Hand for a Hand

by T. Frank Muir

  “How old was he?”

  “Early thirties. From a drug overdose, according to Dainty. Before Chloe met Jack, she had a flat in the south side of Glasgow. Her relationship with Kevin was in the south side also. She frequented pubs there. They both did. That’s where Jack met her.”

  “In a pub?”

  “At a party. But I’m sure drink was involved, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Must run in the family.” She slid another piece of fish into his mouth.

  Five minutes later, with the suppers finished, Nance scrunched up the wrapping. “Where can I put this?”

  “Not outside.”

  “Of course.” She dropped it on the floor, nudged it into the depths of the footwell with her shoe.

  “Here.” Gilchrist held out a cloth. “For your fingers.”

  “A gentleman to the end.” She cleaned her hands, held up the cloth. “Floor, too?”

  “What can I tell you?”

  Nance dropped the cloth between her feet. “So, what’s so special about Glenorra?”

  “It’s also the place where Maureen said she and Watt would meet. In an email she wrote to him.”

  “So we’re driving to the late Kevin Topley’s house to do … what, exactly?”

  “I think Maureen might be there.”

  “You think?”

  He caught the hint of incredulity in her voice, and gripped the steering wheel. “I can’t sit back and do nothing,” he said. “Talk to me. What am I missing? What do Burns’ poems have to do with anything?”

  He removed the letter to Kevin and the scribbled verses from his pocket, and handed them to her.

  She tugged the visor, switched on the mirror light. “The letter’s three years old.”

  “Correct.”

  “Dear Kevin. Thanks for the party. Larry and I really enjoyed ourselves. Who’s Larry?”

  “One of Maureen’s conquests?”

  Nance read on. “It’s a thank-you letter.”

  “So?”

  “The only questions this raises are, has Maureen never heard of thank-you cards? And why would she not write it by hand?”

  “She’s a wannabe novelist. Maybe sitting at her computer is easier. Maybe she’s lost her handwriting skills.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  Nance studied the sheet of verses. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”

  “The reference to princess. That’s what I called Maureen as a child.”

  “And Bully knew that?”

  Gilchrist twisted the steering wheel. “That’s what worries me.”

  “How accurate are these?”

  “I taped our meeting. Why?”

  “I’m not sure.” She removed a piece of paper from her own pocket. “I did a search on first lines, and variations of that first line, thinking that perhaps Bully had got them wrong, maybe forgot the words.”

  Gilchrist shook his head. “Bully thinks he’s smarter than us. It’s characteristic of a psychopath.” He overtook a slow plug of cars. “He’s playing some kind of game,” he went on. “Bully was expecting me. It’s the first thing he said. Don’t you want to play? He said that, too. Read it out again. The verse about the princess.”

  “Oh princess, by thy watchtower be, it is the wished the trysted hour,” she said, then added, “As far as I could find out, Burns never used the word princess or watchtower in any of his poems.”

  Ice chilled Gilchrist’s neck. Was this Bully’s clue? Had he slipped them into a poem by Burns? Princess for Maureen. Watchtower for …? For what? And a thought struck him.

  “What if that line is not by Burns?”

  Nance shook her head. “Google would have picked it up, no matter who wrote it. That line does not appear in anything written by anyone.”

  Gilchrist let the logic of her words work into his mind. This was Bully’s clue. It had to be. Why else would he say these words? But he had recited other verses. Would he find more clues in these? “Call Jack,” he ordered, “and tell him to check the other verses, make sure they match Bully’s lines. And get him to call back the instant he finds something.” He gripped the steering wheel. “Maureen’s alive,” he urged. “She’s alive. I know she is.”

  As he powered into the night, he prayed he was right.

  And that he would not be too late.

  SHE DID NOT know how long she cried.

  But even when she tried to stop, heavy sobs came at her in nervous spasms that tore the air from her lungs. In the cold darkness of her death chamber, her sightless eyes nipped from dust and lack of tears. Her throat ached, and her tongue felt thick and dry as she tried to work up saliva.

