The Road to Hell (29 page)

‘That had nothing to do with it, honestly.’

‘You would tell me – if things are getting on top of you?’

‘Yes. I am fine, and “things” had nothing to do with it.’

‘OK. OK. Now, from what you’ve told me, it sounds as if that doctor, Alton, is definitely off the hook. So what’s the likely verdict?’ The DCI picked up her discarded
sandwich, noticing that part of it had gone soggy due to tea spilt in the saucer.

‘Probably no fault anywhere. Just a mishap like you thought. An aged drunk falling and hurting herself, dying in the cold. No one will be found responsible now. The Professor gave a long,
involved explanation about paradoxical undressing and terminal burrowing, and judging by all the scribbling the Sheriff was doing as she was listening, I reckon she was persuaded by it. After all,
all the forensic evidence, or lack of it, pointed in the same direction, didn’t it?’

‘Do you think that the Reverend McPhee succumbed to the same paradoxical urges?’ said DCI Bell.

‘Maybe, but it’d be a bit of a coincidence. I don’t know . . .’ Alice hesitated for a second, thinking. ‘Moira Fyfe’s clothes were found round about her, near
her body, weren’t they? All of them. Yet despite all the searches we carried out there were no signs of his anywhere.’

‘True,’ Elaine Bell mused, breaking her sandwich in two and preparing to take a bite out of the dry bit, ‘but somebody could have taken them, after he had removed them himself.
Perhaps they checked the pockets for valuables and then threw them into the nearest bins. I know we found nothing in them but they’d been emptied earlier that same morning. Eric confirmed
that with the Council yesterday.’

‘Somebody could have taken them, granted, but surely they’d go through the pockets there, in the gardens, and leave them there. And, don’t forget, Dean Gardens are private, you
need a key to get into them.’ She paused again to think about it. ‘Vandals could get over the railings, I suppose. They’ve done it before. But would they bother checking out the
old man’s clothes? I don’t think so. They’d be far too busy smoking grass in the Pavilion or burning trees. Only this morning . . .’

‘What about the dog?’ the DCI interrupted her, finally taking a bite out of her sandwich.

‘That’s another mystery, if you ask me. If it was in the garden with the man, and that’s where he usually walked it, how did it get out?’

‘You said “Only this morning . . .”’ DCI Bell prompted, her cheeks bulging with the bread she was chewing.

‘Yes, this morning, at the FAI, something happened. There were a number of people at the back of the court – they’d been there since the inquiry began and on odd occasions they
got quite rowdy. All of them were down-and-outs, I think. One of them, I’m fairly certain, is the man who tried to sell McPhee’s signet ring up near Lauriston Place.’

‘Have you brought him in, then?’ the DCI said excitedly.

‘No. He left before I’d managed to place him, but I think I know who he is.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Taff’

‘Taff who?’

‘Just Taff. No-one seems to know his surname. He was a friend of Moira’s.’

The phone rang and DCI Bell picked it up. After a short pause, she fixed Alice in the eye and said, ‘Yes, Sir. I’ve heard all about it from Sergeant Rice. A very unfortunate mistake
for the Crown Office to have made, I must say. They’ll surely have to review their procedures. I understand that Sean Lyle may be involved. Up to his neck.’

Still holding the receiver to her ear, she mouthed to Alice, ‘Find Taff’, and then, pointedly, returned her attention to the Superintendent.

Ringing round the drop-in centres in the city produced no sightings. From a hurried conversation with the manager of the Bread Street Hostel, and a more leisurely one with the
manager at Ferry Road, she learned that Taff occasionally spent the night in Greyfriars churchyard. Alice decided to wait until after dark and then try to find him there. If all else failed she
could check out the care shelter for the night at St Cuthbert’s Church.

Sitting at her desk, staring blankly at her computer, it gradually occurred to her that she had no real picture of McPhee’s character, no feel for him as a living, breathing individual.
But he had been found stark-naked, as well as dead. If there was some strange sexual element involved in his death, it would be useful to have some understanding of him and of his foibles. His wife
might be aware of any kinkiness, of any exotic predilections; on the other hand she might well be entirely in the dark about them. Even if she knew, she might be reluctant to speak. She could take
offence, possibly. He had been a Church of Scotland minister, after all, and she a minister’s wife. Both of them, superficially at least, were pillars of respectability.

However, an old and trusted male friend might prove more forthcoming. Hurriedly collecting her coat from the back of her chair, she rose, determined to go and speak to Timothy Dawson, Duncan
McPhee’s old pal, in the remaining hours of daylight.

With little traffic on the road, the drive from St Leonard’s to the man’s address on the edge of the city took less than twenty minutes. Every traffic light, even
the final, unending series at Barnton, turned to green at her approach as if to speed her passage towards him. Shortly before the Cramond Brig turn-off, the wind rose, rippling through the trees on
the edge of the gorge and tearing off any remaining leaves, sending them spiralling high in the air like motes of dust in sunlight.

On Dawson’s Crescent, parking was easy. The force of the gale had ripped a branch off a nearby fir. Jinking onto the road to avoid it, she ran towards his house. ‘The Larches’,
like the rest of the houses in the street, was a white-harled bungalow, topped with red tiles and enclosed within a high holly hedge.

