Life For a Life Read Online Free

whitened with snow and frost, Jessie close behind him.
    They found her about twelve feet from the path, face down, bedded in snow. Skip’s paw prints trailed across her back. From the path, unless you knew the body was there, you could pass it every day until spring. It had snowed the last four nights but one, and even from where he stood, Gilchrist could tell the body was days old, maybe even a week.
    Watkins looked down at them from the edge of the path.
    ‘Do you take Skip for a walk daily?’ Gilchrist asked him.
    ‘We do, but we haven’t been along this path since November.’
    Christmas was less than three weeks away. Only someone walking a dog would have any chance of finding the body. ‘End, middle, beginning of November?’ Gilchrist asked, just to test the possibilities.
    ‘Twenty-third. Jayne’s birthday.’
    Gilchrist nodded, turned away.
    ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Jessie asked him.
    ‘Depends what you’re thinking.’
    ‘That she could have been lying here for a couple of weeks?’
    ‘Somebody would have reported her missing.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Jessie said. ‘Maybe not.’
    Gilchrist frowned at the body. Even with her face hidden, he could tell she was a young woman, no more than a girl, early to mid teens. Could a teenager be dead for a couple of weeks without anyone noticing her missing?
    ‘She could have tripped and fallen,’ Jessie said to him.
    Gilchrist looked back up at the path, at Mrs Watkins turning away, as if embarrassed to be caught talking on her mobile. He estimated the drop in elevation to be ten feet, the spot where the body was found to be distant enough from the path to lie unseen, and far enough from the water’s edge to be untouched by even the highest tides and the wildest seas. He eyed the path again, and in his mind’s eye watched a young girl trip, roll down the hill and . . .
    ‘Running along in the dark,’ Jessie said. ‘Then you trip all of a sudden. Crack your head on the way down.’ She looked across the rocks to the sea, gave a shiver against a sudden breeze. ‘Knock yourself unconscious,’ she said, ‘and you’d freeze to death out here in less than two hours.’
    ‘Running?’ Gilchrist said to her. ‘Why running?’
    ‘Check the heels.’
    Gilchrist bent down, brushed snow off the woman’s feet. Not running shoes, but red high heels without the heels, evidenced by a square base where the fall had torn them free. Or had they been ripped off to make running possible? And bare legs, too, no tights, woollen or otherwise. Behind the left knee, the blue-black stain of a tattoo in the shape of a broken heart could have been mistaken for a bruise. He noticed, too, that the skirt was short, halfway up her thighs, and finished off with a red belt as shiny as plastic to match. And her white blouse, thin enough to raise goosebumps in the summer, did little to hide the stain of a larger tattoo that spread across her shoulders like a pair of wings. He pushed himself upright.
    ‘What do you think?’ he asked Jessie.
    ‘How does the East Neuk shape up for prostitution?’
    ‘It happens.’
    ‘I’ll bet it does.’ She sniffed, rubbed a hand at her nose. ‘Is it always this cold?’
    ‘An east wind,’ he said, then stared off along the Coastal Path. ‘What was she doing here?’
    ‘Any brothels close by?’
    ‘In St Andrews?’
    ‘I’d say that’s where she was running to. Wouldn’t you?’
    Gilchrist tried to visualise the body falling off the path, rolling down the slope. But tumbling head over heels did not compute. Her body was lying in the direction she had run. He looked back along the path as it trailed the coast, back towards Kingsbarns. Although he had walked the Coastal Path several times when he first married, he had never travelled its full length – from Newporton-Tay to North Queensferry on the Firth of Forth. He pulled his collar tight to his neck. Gusts of wind raised spindrift from the sea like mist. Christ, it was cold