Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

to identify these temporary lodgers, students who may have known about a missing woman, perhaps tell him something that might help shed some light on her disappearance. ‘Denise?’ he offered. ‘Alyson?’
    ‘No idea. None of them stayed long. Cramped our style too much.’
    He gave her five seconds or so, hoping a name might emerge, but when she stared at him in anticipation of his next question, he said, ‘Your style?’
    ‘Small flat with small bedrooms, and not enough privacy to get up to what any normal teenager in the sixties got up to, if you know what I mean.’ She smirked. ‘More tea?’
    He pushed his mug forward. ‘Were you there when Jeanette met Geoffrey?’
    ‘There?’
    ‘The flat in South Street.’
    ‘Jeanette’d been with Geoffrey on and off for years. Even before they went to St Andrews.’
    ‘On and off?’
    ‘Rich little spoiled kids, both of them. Always had to have everything their own way. Used to drive me nuts. One minute they were together, the next with someone else. Sometimes it got to the stage that when I came back to the flat I didn’t know who’d be sleeping with Jeanette. She was a looker, I’ll give her that. Men fell over themselves trying to date her. Fancied her like mad. Especially when she had a tan. It was her Mediterranean looks: dark hair, dark eyes. Great skin.’
    Gilchrist stilled. ‘Italian-looking?’
    She chuckled. ‘By the look on your face I’d say I’ve surprised you.’
    ‘I spoke with Jeanette this morning,’ he said. ‘She didn’t give the impression of, how should I say it, putting it about.’
    ‘Well, she did. And so did he, let me tell you.’
    Gilchrist saddened. Somehow that comment turned his mind back to Gail, and to their first sexual liaison in the Valley of Sin. His wife-to-be’s libido had surprised him at the time. But he supposed it should not have. In the sixties and seventies, pre-AIDS, the youth of the day had an almost blasé attitude towards casual sex. Not only were Jeanette and Geoffrey Pennycuick putting it around, but so was almost every other sexually mature youngster in the British Isles and beyond. He forced thoughts of Gail away.
    ‘Can you remember the names of some of the women Geoffrey went around with?’
    ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But he would always make a point of trying it on with some of the others who shared our flat. When Jeanette found out, she would toss their stuff out in the street.’
    It struck Gilchrist that perhaps Geoffrey Pennycuick kept his affairs close to home just to inflict greater pain on Jeanette. Betty interrupted his thoughts by saying, ‘So, tell me. How is the bitch anyway?’
    ‘She said you and she hadn’t spoken for five years.’
    ‘She tell you why?’
    ‘Something to do with you trying to start an affair with Geoffrey.’
    Her porcelain mug cracked the top of the table with a suddenness that made him jump. Tea splashed on to the oak surface. He watched a flush of sorts work its way from behind her eyes, shift across her face and disappear in a white line at her lips.
    ‘I take it she wasn’t telling the truth,’ he offered.
    She dabbed at the spilled tea with her napkin. ‘Twisted, stuck-up bitch,’ she hissed.
    Silent, Gilchrist waited.
    She rolled her napkin into a tight ball. ‘Geoffrey can’t keep his cock in his pants,’ she said. ‘Never could. Never will. But that stupid stuck-up bitch refuses to see that.’ She grinned, and the anger of moments earlier vanished. ‘He had a thing for me at St Andrews. But I shouldn’t get worked up about it. Geoffrey had a thing for
everyone
at university. Especially himself.’
    ‘Fancied himself, did he?’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘
Loved
himself. He was a handsome devil back then, I’ll give him that. Girls used to have orgasms at the mention of his name.’
    ‘Back then?’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘You said,
back then
.’ Gilchrist sipped his coffee. ‘Which I suppose means you don’t think he’s handsome now.’
    ‘Wouldn’t let him touch me with a ten-foot bargepole.’
    Gilchrist chuckled. ‘Haven’t heard that one before.’
    ‘Mae West said that.’
    ‘So, you didn’t . . .’
    ‘Here’s what happened.’ She leaned across the table, and Gilchrist sensed that he was being made privy to some rare secret. ‘Jeanette’s never trusted her man. And she’s every right not to. Geoffrey’s a serial shagger. For some reason, Jeanette doesn’t want to challenge him. She knew he always had