Life For a Life (19 page)

Which meant . . . ?

Had Dillanos called a direct line to her solicitor?

He dialled that number.

He counted six rings, expecting it to shunt him into voicemail, but it kept ringing on to ten, fifteen, then twenty before he hung up. He stared at the phone, then dialled again, and after ten rings was about to hang up when—

The ringing stopped.

Someone had picked up.

He held his breath, thought he caught muffled breathing on the other end, nothing definitive, more like a palpable sense that someone was listening. Should he say nothing, or could he persuade whoever was on the other end to say something?

But before he reached a decision, the connection died.

He dialled back, but the line was engaged.

He tried the main switchboard number – the one on the website and was put through to voicemail on the second ring. He returned to the original number.

But the line was still engaged.

He replaced the handset to its cradle, and stared at his phone. Someone had picked up. But why had they not spoken? Had his number come up on their phone screen? Were they already checking out the source of the persistent caller?

Which would not be good. On the other hand, it could be.

Out of nothing, comes something?

He googled Murdock and Roberts and checked the main number against that in his notebook. Well, would you look at that. Different, too. Was this a direct line to Mr Murdock or Mr Roberts? Gilchrist dialled it, but it rolled over to voicemail on the fifth ring, and a man’s voice with an accent telling him he had reached the desk of Osgar Murdock. He hung up, not sure if he had caught the name correctly, then tried again.

Sure enough, Osgar Murdock.

Osgar? Middle Eastern? Turkish, perhaps?

He found it interesting that he was uncovering some foreign connection – Kumar, Osgar, Iqbal – names with a Middle Eastern ring to them. And his mind replayed his earlier calls to McKinlay Iqbal. Had Dillanos’s number gone straight through to the desk of Iqbal? Had it been Iqbal on the other end of the line? But more troubling, by calling had he set in motion some reaction to find out who the caller was?

And with that thought, he decided to take a chance.

He dialled the last number, the mobile number with no name or address. It rang out to twenty, which he thought was odd – no voicemail. He hung up, dialled it again, and again counted to twenty. He dialled the number four more times, before replacing the handset, then stared at the phone and smiled.

If they would not speak to him, then maybe his calls would flush them out.

Sunday arrived with a fog as fine as haar.

Snow covered the ground in a thin blanket of white.

Rather than walk straight to the newsagent’s, Gilchrist decided to jog, take a long road for a shortcut – down by the harbour, out to the end of the pier, then back up Shoregate on to High Street. He slipped on his tracksuit and trainers and wrapped up well, winding a scarf round his neck and tucking it in. He pulled on a pair of gloves, then stepped outside, into Rose Wynd.

The fog had thinned, exposing a winter sun that sat low on the horizon, a watery pink that threatened to peel back a sky as white and fine as gauze. A cold wind carried the promise of a white Christmas, and had his breath gusting in visible puffs as he got into his stride.

By the harbour, he slowed down to a walk, and breathed in the smell of salt and kelp. Sheltered by the pier walls, the harbour lay as flat and motionless as slush, as if the cold had frozen it into immobility. He eyed a flock of raucous gulls on the hunt for food, and watched a couple fight over a scrap, a dirty rag by the looks of it, then tumble over the harbour’s edge only to be beaten to the winnings by a herring gull that flew in and caught it, then let it fall mid-flight into the black waters. As he strolled seaward, fishing boats in need of a good painting and a better gutting floated in cold silence by his side.

At the end of the pier, Gilchrist faced the wind, breathed it in.

Beyond the stone walls, the sea heaved and swelled like some beast stirring awake. Terns skimmed the dark surface in synchronised flight. Waves rose as if to peak, then settled again as if overcome by the effort. His mobile rang, its electronic call out of place, like modern day interfering with the timelessness of nature.

He eyed the screen. The incoming number meant nothing to him, and he puzzled as to who would call at this time on a Sunday morning.

‘Hello?’

The line disconnected.

He dialled back and, phone to his ear, turned from the end of the pier.

Where Shoregate met the harbour he caught the burst of exhaust from a white car – a ubiquitous lookalike – and a man slide into the passenger seat. He heard the door slam, the soft roar of the engine as the car slipped from view.

