Life For a Life

by T F Muir

  Gilchrist was able to identify the woman as Eilidh Chambers – Bill’s partner of two years – when her head was located twenty yards from the body, in a field down the slope to the River Tay, about as far as an executioner could fling it. He thought she looked calm, not frightened for her life, as she surely would have been, and so lifelike that it seemed all she had to do was open her eyes and everything would be back to normal.

  Bill’s head was a different story. Blood spatter suggested it had been thrown in the opposite direction, and it was eventually located about the same distance away, in the field on the south side of the B946. Numerous pre-mortem cuts and bruises on the skin, and massive bruising around the eyes – his right eye was completely closed – suggested he had been beaten up – call it torture – before having his head hacked off.

  Bill’s white RAV4 was parked in the layby, abandoned and unlocked with the keys still in the ignition. Eilidh’s purse lay on the floor in the passenger footwell – again, nothing taken – and her ID was conclusively confirmed from the photo on her driving licence. A half-finished bottle of Stolichnaya lay in the back seat. Despite a thorough search, the only thing missing were their mobile phones.

  Back by the bodies, Cooper – who had arrived forty-five minutes earlier – was still busy with her preliminary examination.

  Gilchrist and Jessie stood well back. ‘You think it’s Kumar?’ he said to Jessie.

  She stared off across the brown waters of the Tay estuary, her breath clouding white in the morning chill. ‘It’s certainly got his signature,’ she said. ‘But he has his minions do his dirty work for him now, although I’m sure the sick fuck will lop off the occasional head just to keep his hand in.’ She cleared her nose, spat a mansized gob into the snow. ‘Fuck. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, Andy. I really don’t.’

  Gilchrist had no response to that. He eyed Bill’s body. His jacket and sweater looked as if they had been steeped in dye. Congealed blood in disturbed snow and gravel confirmed that Bill and Eilidh had been executed where their bodies now lay. Gilchrist tried to visualise what had happened, and stared around him. But at that location, in the early hours of a cold winter’s morning, no one would have seen a thing. Bill and Eilidh could have screamed for all they were worth and not a soul would have heard them.

  ‘So Bill brought Eilidh along to keep him warm,’ Jessie said. ‘And she ends up getting herself killed.’

  ‘Looks that way.’ Gilchrist said. ‘I think he would have done Eilidh first.’

  ‘Beheaded, you mean?’

  ‘As opposed to. . . ?’

  ‘Raped,’ Jessie snapped. ‘He’s known to do that, too. Sampling the goods, make sure they’re up to snuff. If I get the chance, I swear I’ll tear the sick fuck’s balls out by the roots.’

  Gilchrist’s gaze drifted back to Eilidh’s body. Staring at it, without a head, his mind struggled for a moment to work out the reality of what he was seeing. ‘Her clothes look intact,’ he said, more to assure himself. ‘But Cooper will confirm it one way or the other.’

  He stared off beyond the crime scene. Traffic shuffled across the Tay Road Bridge in a steady stream of cars and vans. He returned his attention to Cooper. She held Bill’s head in her hands. He watched her insert her fingers into Bill’s mouth, and had to pull his gaze back to Jessie.

  ‘Any thoughts?’ he asked her.

  She nodded to the disturbed snow around Bill’s RAV4, the scuffled tracks that gave some indication as to what had happened, and led in a muddled disarray to the blood-spattered scene of the slaughter. ‘It looks like Bill and Eilidh were both dragged from Bill’s car,’ she said. ‘So who was driving?’

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘How would they have got him to do it? A big strong lad like that? He looked as if he could hold his own.’

  ‘A gun is always a good persuader,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Particularly if it’s to the back of the girlfriend’s head.’

  ‘He would have put up a fight—’

  ‘Against a gun?’

  Jessie gave his words some thought. ‘The USA has the right idea, you know. We should all be armed. Every one of us.’

  ‘You sound as if you’re a gun advocate.’

  ‘I’m registered. Got a .22 that I keep under lock and key.’

  ‘Does your mother know about it?’

  ‘She will one day.’

  Gilchrist did not like the way the conversation was going and tried to bring them back on track with, ‘So, assuming Bill drives, once they’re here, their wrists are then tied. I can’t see Bill just letting them tie his wrists together.’

