Eye for an Eye

by T F Muir

  They reached a row of rooms lined with curtains on rails, and Ferguson pulled the first one open to reveal a young woman in hospital scrubs writing on a medical chart.

  ‘Nurse Simmons will attend to your head wound,’ he said, then closed the curtain before Gilchrist could respond.

  He sat, eyes half-shut, and let the nurse unwind his bandage. As she eased it from his crusted wound, she said, ‘Now, how did you manage to do this to yourself?’

  ‘Got into a fight.’

  ‘At your age?’

  ‘Didn’t know I looked that old.’

  Nurse Simmons let out a staccato chuckle that he found refreshing, and began to work around his head like a hairdresser. She clipped off more of his hair and gave him an injection above the ear before cleaning the wound and sewing in an additional ten stitches, telling him the others looked like they’d been ripped out by the roots. When she finished, she gave him a couple of pills for his headache.

  ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Good as new.’

  Gilchrist fingered his ear. He had no feeling on most of the left side of his face, all the way to his lower jaw.

  ‘You can go home,’ she added.

  Why? thought Gilchrist. And it struck him then how empty his life had become, how he missed his family, how he longed to hear their voices and be surrounded by the careless clatter and rattle of everyday life. How nice it would be to have a pint with Jack, or a meal with Maureen, or just phone them up and say, How about I pop round and take you out? My treat. And he saw that with Gail’s impending death, a huge part of what had been his family, his life, and what was to become his future, would simply vanish.

  ‘Do you have a car?’ Nurse Simmons asked.

  Gilchrist frowned, then remembered he had left his Merc in Patterson’s drive. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Just as well. I wouldn’t want you to be driving in your condition. I can call a taxi, if you’d like?’

  Gilchrist shook his head. ‘I have someone close by I’d like to check up on.’

  ‘I’ll be here for the rest of the morning,’ she said, ‘if you need anything else.’

  She smiled, and Gilchrist wondered if she would still manage a smile after thirty years of attending to the walking wounded. Perhaps she would become inured to the endless barrage of needless brutality and treat life with the cynicism it seemed to deserve.

  Outside, the morning air lay still and crisp as an Arctic frost. Gilchrist’s breath clouded before him in short puffs, visible signs of how cold he felt. He pulled McVicar’s blanket around his neck and decided to take a taxi.

  Sam MacMillan answered the door in a creased plaid shirt that hung over brown corduroy trousers with knees worn as smooth as flannel. White stubble dotted craggy cheeks and wattled neck, the growth at least several days old.

  ‘Thought you were going to call, Sam,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Or were you hoping I’d forget?’

  ‘You’re a right pushy wee bugger getting.’

  ‘Seems to be the only way around here.’

  MacMillan contemplated the bandage around Gilchrist’s head. ‘So, what’s the other guy like?’

  ‘Worse.’

  MacMillan frowned. ‘Can I finish my breakfast? Or are you going to arrest me on my threshold?’

  ‘Finish your breakfast, Sam.’

  MacMillan grunted then shuffled along the hall.

  The kitchen was bright and open, which somehow surprised Gilchrist. Glossy posters and framed photographs of an avian repertoire filled the walls. Two pairs of binoculars sat on an open shelf by the refrigerator. One pair Gilchrist recognized. Beyond the kitchen window, three bird feeders flapped with feathered life in a small walled garden.

  MacMillan screeched a chair up to a light oak table that seemed more suited to a modern house than one centuries-old. He faced the patio window and followed the line of Gilchrist’s gaze. ‘Once they know where to find food,’ he said, ‘they keep coming back.’

  ‘Almost like keeping pets,’ said Gilchrist.

  ‘But without the buggeration factor.’ MacMillan kept his gaze on the activity outside. ‘See that one there? That’s a wren. See it? You don’t find too many of them in town. Had a nest of them a few years back, in that wee bittie privet hedge in the corner. Cats chased them away. Should have shot the buggers.’

  All of a sudden, MacMillan tapped the window so hard that Gilchrist thought the glass would break. The feeders exploded in a wild flutter, three clouds of feathers that burst into the air like smoke. ‘Go on,’ he growled. ‘Get out of it.’ Then he sat back, a scowl bending his lips. ‘Starlings. Bloody pests. You’d think they own the place.’

  One by one the birds returned, the starlings leading, oblivious to the hatred levelled their way.

  Without being invited, Gilchrist pulled a chair opposite and sat. He said nothing as MacMillan bit into a hardened crust of toast as if it was the skull of a starling. Crumbs crackled onto his plate. MacMillan glanced up. ‘You look like you’ve been hit by a bus,’ he growled. ‘And what’s with the blanket?’

  ‘Lost my jacket.’

  ‘It’s chilly to be out without a jacket.’

  ‘Hence the blanket.’

  As if taking sympathy on Gilchrist’s condition, MacMillan said, ‘Help yourself to some tea. There’s another slice of toast in the toaster. If you don’t want it, it’ll no go to waste.’ He thumbed to the window. ‘They’d eat you out of house and home, so they would.’

