Hand for a Hand

by T. Frank Muir

  I have died. That is why I feel nothing, hear nothing, can move nothing.

  Because I am dead. But if I am dead, why is it so cold?

  So cold again. Freezing.

  She managed to pull her legs up, tried to lock her knees against her chest, but toppled onto her side.

  I am so weak, I don’t know how.…

  … I don’t know …

  … how long …

  … I can …

  … hold …

  “BULLY’S GOT IT in for you,” Topley said. “He hates you so much, he’s forgotten why.”

  “Tell me what he said about Maureen.”

  Topley levelled his head, stared hard into Gilchrist’s eyes. “I don’t know a thing about that. And that’s the truth.”

  Gilchrist felt a nip in his gut. Did he have it wrong? “What about Ronnie Watt?” he asked. “Did Ronnie ever talk to you about Bully?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Gilchrist was not sure he believed that answer. But for the time being it would have to do. “How do you know Ronnie?”

  “Does a bit of stuff for us.”

  “Us?”

  “My company.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Stuff stuff.”

  Now where had he heard that before? “Did you know Watt’s with Strathclyde Drug Squad?”

  Topley’s eyebrows shifted. “You’re joking. Right?”

  Ham actor of the century. Maybe even the universe. “Why did Bully want your father buried in the Auld Aisle?”

  “Who says he did?”

  “Me.”

  Topley paused, as if deciding whether or not to continue lying, then shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Stop pulling my plonker.”

  “I’m telling you. I don’t know why the fuck he wanted the old man buried there.”

  “But you did as he asked.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He was your old man. Why let Bully get involved?”

  “Why not?”

  Gilchrist moved closer. “You scared of Bully?”

  Topley cracked his knuckles. “I can look after myself.”

  “Why not tell him to bugger off?”

  “What the fuck did I care? I mean, the old man’s as stiff as a parrot. What the fuck difference does it make? He’s gone. Out of it. Food for the worms.”

  “It made a difference to your mother.”

  “What the fuck is this? You’ll be pulling the old violin out next.”

  “She cared.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s gone where she doesn’t need to care any more.”

  “Ashes in the attic?”

  Topley looked off to the side, as if trying to avoid Gilchrist’s eyes. But Gilchrist was having none of it. He fingered the recorder.

  “Did Bully tell you not to bury her beside your father?”

  Silence.

  “Did you ever ask yourself why?”

  Topley’s flattened nose flared with anger.

  Gilchrist pulled back. He was missing something. But what, he could not say. Did it matter that Bully had ordered Topley to bury his father in some cemetery far from the family plot? And then not to bury his mother there? Or was Gilchrist toddling up the wrong track? He did not know. But what he did know, from the heavy-lidded look in Topley’s eyes, was that some impasse had been reached. Mrs. Hutchison had said ten years, but Gilchrist was interested in hearing how Topley would answer.

  “When did your father die?” he asked.

  “Fuck sake. How would I know? It was years ago.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Not as long as that.”

  “Ten?”

  “Yeah. About that.”

  “Were you in Barlinnie when he died?”

  “Fuck off. I had a good job back then.”

  “Did you like your father?”

  “Bad-tempered drunk, is what the old fucker was.”

  “Ever hit you?”

  “That’d be the fucking day.”

  “How about Kevin? Your father hit him?”

  “Kevin would have nailed him to the door.”

  Gilchrist frowned. Nothing seemed to fit. He had met Jack’s girlfriend. And what had struck him about Chloe was her sensitivity, her artist’s gentleness. Yet Kevin Topley had been her boyfriend before Jack. It seemed improbable. But there was Maureen, too, his own daughter, an employee of the likes of Topley. What the hell was the world coming to? Or more to the point, what the hell was he missing?

  The door opened.

  Gilchrist spun round.

  “Sorry, sir. You did tell me to let you know.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes. Sir.”