  She could not survive long without water.

  She thumped her hand at the door again, nothing more than a heavy slap, a feeble effort that told her that the last of her energy was spent. She had nothing left.

  She was going to die.

  But she could not die. Not now. Not here.

  “No,” she screamed. But the dry hack that coughed from her throat sounded like the voice of someone who was already dead.

  GILCHRIST PARKED ONthe pavement.

  From the activity around the house he knew they were too late. A SOCO van, with its door open to reveal an array of equipment, sat parked as if abandoned.

  He found Dainty in coveralls, phone pressed to his ear. When he saw Gilchrist, he slapped his phone shut.

  They gripped hands in grim silence.

  Then Dainty said, “Maureen was here. But we’re too late.”

  The power to stand almost deserted Gilchrist. “Too late?”

  “She’s been moved. We found a shed in the back.”

  Gilchrist pushed past, but Dainty gripped his arm.

  “It’s not pretty, Andy.”

  “I need to see.”

  Dainty squeezed his lips together, then said, “Put on your coveralls.”

  The back garden looked like a film set. Dragonlights lit the scene like a stage. An unkempt beech hedge pushed branches over a pathway overgrown with weeds. Beyond, a light shone from the open doorway of a wooden building at the bottom of the garden.

  Together, they stepped down the pathway. SOCOs shuffled in silence, tagging and bagging. Someone was pouring a milky looking substance onto the ground, making a cast.

  “We found a bare footprint.” Dainty pointed. “Over there. The grass is covered in shite. We think it’s human.”

  Gilchrist followed in silence. His tongue felt hard, his mouth dry. He stopped on the threshold, gripped the doorframe for support. The stench had him almost backing up.

  In the near corner, discarded underwear lay knotted and thick with fecal matter. Close by, a bra, a skirt, a white blouse, dirty and bloodied. But no shoes. Gilchrist ordered his memory to call up an image of Maureen. Was the blouse hers? The skirt, too? But it was useless. He forced himself to analyse the facts as if he was looking at the crime scene of a stranger. He stared at bloodied smears on the floor and walls. Was that Maureen’s blood? A chain fetter lay coiled on the floor, next to a stain that had him gritting his teeth. The chain ran up the wall to an iron ring bolted to the wood near waist height.

  Dainty’s voice snapped him back.

  “Through here.”

  He entered another room, not much larger than the one with the metal shackles. The air was thick enough to taste, a cloying stench of fat and meat that stuck to the tongue, a rich fleshy smell that reminded him of the butcher’s shop on Market Street. A table as thick as a workbench lined one wall. His eyes took in the instruments of torture—the circular saw with its twelve-inch blade that Mackie had calculated, three hacksaws, blades dark with blood or rust. The bench was scarred with a history of cuts and scrapes clogged with dried blood. Bits of flesh or skin lay curled on the clatty surface like tiny scraps, and Gilchrist wondered if they would find slivers of fingernails embedded in the sides. Beneath the table, the floorboards lay stained black. Flies stirred from the mess with a noisy rush.

&n
bsp; To his side, dull wooden walls brightened with a display of stapled photographs.

  He stepped towards them, felt his breath catch.

  He stared at the closest image—Chloe’s white face. Her eyes stared at him with the vacant look of the dead. It took Gilchrist a full second to work out that the slime on her lips was sperm. Another next to it—Chloe on the floor, naked. Breasts as flat as a child’s. Mons veneris lined with a pathetic strip of blonde hair that did little to hide her vagina.

  Around her ankles, Gilchrist recognised the shackles.

  He peered closer. Was that the toe of a boot?

  Closer still. It was.

  “There’s two of them,” he said to Dainty.

  Dainty pressed in beside him.

  Gilchrist pointed at the image. “Can we get an enhancement on that boot?”

  “Can do.”

  “What do you think, Nance?” he asked, and saw from her tight lips that the worst was yet to come. A glance at Dainty revealed he knew that, too.

