Eye for an Eye

all.’
    ‘That’s not what Sam tells me.’
    Granton stared hard at Gilchrist, as if trying to read his thoughts, and for one awful moment, Gilchrist had the feeling he could see right through his bluff.
    ‘Sam’s ex-army,’ said Granton.
    ‘Ex being the operative word.’
    ‘Wouldn’t be scared shitless talking to a skinny-arsed runt like you.’
    ‘Why would Sam be scared shitless, Alex? Does he know something I’m not supposed to?’
    ‘Stop twisting my words, you pompous prick. All the fucking same, you lot.’
    ‘You think so?’ said Gilchrist. But the discussion was not going at all as he had hoped. He tried his final bluff. ‘How often did Sam deliver the money, Alex? Twice a month? Once a week?’
    ‘What money?’
    ‘Bill’s been a bit naughty. Embezzling from the bank. Took me some time to work out why.’
    ‘And you think he was passing it on to me?’ Granton laughed, a belly-rumble that shuddered his jowls. ‘Crack me up, so you do. Bill might have battered the old dear around a bit, but when it came to business he was as straight as they come.’
    ‘You deny it, then?’
    ‘Fucking right, I deny it. You’ve got the wrong bloke, Gilchrist.’ Granton smirked. ‘Fucking plonker. That the best you can do?’
    Gilchrist turned away. Doubts about his hunch scalded his thoughts. He pretended to study an oil painting mounted in an ornate gilt frame, then beyond, a tall vase that looked as if it was Ming. Surely not. His insides churned. He had it wrong. A good hunch, perhaps, but wrong. He worked through his logic once more, the memory of his conversation with MacMillan, the sound of Granton’s simple response an echo of his mockery.
That the best you can do?
    He had convinced himself that Bill Granton had been embezzling money not to line his own pockets but to keep some secret that could destroy him. Gilchrist had figured either homosexuality or domestic abuse. But as Granton’s wife had refused to report him, Gilchrist had reckoned homosexuality. But MacMillan was a closet homosexual, so how could he blackmail Granton? As he led such a modest lifestyle, the money had to be going somewhere else. But where? Then up popped Alex ‘Fats’ Cockburn, a petty criminal with an eclectic record, including blackmail, who knew all about his father’s physical abuse.
    It sounded a complicated theory, but it wasn’t really. And until a few moments ago, it had been a theory in which Gilchrist believed. Now he knew he was wrong. Not about Bill Granton being blackmailed, perhaps, but about where the money was going.
    Gilchrist stood by a grand piano near the bay window. An overgrown cheese plant reared up from the side, its leaves stooping over a gallery of framed photographs that littered the piano lid.
    ‘Didn’t know you were into photography, Alex.’
    ‘Presents from the old dear.’
    Gilchrist palmed the piano’s polished surface, fingers sliding along wood as smooth as glass. ‘You play?’ he asked.
    ‘’S just furniture.’
    Gilchrist pressed a finger to one of the keys, held it down as the note resonated then faded, leaving nothing but an echo. He tried another, then another, each time listening to the note evaporating as he studied the images before him.
    A young Bill Granton in a short-sleeved shirt on the steps of the Sea Front Hotel, bespectacled, squinting against the sunlight. A woman verging on the skinny hooked to his arm, unsmiling. A photograph to the side showed the same couple, older this time, a row of shops in the background. Again, the same hooked arm, the same tense look. Gilchrist now understood that the look was not one of scorn but of repressed fear, the images black-and-white reflections of how Granton had tyrannized his wife all their married life.
    ‘No home to go to?’
    ‘Not going to offer me another whisky?’
    ‘Fuck that.’
    Gilchrist pressed another key. A chubby Alex as a young man astride a bicycle, the Whyte-Melville Memorial Fountain in the background defining the locale as Market Street. Another of a fat child with a kite on the West Sands, the black-and-white image exaggerating whiter-than-white skin. Others, too, of the Grantons as a family group, or as individuals, ageing before his eyes. But as far as Gilchrist could see, none of the photographs showed Alex Granton with a woman.
    Except one.
    Gilchrist lifted his finger from the key. The note died.
    He placed his whisky on the piano lid and picked up the framed photograph. ‘Who’s