Hand for a Hand

by T. Frank Muir

  Gilchrist struggled to keep his voice steady. “If I ever find out that Watt is involved with Maureen’s disappearance, I swear to God, Tom, I’ll hold you personally responsible for interfering with my investigation.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  “Don’t pretend. Pray.” And with that, Gilchrist strode from Greaves’ office.

  Outside on North Street he thrust his hands into his pockets. His outburst had drained him. He felt emptied, flattened, beyond anger. He imagined Greaves on the phone with ACC McVicar, demanding his resignation. McVicar had stood up for him in the past, but there were only so many rules a man could break, and his final threat to Greaves might have broken the lot.

  He pulled out his mobile, called Watt’s number, but it was unobtainable, or his mobile was dead. He tried Nance, and she picked up on the third ring.

  “Have you seen Watt?” he asked her.

  “Good morning to you, too,” she said. “He’s standing right beside me.”

  “Put him on.”

  “He’s on his mobile.”

  Gilchrist almost cursed, then realised that his calling Peggy Linnet’s number earlier had warned Watt off, forced him to change his SIM card, or use another phone. For all he knew, Watt might be on his new mobile to Greaves, listening to his confession that he had to let the SIO know about Watt’s connection to the Drug Squad.

  “Where are you?” he asked Nance.

  “Outside the University Library.”

  “Nail that bastard to the wall. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  By the time he entered the University grounds, he had cooled off some, but not by much. Watt grinned at him as he approached, his lips lopsided from chewing gum, and Gilchrist had a sense of Nance backing away.

  He reached Watt, grabbed his shirt at the throat. “I warned you,” he growled.

  Watt dead-eyed him. “Don’t make me have to break your arm.”

  “I should kick you off the—”

  “You can’t kick me anywhere,” Watt said. “This goes higher than you, higher than Greaves, higher than McVicar.”

  Gilchrist tightened his grip. “I’m not talking about that,” he snarled. “When did you last see Maureen?”

  Watt seemed to freeze, but only for a second. Then he lifted his hand and took hold of Gilchrist’s bunched fist. “I told you I didn’t want to break—”

  “Give it up, boys,” Nance interrupted. “You’re causing a scene.”

  Gilchrist relaxed his grip. Watt pushed his hand away, tugged at his collar.

  “I won’t ask you to kiss and make up,” Nance said. “That might scare the students even more.”

  All of a sudden, Gilchrist was aware of young men and women standing in silent groups, watching them. “Outside,” he growled at Watt.

  On North Street, Nance had the sense to keep out of earshot while Gilchrist had a face-to-face with Watt. “Does Nance know?”

  “Only you and Greaves. The silly fucker shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Then you’d have no excuse not to be kicked back to Glasgow.” Watt grimaced at Gilchrist’s logic.

  “How about Maureen?” Gilchrist pressed on. “Does she know?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I know you’re seeing her.”

  “Not any more,” Watt said. “It’s over.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “And so is this half-arsed interrogation.”

  “Not so fast, Ronnie. When did you last see Maureen?”

  “About three weeks ago.”

  “And the last time you spoke to her?”

  “About a week ago.”

  “And what about her job with Chris Topley?”

  “What about it?”

  “Why is she working there?”

  “A job’s a job.”

  “And you know Topley.”

  “In Glasgow, who doesn’t?”

  “Who’s Peggy Linnet?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  Gilchrist knew he was being stone-walled.

  “Are we through?” Watt said.

  If Watt’s authority was higher than McVicar, then the chances of Gilchrist being made privy to an on-going drug operation ranged from zero to one hundred below. Watt would tell him nothing, and he would just have to live with it, work alongside the man. But now he had confronted Watt, he could think of no reason for him to be lying about Maureen.

  “Make sure Nance has your new mobile number,” he growled, and stomped off.

  Past the Dunvegan Hotel, he turned into Grannie Clark’s Wynd, then veered onto the Old Course, oblivious to the golfers. A cold wind hit him, bringing with it the smell of a brisk sea. The Old Course seemed such an important part of the killer’s plan that he felt an almost irresistible need to walk the links.

  Was the Old Course itself significant? Or was it being used simply to gather media attention? He walked past the Road Hole Bunker kicking his feet through the rough that bordered the fairway’s length. He continued alongside the sixteenth. From there, the course ran all the way out to the Eden Estuary. He plodded on in his solitary search, criss-crossing the dunes like some game-dog, groping as far as he could into gorse bushes that cluttered the rough. He had to dislodge himself from a bristling clump off the fourteenth fairway to answer his phone.

  The rush of Jack’s voice had him pressing his mobile tight to his ear.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Maureen?”

  The question almost threw him, but he recovered with, “It’s early days, and I—”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Harry told me there’s an appeal on the TV for information on Maureen’s whereabouts. That doesn’t sound like early days to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure.”

  The fight seemed to go out of Jack then. “Don’t tell me Mo’s next,” he said, and before Gilchrist could offer anything, he hung up.

  Gilchrist folded his mobile and eyed the grass and gorse around him. How could he go on with this? How could he search for Chloe when his own daughter was missing? But even as he asked that question of himself, he knew the answer to Maureen’s disappearance would be delivered through the remaining parts of Chloe’s body.

