Tooth for a Tooth (27 page)

He turned the ignition, backed out on to Market Street and was manoeuvring around a parked delivery van when his mobile rang. He recognized the office number and cursed under his breath when he heard Tosh’s voice.

‘You’re off the case, Gilchrist. I want that lighter.’

‘I told you I would turn it in.’

‘You did. But I don’t believe you. Where are you? I want it now.’

Gilchrist hung up, and floored the pedal.

CHAPTER 20

The Merc’s tyres squealed as they bit into asphalt and powered Gilchrist up and over Kinkell Braes. He tried calling Gina Belli again, but her mobile rang out until the call ended. No luck at the St Andrews Bay, either. He gripped the wheel and forced his thoughts into overdrive.

He had experienced Tosh’s obsessive mania once before, when Tosh had carried out a personal vendetta against the family of a petty criminal who had conjured up witnesses to help him duck a charge of assault. After the case was dropped, one by one the family members found themselves in front of the sheriff for cooked-up charges that were driven home by questionable evidence. Fines and custodial sentences were the order of the day, until Tosh had been called into the sheriff’s office and ordered to lay off.

Gilchrist had no doubt that Tosh would do everything in his power to press charges against him for wilful removal of evidence in a murder investigation. And with Tosh’s track record of fabricating evidence and lying in court, the fight to clear Gilchrist’s name was not a foregone conclusion. He was also troubled by the likelihood of being hindered in his search for Kelly’s killer and his efforts to clear Jack’s name. He needed to talk to Kelly’s mother, face to face, before Tosh shackled him. No matter what, he needed to be on that flight to the States in the morning.

He glanced at his watch. He had no time. For all he knew, Tosh might already have finagled a search warrant for his cottage in Crail, God forbid. That thought had him gritting his teeth and his eyes glued to the road as the Merc zipped through sweeping bends like a greyhound after a hare. Out and past a minibus, and again for three cars that swept past him as if going the other way. He eyed the dash, caught his speed pushing ninety and eased back.

He reached Crail without mishap, and crawled through the town at the speed limit. Back at his cottage, he powered up his laptop and connected to the Internet. He accessed MapQuest, typed in the address, requested directions from Saratoga Springs and printed out the result. He threw trousers, underpants, socks, shirts, sweaters and a waterproof jacket into a suitcase and his laptop, passport, Donnie’s records and copies of the case files into his computer case.

In his bedroom, he opened his wardrobe and kneeled on the floor.

He pulled out a shoe rack to reveal a wall safe. He entered the four-digit code – the months of Jack and Maureen’s birthdays – and pulled out a roll of one-hundred-pound notes. He unravelled twenty and returned the remainder to his stash. From his bedside drawer he removed another mobile phone.

Five minutes later, he locked the cottage behind him.

Hasty departures were good reasons not to have pets.

He took the coastal road south, and called Maureen on his regular mobile.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Dad?’

‘The one and only.’

‘Long time,’ she said.

He did not have it in his heart to remind her that she had hung up on his last call. ‘Listen, Mo,’ he said, ‘I’ll be out of town for a few days, heading down to the south coast. If anyone’s looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.’

‘OK.’

He asked how she was holding up after Mum, what she was doing, if she was back at work, but received only grunts in response. After a few more efforts, he said, ‘Got to go, princess. Catch you later. Love you.’

When he hung up, he swore under his breath. Her psychiatric reports confirmed she was making steady progress. Sometimes he found it difficult to convince himself of that. But she
was
alive, and she
was
recovering, no matter how slowly. He had to take that from it at least.

He called Jack next.

‘Heh, Andy, how’s it going, man?’

‘Good,’ was all he offered. ‘How about you?’

‘Never been better.’

‘Why don’t I believe you?’

‘Because you’ve been a policeman too long and you don’t trust anything you hear any more.’

It pleased him to see that simple things like speaking to his children could still pick him up. ‘If you say so,’ he replied. ‘Listen, Jack, I’m driving down to the south coast for a few days.’

‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Cornwall.’

‘Cool.’

‘Yes, it will be.’

Jack laughed. ‘Heh, Andy, have a great time. And don’t forget to call.’

‘The phone works both ways, young man.’

‘I can never remember your number.’

‘Haven’t you got it saved yet?’

‘That’s too complicated, man. I prefer the simpler things in life. Beer and sex. But not in that order.’

‘Stick to the beer.’

They exchanged promises and farewells, then hung up.

He felt bad at having lied to both of them, but if Tosh called for information on their missing father, at least their stories would match.

He drove straight to Glasgow International Airport and parked in the long stay car park. In the terminal building, he converted fifteen hundred pounds into US dollars, then slipped the lot into his computer case. An airport bus dropped him off at a hotel in Paisley, and he checked in under Harry Jamieson, a combination of his ex-wife’s husband’s name and her unmarried name, and paid for the room with cash. The whole place stank of cigarette smoke, which almost had him tapping his pockets for a packet.

He resisted the urge to take a walk into town for a pint. The fewer people who saw him, the better. Instead, he had a shower. He eased back the plaster from his finger, pleased to see he was not going to lose his fingernail, and took care not to open his shoulder wound, which was healing nicely. Even his cough seemed to have cleared. But he took another couple of Ibuprofen to stave off any fever.

Once showered and towelled, he called Edinburgh Royal Infirmary using the room phone, and was assured that Betson was expected to make a recovery. He fought off the urge to call Stan from his new mobile, or the room phone. Either number would appear on the office phone system. Instead, he slipped under the covers and clicked the TV remote.

He picked up nothing of concern on the evening news, no mention of missing DCIs, or upgrades in Fife’s murder enquiries. He clicked the TV on to mute, picked up the room phone and dialled her number.

