Eye for an Eye

three others. Would you like to see?’
    He nodded.
    She reached for one of the upper shelves. Long fingers clasped another model, larger than the one he held.
    ‘Here.’ She handed the model to him and stretched up for another. A sliver of white skin flashed at her waistline. He caught the pale swell of her tummy, the finest of blond hairs at her navel, and lower, a glimpse of black at her panty line. He felt his mouth dry up. Black panties. He never imagined she would wear black, had thought she would wear knickers as white and clean as the image she portrayed.
    But now he knew. Black. The bitch. The dirty bitch.
    ‘Here.’ She held out another model. ‘This range is one of our best sellers,’ she said. ‘They’re popular with collectors. One told me he had upwards of fifty. And going up in price every year.’ His fingers looked rough and unclean beside hers. He read the hand-printed price tag.
    Seventy pounds?
    ‘Do you collect?’
    ‘Uh, no, I, uh, was just looking.’
    ‘Your arm’s bleeding.’
    He frowned at the bloodstain on his sleeve, then looked into her grey eyes. But it was the top of her black panties he saw. He smiled, almost laughed, then turned to the shelves again. ‘How about that one?’
    She seemed to hesitate for an instant, stiffened then faced him. Her eyebrows flickered.
    ‘Excuse me.’ She drew away. ‘I have to ...’
    She returned behind the counter.
    Silent, he watched her, intrigued by the hesitant tug of her lips, as if she was holding back a smile. What would he give for that bitch Alice to see him walk into a restaurant with her on his arm? He thought he saw her whisper from the corner of her mouth. As he turned to replace the model, he brushed against a CD rack, which toppled onto a shelf with a hard crack.
    ‘Fuck.’
    The word was out before he knew it. A couple shifted away. From behind he felt the bitch’s eyes crawl over him.
    ‘Sir?’ A fresh-faced girl with green eyes that stung appeared by his side. ‘Would you like to buy something?’
    ‘I, uh. No.’
    ‘In that case, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
    At the counter, the bitch stood with her back to him, her hand on the phone.
    ‘Now, sir. Please leave.’
    He spun round to face her.
    The young woman stepped back, but kept her nerve. ‘The door’s that way,’ she said.
    As he strode off, he clipped something, heard the hard clatter of a metal ornament hit the floor. But he just kept walking, anger swelling inside him.
    ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you, you bitches.’
     
    PC Norris said, ‘DCI Patterson would like to see you, sir.’
    Gilchrist had worked with Norris on the body on the West Sands. Three years ago, as best he could recall. He wondered if his own face had ever looked as smooth. Long before his lungs felt the choking fire of that first cigarette, no doubt. Something contracted in the pit of his stomach. The urge for a smoke, or maybe it was just the mention of Patterson’s name.
    ‘When?’
    ‘Now, sir.’
    He glanced at his watch: 12:35. He had ignored Patterson’s earlier instruction to report to him, and was now back on North Street assisting in the door-to-door enquiries, surprised Patterson hadn’t hounded him down before then.
    ‘Tell him I’ll be along as soon as I’ve finished.’
    Norris’s lips twitched. ‘He said you would say that, sir, and I’m to let you know he’s ordering you to report to him right away.’
    Gilchrist wondered if he should tell Norris to piss off. Or better still, tell him to tell Patterson to piss off. But Norris was only doing his job. ‘Take over,’ he said to Sa. ‘Norris will assist you.’
    Patterson’s office was located on the upper level at the west end of the building. As Gilchrist mounted the stairs, an image of McKinnon’s grubby face whispering into Patterson’s ear manifested in his mind and he struggled to shake off the sick feeling in his stomach. He rapped his knuckles against the door. Hard.
    ‘Come in.’
    Patterson’s office lay in perpetual twilight, the slatted blinds never fully opened. The main source of light came from a Tiffany lamp with a butterfly design, which cast a greenish glow onto an A3 blotter.
    Patterson sat behind the desk, his attention focused on a document pressed flat to the blotter with his left hand.
    Gilchrist watched him scan it with literary pride, then place his hands to his mouth in a fleshy steeple. In someone intellectual, that pose might suggest thought. Patterson looked