The Red Road (6 page)

He asked her, ‘Did you hear about Princess Diana?’

She fell back in her chair, shrank into the tracksuit and whispered in a voice channelled from elsewhere, ‘She was young to die ...’ Her eyes brimmed with trembling tears and she said, ‘And those boys ...’

They sat at the table, heads bent as if in prayer. They stayed there for a while. When he looked up Julius saw wet tear tracks on her cheeks.

Quite abruptly, because of the tears maybe, Julius recognised her. He had seen her before. She was
the
girl. Of course, Samuel McCaig, the deceased, it was Sammy the Perv. Of course it was her. He never thought he’d meet her face to face, but she was sitting here right in front of him. She could make everything all right for him.

‘What age are you, again?’

‘Fourteen.’

Fourteen. Illegal. It was perfect. And he had her here, in his sole and exclusive power and he had the power to keep her close.

‘I can help you,’ he said, not certain he could but certain he wanted to. Confused by his adamance, he said it again, ‘I can help you.’

The flashing smirk again, softer now because she had been crying. ‘You gonnae give the judge chocolate?’

‘This,’ Julius lifted a finger to the room, ‘I know how to work
this
.’ His turn to whisper. He said it as if they were conspiring children.

Intrigued, she nodded him on.

‘I knew Samuel. I know what sort of man he was.’

‘He was a perv.’

‘That’s what they called him, wasn’t it? Sammy the Perv.’

She nodded.

‘He had a string of convictions for sexual offences against young girls. Did you know that?’

‘Yeah. ’S how they called him Sammy the Perv.’

‘OK, Rose.’ He put down his pen. ‘Rose, this could end in a long sentence for you or a short one. Either way you’ll get detention, understand?’

She nodded, listening intently.

‘The
way
we tell the story is what will decide if it’s a long or a short sentence.’

She leaned in. ‘Get a short one.’

‘Yes, we want to make it short. So here’s the story we need to tell: you didn’t know he was called Sammy the Perv. You didn’t know he had a string of convictions. You thought he was a friendly man, you’re a lonely child, be a child on the stand, in interviews, OK? No more swearing. They don’t want that. No more “my life’s shite anyway”, no one wants to hear that from a child.’

‘What do they want?’

‘They want you to hope.’

‘Hope what?’

‘To have hope.’

‘What kind of hope?’

‘Hope you’ll be a pop star, hope you’ll be a vet, find true love, things like that.’

She looked at him for a moment, hardly believing him, and barked a startled laugh. ‘Mr McMillan—’

‘That’s what people want from children. You need to act like that. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing. And try to cry.’

‘I don’t cry.’

He loved her for that, because she had cried over Diana.

‘Just think of something that makes you cry and do it.’

Looking into a distant corner, she thought about it for a while. ‘How long do I need to keep that up for?’

‘Long as you can. After the trial anyway. Can you do it?’

She held her hands up in surrender, palms scarred with a thousand years’ hard labour. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Here’s our story: you were lonely and you met Sammy and he was friendly. You got in his car and he attacked you, OK?’

‘OK ...’

‘I’m not going to ask about your relationship with him. If anyone else asks, you only just met him that night.’

Julius looked at her, waiting for the questions. None. He looked at her and saw suddenly how long her neck was and a rope of blood around it. He took out his cigarettes and lit one with his gnarled old hands and looked at the second half of the chocolate bar, nodding her to it.

She picked it up and put the whole thing in her mouth, smiling through shit-smeared teeth. He smiled back and they sat across from each other, he smoking, she chewing hard on the rest of the chocolate. She was going to save him, make everything all right.

‘I’m going to make everything all right for you, Rose Wilson,’ he said finally. ‘I’m going to give you a second chance.’

She threw her head back and looked down her nose at him, wary, angry. ‘What you asking back?’

‘I want us to be friends for a long time. I’ll visit you in prison, stay close, take an interest.’

‘Right, I’m not fucking you or anyone else, I’m done wi’ that.’

‘As a friend.’

She swallowed her chocolate and considered his offer. ‘OK.’

4

Robert McMillan had hired a castle on the island of Mull because he didn’t want to die at home.

