one and had to steady one hand against the other as he raised his lighter to it.

  He inhaled, long and hard, held it in his lungs as he felt its heat flood through him, its poison settle his jumping nerves. A dog. That’s what had set him off. The memory of that single word. He took another pull, then studied the burning tip as if surprised to see what he was holding. He exhaled, dropped the cigarette on the pavement, ground it out by stirring it into the asphalt. A dog. He pulled the cigarette packet from his pocket, crushed it in his hands and dropped it into a rubbish bin, followed by his lighter.

  By the end of the week, Gilchrist had his answer.

  Forensics confirmed Ewart’s DNA on the St Andrews postcard, and Megs’ on the Mexican one. Confronted with the evidence, Ewart claimed he remembered Megs asking him to mail some postcards for her. He’d had no idea what she’d written on them, of course, or where they were going to, and had simply done as he was told. In those days, no one argued with Megs, he joked.

  Two hours later he was formally charged with the murder of Kelly Roberts.

  And Fairclough, too. Jack’s DNA was confirmed from the hairs trapped in the paint, and a perfect thumbprint lifted from pieces of the broken bottles recovered from Betson’s garage matched Fairclough’s. An investigation of Fairclough’s offices revealed a crate of Irn-Bru bottles in a storage cupboard, providing the critical connection to the arson attack. The final nail was hammered deep by way of Linda Melrose’s statement confirming the hit-andrun, leaving Fairclough with no way out.

  The procurator fiscal confirmed she had enough evidence to charge Fairclough with death by dangerous driving, and attempted murder for the arson attack. Additional charges of failing to report the collision and attempting to pervert the course of justice would guarantee that Fairclough would be an old man by the time he got out of prison. If he ever lived that long.

  CHAPTER 35

  Two weeks later

  The funeral was small, more memorial service than burial, as they interred the bones in a coffin in the tiny plot. A simple black headstone gave tribute in neatly etched words to the memory of a young life lost.

  KELLY ANNABELLE ROBERTS

  MARCH 17, 1949 – FEBRUARY 23, 1969

  FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS

  Gilchrist thought the final date at least gave some closure to the open-ended question Ewart continued to refuse to answer. It could be a day out, no more than two. But as best he could figure, the twenty-third was when Ewart took Kelly’s life.

  Somehow, staring at the dates seemed to strike home to Gilchrist just how young Kelly and Jack had been at the time of their deaths. Kelly had been a teenager, about to turn twenty in March of that fateful year, and yet she had been two years older than Jack.

  Kelly’s mother surprised him by taking hold of his hand. ‘Are you all right, Andy?’

  He nodded, not trusting his voice. He turned with her, away from the grave, and said nothing as their feet crushed the gravel pathway to his car.

  ‘It’s such a beautiful place,’ Annie said. ‘Kelly would be pleased. And Tom.’ She turned her face to the wind as if testing the air. ‘And such a beautiful da
y, too. Kelly used to write Tom and me about days like this, with the trees and the grass glistening fresh and smelling damp from the rain. It’s what she loved most about Scotland.’

  She squeezed Gilchrist’s hand. He squeezed back.

  At her insistence, he dropped her off at Leuchars Station.

  ‘I’d be more than happy to drive you to Edinburgh Airport,’ he offered again.

  ‘I’d rather take the train,’ she said, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, it’s just . . .’

  ‘It’s just that Kelly wrote about the train journey to Edinburgh. I’d like to travel that same route now, see the same things Kelly might have seen. For Tom, too,’ she said, almost as an afterthought. ‘I don’t think I told you, but Tom and I visited St Andrews three years after Kelly disappeared. We went back to that same hotel, but checked out after only two days. We couldn’t stand it, knowing this was where Kelly used to live. Tom never came back to Scotland again.’

  Gilchrist felt his lips tighten.

  ‘It’s a bit silly, I know,’ Annie went on, ‘but now I know where Kelly is, I feel as if I’m seeing the beauty of the Scottish countryside for the first time. I don’t suppose I’ll ever return here, not at my age, so I’d like to take back what memories I can.’

  Gilchrist carried her suitcase to the platform and, when the train arrived, helped her on board. She turned and faced him, eyes glistening, and placed her arms over his shoulders as if to give him a lover’s hug.

  ‘Take care, Andy,’ she whispered. ‘And take care of Kelly for me.’

  ‘I will,’ was all he could say.

  He returned her hug, then stood alone on the platform as the train pulled into the distance. His last glimpse of Kelly’s mother was of her face at the window, her hand to her lips, blowing him a kiss, a simple action that made him raise his hand in a belated farewell to his own memories of Kelly.

  When the train rattled out of sight, Gilchrist shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  Take care of Kelly for me.

  The wind rose then, a cold burst that shivered the station windows and carried with it the faintest whisper of the departed train. He looked to the skies, thought the rain might stay off. He had one more grave to visit, one more string of memories to fold away. He would repay his final respects to Jack, tell him his killer had been found, then drive to Glasgow and visit his children.

  Take care of Kelly for me.

  The echo of Annie’s voice pulled up an image of blonde hair whipping in the wind and a young couple running along the West Sands, unaware of what the future held for them.

  And blue eyes that laughed and could bring a smile to his lips.

  Even now.

  He leaned into the wind and walked to his car.