Eye for an Eye

To Louise, I mean.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Gilchrist. ‘I do.’
    ‘So, tell me, Mr Gilchrist. What would you have done in my situation?’
    What indeed? But it was not Gilchrist who had broken the law. ‘I think we should talk, Sam. Face to face.’
    ‘When?’
    Gilchrist was about to press for a meeting later that morning, but instead said, ‘At your convenience.’
    ‘Let me think about it.’
    Gilchrist was not sure he liked where this was going. MacMillan was in his sixties. Facing the consequences of the law catching up with him might be more than he could bear. Before he could stop himself, he said, ‘Don’t do anything silly now, Sam.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like running away.’
    Sam growled, long and low, which Gilchrist thought was a stirring of anger. Then he realized with a smile of his own that he had never heard the old man laugh before.
    ‘You crack me up, Mr Gilchrist, so you do. Aye, son, you crack me up.’
    ‘Get back to me soon. All right?’
    ‘Aye, son, I will.’
    Gilchrist stared off to the Eden Estuary and beyond across the Firth of Tay to the distant shores of Buddon Ness and Carnoustie. Sunlight burst through the clouds at that moment and painted the grey landscape with greens and yellows. He listened to the echo of MacMillan’s voice ask him what he would have done in his situation. But he had no ready answer for that. He wouldn’t have liked to have been there in the first place. But it had not been MacMillan’s choice either. He had been dealt a bad hand. And life seemed to have a habit of dealing bad hands.
    As Gilchrist strode back to his car, he passed the spot where Granton had been murdered, and his mind conjured up an image of Sa standing back from the body. Why had she not told him she had known Granton? Why had she not said she knew his son, Alex? And why was she so defensive about her past?
    Maybe the answer lay in her childhood.
    Or in the photograph of a wounded cat.
     
    Sebbie opened the American-sized fridge.
    Its shelves were stuffed with food, not like the tiny model in his own kitchen. He found a six-pack of Miller Genuine Draft and twisted the top off a bottle, took a swig, and strolled back into the living room.
    Alice’s skin had discoloured in shades of yellow and blue. Dieter’s face had fixed in a stiffened grimace of pain and surprise. Sebbie tipped beer into Dieter’s opened eyes. ‘Up yours,’ he said, then laughed, a crazed cackle that seemed to crack through the room.
    He looked up at the ceiling.
    Who lived upstairs? Had they heard him?
    He stepped over Dieter’s body and leaned into the window. The glass felt cold against his skin. Through the windows of the flat opposite he saw someone walking around the room. He pulled back, pressed himself against the wall. Had he been seen?
    Without daring another glance, he closed the curtains.
    The room fell into darkness. If he was going to live in Alice’s flat, he would have to stay quiet, creep around in his stockinged soles, keep the television low, maybe even on mute.
    In the dimmed light, the bodies on the floor looked out of place, like nameless corpses waiting to be carted off by the undertaker. He caught a whiff of something foul, fetid, like rotting eggs.
    He pressed a foot onto Dieter’s stomach. The whisper of flatulence was followed by a stench so powerful he had to press a hand to his mouth. He cursed and rushed from the room.
    A few minutes later, he returned, face wrapped in a dish towel, hands covered with a pair of yellow rubber gloves he had found beneath the sink. Under his arm, he held two cotton sheets stripped from a double bed.
    Dieter’s body was less bloodied. Sebbie had stabbed him as he kneeled over Alice. He rolled the body onto the sheet then dragged it from the living room, down and across the hall, and into a back bedroom.
    Alice presented more of a problem. He had stabbed her in the chest and she had bled like a slaughtered pig. He smiled as he looked down at her. The irony had not struck him until that moment. Alice stabbed through her heart, the same way she had stabbed him through his. Dieter stabbed in the back, the same way he had stabbed Sebbie by screwing Alice while they were still dating.
    He grabbed Alice’s bare legs and twisted her body so that it rolled over onto the sheet, face down. Thick lumps of dark red slime like bloodied slugs slipped over her ribs and dripped onto the sheet. In a rush of disgust, he grabbed the corners of the sheet and threw