Hand for a Hand (9 page)

He shifted his gaze to the junction at the top of the hill. If you turned right at the Dunvegan, then through the mini-roundabout, that put you on the road out of St. Andrews. And he saw in his mind’s eye that the car had come from Glasgow. That was where Chloe and Jack lived. Why hide her body anywhere else? He would challenge Greaves again on working closer with Strathclyde Police.

From somewhere beyond the buildings that bordered the eighteenth, he heard the unsteady rumble of a car’s exhaust. He eyed the road out of town and caught the shiver of parting headlights beyond the hedgerows and shrubs.

But at that time in the morning it could be anyone.

He turned his attention back to the polythene package. Through the sheeting, the leg was slim, verging on the skinny. It lay at an angle, so the inner thigh lay exposed. A lump choked his throat. Had Jack’s hand caressed that leg in moments of intimacy? How could he let Jack see this? He was torturing himself. What the hell would it do to Jack?

He kneeled. The grass felt cold through his coveralls. The leg had been amputated at the top of the thigh, cut at an angle. He tugged the sheeting, eased it back. The wind shifted at that moment, and he thought he caught the smell of burning. He looked up, sniffed the air.

Maybe he’d imagined it.

He shifted the sheet a touch more.

From the marks on the thigh bone and the roughness of the meat where the skin had been cut he guessed the leg had been amputated with a saw.

Mackie would be the one to make that call.

It struck him all of a sudden that there was no note. Which puzzled him. Was that not what this was about? The killer taunting Gilchrist, torturing him, making him pay for the wrong some lunatic conceived had been done against him? And with that, he gripped the plastic and pulled it back.

A rush of ice chilled his blood.

Dear God. There it was. His note. Branded into the skin.

He let go of the plastic, slipped on the wet grass, landed on his rump, and scrambled back, back with his elbows, away from the leg, away from the message that—

“Sir?”

He looked up at Lambert and forced a smile. But his lips jerked instead. “Slipped,” he said. She helped him to his feet. He brushed a hand over his coveralls, tried to convince himself he had seen worse. The five-year-old girl they pulled from the mud of the Kinness Burn four years ago. Even Mackie had gagged when her head slipped through his fingers, leaving him holding her peeled off face as her skull bounced and skittered on the post-mortem slab. But it had still not been as bad as this. This was personal. Chloe had been murdered so her hacked off body parts could be sent to Gilchrist as some kind of morbid message.

He gritted his teeth, held his breath as he bent down to the amputated limb. Christ, just get on with it. He lifted the plastic
so the leg could slide free. But it stuck for a second before ripping free and rolling onto the grass to reveal a mass of blackened scars that ran from the top of the outer thigh to halfway down the calf.

He stared at the disfigured letters, at first unable to make sense of the mess, then deciphered the single word.

BLUDGEON
.

The smell hit him again, a warm guff that rose from the blackened skin like a pall of invisible smoke that found its way into his mouth and lungs—the stench of the burned flesh of his son’s girlfriend. He felt his stomach lurch, and he stumbled to the side. He bumped into the wooden fence, hung over it, and dry-heaved onto the grass.

Then Lambert was by his side. “Sir?”

He straightened, dragged his hand across his mouth. “Jesus, Dot. Sorry.” He closed his lips, faced the wind, took a deep breath. The air smelled clear, cold, devoid of the stench of cooked meat that lay like a coating of filth on his tongue. He coughed, tried to clear his throat, but resisted spitting in front of Lambert.

“Sir?”

“I’m fine, Dot.”

“It’s not that, sir.” Her eyes glistened in the cold, like those of a child reflecting her hidden fears. “I think I remember seeing a car.”

“You
think
?”

She nodded.

“I don’t follow.”

“It was parked on The Links Road. I remember seeing it as I walked past. It was there five or ten minutes ago, but it’s not there now.”

Gilchrist followed her line of sight. “Five or ten minutes ago?” he said. “When I was looking at the.…”

“Yes, sir. It was parked at the corner.”

“Did you get its registration number?”

“No, sir. But it was a Vauxhall. A Vauxhall Astra.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of buying one, and I—”

“Colour?”

“Dark-blue. Black, maybe.”

