Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

bumper.’
    Ewart groaned.
    Gilchrist’s effort to free himself, twist his body to reach the rope, then hold that position while his fingers worked the knot behind his back had almost exhausted him. It had taken him the best part of an hour to free his ankles, and the pain when he at last straightened his legs brought tears to his eyes. He then worked the rope around his wrists, slackening it enough to let him bump and shuffle his tied hands under his backside. Slipping his legs free had almost cost him a broken wrist, but he persevered, and when he slid the rope from his head and pulled the gag from his mouth, he had cried with relief.
    The anchor felt like it was doubling in weight, and his legs begged him to sit. If they put up a fight now, he knew he could not take on both of them. Perhaps not even one.
    Ewart pressed his hands to the ground.
    ‘Stay put,’ Gilchrist ordered.
    Ewart spat out blood, pushed himself to his knees.
    Gilchrist brought the anchor down on his shoulder with a force that broke bone.
    Ewart slumped to the ground, moaning as he gripped his shoulder.
    ‘I’ll break the other one if you make a move.’ He flashed a look at Megs. ‘Now tie him up.’
    Silent, Megs reached for the chain and pulled it rattling over the rim of the boot where it slinked to the ground like a living thing.
    ‘How do you expect me to tie him up with this?’ she complained.
    Here we go again, Gilchrist thought. He needed to be careful around Megs. ‘Just wrap it round him and loop it to the bumper.’
    She gathered in the chain. ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ she pleaded. ‘I only mailed the postcard from—’
    ‘Shut up.’ Ewart glared up at her.
    ‘It’s all your fault—’
    ‘For God’s sake, woman—’
    ‘If you’d kept your cock in your pants, none of it would have happened—’
    ‘Don’t say anything—’
    ‘You didn’t have to get rid of her. You didn’t have—’
    ‘Shut up—’
    ‘—to kill her.’
    Gilchrist thudded the anchor into the ground.
    Ewart and Megs flinched into silence.
    ‘Tie him up. Just get on with it.’ If Gilchrist had not been so exhausted, he could have listened to them argue all night, each accusation bringing him one step closer to the truth of what happened all those years ago. And standing naked in the cold night air did not help. A tremor gripped his legs, and a shiver rattled his upper body.
    Megs laid the chain on the ground, doubled it over. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’
    ‘That’s for others to decide,’ he said.
    She pulled a doubled-up length of chain to her, moved in front of Ewart, her back to Gilchrist. ‘I don’t want to go to prison,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’
    ‘You’ll get a fair trial.’
    She stood still for a moment, as if working out the logic of his words, then twisted her hand around and through a length of doubled-up chain and, like a hammer-thrower at the moment of release, spun around and swung it at Gilchrist in a slicing arc.
    Gilchrist had time only to lift his arm as the chain whistled towards his head like a scythe. He cried out in pain as a heavy blow caught him on the wrist, and back-stepped in panic as a second caught his other arm. It was all he could do to hold on to the anchor. He backed up, stumbled, fell to the ground on his back, managed to roll to the side as the chain thudded by his head with a force that brought up dirt and grass.
    Up and over and on to his feet, one hand dangling useless by his side, the other gripping the anchor for all he was worth.
    He pulled back in time to miss another scything blow. And another.
    The next one caught him on his knee, sending a flash of pain the length of his body.
    Any thoughts of making a run for it were killed there and then.
    She came at him like a crazed demon, hissing and spitting and scything.
    ‘I warned Dougie about you . . .’
    Gilchrist backed away, stumbling over rock and grass in his bare feet, just managing to stay out of reach of the whistling chain. If he tripped, it was over.
    ‘But would he listen . . . ?’
    The chain scythed left then right.
    ‘Would he fuck . . .’
    He stepped to the right. Megs cut him off.
    Then to the left. She did likewise.
    But he saw some logic in her missing swings. She was backing him up, guiding him to some point where he would be trapped, left to face the onslaught head on, his back to the wall, so to speak. It did not matter that her blows were not connecting. It mattered only that he