Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

more like baby-fat grown old. Laurel and Hardy might be considered a compliment.
    ‘Just you and Johnnie?’ he asked.
    ‘Dougie and Brian came, too.’
    Brian? Of Brian and Rita? He thought it odd that Megs had not remembered Brian moments earlier. But she seemed not to have noticed. ‘Was Rita there?’ he asked.
    ‘No, just Dougie and Brian. The three of them went everywhere together. Worse than musketeers.’
    ‘So you were the only woman?’
    ‘Not for long. A pair of pick-up artists, they were, Johnnie and Brian.’
    ‘But not Dougie?’
    She gave a hard cough again. ‘Johnnie and Brian were as cocky as they come, but Dougie just hung around.’
    ‘So Johnnie and Brian picked up some Spanish women and—’
    ‘English,’ Megs grumbled. ‘From London or somewhere.’
    ‘So Johnnie just . . . ?’
    ‘Pissed off and left me.’
    ‘Left you with Dougie?’
    She smiled, and something touching warmed her eyes. ‘That’s when Dougie and I first started going out. Romantic, don’t you think?’
    Well, that might explain Johnnie’s invitation to Megs to go to Spain. Three friends studying the same course at university, one of them hopeless with women, too awkward or shy to ask her out directly, and all by himself. But on holiday, with plenty of drink, it would be easier to establish a relationship, even take over when one ended. Particularly if that had been the plan all along. It might be considered a convoluted way to start a romance, but he had heard of stranger beginnings.
    ‘You and Dougie didn’t marry for years.’
    ‘Off again, on again. I liked to go on foreign holidays, see a bit of the world. Dougie didn’t. I could have lived in South America. Definitely my favourite. But Dougie was so undecided about everything. In the end, I had to take the bull by the horns, or in Dougie’s case the boy by the balls, and make up his mind for him.’
    ‘And the divorce?’
    ‘I made up his mind on that, too.’ She shook her head. ‘How he got to where he is defies logic. But I wish him no harm.’
    Gilchrist held up the photograph. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’
    ‘You can have it, for all I care. Don’t know why I can’t throw stuff out. Worse than a magpie, so I am.’
    ‘Do you have a plastic bag?’ he asked.
    She gave him a Ziploc bag from the kitchen, into which he slipped the book. Her Mediterranean photograph of Johnnie he placed with Kelly’s.
    ‘Did the three musketeers ever go on holiday anywhere else?’ he asked her.
    ‘Once or twice, I suppose. But they all ended up going their separate ways. Why?’
    ‘Did they ever go to Mexico?’
    Megs frowned. ‘I think so, but don’t quote me.’ Then her eyes lit up as some long-forgotten memory returned. ‘They did,’ she said. ‘I remember it now. They had just come back. It was not long after I moved into the flat with Rita and that Mexican brat. We all went over to the boys’ place one night.’
    ‘All of you?’
    ‘Me, Rita and Miss Mexico.’
    Gilchrist gave that some thought. Brian and Rita. Johnnie and Lorena? Which left Dougie and Megs. ‘Was this before or after the trip to Loret?’
    ‘Before,’ she said, a bit too quickly. ‘I had just moved in.’
    Lorena would still have been seeing Johnnie. ‘What was so memorable?’ he asked.
    ‘We got drunk on tequila. That’s what happened. The real McCoy. Duty-free in Mexico City Airport, I think. I remember it because Johnnie ate the slug. I never knew tequila had slugs. Why do they do that, anyway? I thought it was some sort of joke.’
    That would be Wee Johnnie’s style, Gilchrist thought. Macho man. But was he a killer? ‘And what about Dougie? He was free. You were free. Did you, eh, get together?’
    ‘Nope. Just got drunk.’
    The thought of Megs being in the presence of a man and turning down the opportunity for sex seemed out of character. Perhaps Dougie had been too shy for someone as bold as Megs. ‘So, when did you and Johnnie start going out?’
    ‘I wouldn’t call it
going out.’
    ‘What would you call it, then?’
    ‘Sex on tap.’
    ‘And Lorena? Did she just sit back and let Johnnie walk away?’
    ‘She was looking to leave him. She fancied Dougie.’
    ‘Your Dougie?’
    ‘Not any more.’
    ‘And did she go out with Dougie?’
    ‘Dougie fell head over heels for the tramp.’
    Now Gilchrist thought he understood. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or a woman whose man was having sex with the local Mexican. After all these