Hand for a Hand (23 page)

She swept her hands over her skin, rubbing and brushing.

The jet stopped.

“I’m not clean,” she pleaded, then shielded her face as a blast hit her again.

“Fucking hurry up then.”

When she pushed her hands through her hair the jet stopped.

She stood shivering from the cold, watching his dark eyes study her nakedness.

“Get the clothes.”

Back inside the hut, the fetid air almost choked her. She pressed her hand to her nose, amazed that she had breathed in that vile stench for so long. She picked up the bundle and rushed outside.

He stood on a slabbed path that slipped between bushes at the side of a bungalow that looked vaguely familiar. She assumed that had to be the way out, but in the darkness could not be sure. And she could not stop a tremor that now gripped her limbs. Running was out of the question.

She tugged at the clothing. “Do you have a towel?”

“Get the fuck dressed before I change my mind.”

She separated the bundle to find it consisted of only a skirt and a sweater.

“There’s no underwear,” she said.

He looked away, gobbed off to the side.

She turned her back to him and slipped on the skirt. It felt tight, too tight to fasten at the waist. But it was long and black and woollen soft. She pulled on the top, a black woollen sweater, thin at the elbows, with cuffs frayed and stained with paint. It felt tight around her boobs, but she felt warmth seep through her system, despite being wet.

Then a hand gripped her hair, twisted her head, and she
gasped as the cold steel of a blade pressed to her throat. “One squeak and I’ll slit you from ear to fucking ear.” Breath as stale as cigarette ash warmed her face. “Now start walking.”

She was prodded along a slabbed pathway, between bushes to the dark hulk of a car she recognised as a BMW. The boot was already open.

“Get in.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Get the fuck in.”

At least he was not going to gag her, or tie her hands and feet. She lifted one leg over the rim, then the other, and ducked just in time as the boot lid slammed shut. She listened to the sound of footsteps fading, and imagined him returning to the shed to put out the light and lock the door. Cover their tracks? Why would he do that if she was being set free? And if she was being freed, why would he lock her in the boot of his car?

Oh, God, I’m wrong, I’m wrong. He’s going to kill me
.

But her rationale insisted he would not have had her clean herself if he was going to kill her. Confused, she lay on her back, pleased to feel her thighs clear of the tackiness of the last few days. But the cold shower had not rid her skin of the smell of defecation that clung to her like smoke to clothing. She fumbled around, but the darkness was total and the boot-space solid. She lay still. Where had he gone? Was she to be freed?
Dear God, tell me he’s going to let me go. Tell me he’s not going to do any more of that to me.…

But the truth sank inside her like an anchor into dark waters, pulling hope down with it. She had seen his face and knew he would not let witnesses to his sadistic crimes roam the streets.
He’s going to kill me. He’s going to take me away somewhere and slit my throat
. Her eyes strained into the darkness. She had never been scared of the dark before, but as she lay there in the black silence she felt the warm sting of tears in her eyes—

Footsteps.

She held her breath as they stopped at the back of the BMW. The lock popped, and she shielded her face as the boot lid opened.

It was him again. Smiling. Something in his hand.

He leaned into the boot, placed it by her face.

“Look after this,” he said.

She stared at it.

Horror seared her throat in a voiceless scream.

She scrambled away from it, pushed herself back, felt her head hit metal, her legs kick like a trapped swimmer, her arms flail the air for some way out.

The boot lid slammed with a thud.

She screamed then. A primal scream that reflected the terror she had seen in Chloe’s sightless eyes.

G
ILCHRIST WAKENED WITH
a start.

He had been dreaming, more nightmare than dream.

Maureen had been speaking to him in a language he knew but could not place. Then he realised she was speaking the language of the dead. He had reached for her then, but with every step she seemed to fade away, so that when he grabbed her she was nothing more than a shadow dancing in the mirror of his imagination, weak and faint as the vaguest remnants of his oldest dream.

That was when he came to.