  Gilchrist succeeded in maintaining his composure in front of Topley. “Thank you,” he said, and waited for the door to close. He wanted to ask Topley one more question, and leaned closer. “When was the last time you visited your father’s grave?”

  Topley shrugged.

  “You’ve never visited it. Have you?”

  Topley dead-eyed him. “Like I said. He’s dead as a parrot. What’s the fucking point?”

  Gilchrist felt disappointment flush through him. Would anyone visit his own grave after he was dead? Had he made any impact on the world, left anything of any significance behind him? The futility of it all seemed insurmountable. The world was filled with villains much worse than Topley, who murdered without pity or compassion, the cruellest of human beings who took everything and gave nothing. And after trying to extract information from Topley, he now felt like a dog that had been scraping for a meatless bone in the wrong hole.

  “You’re free to go,” he said.

  “Didn’t know I’d been arrested.”

  “Don’t push it.” Gilchrist tugged his hand through his hair. His fingers tined the thinning spot at the back of his crown. He gritted his teeth at the memory of Maureen teasing him. Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll still love you when you’re bald. What would he give to hear her say those words again?

  He waited until Topley’s footfall faded before he stepped from the room. “Do you know how to get to Kirkintilloch?” he asked Nance.

  “Not yet.”

  “And when you’re at it, find out the location of John Topley’s grave.”

  GILCHRIST DROVE HIS Roadster through the gateway of the Auld Aisle Cemetery. The watchtower stood in the oldest part of the graveyard. Beyond the old stone wall, rusting cages huddled over gravesites with tilted headstones weathered smooth.

  He stood at the bottom of the watchtower’s stairway. Behind him, high in the bared branches of a towering maple, a colony of crows watched his movement with black-eyed disinterest. A chill wind swept in from the north. He upped his collar, eyed the worn stairs. How many shoes had marched up and down that short flight? He had once read an article that alleged watchtower guards were often bought, and grave-robbing had not declined, but simply carried out with more care.

  He eyed the ancient structure.

  The base of the watchtower had an arched passage through it, the entrance to the original cemetery. Was this where he would find Maureen?

  “Andy?” Nance’s skin felt soft and warm. “Let me do this.”

  Gilchrist walked up the first six steps, then grabbed the walled stairway. The stone felt cold, and he took the steps one at a time, his heart heavy with the prospect of what he dreaded he would find.

  He reached the top step. The watchtower’s door had been boarded over. Scrapes on the wood looked as if they had been made by a claw-hammer. Was his daughter on the other side of that boarding? He resisted the urge to call out her name, afraid she could not answer. Instead, he pressed his ear against the unpainted surface.

  He heard nothing.

  He slapped his hand against the boarding, then thudded the heel of his hand hard against it. “Anyone?” he shouted, and gave a start when Nance joined him.

  “Stand back.” She lea
ned to the side, kicked out her foot.

  The boarding wobbled.

  She kicked again.

  On the fourth kick, the boarding splintered along one edge.

  Gilchrist thudded his shoulder against it, once, twice, then the nails gave out with a tearing crack. He stumbled into the dark interior.

  “Maureen?”

  Empty. Nothing but bare walls and boarded over openings.

  Oh princess, by thy watchtower be.

  Bully had him beaten, Burns’ verses his way of making Gilchrist believe he had to solve a riddle to save his daughter’s life. But it was a hoax, nothing more than Bully’s self-satisfying ploy to build up Gilchrist’s hopes. Then dash them. And he now saw that he would never find Maureen. She was gone.

  “Andy?”

  But he was already skipping down the steps.

  He ran around the base like a demented lunatic, slapping his hands against the cold stone, hoping, praying he would find some secret door, some window, some opening that would validate his twisted theory that Bully had Maureen interred in some long-forgotten chamber.

  But he found no such opening.

  He pressed the flats of his hand to the cold stone walls and hung his head. It took him several seconds to realise Nance was not with him, but down by the new gate to the cemetery extension. He caught up with her as she strode along a gravel path lined by worn memorials. Headstones, darkened with age, spilled down the cemetery slopes to the Bothlyn Burn.

