Tooth for a Tooth (40 page)

‘You won’t get out of that so easily,’ Ewart said, and left Gilchrist to stare out of the opened boot.

The sound of chains rattling and something being dragged across the concrete floor caused the hairs on the back of Gilchrist’s neck to rise. He needed no explanation as a length of chain was lugged with some effort into the boot, the car settling on to its suspension springs from the added weight of an anchor.

‘You’re going for an eight-hundred-metre swim,’ Ewart said. ‘Straight down.’

The boot lid slammed shut.

Gilchrist lay still in the darkness, listening to the sound of the garage door opening, the crunch of Ewart’s shoes across gravel. The rope tight around his face brought tears to his eyes. Or was he really crying, knowing he was trapped, knowing he would never see his children again, and knowing that whatever Dougie and Megs had in store for him, this time no one would ever find the body?

Eight hundred metres. Straight down.

Was that any way to leave this world?

He recalled the murder cases he had been involved in over his lifetime. How many other poor souls had left it the same way? How many innocent victims had lived their last minutes petrified with fear, helpless with despair and crying at the futility of it all?

He felt his eyes burn, blinked away his own tears.

Christ, he could not die. Not now. Not like this.

He had to find a way out.

By not giving him an injection, was that Ewart’s mistake? By keeping him trussed and alive, was Ewart giving him false hope of escape? Or had Ewart kept him alive because he needed Gilchrist to help him in the final act, by walking towards whatever death awaited him—

The crunching sound of gravel again, the lopsided beat of the different steps of two people, and he sensed someone walk past the boot to the front of the car. The door opened, and the suspension settled as the driver took his seat.

The engine started with the recognizable rattle of Megs’ old Vauxhall, and his head hit the boot lid as the car pulled from the garage and jerked to a halt.

The suspension settled again, a bit more to the left side, he thought. So, Ewart was driving, with Megs as his passenger. The Vauxhall accelerated down the drive and lunged on to the road with a hard bump that cracked his head on the boot floor.

Where were they going? Somewhere far from St Andrews, of that he was certain. If one of Fife Constabulary’s detective chief inspectors went missing, teams of experts would scour the countryside, starting at his last known position, spreading wider until his body was found, or his case eventually closed and filed, unsolved. The irony of it all did not escape him. He would end up just like Kelly.

No, he thought, he would be dumped in some little-known spot at sea. Eight hundred metres deep. He wondered why Ewart had been so precise. As best he could recall, Dougie had never been a sailor, so bathymetrical details would be of no interest to him. Gilchrist had no idea if Megs was sea-wise, and he struggled to pull up a memory of anything in her house or garage that would suggest so. Other than the anchor, his mind remained blank.

Were they taking him out on the North Sea? Or to some loch? Many of Scotland’s lochs were hundreds of metres deep. But eight hundred? Or maybe they would throw his body into some long-abandoned quarry pit.

The car’s motion threw him around the boot, jarring limbs that were already burning from being hog-tied. His thighs cramped, his back ached, his shoulder muscles screamed for release. He twisted and turned, contorting himself in the tight confines, trying to work into a position that would lock his body in place, stop the reckless rolling about. He forced his head back, and found that doing so slackened the rope that tied his wrists to his ankles and relieved the pain, if only for just a moment—

The car pulled to an abrupt halt that forced a curse from Dougie, and threw Gilchrist hard against the side.

Hope soared in his heart.

For one fleeting moment he had felt it.

He forced his head back some more, put pressure on his neck, twisting more and more until his fingers just managed to touch the one thing that could set him free.

The rope around his ankles.

CHAPTER 32

By the time the car stopped, they had been travelling for two hours, the last ten minutes of which had thrown Gilchrist around the boot as they weaved and splashed along what felt like a potholed dirt track.

He estimated they were a couple of miles deep off the beaten track.

When the boot opened, he blinked against the glare of a torch that wavered over his nude body, then settled on his groin.

‘I see I wasn’t missing much,’ Megs quipped.

Gilchrist groaned from behind his gag.

Ewart bustled in beside Megs. ‘Give me a hand,’ he said, and leaned into the boot space. ‘Come on. We don’t have much time.’

‘You mean
you
don’t have much time. You’ve got to get back to that stuck-up wife of yours. I’ve got all night.’

‘You take his ankles. I’ll take his arms.’

Gilchrist waited until Ewart’s gloved hands touched him.

Then he rolled over, gripped the anchor with both hands and swung it up and into Ewart’s shocked face. His stiff joints and aching muscles caused him to miss with full force, but Ewart still slumped to the ground with a hard grunt. Gilchrist snatched the rope from his mouth, spat out the gag and scrambled out of the boot to confront Megs, who stood transfixed as he heaved the anchor to shoulder height.

They stood no more than three feet apart.

‘Don’t make me hit you with this,’ he said to her. ‘Chain him to the bumper.’

Ewart groaned.

Gilchrist’s effort to free himself, twist his body to reach the rope, then hold that position while his fingers worked the knot behind his back had almost exhausted him. It had taken him the best part of an hour to free his ankles, and the pain when he at last straightened his legs brought tears to his eyes. He then worked the rope around his wrists, slackening it enough to let him bump and shuffle his tied hands under his backside. Slipping his legs free had almost cost him a broken wrist, but he persevered, and when he slid the rope from his head and pulled the gag from his mouth, he had cried with relief.

The anchor felt like it was doubling in weight, and his legs begged him to sit. If they put up a fight now, he knew he could not take on both of them. Perhaps not even one.

Ewart pressed his hands to the ground.

