Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

Lane.
    ‘Sorry I’m late.’ She went on tiptoe to give Jack a peck on the cheek.
    ‘Didn’t know we were in a hurry,’ Jack said, and pulled crumpled notes from his jeans. ‘What’re you having?’
    ‘The usual.’
    ‘Can’t persuade you?’
    She shook her head. ‘Just bottled water. None of that fizzy stuff. And no ice.’
    ‘Very sensible,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Wish I had your willpower.’
    ‘Both my parents were alcoholics. So I keep well away from it.’
    He thought that standing in a pub, surrounded by drink, soaking in the alcohol-fuelled atmosphere contradicted her stance. And he noticed the past tense –
were alcoholics
– which had him thinking her parents were dead. While Jack pressed through the crowd to the bar, he asked, ‘So, how long have you known Jack?’
    ‘Several years, but we’ve only been together for about four months.’
    Gilchrist nodded, and wondered why Jack had never mentioned her in all that time.
    ‘Jack’s upset,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen him cry before.’
    ‘Excuse me?’
    She searched the bar, as if ensuring Jack was out of earshot. ‘His mother,’ she said. ‘She was very young.’
    ‘Forty-six,’ he agreed.
    ‘I lost one of my sisters to cancer,’ she went on, her voice as soft as a whisper. ‘I still can’t believe it. She was much too young to have died.’
    Gilchrist held her gaze. Her eyes were the lightest blue, like a frosted sky on a winter morning. ‘How old was she?’ he asked.
    ‘Twenty-two.’
    Twenty-two
. Kara’s sister had been around the same age as the girl in McLeod’s grave when she had been murdered. And older than Gilchrist’s brother when he had been killed in a hit-and-run. And he saw that he and Kara must have shared the same emotional pain, probably even the same tear-filled dreams. He wondered what life would have been like if his brother had not been killed, and how his own mother had put a brave face on it and struggled through the remainder of her life. And that thought made him realize something more troubling than an unsolved murder.
    Had the girl’s parents been alive when she disappeared? Had they lived every year, every month, every moment since, torturing themselves over what might have happened to their daughter? And if they had been alive then, were they alive now?
    ‘Here we go, Andy.’
    He took hold of a low-ball glass that glowed golden and chinked with lumps of ice.
    ‘And don’t try and tell me whisky’s a warm drink. That’s just another example of trying to fit everyone into the same mould. This is the way it should be taken. Just like the Russians drink their vodka. Ice cold. Even better straight from the freezer.’
    ‘I thought you drank Pernod.’
    ‘Just a phase we go through,’ said Jack, and glanced at Kara as if seeking approval. ‘We’re Scottish. So we should be drinking Scotch. Right?’
    ‘Becoming patriotic in your old age?’ Kara said.
    ‘And proud of it.’ Jack lifted his glass to Gilchrist. ‘To Mum,’ then to Kara, who held hers up in silent salutation.
    ‘And to the memory of the good times we used to share,’ Gilchrist said, and felt his throat burn as the whisky wormed into his system. He watched Kara ease her tumbler towards Jack’s, then take a sip, and something in her hesitancy warned him that all was not well between Kara and his son.
    Gilchrist and Jack spent the next hour reminiscing, with Kara silent on the sidelines. They touched on life together as a family, Gilchrist recalling the fight Jack and Maureen had over who was going to sit first on the swan potty, and how in the end they sat on it together. The sight of their two little faces straining in unison had sent Gilchrist into fits. Looking back, he could see that, even then, Gail had begun to lose her sense of humour. The swan potty had disappeared not long after.
    Gilchrist revealed to Jack how, on the first night after Gail’s departure, he had ended up drunk and flat on his back in the Whey Pat Tavern, where his relationship with Gail had first begun, and how he had struggled to hold back his tears. He was surprised when Jack told him Gail had cried, too. And throughout their reminiscing, Gilchrist was conscious of Kara being sidelined. She seemed to brighten when he suggested they return home, and after Jack swallowed his third one-for-the-road, they set off.
    Back home, Jack did his best to finish The Macallan 10 before midnight, and all the while Kara sat on the edge of the sofa,