Gilchrist eyed the hotel windows. Most lay in blackness, but beyond The Scores Hotel a few rectangles of light spilled into the pre-dawn gloom. Had someone glanced out one of those windows? Had anyone heard anything, seen anything?
He shifted his gaze to the junction at the top of the hill. If you turned right at the Dunvegan, then through the mini-roundabout, that put you on the road out of St. Andrews. And he saw in his mind’s eye that the car had come from Glasgow. That was where Chloe and Jack lived. Why hide her body anywhere else? He would challenge Greaves again on working closer with Strathclyde Police.
From somewhere beyond the buildings that bordered the eighteenth, he heard the unsteady rumble of a car’s exhaust. He eyed the road out of town and caught the shiver of parting headlights beyond the hedgerows and shrubs.
But at that time in the morning it could be anyone.
He turned his attention back to the polythene package. Through the sheeting, the leg was slim, verging on the skinny. It lay at an angle, so the inner thigh lay exposed. A lump choked his throat. Had Jack’s hand caressed that leg in moments of intimacy? How could he let Jack see this? He was torturing himself. What the hell would it do to Jack?
He kneeled. The grass felt cold through his coveralls. The leg had been amputated at the top of the thigh, cut at an angle. He tugged the sheeting, eased it back. The wind shifted at that moment, and he thought he caught the smell of burning. He looked up, sniffed the air.
Maybe he’d imagined it.
He shifted the sheet a touch more.
From the marks on the thigh bone and the roughness of the meat where the skin had been cut he guessed the leg had been amputated with a saw.
Mackie would be the one to make that call.
It struck him all of a sudden that there was no note. Which puzzled him. Was that not what this was about? The killer taunting Gilchrist, torturing him, making him pay for the wrong some lunatic conceived had been done against him? And with that, he gripped the plastic and pulled it back.
A rush of ice chilled his blood.
Dear God. There it was. His note. Branded into the skin.
He let go of the plastic, slipped on the wet grass, landed on his rump, and scrambled back, back with his elbows, away from the leg, away from the message that-
“Sir?”
He looked up at Lambert and forced a smile. But his lips jerked instead. “Slipped,” he said. She helped him to his feet. He brushed a hand over his coveralls, tried to convince himself he had seen worse. The five-year-old girl they pulled from the mud of the Kinness Burn four years ago. Even Mackie had gagged when her head slipped through his fingers, leaving him holding her peeled off face as her skull bounced and skittered on the post-mortem slab. But it had still not been as bad as this. This was personal. Chloe had been murdered so her hacked off body parts could be sent to Gilchrist as some kind of morbid message.
He gritted his teeth, held his breath as he bent down to the amputated limb. Christ, just get on with it. He lifted the plastic so the leg could slide free. But it stuck for a second before ripping free and rolling onto the grass to reveal a mass of blackened scars that ran from the top of the outer thigh to halfway down the calf.
He stared at the disfigured letters, at first unable to make sense of the mess, then deciphered the single word.
BLUDGEON.
The smell hit him again, a warm guff that rose from the blackened skin like a pall of invisible smoke that found its way into his mouth and lungs-the stench of the burned flesh of his son’s girlfriend. He felt his stomach lurch, and he stumbled to the side. He bumped into the wooden fence, hung over it, and dry-heaved onto the grass.
Then Lambert was by his side. “Sir?”
He straightened, dragged his hand across his mouth. “Jesus, Dot. Sorry.” He closed his lips, faced the wind, took a deep breath. The air smelled clear, cold, devoid of the stench of cooked meat that lay like a coating of filth on his tongue. He coughed, tried to clear his throat, but resisted spitting in front of Lambert.
“Sir?”
“I’m fine, Dot.”
“It’s not that, sir.” Her eyes glistened in the cold, like those of a child reflecting her hidden fears. “I think I remember seeing a car.”
“You think?”
She nodded.
“I don’t follow.”
“It was parked on The Links Road. I remember seeing it as I walked past. It was there five or ten minutes ago, but it’s not there now.”
Gilchrist followed her line of sight. “Five or ten minutes ago?” he said. “When I was looking at the…”
“Yes, sir. It was parked at the corner.”
“Did you get its registration number?”
“No, sir. But it was a Vauxhall. A Vauxhall Astra.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of buying one, and I-”
“Colour?”
“Dark-blue. Black, maybe.”
Gilchrist eyed the corner of The Links Road that paralleled the eighteenth fairway, and realised what the earlier sound of the engine had been. “Facing downhill?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”
Gilchrist stripped off his gloves and coveralls, threw them to the ground, pulled out his phone. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Nance is on her way.” He ran to his car, had his keys in his hand and the Office on his mobile by the time he opened the door.
“Crime Management.”
“Call Cupar Division,” he ordered. “Tell them to set up a road block and stop all cars out of St. Andrews.” He switched on his engine. “We’re looking for a Vauxhall Astra, dark-blue, black, or any other car that looks like it. All occupants are to be considered armed and dangerous.” He pulled into reverse, hit the pedal, and tugged the wheel.
The Merc’s tyres squealed as it raced up Golf Place. Cupar was about ten miles west of St. Andrews on the A91, the main road to Stirling. And Glasgow.
It was a long shot. Maybe his longest yet.
But if they were quick enough…
Chapter 11
GILCHRIST PASSED THE Links Road and noted the spot where the Vauxhall Astra had parked, a dry patch on the road, darkening by the second from a steady drizzle moving in from the sea.
He played out the scene in his mind’s eye.
Car parked at the corner, its occupants peering through the windows to make sure their grisly package was found. Then releasing the handbrake and cruising downhill, into gear and the clutch out.
That was the sound he had heard, the Astra bump-starting.
He powered through the mini-roundabout and raced out of town. The clock on the dashboard read 5:43. Ahead, the Roadster’s twin beams pierced the darkness. The rain had almost stopped, and the road glimmered with beads of water as bright as ice.
He roared past the Old Course Hotel to his right, its tan façade alight from an array of spotlights, then on to open countryside, all zipping past unseen in the pre-dawn dark, like nighttime memories.
He glanced at the dashboard-5:46. When had he heard the bump-starting? Fifteen minutes? Ten? Less? At sixty miles an hour, fifteen minutes would put the Vauxhall fifteen miles away. Through Cupar. And he would be too late.
Ten would be too late, too.
He grabbed his phone, poked in Nance’s mobile number from his list of contacts.
She answered with a snappy, “Hold your horses, big boy. I’m on my way.”
“Get onto the PNC and do a search for Vauxhall Astras,” he said. “Dark-blue or black. I want names and addresses of all owners living in Glasgow.”
“Care to tell me what’s going on?”
“We have another body part down by the Golf Museum.”
“The Office already called,” she said. “The left leg.”