Eye for an Eye

man?’
    Stan was spinning before him, whirling out of focus, like one of Chloe’s paintings. ‘Beth,’ he tried.
    ‘Beth’s okay, boss. She’s had a fright.’
    Gilchrist hung his head. Images of Beth swamped him, her eyes beseeching in silence. He had failed again. Failing seemed to be what he was best at. He had failed Gail. He had failed Jack. He had failed Maureen. It seemed as if he’d gone through life failing those who depended on him until it culminated in the Stabber investigation and his failure to bring that case to closure. Patterson was doing his damnedest to kick him out because he had failed him, too. He had failed his team, failed the men and women who worked with him on the case, failed the townspeople of St Andrews who looked to him to bring an end to the reign of terror.
    And now Beth. He had failed her, let the sick pervert escape. Surely his life was not going to be measured by the tally of his failures. Surely to God no one person could be expected to go through life—
    The car shuddered, snapping him back to the present. Then they were moving again, and a dizzying sensation hit him in thick waves that threatened to topple him.
    ‘Stan,’ he whispered. ‘I think, I’m—’
    ‘Hang on, boss.’
    A grip as tight as a steel claw thudded onto Gilchrist’s arm, and he stared at the hand, wondered how it had landed there, who it belonged to.
    ‘Nearly there.’
    The car took a swing to the right that had Gilchrist pawing the window. Then it surged upward, like a fishing vessel riding a breaking wave, and drew to a halt.
    A door opened. Frigid air brushed his face.
    Twin wooden rods slipped under his arms and pulled him out. He tried to stand, felt his legs sweep out from under him and a rush of breath by his ear.
    ‘Just as well you’re not twenty stone, boss.’
    Darkening clouds spun as they negotiated the entrance, then changed to speckled tiles and silver lights in a white sky. Gilchrist felt his back thud against a hard mattress, heard rattling and a steady squeak that seemed to keep time with the wobbling of his head. Overhead lights drifted by like flotsam in a milky sea that turned to grey and darkened with every struggling beat of his heart until it sank into a cold blackness that whistled like a cruel wind.

CHAPTER 26
     
    ‘I’m Doctor Mackie.’
    Beth watched the doctor’s baggy-eyed gaze take in PC Browning then settle on her.
    ‘How do you feel?’ he asked her.
    She pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders.
    ‘We should perform a forensics examination.’
    ‘But nothing happened. I’ve already told them.’
    ‘I know,’ he sympathized. ‘But whoever did this may have left something, some evidence.’
    She was not sure what the doctor was saying, only that she would not let him touch her.
    ‘He never had time to, to, to do anything,’ she said, conscious of PC Browning’s hand tightening on her shoulder.
    ‘We can have Mary Girvan perform the examination,’ said Browning. ‘She’s a trained nurse with the Procurator Fiscal’s Office in Dundee. If you think you’re up to it.’
    Beth lowered her head.
    Browning aimed the tiniest of frowns at Mackie, and he turned and left the room.
    ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Browning said. ‘Shall I?’
    Beth felt Browning’s fingers massage her shoulder then slip away.
    From the kitchen came the drumming rush of a kettle being filled. If Beth strained, she could catch the whisper of people talking in another room, the hallway, or her bedroom, perhaps, and she imagined them opening her wardrobe, her chest of drawers, and fingering her clothes.
    The violation of her privacy was nothing compared to the violation of her person, of the fabric of her memory. She wished she could wipe that morning clean from the blackboard of her life. She regretted not possessing the strength or the courage to fight.
    Most of all, she regretted what she had not done.
    She squeezed her eyes tight shut and held back a choke of disgust as she saw how she should have fought him rather than succumb to his sick demands. But he had a knife, slashed it wildly across her throat, close enough for her to feel the draught of its passing.
    She had waited for the pain to hit, for the spurt of arterial blood as her life erupted from the hack in her neck.
    But the pain never came. Nor the blood.
    And that was when she decided she wanted to live.
    More than anything, she wanted to take one more breath, live one more second, then more until she