“Every bunker on the Old Course was looked at yesterday. Including half the rough.”
“Who was in charge?”
“Constable Tommie Murray.”
“Double check it.”
“Way ahead of you. Tommie’s already confirmed the bunker was clear.” A pause, then, “We didn’t miss it. The hand was placed there overnight.”
“Anyone see anything, report anything?” Gilchrist tried.
“Not a thing.”
What had he expected? “Stay there,” he ordered. “I’ll be with you in fifteen.”
Watt hung up before Gilchrist.
Shaved and showered and feeling shakier than a sea-legged sailor on dry land, Gilchrist jabbed the key into the ignition. He drove with the window down, the cold air blustering around his neck and face, blowing away the remnants of last night’s beer. Once Nance left, he had sat alone at the end of the bar, reviewing the list of names and addresses Nance and Watt had collected, making notes, scribbling thoughts, and returning home at the back of eleven none the wiser.
He parked his Roadster close to the Jigger Inn again. He removed a set of white coveralls and gloves from the boot and fought off another wave of nausea that threatened to have him heaving over the stone dyke. But it passed, and he carried the protective clothing under his arm and walked along the side of the seventeenth fairway onto the sixteenth.
The Principal’s Nose was not one bunker, but a cluster of three on the left side of the sixteenth fairway. In the distance, dragonlights lit the scene like a druid’s party. As Gilchrist neared, he noticed the SOCO van on the fairway. A pair of SOCOs shifted through the scene, white figures drifting through spheres of light like ghosts blown in from the sea.
As Gilchrist neared, the scene developed before him.
The stiff figure of Watt stood a short distance from the bunkers, on top of a hillock in the rough, talking into his mobile. His hand flapped, finger stabbing the air, voice lost on the cold sea breeze. Close by, a solitary figure in a yellow anorak and green Wellington boots looked seaward. Something moved by the man’s feet, a shape that manifested into a black labrador with doleful eyes that followed Gilchrist’s step.
He reached the scene and donned his coveralls and shoe covers, then slipped on his gloves. The Crime Scene Manager, DC Alan Bowers, ordered him to sign in. He scribbled his name then stepped into the lighted area, lifted the yellow tape and slipped under it. He half-expected to catch Mackie shoulder deep in the bunker.
“Has Bert been called?” he shouted to Bowers.
“On his way, sir.”
Gilchrist stared into the bunker. The sides were steep, about two feet at the back face, rising to five at the front. The fairway fell towards the cluster of bunkers, a graded catchment for stray drives. Shadows danced around him as a SOCO grabbed one of the dragonlights and shifted it several feet farther away. Gilchrist crouched.
The hand lay in the sand, close to the back face, curled fingers up, a note clutched between thumb and forefinger. For a moment, he wondered how Watt had known what was written on it, until he leaned closer and saw the printing. He cocked his head to the side.
Massacre.
Murder. Now Massacre. What was the killer trying to tell him? Was the clue to be found in the words? Or in the location of the body parts? First the Road Hole Bunker, next the Principal’s Nose. Was that significant? Or, first the seventeenth, and next the sixteenth? Should they now be focusing on the bunkers on the fifteenth?
Gilchrist stared off across the dunes towards the hidden sea, the wind like ice against his face. It would have been colder when the hand was placed in the bunker. What had the killer worn? Something dark, so he could flit unseen through the night? And why only a note this time? Why no envelope? The ink had bled where the dew had settled on the paper. Had the killer not worried that the printing might become illegible, that his message might be lost? He turned his attention back to the hand at his feet.
White skin was beaded in moisture as fine as condensation. Several hairs stood out, as if bristling with horripilation, or from the shock of being cut off from their source of life. And in that matter, he saw that the hand had been sliced from the forearm in a neat cut this time, several inches above the wrist, as if the killer had chopped it with a sharp blade and not quite hit his mark. The sand appeared undisturbed, as if the hand had been placed in the bunker with care. Gilchrist looked to his feet. Had the killer stood on this same spot?
He moved away from the edge, stepped off to the side, and crouched again. The grass was thin and hard, worn bare from the harsh east winds and winter sun. His own prints were barely noticeable. Was that why the killer chose the bunker closest to the fairway, to avoid leaving evidence in the long grass? He eyed the rough, followed the telltale trail of Watt’s advance up the hillock, and that of the man and his dog, and came to see that this killer knew what he was doing, and why he was doing it.
Gilchrist looked across the fairway, at the stone wall and the Eden Course beyond. On the other side of the wall lay a gravel path, all that was left of the abandoned railway line. That was how the killer had come, he thought, walked along the pathway that ran the length of the sixteenth, then leapt over the wall, crossed the fairway and placed the hand in the bunker. He would have returned the same way, maybe walked along the fairway a short distance. Or maybe he had it all wrong.
He turned to the hand again, intrigued by how unreal it looked, as if death had moved in and removed whatever vestige of life remained. But he felt haunted by a vague sense of familiarity. He had seen a hand like that before, the hand of a wax dummy, years ago, as a child in Madame Tussaud’s in Blackpool while holidaying with his parents. For one moment he wondered if the dragonlights were playing tricks with his eyes, and he felt annoyed for not having noticed sooner. Perhaps he was wrong. He had to be wrong.
He leaned closer.
He was not mistaken.
The fingernails were longer on this hand.
He kneeled on the grass, felt the cold seep through his gloves and coveralls, leaned forward as far as he could. It was the thumbnail that settled it for him. The nail was long. Not too long. And not square, but rounded, flush with the curve of the tip, so that it looked white, a healthy solid white, as if it had been varnished.
But the white tip, the white tip was…
Gilchrist felt his chest drain.
Dear God. Don’t tell me.
His mind tried to tell him he was wrong. But he knew he was not.
The underside of the nail was thick with paint.
He now saw traces of paint in the cracks of the cuticles, a tiny spot embedded in the skin by the half-moon. Other marks, a touch of green, a hint of yellow, had him thinking that the killer must have scrubbed the first hand, trimmed the nails to make identification difficult. But now the second hand was on display, as if the killer wanted them to know who the victim was. Or worse, needed Gilchrist to make the identification. Which was why the first note had been addressed to him.
He stood as Watt approached, shoes glistening black as he scuffled through the long grass. Either Watt had removed his coveralls, or he had never put them on. He stopped on the other side of the yellow tape.
“What d’you think?” Watt asked him.
Was it possible to recognise someone by their hands? If his own hands were found lying apart from his body, could Jack or Maureen identify them as his? He thought not. So why did he think he knew who these hands belonged to?
“You look rough,” Watt added.
Gilchrist remembered the first time he met her. You don’t wear rings, he heard his mind say. I don’t like them, she whispered. I find them distracting. He had thought it such an odd thing to say, that he had taken her hands in his and held them, looked down at fingers long and slim, at nails trim and clean, just the tiniest bit ragged from working the paints, scrubbing the canvases. Would he describe them as being cracked?