THE REMAINDER OF the day consisted of meetings and phone calls. After debriefing, which turned up a list of one hundred and twenty-seven students who had an interest in painting, or knew someone who had, Gilchrist found himself stepping into Lafferty’s.
“Pint of Eighty, Eddy, and a couple of sausage rolls.”
He cocked an eye at the television set in the corner of the bar. The Old Course Hotel in the background swelled as the camera zoomed in on the seventeenth green, closer still until it slipped from view and the Road Hole bunker filled the screen.
“There you go, Andy.” Fast Eddy glanced at the television. “That one of yours?”
“Afraid so.”
“Was on earlier. That plonker, the one you had the run in with years back, he was on. Chewing gum like some big-shot. Should’ve heard Marge.” Fast Eddy’s eyes glistened. “Wetting her knickers for the guy. God knows what the women see—”
“Sausage rolls?”
“On their way.” Fast Eddy slipped from the bar and headed to the kitchen.
Gilchrist took a sip of his Eighty-Shilling, removed his mobile from his jacket, and dialled Nance. It barely rang.
“Where are you, Nance?”
“Just leaving the office.”
“Care to join me?”
“What for?”
“I meant, for what reason?”
“Come and join me and find out.”
A pause, then, “Let me guess. Lafferty’s?”
“Sherlock Holmes the second.”
“Sherlock was a man. I’m not sure if that was an insult or a compliment.”
“I would never insult you, Nance. You know that.”
She chuckled in response, said, “Give me ten,” then hung up.
By the time Nance arrived, Gilchrist had finished his plate of sausage rolls.
“Well, hello, darling,” said Fast Eddy, his eyes lighting up. “My most favourite Detective Sergeant on the entire planet.”
“The answer’s still no.” Nance pulled up a stool beside Gilchrist.
“You’re breaking a lonely Irishman’s heart, my lovely.”
“Give it up, Eddy. My knickers are cuffed to my bra.”
Fast Eddy laughed his staccato chuckle. “How do you know I’m not a Houdini in disguise?”
“Houdini got out of tight places,” Nance said. “Not into them.”
“Ah, but a man can live on dreams for only so long.”
Nance rolled her eyes. “Keep this up, and I’ll have to charge you with indecent—”
“Exposure?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have what Andy’s having. And make it two.”
“Ah, you’ve cut me to the core.” Fast Eddy pulled the first of two pints, letting one settle as the other swelled. “And I’ll never know how you manage to keep that lovely figure so slim drinking all this real ale.”
“I get plenty of exercise running away from hard-ons like yours.”
Fast Eddy snickered.
“Not at all. I think we’d make a grand couple.”
“I think they should change your name to Past Eddy.”
“And a wit as matchless as her eyes,” said Fast Eddy. “How do you stand it, Andy?”
Gilchrist pulled out his wallet, removed a twenty.
“I’m getting these, Andy.”
“I owe you, Nance.”
“Since when?”
“Since teaming you with Watt.”
Her face hardened. “In that case, you owe me more than one.”
Gilchrist tried a smile, not sure he pulled it off. He pressed the twenty across the bar. “One for yourself, Eddy.”
“Now that’s what I call a gentleman.” Fast Eddy pushed two pints across the bar, heads settling on a rising creamy base. “There you go,” he said. “That’s one for the lady, and another for the gentleman.”
A woman sidled up to the far end of the bar. Fast Eddy flashed a smile. “With you in a sec, love.”
Gilchrist tapped his pint against Nance’s. “How’d it go with Watt?”
“One guess.”
“Don’t tell me he tried it on.”
Nance screwed up her face. “Not a chance.”
Gilchrist hoped she read the plea in his eyes. Let me know the instant he does, he willed her. Like a leopard could not change its spots, Watt could not change his personality. He looked to his pint. “Well, keep me posted.”
“You wanted me to join you,” Nance said. “Let’s have it.”