  ‘But somehow they did.’

  ‘Maybe drugged?’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  Gilchrist shifted his gaze to Cooper. If Bill was drugged, she would confirm it.

  Jessie clapped her hands, blew into her gloves. ‘It’s freezing. Must have been brass balls last night. They wouldn’t have hung about. They would have had Bill watch Eilidh being beheaded. Or maybe they beat Bill up in front of her.’

  ‘What’s to be gained from that?’ he said, as his mind pulled up an image of Gordie, eyes bulging with the knowledge of what was to come. For a moment, he had to chew back the bitter taste of bile. But it passed, and he looked away as he dragged a hand across his mouth.

  ‘How would they have known Bill was a detective?’ Jessie said to him. ‘OK, he’s parked outside the bungalow, I know. But he’s with his girlfriend, having a snog and a shag in the back seat. Why would they think that’s suspicious enough for a beheading?’

  Jessie’s rationale made sense, but Gilchrist thought he also knew Bill well enough to understand he could not have sat in his car in the pretence of having it off in the back seat.

  ‘Bill didn’t stay in his car,’ he said. ‘He left to have a closer look.’

  ‘Did you see any footprints to back that up?’

  ‘Only the exit tyre tracks. But the snow could have covered Bill’s footprints, and he could have been in the X5 when they drove out. Then they stopped for Eilidh in Bill’s car parked up Lover’s Lane, or wherever.’

  Jessie nodded, then said, ‘Uh-oh, legs alert.’

  Gilchrist followed Jessie’s line of sight. Cooper had stripped off her forensics clothing and now walked towards them, her hand by her ear, tugging strands of loose hair from her face. She looked good in jeans. Up close, her eyes sparkled sky blue, and creased with the tiniest of crow’s feet.

  ‘I’d say our killer has medical expertise,’ she said to Gilchrist.

  ‘Or plenty of practice,’ Jessie said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Gilchrist asked Cooper.

  ‘The cuts are precise, the same on each body. And I’m thinking boning knife—’

  ‘Why not scalpel? Smaller, easier to hide,’ Jessie argued.

  ‘But not to cut through the spinal cord. No,’ she said. ‘Boning knife.’

  Jessie shoved her hands into her pockets, as if chastised.

  ‘Anything else?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Their throats appear to have been sliced in one steady cut,’ Cooper said. ‘From left to right.’ She lifted her chin, pressed a finger to her neck about a couple of inches below the left ear lobe, then dragged it with slow deliberation across her throat in a U-shaped cut, to an equivalent point under her right ear lobe.

  ‘So the killer would have been standing behind?’

  ‘Most definitely. And the victims would have been kneeling, or maybe lying down. Then hand to the hair, head back, and just get on with it.’

  ‘Boning knife in his right hand?’

  ‘I’d say so. The insertion wound appears to be on the left, with evidence of the exit wound tailing off on the right. But I’d want to reserve a final call on that until I’ve had a closer examination in the PM room.’

  ‘The cuts and bruises on Bill’s face,’ Gilchrist tried. ‘Pre- or post-mortem?’

  ‘Pre.’

  ‘So he was beaten up before being beheaded.’


  Cooper nodded, then looked at the bodies. The SOCOs were preparing to bag them. Then she faced Gilchrist and said, ‘Bill’s right eyeball was removed. Not cut out, but ripped from its socket.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Jessie again.

  Gilchrist tried to shove that image way – a hand tugging Bill’s eye, teasing it from the socket to aggravate the pain and horror – but failed. He gritted his teeth, wondered if they had thrown Bill’s eye into the fields. ‘Did you find . . . ?’

  Cooper nodded. ‘In his mouth.’

  Gilchrist felt his whole being deflate. He suffered no illusions over the horrifying extent of man’s cruelty to one another. The planet could catalogue an entire history of acts so evil and barbaric that they could almost defy imagination. Even the town of St Andrews had its own historical notoriety: men burned alive at the stake; hanged, drawn and quartered in Market Street; tortured in the castle dungeons – the list went on. But somehow, being blinded by having your eye torn from its socket hit Gilchrist with renewed horror.

