The Road to Hell (11 page)

‘A suspicious death or natural causes?’

‘I can’t say for sure, but she could well have been attacked. If so, it would have been by a blow to the head – striking the left temple. Or it could have been caused by a
fall, of course. I can’t tell at present. Ideally we need her history. And I don’t know whether she died from the subdural or the hypothermia or both. She’s rather more prone than
most to a subdural, being an alcoholic.’

‘So what should I tell the DI?’

‘Tell him, for the moment, just for time being, to treat the cause of death as the subdural. We have to exclude an attack, the worst-case scenario. The best case is a fall. Everything may
well change as more information comes to light. Hopefully we’ll get something useful from the lab results – if not, from you lot.’

The traffic on the Cowgate was at a standstill. Workmen in hard hats at the St Mary’s Street junction and at the Grassmarket end were supposed to be controlling the cars,
but neither of them was allowing any vehicles to pass. As a result, there was a lengthy hold-up, with horns blaring and engines revving but no movement.

As they walked back to the station, turning at the lights uphill onto the Pleasance, Alice said to DC Cairns, ‘You did well. I take it you’ve been to a post mortem before?’

‘No,’ the Constable replied, ‘I’ve never. But I’ve seen far worse than that.’

‘Where on earth? Were you a pig stunner in an abattoir or something?’

‘No, but I worked as a nurse for a while. An awful lot of things happening to the living are much worse than that. The dead don’t feel a thing, do they? So they’re all right.
You don’t need to worry about them.’

‘Still, there are the foul smells, the sounds, you know, the saws, the ripping and tearing . . .’

‘It’s water off a duck’s back as far as I’m concerned. It would probably mean nothing to you too if you’d had to watch people crying out in pain, people screaming
– and that’s just a hashy catheterisation. A post mortem’s a cakewalk in comparison, a party.’

‘Why did you give up nursing?’ Alice asked.

‘Because,’ she replied in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I never grew a second skin. And you need one for that job. Oh, and the pay. It wasn’t too hot either, sweeties, not to
mention the hideous uniform they force you to wear.’

‘We shouldn’t be here – in the pub,’ DC Galloway said, and then he tilted his glass of IPA towards his mouth and took a large gulp.

‘I don’t see why not. There’s nothing more we can do tonight,’ DC Littlewood replied. He was using the coasters on their table as cards, propping them up against each
other in an attempt to make a house. Just as he was about to complete the third storey, DC Cairns pushed up her spectacles and blew hard on them, causing the entire structure to collapse.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said peevishly, looking at her in disbelief and then gathering the coasters up to try again.

‘If you do it again . . .’ he threatened, but his voice was drowned out by a loud roar as the pub erupted with joy, men now rising from their seats and punching the air as Hearts
scored their first goal against St Mirren.

‘Anyway,’ Alice said, once the noise had died down, ‘it’s late and the Inspector knows we’re here.’

‘How did you manage at your first post mortem?’ DC Littlewood asked the bespectacled female constable. He had given up on the card house and was now curious about the new recruit
from Torphichen Street.

‘Fine,’ she replied breezily. Her second glass of gin and tonic was already half empty.

‘You didn’t throw up, then?’ he asked, impressed, a couple of crisps in his hand.

‘No.’

‘I did,’ he said, his mouth now half-full, and added, ‘but I’d had a heavy night before and it was first thing in the morning. I’d have been all right
otherwise.’

‘’Course you would!’ DC Galloway said sweetly. ‘Like you were the last time. Not.’

‘Want another one, Sarge?’ Tom Littlewood asked, pointing at Alice’s empty glass.

‘No thanks,’ she replied, finishing the dregs. ‘I’d better be going home.’

She stood up and walked towards the door, but before she reached it she found herself face to face with Eric Manson. He looked exhausted, colourless.

‘Everything all right, Sir?’ she asked, surprised to see him in the pub and worried suddenly by his haunted expression.

‘Yes, Alice. But I need to speak to you . . . outside, if that’s OK with you?’ She nodded, feeling uneasy, further disconcerted by the uncharacteristically nervous tone in his
voice. Something really must be up. He followed her out onto the High Street and they stood close together by the door of The Thistle as she waited for him to speak. A couple moved past them and as
they went into the pub the sounds of rowdy conversation leaked out from it. A drunk staggered through the doorway, bumped into the Inspector, winked and sniggered, ‘A fine night for it,
eh?’, as if he and Alice were about to kiss.

Watching the man meander down the pavement, Manson still said nothing. Alice asked him: ‘You said you needed to speak to me, Sir?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he answered, but again he said nothing. She waited a few more seconds, her impatience growing. The air was freezing, and Ian would be back by now, waiting for her.

‘Well, I’d best be getting home then, eh?’ she said, looking at him, trying to prompt him to speak, and then, when he did not, turning towards the Tron Kirk, ready to go.

‘It’s about Ian,’ he said.

She stopped in her tracks and turned back to face him.

‘What about him?’ Her heart already racing, her words came out too fast, in a rush.