A recorded voice told him the person he was calling was unavailable.

More from instinctive curiosity, he started back along the pier, walking quickly to begin with, then breaking into a jog. He tried the number again.

No answer.

He reached the harbour front and managed to catch the tail end of the white car as it rounded a corner, too far away to identify the make and model but close enough to make out a dent in the back bumper.

On impulse, he dialled Dick.

‘Bloody hell, Andy, what time is it?’

‘Early. Got another number for you.’

‘You sound like you’ve been running.’

‘Morning exercise.’

‘Let’s have it,’ Dick said, wide awake now.

Gilchrist recited the number. ‘And if it’s one of these untraceable ones, get me a location on it, will you?’

‘I’ll get back to you.’

Gilchrist ended the call, then put his head down and gritted his teeth as he ran up Shoregate. If he was quick enough, he might catch another glimpse of it.

But by the time he reached High Street, the car was gone.

The hard jog had his heart racing, and despite the cold wind, sweat warmed his brow. He walked along the pavement, and by the time he entered the Cooperative, his breathing had returned to normal.

He bought a
Mail on Sunday
, half a dozen large eggs, bacon and four morning rolls – brown for a change. The jog to the seafront had done wonders for his appetite, and the thought of grilled bacon and a poached egg on a fresh roll had his mouth watering.

As a child, Sunday had always started with a full cooked breakfast, as if that was the only morning his father had time to eat instead of having to rush off to work. But back then, everything was cooked in lard, served up swimming in fat, eggs fried hard, not soft-poached or scrambled, and bacon strips from which you could wring your weekly intake of oil. And in true Scottish fashion – waste not, want not – bread slices fried to soak up the remains of the frying pan, served dripping with fat hot enough to blister your lips. And they wonder why Scotland was the heart-attack capital of the world?

On the walk back to his cottage, he held his shopping in a plastic bag with one hand while he did what he could with the other to flip through the newspaper – Dundee United lost 0-1 away to Livingstone; both Bush and Blair were standing by the decision to invade Iraq.

He stepped off High Street and walked into Castle Street.

A glance downhill to a row of parked cars, and not one of them white. What was he expecting? But over the years he had come to trust his gut. Which was why he stopped, his back against the wall of the corner building, plastic bag at his feet, newspaper opened, and pretended to be caught up in some interesting article.

He did not have long to wait, less than a minute as best he could tell.

A white Toyota, distinguishable by its T-shaped logo, slowed down at the entrance to Castle Street, indicator flashing, then accelerated off in the pretence of a wrong turning. But Gilchrist had caught the look of surprise on the driver’s face, the silent curse as the car accelerated away, and the dent on the rear bumper. The passenger looked vaguely familiar, although for the life of him Gilchrist could not place him.

He slipped his newspaper inside the plastic bag, dialled the office and said, ‘Put me through to CID.’ When a woman’s voice introduced herself as Liz, he said, ‘I need you to run a number through the PNC.’ He recited it from memory, then said, ‘I’ll wait.’

In less than thirty seconds, she said, ‘Here we are, sir. Just pulling it up now. Hang on. Run that number past me again?’

He did.

‘You sure, sir?’

He was.

‘That number’s registered to an Alfa Romeo in Bournemouth, a Mr Fleming.’

For a confusing moment, Gilchrist wondered if he’d muddled the letters up, but a quick run through the mnemonic phrase reassured him he had it right. And the numbers were easy, four letters that were as good as a date. No mistake. Fake plates.

‘Put out a BOLO for that number on a white Toyota,’ he said. ‘Apprehend the passengers, two males. Driver’s foreign-looking’ – he had wanted to say Arabic, but did not want to taint anyone’s opinion – ‘maybe Spanish, Mediterranean. You get the picture. Black hair, tanned complexion.’ He pulled up an image of the man slipping into the car down by the harbour, again puzzled by a sense of familiarity. But he had been too far away to make an ID. ‘Passenger’s a white male,’ he said. ‘Approach with extreme caution. They may be armed.’

‘Will do, sir. Anything else?’

‘Have someone call Fleming in Bournemouth. And get back to me.’