Dressed in dark-brown corduroys and a green turtle-necked jersey with frayed sleeves, the man himself showed her into his small hallway. It smelt strongly of burnt toast. As he led the way he
apologised profusely for the mess everywhere. Oily car parts rested against the chipped skirting boards in the hallway, and old newspapers occupied the three hard chairs in his study. Moving one
pile onto the floor to free a seat for her, he said, in a deep, patrician voice, ‘Take a pew, officer.’

He was a tall man, well over six foot, but it was not his height that caught Alice’s eye. It was his perfect hairlessness. Neither eyebrows nor eyelashes shadowed his bright eyes, and all
available light seemed to be reflected off his glistening, bald pate. As he bent over to clear more papers so he could sit opposite her on a stool, she noticed that he was wearing odd socks, one
black and one green. Once he was seated, a sinuous Siamese cat appeared from nowhere and leapt onto his lap, arching its back and rubbing itself against him. His large hands stroked it and he
beamed at her as she began to purr. Alice noticed, looking at the pair of them together, that their eyes were an identical shade of blue.

‘Despite what you said on the phone, I’m not sure I’m the right person to help you,’ the man said, looking anxiously at Alice and pulling the cat closer as if it was a
shield.

‘But you’re a friend of Duncan McPhee, the Reverend McPhee?’

‘I was. A very close friend.’

‘Then can you tell me a little about him? What sort of a man he was?’

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Dawson said, sighing deeply and shifting uneasily on his seat, but keeping the cat cradled on his lap.

‘Don’t know what?’

‘Anything. Anything important, at least. Juliet didn’t tell you, did she?’

‘Tell me what exactly?’

‘I’ll tell you and then you can decide whether you still want to hear from me about Duncan, OK?’ The man’s naked brow was furrowed, two neat perpendicular grooves forming
at his nose where the ends of his eyebrows should have been.

‘OK.’

‘He and I go back a long way. We first came across each other in our early twenties when we were both reading theology at Glasgow University. We come from very different backgrounds. I
went to Harrow, you see. But we found we got on. I don’t know exactly why we did . . . but we just did. You know how it is?’

Alice said nothing but nodded.

‘We both married at about the same time. Had our children at about the same time, too. Flora and Imogen are the best of pals to this day. But, gradually, as the years passed our careers
diverged. You see, as a minister I was content, happy even, simply attending to my parish work, but he had set his sights on other things.’

‘Other things?’

‘“Higher” things, “better” things, he would have thought, if not actually said. He wanted to advance up the hierarchy of the Church, whereas I was quite happy with
my parish, with my lot.’ He hesitated again, his fingers caressing the cat’s fur and making it close its eyes in ecstasy.

‘So, what happened?’

Alice shivered in the unheated, spartan room, desperately prodding him to answer the questions so that the interview would come to an end as soon as possible. The window was wide open, letting
in a howling draught, but he seemed oblivious to the cold, to any discomfort.

‘So, he became increasingly involved in committee work, getting to know the right people, people in high places.’ He stopped speaking, his expression mournful. ‘Do you really
want me to go on? Is this really the sort of thing you want to know?’

‘Yes. Why did you fall out – because your careers diverged?’

‘No,’ he replied, fixing her with his round, candid, cornflower-blue eyes, ‘that wasn’t it, dear. It was much more basic, much simpler than that. That’s just the
backdrop, the background to everything.’

He hesitated briefly, looking at her as if trying to catch a glimpse of her soul, took an audible breath and then began to speak more quickly.

‘What happened was that I had an affair with a parishioner of mine. That was the real catalyst for everything. It did not last – as, perhaps, you can divine . . .’ He allowed
his eyes to rove around the room, stopping briefly on a long-dead pot plant and the stained carpet, witnesses to the lack of a female touch in his life.

‘There was a complaint, it was upheld and I was suspended from my parish for three years. I appealed it, and at the hearing at the General Assembly – that was how it used to be done
– I expected Duncan, if nobody else, to support me. He knew me, after all. He knew it was a temporary, uncharacteristic lapse, a silly, trivial . . . infatuation. But he chose not to do so
because, and I hesitate to say this about anyone, I think he put his career before me, before our friendship. Fortunately, enough of my brethren took a different, more compassionate view, and after
debate my sentence was reduced from three years to one year. And, for a bit, a short while, I managed to keep my parish.’

‘So you no longer consider the Reverend McPhee as your friend?’

‘Correct. He dropped me like a stone,’ the man replied, looking fixedly down at the cat on his knee.

‘Are you his enemy, then?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, lifting his head up quickly with a shocked expression on his face, ‘not that. What a black-and-white view of life you must have! Of course not. I’m not
his friend, but I’m not his enemy either. However, I lost my wife, my faith . . . and my hair . . . and he had a part to play in all of that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Despite my alopecia, Fu Manchu didn’t desert me,’ he said, playing with the cat’s chocolate-coloured ears.

‘What sort of man was Duncan McPhee?’ she asked.

‘In a way I think I’ve given you a clue already, haven’t I? A man who put his own preferment above everything else. Ruthless, in his way. A man who has climbed and climbed
– I expect I helped him on his way in the early days – but not for the view from the top. He climbed as if driven by some strange fear, some strange compulsion to escape from the
“bottom”, as he would have described it. I should feel sorry for him . . . but I don’t any longer.’

‘Was he a happily married man?’

‘To the best of my knowledge. Why?’

Alice hesitated, reluctant to reveal too much. But something would have to be said to nudge him in the right direction.

‘When his body was found in Dean Gardens, he was completely naked.’