Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

at that thought.
The end of his life
. Or more correctly,
part
of it. Gail was now gone, and he worried he would spend even less time with Jack and Maureen. He forced his mind to focus on the present, and eyed the forensic tent.
    ‘So, Stan, it looks like we’re dealing with a thirty-five-year-old murder.’
    ‘Bit soon to jump to that conclusion, boss. The body could have been buried any time since the burial of Hamish McLeod.’
    Gilchrist zipped up his coveralls. ‘But why was it buried in
that
grave, Stan? Have you asked yourself that?’
    Stan scratched his head. ‘It’s difficult to imagine a more perfect place to hide a body. I mean, who would look for it in a cemetery?’
    ‘But why that particular grave?’
    ‘Boss?’
    ‘Because it would have been
fresh
, that’s why. And if there is no coffin, there was no funeral. And if there was no funeral, no one knew about it. Therefore, we have a thirty-five-year-old murder on our hands.’ He stared off to the edge of the cemetery and the open fields beyond. Scotland in the sun was like no other place on earth. But its blue skies offered only false promise of a fine day. ‘Not exactly thriving, is it, Stan?’
    ‘Dead centre of town, boss.’
    Gilchrist almost smiled. ‘Ever been here before, Stan? In this cemetery?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Neither have I. Which makes me think neither have a lot of people. So start off by making a list of all those who attended McLeod’s funeral.’
    Stan livened. ‘I’ll get on to it, boss. Door to door, discreet like, see who knows what,’ he said as he walked away.
    From the outside, the
Incitent
gave the impression it would be cramped and dark, but the interior was suffused with a yellow light that seemed to lend a reverential quietness to the scene. Gilchrist counted four transparent plastic bags next to the open grave, each filled with bones the colour of mud. A row of larger plastic bags, full of earth, lined one wall like in a garden centre. A camera sat on a silver metal case. Four Scenes of Crime Officers worked in silence, while Gilchrist watched.
    One SOCO sifted through a heap of soil at the side of the grave. Another placed more muddied bones into a fifth bag, while two more scraped soil from the bottom of the opened grave with the focused intensity of biblical archaeologists. As Gilchrist stepped forward, one of the SOCOs in the grave looked up. Despite coveralls that hid his balding pate and made his face look round and tight, Gilchrist recognized Bert Mackie, not a SOCO but the police pathologist from Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.
    ‘Any luck, Bert?’ he asked.
    ‘I expect you mean have we found any items of identification?’
    ‘That’ll do for starters.’
    ‘Afraid not, Andy. All we have at the moment are bones. No watches, no jewellery. And the clothes have deteriorated to rags. Looks like she was wearing some sort of nylon jacket, but it’s difficult to say at this stage—’
    ‘She?’
    ‘The bra gives the game away. Unless
he
was trying it on for size. Interestingly,’ he added, scowling at a muddied bone, scraping at it with his thumb, ‘she appears not to have been wearing any knickers.’
    ‘Could they have rotted away?’
    ‘I’d expect to find traces of elastic.’ Mackie shook his head. ‘None so far.’
    Gilchrist wondered if that was important. Why wear a bra, but no knickers? Had she just had sex, perhaps a
quickie
, and something was said that ended in violence? Had she been raped, then murdered? Or did she simply like to walk around feeling free and airy, so to speak? ‘Any ideas on her age?’ he asked.
    ‘I’ll be in a better position to confirm that after a full postmortem, of course. But if I was pushed, I’d say late teens, early twenties.’
    Gilchrist squatted by the open grave. ‘This no knickers thing,’ he persisted. ‘Any thoughts?’
    ‘Sex is always a grand motive,’ said Mackie. ‘He wants some. She doesn’t. He’s drunk. They argue. Turns into a fight, and before you know where you are he has a fit and batters her to death.’
    Mackie’s explanation seemed brutally simplified, but Gilchrist had heard of less compelling motives. ‘Too early to have a stab at cause of death?’
    ‘Neil,’ snapped Mackie. ‘Skull.’
    The SOCO by the plastic bags removed a dirty-brown skull from one of them, which he handed to Mackie as if passing over the Crown jewels.
    Mackie took it without a word, and Gilchrist noted that the teeth looked perfect. The