His T-shirt clung to his skin like damp cloth. He struggled to still the jackhammer pounding in his chest. He glanced at his radio clock—3:33.

He breathed in, almost sobbed.
Dear God, tell me this isn’t happening. Tell me that if I had never joined the force Maureen’s life would not now be in danger
. His head slumped into his hands and he choked back a sob. He clenched his jaw and looked up. He had to get a grip. He had to get on with it. Moping around wasn’t going to solve a damn thing. But how was he supposed to think, when his daughter was next in line to be served up to him in bits?

He staggered into the shower, scrubbed himself with soap as if he wanted to rip his skin from his bones. An early morning shower often brought his thoughts into focus, but ten minutes later he stepped from the cubicle none the wiser.

In the kitchen he poured a glass of orange juice, then checked with the Office. But no one had any news for him. He tried Dainty on his mobile, but it rang out. He got through to Pitt Street, but was told Dainty would not be in until 8:00. He asked for a home number but the receptionist declined to give it out. He next called Directory Enquiries for Strathclyde Drug Squad, but when he asked for Watt he was surprised to be told they had no record of a Ronnie Watt, Ron Watt, Ronald Watt, or any variation of that name, either at Detective Sergeant or Constable level.

Gilchrist gave a whispered curse as he hung up.

What the hell was going on? If Strathclyde had no record of Watt, did that mean Watt had pulled one over on Greaves? Watt would be transferred to Fife only on written authority. Had Watt faked the transfer, or was Greaves in on it? Or was he just pissing up against the wrong tree?

He checked his watch. He would make one more call.

“This is DCI Gilchrist,” he said. “How much have you printed?”

“Mr. Gilchrist?” grumbled Leighton. “It’s 5:00 in the morning.”

“You said you would call.”

“I’ve been quite busy working on them.”

“In that case, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Give me what you’ve got.”

He pulled on his black leather jacket and stepped out into a cold east coast morning.

Today he would find his daughter.

Even if he had to die doing so.

Chapter 27

L
EIGHTON SCOWLED AT
him. “Through there,” he said, and pointed to a door at the end of the hallway. “I don’t like being wakened at this time of the morning.”

“Neither do I.”

Gilchrist brushed past and entered the room. An oak dining table with folded leaves, reminiscent of the one his grandmother used to have, centred the cramped space. Reams of printed paper stacked the table’s polished surface. On a coffee table to the side, Maureen’s laptop sat hooked to an HP DeskJet printer. Two opened boxes of copier paper squatted on the carpet.

“Is this it?” Gilchrist asked.

“As much as I’ve printed thus far.”

Gilchrist flipped through several pages. Leighton had printed them in chronological order and divided them into piles by year. A single sheet listed the file names in each stack.

“Is there much more?” he asked.

“That’s only one day’s printing.”

Gilchrist removed his wallet. “Ten hours cover it so far?”

Leighton did not hesitate. “That should just about do it.”

Gilchrist knew he was being ripped off, but peeled ten twenties from his wallet and passed them to Leighton. He picked up the printed reams. “How soon until you print the rest?”

Leighton shrugged. “Another day or so?”

“Too long. I need them tonight.”

“I can only print out as fast as my printer will allow.”

“Get another printer,” he snapped. “Get two. I’m paying your expenses. I need them tonight, no later than seven.”

“That doesn’t give me much time.”

“You’d better get on with it then,” he said, and strode down the hall.

T
HE
BMW
DREW
to a halt.

Its engine purred in the quiet of some deserted spot. Maureen knew it was deserted, because the sound of traffic had stopped fifteen minutes earlier. They were in the countryside somewhere. But even if she knew how far they had travelled, she did not know the starting point, or in which direction they had come. They could be anywhere.

The engine died.

She listened to the sounds of the door opening, closing, then footsteps crunching the length of the car. The footsteps stopped.

The boot lid popped open.

Before she had time to move, fingers as tight as talons grabbed her by the hair.

“Don’t even think about it.”

