Wee Kenny put a hand to his mouth. “That’s fucking honking, so it is.”
Jimmy returned the poker to the brazier, slid grimy fingers across his forehead and licked the sweat from them. He seemed always to be sweating now. He had a touch of the flu. That was all. He hawked phlegm from the back of his throat and spat a gob of green into the brazier where it hit with a hard hiss then bubbled and popped. Then he removed a flat tin from his pocket and fingered tobacco onto a strip of Rizla paper. He evened it out, rolled the paper, ran his tongue along the edge. He pulled the poker from the fire and held it to his face. As he drew on his cigarette, acrid smoke forced his eyes to water, and he slapped the poker back onto the skin.
Wee Kenny jumped, but kept his grip.
Jimmy held his cigarette in one hand, stirred the poker in the brazier with the other. Cigarette smoke shifted in the still air. He half-closed his eyes. The heat from the brazier felt as hot as the Spanish sun. He hated the sun. The sun was no place for a man to sit out in. He stabbed the poker at the coals. Sparks flickered then died in the night air. He felt a sudden need to just get on with it, and drew the tip of the poker across the skin in a curve.
Curling fingers of black smoke rose into the darkness.
“What’s it say, big man?”
For a moment, Jimmy thought of pressing the poker to Wee Kenny’s face. That would shut the fucker up. But he gobbed again and worked in silence, laying the poker on the skin, twisting and branding, taking pleasure from Wee Kenny grimacing from the stench of burning skin and putrescent meat.
When it was done, he eyed his handiwork.
Wee Kenny squinted at it. “Blood-what?” he asked. “Is that how you spell blood?”
“It’s not blood.”
“I thought it said-”
“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” he snarled. “Just wrap the fucker up.”
Wee Kenny pulled a polythene sheet from the box and did as he was ordered.
Jimmy took a final drag, the short stub crimped between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He sucked in hard, felt the dowt’s burning heat, then flicked it into the brazier.
Wee Kenny glanced up at him, then returned his frightened gaze to the poker, staring at the handle sticking out of the red coals, at the tip glowing white-red. He knew Wee Kenny was scared of him. That was the way it should be with goffers. Wee Kenny had seen him in action before, seen him with his brother, Bully. He told Wee Kenny that you could never tell with Bully. But you could never tell with himself either.
You just never knew the minute.
Wee Kenny hugged his gruesome parcel to his chest. “Is that us?”
Jimmy hawked another gob onto the brazier. “That’s it, wee man. Let’s go.”
Chapter 10
GILCHRIST PEERED AT the digital display.
5:01. Bloody hell. He reached for his mobile phone and pressed Connect.
“Gilchrist.” He tried to sound awake, but his voice betrayed him.
“We’ve got another body part, sir. Report’s just come in.”
Gilchrist slid his feet from under the quilt. “Whereabouts?” he growled.
“Near the Golf Museum.”
“On the Old Course?”
“No, sir. By Golf Place.”
Opposite the R &A clubhouse. Not a bunker in sight. “Who’s at the scene?”
“PW Lambert, sir. She called it in about a minute ago.”
Dorothy Lambert. Dot to friends and colleagues. “Which part is it this time?”
“Leg, sir.”
Gilchrist grimaced as Nance’s words came back at him. Watt’s started a sweepstake. “You called anyone else?” he asked.
“Not yet, sir.”
“Have Nance meet me at the scene,” he growled. “And don’t call Watt until…” He glanced at his watch. “… 5:45. On the button.”
“Sir?”
“And get Bert Mackie and his team down there right away. I’m on my way.”
He stumbled to the bathroom. Rain battered the frosted glass. He brushed his teeth, felt his stomach lurch, and coughed into the sink. Why had he let Jack persuade him to have a half? Just the one. But one always led to two. He tried to convince himself that he’d had a few to keep Jack company, get his mind off Chloe. At that thought he coughed again, spat out a dribble of bile. Jesus. Was he really about to see Chloe’s hacked off leg?
He stared at the mirror, ran a hand over his face, felt the hard brush of stubble on his chin. Slivers of grey pressed by his ears. He tried a smile. It was a toss-up as to which was whiter, his teeth or his face. The bags under his eyes looked as dark as mascara. If he ever thought he was a looker, those days were gone. Maybe it was just as well Gail had found Harry. And how could he blame Beth for running off to Spain?
He shaved and showered, and as he stepped into a brisk east coast breeze he made a promise to himself that soon he would retire. He would take up photography again, be more serious this time, maybe turn the front room into a gallery, make a few bob selling framed photographs, just enough to supplement his pension. Much more sensible than running around at all hours of the day and night looking at body parts.
Twenty minutes later, he parked his Merc by the side of the R &A Clubhouse. The rain had stopped, the air as fresh and cold as ice. He removed a set of coveralls and gloves from the boot, put his head down, and marched into the wind. Winter on the Fife coast could be freezing cold. That morning was making no exceptions.
Ahead, the lone figure of PW Lambert stood as still as a silhouette by the dulled light from a streetlamp on the opposite side of the road, the area devoid of police tape and cones.
Gilchrist reached her. “Where is it, Dot?”
“This way, sir.”
He thought her voice possessed a hint of a shiver, from the cold or her gruesome find, he could not say. She pointed to a rolled sheet of plastic that lay just off the back of the path, then stepped to the side, as if in deference to his seniority. The plastic sheet had split open to reveal the knee joint and a length of white calf.
Gilchrist slipped on his coveralls and gloves.
He eased back the sheet to reveal the painted toenails of a left foot. Rain dotted the plastic’s grimy surface, but from the length of it, Gilchrist could tell it was a complete leg. He grimaced. Left leg.
Watt had won the sweepstake. A guess? Or had he known?
Gilchrist promised himself he would tear it out of him.
The package had been dumped on the grass next to the putting green, and by the way it had burst open Gilchrist would bet a month’s wages that it had been thrown there.
Tossed from a passing car?
“How did you find it?” he asked Lambert.
“It was just lying there, sir.”
“Which way were you walking?”
She glanced over his shoulder, away from the beach, past the R &A Clubhouse. “From that way, sir.”
“Did you walk along the Links Road?”
“Yes, sir.”
“From the pathway by the Jigger Inn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, from the Jigger it would take you what, five to ten minutes to walk from there to here?”
“About that, sir. Yes.”
“During which time this road”-he swept an arm from the seafront to Auchterlonies, down past Tom Morris’s to the house at the end of the terrace that overlooked the eighteenth tee-“would have been in your view.”
“Yes, sir.”
It would have been dark, too. But still…
“Did you see anyone?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Any cars? Anything?”
“Sorry, sir. I was just walking past when I happened to look over and see it.”
Gilchrist nodded. At night, this was a quiet part of town. No reason for anyone to walk or drive that way, unless they were heading to the beach. And who would do that in the pre-dawn hours of a winter morning? He turned to The Scores, the road that ran uphill at right angles to Golf Place. Hotels lined one side and overlooked an expanse of grass that fell away to rocks and the beach below. Martyrs’ Monument stood dark and tall as a silent sentinel.