Gilchrist eyed the corner of The Links Road that paralleled the eighteenth fairway, and realised what the earlier sound of the engine had been. “Facing downhill?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

Gilchrist stripped off his gloves and coveralls, threw them to the ground, pulled out his phone. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Nance is on her way.” He ran to his car, had his keys in his hand and the Office on his mobile by the time he opened the door.

“Crime Management.”

“Call Cupar Division,” he ordered. “Tell them to set up a road block and stop all cars out of St. Andrews.” He switched on his engine. “We’re looking for a Vauxhall Astra, dark-blue, black, or any other car that looks like it. All occupants are to be considered armed and dangerous.” He pulled into reverse, hit the pedal, and tugged the wheel.

The Merc’s tyres squealed as it raced up Golf Place. Cupar was about ten miles west of St. Andrews on the A91, the main road to Stirling. And Glasgow.

It was a long shot. Maybe his longest yet.

But if they were quick enough.…

Chapter 11

G
ILCHRIST PASSED
T
HE
Links Road and noted the spot where the Vauxhall Astra had parked, a dry patch on the road, darkening by the second from a steady drizzle moving in from the sea.

He played out the scene in his mind’s eye.

Car parked at the corner, its occupants peering through the windows to make sure their grisly package was found. Then releasing the handbrake and cruising downhill, into gear and the clutch out.

That was the sound he had heard, the Astra bump-starting.

He powered through the mini-roundabout and raced out of town. The clock on the dashboard read 5:43. Ahead, the Roadster’s twin beams pierced the darkness. The rain had almost stopped, and the road glimmered with beads of water as bright as ice.

He roared past the Old Course Hotel to his right, its tan façade alight from an array of spotlights, then on to open countryside, all zipping past unseen in the pre-dawn dark, like nighttime memories.

He glanced at the dashboard—5:46. When had he heard the bump-starting? Fifteen minutes? Ten? Less? At sixty miles an hour, fifteen minutes would put the Vauxhall fifteen miles away. Through Cupar. And he would be too late.

Ten would be too late, too.

He grabbed his phone, poked in Nance’s mobile number from his list of contacts.

She answered with a snappy, “Hold your horses, big boy. I’m on my way.”

“Get onto the PNC and do a search for Vauxhall Astras,” he said. “Dark-blue or black. I want names and addresses of all owners living in Glasgow.”

“Care to tell me what’s going on?”

“We have another body part down by the Golf Museum.”

“The Office already called,” she said. “The left leg.”

“Surprise, surprise,” he hissed. He felt his teeth grind. “When Watt shows up, make sure you nail his feet to the ground until I get back.”

“Got it.”

Another glance at the dashboard. Almost ninety. If the Astra was doing sixty, he was making up a mile every two minutes. If it had a ten-minute start on him, it would take twenty minutes to catch up. By which time he could have reached Cupar and had a cup of tea and a sandwich. That thought settled him down. No need to kill himself hounding the rabbit into the snare.

He eased his foot from the pedal and called the Office. As soon as he was connected, he said, “Has Cupar Division been called?”

“One minute, sir.”

“Don’t put me on.…”
Shit
. He pulled out to overtake a van, caught a glimpse of an angry face as he shot past. What were these people doing up at this time? Back into the inside lane, dabbed the brake for the left-hand bend, through it and foot to the floor again.

Seventy-plus. Still too fast.

He eased back.

“I have Cupar Division on the phone for you, sir.”

“That’s not what—”

“DC Grant Neville. How can I help?”

Gilchrist felt his jaw clench. Nothing had been done about setting up the road block. Not a damn bloody thing. He should have called himself.
Shit
. And
damn it
. He felt his foot pressing to the floor again. “This is DCI Gilchrist of St. Andrews Division,”
he said, struggling to keep his tone level. “I asked for a road block to be set up on—”

“Yes, sir. We’re taking care of that.”

Gilchrist felt a surge of regret at his misplaced assumption. Maybe he needed a refresher course on anger management. “That’s good,” was all he could think to say.

“The occupants are armed and dangerous,” continued DC Neville. “What are we looking at here?”

