‘Andy here.’
‘Are you trying to get me fired?’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ He heard Sa curse under her breath and added, ‘I’d argue I’m on leave of absence.’
‘Wouldn’t work.’
‘At the worst, I’m suspended.’
‘That’s not what Patterson’s saying.’
Gilchrist gritted his teeth. Patterson was already greying the black and white of the truth. Another week and it would be set in stone that Gilchrist had handed in his notice.
‘He’s been sucking up to the ACC,’ Sa continued. ‘Rumour has it McVicar blew a fuse.’
Archie McVicar. Fife Constabulary’s assistant chief constable. If Patterson was successful in bending McVicar’s ear, Gilchrist’s career was over. ‘Listen, Sa, I need your help.’
‘I should’ve known.’
‘Beth’s had a bit of an incident at her shop.’
‘I thought you two split up ages ago.’
‘We did.’
‘Is it back on?’
‘Quit the interrogation for a minute, and just listen.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Gilchrist told her what Beth had told him, but Sa could confirm only that his complaint was noted and would be looked into once manpower was freed from the Stabber case. All as expected. For the time being, he could do no more.
He walked down Mercat Wynd, his thoughts on the reasons for his break-up with Beth. The magnitude of his sin had been blown out of all proportion. He worked too hard. Simple as that. They had talked about it, but he got snarled up in yet another case and failed to make a dinner engagement. It still hurt to think how readily she had replaced him with Tom Armstrong, a businessman whom Gilchrist never believed was her type.
In the Dunvegan a crowd of golfers, replete with beer and whisky, their weather-beaten faces ruddied from the cold November wind, hogged the space in front of the bar, forcing him to squeeze past and claim a seat at a table in the corner. He laid his gift-wrapped presents on the chair next to him and slipped off his jacket.
He ordered steak pie, chips and peas, and a chilled Guinness. A television set on the far wall showed blue lakes and tree-lined fairways, and he tried to work out which US PGA golf tournament was being played. It was only when he took a sip of his Guinness that he glanced over the rim and saw her.
Her short blond hair stood tight in tufts that looked wet. A white blouse hung loose beneath a dark blue cardigan that could have been mistaken for a man’s. Her muscle tone exuded a healthiness that seemed to make her gleam in the crowd. Lex Garvie was more than just attractive. But her companion intrigued him. The same woman he had seen with Maggie Hendren in Lafferty’s.
He carried his glass across to their table and said, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
Garvie gave a smile as tight as a grimace.
‘Is that a gin and tonic?’ he asked the other woman.
She frowned, as if puzzling over his presence, or perhaps thinking as Gilchrist was, that they had met somewhere before. ‘Vodka and tonic, actually.’
‘Double?’
‘Thank you.’
Gilchrist detected a masculine hardness about her. A crumpled packet of Camel cigarettes lay in an ashtray on the corner of the table.
‘Ice and lime?’ he asked her.
‘Are you always this disarming?’
Gilchrist was not quite sure what to make of her comment. He turned to Garvie. ‘I’ve ordered some food,’ he said to her, and nodded to his table. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt your evening, just to offer a drink.’
‘Glenfiddich then,’ she said. ‘No water. Plenty of ice.’
He ignored her coldness. ‘Double?’
‘What’s the occasion?’
‘It’s my way of apologizing.’
‘For what?’
‘For poking and prodding.’
‘But not for thinking I could be involved?’
‘We have to be thorough,’ he said. ‘But if it helps, yes, that too.’
Garvie looked away.
Her bitterness puzzled Gilchrist. He was about to turn from the table when the woman by her side leaned forward and held out her hand. Nicotine tanned her fingertips. ‘We’ve never been introduced,’ she said. The strength of her grip surprised him. ‘Patsy,’ she offered. ‘Patsy Lynch.’
He nodded. ‘Andy Gilchrist.’
‘I know all about you, Andy.’
Hearing his first name spoken by a stranger sounded odd. He glanced at Garvie. Her eyes danced with anger. ‘I can’t help thinking we’ve met before,’ he said to Patsy.
‘You’ve probably seen me with Sa.’
‘I didn’t know you were friends.’
‘And Maggie. As you know.’
Gilchrist nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said, then fished up an image of Patsy driving off with Sa as a passenger. ‘Land Rover Discovery. Dark blue. Dent in the driver’s door.’
‘You’ll be telling me the registration number next.’
‘My memory’s not that good.’
Patsy gave a wry grin. ‘That’s not what Sa tells me.’
‘You still drive it?’
‘Sold it. Why? Looking to buy one?’
‘Just asking.’
‘That’s what he does,’ Garvie cut in. ‘Next thing you know he’ll be digging through your rubbish bin.’
‘Is that true, Inspector?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘See?’
‘Why don’t I order your drinks?’ he said.
‘Good God. He even talks in questions.’
Gilchrist excused himself and pressed his way to the bar where he paid for their drinks.
When his steak pie arrived, he had to divert his eyes to avoid glancing over at Garvie. The attraction he felt toward her surprised him, and it puzzled him to hear that his visit to her home had upset her so much. He had been polite, not overly investigative, nor had he stayed too long.
So what was her problem?
On clearing his bill, he gathered his jacket and presents and stood up. A final glance toward Garvie and Patsy, faces fired with the heat of their conversation, had him thinking they would not survive the evening together.
Gilchrist walked up North Street to the Police Station and told the desk sergeant that he was back to clear his desk.
The back office had an eerie quietness about it, as if he had arrived seconds after some party had ended and left its echo in the walls. He found Stan behind a grey divider, sifting through a pack of files.
‘You look the way I feel,’ said Gilchrist.
Stan started. ‘Bloody hell, boss.’
‘DeFiore giving you grief?’