‘Stay put,’ Gilchrist ordered.

Ewart spat out blood, pushed himself to his knees.

Gilchrist brought the anchor down on his shoulder with a force that broke bone.

Ewart slumped to the ground, moaning as he gripped his shoulder.

‘I’ll break the other one if you make a move.’ He flashed a look at Megs. ‘Now tie him up.’

Silent, Megs reached for the chain and pulled it rattling over the rim of the boot where it slinked to the ground like a living thing.

‘How do you expect me to tie him up with this?’ she complained.

Here we go again, Gilchrist thought. He needed to be careful around Megs. ‘Just wrap it round him and loop it to the bumper.’

She gathered in the chain. ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ she pleaded. ‘I only mailed the postcard from—’

‘Shut up.’ Ewart glared up at her.

‘It’s all your fault—’

‘For God’s sake, woman—’

‘If you’d kept your cock in your pants, none of it would have happened—’

‘Don’t say anything—’

‘You didn’t have to get rid of her. You didn’t have—’

‘Shut up—’

‘—to kill her.’

Gilchrist thudded the anchor into the ground.

Ewart and Megs flinched into silence.

‘Tie him up. Just get on with it.’ If Gilchrist had not been so exhausted, he could have listened to them argue all night, each accusation bringing him one step closer to the truth of what happened all those years ago. And standing naked in the cold night air did not help. A tremor gripped his legs, and a shiver rattled his upper body.

Megs laid the chain on the ground, doubled it over. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’

‘That’s for others to decide,’ he said.

She pulled a doubled-up length of chain to her, moved in front of Ewart, her back to Gilchrist. ‘I don’t want to go to prison,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’

‘You’ll get a fair trial.’

She stood still for a moment, as if working out the logic of his words, then twisted her hand around and through a length of doubled-up chain and, like a hammer-thrower at the moment of release, spun around and swung it at Gilchrist in a slicing arc.

Gilchrist had time only to lift his arm as the chain whistled towards his head like a scythe. He cried out in pain as a heavy blow caught him on the wrist, and back-stepped in panic as a second caught his other arm. It was all he could do to hold on to the anchor. He backed up, stumbled, fell to the ground on his back, managed to roll to the side as the chain thudded by his head with a force that brought up dirt and grass.

Up and over and on to his feet, one hand dangling useless by his side, the other gripping the anchor for all he was worth.

He pulled back in time to miss another scything blow. And another.

The next one caught him on his knee, sending a flash of pain the length of his body.

Any thoughts of making a run for it were killed there and then.

She came at him like a crazed demon, hissing and spitting and scything.

‘I warned Dougie about you . . .’

Gilchrist backed away, stumbling over rock and grass in his bare feet, just managing to stay out of reach of the whistling chain. If he tripped, it was over.

‘But would he listen . . . ?’

The chain scythed left then right.

‘Would he fuck . . .’

He stepped to the right. Megs cut him off.

Then to the left. She did likewise.

But he saw some logic in her missing swings. She was backing him up, guiding him to some point where he would be trapped, left to face the onslaught head on, his back to the wall, so to speak. It did not matter that her blows were not connecting. It mattered only that he kept back-stepping into the night.

A quick glance behind him left him none the wiser and had the chain whistling past his throat, a warning to keep his eyes to the front, on Megs. Another swing scythed past his thighs, close enough to feel the draught of its passing.

And with each sweep of the chain, Megs vented her anger.

‘Who killed her?’ he shouted back.

‘Not me . . .’ Another sweep.

‘Why did Dougie do it?’

‘She told him she was pregnant . . .’

Pregnant?
The chain clipped his elbow, sending a jolt like an electric shock to his shoulder, reminding him to keep backing up.

‘I see that got your attention.’ She swung the chain at his face, and almost connected. ‘You bastard . . .’

But he could tell she was tiring, the scything taking its toll, her words punctuated by gasps. He noticed, too, that she was now swinging the chain with one hand, gathering it in with the other, like a climber easing her way up a length of rope to the summit of Gilchrist’s anchor. It would not be long until she reined him in.

He clung on to the anchor. Its weight fired the muscles in his arm and shoulder.

If he could swing it back and forward, somehow use it to—

His heel caught.

He landed on his back with a force that emptied his lungs and cracked his head on a rock. He struggled to stay conscious. For one confusing moment his body failed to work. Megs seemed to sense this as she widened her stance, readied to swing the chain up and over and down in a crushing death blow.

The anchor. It was his only hope.

He lifted it, tried to throw it, but on his back, with his weakened arm, its weight was too much. He gasped in disbelief as it slipped from his grip.

Megs’ eyes widened at the logic of something that was beyond Gilchrist’s thinking.

The sound of metal ringing by his ear had him turning his head.

The chain rattled and scurried over the rocky surface like a burned snake.

Megs was trying to unwrap the other end from her wrist, her mouth gaping in panic, her arm flapping. The chain seemed to shoot up from the ground, take hold of her arm and jerk her towards him. She belly-flopped by his side, threw an arm over him in the passing. But in the nude, he had nothing to offer.

He had time only to turn to his side, respond in like fashion. He managed to grab the hem of her skirt, felt the strain in his arm as her body fell over the edge, the shock of pain in his wrist as her deadweight transferred with a sharp snap through the broken bone.

He could not hold on.

He pushed himself to his knees in time to see her tumbling off the rock face, her body spinning like a toy, deep into the dark void. Moments later, the sound of her death-splash echoed up at him. He lay still for several seconds, then pushed back from the edge.