‘This is becoming a bit of a habit,’ Rita said.

‘It’s that accent of yours that I find irresistible.’

Even her chuckle sounded Welsh. ‘Any luck with your investigation?’

‘Still sniffing around,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you some more questions?’

‘Sniff away.’

It had been his comment to Stan that made him revisit his deductive reasoning. Jacket and no knickers. Had Kelly been sexually assaulted? But just as troubling was his inability to recall exact dates. When exactly had Jack’s emotions changed? After Kelly disappeared mid-February? Or had it been closer to New Year? Had Kelly taken on a new lover? If so, that raised the possibility, no matter how slender, that Jack had been unable to handle the breakup and killed her in a fit of jealous rage. Was that possible? Could his brother really have been a murderer? And again the thought that Jack had deliberately stepped in front of Fairclough’s MGB slipped into his mind. All of a sudden he was not quite sure how to broach the subject.

‘Did Kelly ever confide in you?’ he blurted.

‘We were quite close, if that’s what you mean.’

He thought her evasive response gave him his answer, but he needed to be sure. ‘Did she ever talk to you about seeing anyone else?’

The pause on the line told him that Rita was having trouble breaking a long-held confidence. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you know if she slept around?’

‘While she was with Jack?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not sure, Andy.’

‘But you have your suspicions.’

She paused long enough to worry him, then said, ‘Andy, I really don’t like this.’

At last. He had hit on something, or rather, someone. He tried a different tack. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to pry into your personal relationships, but it sounds to me like it might have been someone common to you both.’ He pressed the phone to his ear.

Silence.

‘If I gave you a name, could you just say if I’m wrong or right?’

She sniffed. Was she crying? ‘Depends.’

‘Geoffrey Pennycuick,’ he said.

‘Never heard of him.’

Gilchrist frowned. Not quite the answer he had expected. He decided to go straight for the heart. ‘We can do this unofficially,’ he went on, ‘or I can have you brought to the office for a formal interview.’ He let his words sink in. ‘I really don’t want to go down that road.’ He hated lying to her, but she would never know he was suspended. ‘But I’m in charge of a murder investigation. Any information you provide could prove critical.’ Another pause. ‘If it’s personal, it won’t go any further.’

‘I can’t tell you, Andy.’

‘I
will
have you pulled in,’ he pressed.

‘It won’t do any good,’ she said. ‘I don’t know their names.’

Gilchrist felt himself slump.
Their
names. ‘Rita?’

‘She had men back all the time, Andy. I’m sorry.’

Men back all the time
. Well, there he had it. He wanted to ask where Jack had been while Kelly took others at her leisure. But he knew Jack had played rugby, practised with the team during the week, spent most weekends on the field, at home or away. He took a deep breath. In terms of finding Kelly’s murderer, this was about the worst thing that could have happened. Instead of narrowing the suspects, Rita had opened up the field, thrown in an entire rugby team. Maybe two teams, for all he knew. They could have made a right good game of it. But more troubling were his thoughts on how Jack would have reacted if he had ever found out.

‘Are you still there, Andy?’

‘I am.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ he said, wondering if
all the time
meant not as often as he first thought. He decided that was what he would choose to believe. Kelly had not been a sex-craving slut, but a young woman living away from home, attractive, vivacious, looking for comfort where she had found none in her relationship with her boyfriend.

‘Rita,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you this. It might help. Can you remember any of their names?’

‘She didn’t exactly introduce them to me.’

‘So how do you know Geoffrey Pennycuick was not one of them?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said I’d never heard of him.’

There he was again, missing the obvious, hearing only what he wanted to hear and jumping to conclusions. Which at least meant that Geoffrey Pennycuick was still not ruled out. Not just yet. He was undecided if that pleased or disappointed him: pleased that he might bring down the King of Condescension himself; disappointed that Pennycuick might have shared intimate moments with his brother’s girlfriend.

He tried to settle his thoughts by thinking ahead.

Maybe he would find something in Kelly’s mother’s attic that would throw light on what had happened. He wanted to believe that. Without that, the case was toppling against him. And with those thoughts, he could almost feel the wheels of justice crushing his memories of Jack.

CHAPTER 21

Morning arrived dark and wet.

Before boarding the airport bus, Gilchrist dismantled his mobile phone, dropped the SIM card through the grating of a road drain and threw the phone case into a waste skip. Seated in the departure lounge, he half expected Tosh to come bounding along the corridor, brandishing a pair of handcuffs. But the flight was called sans Tosh, and he boarded without incident.

Clearing customs at Newark was a different matter. The grilling he received over such a short visit had him wishing he had ticked the business box for the purpose of his trip. But he had worried that he might have needed a business visa to do so, and had not checked the requirements before leaving.

Compared to Newark, Albany was a breeze. His luggage cleared the carousel in no time at all, and he was driving his rental car within thirty minutes of landing, paying for two days in cash.

He drove north on the Thruway, surprised by how cold the landscape looked. Trees bared of leaves rolled over hills as grey as a jailer’s crew cut. Heavy clouds threatened snow. Summer could have been a forgotten season.

He took exit 13N for Saratoga Springs, which brought him into the north end of town, close to Route 9 north to Wilton. He tried calling Kelly’s mother on his new mobile, but was connected to her voicemail and hung up. Checking into the Holiday Inn off Broadway, he booked the cheapest room they had.

He unpacked, showered and confirmed that all his wounds were doing fine. Then he phoned Kelly’s mother again but was connected once more to her voicemail. He worried that she might have left town or arranged to meet someone, and cursed himself for not calling ahead. He checked his watch. Seven forty-three.