Hand for a Hand Read online

  At the mention of Coyle’s wife, Gilchrist knew where the conversation was heading. But he was helpless to stop it.

  “Do you still hear from Gail?”

  Gilchrist grimaced. “Indirectly.”

  “How is she?”

  Gilchrist took another sip of Guinness, then, defeated, said, “She’s got cancer.”

  “Christ, Andy, I’m really sorry to hear that.” He paused, then ventured, “Is it …?”

  “It is.”

  Coyle smiled. “That’s dreadful.”

  Gilchrist dreaded Coyle asking after Jack and Maureen and the conversation turning towards Chloe, so he said, “Listen, Martin. I need a favour. Got a mobile phone number here. I’d like to see records from the start of the year. Including calls made today.”

  Coyle whistled. “That’s a toughie,” he said. “Might need to wait a few days before today’s calls log on.”

  Gilchrist nodded. A few days would be fine. As long as the wheels were turning. He handed the number over, and Coyle said, “I take it no one is to know about this.”

  Gilchrist put on his poker face. “Know about what?”

  It took a full two seconds for Coyle to catch on. He gave out a quick laugh, and said, “I get it. I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  Coyle slapped his thigh and chuckled some more.

  Gilchrist bought lunch, two chicken sandwiches and chips, and managed to keep the conversation off Gail and his children. By 2:00 they were all talked out, having caught up mostly on Coyle’s life, his mid-life crisis with his wife, and the pregnancy of their fifteen-year-old daughter who had given them a surprise grandchild. Coyle left with assurances that he would call in a few days.

  Gilchrist tried Maureen again, and this time she answered on the fourth ring with a curt, “Hello?” He choked a laugh, felt a dead weight lift off his heart and soar skyward.

  “Have you stopped returning calls?” he grumped.

  “Oh, hi, Dad. I got your message.”

  “All ten of them?”

  “I’ve been meaning to call. Sorry.” She made a noise like a sponge being squidged. “But you know I love you.”

  And you’ve no idea how much I love you.

  “I’ll make a point of calling more often,” she added.

  “Well, that’s a start,” he said, then found himself asking the same question he always asked. “Any chance of you making it up this way?” and expecting the same answer.

  “I think that might be possible.”

  What? He pressed the phone to his ear. “Did I hear you right?” Maureen laughed, a soft rumble that cast up an image of dark eyes and white teeth and asked him how long it had been since they last met. Just after New Year? Had it been that long? “That’s wonderful, Mo,” he said, and meant it. “Any idea when this great event might take place?”

  “Well, Chris and I are thinking—”

  “What happened to Larry?”

  “That plonker?”

  “I thought you and he were … you know.”

  “Were what?”

  “I thought you, eh, loved each other.”

  “Correct, Dad. Past tense.”

  Gilchrist felt his face flush. He and Maureen never talked about her personal life, and his embarrassment reminded him how far he had drifted from her life. He made a mental note to try to sort things out when she came up.

  “So, what’s this Chris like?” he asked.

  “You can find out for yourself next month.”

  “So soon?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you, Dad, before you cut me off with the Larry crap.”

  “You’re both welcome to stay at my place,” he said. “Thanks, Dad. But Chris has friends up that way.”

  “Of course. Right.”

  As if sensing his disappointment, she added, “But I’ll run it past him. Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I spoke to Jack.”

  “Who?”

  He struggled not to rise to the bait. If he had spent more time with his family instead of the case of the day, then maybe Gail would not have had an affair, and they would still be together as a family. He thought of telling her why he called Jack, of his fears for Chloe, his concern for her own safety. But it was early days and he could be wrong. Rather than scare her, he said, “Jack told me about Mum.”

  “Mum’s not doing well,” she said.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, Dad. She’s got Harry,” then added, “I’m sorry. I know how you feel about him.”

  Gilchrist eyed his pint. When he first met Gail, they would get drunk together, as if it was some rite of passage Scottish couples had to negotiate. Back then, Gail drank wine and the odd beer, but after nineteen years of a bitter marriage no longer drank. And she hated that Gilchrist continued. Dark beer especially riled her. He had never understood her rationale.

