Eye for an Eye

see him?’
    ‘From time to time.’
    ‘If you asked him, would he do me a favour?’
    ‘Depends what you want me to ask.’
    He removed the two pieces of Granton’s photograph from his pocket and laid them on the table. He slid them together and positioned them in front of Beth. ‘I need some digital enhancement done on this.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘A photograph.’
    ‘I see that, you idiot, but doesn’t the police lab—’
    ‘I’ve been suspended.’
    ‘Oh, yes. I forgot. How many times is that now?’
    ‘I’d rather not get into it.’
    Beth fingered the photograph. ‘And you don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing. Right?’
    ‘Right.’
    She leaned closer. ‘It looks old. Anyone I know?’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘Keeping secrets, are we?’
    ‘Will you ask for me?’
    ‘Is this to do with the Stabber case?’
    ‘Could be.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just a hunch.’
    ‘And we know all about your hunches, don’t we?’ she said, slipping her hand into her leather satchel and pulling out her mobile phone.
    Gilchrist took a sip of beer as Beth called Leighton, and thought about his hunches. Beth had been referring to an earlier case of his in which he had chosen to ignore the usual line of questioning and go with his sixth sense. Trust it, he had told himself. It always works for you.
    And it had.
    His hunch and his inquisitive persistence had uncovered the murder weapon, a twelve-inch butcher’s knife buried in the soil by the victim’s headstone. The last place anyone would look. Anyone, that is, except Gilchrist. He had become the reluctant local hero after that, even portrayed as a genius by the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, the one who had almost married Beth and whose article was the catalyst that sparked the beginning of Gilchrist’s relationship with her. Now his instinct was being piqued once again, this time by an unclear image of a cat on a twenty-year-old photograph.
    Why? How could he continue to investigate on hunches? What if this time he was wrong? Would that convince him that Patterson was right and it really was time to hang up his boots? Despite his doubts, the image of the cat still niggled.
    Beth disconnected. ‘Terry’s driving to London for a week,’ she said. ‘He’s leaving first thing in the morning. If you want him to work on the photograph while he’s there, he needs to have it this evening.’
    ‘Do you have an address for him?’
    ‘I pass his street on the way home. I’ll drop it off.’
    ‘Oh. Okay.’ Gilchrist lifted his pint.
    Beth surprised him by taking hold of his hand and squeezing it. ‘Terry’s bald and grey and twenty stone,’ she said.
    It irked Gilchrist that she could read him with such apparent ease, but with the digital enhancement now arranged, and concern over the creep in the shop seemingly behind them for the evening, he found them both relaxing as they ordered food and drinks and chatted about old times.
    He liked how comfortable he felt with her, and how talk ebbed and flowed between them with no effort, and how her fingers would touch his, or her hand graze his thigh, if their conversation hinted at their past intimacy. And when her face lit up with a smile, he had to remind himself of her initial response to his invitation, and resist the urge to lean over and press his lips to hers.
    After another two pints of Eighty and an unfinished glass of white wine, they left the bar at nine and walked arm in arm to the end of Market Street where Beth surprised him once again by giving him a quick kiss and ordering him to call her tomorrow. He wondered if her kiss was an invitation to respond, but by the time his mind had worked out that it had been nothing more than a parting peck, she already had her back to him and was heading off to Leighton’s.
    He pulled his jacket collar tight and set off toward the Cathedral. In the cold night air, his breath rushed like steam and his mind cast up an image of the bloodless corpse on the beach, a white mass that had lain at the water’s edge like an abandoned lump of meat.
    It had been cold that morning, too, and drizzling as he walked over the rippled beach of the West Sands, a uniformed policeman by his side. Five or six early morning beach strollers parted as they approached.
    The body was naked, the skin flawless white in the cold light, drained of blood from a cut that ran across the throat from ear to ear and grinned at them like a clown’s misplaced smile. The drizzle