Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

sea.
    Sixty feet beneath him, waves thrashed the rocks.
    A tooth. Had it come to that? And a jacket. Why had he not told them the truth?
    He remembered the jacket clearly now. Dark blue, a present from Kelly to Jack, a Christmas gift that she seemed to wear more often than Jack. She wore it to the New Year party – dark blue jacket and dark blue jeans. With her blonde hair and even tan, Gilchrist thought he had never before seen anyone as beautiful. Jack had told him that she loved to slip it over whatever she was wearing, to keep out that cold Scottish weather, that dreich and dreary dampness. He smiled at the memory of her American accent tripping over the Scottish words.
    ‘Dreich,’ Jack had said to her, ‘with an eegh not an eek.’
    ‘Dreek,’ she had replied
.
    Gilchrist watched a pair of gulls tumble in the wind, then he fixed his gaze on the grey horizon. Was this what it was all coming down to? Thirty years of a police career sucked down the drain because of a cigarette lighter and a tooth?

CHAPTER 19
     
    He called Gina Belli on the number registered in his mobile’s log, but it rang out. He then tried the St Andrews Bay, managed to confirm that she was still resident and asked the receptionist to pass a message to her to hold the lighter until he collected it.
    Then he went to find Stan.
     
    The jacket was barely recognizable as a piece of clothing. What appeared to be rotting strips of material had been the collar and sleeve and part of the front, the rest having disintegrated to more or less nothing. The name tag had been removed for forensic analysis. But what had looked like a clump of dirt in a pocket, had been a tooth wrapped in the silver foil from a chewing-gum packet.
    Gilchrist remembered it now, the rugby game the weekend before, in the days before gumshields were the norm. Jack had dived at a loose ball and been booted unconscious by a poorly aimed clearance kick. The tooth had cracked above the root, and had to be extracted.
    ‘So where does that put us, boss?’
    ‘Nothing changes, Stan. We still have a murder to solve.’ And even as he said the words, he knew he did not have long to go.
    ‘It’s not looking good for Jack.’ Stan scratched his head. ‘Is it, boss? With the fight outside the Keys, and the assault charge and everything.’
    ‘Jack could take care of himself,’ Gilchrist said, ‘but he would never harm a woman. That you can bet your life on.’
    Stan nodded and turned away, as if unconvinced.
    Who could blame him? ‘I think Kelly was sexually assaulted,’ Gilchrist said.
    Stan turned around. ‘Boss?’
    ‘Think about it, Stan. She was wearing a jacket. When they found her, she was not wearing knickers. Jacket with no knickers? Doesn’t sound right, does it?’
    ‘Maybe she was changing and got interrupted.’
    Gilchrist shook his head. ‘The jacket, Stan.’
    ‘Maybe the killer put it on after she was killed.’
    ‘Why?’
    Stan scratched his head, for once out of ideas.
    ‘And now they have Jack’s tooth, Tosh will try to force-fit the evidence to get the result he wants. And have me fired or demoted at the same time.’ Gilchrist pursed his lips, raked his hair. Or even charged, he thought.
Tosh
. He wished he had never met the man, never confronted him. But looking back, he would have done it all over again.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    Tosh had turned, chest heaving with the anger of the moment. At his feet, a woman sat huddled in a puddle, arms protecting her head, strands of hair striping her face like wet string. Gilchrist had not known if she was shivering from the cold, or from the kicking
.
    ‘What are you doing?’ he asked again
.
    Tosh adjusted his jacket, his muscles bulging. ‘Making an arrest,’ he panted
.
    Gilchrist stepped around him, aware of the animal strength of the man. He reached down, took hold of the woman’s hand, pulled her to her feet. Her clothes clung to her, cheap and sodden. Mascara streaked her cheeks like oil. She could have been sixteen, maybe younger. She ran the back of her hand under her bloodied nose
.
    Gilchrist removed his leather jacket and hung it over her shoulders. ‘Would you like to register a complaint?’
    ‘She’s a fucking hoor, is what she is.’
    She lowered her eyes, shook her head
.
    Gilchrist drove her to the hospital and filed a complaint on her behalf. But she signed herself out the following morning and fled back home to Falkirk. With no formal statement, Gilchrist was stymied. Two