Tooth for a Tooth (25 page)

Randall placed both hands palms-down on the table, as if to show how harmless he was. ‘I’m with you on this, Andy. We both are. We’re on the same side. We don’t want to make accusations that could tarnish the Force’s reputation. We have enough problems with our image as it is. But you must see how it looks, Andy. The body of a young woman is found thirty-five years after she disappeared, and the brother of one of our own boys in blue, the SIO in charge, no less, was going out with her at the time she was murdered.’

Randall paused, lifted both hands from the table in a gesture of helplessness. ‘And to make matters worse, this SIO removes an important piece of evidence, and withholds further evidence, both of which are critical to the case. Which puts us in a bit of a dilemma, Andy.’ Randall tried a smile of sympathy, but he was fooling no one. ‘What we’re hoping for is that you can help us explain away this . . . this damning evidence, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

Gilchrist sat motionless. He had heard some pretty persuasive arguments before, but never with such self-serving guile. If Randall was a fox in a henhouse, he would have convinced the chickens he was laying their eggs for them.

‘So, Andy. Can you help us? Can you tell us why you removed your brother’s lighter?’

‘Who said the lighter was my brother’s?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘How would I know?’

‘If it wasn’t, why did you remove it?’

‘I took it by mistake.’

‘That doesn’t cut it,’ Randall said, shaking his head.

‘You have the tooth,’ Gilchrist said. ‘That’s enough to try to nail my brother to the cross, if that’s your aim.’

‘But we found the tooth only after you removed your brother’s lighter, Andy. Do you see our problem with that? If we hadn’t found the tooth, what evidence would we have had?’

‘The only problem I see is that you continue to assert, without one shred of proof, that the lighter is Jack’s.’

Randall gave a tired smile and sat back.

Gilchrist returned a smile of his own, but his mouth refused to work the way it should. If he was in Randall’s position, the only course of action he could recommend would be to remove the SIO from the case. The facts were almost unarguable. The SIO had a personal stake in this case and could not be trusted, evidenced by the fact that he had removed his brother’s lighter. They would argue that if Gilchrist had been around when they found the tooth, he would have removed that, too.

‘I see,’ said Randall. ‘I would remind you, Andy, that we are trying to help you here. Give a bit, take a bit, that sort of thing. Back and forth. But if you’re holding anything from us, it really isn’t helping anyone. Do you understand, Andy?’

Loud and clear, Gilchrist thought. He struggled with the sudden impulse to get up and leave. He was the SIO, and the case was still his until instructed otherwise. He made a conscious effort to breathe slow and deep.

Randall shifted in his seat. ‘What can you tell us about the jacket?’

‘What jacket?’

‘The one in which the tooth was found.’ Randall scanned his notes. ‘We’ve established that it was a man’s jacket.’

Where the hell was he when all this investigation was going on? Chasing a lead to his brother’s hit-and-run accident, came the answer. No wonder he was so far out of touch.

‘Maybe she liked to wear men’s clothes,’ he said.

‘Not just any man’s clothes,’ Randall said. ‘But your brother’s.’

Gilchrist said nothing. He knew they had found something on the jacket to tell them it belonged to Jack. In his mind’s eye, he watched his mother sew a name-tag into the seam of the collar. She had done that on all their clothing, from the first day he had gone to school, for as long as he could remember.

‘Do you see where this is going, Andy? We need you to be more open. We need you to help us out. Can you do that for us, Andy? Can you?’

‘What colour?’ Gilchrist said.

Randall frowned. ‘Colour?’

‘The jacket. What colour?’

Randall referred to his notes, flustered for a moment. ‘Dark blue, we think.’

‘Material?’

‘Nylon-based.’ Randall smiled, pleased to be back in control. ‘Just an ordinary waterproof jacket.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘I never knew Jack to wear any kind of waterproof jacket.’ Gilchrist pushed his chair back and stood.

Tosh sprang to his feet. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Ending this charade,’ Gilchrist snapped. He looked down at Randall. ‘This is still my investigation. And I will bring formal charges against anyone who keeps anything from me or interferes with it. Got that?’

Randall pushed his chair back. He stood a tad taller than Gilchrist, six-two, perhaps, to Gilchrist’s six-one. ‘I’m prepared to put matters on hold for the time being,’ he purred. ‘But I have to advise you that I am not altogether
au fait
with your answers.’

Au fait?
In which country was this investigation being carried out, exactly?

‘But I would be grateful if you could find a way to return the lighter,’ Randall said.

Gilchrist nodded.

‘You still have it, I presume?’

For one disconcerting moment Gilchrist suspected it was a trick question, but he said, ‘I do,’ and prayed that Gina Belli had not checked out of the St Andrews Bay.

Outside, he breathed in clean cold air. The wind had picked up, carrying with it the taste of the open sea. Overhead, gulls wheeled and dived in the swirling winds. He needed to clear his mind, try to think straight.

At the end of North Street, he crossed into Gregory Place, a narrow access road that paralleled the cathedral wall towards the harbour. He changed course at the ruins of Culdee Church, doubled back along the pathway that led to the castle ruins. He stopped at the path’s peak, gripped the black wrought-iron fence and stared out to sea.

Sixty feet beneath him, waves thrashed the rocks.

A tooth. Had it come to that? And a jacket. Why had he not told them the truth?

He remembered the jacket clearly now. Dark blue, a present from Kelly to Jack, a Christmas gift that she seemed to wear more often than Jack. She wore it to the New Year party – dark blue jacket and dark blue jeans. With her blonde hair and even tan, Gilchrist thought he had never before seen anyone as beautiful. Jack had told him that she loved to slip it over whatever she was wearing, to keep out that cold Scottish weather, that dreich and dreary dampness. He smiled at the memory of her American accent tripping over the Scottish words.

