Tooth for a Tooth (Di Gilchrist 3)

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 fragrance thick enough to taste. He slipped an elasticated mask over his lower face as he approached the table.
    Mackie glanced up. ‘Been expecting you, Andy. Come see our lady.’
    In front of him lay a disconnected skeleton, bones washed clean and tinged red from soil that now lay like mud in a bucket on the tiled floor. Gilchrist tried to picture the skeleton covered with skin and, in doing so, imagined the woman to be slim.
    ‘What do we have?’ he asked Mackie.
    ‘The thirty-plus-year-old skeleton of a young woman. More than likely killed by a blow to the head. See here?’ Mackie ran a finger around the cracked indentation in the skull. ‘No new bone growth of any kind, which suggests she died immediately, or shortly after, assuming of course that she was alive at the time of the blow.’
    Gilchrist leaned closer.
    ‘Slightly taller than average. Five-ten,’ went on Mackie. ‘Slight in build. No fractures, no broken bones of any kind. Except this.’
    He ran his hand down the skeleton’s lower left leg and stopped at the ankle. ‘See here?’ He removed a bone from the foot. ‘This has been cracked and healed, somewhat poorly, I have to say. See this ridge? The fracture is an injury normally associated with a sprain. She could have twisted her foot stepping off the pavement. It’s impossible to determine exactly how long before death the fracture occurred, but I’d say no more than a year, maybe less.’
    ‘Anything else?’ Gilchrist asked.
    ‘Teeth.’ Mackie returned to the top of the table and picked up the skull. ‘All thirty-one of them are perfect,’ he said. ‘Not a single filling. The top right wisdom tooth never came through.’
    ‘Could she be coloured?’
    ‘The shape of the skull suggests Caucasian.’ Mackie held the skull in profile, staring at it with almost morbid fascination, before returning it to the head of the skeleton. ‘I’d say she was a common-or-garden white woman.’
    Gilchrist felt his body give an