  “Go back to the car,” she said.

  “I need to see for myself.”

  “We don’t know for certain, Andy.”

  “No,” he whispered. It was all he could hope for.

  They found John Topley’s grave in the newest part of the cemetery, which seemed brightened by shiny headstones of glossy grey and bituminous black, footed by wreaths that sprinkled the grass with pinks, reds, yellows, whites, like the leftovers from some garden party. Topley’s grave was marked by a flat black headstone with an empty pewter flower-holder at its head. Shorn grass grew as tough as reeds around it.

  Gilchrist read the chiselled epitaph.

  Gone, but not forgotten.

  How meaningless words could be.

  But the turf that fronted the memorial looked sliced where the grass had been lifted and relaid. He checked the chiselled words. John Topley had died at the age of sixty-two, and been buried ten years earlier. Yet the turf that fronted his headstone had only recently been relaid.

  Gilchrist now knew there was no hope.

  He slipped his mobile into his hand and punched in the numbers. “Dainty,” he said. “I need authorization to exhume a coffin.” He listened to Dainty fire questions at him, then heard his own voice say, “I think we might have found her.”

  Chapter 35

  It took less than two hours to uncover the coffin.

  As Gilchrist had expected, it was not buried deep. Bully’s men would have had little time in the space of a single night to bury it, and a shallow grave at least ensured it was out of sight. But the fact it was a coffin at all puzzled Gilchrist. Why not wrap Maureen’s body in plastic sheeting instead, the same sheeting in which Chloe’s left leg had been wrapped?

  It made no sense to him. Or maybe it did.

  Would lugging a coffin into a graveyard at night raise less suspicion? Or maybe Bully had known not to trust his men, that they might not follow his instructions to the letter but bury the body in a grave shallow enough for some feral dog to dig up. A coffin would at least offer the cadaver some protection.

  But Gilchrist’s rationale was muddled. Something did not fit. The coffin’s surface looked scratched and worn, as if it had been in the ground for years, rather than days. One of the SOCOs unscrewed the brass holders and prepared to open the lid. Gilchrist glanced at Nance and caught the glitter of tears in the late afternoon sun.

  Gloved hands gripped the coffin lid.

  Gilchrist stopped breathing.

  The lid was lifted and placed on the grass.

  “Fucking hell.”

  “What’s this then?”

  “Don’t touch.”

  Dainty stepped forward, his brow furrowed, and Gilchrist saw Nance was just as puzzled. “There must be millions here,” Dainty gasped. “Bloody hell. A fucking fortune is what we’ve got.”

  Gilchrist looked into the opened coffin, at bundles packed like icing sugar wrapped in polythene, the same material as that around Chloe’s left leg, he would bet, crammed into the confines of a coffin stripped of silk and padding to make more room.

  Dainty scratched his forehead. “I think our Mr. Topley’s got a lot of answering to do. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Gilchrist should have been relieved that Maureen’s body was not in the coffin, but it surprised him to feel disappointment flush through him. If Maureen had been buried there, then he had found her, could have tried to live with the horror of it all. But now she was still out there, somewhere, tied up, dead, buried, hacked to pieces, or God only knew what, her body planted for him to find, or not find, at Bully’s dictate.

  He now saw why Topley’s mother’s ashes were in the attic. The coffin was used for the temporary storage of drugs, which must have started after John Topley’s death, but before Betsy’s. Bully had instructed Topley not to bury his mother here. The grave-diggers would have unearthed an unrecorded coffin, and Bully’s hidey-hole would have been lost, along with his millions in drugs.

  Gilchrist held out his hand. “Gloves.”

  The nearest SOCO offered him a pair.

  Gilchrist pulled them on and leaned into the coffin. He eased one bundle out, laid it to the side, then did the same with two others. But Bully would not risk contaminating his consignment by storing it with Maureen’s body. Six packets later he knew he was right. He slipped off the gloves.

  “What do you think?” Dainty asked him.