  Then his eyes settled on a group of six photographs. Even from where he stood, he recognised Maureen. Her bloodied blouse, the abandoned garment in the adjacent room, reflected the glare of the flashlight. Her bare legs looked thinner than he remembered.

  “Don’t touch,” Dainty snapped.

  Gilchrist had to force himself not to rip the lot from the wall. The photographs could provide clues, could be used as evidence, dusted for prints, analysed for age. But who had taken them? And when? And how long since Maureen had lain chained to the wall?

  He tried to study the images with professional detachment. He was a DCI with Fife Constabulary, in charge of a murder investigation. The fact that the victim was known to him should be of no significance, so that his powers of detection remained uninhibited, his sense of reasoning unimpeded, his—

  “I’m sorry, Andy.” It was Dainty.

  Gilchrist stared at the images the same way he had stared at the images of a hundred dead bodies before. He felt an odd sense of satisfaction that Maureen had been alive at the taking the photographs. But he had seen that red-rimmed look of fear locked in the eyes of too many victims for him to be mistaken. Maureen had known she was going to die.

  He felt his lips tighten as he struggled to comprehend the sperm splattered on her forehead, dripping from her chin, creeping into her eyes. He tried to see past that, focus on what any normal detective would. He struggled to reason the facts like an impartial investigator. But it was no use.

  He pressed his hand to his mouth, bit down on his knuckles. Tears came at him in gasping sobs, and a fire that he had not felt since he had been bullied with a leather strap at the age of twelve, rose from somewhere deep within him and emerged in a choked curse.

  Dainty’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

  He shook it off, and thudded from the shed into the cold morning air, past the SOCOs, the flickering camera, the murmuring voices, and strode down the slabbed path.

  He was going to have Bully.

  He was going to have him with his bare hands.

  He was going to tear him limb from limb.

  If Maureen’s body was served up to him in bits, he would kill Bully.

  By Christ, he promised himself that treat.

  Chapter 31

  IT TOOK THE realization that Glenorra had to be the key to finding Maureen—it just had to be—to force Gilchrist back to the crime scene.

  “Our best guess is that she was taken from here within the last twenty-four hours,” Dainty said to him. “Her underwear may help determine when. We’ll need to run DNA tests. Could you give a blood sample?”

  “Of course.”

  Dainty nodded.

  Gilchrist read the pain in Dainty’s eyes. He knew how Dainty was thinking, how he would feel if it were his own daughter’s life on the line, how he could ask the unanswerable question—how could any father be asked to carry out his professional duties as if the victim was not related to him? It would be too much for Dainty. Gilchrist saw that.

  And he saw, too, that it was too much for himself.

  He stepped into a kitchen commandeered by Dainty’s team. Muddled voices and the crackle of radio static filled the air. He pushed through an open door into the relative quiet of the hall. He forced himself to concentrate, fight his way back into his investigation. If he had any hope of saving Maureen, he had to think.

  Topley. Glenorra. Bully.

  Think, God damn it, think.

  How were they connected?

  Had Chloe visited Glenorra when she dated Kevin Topley? Had she walked along this hallway, stepped into that kitchen? And Maureen, too? She had been at Topley’s party. Had she once stood on this same spot, maybe eyed the same rooms? Had she been here with Chris Topley? Gilchrist looked around him, at cobwebbed cornicing, at a dusty balustrade that led up a staircase of bare floorboards to an upper hallway that seemed to swim with motes of dust. Once-white wallpaper hung from the stairwell in dried strips.

  Why had the house been allowed to fall into such a state? And why hack Chloe to pieces here? Why keep Maureen chained in the garden shed? Was Bully trying to make it look as if Chris Topley was involved in Chloe’s murder?

  Chris Topley had shared a cell with Bully. Gilchrist had established that fact. And Chris Topley had employed Maureen. Chloe had dated Kevin Topley then dumped him for Jack. Was that part of a twisted plot dreamed up by Bully in the cells of Barlinnie? To set Gilchrist’s son up with his cellmate’s brother’s ex? Then kill her?

  It seemed too complex by far. Or was it?