‘He’s been in a car accident. He was hit this evening by a car in Stockbridge.’

‘He’s all right?’ she said.

He said nothing.

‘Tell me he’s all right?’ she repeated, pleading with him.

‘I can’t.’

‘Tell me –’ she implored him.

‘He’s dead. They took him to the Infirmary but he was dead on arrival.’

The next morning Alice awoke in a strange bedroom and for a single, blessed second, wondered where she was. As her eyes roamed around the room, the realisation that she was in
her sister’s house was accompanied by a physical sensation of dread, of fear almost, as the fact of Ian’s death hit her once more. Feeling tears forming behind her eyes, she
deliberately looked up at the ceiling, blinking them back, and tried to concentrate on the whiteness of it, the strange pattern made by the single hairline crack, anything to distract her from this
new, unwanted reality. But a voice in her head, unbidden by her, repeated insistently: ‘He is dead. He is dead. He is dead,’ chiming like a bell.

‘Alice?’ It was her sister, Helen, standing outside the door.

‘Yes?’

‘Would you like some breakfast?’

No. That would be the truthful answer, but it was not worth saying. Sometime she would have to get up, sometime she would have to face them all, and now was as good a time as any.

‘Thanks. I’m just coming.’

‘I’ll just bring it in then, shall I?’ her sister asked, and, without waiting for an answer, barged her way sideways through the door and into the room. She bore a tray, laid
for breakfast, and on it was a small vase of snowdrops. As if Alice was an invalid, she placed it in front of her, resting it on the blue duvet, and then bent over her, plumping up one of the
pillows, ready for her sit up and lean against them. Then she sat down on the bed and looked intently at her sister.

‘Thanks,’ Alice said, looking down at the toast and boiled eggs and feeling no hunger for any of it. The meal seemed about as appetising as her own bedclothes.

‘Did you sleep all right?’ Helen asked.

‘Fine. Thanks.’ Her answer sounded oddly formal, Alice thought, and added to the air of unreality that enveloped her, that she could not shake off. Everything that mattered had
changed. The world was no longer the same. Yet the rules of grammar were being adhered to, food was being brought at the normal time of day and their exchange had been a model of polite triviality.
But she, or the she that she recognised, no longer existed. She had become hollow, no longer had any substance. There was now a huge gap in her where once her heart had been.

‘Do try and eat something,’ Helen said.

When Alice made no move, her sister took matters into her own hands, knocking the top off an egg with a knife and then buttering the two slices of toast.

‘They were laid yesterday, so they’ll be as fresh as can be,’ she said.

‘What?’ Alice said, bemused, her mind somewhere else.

‘The eggs.’

‘What about them?’

‘They were freshly laid, yesterday.’

‘Were they laid by your hens?’ Alice asked, trying to sound interested, but feeling her chin tremble as she said the words.

How the hell had this happened? How could they possibly be talking about the identity of the hens that had laid the eggs when Ian was dead? Simply pronouncing his name in her head made the tears
swim in her eyes.

Because that was all he was now. A name in people’s mouths, a memory in their minds. As insubstantial as air. There was no flesh, no body to touch any more, no eyes to look into, no voice
to hear. He, as she had loved him, was no more.

‘Yes,’ she heard her sister’s voice as if in the distance, ‘and I’m pretty sure they are both from the Black Rocks. I got them as pullets, on point of lay, and I
think that these two are a couple of their first efforts.’

‘Really?’ Alice answered, trying to infuse her voice with interest, but finding that she was quite unable to think of anything else to add. Mechanically, she lifted her spoon and
sank it into the yolk, watching her sister watching her.

The kitchen, when she entered it, seemed to be alive with noise. Sam, her four-year-old nephew, was racing around the wooden table on his bicycle, stabilisers squeaking on the
wooden floor. He was naked except for a pair of trainer pants, and his dog, a blue-eyed collie, was tearing after him and barking loudly. Quill, Alice’s mongrel, was in hot pursuit of both of
them, and he, too, was barking. The boy was shouting their names, egging them on in their pursuit of him and howling like a wolf.

Helen had her hands in the sink, washing pots and pans from the night before, and her younger child, Angus, was sitting cross-legged at her feet. He was watching the TV, a wide-eyed look of
wonder on his face, singing out loud and occasionally bursting into high-pitched laughter.

Walking into the room, Alice felt overwhelmed. Everything happening in it was happening too fast, it was blurred with speed, and the colours were too vivid, the sounds too loud. When she spoke,
her voice sounded oddly heavy, leaden, like someone else’s.

‘Hello, Sam.’

‘Out of the way! Get out of the way!’ he shouted at her, missing her by inches as he careered past, the dogs straining to reach him.

‘Sam!’ Helen said crossly, but he took no notice of her.

Rolling her eyes heavenwards, she took off her rubber gloves and, on his next circuit, stretched out to catch him as he whirled past her again. At her second attempt, she managed to grab his
bare shoulders and slowly draw him towards her. Once he was still, the dogs, too, came to a halt, and Quill, pink tongue lolling from his mouth, wandered over to the water bowl for a drink.