  “When does Bully get out of Barlinnie?”

  “With his appeal going ahead, two, three years, give or take six months or so. Why?”

  “He must have known he would be the prime suspect in Maureen’s murder.”

  “Come on, Andy, Bully’s in a top security—”

  “It’s him—”

  “You can’t prove a—”

  “I will,” Gilchrist snarled. “Believe me, I will.”

  Dainty’s eyes flared, then saddened. “You’ll have a tough time, Andy. His brief’s Rory Ingles. Solicitor to the mob. And the likes of Bully.”

  “Which means?”

  “That he’s never lost a case.”

  “And he costs a ton of money.” Three SOCOs were dusting the coffin for prints, but they were wasting their time. “There’s Bully’s legal nest-egg for the next thirty years.”

  “So this is nothing to do with Topley, is what you’re telling me.”

  “It’s got Bully written all over it.”

  “Give it up, Andy. You’ve got Bully on the bloody brain.” Dainty’s mobile rang at that moment, and he seemed relieved to take the call.

  Gilchrist choked back his anger, turned away, almost bumped into Nance.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.

  But he pushed past her, onto the asphalt path that led to the old part of the cemetery. Bully could not have anticipated the discovery of his drugs cache, which was a huge plus in Gilchrist’s favour. Or was it? When Bully found out, he would go berserk. Then how could Gilchrist ever force Bully to confess to what he had done with Maureen? They had almost found her at Glenorra. But Bully had been one step ahead.

  Why? Why had Maureen been moved?

  Maybe that was the question he should be asking.

  Not where had she been moved to, but why had she been moved.

  Why that night? Why not earlier? Because the cryptic clues were simple, intended to be solved, and Bully would have known that Gilchrist was getting close, that he was pulling it all together. Were the clues provided not to solve the murder, but to ensure that Gilchrist would suspect Bully then
meet him? So that Bully could gloat?

  Was Bully only a red herring? Were the answers with Bully’s brother, Jimmy? Was Maureen’s body moved the night Wee Kenny was murdered? Was Jimmy already living it up in Spain, soaking up the sun, setting up the villa for Bully’s release in three years, maybe less, with Rory Ingles, solicitor for the rich and infamous, handling his appeal?

  Gilchrist removed his copy of Bully’s lyrics, and studied that line again. He had spent almost twelve months bomb-proofing the case against Bully, had come to know the man as well as he would his own brother. So what was he missing?

  Oh princess, by thy watchtower be.

  He crushed the paper into a ball, his mind playing that line over and over.

  Oh princess, by thy watchtower be.

  He faced Topley’s grave. The SOCOs were loading the drugs into their van. To the side, some forty feet away, Nance stood by another headstone. He walked towards her.

  She surprised him by saying, “Joe Reid. Bully’s father’s grave.”

  Gilchrist almost smiled. In the process of locating Topley’s grave, Nance had taken the initiative and found Bully’s father’s, too. He read the inscription.

  The honest man, though e’er sae poor Is king o’ men for a’ that.

  He recognised the lines from Burns’ poem A Man’s a Man for A’ That, and once again puzzled over the reference to Burns. “What’s Bully’s attraction to all things Burns?” he asked Nance.

  “Maybe it was drummed into him at school?”

  “Did he go to school?” His mobile rang. He flipped it open, and walked off.

  “Hey, man, I went through the print-outs like you asked, and I found something.”

  Gilchrist’s throat seemed to clamp at Jack’s words. “I’m listening.”

  “Tried to check it out before I called, in case I’d got it wrong. But I got nowhere.”

  “Back up, Jack. You’re losing me.”

  “It’s Maureen’s job, man. The Topley Company’s just eyewash.”

  “Are you saying she’s employed by someone else?”

  “The police.”

  Something thudded into Gilchrist’s chest.

  “I mean, who would’ve believed it? There’s no contract or anything. Just two emails, the first confirming she would be available for employment, the second confirming the terms of their agreement.”