Sitting alone in his car, heavy rain thrumming on the roof, he looked up, disappointed. Really, it was more of a Gothic mansion. It wasn’t big enough to count as a castle.

His phone was in the passenger seat. He had turned it off as he left Glasgow. He couldn’t bring himself to listen to the messages from Uncle Dawood.
Come home
, that’s what the messages would say.
Come home, we miss you, we’re worried, your mother is worried.

Uncle Dawood had phoned six times before Robert left Glasgow. He didn’t know that Robert had looked in the back safe, didn’t know Robert understood what they’d been doing. When the police found Robert dead the messages would still be there. Robert wanted them to go and see Dawood after his body was found.

The fact of his death ambushed him again, horrifying, absolute. Robert held tight to the steering wheel, fingers stiff, palms prickling with sparks of sweat.

He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. The funeral had started, they’d be singing at the crematorium. Uncle Dawood would give the eulogy. Charity work. All those trips to Pakistan. Kind man. Sugared lies. Robert wondered if it started with Dawood, was it his idea, but it didn’t matter who it started with. It started. That was all.

Valiant windscreen wipers were engaged in a futile war with fat raindrops. Wipe and ruin, wipe and ruin. Robert found himself charting the hopeless struggle for order instead of looking beyond it to the view. Narrow focus. He was angry with himself. If he had done this a long time ago, looked closer, paid attention to minutiae, he wouldn’t be here now. His father had only told him about the safe in his delirium, but there must have been other clues. He should have paid attention.

He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, mouth slack, swollen eyes itching, feeling the heat of the engine seep away. The funeral service might be finished already, he wasn’t sure how long these things took.

Afterwards they would mill outside and then go back to a hotel or something; his mother wouldn’t want people in her house. They’d drink and talk about what a great man he was, how funny, how charming, how community-minded. No mention of Robert or his absence. Margery would get drunk and the gathering of strangers would pretend it was because she had lost her husband. They’d all know, really, that she had an unhappy history with drink.

Rose would be ushering the kids down the aisle, Francine walking behind, two steps behind. Sometimes, he felt as if Rose and Francine were the real couple, as if he was working to finance their life together.

The car was getting cold. His buttocks were damp from sitting in the warmed seat on the long drive from the ferry. The rain got heavier suddenly, stealing the light, turning the inside of the car blue and green. Cadaverous, he thought, a coffin car.

The women would have dressed the kids in appropriate clothes: suits for the boys and a dress for Jessica, black but good quality. They could wear them again for his funeral.

A sharp knock on the side window made him jump in his seat. The worn crotch of a pair of pink jeans was eye-level with Robert. He flinched away from it. Rather than bend down to look in the window, the owner of the crotch stepped back as if he had a bad back and didn’t want to bend.

He was an old hippy, had long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail and he was holding a woman’s umbrella, white, frilly and yellowed at the edges where it had been wet and dried.

‘Yeah, McMillan?’ The low voice was muffled through the glass.

Robert sat for a moment, watching him. The rain ran down the window, melting the hippy’s face over and over. Robert thought, this could be the face of death. This hippy could be the one they’d sent to kill him. But he’d probably just have shot Robert through the window if he was. The man’s face was in the shadow of the umbrella but Robert could see his mouth quivering through the rain and saw him try to make a warm, welcoming smile. It withered instantly to a baring of teeth. He wasn’t used to smiling.

The man’s eyes narrowed over the roof and then he looked back, suspicious. ‘You McMillan? D’you hire the castle?’

‘Yes, sorry,’ said Robert through the window and waited. The hippy didn’t shoot him. It was time to get out.

He opened the glove compartment, pulled out the envelope full of money and opened the driver’s door. He swung a leg out into the lashing rain, watching his suit trousers and the upholstered interior of the car door getting wet. He turned his torso and brought the other leg out. The rain hit the back of his neck, cold, fresh.

He stood up, shut the car door and handed him the envelope. ‘That’s the money,’ he said.

The hippy took it, squeezed it as if he could count it by feel and put it in his back pocket.

