THE SMELL OF urine still hung in the cold room.
Gilchrist glanced at his watch—11:27. He removed her photograph from his jacket pocket, the same one he had passed around. Dark eyes smiled at him, filled with the youthful promise of life. He rubbed his thumb across her face and startled as the door opened.
A guard pushed at Bully as he shuffled in.
Gilchrist thought Bully had aged, as if a few more days in jail had added years to the man. Bully scowled as the guard shoved him onto his seat and shackled his legs to the floor. Then the guard stood and backed up to the door.
Bully’s face broke into a cruel smile. “My oh my. How the mighty have fallen.”
Gilchrist knew he looked a mess. His left cheek was swollen and bruised. Common sense told him he would need to have it x-rayed. His leather jacket was slashed at the sleeve where Reid had plunged his knife but failed to cut flesh. Underneath, his one-sleeved shirt was missing four buttons and stained with a mixture of his and Nance’s blood. The knees of his jeans were caked with dirt. He placed Maureen’s photograph on the table, as if laying down a trump card, then stood with his back against the opposite wall.
“You masturbate to my daughter,” Gilchrist said.
Bully blinked, as slow as a reptile.
“You masturbate to my princess.”
“Your princess?” Bully coughed a laugh. “I hear your princess is a good ride.”
Gilchrist pushed off the wall and paced the short length of the room, eyes to the floor, away from Bully, always away, he thought, and felt wonder at the fear the man was able to instil in him. “We’ve contacted the Spanish authorities,” he said to the floor. “Suggested it would be appropriate to impound your villas.” He glanced at Bully. “They do that for drug-associated crimes these days.”
The chains rattled.
He concentrated on the floor, did not want Bully to read anything from his eyes, to see how he scared him, even now. The chains clattered as Bully shuffled in his seat.
“We’ve also been in contact with your solicitor, Rory Ingles.”
“You’ll be hearing from Rory,” Bully growled.
“Word on the street is that you think you’re getting out in two years.”
“Sooner, now you lot are fucking it up.”
Gilchrist kept pacing. “I’m not here to argue that point.”
“What the fuck’re you here for then? To give me new wanking material?”
Gilchrist stepped to the table with a speed that almost had Bully tensing. He grabbed the photograph. “You could do yourself a favour,” he said, and held it up for Bully to leer at. “And confess.”
“To what?”
“That you ordered Chloe’s murder. My daughter’s, too. That you devised the whole scheme, the body parts, the notes, the kidnapping, all to satisfy your sick psycho needs.”
Bully looked pleased to find himself back in control. “Not a fucking clue what you’re on about,” he said.
“That’s a pity.” Gilchrist slipped Maureen’s photograph into his pocket, safe from Bully’s lecherous eyes. He started pacing again. “We’ll just have to let Jimmy tell us, then. Won’t we?”
Bully hawked phlegm from the back of his throat. “In your dreams, big man.”
“No dreams. Try nightmares.” He gave Bully a passing glance. “Yours.”
Bully smiled, an ugly grimace that settled somewhere between confusion and anger. “Jimmy’ll tell you fuck all. He knows what would happen to him when I get out.”
Gilchrist stopped. He faced Bully. “Don’t you mean if you get out?”
Bully’s eyes tightened. His lips pursed. Sweat dotted his upper lip. “Wait till I talk to Rory,” he growled.
“Won’t do you any good.”
Bully’s eyes flickered, as if he knew something was going on but could not figure it out. “You’re at it,” he said.
“Oh, Rory’ll be talking to you all right. But it won’t be about getting out in two years. More like breaking the news that you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison.” He eyed the bare walls, faced the slit-window. “In this miserable hell-hole. Without the remotest chance of parole.”
“What the fuck’re you on about?”
Gilchrist leaned forward. That close, he could smell the prison stench of the man. If confinement and desperation had a scent, that was what he was smelling. “Oh princess, by thy watchtower be,” he said.
Bully gave a smile of victory. “You worked it out yet?”
Gilchrist wanted Bully to think he had the upper hand. He wanted him to hold on to that belief for as long as possible, so that when he eventually told him the pain would be all the greater. For a moment he wondered if he had become as cruel as Bully, if recent events had snapped his mind and changed him. But what Bully had done to Chloe, to Maureen, violated all sense of conscience. And Gilchrist knew he could never be that cruel.
“Confess,” he said to Bully. “Tell me how you commanded your brother to kill two women for you.”
Bully smiled. “After I talk to Rory. Maybe I’ll think about it. How does that sound?”
“I’ll give you one last chance.”
Bully chuckled. “You just fucking crack me up, Gilchrist. You know that?”
“We found the coffin.”
Bully froze. Something dark shifted behind his feral eyes. Disbelief, perhaps. Or rising vitriol.
“And your secret stash.”
Bully worked his jaw. From the look in his eyes he could have been chewing nails.
“Street rates put it at around thirty million, give or take a million or two.”
Bully strained forward.
“We’ve got Jimmy, too.”
