Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

and tightened until the light went out of his world and he felt the hard wooden seat of a chair hit the back of his thighs.
    ‘Boss?’
    Gilchrist waited until Stan’s face reappeared in a shimmering haze. ‘Fingerprints?’
    Stan nodded. ‘Plain old-fashioned fingerprints.’
    Gilchrist dabbed his eyes, sniffed his running nose. ‘We did it,’ he whispered. ‘We got him, Stan. We got him.’
    ‘Yes,’ Stan said. ‘You did—’
    ‘What did I tell you?’
    The American accent had Stan and Gilchrist turning their heads like a choreographed act. Gilchrist thought Gina Belli looked softer somehow, as if the passing of a few days had helped her shed an outer layer of skin. As she neared, he thought
less severe
might be more appropriate. She surprised him by leaning forward and pecking him once, twice on the cheeks, leaving behind a fragrance that teased his senses.
    ‘Believe me now?’ she asked.
    Upright again, she removed a Marlboro and lit it up, her penetrating stare never wavering from his, as if she were trying to speak to him through her psychic thoughts. She took a couple of deep breaths, exhaled from the side of her mouth.
    ‘Here,’ she said to him, ‘you look as if you could use this.’
    He inhaled, hard, the heat and acrid taste hitting his throat with a force that had him coughing. But he stuck it out, fought off the dizziness that threatened to overpower him and took another draw, pulling in for all he was worth.
    She grinned at him as she lit another. ‘I know you better than you know yourself,’ she said, and removed a small blackened metal case from her bag and handed it to him.
    Jack’s cigarette lighter. Gilchrist nodded, half-closing his eyes against the nip of smoke, an overwhelming sense of relaxation flowing through his being. If he closed his eyes, he could be floating through air. He took another draw, long and deep and hot.
    ‘Maybe,’ he said to her. ‘Maybe you do.’
     
    Stan and Gilchrist took the CalMac ferry to Rothesay, and found the flat in Bishop Street without any difficulty. They reached the top floor of the refurbished tenement building and confirmed the number on the door.
    Gilchrist shivered off the cold air and gave a hard rap.
    It took a full minute before the door opened. A stocky woman eyed them with suspicion from beneath a mass of blonde tousled hair. She tightened her bathrobe.
    ‘Mrs Clarke?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘We understand a Mr James Fairclough is living here.’
    ‘Says who?’
    Gilchrist flashed his warrant card, but she showed no interest in it. ‘We need to talk to him. Is he here?’
    ‘Naw, he’s no.’
    The smell of bacon drifted along the hallway, followed by the clatter of a metal pan sliding on a stove.
    ‘Are you alone?’
    ‘What if I am?’
    That was enough for Gilchrist. He pushed her aside, marched down the hallway and burst into the kitchen. Fairclough jerked his head in surprise, and Gilchrist managed to pin him to the wall before he could swing the frying pan at him. Fat and bacon strips splashed the tiles and dripped on to the cheap linoleum floor.
    ‘A dog,’ Gilchrist growled into Fairclough’s ear. ‘That’s what you compared my brother to.’ He spun Fairclough around, pressed his face against the wall with more force than was necessary and twisted his arm up his back, hard. ‘A
dog.’
    Fairclough gasped from the pain.
    ‘The good news for you is that Betson’s out of intensive care.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘You know who,’ Gilchrist said, and cuffed Fairclough’s wrists with a hard click. ‘Betson’s going to live,’ he growled.
    ‘My arm—’
    ‘So you’re only going to be charged with the one—’
    ‘Boss.’
    Gilchrist gave Fairclough’s arms a parting jerk up his back, heard the hard crunch of gristle tearing and stood aside as Fairclough slid down the wall with a groan and slumped to the floor. For a moment, Gilchrist puzzled as to why Stan’s face was so tight. From the hallway, Fairclough’s secretary stared at the scene with white eyes. ‘Read this fat piece of shite his rights,’ he said to Stan, and bruised his way from the kitchen.
    Outside, wet streets sparkled like glass. The sky shone blue-white.
    Gilchrist raked his hair. His chest heaved as if he had sprinted a hundred yards. He removed a packet of Marlboro, took one and had to steady one hand against the other as he raised his lighter to it.
    He inhaled, long and hard, held it in his lungs as he felt its heat flood through him, its