Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

auction.
    The rusting body of an old MGB GT that sat on the side lawn beside the tarpaulin-covered hulk of another vehicle had Gilchrist’s heart pounding. For a moment he thought it could be the same car Gina Belli identified, but the registration plate dated it in the seventies, years after the hit-and-run. Both cars had not been moved for some time. Grass sprouted around tyres and under the chassis like desert scrub. A dilapidated Ford Sierra huddled half on, half off the pavement, in front of a battered Transit van with taped cardboard where the side window should have been. The only vehicle that looked as if it had moved in the last year was a long-bodied Ford van with the telescopic arm of a cherry picker folded along its roof.
Fairclough Engineering
stood out on its grimy side panels.
    Gilchrist parked his Merc four houses away.
    When he returned, he lifted the corner of the tarpaulin on the car next to the MGB, just enough to identify the badge of an ancient and dilapidated Ford Anglia. No luck there.
    Fairclough’s home was no better. The door had not felt the welcome bristles of a paintbrush for at least ten years, maybe twenty. Square lawns either side of a cracked path looked as if the grass had been torn, not cut. Curtains hung askew in the front window. The door split from the frame with a sticky crack on Gilchrist’s third pressing of the doorbell.
    A pot-bellied man in a grimy T-shirt and baggy sweatpants stood barefoot in the hall. Hair like white wire sprouted either side of a bald head. Swollen bags under bloodshot eyes folded into fat cheeks. The stench of sour milk drifted with him as he stepped forward.
    ‘James Fairclough?’
    ‘Whatever you’re selling,’ he growled, ‘I’m not interested.’
    ‘James Matthew Fairclough?’ Gilchrist fingered his warrant card.
    ‘So?’
    ‘Can I have a word?’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Inside?’
    Fairclough coughed, a hard bark that brought phlegm to his mouth. He pulled a filthy cloth from his pocket, spat into it, then slipped it back into his sweatpants. Maybe outside was better.
    ‘You used to own an MGB GT,’ Gilchrist said.
    ‘Still do.’ Fairclough nodded to the rusting hulk. ‘Want to buy it? I’ll give you a good deal.’
    ‘I’m sure you would,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But you had one before that?’
    ‘I’ve owned a ton of cars. So?’
    ‘A late-sixties model. G reg.’
    ‘Could have.’
    ‘Blaze ring a bell?’
    ‘Don’t hear a thing.’
    Gilchrist waited. Stan had given him the registration number he downloaded from DVLA’s records in Swansea, but Gilchrist did not want to give that out to Fairclough. Not just yet. DVLA had no record of Fairclough’s MGB after ’76, the last owner’s address being somewhere in Stirling, which had him thinking the car had been scrapped.
    ‘Alsatian, was it?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The dog you hit.’
    A tic flickered in Fairclough’s right eyelid. ‘What dog?’ he tried.
    ‘St Andrews.’
    ‘Not been there for yonks.’ Fairclough stepped closer, almost filling the doorway with his clatty bulk. ‘What’s this about, anyways? Dog? What fuckin’ dog?’
    ‘MSN 318G?’ Gilchrist caught the flicker of recognition at the registration number.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The registration number of your blaze-coloured MGB GT.’
    ‘If you know the number, what the fuck’re you asking me for?’
    ‘Because you killed someone in St Andrews while driving that car. You were drunk at the time, so I have to assume it was an accident. But you didn’t report it. That was your mistake—’
    ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Fairclough. ‘I’m going to go inside and have myself a nice cup of tea. Then I’m going to call my solicitor and tell him that some skinny prick in a leather jacket has been slandering my name about, and how much do you think I should sue him for?’ Fairclough tried to smile, but his mouth failed to work the way it should.
    ‘You do that,’ said Gilchrist. ‘And when you’re at it, tell him my name. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist.’ He tried to take some pleasure from watching Fairclough’s face pale, but inside he struggled against the almost overpowering urge to pull him from his house and handcuff him face-down on the front lawn. He had no doubts now about Gina Belli’s psychic abilities. However she had done it, here was the man who had left his brother dying in the rain-soaked streets of St Andrews, who had driven off without offering help,