All of a sudden, Gilchrist felt like the boy who cried wolf. What could he say? That it was a spur of the moment thing? That it was only a hunch? Greaves’ voice came back at him, ingratiating as ever.
I need more than just a hunch. I need results
. Why the hell could he not keep his thoughts to himself?

“Sir?”

Gilchrist cleared his throat. “I’m SIO on the body part investigation in St. Andrews. A limb turned up half an hour ago. We believe the occupants of the Vauxhall can help in our investigation. We need to apprehend them for questioning.”

“Do you have the registration number?”

“No.”

“How many occupants?”

“Don’t know.”

“Male or female?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know if they’re armed?”

Bloody hell. This was as bad as being cross-examined. “We don’t know for certain,” he said, “but he, she, or they should be approached with caution. Is that clear enough?”

“Very good, sir. Anything else I need to know?”

Gilchrist’s mind turned up a blank. “I’ll be with you in five minutes. Don’t let any cars through until I get there.”

“Very good, sir.”

Gilchrist offered curt thanks and hung up.

He neared the Guardbridge roundabout, shot through it at
sixty-plus, and up the hill towards Dairsie. He tried to rationalise his thought process, but that niggling gut feeling of his was telling him to keep going, keep chasing, you’ve got them trapped.

At 5:54 he reached the roadblock, no more than twenty cars end to end in a line that stopped at a police car with blue twirling lights. He pulled his Merc onto the pavement, and switched off the engine. The ground felt dry, the air fresh and crisp. The rain had somehow missed Cupar. He walked past the end car, a yellow Fiat, then on past a white Lexus, then a tired-silver Jaguar XJ-12 with an unfinished repair to the boot lid. Under the streetlights the red-oxide patch looked like blood, which had him thinking what Chloe’s last thoughts had been as she watched her lifeblood leave her.

Jesus, he was torturing himself. But images of Chloe’s body lying in a pool of blood kept stirring in his mind. He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and kept walking, past a decrepit pick-up with a ladder strapped to its roof, onto a Ford, past a Transit van, another Ford, and a—

The black Astra sat four cars from the front.

He forced himself to keep walking.

Exhaust fumes rose from idling engines like steam from panting horses. He felt his pulse quicken as he neared the Vauxhall. Almost on it. For one moment he toyed with the idea of just opening the driver’s door and dragging whoever was inside onto the ground.

He drew level, threw a glance inside. The windows were misted.

But through the steamed glass he saw two passengers. Both male.

Then he was past it, fighting the urge to glance back.

He kept walking until he reached the police car, its lights rotating in the night air. Two uniformed constables stood with their backs to their car. He stepped up to the taller of the two, a smooth-faced hulk of a man, about an inch or so taller than himself. He flashed his warrant card and introduced himself.

The tall constable was Mark Graham. The other, Vic MacKay.

“Where’s DC Neville?” Gilchrist asked.

“On his way, sir,” Graham replied.

“Did he tell you what we’re looking for?”

“Vauxhall Astra. Dark blue or black.” Graham nodded over Gilchrist’s shoulder and, with all the stiff-lipped subtlety of a trainee ventriloquist, added, “Like the Vauxhall four from the front, sir?”

“We’ve checked with PNC,” MacKay said. “It’s registered to a James Fletcher.”

“Address?”

“Ardmore Street, Glasgow.”

Glasgow
. Was his hunch right? Was his sixth sense doing the impossible? He told Constables Graham and MacKay how he wanted to handle it. They nodded in understanding.

“Right,” Gilchrist said. “Let’s get on with it.”

He turned to the first car, a glistening black BMW 531, and stepped onto the road. He waited until the driver opened his window, then said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. You can drive on now.”

The driver frowned, as if undecided whether to be annoyed at the delay or relieved it was over, then spurted through the gap between the police cars with a squeal from the tyres.

Gilchrist did the same with the next vehicle, an ageing Ford Capri and a carefree farmer, then the next, a Landrover and a platinum blonde in her seventies, two dogs in her lap. She had to be violating some traffic law, but he waved her on.

The Astra pulled level and drew to a halt as he held up his hand.

Graham and MacKay stepped onto the road in front of it.

Gilchrist tapped the window, leaned forward as it opened.