Robert found himself looking away from the house, at a path into a deep forest of Scots pine, the floor thick with ferns glittering with silver tears. Even to him, it looked quite beautiful.

‘So, yeah.’ The hippy was happy now. He swung a loose hand at the house. ‘Brolly?’

He was a good deal taller than Robert. Robert stood in the rain, rolled a shoulder, mentally simulating the ungainly walk of a tall and small person sharing an umbrella.

‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s, just, go inside.’

‘Yeah.’ The gangly man set off for the steps leading up to the grand storm doors.

The doors opened into a stone porch with a glass door beyond into the hallway.

In the shelter of the porch the hippy put his umbrella down and turned back to the steps, shaking off the rain by flapping it open and shut. It smelled stale, and as he flapped it the whiff of mildew billowed back at them.

Robert looked out at the view. An angry sea battered the white sands below. High sheer cliffs on either side, topped with high hills, green as felt. The rain was so heavy it flattened the grass on the lawn, bounced five inches off a long bench looking out to sea. And yet, beyond the bay, a wide slanting column of sunshine out at sea.

‘Yeah, so, come in?’ said the hippy, opening the door.

Robert did as he was told and the hippy shut the door behind him.

The castle was lovely inside. The hallway was painted a cheerful yellow, walls hung with muted, cheerful pictures of no great value. At the end of the short hall a stairwell curled up, the banister a sensuous sweep of warm cherry wood. The hippy must have prepared for him coming and put the heating on because it was warm. A small fire was set in a pink drawing room to their right.

‘Warm,’ muttered Robert.

‘Yeah.’ The man held a hand up to a corridor leading off the hall. ‘Kitchen.’

Robert walked where he was told. The hippy followed and rolled through a series of facts: here is the fridge. This is the thermostat. Here is an oven.

Robert watched him. The man was wearing a woman’s green velvet knee-length coat over an orange suit shirt. Velvet seemed an odd thing to wear in such bad weather. And it was a woman’s coat: he could see the breast darts. It was good lush velvet, the rain had spattered over the hem, sinking deep into the material and one of the sleeves. When he reached over to point at something Robert saw that the lining was pink silk with tiny hummingbirds on it, as if the man had pulled a tiny exotic garden around himself.

‘This one’s our cupboard so please don’t use the stuff in it. This is yours.’ He opened the cupboard next to it. The shelf was lined with used goods left by other holidayers: bottles of ketchup, Waitrose teabags, salt from Morrison’s, fancy herbs for cooking a special dish – lemon pepper, allspice.

‘You live here?’ asked Robert.

‘Downstairs. Please don’t come down unless something goes wrong. I don’t like being disturbed. I, uh, do meditation.’

Robert couldn’t let it go. ‘I thought I had exclusive use of the house.’

‘You won’t see me again.’

‘But you’ll be downstairs?’

‘I’m the housekeeper.’ He walked away. ‘The TV room is down here.’

Alarmed, Robert followed him down the corridor. He found himself in a small room with a crappy TV in the corner.

The hippy pointed vaguely at a table. ‘The remotes are in that drawer.’

‘Look,’ Robert said firmly, ‘I needed the house to be empty. That’s what I’m paying for, for exclusive use.’

The man looked at him for a moment, his mouth hanging open. Robert sounded too fervent, he knew he did. He could see the man run through the possibles: you’re going to hang yourself in my kitchen. You’re planning to burn the place down. Robert saw him decide to be firm and grind his teeth in preparation.

‘No. I live downstairs,’ he said unequivocally. ‘I’m the housekeeper.’

‘You live here?’ Robert pointed to the floor. ‘All the time? It was my understanding, from the conditions in the lease, that I would have sole use of the castle for the duration of my stay here.’

The hippy was looking at Robert’s mouth, trying to process what he had said. ‘I live downstairs,’ he repeated. ‘I’m just there if there are any problems.’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘Boiler can be a tricky. The wood might run out.’

‘I wanted sole use of the castle.’

He processed the thought. ‘D’you want your money back?’

‘No. I want
you
to go
away
.’

The lights were off and they stood in the dark of a faux night, looking away from each other.