  “By all accounts,” he said, “Harry is a nice guy.” He took a sip, waited for Maureen to speak, but his phone beeped. “Hang on, Mo. I’ve got another call.”

  “That’s okay, Dad. I’ve got to go. I’ll tell Mum we spoke. Talk to you later.”

  “Listen, Mo. Will you be careful?” But she had hung up. He switched lines, and said, “Gilchrist.”

  “Andy, it’s me.”

  “Jack?”

  “I’m at Leuchars station. Can you pick me up?”

  Confused, Gilchrist felt his hopes rise, then stall. “You have Chloe?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Gilchrist said, although he thought he did.

  “I need to look at the hand.”

  Chapter 8

  JACK’S FACE LOOKED as grey as the sky. His hair stood in untidy clumps that gave the impression he had not showered in days. His combat jacket hung from shoulders as thin as bone and sported greasy stains at the cuffs and neck.

  They shook hands with nothing more than a nod, and Gilchrist tried to hide his concern with a quick smile. But he was fooling no one. They had still not spoken by the time he veered left at the Guardbridge roundabout.

  “You look as if you’ve lost weight,” he tried.

  Jack shrugged.

  “Are you managing to sell any work?”

  “Some.”

  “Keeping gainfully employed, are you?”

  “You could say.”

  Gilchrist accelerated up the slight incline, felt the car respond with a beefy spurt of power. “Talk to me,” he said.

  Jack shrugged again. “What do you want to hear?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Chloe’s gone. What can I say?”

  “Define gone.”

  Jack glanced at him with a grimace filled with contempt. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Gone home? Gone away? Gone to Spain? What?”

  “She’s gone. All right?”

  “As in, gone away from you?”

  Jack tutted. “Don’t treat me like an idiot, Andy. All right?”

  Gilchrist swung out to pass a couple of cars, and eased back in when the road ahead was clear. It did not happen often, but when Jack behaved like this, he could be harder to break through to than Maureen. Gilchrist tried again.

  “You said you needed to look at the hand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “To ID it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And put your mind at rest?”

  From the corner of his eye, he watched Jack turn away and stare across the fields to the Eden Estuary. A solitary pig stood mud-stained and grumpy in a grassless sty. A pair of jets from RAF Leuchars raced into the sky like dark missiles then banked east and bulleted out across the North Sea.

  “Why do you think you could ID Chloe from the hand?”

  “Which hand is it?”

  Gilchrist twisted his grip on the steering wheel. “We have two hands now.”

  Jack sank deeper into his seat and stared out the window. It took Gilchrist a few seconds
to realise he was crying. He reached across, was about to place his hand on his knee, when he pulled back. “Are you up for this?”

  Jack sniffed, and said, “I’ll be all right.”

  Gilchrist detected an undercurrent of anger, reminding him of how Jack used to behave as a child when scolded. He and Gail would wait it out, say nothing until Jack’s mood evaporated. Silent, Gilchrist eyed the road ahead.

  Jack ran the palm of his hand across his eyes. “I loved Chloe,” he said.

  Gilchrist caught the past tense, felt his chest tighten.

  “She had this phenomenal talent as an artist. Like she had all this creative power just bubbling inside her, waiting to erupt onto the canvas.” Jack shook his head. “She made my sculptures look incomplete. She had this ability to humble me as an artist, make me realise there was so much more I still have to learn, you know, without knowing she was doing it.” Jack stared off across the golf courses to the dunes beyond, and Gilchrist wondered if he was searching for their winter picnic spot, or remembering it was only January since they had all been together.

  “That’s why we argued,” Jack went on. “Sometimes she would just go on at me, urge me to do better, like she knew I had it in me, but I couldn’t get it out. It used to do my nut in. In the end we had this huge row. I just flipped.” He shook his head, and it took a few seconds of silence for Gilchrist to realise Jack had said all he was going to say.

