Gilchrist retreated from the window, relieved to feel his teeth intact.
Nance had her hand to her stomach. “Caught me where it would hurt if I was a man,” she grimaced. “Wasn’t expecting it.” She reached over her shoulder. “And my back hurts.”
“Let me look.”
She surprised him by lifting her blouse. Her skin looked white, her waist slim, her physique more athletic than he imagined. “See anything?”
He eased her blouse up her back to reveal a black sports bra.
She twisted an arm behind her and tapped with her finger. “Just about there.”
He eyed an angry welt at the base of her shoulder blade, already darkening to a bruise. “The skin’s not broken,” he said, “but it could hurt for a while.” He thumbed the bruise, felt her body jerk. “Sorry,” he said.
“Remind me never to come back to your surgery.”
“Nothing’s broken,” he said, and noticed a short-legged coffee table twisted askew on the rug, the remains of a glass tumbler in the corner near the stereo set. “I’d say you hit the corner of the table.” He let her blouse drop, and she surprised him once more by unzipping and tucking it in, giving him a glimpse of skimpy underwear.
Then she lifted her hand to his temple. “You’re bleeding.”
He almost pulled away. “Will I live?”
“Regrettably.” Then she stepped back. “Just a graze.” She looked around the tidy room and grimaced. “I’d say we got here before he had time to steal anything.”
“Who said anything about stealing?”
“What do you think he was doing? Choosing furniture?”
“Looking for something.”
Nance raised an eyebrow. “Looking for something?”
Gilchrist moved through the room, fingered a pile of CDs on a shelf, an eclectic mix of old and new-Marti Pellow, Elton John, Nelly Furtado, Lionel Ritchie-and he saw in Maureen’s collection the wants and longings of a young woman searching for love.
“Notice anything?” he asked Nance.
“Like what?”
“The walls.” He looked around the room. “And the shelves.”
“I’m not sure I’d choose the colour scheme.”
“No photographs,” he said.
“Is that odd?”
“Maureen was a keen photographer. I bought her a camera for her thirteenth birthday. Back then she was going to be a photojournalist.”
“What happened?”
“She met men.”
“Figures.”
It struck Gilchrist then that he had never been invited to Maureen’s flat. He would meet her in Glasgow on the odd occasion, take her out for a drink and a meal, but she would never invite him back. You wouldn’t want to see it. It’s too messy. So he never pushed.
Other than an archway into a modern kitchen-dining room, one other door opened off the living room, to the hallway. The flat was small, probably too small to share. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Maureen say that one day she would have a place of her own, no one to pick up her dirty knickers, tell her what to do, how to run her life. He wondered if this was it.
“It’s not too messy,” Nance said.
Gilchrist was not sure if she meant Maureen kept her place tidy, or the intruder had not done much damage. He chose the latter. “We caught him in the act,” he said. “But what’s odd about the break-in? What do you see?”
“I don’t get it.”
He let his silence do the asking.
“This place isn’t crawling with people,” she tried. “Did you notice anybody checking out the commotion? We weren’t exactly quiet breaking in here.”
Gilchrist nodded. The flats were probably owned by young professionals with careers and money, who worked hard and socialised harder still. No time for kids. During the day the building would be deserted. But something else did not fit.
“The outside door was jimmied,” he said. “But the door to Maureen’s flat wasn’t.”
“So he let himself in?”
“Maybe.”
“With a key?”
“Maybe.”
Nance eyed him. “Maybe he was an expert lock-picker?”
“So why jimmy the outside door?”
“It takes time to pick a lock. He couldn’t risk being seen fiddling with it.”
“So he jimmied it instead?” Gilchrist eyed the CDs, the shelves, the walls. And why no photographs? What was he missing?
Nance’s mobile rang. She took the call, then said, “Mini Cooper belongs to a Tony Brenton. Lives with his mother in Edinburgh.”
“Right,” said Gilchrist. “Let’s pay him a visit.”
“Won’t help. Yesterday morning he reported it stolen.”
As Gilchrist’s mind worked through the rationale, he struggled to keep his emotions in check. The stakes had just been raised. If he had any doubts about the danger Maureen was in, they were dispelled at that moment. The fact that someone stole a car in Edinburgh to break into a flat in Glasgow put the crime in a different league. He was no longer dealing with local criminals, but with someone higher up the food chain, with money and contacts and power, and crews who worked the streets, and the criminal wherewithal to lead Gilchrist by the nose and make sure he would never find his daughter.
Even though this was Maureen’s flat, and he was standing on her rug, looking at her tables and chairs and shelves filled with CDs, personal effects she had touched and listened to and sat upon, he did not feel close to her. At that moment he felt farther from her than at any time in his life. He thought he caught a glimpse of what his life would be like without his daughter in it.
And it felt lonely and cold and dark.
Chapter 17
GILCHRIST CALLED FOR a Lookout Request for the Mini Cooper. It was stolen, almost certain to be abandoned now, but you could never tell. He elected not to report the break-in to Dainty, deciding instead to do some investigation of his own first. This was his daughter’s home, after all.
The flat had two bedrooms; one unfurnished that smelled of fresh paint and plaster. Surprisingly, he thought, Maureen’s room was clean, with the Queen-sized bed made. He pulled back the duvet cover and confirmed only one side had been slept in.
Sweaters, jeans, socks, lay folded on open Formica shelves that took up most of one wall. In a fitted cupboard, he found a selection of silk blouses, mostly white, and expensive-looking jackets hanging on cedar coat-hangers. A dozen pairs of shoes sat in formation on the floor. Again, expensive-looking.
One thing continued to trouble him. Maureen had a computer. But other than a plug in a socket close to the bed, the flat seemed devoid of all things electrical.
“Maybe she has a laptop and has it with her,” Nance said.
“Maybe.” But he thought it odd that they found nothing computer-like-no discs, no software, no electrical leads. A more careful search under the bed uncovered two deep fitted-drawers either side, which he had mistaken for part of the bed-frame. With the fitted sheets and valance on, the drawers were hidden.
Nance was almost right. Maureen did have a laptop, but not with her. He found it in the under-bed drawer next to the headboard end, and a filing box that held a number of CDs. He read Maureen’s scribbled label on one-Short Stories.
And on another-Mystery Novels 1 & 2.
It surprised him that Maureen would write not just one novel, but two, and he felt dismayed that he knew nothing about her literary efforts. Other CDs confirmed she had written six novels. Was she published? Was that how she could afford this flat?
The feeling that Maureen was so far removed from his life rushed through him in a warm flush. She wanted little to do with her father. She was growing up, had grown up, and wanted a life free of parental ties.
He plugged in her laptop, struggling to smother the feeling of guilt that he was about to violate her privacy. What right did he have to read her personal writings? The hard-drive hummed alive. If her laptop was password-protected he would have to take it to the experts, the computer geeks who would-