Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

kept back-stepping into the night.
    A quick glance behind him left him none the wiser and had the chain whistling past his throat, a warning to keep his eyes to the front, on Megs. Another swing scythed past his thighs, close enough to feel the draught of its passing.
    And with each sweep of the chain, Megs vented her anger.
    ‘Who killed her?’ he shouted back.
    ‘Not me . . .’ Another sweep.
    ‘Why did Dougie do it?’
    ‘She told him she was pregnant . . .’
    Pregnant?
The chain clipped his elbow, sending a jolt like an electric shock to his shoulder, reminding him to keep backing up.
    ‘I see that got your attention.’ She swung the chain at his face, and almost connected. ‘You bastard . . .’
    But he could tell she was tiring, the scything taking its toll, her words punctuated by gasps. He noticed, too, that she was now swinging the chain with one hand, gathering it in with the other, like a climber easing her way up a length of rope to the summit of Gilchrist’s anchor. It would not be long until she reined him in.
    He clung on to the anchor. Its weight fired the muscles in his arm and shoulder.
    If he could swing it back and forward, somehow use it to—
    His heel caught.
    He landed on his back with a force that emptied his lungs and cracked his head on a rock. He struggled to stay conscious. For one confusing moment his body failed to work. Megs seemed to sense this as she widened her stance, readied to swing the chain up and over and down in a crushing death blow.
    The anchor. It was his only hope.
    He lifted it, tried to throw it, but on his back, with his weakened arm, its weight was too much. He gasped in disbelief as it slipped from his grip.
    Megs’ eyes widened at the logic of something that was beyond Gilchrist’s thinking.
    The sound of metal ringing by his ear had him turning his head.
    The chain rattled and scurried over the rocky surface like a burned snake.
    Megs was trying to unwrap the other end from her wrist, her mouth gaping in panic, her arm flapping. The chain seemed to shoot up from the ground, take hold of her arm and jerk her towards him. She belly-flopped by his side, threw an arm over him in the passing. But in the nude, he had nothing to offer.
    He had time only to turn to his side, respond in like fashion. He managed to grab the hem of her skirt, felt the strain in his arm as her body fell over the edge, the shock of pain in his wrist as her deadweight transferred with a sharp snap through the broken bone.
    He could not hold on.
    He pushed himself to his knees in time to see her tumbling off the rock face, her body spinning like a toy, deep into the dark void. Moments later, the sound of her death-splash echoed up at him. He lay still for several seconds, then pushed back from the edge.
    A violent tremor took hold of his body then, chattering his teeth, shaking his limbs. He could not tell if it was from the rush of fear, or from the cold night wind that seemed to rise up the rock face from the quarry pit below.
    Or perhaps it was from the passing of Megs’ cold soul as it rose from the depths to embark on its final journey.

CHAPTER 33
     
    Tosh was all spittled mouth and flushed face.
    ‘You fucking set it all up, Gilchrist. I know you.’
    ‘Give it up, Tosh.’
    ‘Ewart’s telling us you attacked him and his wife—’
    ‘Ex-wife—’
    ‘—Trussed them up and drove them to the quarry.’
    ‘Of course he would.’
    ‘Then you tied a chain around his wife’s wrists and kicked her over the edge.’
    ‘You’re not listening.’
    ‘Oh, I’m listening, all right. I’m listening to Ewart tell me what really happened.’
    ‘If he was telling the truth, why would I not have shoved him over the edge, too?’
    ‘Then you’d have no reason to come back to the office,’ he said, without missing a beat. He closed in on Gilchrist, his face growing impossibly redder. ‘And act all hurt and innocent.’
    ‘The postcards,’ Gilchrist said to him.
    Tosh stumbled. ‘What postcards?’ he tried.
    Gilchrist knew Tosh was bluffing, waiting to see how he would play it. Tosh could not know that Gilchrist knew of his call to the Sheriff’s Office from the Thai restaurant. ‘The postcards Kelly was supposed to have sent from St Andrews and Mexico,’ he said. ‘You need to talk to Bert.’
    ‘Bert? What the fuck’s Bert got to do with any of this?’
    ‘He’s having DNA lifted from the back of the stamps.’
    ‘Who told him to do that?’
    ‘Now you really