Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

Resources Director. He scanned the phone numbers. One was her office, another her fax, the last one her mobile.
    He flipped open his phone.
    She answered on the fifth ring. ‘Hello?’
    Without introduction, he said, ‘I have one more question.’
    She let out a tired sigh. ‘I didn’t give you my business card so you could call to annoy me every five minutes.’
    ‘What did you use to light the candle?’
    ‘Matches, Inspector. What on earth did you think we used?’
    Somehow, her answer did not surprise him. His sixth sense was screaming at him, telling him she was not speaking the truth. She could have used a cigarette lighter. Like the one they found in the graveyard. ‘How did you meet your husband?’ he tried.
    ‘At a party.’
    ‘At university?’
    ‘In the flat in South Street, if you must know. And I’m not sure I like your manner, Inspector. I think I’m going to register a formal complaint. Fife Constabulary, did you say?’
    Gilchrist hung up, threw his mobile on to the passenger seat and wondered if Jeanette Pennycuick really was lying to him. She had told him she met her husband at a party in her flat. Which meant Geoffrey Pennycuick had lived in St Andrews at the same time. Or had he been up there on holiday, the same way Gilchrist had met his wife, Gail? Or perhaps he’d been a student at the university. He was a consultant at the Western. St Andrews offered medical degrees. Had Pennycuick graduated from St Andrews? And if so, had his wife tried to fudge her answer to his question?
    As a detective, Gilchrist knew that all things were possible. But what was forming in his mind was something ominous. If Jeanette was lying, she had something to hide. Which meant that Geoffrey and Jeanette Pennycuick were now smack dab in the middle of his sights.

CHAPTER 7
     
    It had been two years since Gilchrist last met with Dr Heather Black.
    She smiled as he approached, her arm outstretched.
    ‘Good to see you again, Andy,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘You haven’t changed a bit. Maturing gracefully with age, if anything.’
    Not the politically correct introduction, perhaps, but from memory, Heather Black was not a woman who minced her words. Somehow she looked different, her eyes, he thought – larger, sharper, more focused. Brighter, too. Perhaps it was the subtle use of mascara, the hint of kohl on the lids.
    ‘Good to see you, too,’ he said. ‘You look, eh . . .’
    ‘Stunning?’
    He nodded. Yes, stunning would do.
    ‘Laser surgery last year. Best thing I ever did.’ She chuckled. ‘With three teenage kids and a needy husband, compliments are not something with which I am familiar. If I don’t pay them to myself, who else will? Come on,’ she said. ‘It arrived only half an hour ago.’ She strode along the corridor with the enthusiasm of someone half her age.
    They entered an open office that reminded Gilchrist of a school laboratory. Desks like drafting tables lined the walls. Tower computers, flat computers, oversized off-white metal boxes that held prehistoric motherboards and hard drives lay stacked under the desks, all seemingly interconnected by what Gilchrist could describe only as cable spaghetti. Six white-coated students sat huddled around a monitor screen on which a face of horizontal and vertical grid lines rotated like a spool of thread on a spindle. Barely a glance as Black led Gilchrist beyond them and into an office at the far end.
    A FedEx box lay opened on a grey metal desk, and by a wired window a young Asian woman with black-rimmed spectacles looked up from her computer. Next to her, a familiar skull with its crushed side sat on a raised metal plate like some unfinished sculpture. A camera lay beside it, connected to the computer.
    ‘Yan is one of our more promising students,’ Black said, peering at the monitor. ‘How’s it coming along?’
    ‘Slowly,’ Yan replied. ‘We could use more memory, faster chips, what can I say? Digital tomography always takes like, for ever.’
    ‘Limited budgets. The bugbear of university research. Here,’ she said to him, ‘look at this.’
    Gilchrist followed her to another monitor.
    ‘How long are you in town?’ she asked.
    ‘How long will it take to come up with a visual?’
    ‘Depends,’ she replied. ‘But if you’ve something else to do, you should do it.’ She eyed the screen, clicked the mouse. ‘I’m developing a new technique for fleshing out the skull. It’s more time-consuming, but the results