  The birds had recovered from their temporary scare and were pecking at the feeders with renewed vigour, it seemed. Gilchrist tugged the blanket over his shoulders and rested his elbows on the table. ‘Tell me about Louise, Sam.’

  ‘What’s there to tell? She’s my daughter. Mentally retarded. Lives in a home in the outskirts of Dundee with specialist care that costs too bloody much. Scandalous, so it is.’

  ‘Do you visit?’

  MacMillan looked up at him, then eyed the toast again. ‘Not as often as I should,’ he confessed. ‘But it’s not the kind of place you’d queue up to see.’

  ‘When were you last there?’

  ‘A month ago. Maybe two. You lose track of time at my age.’ He bit into the toast.

  ‘You said your wife left you.’

  ‘She couldnae cope.’

  ‘With Louise?’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘What happened, Sam?’

  ‘When the wheels start falling off in life, it’s often difficult to keep pedalling.’ MacMillan crunched the last bit of toast with a determination that spoke of bitter memories. Maybe the pedals had fallen off, too, Gilchrist thought. Silent, he watched the old man take a mouthful of tea that emptied his mug.

  ‘You’ve got two kids, son.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Jack and Maureen.’

  ‘I know. I seen you over the years.’ MacMillan’s eyes narrowed, and gave Gilchrist the impression he was trying to recall the last time he had seen Gail and him walk the streets with their children. It seemed so long ago to Gilchrist that he imagined buckets and spades and sand-covered feet.

  ‘She left you,’ MacMillan said.

  ‘She did, Sam. Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Things never seemed to go the way he intended with Sam, but Gilchrist decided that a bit of give and take was as good a policy as any, so he said, ‘For someone else.’

  ‘You miss the kids?’

  Gilchrist felt his lips tighten. More than anything, he wanted to say. But all he dared allow himself was, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would you feel if something happened to them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘How would you feel if one of the kids was in an accident and left brain damaged?’

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  MacMillan grunted and turned once more to his feeders, glaring at them as if he no longer found pleasure in wa
tching birds. ‘It’s the worst thing that can happen to a parent.’

  Silent, Gilchrist watched the old man’s lips tighten, as if he was torturing himself with the memory of something he could perhaps have prevented.

  Still facing the feeders, MacMillan’s voice lowered to a grumble. ‘How would you feel if the accident turned out to be no accident at all, and that the brain damage had been caused by someone you thought you loved? Someone who then buggered off and left you holding the baby, so to speak.’

  A frisson ran the length of Gilchrist’s spine. ‘Is that what happened, Sam?’

  MacMillan took a deep breath, and sadness spilled from his face in shuddering waves. ‘Aye, son,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened.’

  ‘Louise was no accident?’

  MacMillan raised a thick-fingered hand to his eyes and dug in his thumb and forefinger. Then he lifted his chin and whispered to his birds, ‘She tried to hide it from me. But I could tell something was wrong the moment I set foot over the threshold. Louise was asleep. But she never woke up when I kissed her. I loved to do that. Wake her up, like, and play with her. I seen something was wrong from the look on Margaret’s face.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Go on, Sam.’

  ‘Louise fell in the bath. She hit her head against the side. That’s what Margaret told me. Except I didnae believe her. I seen the way she treated her. She’d a right temper on her, so she had. When she lost it she would shake Louise till you’d think her head was gonnae come off at the shoulders. I done nothing about it and regretted it ever since. Should’ve clouted her into the middle of next week.’

  MacMillan’s hands had curled into white fists that he used to dab spittle from the corners of his mouth. Then he looked down at them, as if surprised, opened them and placed them on the table, palms flat. He stared at his fingers for several seconds, then said, ‘But I couldnae hit a woman.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference?’

  ‘She would have thought twice about doing what she done.’

  ‘Did you not try to talk to her?’

  ‘Talk? I shouted myself hoarse.’

  ‘Did you not report her?’

  ‘What good would reporting anything have done back then?’ He shook his head. ‘We took Louise to the hospital, Margaret and me. Told the doctors she’d cracked her head on the side of the bath.’

  ‘And they believed you?’

  ‘Aye, son. They did.’ MacMillan stared dead-eyed at his birds. ‘Louise widnae wake up. The doctors said she was in a coma. For three whole days I prayed to God. I never missed a minute, not one minute. But when she woke up, her eyes were glassy like. God was nae bloody use to me then and He’s been nae bloody use to me since.’

  Gilchrist waited several seconds before saying, ‘And what did your wife say?’

  ‘Say?’ MacMillan shook his head. ‘She said bugger all. I told her to bugger off out of it.’

  ‘And you told no one?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Where did your wife go?’

  ‘Last I heard she was in London.’ Thick fingers dabbed at his eyes again. ‘But by then the damage was done.’ He faced Gilchrist then. ‘I’m not a wealthy man, son. Taking care of Louise drained me of every penny I earned. I worked weekends, nights, every hour that bugger of a God gave me.’ He looked at the table, fingered the crumbs, and whispered, ‘So, when the chance came up to make a wee bittie money on the side ...’ He hung his head. ‘I took it.’

