Tooth for a Tooth (9 page)

‘Did you and Betty fall out?’ he tried.

She gave a stuffy little chuckle. ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

‘What happened?’

‘She tried to have an affair with Geoffrey.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘But Geoffrey would have none of it.’

Gilchrist felt his gaze tug to his right. Pennycuick stood with his lips tight, eyes blazing. He seemed to puff out his chest, and Gilchrist wondered if he was doing so in offence at the memory, or from guilt at the thought of infidelity. He forced his thoughts back on track by asking, ‘Can you remember the names of the others?’

‘There was Ella. Big Ella, Betty and I used to call her. She stayed with us for two years, as best I can recall. But I can’t remember her last name.’

‘And the fourth?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘The fourth came and went. Betty and me were in the same year, so we earned some spending money by taking in the occasional student, then flinging them out when we got fed up with them.’ Her face seemed to sag, as if in remorse at the unkindness. ‘We could be bitches when we put our minds to it.’

Geoffrey coughed.

‘Can you remember any of their names?’ Gilchrist asked.

She shook her head. ‘Denise rings a bell. Maybe Alyson. But I really couldn’t say. Just the two of us for certain.’

‘All Scottish?’

‘The occasional Englishwoman.’

‘Any foreigners?’

‘None that I recall.’

‘Good teeth?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Do you remember if any of them had good teeth?’

‘Can’t say that I do. Why?’

‘Just a thought.’ He then told her about the list of names Nance had prepared, and offered to send her a copy for her review. Maybe one might jog her memory.

‘Here’s my email address,’ she said, removing a business card from her purse.

‘Anything else, Inspector?’ It was Pennycuick.

‘You drank in the Central,’ he said to Jeanette.

She frowned. ‘One of many pubs, I’m sure.’

‘What about the cigars?’

She looked at him as if he had cursed. ‘Cigars?’

‘And the Moscow Mules?’

Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘Just some student stupidity.’

‘An initiation of some sort?’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Friends can be cliquish,’ he suggested. ‘Form gangs, clubs, that sort of thing.’

‘None of us joined any gangs,’ she objected, ‘or clubs. Not to my knowledge, anyway.’

‘Did you form one of your own?’

Pennycuick stepped into the centre of the room. ‘How much longer is this going to take?’

‘Not much.’ He faced Jeanette. ‘Why once a month?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Why did you smoke cigars and drink Moscow Mules once a month?’

She seemed to give his words some thought, then shook her head. ‘I’ve often heard about policemen like you, who look for clues in the strangest of places only to find nothing.’ She gave a tired smile that evaporated to leave a hard face.

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake. Must I spell it out for you? Our menstrual cycles. Women living together often tune in to each other’s monthly cycles. It was our way of combating the dreaded rag week.’

Gilchrist turned to the window. The cold from the glass felt good against the warmth of his face. Their periods. How bloody simple. Why had he not thought of that? Would Nance have worked it out? Or Stan? He faced the room again.

‘How did you light your cigars?’ he asked.

‘This is preposterous,’ snapped Pennycuick. ‘What on earth has lighting cigars got to do with anything? I think we’ve heard quite enough.’ He held out his hand. ‘Jeanette?’

She looked at him, but made no attempt to stand.

He glared at her for a moment, then growled, ‘I’ll be in the car. And I’ll be leaving in exactly one minute.’

Gilchrist waited until it was only the two of them. The room seemed larger without Pennycuick’s presence. And Jeanette seemed smaller, too, almost insecure. ‘Where do you work?’ he asked her.

‘The city centre.’

A car door slammed. Gilchrist glanced out the window. ‘I can give you a lift, if you’d like.’

Jeanette stood, patted the creases from her skirt. ‘If you have no further questions,’ she said, ‘I’d rather Geoffrey dropped me off.’

Gilchrist nodded. ‘After you.’

He followed her along the hallway where a cold wind blew in through the opened front door. As he stepped outside, he caught sight of Pennycuick’s flushed face through the windscreen of his BMW. He waited until Jeanette locked the front door.

‘You never did answer my question,’ he said.

‘I didn’t?’

‘How did you light your cigars?’

‘With a candle.’

She stepped down the slabbed footpath, her heels ringing in the icy air.

Gilchrist wrapped his arms around himself to fend off the chill. Somehow the air in Glasgow felt colder than in St Andrews, as if the west-coast dampness could infiltrate the heaviest of garments. ‘A candle,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t remember the Central Bar ever having candles on the table.’

‘We brought our own.’

Gilchrist almost stopped. ‘But why would you bring a candle?’

She smirked as she stepped through the gateway. When he followed, she pulled the wrought-iron gate towards her, closing it with a hard metallic clang. ‘Now, why else would nice girls carry candles around with them, Inspector?’

Gilchrist stepped aside as she opened the passenger door and slid on to the seat, her skirt riding high on stockinged thighs. He watched the BMW accelerate down the hill, its exhaust leaving a white trail that swirled to the ground. His breath puffed in the cold air as if in weak imitation. He coughed, and something vile hit his tongue, causing him to fight off an almost overpowering need to throw up.

The Pennycuicks had mocked him. He watched their BMW’s brake lights flash as it turned towards Great Western Road without indicating. An image of Geoffrey Pennycuick flickered into his mind. Pinstriped suit, starched white shirt, shining black shoes. Gilchrist looked down at his own feet, at leather that had not seen polish in three days. Grey scuff-marks soiled the uppers. Then Jeanette surfaced beside the image of her husband, her black hair glistening in the light from the window, her white blouse thin enough to reveal the floral pattern of her bra.

Cigars. Periods. Candles.

If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny.

