Eye for an Eye

quiet thud behind him and he knew without looking that Pitter had leapt from the wall and was loping through the tall grass toward her keeper.
    He held his breath.
    If Pitter stopped ...
    If Garvie turned her head ...
    ‘There you are, Pitter. Who’s a clever puss?’
    Gilchrist watched Garvie lift the cat to her face. ‘Who’s a clever Pitter?’ she said, casting a look toward the boundary wall before closing the door.
    The garden settled into darkness once more.
    Gilchrist felt his breath leave his lungs in a long sigh. He shifted his position, trying to find some way to ease the pain. But it was no use.
    He gritted his teeth and tugged the ventilation grille free from the wall. He had to roll onto his side to place the concrete block behind him and gasped as the pain hit. The block slipped from his grip and dropped onto the grass.
    When the fire faded, he pushed his arm back through the hole in the wall. The still air under the flooring felt warm and he wondered why, during his earlier search, he had thought of only down, and not up. Was he slipping? Would Stan or Sa have been more thorough? And was it not strange how it had taken being hit with an old cricket bat and remembering how the bat hung on hooks on Beth’s wall?
    Hooks. Or nails hammered in and bent up like hooks.
    Like the nail he had found the day before. Not an old nail, but a nail tarnished by rust light enough to brush off and expose metal as fresh as new.
    Gilchrist’s fingertips searched the side of the wooden beam, its surface as dry and bristled as a pig’s hackles. He patted the beam, stretched as far as he could manage.
    Nothing.
    He tried the other side, felt a flush of disappointment.
    Was he wrong?
    He shone his torch through the hole, and peered in. But the opening was too small, the angle too tight. He shifted his body, pushed his arm back through and reached for the beam on the left. The surface bristled with splinters of wood.
    He touched something.
    Something cold and slippery, something that shifted in his prying fingers. Plastic. A sheet of plastic. A sealed package.
    Hanging on nails for hooks.
    He lifted the bundle up and off its hooks and out through the opening. He felt the cold shiver of horripilation as he clicked on his pencil-torch.
    Wooden staves glistened beneath the plastic sheath like rods of gold with unmistakable ridges. Bamboo. Thirteen in total.
    Gilchrist fingered the tips.
    Blunt. All of them.
    None sharpened to a point. Not yet.
    His investigation teams held differing views on why the Stabber used shaved bamboo staves. The general consensus was that natural ridges of bamboo provided an excellent handgrip.
    But why were they shaved?
    Gilchrist had seen each stave after it had been removed from the eye socket of the victim. Now he could see they all came from a single piece of bamboo furniture. But he saw, too, why they had been shaved.
    The ends of several were discoloured where they had been bound together, perhaps as the corner of a coffee table. Or a bookcase. Shaving the varnished surfaces, at the same time as whittling one end to a point, obliterated all trace of the bindings.
    All of a sudden, Gilchrist was aware of the seriousness of his predicament. If he took the lot to the Office, in all likelihood the staves would not be permissible as evidence. He had no search warrant, no right to be on Garvie’s property, not to mention being suspended. Patterson would have a field day. And so would any defence lawyer.
    He could make an anonymous call. But doing so would not serve his own needs. He would still be viewed by Patterson as
persona non grata
, his reputation vilified. The prospect of Patterson’s own career being exalted at Gilchrist’s expense sealed it for him. He would not, could not, go down that route. Two days on the case and the Scottish Crime Squad exposes the identity of the Stabber. How right Patterson had been to bring in DeFiore. And how wrong Gilchrist’s supporters had been to believe he was the right man for the job.
    The more Gilchrist thought about it, the more he saw he had no choice but to keep his find to himself and continue with the investigation alone. And God help him if victim number eight turned up before he caught the Stabber.
    As Gilchrist crept from her Garvie’s garden, he decided he would wait. And watch.
    Sebbie finished the last of the six-pack. He glanced at the digital clock on the microwave: 8:11.
    What had happened? Margo said she would be round at eight.