  ‘Why didn’t they rip out his other eye?’ Jessie asked.

  Gilchrist almost groaned.

  ‘He could have fainted,’ Cooper said. ‘The pain would have been excruciating.’

  ‘So they’d want to cut off his head when he was still able to feel it.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘More than likely, I’d say. They didn’t try to cut off his balls, did they?’

  ‘They’re still intact.’

  ‘So, no sexual interference to either of them?’

  ‘None that I can see. But I’ll know more later.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  Gilchrist was discovering a side to Jessie that was unsettling. From the chirpiness in her voice, she could have been having a chat about the weather. ‘Anything else?’ he asked Cooper.

  Cooper held his gaze. He thought she looked sad, as if she had something to tell him that she did not want him to hear. He swallowed an annoying lump in his throat, forced the bile from rising.

  ‘The killers would have been covered in blood,’ she said.

  ‘That’s obvious,’ Jessie said.

  ‘Which they would have transferred to their car. It would be on the steering wheel, the seats, the doors, anything they’re likely to have touched. A BMW X5, silver, you say?’

  ‘We think so,’ Gilchrist confirmed.

  ‘I shouldn’t think there would be too many of these around.’

  Jessie bristled. ‘Yeah, we’ll just drive over to Dundee and pick him up before he orders lunch,’ she said, then turned and stomped off.

  Together, Gilchrist and Cooper watched Jessie stride up the beach.

  ‘She’s a touchy one,’ Cooper said at length.

  Gilchrist could not disagree, but also felt an odd reluctance to acknowledge his agreement. ‘She has some issues,’ he said.

  Cooper’s teeth glinted white in the cold air. She tugged a strand of hair, ran it behind her ears. ‘Do you think these decapitations are related to the Kingsbarns’ killings?’

  ‘I’m positive they are.’

  Her mouth tightened, and her eyes creased, causing her cheeks to pull in, and giving Gilchrist a glimpse of what she might look in later years. Then she stared off to some point in the snow-covered distance. ‘I’ve worked on a number of murder cases,’ she said, ‘but this one is disturbing.’

  Gilchrist could only agree in silence, and watched her turn to face him.

  ‘Are you any closer to finding a suspect?’ she asked.

  He took a deep breath, then let it out. ‘Yes and no. If we could have carried out more surveillance on the cottage, I might feel better about it.’ He shook his head. ‘But they won’t come back to it now. I suspect they’ll find someplace else, lie low for a while.’

  He found himself resisting the urge to look at Bill, as if to do so would confirm his thoughts that Bill was to blame. Had Bill slipped up? Had he downed a few slugs of Stollie then decided to take matters into his own hands? Had he been caught checking up on the cottage at close quarters? Was that what had caused Kumar, or whoever he was, to flee? If Bill had done as Gilchrist had instructed, he and Eilidh would almost certainly still be alive, and the chances of catching Kumar would still be a reality—

  ‘You need to be careful,’ Cooper said.

  The cold air had brought tears to her eyes, and he said, ‘Am I not always?’

  She smiled at his double-entendre. ‘I mean it, Andy. The body count on this one is rising as if there’s no tomorrow. I haven’t seen anything like it.’

  Gilchrist nodded, unable to stifle the feelings of failure that stirred deep within him. Was he to blame for Bill and Eilidh’s deaths? If he had not been so intent on keeping Bill out of the pub, would he not have put his life in danger? He tried to work through the logic of that argument but felt as if he was stumbling in the dark.

  ‘You’re a good man, Andy. There aren’t too many of you out there.’

  He opened his mouth to respond. But Cooper turned and walked away, hips swaying in that come-on stride of hers, causing him to watch her in silence until she slid behind the wheel of her Range Rover and drove off, leaving him unsure what to make of her parting comment.

  CHAPTER 40

  The rest of the day passed by in a flurry of meetings and briefings.

  Despite the fact that Fife Constabulary had lost one of their own, the press hounded Gilchrist as if he had personally beheaded Bill and Eilidh. National newspaper, TV and radio crews made their way to St Andrews and Dundee in flocks, and the quiet estuary village of Tayport was in danger of losing its charm to the onslaught of camera equipment, sound systems, vehicles, newsmen, and a host of spectators more interested in seeing their faces on TV than providing any meaningful assistance to the investigation.

