“And your point is?”
“I would have thought a brainy bastard like you would work it out.”
Work what out? The verses? The reference to lawyers and priests? The lies? The truth? What? But what Gilchrist had worked out was that Bully was behind Maureen’s disappearance. Of that he was certain.
He tried again. “Where is my daughter?”
Bully held his gaze for a long moment, then glanced at the door, and Gilchrist felt his hopes soar at the possibility that Bully was about to tell him. Then Bully’s eyes gleamed with victory. “Oh princess, by thy watchtower be, it is the wished, the trysted hour. Those smiles and glances let me see, that makes the miser’s treasure poor,” and with an abruptness that had Gilchrist on full alert, Bully pushed back and stood. He raised his hands, shackles jangling, then brought them down on the table with such force that Gilchrist was sure he must have cracked several bones.
The guard burst in. “You. Sit.”
Bully held out his hands, and Gilchrist saw the disfigured fingers of crushed joints.
“Take me.” Bully shuffled towards the guard, as if the act of smashing his hands had drained him of all energy. But at the door, he halted. “Vengeance, Mr. Gilchrist. You put me away eight years ago. And through every second of every minute of every hour of every one of those eight years, vengeance has kept me going.”
Gilchrist saw that Bully had said all he was going to say. But he could not let him just walk away. He had to give it one last shot. “My daughter’s done nothing to harm you,” he tried. “Let her go.” It was pointless negotiating with a psychopath, he knew that, but he tried anyway. “Please,” he added. “What’s she ever done to you?”
Bully glared at him for a full ten seconds, then said, “The wind blew as twad blawn its last. The rattling showers rose on the blast. The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed. Loud, deep and lang the thunder bellowed. That night, a child might understand, the Deil had business on his hand, Mr. Gilchrist.” Then Bully tilted his head back and let out an ear-piercing howl like a demented wolf.
Even the guard looked taken aback.
Gilchrist stared at the man, knowing he was being toyed with. Another howl raised the hairs on his neck, followed by a crazed laugh that cut to the heart of his soul.
Then Bully stepped into the corridor.
The door closed with a metallic clang.
Gilchrist sat stunned, listening to the sound of Bully’s laughter and wolf-howls fade, until all that was left was the silent echo of prison life. He opened his jacket and removed his recorder. He replayed their conversation, recognised some of the words, excerpts from poems by Robert Burns. But what did they mean? Was Bully giving him more clues? Or just playing with him?
On the way out, he checked with the prison doctor, who confirmed Bully was not on medication.
“What about his health? Any sweats, yellow eyes, that sort of thing?”
“We have the occasional viral infection passing through the prison population. Much like the real world. According to my records, Mr. Reid has not had any serious illness for five years.”
“And five years ago, what happened?”
“The flu.” He cocked his head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Inspector, but Mr. Reid has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, excellent health.”
Driving back to St. Andrews, Gilchrist let his thoughts run their convoluted course.
Bully was not being prescribed medication. Was he having drugs smuggled in? Hard to do, but not impossible. He could not say. But one thing he could say was that Bully’s gibberish had to mean something. Of that, he was certain.
But what?
And if he found out, could he save Maureen?
MAUREEN GROANED FROM a dull pain at the nape of her neck.
That was where he had hit her, knocked her unconscious.
Since coming to, she had spent the last thirty minutes kicking the wooden door that was the only exit from her chamber. But her efforts had resulted only in bruised and bloodied feet. Her mouth was gagged with duct tape that ran around the back of her head, pulled her hair tight, made breathing difficult. Her ankles were bound with the same tape. Behind her back, her hands were, too. Every joint in her body seemed to ache.
She shuffled across the concrete floor on her rump until her back hit the stone wall. As best she could work out in the pitch darkness, the chamber was no more than six feet square. The ceiling was low, barely high enough to allow her to sit. The air smelled dusty and dry, and she worried that the oxygen might run out. The tape was wound four or five times around her limbs, letting her know she was not meant to escape.
And she knew, too, that he was not coming back.
She was all alone. No water. No food.
She was going to die. This chamber was to be her final resting place. And it pained her to think that no one would find her, no one would visit her once she was gone.
The tears came then, racking sobs that threatened to steal the air from her lungs. Thoughts of all she had done wrong in her life-the indifference she had shown her parents, the disregard she had shown her brother, the recklessness she had developed of late-swirled around her mind in dizzying waves. Oddly, it was the thought of dying that stopped her crying. She sniffed, tried to blink her eyes dry. She was not dead yet.
She would not lie down and die. She would not let that happen.
She wriggled to the door, turned her back to it, felt her fingers fumble over the wooden surface, work their way around the edge, searching for a splinter of wood that might have broken off during her attempts to break free. But the door was solid. She twisted her body, tried to reach higher, the fire in her shoulders and arms forcing a gasp from her aching throat. She fought to ignore the pain, and pressed harder, pushing, pushing, until-
She scraped against something.
An edge of the concrete wall, a bit that was chipped, maybe sharp enough to cut.
She gritted her teeth, pressed the tape to the wall.
She would not die. She would not let him win.
She rubbed her wrists up and down.
Up and down.
Chapter 29
JACK SAID, “THAT’S scary, man. What the hell does it mean?” Gilchrist had asked that same question a hundred times. And a hundred times he had come up with the same answer. I don’t know. On the drive back to St. Andrews, the word watchtower had prompted him to call Stan to initiate a search of the West Port, St. Rules Tower, St. Salvator’s, and any other tower-like structure in the St. Andrews area. But so far, no one had found a damn thing. Maureen no longer lived in Fife, so how many other towers were there in Glasgow, or Scotland, or the British Isles for that matter? A similar call to Dainty had resulted in a curt lack of manpower response, and a snide remark that left Gilchrist wondering if it was all just a hoax. Had Bully been teasing him, letting him think he was giving him clues, knowing they meant nothing? Now that would be Bully, devious and cruel to the point of mental sickness.
Bully’s voice came back to him.
I’m smarter than the whole fucking lot of you piled together.
And because Bully believed he was smarter, he had left clues. Gilchrist was certain of that. If Bully’s recitals had not been intended as clues, then what the hell did they mean?
Which brought him full circle.
He fingered the recorder. “Let’s go through it again.”
Jack seemed to have come to terms with Chloe’s murder, and had offered to help in Maureen’s disappearance. Trying to decipher Bully’s madness was a good start. He stared at the recorder, hand poised with pencil. Bully’s metallic voice whispered at them.