‘Dreich,’ Jack had said to her, ‘with an eegh not an eek.’

‘Dreek,’ she had replied
.

Gilchrist watched a pair of gulls tumble in the wind, then he fixed his gaze on the grey horizon. Was this what it was all coming down to? Thirty years of a police career sucked down the drain because of a cigarette lighter and a tooth?

CHAPTER 19

He called Gina Belli on the number registered in his mobile’s log, but it rang out. He then tried the St Andrews Bay, managed to confirm that she was still resident and asked the receptionist to pass a message to her to hold the lighter until he collected it.

Then he went to find Stan.

The jacket was barely recognizable as a piece of clothing. What appeared to be rotting strips of material had been the collar and sleeve and part of the front, the rest having disintegrated to more or less nothing. The name tag had been removed for forensic analysis. But what had looked like a clump of dirt in a pocket, had been a tooth wrapped in the silver foil from a chewing-gum packet.

Gilchrist remembered it now, the rugby game the weekend before, in the days before gumshields were the norm. Jack had dived at a loose ball and been booted unconscious by a poorly aimed clearance kick. The tooth had cracked above the root, and had to be extracted.

‘So where does that put us, boss?’

‘Nothing changes, Stan. We still have a murder to solve.’ And even as he said the words, he knew he did not have long to go.

‘It’s not looking good for Jack.’ Stan scratched his head. ‘Is it, boss? With the fight outside the Keys, and the assault charge and everything.’

‘Jack could take care of himself,’ Gilchrist said, ‘but he would never harm a woman. That you can bet your life on.’

Stan nodded and turned away, as if unconvinced.

Who could blame him? ‘I think Kelly was sexually assaulted,’ Gilchrist said.

Stan turned around. ‘Boss?’

‘Think about it, Stan. She was wearing a jacket. When they found her, she was not wearing knickers. Jacket with no knickers? Doesn’t sound right, does it?’

‘Maybe she was changing and got interrupted.’

Gilchrist shook his head. ‘The jacket, Stan.’

‘Maybe the killer put it on after she was killed.’

‘Why?’

Stan scratched his head, for once out of ideas.

‘And now they have Jack’s tooth, Tosh will try to force-fit the evidence to get the result he wants. And have me fired or demoted at the same time.’ Gilchrist pursed his lips, raked his hair. Or even charged, he thought.
Tosh
. He wished he had never met the man, never confronted him. But looking back, he would have done it all over again.

‘What are you doing?’

Tosh had turned, chest heaving with the anger of the moment. At his feet, a woman sat huddled in a puddle, arms protecting her head, strands of hair striping her face like wet string. Gilchrist had not known if she was shivering from the cold, or from the kicking
.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked again
.

Tosh adjusted his jacket, his muscles bulging. ‘Making an arrest,’ he panted
.

Gilchrist stepped around him, aware of the animal strength of the man. He reached down, took hold of the woman’s hand, pulled her to her feet. Her clothes clung to her, cheap and sodden. Mascara streaked her cheeks like oil. She could have been sixteen, maybe younger. She ran the back of her hand under her bloodied nose
.

Gilchrist removed his leather jacket and hung it over her shoulders. ‘Would you like to register a complaint?’

‘She’s a fucking hoor, is what she is.’

She lowered her eyes, shook her head
.

Gilchrist drove her to the hospital and filed a complaint on her behalf. But she signed herself out the following morning and fled back home to Falkirk. With no formal statement, Gilchrist was stymied. Two weeks later, he had taken a beating of his own from two thugs who were never found—

‘Andy?’

Gilchrist was aware of a silencing in the room, a subtle change in the mood, as if someone had eased the doors shut on an outside noise. Chief Superintendent Greaves stood half in, half out of the office.

‘You got a moment?’ Greaves said.

Not a request, but an instruction, evident by Greaves closing the door on his way back to his office. By the time Gilchrist stepped into the hallway, Greaves was already marching up the staircase without so much as a backward glance. Gilchrist reached the upper landing in time to catch Greaves slipping into his office.

Gilchrist opened the door.

Greaves lifted his suit flap and sat on the edge of his desk, facing Gilchrist. ‘Come in, Andy. Just had a word with Randall and MacIntosh.’ He clenched his jaw, shook his head. ‘Randall’s not buying it, I’m afraid.’

‘And Tosh?’

‘The same.’

‘How about you?’

Greaves paused, as if giving consideration to his question. But Gilchrist knew that his decision had already been reached. This face-to-face was only a matter of courtesy, the way Greaves always liked to handle things. Silent, Gilchrist waited for the words that could end his career.

He did not wait long.

‘Under the circumstances, Andy, I don’t believe I have any option but to remove you from the case.’

‘I really don’t—’

‘Andy.’ Greaves raised his hand. ‘Let me finish, please.’

Gilchrist struggled with the urge to turn around and walk from the office. But he had known Greaves for many years, found him to be fair and reasonable. Better to sit tight, he thought.

‘I don’t believe you have any ulterior motive for removing evidence,’ Greaves said. ‘I want to make that perfectly clear. Your record speaks for itself, and I would stand by you to the death in support of that. But . . .’ Greaves raised his eyebrows as if seeking some revelatory explanation, ‘. . . as Jeff pointed out, we really are in a bit of a dilemma.’

Greaves slid his backside off his desk and shuffled around to the other side. ‘The dilemma being,’ he continued, ‘that we can’t be seen to have the slightest influence in the outcome of any ongoing investigation.’ He studied Gilchrist. ‘Do you get my meaning, Andy?’

‘You can’t have your SIO being suspected of cooking the books, is what I believe you are trying to tell me.’

‘I wouldn’t want to use the term
cooking the books.’

‘What term would you want to use?’