Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

‘
Staying on in Mexico a bit longer. Expect to be back at the end of April. Love, Kelly.’
    Ewart scratched his head. ‘You have me confused,’ he said. ‘If she never flew to Mexico, how could she have sent the postcard?’
    ‘She didn’t.’
    Ewart paused. ‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me, Andy.’
    Gilchrist noticed the use of his first name, a ploy to soften him up, perhaps, keep it friendly. But sometimes you had to go in with the boot. ‘Someone sent the postcard from Mexico on her behalf.’ He stepped forward, closed the gap. ‘That someone was you.’
    Ewart frowned, his forehead a mass of intersecting furrows that seemed to move in waves as his eyebrows lifted and fell. ‘I’ve never been to Mexico.’
    ‘Why don’t I believe you?’
    ‘How would I have got there?’
    Gilchrist almost stumbled. ‘Flown. How else?’
    ‘I don’t fly. I’ve never flown. Not once. Ever.’
    Something fluttered in Gilchrist’s chest, then kick-started with a rush of blood that threatened to scald his face. ‘You went to Spain,’ he tried, but he already knew the answer.
    ‘We took Johnnie’s car.’ Ewart’s voice seemed to ring with renewed confidence. ‘Aviatophobia,’ he pronounced. ‘I have a fear of flying.’
    ‘People take pills for that.’
    ‘I’m allergic to most of them.’
    Even then, Gilchrist tried not to lose face. ‘I’ll check passport records, look into—’
    ‘No need to,’ Ewart said. ‘I’ve kept my original passport. The only one I’ve ever had. The only stamps on it are the exit and entry to Spain that year. First and last time I’ve ever left the country.’
    Gilchrist stepped to the end of the desk and stared out the window, trying to find the flaw in the logic. Ewart could have had a false passport, used it to fly to Mexico, then destroyed it. Or maybe lost his passport and had another issued. But if his fear of flying and his allergies were for real, then he really was accusing the wrong man—
    He jerked at the sound of squealing tyres.
    From the tilt of Ewart’s head, he knew he had heard it, too.
    He squinted through the blinds. By the corner of the building, a team of policemen spilled from the opened doors of a white Transit van, followed by Tosh, all wild arms and red face, shouting out orders.
    Gilchrist swept the photographs and postcards off the desk and into his laptop case. ‘Give me five minutes, Dougie, all right?’
    Ewart seemed puzzled to the point of grinning.
    Gilchrist leaped over the desk and pulled open a drawer.
    ‘Hey, hang on—’
    Gilchrist slammed the drawer shut, opened another and pulled out a set of car keys with a BMW keyring. ‘Tell them I left five minutes ago. If it comes down to it, I’ll swear under oath that I threatened you.’ He zipped up his case, swung it over his shoulders, pulled the blinds to the side and opened the window. A final check confirmed that Tosh was out of sight, probably running his way through the main door. Others would surely follow.
    He swung his feet up and over and dropped to the ground.
    It never failed to amaze him how the mind worked. Even as he ran, his brain fired up in some part of his subconscious, sprang alive somewhere deep within its neural network and, with the logic of a computer, dissected and analysed and spat out the answer.
    By the time he powered up Dougie’s BMW, he thought he had it worked out.

CHAPTER 30
     
    He found her in the back garden, pegging washing to a whirligig.
    The look on her face shifted from shock to surprise, then settled into a strained grin that warned him – here was a woman who could slide a knife deep into the heart of your gut and tell you she loved you. Cracking a bedside lamp against Kelly’s head would have raised about as much emotion as tapping a nail into wood.
    ‘You’ve decided to come back,’ she said.
    Gilchrist followed her into the kitchen where she shoved the clothes basket into the utility cupboard. Before she could turn, he clamped both her arms to her side and pushed her through to the lounge, away from the kitchen with all its cleavers and knives.
    They reached the safe haven of a bookshelf in an alcove to the side of the fireplace. He let his computer case slide from his shoulder to the floor.
    She turned to him, her face an odd mix of surprise and determination, her hands hoisting the hem of her skirt. ‘When did you last have a woman, Andy?’
    Five weeks ago, his mind whispered. But Nance’s heart had not