‘And then some.’ Stan shook his head. ‘You’d think we’d done bugger all for the last four months except sit on our arses and wait for the bloody Crime Squad to drive in and save our souls.’ He slapped the files onto the desk as if he was throwing in a hand of cards. ‘I tell you what, boss, you’re well out of it.’ Then he frowned. ‘What are you doing here anyway? Patterson will have you.’
‘I need to use your computer to check out a few things.’
‘Tell me you’re kidding.’
Gilchrist shrugged.
Stan stood. ‘Well, I’m out of here. It’s your head, not mine. I’ll deny all knowledge. All right?’
‘Sounds fair.’
Gilchrist waited until Stan closed the door before slipping behind the divider and taking his seat. He keyed in Stan’s password and set about clearing some niggling thoughts. When he next looked at his watch, it was 11:20.
No one paid him any attention as he left the building.
Stars glittered in a black sky. The night was north wind cold.
Muttoes Lane led onto Market Street. A couple tottered arm in arm from the direction of the Central Bar, the man in short sleeves, drunk, oblivious to the cold, the woman grumbling beside him.
At PM’s Fish and Chip Shop, the main thoroughfare narrowed to a lane wide enough for only one car. His footfall echoed off the walls on either side. He had almost purchased a house here, when he and Gail first married. But she had proclaimed the street too dingy, the house too dilapidated. As he recalled the ensuing arguments, he realized with a spurt of sadness how early he and Gail had started growing apart.
He found himself slowing down as he came to the spot where the Stabber’s fourth victim had been found. He cast his gaze into the darkness beneath the open pend and wondered for the umpteenth time what the victim, Johnny Gillespie, had been thinking as the Stabber attacked. Had his mind, sodden with whisky, worked out in those final seconds of life as the stave popped his left eyeball, always the left, and plunged deep through the soft mass of his brain that he was about to die? And dead before his body thumped onto the cobbles. Had he let the Stabber walk up to him? And if so, why?
Again an image of the Stabber as a woman, muscles hidden beneath her feminine façade, flooded his mind’s eye. And it livened him to see how well Lex Garvie fitted the role.
Then he passed the spot, cut onto South Street, then left toward The Pends and Deans Court. As he neared the Roundel, the skeletal ruins of the Cathedral’s spires braced the night sky like Siamese twin rockets waiting to be launched.
He checked his watch.
11:44. Plenty of time.
He sheltered behind the support column of the archway to The Pends. His breath puffed white in the frigid air as his thoughts drifted to Gail. It still surprised him how upset he’d been at losing not only his wife and lover of eighteen years, but his stone-built home in Windmill Road. Years ago, before their relationship soured beyond repair, he would often imagine the two of them walking the West Sands together, grandchildren in tow, an elderly couple still deeply in love.
What had marriage meant to him? Loyalty, he supposed. And understanding, too. Being a policeman’s wife required considerable understanding. And trust. Definitely trust. But he had found out, almost by accident, that Gail was having an affair with an administrative manager in the hospital where she worked. Several days later, when he finally found the courage to challenge her, her response had been to file for divorce. Six months later, he lost his home, his furniture, his wife, both his children, and thirty-plus years of living in St Andrews. It seemed as if he had wakened one morning to find his past had evaporated.
The pain he now felt at the news of Gail’s illness reminded him that their relationship had not always been bitter. Far from it. When he first met her, in the Whey Pat Tavern, drunk and loud on the second night of her summer break, up from Glasgow for the week, her libido surprised him. That first night, after a walk through the darkness of the West Sands, they crossed the first and eighteenth fairways of the Old Course. As they neared the last green the other side of midnight, Gail said, ‘I know all about golf. I’ve heard about this hole.’ She tottered off to the side, pulling Gilchrist with her. ‘There’s a dip in the green called the Valley of Sin.’
She led him straight to it, and together they stood in its lowest spot, the night-lights of St Andrews twinkling all around them, it seemed. With the salty smell of the cold night air, they could have been on a ship at sea, looking at lights on the shore.
‘The Valley of Sin,’ she repeated, then dipped forward. One step, two steps, and her knickers were in her hand. ‘Such an appropriate name,’ she whispered, as she lay down on the grass, her right arm reaching up for him. Even now, the memory of that moment could bring a smile to his lips.
MacMillan came into view, walking past Deans Court. And sure enough, a pair of binoculars dangled from his left shoulder. Gilchrist waited until the old man was only a few yards from the corner of South Street, then crossed, unnoticed.
‘Sam.’
MacMillan stiffened, almost backed away.
‘DI Gilchrist,’ he said, making sure his voice gave off the authority it had once possessed before Patterson emasculated it.
‘Buggeration, son.’ Sam slapped a thick hand onto his chest. ‘For a nasty moment there, I thought it was my turn.’
Gilchrist stepped up to MacMillan, close enough to see the moisture in his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’
MacMillan’s lips almost pouted. ‘Well, you’re going about it the wrong way.’ He tightened his grip on the binoculars and Gilchrist had an image of Sam as a younger man, tough and tight and a fearsome adversary.
‘Would you like to take a walk, Sam?’
‘I’ve just had one.’
‘It won’t take long.’
‘Where to?’
‘This way.’
Down by the harbour, a stiff wind blew in from the sea, carrying the smell of salt and seaweed and the distant sound of surf crashing over rocks.
Gilchrist walked along the stone promontory that sheltered the entrance to the harbour from northerly gales. Spray, fine as mist, drifted on the air. He looked up at the sky.
‘Sometimes I think Scotland’s the most beautiful place in the world,’ he said. ‘Other times I wish I was any place else.’ They reached the first of four breaks constructed in the wall, the stones inset to form a seating area. ‘What do you think?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘About what?’
‘About anything.’
‘I think you’re an odd sort.’