  “I’m not sure if trying to ID the hands is a good idea.”

  Jack turned to him. “I need to know.”

  Gilchrist felt Jack’s eyes on him, and made a conscious effort to speak in the present tense. “Does Chloe have any marks on her hands or fingers like moles or freckles or anything that would provide conclusive identification?”

  “Yes.”

  Gilchrist felt his heart leap. He had seen no marks on either hand. In fact, both hands looked unblemished. Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion? Were the hands not Chloe’s? For a fleeting moment, his mind nurtured that idea then thumped back with the question he could not answer—why was his name on the note? The victim had to be someone close to him. He struggled to keep his voice level. “Such as?” he asked.

  “A scar at the base of her thumb.”

  A scar? Mackie hadn’t mentioned any scars.

  “Which hand?” he asked.

  Jack seemed to think for a second. “Right, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “No. Definitely the right hand.”

  “How big a scar?”

  “Half-inch.”

  “Crooked? Straight? What?”

  “Straight. She cut herself with a palette knife.” He almost smiled. “Don’t ask.”

  “Any other marks?”

  “On her hands?”

  “Anywhere.”

  Jack pulled up the front of his sweater. “One of these.”

  Gilchrist glanced to the side, but saw only white skin and felt a spurt of surprise flush through him at how thin Jack looked. Skinny verging on skeletal. “One of what?” he asked.

  Jack twisted in his seat and fingered a tattoo that stained his skin like a tiny ink blot an inch or so above his belly button. “Love-heart.”

  “And Chloe had one, too?” Too late, he realised he had spoken as if she was no longer alive.

  Jack seemed unaware of his blunder. “Last Christmas,” he said, lowering his sweater. “To seal our love. Kind of stupid, I suppose. It was Chloe’s idea.”

  Gilchrist stared at the road ahead. When he first met Gail, drunk and wild in the Whey Pat Tavern, up from Glasgow on her annual holiday, she had sworn at some American guy with a buzz-cut and two bared arms blue with tattoos and taut with muscles. Gilchrist had escorted her from the pub after that, tried to calm her down. But something about the tattoos had her wound up.

  My uncle had a tattoo, she told him. An anchor with a silly rope wound around it.

  What’s so bad about that? he had asked.

  He hit my aunt.

  It hurt to think that when he first met Gail he was taken by her vivacity, her uncut love of life. Nothing seemed too big to take on. The whole world, if they wanted. He had never been able to work out the exact moment Gail changed, that instant in time when something inside her died. He struggled to force his thoughts back to Jack.

  “Chloe’s scar,” he said. “Why do you remember it so clearly?”

  “She needed a couple of stitches. I took her to the hospital.”

  “You and Chloe were dating?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, the scar’s recent?”

  “Last summer.” He sniffed again, tugged a hand through clumped hair. “Is that important?”

  “Could be.” He dialled Mackie’s number. It was answered on the second ring. “Bert. Andy here. Have you completed your examination?”

  “Other than spectrographic analysis, yes, I’m more or less finished.”

  Gilchrist puffed out his cheeks, then let out his breath. “Find any scars?”

  “One. On the right hand.”

  A bull butted him in the gut. “Whereabouts?”

  “Base of the thumb. Fairly recent, I’d say.”

  Last summer? Gilchrist pressed his phone hard to his ear as Mackie confirmed size and angle, and concluded with, “It looks like a knife wound.”

  “How about an artist’s palette knife?”

  “That’s an interesting suggestion. But, yes, any kind of knife would make sense. Why do you ask?”

  “Jack’s with me. He might be able to make an ID.”

  “Your son, Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good lord, Andy. Are you saying.…”

  “Nothing definite, Bert. But we’d better take a look at it.” He hung up and glanced at Jack. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “It’s not looking good.”

  “It’s Chloe. I know it is.” His voice sounded steady, as if he was oblivious to the gruesome prospect of examining amputated extremities.

