Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

shown himself to be soft-mouthed and placid. All he had wanted was his morning walk, and he now lay asleep outside on the front step, a warning to anyone who threatened his master’s sister.
    Nor was Linda what Gilchrist had imagined. Grey-haired and white-toothed, she greeted him from her wheelchair with a firm handshake that defied her frail appearance.
    ‘Rabbie’s telling me you’re a nuisance,’ she said to Gilchrist.
    ‘I thought he was talking about Tam.’
    She smiled for an instant. A flash of sunshine. ‘Would you like a cuppa?’
    Gilchrist was about to say he was all coffeed out until it struck him that this was her way of keeping Rabbie from listening to whatever he had to ask. ‘Just the one, then. Tea. Milk, no sugar,’ he said.
    ‘And I’ll have my usual, Rabbie. But I’ve no fresh milk.’
    Rabbie slid from the room without complaint.
    Gilchrist heard the front door open, Rabbie’s words of encouragement to Tam, then a gentle click as the door shut. ‘He looks after you well,’ he said.
    ‘As well as can be expected at this stage. But I don’t think he’ll be up for what’s coming,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to get a nurse in. To do the personal things.’
    Gilchrist lowered his gaze. He wondered how he would feel if he knew he was going to die. Oh, we are all going to die. There is no getting around that. But to know
how
you are going to die, and that it is only a matter of time, that must be a hard thing to acknowledge.
    ‘So why are you here?’
    Gilchrist looked into eyes that he saw had once sparkled with the promise of life. Now they glistened with the knowledge that the promise was dashed, that life was nothing more than a routine of wakening and sleeping until one day you didn’t waken.
    ‘I met Gina Belli,’ he said.
    At the mention of her name, something seemed to snuff the light in Linda’s eyes. ‘She told me you might come.’
    ‘Did she tell you why?’
    ‘Only that you had a vested interest. Whatever she meant by that.’
    Annoyance gripped Gilchrist’s lips. Gina had veiled the truth. Linda Melrose did not know Jack had been his brother. He decided to edge into it, unsure of how much to disclose.
    ‘You were a passenger in a car,’ he said. ‘What do you remember?’
    She faced the window again, and Gilchrist felt his own gaze following, as if the accident was about to be replayed in the reflective sheen of the glass.
    ‘Not much,’ she whispered.
    Gilchrist waited.
    Seconds turned to minutes. Still, she stared out the window.
    Then her shoulders heaved, and her body seemed to rise from her chair before settling once more into immobility. ‘It was raining,’ she whispered.
    Gilchrist strained to catch her words.
    ‘We’d been drinking.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘Me and Jim.’
    Something akin to electricity ran the length of Gilchrist’s spine.
    ‘Legless, I was,’ Linda looked up with a defeated smile. ‘I’ve not had a drink for ten years, and here I am. Legless again.’
    Gilchrist tried to offer a smile, but did not pull it off.
    ‘Don’t know what I saw in him. Jim wasn’t my type, really. Drove a fancy sports car. Just sitting in it made me feel special. Jim was no looker. But when you’re young and stupid and drunk mostly every weekend, who cares? I was on the pill. We all were. What did it matter?’
    ‘It was raining, you said.’
    She looked to the window, as if searching for her memories. ‘I was wearing a mini-skirt.’ She shook her head. ‘How on earth we wore them I’ll never know. I looked good, though.’ She slapped her legs. ‘Nice and shapely they used to be. I’ve always wondered, if the style had been different, would that night have turned out different, too?’
    ‘I’m not sure I follow.’
    ‘That’s what distracted Jim. My legs. He couldn’t keep his hands off them. I told him to stop, keep his eyes on the road, he’d get what he wanted later.’ She pressed her hand to her mouth as tears filled her eyes. ‘Listen to me, I sound like a wee hairy. But I wasn’t. Honest to God, I wasn’t. I was just drunk.’ She dabbed the corners of her eyes, tucked loose hair behind an ear. ‘I never saw him.’
    Gilchrist’s mind sprang alert. ‘Saw who?’
    ‘The man Jim hit. I only heard it. A right hard thud, so it was. Jim stopped the car. He just sat there, gripping the wheel, looking in the mirror. He looked scared.’
    ‘You never saw the man he hit?’
    She shook her head. ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I was