  He hung his head and struggled on.

  By the time he reached the twelfth tee he had found nothing. The tide was out and the flat sands of the Eden Estuary stretched before him as uninviting as mud. Overhead, clouds tumbled like windblown cotton. He decided to cut across the Jubilee and the New Course onto the West Sands and walk back to town along the beach.

  When he ducked through the wire fence that bordered the links, his mobile rang.

  “No luck,” said Dick without introduction. “Peggy Linnet is one of three students who rent the flat from McPhail. The number belongs to her ex-boyfriend who used her address for billing purposes.”

  “Got a name?”

  “Joe.”

  “Joe who?”

  “That’s the problem. She only ever knew him as Joe.”

  “How long had she been going out with the guy?”

  “Three months.”

  “And she never knew his name?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Are they all covering for him?”

  “Don’t think so. Apparently he’s a nasty piece of work. Drank too much. Argued all the time. Left without paying his share of the rent. Peggy says she keeps getting his bills and keeps sending them back. They would all shop him if they could.”

  “Description?”

  “Slim. Dark hair. Five-eight. Thirty-something going on fifty. Rolls his own. Born in Glasgow. Rough as they come.”

  Gilchrist dug his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. A thousand Glaswegians would fit that description. “Keep at it, Dick,” he said, even though it was probably useless.

  He slid down a worn path between two dunes.

  The West Sands stretched before him, copper and gold bordered by the dark waters of the North Sea. Mu
lti-coloured kites of reds, yellows, blues, dipped and swooped then soared high. In the distance he noticed a gathering crowd and wondered if a busload of day-trippers had offloaded and spilled onto the sands, or if someone was having a party, a student perhaps, celebrating God only knew what excuse for a drunken orgy.

  By the time he figured it out, his feet were pounding the firm sands at the water’s edge, his breath coming at him in hard hits. He heard his own whimper burst from his mouth with the certain knowledge that after a few more minutes he would have only one more body part to find. And then.…

  “Dear God, no.”

  Chapter 25

  GILCHRIST ORDERED EVERYONE to, “Step back. Police. Step back.”

  And louder. “Sir. Back from the body.”

  He had used the word body, even though it was not a complete body, but a mostly limbless torso. As he stood by the white thing that lay before him like a lump of bloodless meat, his lungs seemed unable to pull in air. He stumbled to his knees. Seawater soaked through his trousers.

  He stared at it, at the headless torso with no legs, and only one arm—without a hand—which shifted on the sands with each incoming wave. Ruddied pockmarks dotted the skin where gulls and other seabirds had pecked through.

  He brushed sand from the flat swell of the stomach, revealing what looked like a black stain above the belly-button. He cupped seawater with his hands, spilled it over the torso, and a tiny love-heart swam into view.

  He pushed himself to his feet, brushed his hands on his thighs. Despite himself, he could not take his eyes off the blackened nipples of her small breasts. It struck him then that her nakedness was exposed for all to see, and he snapped at the onlookers, “Go on. Get out of here. What are you looking at?”

  With hesitant reluctance the crowd backed up.

  He slapped his mobile to his ear, ordered the SOCOs, and gave directions. But it was not until he closed his mobile and stared at the blonde pubis that lay between twin circles of butchered meat that he realised something was missing.

  Curiosity overpowered his revulsion. He kneeled again, and studied the love-heart. The finest of blonde hairs, dried by the sun, stood proud, as if refusing to give up life. His gaze shifted on to bony shoulders made all the more narrow by the missing left arm, down across a rippled ribcage to a wasp-like waist that made Chloe’s torso seem strangely thin and frail. The gulls had not done too much harm. Open pits around the upper chest looked more like unhealed sores than carrion food-spots. But other than the tattoo and the peck-holes the torso was unblemished.

  A wave rushed the shore and a hacked hip bumped against his arm before he could move. He choked back the urge to throw up, trying to convince himself it was the personal nature of the torso that was making him gag. But he saw with a clarity that stunned him that it was more than that. For once, he was on the receiving end, the relative of a murder victim, the person left to cope with death. How heartless he must have appeared to relatives of other victims. And he saw that no amount of whispered condolences or words of kindness could ever salve their loss.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand, see this as just another murder. And that thought stopped him. Just another murder? How had he ever let himself become this cold? He took a deep breath, gripped Chloe’s right arm, pulled her up and over, surprised by how light she felt. Her torso slapped onto the sand, and a muted gasp rushed from the onlookers as they took another step back.

  He had his sixth note. Gouged into the back with vee-shaped cuts deep enough to show bone. BUTCHER.

  And the sixth letter. E.

  It could not be clearer.

  M. A. U. R. E. E.

  His daughter was next. And she was missing.

  “HEY.”

  Gilchrist pressed his phone to his ear, stared out to sea. “Jack?”

  “Hey, Andy, listen, I’m sorry about earlier. I just—”

  “Jack.”

  A pause, then, “It’s Chloe, isn’t it?”