  The apparent newsworthiness of the double decapitation troubled Gilchrist, and only emphasised to him how barbaric the human race still was. Put a common or garden stabbing or shooting on the nightly news, and people would barely notice. But a decapitation, and a double one at that, seemed better entertainment. The reporting business, and the manner in which the public received it, just sickened him. And by the end of the day he felt as if his investigation had taken three steps backwards.

  The SOCOs had been unable to lift any fingerprints from Bowden’s bungalow. All surfaces had been wiped clean, reminding Gilchrist of the cottage in Boarhills. Fife, Tayside, Grampian, and Lothian and Borders Constabularies found no trace of a silvercoloured BMW X5 SUV with the registration number noted by Bill, though Tayside confirmed that an X5 matching the description crossed the Tay Road Bridge at 02.21 – tying in with the timing of Gilchrist’s visit to Bowden’s cottage. CCTV footage was unable to confirm the registration number plate, as it was covered in slush and snow – the plates would have been changed by now anyway – and once beyond Dundee, heading north to Aberdeen, they lost all trace of it.

  An examination of the tracks and footprints around Bowden’s cottage lent strength to Gilchrist’s theory that Bill had disobeyed his instructions and had worked his way round the cottage in an ill-fated attempt at police heroics. No one could say with any certainty how Bill had been caught, as footprints – two distinctly separate pairs – leading to where the X8 had been parked showed no signs of a scuffle having taken place.

  It seemed as if Bill and Eilidh had simply driven off.

  Jessie said, ‘I think Bill followed the X5 once they left the cottage.’

  ‘But why would they leave the cottage at all?’ Gilchrist argued.

  ‘How do I know? Perhaps they were only checking it out so they could move in the next day. Or maybe they saw Bill sniffing around and decided to take care of him. Or maybe they didn’t see him until he started to follow them. However it happened, I’m willing to bet that Bill and Eilidh were overpowered someplace other than the cottage.’

  Again, Jessie’s rationale worked with his own, and Gilchrist was beginning to see that behind her bitter Glasgow tongue a
nd her couldn’t-care-less attitude was a detective whose mind was as sharp as any he had worked with.

  He decided to check his own logic against hers. Statistically, the last call made on a mobile is important. But his team had already confirmed from phone records that the last call Bill made had been to Gilchrist, and the last call received the one Gilchrist made later.

  ‘So where’s Bill’s mobile?’ he asked her.

  ‘Bottom of the Tay. Destroyed. Does it matter?’

  ‘Do you think it odd that Bill never used his mobile for three hours before calling me?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s odd about that? Bill had Eilidh beside him. They were too busy shagging each other senseless. Check Eilidh’s mobile records and see if they match.’

  Gilchrist did that, and the records matched, with Eilidh’s last call being one to Bill at 20.14, which in turn matched Bill’s records. Feeling as if the mobile records were getting them nowhere, he called Cooper and put her on speaker.

  Cooper confirmed that Bill and Eilidh’s throats had been cut from left to right, which suggested a right-handed person, probably male because of the depth of the cut and the strength needed to slice through the spinal cord.

  ‘Strong female?’ Jessie tried.

  ‘Could be but I doubt it.’

  ‘Any sexual interference?’ Gilchrist asked, cutting off the argument before it started.

  ‘I’ve recovered seminal remains from Eilidh’s vaginal tract, but no sign of rough play, all pointing to consensual sex. Interestingly,’ she added, ‘I also found semen in her mouth—’

  ‘Never heard of a blow job?’ Jessie fired.

  ‘I won’t dignify that with an answer. But if the semen isn’t Bill’s then it might be the killer’s—’

  ‘It was too cold last night to fool around with blow jobs,’ Jessie said. ‘By the time they chopped off their heads and ripped out Bill’s eye, they would have been bloody freezing.’

  ‘Just check out the DNA, Becky,’ Gilchrist said, ‘and let me know what you find.’

  ‘Already doing that.’

  He ended the call and said to Jessie, ‘It would be helpful if you gave Becky and your dead colleague a bit more professional respect.’