  Gilchrist wondered how on earth he ever got himself into such a morbid job.

  He felt his heart sink. He hated to admit it.

  But Jack was right.

  GILCHRIST FOUND MACKIE in the post-mortem room in the Bell Street mortuary, a woman’s body on the stainless steel table in front of him, opened from sternum to pubis. Cruel looking surgical equipment lay on flat metal surfaces. Something wet and slimy and white as brain glistened by a set of scales. The air felt cold, and hinted of decaying flesh and formaldehyde that left an aftertaste on the tongue.

  Mackie caught Gilchrist’s eye, and stepped away from the table.

  Gilchrist introduced Jack, then together they followed Mackie into another room.

  Gurneys lined either side.

  Mackie shuffled forward without a word, and halted at one of the gurneys halfway along on the left. He peeled back a cotton sheet to reveal two clear plastic bags. Through the plastic sheen, the amputated hands looked ghostlike, as if at any moment they could move of their own accord and crawl from their confines. If Gilchrist had any doubts they were from different bodies, they evaporated right then.

  He stood beside Jack. “Ready?”

  Tight-lipped, Jack nodded.

  Gilchrist eyed Mackie.

  Mackie opened one plastic bag, removed a hand, the left one, and placed it palm down on the gurney. Then he did the same with the right hand. He pushed the bags to the side and positioned the hands so they looked as if they were reaching out for Gilchrist.

  Jack let out a rush of breath and took a step back.

  Something clamped Gilchrist’s chest. He stared at the hands, the claws, the lifeless things on the table. They had once belonged to a young woman, once touched and caressed and moved with life. An image of him holding those hands, looking down at those fingers, burst into his mind. He fought off an overpowering urge to take Jack by the arm and lead him from the room. But his pragmatic side kept him rooted. He had a victim to identify, a murder to solve, and he prayed to God that Jack woul
d simply shake his head and tell him the hands could not be Chloe’s, that they belonged to some other poor soul.

  “The scar should be on the inside,” Jack whispered, and held his own hand out and pointed to the base of his right thumb. “About here.”

  Mackie eyed Gilchrist with an intensity he had not seen in the old man’s eyes since he performed the post-mortem of his own sister-in-law. Grim-faced, Mackie turned the right hand over and pointed a finger to a pink mark at the base of the thumb. “This is the only scar I detected.”

  Gilchrist felt his lungs deflate. He had his answer. His peripheral vision watched Jack’s body sway as if buffeted by a wind. He grasped his arm, tightened his grip. “Jack,” he said, “I need you to be sure.”

  “It’s her,” Jack whispered. “It’s Chloe.”

  Gilchrist stared at Jack’s face. For his own benefit, he needed to hear more. “No doubts?” he asked.

  Jack opened his eyes. His cheeks glistened with tears. His breath shuddered as he stared at the hands, and he surprised Gilchrist by leaning closer and reaching out as if to lift the hand from the gurney. Instead, he tapped the back of his own hand. “When Chloe was ten years old she crushed a knuckle on her left hand. Her pinkie knuckle. Compared to the others, it looked flat when she made a fist.”

  Gilchrist glanced at Mackie. “Did you take x-rays?”

  Mackie nodded. He replaced the right hand, picked up the left, and pointed to the small knuckle. “Fifth metacarpal shows evidence of having sustained a similar injury.” He looked at Jack. “Did she say how it happened?”

  “She’d been watching TV. Some judo expert. She tried to punch her fist through a block of wood.” He gave a wan smile. “She said that was a defining moment in her life, when she realised she would be an artist, not a martial arts expert.”

  Mackie returned his attention to the hand, giving Gilchrist the impression he was leaving the hard part to him.

  “That’s all for now, Bert.” Gilchrist tugged Jack’s arm, felt a moment’s resistance, then Jack was by his side, out the refrigerated room, into a short corridor. They pushed through the door and stepped into the grey light and cold air of a late winter afternoon. They walked past Gilchrist’s Merc and over to the edge of the car park. Then stopped.