Hand for a Hand (27 page)

Then his eyes settled on a group of six photographs. Even from where he stood, he recognised Maureen. Her bloodied blouse, the abandoned garment in the adjacent room, reflected the glare of the flashlight. Her bare legs looked thinner than he remembered.

“Don’t touch,” Dainty snapped.

Gilchrist had to force himself not to rip the lot from the wall. The photographs could provide clues, could be used as evidence, dusted for prints, analysed for age. But who had taken them? And when? And how long since Maureen had lain chained to the wall?

He tried to study the images with professional detachment. He was a DCI with Fife Constabulary, in charge of a murder investigation. The fact that the victim was known to him should be of no significance, so that his powers of detection remained uninhibited, his sense of reasoning unimpeded, his—

“I’m sorry, Andy.” It was Dainty.

Gilchrist stared at the images the same way he had stared at the images of a hundred dead bodies before. He felt an odd sense of satisfaction that Maureen had been alive at the taking the photographs. But he had seen that red-rimmed look of fear locked in the eyes of too many victims for him to be mistaken. Maureen had known she was going to die.

He felt his lips tighten as he struggled to comprehend the sperm splattered on her forehead, dripping from her chin, creeping into her eyes. He tried to see past that, focus on what any
normal detective would. He struggled to reason the facts like an impartial investigator. But it was no use.

He pressed his hand to his mouth, bit down on his knuckles. Tears came at him in gasping sobs, and a fire that he had not felt since he had been bullied with a leather strap at the age of twelve, rose from somewhere deep within him and emerged in a choked curse.

Dainty’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

He shook it off, and thudded from the shed into the cold morning air, past the SOCOs, the flickering camera, the murmuring voices, and strode down the slabbed path.

He was going to have Bully.

He was going to have him with his bare hands.

He was going to tear him limb from limb.

If Maureen’s body was served up to him in bits, he would kill Bully.

By Christ, he promised himself that treat.

Chapter 31

I
T TOOK THE
realization that Glenorra had to be the key to finding Maureen—it just had to be—to force Gilchrist back to the crime scene.

“Our best guess is that she was taken from here within the last twenty-four hours,” Dainty said to him. “Her underwear may help determine when. We’ll need to run DNA tests. Could you give a blood sample?”

“Of course.”

Dainty nodded.

Gilchrist read the pain in Dainty’s eyes. He knew how Dainty was thinking, how he would feel if it were his own daughter’s life on the line, how he could ask the unanswerable question—how could any father be asked to carry out his professional duties as if the victim was not related to him? It would be too much for Dainty. Gilchrist saw that.

And he saw, too, that it was too much for himself.

He stepped into a kitchen commandeered by Dainty’s team. Muddled voices and the crackle of radio static filled the air. He pushed through an open door into the relative quiet of the hall. He forced himself to concentrate, fight his way back into his investigation. If he had any hope of saving Maureen, he had to think.

Topley. Glenorra. Bully.

Think, God damn it, think.

How were they connected?

Had Chloe visited Glenorra when she dated Kevin Topley?
Had she walked along this hallway, stepped into that kitchen? And Maureen, too? She had been at Topley’s party. Had she once stood on this same spot, maybe eyed the same rooms? Had she been here with Chris Topley? Gilchrist looked around him, at cobwebbed cornicing, at a dusty balustrade that led up a staircase of bare floorboards to an upper hallway that seemed to swim with motes of dust. Once-white wallpaper hung from the stairwell in dried strips.

Why had the house been allowed to fall into such a state? And why hack Chloe to pieces here? Why keep Maureen chained in the garden shed? Was Bully trying to make it look as if Chris Topley was involved in Chloe’s murder?

Chris Topley had shared a cell with Bully. Gilchrist had established that fact. And Chris Topley had employed Maureen. Chloe had dated Kevin Topley then dumped him for Jack. Was that part of a twisted plot dreamed up by Bully in the cells of Barlinnie? To set Gilchrist’s son up with his cellmate’s brother’s ex? Then kill her?

It seemed too complex by far. Or was it?

