Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

little to lift his misery.
    He recognized the West Sands and Jack and Kelly in running shorts; Jack’s minuscule and tight, his white thighs rippling with the powerful running muscles of an inside-centre. Beside him, Kelly’s tanned legs looked lean and lithe, her hair ruffled by a strong sea breeze, her hand raised as she pushed it back from her brow.
    He slid his hand into the box again, like a lucky dip, and removed another. This one showed Kelly, Rita and Lorena Cordoba seated in some bar, the table crammed with pint mugs, cigarette packets, filled ashtrays. There seemed to be more beer on the table than in the glasses. He pulled out another photograph and stared at it. Kelly faced the camera, her eyes smiling, her hand to her mouth, time locked in the moment of her blowing a kiss. He felt Annie’s interest in his stillness, and he buried the photograph in among the others.
    Back into the box. This one a black-and-white image of the castle ruins, taken with a low-lying sun, the direction of the shadow telling him that Kelly had shot it in the morning. She had introduced him to the art of photography, given him a camera for his twelfth birthday and explained how to adjust the lens aperture for depth of field, or frame a study for effect.
    ‘Here,’ Annie said, and handed him another.
    Gilchrist stilled. Jack stared back at him, another black-and-white on fast film, the natural light from the window by his side creating a hard contrast that sculpted his face. How young he appeared. It struck Gilchrist then that Jack and Kelly had been killed in their prime, their ambitions, aspirations, all snuffed out at the hands of some callous killers. They had never been given the chance to live, to marry, to have a family, and here he was, browsing through images they should have been looking back on with fondness.
    He cleared his throat. ‘This is quite a collection,’ he said.
    ‘All of her time in St Andrews,’ Annie said. ‘She had more albums of her days at Skidmore. Would you like me to get them?’
    ‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘At the moment, I’m more interested in anything you can show me of her stay in St Andrews. Perhaps her letters?’
    ‘Let me get them for you.’
    Annie left the room, and Gilchrist dug his hands into the photographs, letting them fall from his fingers like playing cards. What had become of Kelly’s camera? Had that been stolen when her flat had been cleared out? Could that have contained a photograph of her last day, perhaps of her last moments, her killer captured on film?
    Annie returned with a shoebox tied with string. ‘Here it is.’ She untied the knot and removed the lid. ‘Tom opened every one in the hope of finding something that could tell us where Kelly had gone, even though he felt as if he was violating her privacy. In the end, after he closed her bank accounts, they just stopped coming.’
    Gilchrist glanced at his watch, surprised to find it was almost eleven o’clock. ‘I’ve kept you up way past your bedtime,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I won’t be able to sleep tonight. In a way I’m pleased you came. It’s difficult to explain. But it’s the not knowing that’s the worst. At least I now know where Kelly is.’
    Gilchrist realized that the subject had not come up. ‘I can arrange for Kelly’s remains to be transported to the States,’ he ventured.
    Annie shook her head. ‘Kelly had nothing but nice things to say about Scotland, and especially St Andrews. Tom’s grandparents came from Scotland. I’m sure Tom would not object to returning Kelly to the home of her forefathers,’ she said. ‘And I would like to make one last trip to Scotland before I die. To say my farewells to Kelly there.’
    Gilchrist nodded, not trusting his voice.
    ‘Can I ask you to arrange that for me, Andy?’
    ‘Of course,’ he said, and cleared his throat. ‘When they took your DNA sample yesterday, did they ask you to identify a computer-generated image?’
    ‘An image? What of?’
    The fact that the police had failed to ask her to identify the computer image formally only injected doubt into his mind of their willingness to assist in solving this crime. Their apparent disinterest in her case troubled him. He had the computer image in his case in the car. But what good would it do showing it to Annie now? It could only upset her, an image of her missing daughter manufactured from death. Not like this box of photographs that provided images of her