“That’s why we argued,” Jack went on. “Sometimes she would just go on at me, urge me to do better, like she knew I had it in me, but I couldn’t get it out. It used to do my nut in. In the end we had this huge row. I just flipped.” He shook his head, and it took a few seconds of silence for Gilchrist to realise Jack had said all he was going to say.
“I’m not sure if trying to ID the hands is a good idea.”
Jack turned to him. “I need to know.”
Gilchrist felt Jack’s eyes on him, and made a conscious effort to speak in the present tense. “Does Chloe have any marks on her hands or fingers like moles or freckles or anything that would provide conclusive identification?”
“Yes.”
Gilchrist felt his heart leap. He had seen no marks on either hand. In fact, both hands looked unblemished. Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion? Were the hands not Chloe’s? For a fleeting moment, his mind nurtured that idea then thumped back with the question he could not answer-why was his name on the note? The victim had to be someone close to him. He struggled to keep his voice level. “Such as?” he asked.
“A scar at the base of her thumb.”
A scar? Mackie hadn’t mentioned any scars.
“Which hand?” he asked.
Jack seemed to think for a second. “Right, I think.”
“You think?”
“No. Definitely the right hand.”
“How big a scar?”
“Half-inch.”
“Crooked? Straight? What?”
“Straight. She cut herself with a palette knife.” He almost smiled. “Don’t ask.”
“Any other marks?”
“On her hands?”
“Anywhere.”
Jack pulled up the front of his sweater. “One of these.”
Gilchrist glanced to the side, but saw only white skin and felt a spurt of surprise flush through him at how thin Jack looked. Skinny verging on skeletal. “One of what?” he asked.
Jack twisted in his seat and fingered a tattoo that stained his skin like a tiny ink blot an inch or so above his belly button. “Love-heart.”
“And Chloe had one, too?” Too late, he realised he had spoken as if she was no longer alive.
Jack seemed unaware of his blunder. “Last Christmas,” he said, lowering his sweater. “To seal our love. Kind of stupid, I suppose. It was Chloe’s idea.”
Gilchrist stared at the road ahead. When he first met Gail, drunk and wild in the Whey Pat Tavern, up from Glasgow on her annual holiday, she had sworn at some American guy with a buzz-cut and two bared arms blue with tattoos and taut with muscles. Gilchrist had escorted her from the pub after that, tried to calm her down. But something about the tattoos had her wound up.
My uncle had a tattoo, she told him. An anchor with a silly rope wound around it.
What’s so bad about that? he had asked.
He hit my aunt.
It hurt to think that when he first met Gail he was taken by her vivacity, her uncut love of life. Nothing seemed too big to take on. The whole world, if they wanted. He had never been able to work out the exact moment Gail changed, that instant in time when something inside her died. He struggled to force his thoughts back to Jack.
“Chloe’s scar,” he said. “Why do you remember it so clearly?”
“She needed a couple of stitches. I took her to the hospital.”
“You and Chloe were dating?”
“Yeah.”
“So, the scar’s recent?”
“Last summer.” He sniffed again, tugged a hand through clumped hair. “Is that important?”
“Could be.” He dialled Mackie’s number. It was answered on the second ring. “Bert. Andy here. Have you completed your examination?”
“Other than spectrographic analysis, yes, I’m more or less finished.”
Gilchrist puffed out his cheeks, then let out his breath. “Find any scars?”
“One. On the right hand.”
A bull butted him in the gut. “Whereabouts?”
“Base of the thumb. Fairly recent, I’d say.”
Last summer? Gilchrist pressed his phone hard to his ear as Mackie confirmed size and angle, and concluded with, “It looks like a knife wound.”
“How about an artist’s palette knife?”
“That’s an interesting suggestion. But, yes, any kind of knife would make sense. Why do you ask?”
“Jack’s with me. He might be able to make an ID.”
“Your son, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Good lord, Andy. Are you saying…”
“Nothing definite, Bert. But we’d better take a look at it.” He hung up and glanced at Jack. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “It’s not looking good.”
“It’s Chloe. I know it is.” His voice sounded steady, as if he was oblivious to the gruesome prospect of examining amputated extremities.
Gilchrist wondered how on earth he ever got himself into such a morbid job.
He felt his heart sink. He hated to admit it.
But Jack was right.
GILCHRIST FOUND MACKIE in the post-mortem room in the Bell Street mortuary, a woman’s body on the stainless steel table in front of him, opened from sternum to pubis. Cruel looking surgical equipment lay on flat metal surfaces. Something wet and slimy and white as brain glistened by a set of scales. The air felt cold, and hinted of decaying flesh and formaldehyde that left an aftertaste on the tongue.
Mackie caught Gilchrist’s eye, and stepped away from the table.
Gilchrist introduced Jack, then together they followed Mackie into another room.
Gurneys lined either side.
Mackie shuffled forward without a word, and halted at one of the gurneys halfway along on the left. He peeled back a cotton sheet to reveal two clear plastic bags. Through the plastic sheen, the amputated hands looked ghostlike, as if at any moment they could move of their own accord and crawl from their confines. If Gilchrist had any doubts they were from different bodies, they evaporated right then.
He stood beside Jack. “Ready?”
Tight-lipped, Jack nodded.
Gilchrist eyed Mackie.
Mackie opened one plastic bag, removed a hand, the left one, and placed it palm down on the gurney. Then he did the same with the right hand. He pushed the bags to the side and positioned the hands so they looked as if they were reaching out for Gilchrist.
Jack let out a rush of breath and took a step back.
Something clamped Gilchrist’s chest. He stared at the hands, the claws, the lifeless things on the table. They had once belonged to a young woman, once touched and caressed and moved with life. An image of him holding those hands, looking down at those fingers, burst into his mind. He fought off an overpowering urge to take Jack by the arm and lead him from the room. But his pragmatic side kept him rooted. He had a victim to identify, a murder to solve, and he prayed to God that Jack would simply shake his head and tell him the hands could not be Chloe’s, that they belonged to some other poor soul.
“The scar should be on the inside,” Jack whispered, and held his own hand out and pointed to the base of his right thumb. “About here.”
Mackie eyed Gilchrist with an intensity he had not seen in the old man’s eyes since he performed the post-mortem of his own sister-in-law. Grim-faced, Mackie turned the right hand over and pointed a finger to a pink mark at the base of the thumb. “This is the only scar I detected.”
Gilchrist felt his lungs deflate. He had his answer. His peripheral vision watched Jack’s body sway as if buffeted by a wind. He grasped his arm, tightened his grip. “Jack,” he said, “I need you to be sure.”
“It’s her,” Jack whispered. “It’s Chloe.”