Eye for an Eye

cigarette first thing? He had not smoked in twelve years. Surely his brain should have adjusted by now.
    His dream floated by. Shifting shadows. He almost had it. Then lost it. It was as if he held something then laid it down, only to find moments later he could not locate it and the memory of what he had held, where he had put it, vanished like a morning haar.
    He tottered through to the bathroom on stiff legs that felt cramped, as if he had over-exercised. He straightened his back, then remembered pulling himself up and over stone walls, and lying on damp grass. Then the walk to his car with icy feet, shoes and socks sodden.
    He stripped off his shirt and underpants and stood naked. The bathroom was heated by an oversized radiator on the back wall, over which hung four bath-towels. He removed one and wrapped it around his waist like a sarong, loving its soft warmth against his skin. He ran his tongue over the fur on his teeth and reached for his toothbrush, its bristles splayed and clogged. Time to buy a new one. He squeezed out a dollop of toothpaste and scrubbed hard and fast, forcing his thoughts into gear.
    Chloe’s painting. Faded dreams. What did it all mean?
    He almost caught his dream again, watched something slink away from him like a frightened animal, then evaporate in the neural mist. He rinsed out his mouth, swabbed the sink, and returned to his bedroom.
    He lifted Chloe’s painting and held it at arm’s length. What had been going on in her head when she had painted that image? He twisted it to the side, focused on the hole for a mouth ...
    The mouth. That’s what he had dreamed of. A mouth. An open mouth. But more than just an open mouth.
    He had dreamed of lips.
    And through the haze in his mind, the dream came back to him. And in the dream, he was back where it had happened.
    Glasgow. Fifteen years earlier.
    Assisting with a routine investigation in Blackhill, a ruin of a residential development on the city outskirts. How anyone could live there defied the imagination. Ground-floor windows were bricked over. Rusted hulks of stripped cars dotted derelict streets. Back gardens lay hard and bare of grass. Graffiti slashed grey walls.
    Gilchrist had been standing at the back of a tenement block when a young girl approached him. No more than twelve. Maybe eleven. Lipstick. He remembered her lipstick.
    Bright red. And smudged, as if she had been kissed.
    She told him her boyfriend had been hit over the head with an axe. He remembered feeling more surprised at hearing she had a boyfriend than by the alleged attack. And he kept looking at her lips, fascinated by this eleven-year-old woman. His peripheral vision caught movement in the brown dirt behind and to the side of her. A skulking cat. Once domesticated, now abandoned and wild and living in fear of human predators. The cat slipped under a concrete slab before Gilchrist had time to have a close look. But he had seen its lips.
    And that’s what he had dreamed about.
    The cat’s lips. And Alex Granton’s photograph.
    He remembered asking the Glasgow detective what was wrong with the cat. It was a game the kids played, he’d been told. Like scalping. They caught cats and sliced off their lips. It was something to do. The residents didn’t complain. It was better that the kids cut up cats rather than each other.
    Gilchrist picked up his mobile. After a couple of rings, a sleepy voice grumbled, ‘Hello?’
    ‘Sorry to wake you.’
    ‘Don’t tell me it’s you, Andy.’
    ‘Okay, it’s not me.’
    ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Almost seven.’ He listened to some ruffling on the line, imagined Beth shifting her body, coming to, fluffing her pillow, and an image of her naked body seared into his mind.
    ‘Did you see Terry Leighton last night?’ he asked.
    She let out a heavy breath, as if disappointed, and said, ‘Yes, Andy, I saw Terry last night, and yes, I gave him the photograph, and, yes, he said he would work on it as soon as he could. Anything else?’
    ‘Do you have his telephone number?’
    ‘Not trust me?’
    ‘Implicitly.’
    ‘Liar,’ she grumbled. ‘His mobile number. That do?’
    ‘Perfect.’ He jotted down the number as Beth read it out. ‘Thanks. Try to catch another hour.’
    ‘Oh, great. You wake me up to tell me to sleep?’
    ‘Wish I was there.’
    The words were out before he could stop himself. For several seconds the line remained silent, then Beth said, ‘I enjoyed last night,’ her voice soft. ‘It was