Gilchrist stepped from the hall into a darkened lounge. Heavy floral curtains were still drawn. He opened them. Light slid into the room on dusty beams. Another day was dawning. Would he find Maureen alive by the end of this day? Or was she already dead? He tried to bury that thought, and peered out the window.

Glenorra stood at the end of a narrow road lined by mature trees. The footpath opposite was edged by a privet hedge, behind which an open field rose into the daybreak gloom. Fifty yards to his left, the grey hulk of the only neighbouring house seemed to manifest in the lightening skies.

Who lived there? Had they seen anything? Heard anything?

He faced the room again. Light patches on the flocked wallpaper were ghostly reminders of removed pictures. What had these pictures shown?

Upstairs, the same questions worried away at him. Why this
house? Why here? Why use the garden shed to hack up a murder victim, and why keep another one captive? But the house stood in a tranquil country setting, so why not?

On the ceiling, in an oversized cupboard off the upper landing, he found the entrance hatch to the attic. He reached up and pulled it down to reveal a sliding ladder. He waggled it to the floor then clambered up the wooden treads.

He stood with his head and shoulders in the confines of the attic. In the darkness the air smelled dry and musty. His fingers found a light-switch close to the entrance hatch, but the electricity had been disconnected. He called for a torch.

Two minutes later, Nance obliged. “See anything?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

Gilchrist ran the beam around the attic space. What was he looking for?

He guessed no one had been in the attic for years. The space was small, the angle of the ceiling restrictive to someone his height. Planks of wood ran at right angles across the roof beams, creating a floored area about ten by ten. Beyond, rafters ran into the darkness like ship’s ribbing. Two suitcases lay one on top of the other. From the hollow sound they made when he tapped them, he could tell they contained nothing. Four tea chests lined one edge of the attic flooring.

He pulled himself up and into the attic.

Nance scrambled in after him. “Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

“Just sniffing.” From the top of the chest, he removed an item wrapped in newspaper. He unravelled it to reveal a bone-china teacup. He was not an expert in antiques but had the distinct feeling that he was holding something of value. “Why leave this stuff here?” He shone his torch across the broadsheet. “The Herald,” he said. “January 1993.”

Nance dug into the adjacent tea chest. “Has the house been deserted that long?”

“We can have it checked out.” The rest of the tea chest uncovered more crockery, but nothing of any interest. “Is this stuff expensive?” he asked Nance.

“You’re asking the wrong person. My grannie wanted to leave me her china set and got upset when I told her I didn’t want it. I prefer Mikasa.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh, shit.”

Gilchrist shone the torch at her.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Gilchrist trained the beam on an urn that gleamed like polished copper. Although it had been wrapped in newspaper, he caught the green stain of verdigris around the base.

“Betsy Cunningham Topley,” she said. “Born 5th of June 1932, died 1st of December 1997.” She looked at him. “Topley’s mother? Why keep her here?”

Gilchrist had no answer for that. His own parents were dead, and their funerals had been carried out in accordance with their wishes. Both had been cremated, and their ashes interred in a small plot in the local cemetery. It sometimes embarrassed him to think how seldom he visited.

Other tea chests revealed nothing of interest. He left the hatch open, the access ladder down, and had Nance notify the crime scene manager. Not that the stuff in the attic was relevant, he supposed.

In the back garden, SOCOs still combed the grounds. The dawn light flickered with the staccato flare of the police photographer’s flashlight.

“Has anyone interviewed the neighbours?” he asked Dainty.

“Not yet.”

Gilchrist was out of his jurisdiction, but he had a sense that Dainty was overwhelmed with the mass of evidence being gathered. “I can make a start,” he said.

Dainty poked at the pad on his mobile. “Make sure you give me a typed report,” then turned away to make the call.

The street surface was littered with potholes that glistened black with rainwater. A heavy dew painted the lawn in a transparent white. He caught movement behind an upper curtain as he and Nance approached the house, a smallholding with roughcast walls in dire need of paint. He glanced at his watch—6:15—then at the nameplate—Hutchison.

He rang the doorbell.

It took no more than five seconds for the door to crack open. An elderly woman with white hair as wild as candyfloss faced them. A blue housecoat stained from overuse covered a pink nightgown. Worn slippers warmed blue-veined feet as white as porcelain.