The chain clattered as Bully shifted his feet. “You’re at it, Gilchrist. You’re fucking at it. I know you.”
“Do you?”
Bully let Gilchrist’s question hang in the air. Then he growled, “Jimmy’s told you fuck all. I know Jimmy. He’d tell the fuzz to fuck off.”
“And Maureen, too,” Gilchrist added. “We found her.”
Bully tried a tight grin. “Now I know you’re at it.”
Gilchrist returned to his place on the opposite wall. He stared at the pockmarked face, at demonic eyes that glared at him with madness, and felt a gut-sickening hatred simmer and boil and fill him with an almost irresistible desire to pull Bully across the table and bludgeon him to death with his bare hands. He fought against the moment, felt it pass, then in his softest voice said, “Maureen’s in Stobhill Hospital.”
The chains rattled. Bully clenched his fists.
Gilchrist felt his lips pull into a grin, then onto a heartfelt smile that tugged at his mouth and reached his eyes and made him want to laugh. “Despite what you had that psycho brother of yours do to her,” he said, “to my daughter, to my princess, she survived.” Barely, he thought. But alive, thank God. Alive. “She’s expected to make a full recovery.”
“Lies,” hissed Bully. “It’s all lies.”
Gilchrist slipped his hand into his inside jacket pocket and removed a folder of photographs. “Jimmy’s no longer afraid of you.”
“I’ll kill that bastard if he says a word.”
“And do you know why Jimmy’s not afraid of you?”
Bully’s knuckles whitened. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth. “Jimmy knows he’ll be dead fucking meat.”
For a moment, Gilchrist wondered if Bully knew Jimmy had terminal cancer, or even if he cared. “Because Rory Ingles, your brief, your high-paid big-shot solicitor, on first-name terms, has now been hired by your brother, Jimmy.”
“Lies.” Clenched fists crashed onto the table. “Fucking lies.” Bully reached for Gilchrist, but his fettered legs held him back.
Gilchrist threw the folder of photographs onto the table. It split open. Coloured images spilled out, sliding across the metal surface like a discarded pack of cards.
Bully glared at them.
“Taken early this morning,” Gilchrist said. “At police headquarters in Pitt Street. Take a good look.” He watched Bully finger through them. “That one is Rory talking to Jimmy, convincing him his best chance for a deal is to turn Queen’s evidence.”
“Lies,” Bully hissed at the images. “Fucking lies.”
“And here was me thinking the camera never lies.”
Bully looked up. Anger danced like madness in eyes that burned. “Fuck you, Gilchrist.” He slammed his fists to the table, swept the photographs to the floor. “Fuck you. It’s lies. All of it. It’s lies. Fucking lies.”
Gilchrist felt his lips pull into the tiniest of smiles. He nodded to the guard, who opened the door.
A short man with a balding head and thickening waist walked in, his pinstriped suit pristine next to Gilchrist’s dishevelled figure. “William Thomson Reid,” he said in a voice that sounded bored, “I am charging you with complicity in the murder of Chloe Fullerton, and conspiracy to abduct and murder Maureen Gillian Gilchrist. Charges will also be brought against you for drug-related offences.…”
As Bully was read his rights Gilchrist stared at him and hoped Bully could read from his eyes the hatred that pulsed beneath his skin in time with the beat of his heart. And as he watched the reality of Bully’s dilemma settle into his twisted mind, Gilchrist came to realise that he was no longer afraid of the man, as if some road that had stretched out in front of him, once dark and ominous, now lay cleared to the horizon where he could see the safety of his own future.
It took three guards to haul Bully back to his cell, all the while struggling against his shackles and screaming like a demented lunatic. Gilchrist closed his eyes, let the diatribe vanish over his head.
I’ll have you, Gilchrist, d’you hear? I’ll fucking have you. I’m not through with you. The fucking lot of you are in for it now. You’d better believe it. You listening to me?
You’re dead, Gilchrist.
You’re fucking dead.
When all that was left was the echo of Bully’s voice and the smell of stale urine, Gilchrist opened his eyes, pulled the recorder from his pocket, and switched it off. He had not been altogether honest about Jimmy turning Queen’s evidence, but Bully’s murderous threats would go a long way to convincing Jimmy to cooperate.
Gilchrist felt tired, and his body ached. He clawed his fingers through his hair, surprised by how grimy it felt. The thought of a long hot shower almost had him changing his mind, but he needed to make another visit.
• • •
HE FOUND HER still in Intensive Care, hooked up to a plethora of plastic tubes and full bottles and bags on wheeled stands. Surprisingly, he thought, she was awake. Well, her eyes were open, and swam in and out of focus as he approached.
He sat beside her, took hold of her hand. She tried to smile, but the effort seemed too much. Feeble fingers entwined with his, and he felt his eyes well as her cracked lips formed, “I’m sorry, Dad.”
He leaned forward, pressed his lips to her damp cheek, not sure if the tears he tasted were from her eyes or his own.
“So am I,” he whispered, then buried his face into the pillow beside her and let his tears flow.