He pulled her upright, and she squealed, “You’re hurting me.”

A blow to the side of her head sent her slamming into the dark confines of the boot.

Warm breath by her ear. “If you want to see your old man again, shut the fuck up, and do as you’re told.”

Hope and fear surged through her in a confusing wave. If she did as she was told, she would see her father again. But why mention her father, not her mother? Did he know her mother was ill? If he knew that, what else did he know?

“Sign this.”

She peered up. The sky was still dark, but she caught the high-pitched chatter of birdsong. A blackbird? A starling? Did that mean it was morning, not night?

A beam of light pierced the darkness, and she glimpsed the
back of Chloe’s head. When they had driven off, Chloe’s head had rolled into her. She had screamed then, pushed the thing away, hating the feel of Chloe’s hair on her bare skin, just managing to keep down the vomit that threatened to erupt from her throat. She must have jammed it into a hole or something, for the head had not moved for the rest of the journey.

“Here.”

She stared at a pen and a rough-edged piece of paper.

“Sign.”

“Why?”

“Don’t play the silly cunt.” He leaned down, picked up Chloe’s head, and she gagged back a scream. “If you don’t want this to happen to you,” he growled, “you’d better sign.”

Once more, hope soared within her.

If she signed, would he let her go? She took the paper, noticed something was printed on it. “What’s it say?”

The beam of light shivered across the paper.

“Vengeance? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just sign the fucking thing.”

“You’ll let me go then?”

“I won’t slit your throat, you stupid bitch.”

Maureen stared at his lantern jaw, made all the more gaunt by several days’ growth, at his filthy moustache yellowed from tobacco smoke. Where was his knife? Could she make a run for it? And once again that thought flew from her mind. She would not stand a chance. She turned to the note and pretended to have difficulty holding the pen. But between looking up at him, then down at the pen, she glanced past him to the bushes by the wall.

It was morning. She knew by the way the sky was lightening.

And that was when she saw it, when it hit her that he had no intention of letting her live. She felt the warm release of urine as a tremor gripped her hands. She almost dropped the pen. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please let me go.”

His face darkened. “Aw, you bitch, you pissed in my car. I should slit your fucking throat for that. Get out.”

She tried to pull herself to her feet, but her legs gave way. She did not even have the strength to scream as he hauled her out by her hair.

She slumped onto hard asphalt.

“Now sign that fucking paper or I’ll rip your fucking head off.” He gobbed off to the side, a thick lump of green phlegm that anger had released from his throat.

Through the blur of her tears, she tried to make sense of the single word.

VENGEANCE.

What did it mean? But it was pointless asking. She was going to be killed. Maybe by signing she could leave a message to her parents, let them know she had remained defiant to the last. She almost choked a laugh at the thought. How could she even think that, when she wet herself with every spurt of fear?

She gripped the pen, signed beneath the single word.

Mo, she wrote. That was all.

He snatched the paper from her, stuffed it into his pocket.

She felt herself freeze as he reached behind him. He was going for his knife. That was where he kept it. In a leather sheath on his belt. She stared at the bushes, or what she had mistaken for bushes. Now morning was dawning, the old stone wall and the headstones behind it had taken shape. And the oddest thought coursed through her mind.

A cemetery seemed such an appropriate place in which to be killed.

“A
NDY
. I
T’S
P
ETE
Small. You tried to reach me?”

Gilchrist dug his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “Ronnie Watt,” he said. “He’s not one of yours. Is he?”

“You know I can’t talk about that, Andy. Is that why you called?”

Gilchrist caught the anger in Dainty’s voice. The man might be small in stature, but that did little to lessen his presence. “There used to be a time when we worked hand in hand.”

“Don’t play with words, Andy. You know the rules.”

Gilchrist stared at Leighton’s printouts on his desk. He’d been reading his way through them for the last four hours, but come up with nothing. “Watt knows Chris Topley. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“They were seen having a drink together. Does that not interest you?”