  Gilchrist dragged a hand over his face. Two SOCOs in white coveralls were rolling her torso into a body-bag. A yellow cordon did little to separate the scene from onlookers. Uniformed policemen were interviewing individuals from the dwindling crowd.

  “Tell it to me straight, Andy.”

  Straight? What could he say? He stepped away as the SOCOs lifted the body-bagged torso and carried it dripping with seawater to the back of their van for Mackie to examine at Ninewells.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. It’s Chloe. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Jesus.” And from that one word Gilchrist could almost feel Jack’s utter despair.

  He wondered if he should have spoken to Jack face-to-face rather than tell him over the phone. He had handled his marriage all wrong, the break-up, too. Now he was handling his son wrong.

  “Jack. Listen,” he said. “We will solve this. I promise you.” He tried to force all thoughts of failing from his mind. But you could never tell with a murder enquiry. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Down by the harbour. It’s where we used to walk. Chloe loved the sea. Did she tell you that?”

  He was about to say yes, then realised Jack needed to air his grief. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Chloe had something about not being able to paint the ocean, about it being too wild and beautiful. The ocean represents life in its perpetual evolution, she said. She refused to paint seascapes because she said she could never capture its beauty in its stillness. You had to see it moving to appreciate the ocean’s true beauty.” A rush of breath, then, “I tell you, Andy, Chloe was something else. She was special, man.”

  “I know she was.” It was all he could think to say. The SOCO van roared into life and eased along the sands. Onlookers drifted away. Already Chloe’s mutilated torso on the beach was being assigned to history.

  “I feel like, you know … helpless, Andy. Just out-and-out helpless.”

  Like father like son, he thought.

  “Do you, uh, do you need me to do anything?”

  Gilchrist knew what Jack was asking. But how could he have his son identify his girlfriend’s hacked up torso? “No,” he said, and thought he caught a sigh of relief.

  “You haven’t heard from Maureen yet, have you?” Jack asked.

  “I was hoping you had.”

  “You really don’t think anything’s happened to her, do you?”

  Jack’s question confirmed he was in denial. First his girlfriend, then his sister. It was too much for anyone to handle emotionally. But Jack did not need to hear that his sister was next to be hacked to pieces. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,” he tried. “You know Mo. She’s probably gone away for a few days.

  “Remember that time she ran off to Spain for a month without telling you or Mum? You went ballistic, man. Through the roof.” Jack chuckled. “Maybe she’s gone there again. Do you think?”

  Gilchrist kept the deception alive. Having Jack do something was better than him doing nothing. “Maybe,” he said, and tried to sound upbeat. “Why don’t you look into that, Jack? Call a few friends. Find out if they know anything.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

  “And when you get hold of her,” Gilchrist said, “give her an earful and tell her to call her old Dad.”

  Jack forced a chuckle down the line. “Will do, Andy.”

  By nightfall Gilchrist had not heard from Maureen.

  But he had not expected to.

  MAUREEN STARTLED AT the scraping sound.

  Someone was outside.

  She heard it again.

  A key? A knife?

  She peered into the darkness, but saw only the shape of the door and the curtained window of the hut she was in. She struggled to move, but the knots bit into her skin, brought tears to her eyes again. She fought them back, bit down on the gag, and breathed through her nose. She had worried about the gag, worried that if her nose blocked she would be unable to breathe. It had happened once, two nights ago, and she had passed out from
lack of air. But she wakened later, her nasal passageways clear again.

  Another scrape. A key that time. No doubt about it.

  The door opened and in the dim greyness she could make out the dark silhouette of his figure. She felt wetness spread between her legs, and tears well at her inability to contain her fear. The warm smell of urine lifted off the wooden floorboards.

  She felt the floorboards shiver from the heels of his boots, smelled the stale tobacco that clung to his body like his personal scent. Despite hating that smell, it gave a welcome respite from the stench of defecation that had filled her senses for days.

  An explosion of light hit her like a blow to the head.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “It’s fucking honking in here,” his voice growled.

  Footsteps thudded across the floorboards. A tremor took hold of her then.

  Don’t let him touch me. Don’t let him come near me.

  The footsteps stopped. She knew he was standing in front of her. She heard a rustle of cloth, jacket rubbing jeans, perhaps, the sound of a bottle being opened. She eased her eyes open, squinted against the harsh light.

  He squatted no more than three feet from her, his filthy moustache thick and dark over lips as tight and narrow as a scar. He smiled a slow smile that exposed cracked and yellow teeth, then held a plastic bottle out to her.

  “Want some?”

  She tried to say yes, but managed only a groan from behind the gag. She shifted herself on the floor, felt the damp squelch of her own defecation as it squeezed thick in the folds of her underwear.

  “Want me to take that off?”

  She closed her eyes in a long blink.

  Please, take it off. Please. I won’t do anything. I promise.

  She held her breath as he tilted the bottle to her upturned face and dribbled water onto her gag. She worked her tongue, sucked at the cool liquid.

  Then the bottle tilted upright, and he waved it in front of her. “Some more?” He grinned at her, his eyes dark and feral, his hand lowering to his zip. “This first.”

  She turned her head away, closed her eyes.

  I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me do this. I can’t.

  She heard his zip being pulled down, some rustling, a grunt.