  ‘From Granton?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And your midnight forays to the pier was Granton’s way of getting something in return.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Gilchrist found his gaze eyeing the bird feeders. A starling fluttered onto one of the trays, its opened beak chasing smaller birds away.

  ‘Which brings us to why you’re here.’ MacMillan’s eyes glistened. ‘They say this’ll be her last Christmas. She’ll no see another one. I’ve done my bit. I cannae do anything more for her.’

  Her last Christmas. Hearing those words struck a chord with Gilchrist as if the old man’s troubles paralleled his own. Gail would see only one more Christmas. How many others would suffer the same? He understood MacMillan’s need to pay for his daughter’s care and could understand his helplessness over the imminent loss. But the twisted irony of it all did not go unnoticed.

  Bill Granton, a bank manager whose life was lost because he was an abuser of women. Sam MacMillan, a painter and decorator who thought his life was lost because he was not an abuser of woman. If Sam had clouted his wife, would she not have harmed their daughter? Could that be argued in any rational sense of the word? And if Louise had not suffered brain damage, would Sam have been involved in embezzlement? Gilchrist did not believe so.

  MacMillan stood, the move so sudden that Gilchrist started. ‘Let’s get it over with, son.’

  Gilchrist frowned.

  ‘I’ll no be defending the charge. I took the money. So I’m guilty. I’ve been found out.’

  ‘Sit down, Sam.’

  MacMillan stiffened, as if in defiance, and Gilchrist could almost read his mental turmoil. MacMillan had committed a crime. An accomplice in embezzling funds. He had known the money was stolen from a bank. And he took it. It did not matter that the money was used to care for his daughter. It mattered only that he had broken the law. And now he had been found out, he was going to pay the price. It was his way of making amends, making peace with his conscience, perhaps. Then MacMillan blinked, and his face softened, as the meaning of Gilchrist’s words sunk in.

  ‘Louise needs you, Sam.’ Gilchrist eyed the bird feeders, and smiled. ‘And they need you, too.’

  ‘Why, son?’

  The question seemed simple enough. The answer proved otherwise. Gilchrist felt as if his life was a collection of failures. He had failed Gail, failed Jack and Maureen, failed Beth, too. But MacMillan had not failed. He had been dealt a cruel hand, but succeeded in looking after his daughter despite everything life set against him. How could Gilchrist in all conscience arrest the man? MacMillan was no crook. Putting him on trial toward the end of his life would not serve the law. It might even be argued an injustice.

  Gilchrist shrugged. ‘What do I know, Sam?’ He pushed his chair back and stood, its legs making a screech that sent a signal to the birds. ‘You should visit your daughter,’ he added. ‘Enjoy what time you have left with her.’

  MacMillan’s lips tightened, and his nostrils flared. A tremor seemed to play with his chin. ‘Aye, son, I will. I’ll do that,’ he managed.

  ‘You asked me to call, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Andy. Thank you.’ McVicar paused, then said, ‘Could you face a press conference?’

  ‘Would you like the truth, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I’m ready and willing.’

  McVicar chuckled, a deep rumble like the lazy growl of a large cat. ‘It comes with the new territory, Andy.’

  Gilchrist gripped the phone. ‘Define new, sir.’

  ‘Promotion. I’m putting your name forward for detective chief inspector. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’m ... I’m—’

  ‘Pleased your efforts are being recognized at long last?’

  ‘Surprised, actually.’

  ‘Well, don’t be.’

  ‘What about Patterson?’

  ‘He’s moving on.’

  Gilchrist fiddled with the bandage where it had slackened by his ear. He could feel his hair short and stiff, close to the stitches. McVicar, true to his word, had wasted no time in finding out the truth. Last night, Patterson had lied. Now he was being given a choice. Take a sideways step, or get out.

  ‘I need you here at eleven-thirty for a debriefing, Andy. I’d like to hear your side of it all before we face the press. We’re in for a rough time, let me tell you. But all things being equal, we can announce your promotion then.’

/>   ‘Very good, sir. But there is one other thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I had been planning to take some leave. A couple of weeks. To spend some time with Jack and Maureen. And a long-lost friend.’

  ‘I think we could live with that. But I need you to complete all reports before you go.’

  ‘Not a problem, sir.’

  And with that, McVicar disconnected.

  Gilchrist glanced at his wrist then remembered he had lost his watch at Patterson’s. He was less than a mile from the hospital and estimated the time to be about ten o’clock. Doctor Ferguson had told him Beth would be out of it for the best part of the morning.

  When she wakened, would she remember what she had done? Would she feel regret at her past? Or fear for her future? Would her memory reveal itself with all its hidden horrors? However she felt, Gilchrist knew she would need someone to be with her, someone to tell her it’s all right to make a mistake, all right to fail from time to time. Failing is part of life. It’s what makes us human. And sometimes we have to learn how to fail before we learn how to succeed. He would tell her that. He would not fail her this time.

  He leaned into the wind and started walking.