Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

immobile, and stared at him in silence. In the shadowed lighting the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips added a sexual charge to the macabre image. He returned her stare, not sure what he had just witnessed, and even less sure of what he was expected to do next.
    She broke the spell by pushing her hands through her hair. ‘I’ve not been altogether honest with you,’ she said.
    ‘Well, that’s a start.’
    She lit another cigarette, inhaled as if her life depended on it, then sat on the edge of the bed. She eyed him through a shadowed cloud of smoke. ‘I received a name.’
    ‘Voices whispering in your ear?’
    ‘In my head.’ Her cheeks pulled in for another draw. ‘It’s the same name.’
    ‘The same name as what?’
    ‘As before. Only this time stronger.’
    ‘Louder?’
    ‘No. Clearer.’
    ‘You’ve not been altogether honest with me?’
    She looked away from him then, her gaze settling on some spot on the wall, as if she could see beyond it and was counting the night stars. ‘I read the accident report earlier. Worked through the cold files.’ She faced him. ‘I also visited the scene of the accident.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Four or five months back.’
    About the same time she approached Gail, he thought.
    ‘That’s when the name came to me.’ She drew in, inhaled hard and swallowed. ‘It was only a whisper.’ Her breath rushed in a white fog. ‘I couldn’t understand what I was hearing. I didn’t even think it was a name. It sounded like
fake love
.’ She grinned up at him. ‘How often is that true?’ She pushed herself to her feet, found her empty whisky glass, took another draw and stubbed the stem into it. Then she walked to the window. With her back to him, she stood silhouetted against the night beyond.
    Gilchrist waited.
    ‘So I started digging.’
    ‘Digging?’
    ‘Research. I write biographies. It’s what I’m good at.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought I was on to something. I could feel it. I just didn’t know what it meant. So I tried another route. I contacted DVLA in Swansea, eventually found someone who would search their database for me—’
    ‘Who?’
    She turned from the window and faced him. ‘That’s not important.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I wanted a printout of the names and addresses of all owners of MGs registered in the UK for 1969.’
    Gilchrist felt his eyebrows lift. ‘That’s quite a task.’
    ‘It was,’ she agreed. ‘It took me five weeks to get it, and four days to go through it.’
    ‘What were you looking for?’
    She shrugged again. ‘Anything that came to me.’ She strode to the bedside table, removed a fresh packet of Marlboro from her handbag. She stripped it open, removed one and lit it with her diamond-studded lighter. Watching her addiction on full display seemed to douse Gilchrist’s own urges. Or maybe his dread of the outcome of her psychic show was killing his desire.
    She sat on the bed again, closed her eyes and exhaled. ‘When I started going through the printout, I realized that the
fake love
I’d been hearing was really a name. I found seven in total.’ She glanced at the writing desk. ‘I wrote them down.’
    Gilchrist thought he saw where she was going. ‘And one of these seven names came back to you tonight. Only clearer.’
    ‘Yes.’
    He was almost afraid to ask. ‘Whose name?’ he tried.
    She looked up at him, and something in the shape of her mouth, the glint in her eyes, told him she had not wanted to go this far.
    ‘It’s the name of the driver.’
    Hearing those words had him struggling with the urge to walk to the door and leave her to play her silly psychic games. But he stood rooted. After all, was this not what he had hoped for, that her psychic powers might somehow give him a lead? But he had not thought it through, had not imagined what she could give him. Not the name of the driver.
    He had not expected that.
    ‘On the writing desk,’ she said, ‘next to the lighter, is the list of seven names. I’ve underlined the name that came to me tonight.’
    Gilchrist strode to the desk, snatched up the sheet.
    James Matthew Fairclough
.
    He scanned the other names, mostly close variations.
    Only one was underlined.
    James Matthew Fairclough
.
    He scowled down at her, could not keep the sarcasm from his voice. ‘You expect me to believe this?’ he said. ‘When the entire police force failed to come up with any suspects in their investigation?’
    She took a long draw. ‘We’re going back