  Gilchrist stepped from the hall into a darkened lounge. Heavy floral curtains were still drawn. He opened them. Light slid into the room on dusty beams. Another day was dawning. Would he find Maureen alive by the end of this day? Or was she already dead? He tried to bury that thought, and peered out the window.

  Glenorra stood at the end of a narrow road lined by mature trees. The footpath opposite was edged by a privet hedge, behind which an open field rose into the daybreak gloom. Fifty yards to his left, the grey hulk of the only neighbouring house seemed to manifest in the lightening skies.

  Who lived there? Had they seen anything? Heard anything?

  He faced the room again. Light patches on the flocked wallpaper were ghostly reminders of removed pictures. What had these pictures shown?

  Upstairs, the same questions worried away at him. Why this house? Why here? Why use the garden shed to hack up a murder victim, and why keep another one captive? But the house stood in a tranquil country setting, so why not?

  On the ceiling, in an oversized cupboard off the upper landing, he found the entrance hatch to the attic. He reached up and pulled it down to reveal a sliding ladder. He waggled it to the floor then clambered up the wooden treads.

  He stood with his head and shoulders in the confines of the attic. In the darkness the air smelled dry and musty. His fingers found a light-switch close to the entrance hatch, but the electricity had been disconnected. He called for a torch.

  Two minutes later, Nance obliged. “See anything?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Gilchrist ran the beam around the attic space. What was he looking for?

  He guessed no one had been in the attic for years. The space was small, the angle of the ceiling restrictive to someone his height. Planks of wood ran at right angles across the roof beams, creating a floored area about ten by ten. Beyond, rafters ran into the darkness like ship’s ribbing. Two suitcases lay one on top of the other. From the hollow sound they made when he tapped them, he could tell they contained nothing. Four tea chests lined one edge of the attic flooring.

  He pulled himself up and into the attic.

  Nance scrambled in after him. “Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

  “Just sniffing.” From the top of the chest, he removed an item wrapped in newspaper. He unravelled it to reveal a bone-china teacup. He was not an expert in antiques but had the distinct feeling that he was holding something of value. �
�Why leave this stuff here?” He shone his torch across the broadsheet. “The Herald,” he said. “January 1993.”

  Nance dug into the adjacent tea chest. “Has the house been deserted that long?”

  “We can have it checked out.” The rest of the tea chest uncovered more crockery, but nothing of any interest. “Is this stuff expensive?” he asked Nance.

  “You’re asking the wrong person. My grannie wanted to leave me her china set and got upset when I told her I didn’t want it. I prefer Mikasa.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Gilchrist shone the torch at her.

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  Gilchrist trained the beam on an urn that gleamed like polished copper. Although it had been wrapped in newspaper, he caught the green stain of verdigris around the base.

  “Betsy Cunningham Topley,” she said. “Born 5th of June 1932, died 1st of December 1997.” She looked at him. “Topley’s mother? Why keep her here?”

  Gilchrist had no answer for that. His own parents were dead, and their funerals had been carried out in accordance with their wishes. Both had been cremated, and their ashes interred in a small plot in the local cemetery. It sometimes embarrassed him to think how seldom he visited.

  Other tea chests revealed nothing of interest. He left the hatch open, the access ladder down, and had Nance notify the crime scene manager. Not that the stuff in the attic was relevant, he supposed.

  In the back garden, SOCOs still combed the grounds. The dawn light flickered with the staccato flare of the police photographer’s flashlight.

  “Has anyone interviewed the neighbours?” he asked Dainty.

  “Not yet.”

  Gilchrist was out of his jurisdiction, but he had a sense that Dainty was overwhelmed with the mass of evidence being gathered. “I can make a start,” he said.

  Dainty poked at the pad on his mobile. “Make sure you give me a typed report,” then turned away to make the call.

  The street surface was littered with potholes that glistened black with rainwater. A heavy dew painted the lawn in a transparent white. He caught movement behind an upper curtain as he and Nance approached the house, a smallholding with roughcast walls in dire need of paint. He glanced at his watch—6:15—then at the nameplate—Hutchison.