Two ageing dogs, a clot-haired collie and a matted wire-haired terrier, looked up at him with hound dog eyes, then rose from battered wicker baskets and kowtowed towards him, tails brushing the tiles. He leaned down, dug in his fingers behind the collie’s ears, and said, “Names?”
“Jack and Jill,” Coyle replied.
“Which is which?”
“Basket.”
Both dogs skulked to their baskets, leaving Gilchrist to wipe his fingers on his trousers. As they stepped up and over the wicker edges, he could not help but notice how both of them were hung.
He raised an eyebrow at Coyle. “Jill?”
“They can’t speak English.” Coyle shrugged. “Linda’s idea. Don’t ask.” Then he reached for a large envelope on the shelf and held it out. “This what you’re after?”
Gilchrist thanked him, was about to open the envelope when the kitchen door swung open and Linda walked in wearing a threadbare bathrobe. A thatch of witch-grey hair looked as if it had not seen a brush for a month. She rushed over, put her arms around him. “Andy, love. How nice to see you again.”
She felt soft and fat and smelled of bedclothes and dogs. He responded with, “Nice to see you, too,” and was squeezed with a big-breasted bear-hug.
“We’re so sorry to hear about Gail,” Linda said, relaxing her grip. “Aren’t we, Martin?”
Coyle smiled.
“How are you coping, love?”
Gilchrist felt his face flush. “Fine,” he said.
“And the kids? Jack and Maureen, isn’t it?”
“They’re fine, too.”
“Poor souls. I always think it’s those that have to live on that suffer the most.” She placed her lips to his cheek and kissed him. “God bless you, love.” Then she stepped back. “Have you eaten?”
Gilchrist patted his stomach. “Had something earlier,” he lied.
Linda scowled at the wicker baskets. “Who’s a pair of lovely wonders, then? Eh?”
Gilchrist smiled as both dogs’ back ends twitched with measured pleasure. Then he turned to Coyle and waved the envelope. “If you don’t mind, Martin, I’ll skip the cuppa. I really should get going.”
Linda kissed Gilchrist on the cheek again, then Coyle led him to the door.
They promised to keep in touch.
Gilchrist waited until he could no longer see the mansion in his rear-view mirror before pulling off the road. He opened the envelope and removed fifteen pages of computer print-out that listed in columns from left to right across the page, date, telephone number, time of call, duration, and cost.
He checked the last call-outgoing to a mobile phone number he failed to recognise. Three days ago. At 22:54. Lasting two minutes. He found the first outgoing call that day at 04:49, and felt his brow furrow.
One minute only.
Watt had said he had risen early. To make a call? Who would he call at that time in the morning? Then he noticed it was the same phone number as the last call. So, the first and last calls of that day were both to the same mobile number. Which meant…?
Gilchrist flipped through the rest of the pages, checked the very first call on the list.
Same number. 07:51. Three minutes long.
And the last call that day.
Same number. 23:03. Two minutes.
Gilchrist searched the lists for the same number, and found it. Three more calls had been made three days ago. He found a pencil and circled each of the numbers, ending up with five circles three days ago. And five again, the day before.
He worked his way back.
Watt’s records never had fewer than a dozen calls on any given day, but always a minimum of three to that same mobile number, and almost always the first and last calls of the day. And the earliest time of any of the morning calls was seven days ago, at 04:07.
Gilchrist opened his mobile phone and punched in 141, which prevented the recipient from tracing the incoming call, then tapped in the number. He pressed the phone to his ear, not wanting to miss the slightest sound.
Fifteen rings later, he hung up.
He checked the print-out and tried again. He counted twenty rings, then hung up.
He could think of any number of reasons why the call would not be answered, but he worried that a sequence had to be followed, that perhaps it had to ring an agreed number of times, then hung up and tried again. If that was the case, then he had already blown it, and Watt was being warned off at that moment.
Gilchrist dialled the Office. “Put me through to Dick,” he ordered.
Several seconds later, an upbeat voice chirped, “Hey, Andy. Long time.”
“Can you do a reverse number check on a mobile phone number for me?”
A sharp intake of breath, then, “Could do. But it depends on which company. Some of them spring up out of nowhere, do the biz, then pow, just evaporate. Sometimes you can’t get a damn thing. But I’ll give it a go. Looking for a name and address?”
“At least.”
“Need bank account details, driver’s licence?”
“Give me what you can.” Gilchrist recited the number, and said, “And as soon as.”
“You got it.”
Working back from the most recent date, Gilchrist looked for numbers he recognised. On the page that listed Watt’s outgoing calls the day before he returned to Fife Constabulary, he came across a number that reverberated in the depths of his memory banks. He had seen that number before, but could not recall whose it was. He opened his mobile and ran through its memorised numbers.
Thirty seconds later he had a name.
His lips moved in silence as he compared the number, one digit after another, taking care to make sure it was correct, then failing to understand how it could be on Watt’s records in the first place. He checked other pages, flipped the records over and over then back to the beginning to make sure the number on Watt’s record, the number that should not be there, was the number he was reading.
But he was not mistaken. The number was right.
Starting with 0141, the code for Glasgow.
He ran through every page, but found it recorded only once. As if that would lessen the anger that swelled in his throat and stifled his breath. The call, the one call, the only call to that number he could find, had lasted all of sixteen minutes.
Which could mean only one thing.
She had answered. And Watt had spoken to her.
For sixteen minutes, a full sixteen minutes, DS Ronnie Watt had spoken to Maureen Gillian Gilchrist.
An image of Watt’s bloodied face flashed into his mind with the force of a lightning strike. Then Maureen, face tearful and twisted with anger, burst through. He remembered how they had argued and, after calming down, how he thought he had talked sense into her. She promised she would never speak to Watt again. But now her promise had been broken.
And by Christ, she would tell him why.
He dialled Maureen’s number, and counted ten rings before it struck him that he had checked Watt’s records for her home number only, not her mobile. He hung up and searched his memorised numbers again until he found her mobile number. Then he searched Watt’s records and found Maureen’s number on five separate dates and circled every one of them. The calls ranged from twenty-six minutes, to the shortest at two minutes, three weeks ago, after which Watt had not called her mobile number again.
Did that mean Maureen and Watt had an affair that ended? That she wanted nothing more to do with him? Or was it worse than that? Was she calling Watt? Again, thoughts of having it out with her fired through his mind, until he saw that it was not his daughter he needed to talk to.
He crumpled the print-out into a ball, and threw it into the passenger seat.
“You bastard,” he hissed, and thudded into gear.
The Merc’s tires cut into the asphalt with a tight squeal. Only once before had his control failed him. And that was against Watt. He had almost lost his job over that incident. But back then, he’d had two children and a wife to consider. Now none of that mattered.