Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

thirty-plus years here. Forensic science was in its infancy. The east coast of Scotland was a long way from Scotland Yard, if you get my drift. Fairclough was drunk when he killed your brother. Way over the limit.’
    ‘Who have you shown this to?’
    ‘Only you.’
    He glared at the name again, his logic screaming that it was all a con, a way for the psychic author, Gina Belli, to land another book on the
New York Times
bestseller list. It would not be the first time he had crossed someone intent on conning him for some ulterior motive.
    He stared into eyes as black as oil. ‘This is unbelievable.’
    ‘I won’t argue with you on that.’ She inhaled long and deep, then let it out with a rush. ‘But I’m seldom wrong.’
    ‘Which also means you’re not always right.’
    ‘But I’m right on this one.’
    Silent, Gilchrist waited.
    ‘I knew you would be hard to convince,’ she went on. ‘So I dug deeper still.’
    Now they were coming down to it, he knew, her moment of dishonesty.
    ‘There was a passenger in the car.’
    Passenger?
Even as the word chilled his skin, his logic was firing two steps ahead, his nervous system twitching at the sudden possibility of a witness to the accident. ‘You mean, a woman?’
    ‘You never miss a trick.’
    ‘Fairclough’s girlfriend?’
    ‘Ex-girlfriend.’
    ‘You’ve spoken to her?’
    ‘I went to see her.’
    ‘You found her address? How?’
    ‘Don’t look so incredulous. Once I had Fairclough’s name, the rest was easy.’
    ‘You’re not answering my question.’
    ‘My father was wealthy,’ she said. ‘When he died, he left me a fortune. I don’t need to write for a living. I write because it’s what I want to do.’ Her dark eyes smouldered. ‘And it’s worth it just to experience moments like this.’
    ‘But how?’ he pleaded.
    ‘Money makes people search databases,’ she said. ‘And it makes people talk.’
    Was that all it took, money? The man who had killed his brother had spent all these years free because the police could not throw enough money at the case? Was that what had happened?
    ‘And Fairclough’s passenger will come forward only through me,’ she continued. ‘No one else. She has lived with the memory of that accident for thirty-five years. She can live with it for the rest of her life if she has to.’
    ‘Why doesn’t she?’
    ‘She’s dying. Motor neurone disease.’ She blew a cloud of smoke at him. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t die before she talks to you.’

CHAPTER 10
     
    Sleep eluded Gilchrist.
    Images came at him as speeding cars, broken bodies, limbs splayed over damp cobblestones, as if his mind was a screen on which all accidents were replayed. If Gina’s information was correct, then he had the name of the hit-and-run driver who had killed his brother and since managed to evade every attempt by the police to track him down.
    After thirty-five years.
    He pulled himself from bed and stumbled along the hallway in the darkness. In the front room, he opened his notebook and read the name one more time, to reassure himself that it was still there, that he was not mistaken.
    James Matthew Fairclough
.
    Printed in pencil. Each letter gone over half a dozen times.
    James Matthew Fairclough
.
    He would have Stan dig up a current address. But in the meantime, it was the passenger, the sole witness to the accident, he needed to speak to.

     
    Pittenweem was one of those fishing villages that featured in holiday postcards and the occasional restaurant menu –
Fresh Pittenweem Haddock Caught Daily
. He turned off the A917 and made his way on to Abbey Wall Road, driving downhill to a picturesque row of houses that looked quaint and fresh-painted and which fronted the sheltered harbour.
    That morning, a sea haar dampened the scene.
    He parked his Merc and shivered off a chilling sea breeze.
    The call from Kara surprised him.
    ‘I don’t know who else to talk to,’ she began. ‘I’ve tried talking to Jack about it. But you know what he’s like. Stubborn as they come. Even when he knows he’s wrong.’
    ‘And is he wrong?’
    A pause, then, ‘He’s back on drugs.’
    The words were spoken so quietly that he almost never caught them. ‘How long?’
    ‘A few months. After we started going out.’
    Gilchrist felt his breath leave him. He faced the sea. The haar was lifting, giving a bleak glimpse of swelling waves. In the harbour to his side, anchored boats rocked and creaked as if stirring alive.
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