Gilchrist faced his Roadster. It looked small and worn compared to Pennycuick’s BMW. He turned on the ignition and gripped the steering wheel while the car’s engine split the silence of a suburban Glasgow morning. He fought off the crazy urge to floor the pedal, then pulled into Drive and eased away from the pavement.

He replayed the interview, struggling to force his thoughts through the haze of his hangover. It was not until he turned off Hyndland Road and was nearing Glasgow University that he realized his failing. He fumbled in his pocket and removed her business card. He read the company name.
ScotInvest
. The address in Bath Street. Her name and title, Jeanette W. Pennycuick, MBA, Human Resources Director. He scanned the phone numbers. One was her office, another her fax, the last one her mobile.

He flipped open his phone.

She answered on the fifth ring. ‘Hello?’

Without introduction, he said, ‘I have one more question.’

She let out a tired sigh. ‘I didn’t give you my business card so you could call to annoy me every five minutes.’

‘What did you use to light the candle?’

‘Matches, Inspector. What on earth did you think we used?’

Somehow, her answer did not surprise him. His sixth sense was screaming at him, telling him she was not speaking the truth. She could have used a cigarette lighter. Like the one they found in the graveyard. ‘How did you meet your husband?’ he tried.

‘At a party.’

‘At university?’

‘In the flat in South Street, if you must know. And I’m not sure I like your manner, Inspector. I think I’m going to register a formal complaint. Fife Constabulary, did you say?’

Gilchrist hung up, threw his mobile on to the passenger seat and wondered if Jeanette Pennycuick really was lying to him. She had told him she met her husband at a party in her flat. Which meant Geoffrey Pennycuick had lived in St Andrews at the same time. Or had he been up there on holiday, the same way Gilchrist had met his wife, Gail? Or perhaps he’d been a student at the university. He was a consultant at the Western. St Andrews offered medical degrees. Had Pennycuick graduated from St Andrews? And if so, had his wife tried to fudge her answer to his question?

As a detective, Gilchrist knew that all things were possible. But what was forming in his mind was something ominous. If Jeanette was lying, she had something to hide. Which meant that Geoffrey and Jeanette Pennycuick were now smack dab in the middle of his sights.

CHAPTER 7

It had been two years since Gilchrist last met with Dr Heather Black.

She smiled as he approached, her arm outstretched.

‘Good to see you again, Andy,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘You haven’t changed a bit. Maturing gracefully with age, if anything.’

Not the politically correct introduction, perhaps, but from memory, Heather Black was not a woman who minced her words. Somehow she looked different, her eyes, he thought – larger, sharper, more focused. Brighter, too. Perhaps it was the subtle use of mascara, the hint of kohl on the lids.

‘Good to see you, too,’ he said. ‘You look, eh . . .’

‘Stunning?’

He nodded. Yes, stunning would do.

‘Laser surgery last year. Best thing I ever did.’ She chuckled. ‘With three teenage kids and a needy husband, compliments are not something with which I am familiar. If I don’t pay them to myself, who else will? Come on,’ she said. ‘It arrived only half an hour ago.’ She strode along the corridor with the enthusiasm of someone half her age.

They entered an open office that reminded Gilchrist of a school laboratory. Desks like drafting tables lined the walls. Tower computers, flat computers, oversized off-white metal boxes that held prehistoric motherboards and hard drives lay stacked under the desks, all seemingly interconnected by what Gilchrist could describe only as cable spaghetti. Six white-coated students sat huddled around a monitor screen on which a face of horizontal and vertical grid lines rotated like a spool of thread on a spindle. Barely a glance as Black led Gilchrist beyond them and into an office at the far end.

A FedEx box lay opened on a grey metal desk, and by a wired window a young Asian woman with black-rimmed spectacles looked up from her computer. Next to her, a familiar skull with its crushed side sat on a raised metal plate like some unfinished sculpture. A camera lay beside it, connected to the computer.

‘Yan is one of our more promising students,’ Black said, peering at the monitor. ‘How’s it coming along?’

‘Slowly,’ Yan replied. ‘We could use more memory, faster chips, what can I say? Digital tomography always takes like, for ever.’

‘Limited budgets. The bugbear of university research. Here,’ she said to him, ‘look at this.’

Gilchrist followed her to another monitor.

‘How long are you in town?’ she asked.

‘How long will it take to come up with a visual?’

‘Depends,’ she replied. ‘But if you’ve something else to do, you should do it.’ She eyed the screen, clicked the mouse. ‘I’m developing a new technique for fleshing out the skull. It’s more time-consuming, but the results are worth it.’

‘In what way?’

‘Less wooden-looking. More lifelike. I could send a digital image tomorrow. That work for you?’

‘That works,’ he said.

Another couple of clicks, a password typed and a string of files with numerical identification that meant nothing to Gilchrist flowed down the screen. She clicked again, and the digital waterfall stopped.

‘Let me show you,’ she said, as the image of a human skull appeared on the screen. She jiggled the mouse and the skull turned left, back to the right, rolled over and around and back to face-on again. ‘By holding down the left button and dragging the mouse, you can rotate the image any way you like. Here. Try it.’

Gilchrist obliged, and the skull span on its spot. He clicked again, managed to stop it, but turned it over so that he was looking at it from above. Another couple of clicks and drags and he had the skull stopped, almost back to where it began.

‘Three-D imaging,’ Black said. ‘Helps us develop a more accurate picture. But there’s still a lot of guesswork goes into the final image. Skin tone. Hair colour. Eye colour. Shape of the nose. Lips. Ears. We mostly skip the ears. Each of which leaves a different visual impact on the beholder. Here, let me show you.’ She spun the skull on its spinal axis, returning it to its original position.

‘Certain parts of the face we know have little skin covering.’ As she spoke, her fingers worked the mouse. ’Around the eyes, for example.’