He hung up, picked up his shopping, and trotted to his Merc parked at the corner. It was the fake registration plate that did it. Anyone who went to the trouble of switching plates had to have a good reason to run from the law.

He clicked the key fob, threw the shopping into the passenger footwell.

He powered up, backed into Castle Street, and accelerated on to High Street with a squeal from the tyres. On the A917, he pushed up to eighty, braking hard as he pressed into corners, accelerating through them, the steering wheel jerking in his hands as it clipped the road edge. On the straight, foot to the floor and back against the seat as the 2.3 litre engine let loose with a rush of power.

Hedges, grass verges, stone walls whipped past in a snow-white blur.

He cursed at himself for not thinking ahead. He should not have been pretending to read his newspaper. He should have been in his Merc, key in the ignition, ready for the chase the moment the Toyota showed itself.

He slowed down to a sedate forty as he entered the town of Kingsbarns. He glanced up side streets, considered for an idiotic second driving to the cottage, then realised that if they were who he thought they were, even the dumbest brain on the planet would not risk going anywhere near there.

Through Kingsbarns and up to ninety at one point. He overtook a convoy of cars with a blare from his horn, through another corner touching seventy. He felt the wheels give a flicker, and eased back at the thought of black ice as he neared the Boarhills cut-off.

Straight ahead for Boarhills. Left for St Andrews.

With a BOLO being despatched from St Andrews, the white car would be intercepted before it reached St Andrews. The downside to that argument was that the A917 had any number of side roads that led into the country, through farmland, over hills, to connect with some other road. You might be lost for a while, but you would hook up with civilisation eventually.

He chose straight on.

He felt his body lift from the seat as he powered over the brow of the hill towards Boarhills. He slowed to little more than a crawl as the road narrowed, and followed it as it wound through the small village. He nodded to a woman walking her dog, pulled to a halt to let an elderly couple cross in front of him, all the while searching side roads, parked cars, driveways to garages and homes, for a white car with a dent in its bumper.

He eased uphill, past a well-kept farm that faded in disrepair to a collection of derelict stone buildings, then downhill to open fields on the right and an old brick ruin on the left. The unpaved road opened up to a turning area, then branched off to the right, towards the sea.

He pulled over, stepped out. The air felt colder here, straight off the North Sea.

The narrow road stretched ahead, nothing more than two rutted tracks separated by a row of grass high enough to snag a car’s axles. And lying white and pristine with untouched snow as fine as powdered sugar.

Back into his Merc, a quick reverse, a spin of his wheels, then powering uphill.

He called the office.

‘Anything?’ he asked Liz.

‘One moment, sir.’

He wound back through the village, speed at a minimum, the car’s engine burbling beneath the bonnet. Driving in that direction gave a different view into homes, a variation in the angle, a sightline past a trimmed hedge, a peek into a distant corner of a gravel driveway. He eased into a corner, slowed to a crawl as a tractor approached him, taking up most of the road, its oversized rear tyres spitting up slush and dirt in a spattered spray—

‘Nothing to report, sir.’

Gilchrist thanked her, asked her to call the moment she heard anything, then threw his mobile on to the passenger seat. When the tractor passed, he tugged the wheel, depressed the accelerator then slammed on the brakes. He clipped into reverse, backed up ten feet, and eyed the driveway.

He was not mistaken.

From the back corner of a single bungalow at the end of a long gravel drive poked the tail end of a car, parked at an angle that permitted him to see the dent in the bumper.

He pulled over the kerb and on to the pavement.

He kept the engine running, and reached for his mobile.

But even from where he sat, he worked out that he was too late.

A pair of almost identical tracks in the snow-covered driveway told him the Toyota had driven out, then returned. But a single line of tracks, slightly wider, the last set to be laid down, told him that a larger vehicle, maybe an SUV, had driven off.

He stepped on to the pavement and stood at the entrance to the property. The house looked like as if it had closed for the winter. Curtains were drawn in all the windows, and the roof was covered with a fresh layer of snow. An expansive lawn fell away from the front door, its unmarked surface as smooth as a white bowling lawn. He studied the tracks on the driveway, and confirmed his thoughts. The third set overlaid the others, and twin strips of ice in the form of skid marks told him that whoever had been driving had left in a hurry.