Eye for an Eye

West Port, pulling his tattered combat jacket tight around his shoulders. Damp seeped through the soles of his trainers and forced him to curl his toes.
    He passed the blackened ruins of Blackfriar’s Chapel, its arched supports and vaulted roof a sixteenth-century work of construction ingenuity. He felt his stomach spasm and that familiar sickness seep through his guts like acid. He should find out what was wrong. But what could the doctors do? They had not been able to help his father. So how could they help him?
    At Queen’s Gardens he crossed the street and sat on a wooden bench in the slabbed area that fronted the Town Kirk. From there he had a view along South Street and up Logie’s Lane through the covered walkway that led onto Market Street. Sometimes she would come that way, down through the alley and past his bench, then left onto South Street toward her shop. Other times she came from the West Port.
    A man in jeans and a grey sweatshirt walked past, holding a tongue-lolling Alsatian by a leather leash. He had a sausage roll pressed to his mouth. Shards of pastry fell to the pavement like flakes of brown snow. Sebbie watched him strut along Logie’s Lane toward the covered walkway, the mouth-watering smell of cooked meat and onions enticing him like a Siren’s call. The Alsatian lifted a leg at the corner of the pend and Sebbie turned to—
    Shit.
    He shielded his face with a hand, but she walked past on South Street without so much as a tiny glance his way.
    The stuck-up bitch.
    He waited until she passed the corner of the Town Kirk before he followed. He hooked a thumb under the waist of his jeans and tugged them up. They seemed looser. Maybe they had stretched. Maybe they needed a wash. But the washing machine that was left in the house after his parents had ...
    After they had ...
    Even now, three years later, he still found the correct expression confusing. After his parents had
died
. Or after his parents had
gone
. Neither was strictly correct, since only his father’s body had been found, shifting along the West Sands on the incoming tide, skin as white as porcelain, a red slash like shocked lips on his neck. Sebbie’s mother disappeared that day, too, and when no trace of her was ever found, the police named her as prime suspect, convinced she had slit his father’s throat then fled the scene, maybe even the country. But without any physical evidence, no one knew for sure. Two years later to the day, the case had been closed. That was a mistake. And now that useless detective, the skinny one with the white teeth and the good looks, was going to pay.
    Sebbie ground his teeth. Payback time. He walked along South Street, eyes glued to the wobble of her rump. Something warm and cosy settled in his stomach and pressed its way to his groin. He almost smiled.
    Payback was going to be fun.
     
    Beth put a fresh filter in the coffee machine, topped the water reservoir, then chose five CDs for the shop’s player. Her customers often complimented her on her choice of music – often little-known jazz bands, singers, pianists, music every bit as accomplished, if not more so, than commercially successful artistes. She switched the player onto SHUFFLE .
    Loston Harris sang mellow in the background as she turned her attention to the countertop. It always annoyed her that customers pressed their fingers to the glass when pointing at something they wanted to buy. She gave it a short squirt of Windolene and a stiff rub with a paper towel then walked round to the customer side and did the same with the front panel.
    Something caught her eye. She turned.
    He stood with his face pressed against the door. Both hands capped his eyes, restricting her view of his features. She thought he was checking to see if the shop was open, so she tapped her wristwatch and mouthed,
We don’t open until nine
.
    He lowered his hands and twisted to the side. For one confusing moment, Beth thought he was going to slam his shoulder against the door. Then a clenched fist thudded against the glass, and the panel rattled as if about to burst from its frame.
    She rushed behind the counter and lifted the phone from the wall. She had the police on speed dial and was about to press the number when the man ran off. She held on to the receiver, her heart fluttering.
    What was that all about?
    She eased the phone back onto its cradle and almost tiptoed to the door. She scanned South Street but saw only couples window-shopping, a small boy