“Mrs. Hutchison?” Gilchrist asked.

“Yes?”

“We’re with the police. May we come in?”

“Is it to do with the Topley’s old house?” she asked.

“It is.”

“Well, thank goodness. You’d better come in.”

Gilchrist followed her tiny frame down a dark hall and into a dull kitchen that needed to be gutted. Cupboard doors hung from hinges long past their sell-by date. Woodchip wallpaper painted deep yellow was blackened with grease above the oven. A white tablecloth covered a small table in the centre of the room.

“Would you like some tea? I always have a pot brewing.”

“That would be nice,” Nance said.

“Do you live alone?” Gilchrist tried.

“For the last eleven years.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Cancer done it. That’s what took my Tom. I told him to give up the smoking. But he never listened.” She smiled, an odd crinkling of her lined face. “It’s what I liked most about him,” she went on, “that he took no one’s advice but his own. Milk, love?”

Nance nodded. Gilchrist did likewise.

She handed Gilchrist a chipped cup with tea like melted
Caramac and speckles of soured milk spinning in it like dandruff. He took a polite sip through closed lips, then said, “Why were you so pleased to invite us in?”

“The old Topley house has been empty for years,” she said. “Then all of a sudden it’s like Sauchiehall Street.”

“You saw someone go into it?” Nance asked.

“Two of them. Like tinkers. Scruffy they was.”

“Did you call the police?” Gilchrist asked.

“Oh, dear, no. I didn’t like to. I try to mind my own business.”

“Could you describe them?”

She gave Gilchrist’s question some thought, then shook her head. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, you know. I need a new prescription.” She scanned the kitchen with a worried frown. “Where did I put my glasses?”

“Tall, small? Fat, thin? Male, female?”

“Oh,” she said. “One was tall and gangly.” She screwed up her face. “I’ve never liked that in a man. The other was small. With short legs. Like Tom.”

“Could you see what they were doing?” Nance asked.

“Doing, love?”

“Were they carrying anything?”

“I don’t think so. They were just going in and out. Making a nuisance of themselves. Slamming car doors. My sight might not be as good as it used to be. But there’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

“And when did all this going in and out take place?”

“Last week.”

“And before that?”

She shook her head. “Oh, dear. Not for a while.”

“Did they come by car?” Nance asked. “Yes, love.”

Gilchrist was sure he was about to waste his breath. “Did you get the number plate? The make of car?”

“Goodness gracious me. No. Tom was the man for the cars.
Not me. He always used to say he would buy me a big car so he could drive me to the shops—”

“Can you remember the colour?”

“Shiny. Like metal.”

Gilchrist remembered the Jaguar with the paint repair on the boot. “Silver, perhaps?”

“I think so.”

“Did it have any scratches or dents? Blotches of paint a different colour?”

“Oh, dear. I couldn’t say. I’ve no idea about that.”

Gilchrist and Nance continued to grill Mrs. Hutchison in a gentle round-about fashion, getting nowhere, learning nothing, until Gilchrist asked about Topley Senior.

“He was a strange one.” She twisted her lips as if she had bitten into a rotten apple. “And a loud drunk. Singing and shouting all those religious songs. But Betsy was nice. I don’t think John done her any harm. But I never understood why she went and married him. I think it was the children that done her in in the end.”

“Done her in?”

“Wore her out.” She shook her head. “A disappointment to her, they was. Two boys. But that was two too many, if you ask me. Poor Betsy. She lost their first child, you know. A girl. She died at birth. She’s buried in the family plot in Maryhill. Betsy used to place flowers by her grave every year. November the eighth.”

“You have a good memory.”

“I used to. I remember it well because it was three days after Guy Fawkes.” She smiled. “Remember remember, the fifth of November.”

“What were the two boys like?”

Her smile evaporated. “Horrible.”

That would certainly describe Chris Topley, Gilchrist thought.

“Cheeky cheeky cheeky. They used to break the heads off my
roses. And when they kicked their football into my garden, they would just run in and pick it up. They never asked permission.” She bit into the apple again.