Tooth for a Tooth Read Online Free PDF Page B

last, he looked at Gilchrist. ‘Of course, my Jenny was alive back then.’
    Gilchrist waited while Sammy dabbed a thick thumb to the corners of his eyes. ‘Take your time,’ he offered. ‘You’re doing wonderfully well.’
    Sammy grimaced. ‘There was two more. But I didnae know their names.’
    ‘Can you remember what they looked like?’
    Sammy shook his head. ‘I didnae pay them any attention, mind. I just clicked that they was there, like.’
    ‘Male? Female?’
    ‘A man and a woman. Students, I think they was.’
    ‘Young, were they?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Were they together?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    Dougie Ewart, thought Gilchrist. And Mrs McLeod’s ‘
daughter
’. ‘Did you see the young woman console Mrs McLeod?’
    Sammy frowned, causing skin to corrugate the length of his forehead, letting Gilchrist see the full age of the man. ‘Everybody was consoling her, son.’
    ‘But the woman who stood beside her,’ nudged Gilchrist. ‘The one who was hugging her and talking to her. Can you remember her, Sammy?’
    Sammy turned his head and stared at the heap of domestic junk, as if each box was a book of memories from which he could retrieve an image.
    Gilchrist placed a hand on Sammy’s shoulder, felt the hard lump of bones beneath the coat. ‘If you can’t remember, Sammy, it doesn’t matter.’
    ‘Sorry, son. It’s just too long ago.’ He coughed again, a barking sound that echoed from somewhere deep inside his chest.
    ‘I think you should see the doctor, Sammy.’
    ‘Cannae stand the buggers. A hot toady’s what I need.’
    Gilchrist handed over his card. ‘If you remember anything else, give me a call.’
    ‘I’ll take the lot,’ said Stan. ‘Sixteen Pro V-1s in here. That’s eight quid.’
    Gilchrist pulled out a twenty and handed it to Sammy. ‘Keep the change, Sammy.’
    ‘Son?’
    ‘Buy yourself a bottle and have some hot toadies. You’ve been a great help.’
     
    They spent the remainder of the day checking local misper files and the Police National Computer reports for mispers around the time of McLeod’s funeral.
    Local records turned up nothing. Two teenage boys had disappeared from Crail in October of that year. Gilchrist had vague memories of the incident, being only twelve at the time. Ten years later, one of the boys returned, having lived in London with his missing friend who was then working in a bar in St Tropez.
    The PNC files offered more promising leads and Gilchrist downloaded photographs where available, or asked the local police to fax or email him what they had. By the end of the day, they had a few more mispers to look into.
    ‘That’s nine possibles,’ said Stan. ‘And I’d say at least five of these are long shots. But we still don’t know for sure that she went missing in ’69.’
    ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ Gilchrist conceded. He picked up one of the photographs. The date confirmed the girl had been missing for nineteen years. She looked to be in her teens, hair dark, untidy, with eyes that could have been borrowed from an older woman. What had he been doing when she had vanished? Back then he and Gail had been happy. At the moment of the girl’s disappearance, had he and Gail been laughing, crying, making love? Playing with their own children? He studied the image. Thin lips stretched tight over teeth almost hidden from the camera, but parted just enough to confirm that one of her front teeth was decayed black. He handed the photograph to Stan and pushed himself to his feet.
    ‘Where’re we off to, boss?’
    ‘We’re not. You stay put and get dental records for every one of these.’
    Stan’s face almost slumped.
     
    Gilchrist pulled his Mercedes into the car park of the police mortuary in West Bell Street, Dundee. Inside, he entered the post-mortem room and found Bert Mackie already hard at it, his attention held by a skeleton on the closer of the two PM tables. Gilchrist had never become accustomed to the smell of the mortuary, a