Gilchrist twisted the pint in his hand. “You know how sometimes you get a feeling that something’s not right and you can’t quite put your finger on it?”
“Every paycheck.”
He smiled as Nance took a sip and, as if for the first time, noticed how dark her eyes were, almost black, how little make-up she wore. Maybe Fast Eddy’s patter was not just patter, but a genuine attempt to find a date.
“And?” she said.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It’s like a sixth sense.”
“I know all about that sixth sense of yours,” she said. “It’s not to be scoffed at.”
He tried a smile, but felt tired—tired of the endless pursuit of criminals, the pointless aim of it all, the charging, the sentencing, the jailing, then the early release so they could go out and do it all over again. The futility seemed overwhelming, like trying to stop the rising tide of a sea filled with the rough-and-ready scum of the earth who would rather rob a ninety-year-old blind pensioner than do an honest hour’s work.
“You’re a bit of a local hero,” Nance said. “Especially after that last case.”
“I got lucky.”
“Well, get lucky on this one.”
He felt a frown crease his brow, felt that familiar weight of failure shift through him. “I think that’s why I asked you to join me for a pint. I don’t feel lucky on this one. I don’t like the feel of it. Not at all.”
“Because of Watt?”
“I don’t like my name being on an envelope, Nance. I don’t like a hand being delivered to me. We’re being toyed with.”
“You think we’ll find the rest of the body?”
Bit by hacked off bit. “I’m sure of it,” he said. “We’ll be given more clues. Why else write a single word on the note. Murder. What the hell’s that supposed to tell us? I don’t know. What I do know is, that when we finally work it out we’re not going to like it.”
Nance sipped her beer.
“I think this case is going to be painful, Nance. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.”
He nodded and surprised himself by placing his hand on her shoulder. He flexed his fingers. “And you watch yourself with Watt. Don’t trust him.” He removed his hand, turned back to his pint. “Just watch yourself, Nance. Okay?”
But he knew it was not just Nance he was worried about.
It was himself.
ON THE DRIVE home, that night came back at him, swirling dark as the blackest smog, settling and clearing until he saw her face, her eyes, the shock still there, still unmistakable, as if the vile event had not happened eight years ago, but only yesterday. He tried to shift her image, but it impinged on his mind like the thickest of syrups that slowed the action of his memory until it seemed he was watching the scene one frame at a time.
Maureen was naked, sitting upright, her back to him. She turned as he entered the room, her face pale and blank with the rigidity of shock. Then she pushed herself up, her underage buttocks flexing with teenage ease, and he tried to keep from looking at her private parts as she slipped off her partner.
Hey, Andy. What’s up?
He remembered looking at Watt’s face, puzzling over it, as if looking at someone he had met a long time ago, but could not place when or where. Then the frames sped up.
Get out.
Get out of my house.
He turned to Maureen then, turned to confront his fifteen-year-old daughter, her back pressed to the wall as if she had no place to run. One hand covered her pubis, the other her half-developed breasts. Her cheeks glistened with tears. Then, as if by legerdemain, her clothes were in his hand.
He threw them at her. Get dressed.
He turned on Watt, who smiled up at him, mouth chewing, arms folded behind his head, his unprotected erection flat to his belly, still veined and full and glistening with the spoils of his conquest for all to see.
That was the moment Gilchrist snapped.
He remembered stepping forward. He remembered that. He could still see it. And looking down at Watt’s smiling face. He remembered that, too. But the next memory he had was of standing upright, chest heaving, lungs burning, wondering why there was so much blood, and why Watt had not tried to fight back.
And now here was Watt again, back in St. Andrews, somehow involved in a murder case clearly earmarked for Gilchrist. Fuck it. He tugged the wheel, accelerated hard past two cars, and had to slam on the brakes as he powered into a sweeping bend. Of all the people for Greaves to assign to the case, he had to pick Watt.
Greaves was no fool. Gilchrist knew that.
So why on earth had he put the two of them back together again?