The Road to Hell (8 page)

A movement, seen from the corner of his eye, caught his attention. A stoat in its white winter clothing was standing on its hind legs and, intrigued by the sight, he lumbered slowly in its
direction, his wet trainers squelching with each step. Instantly, the creature darted off into the nearby thicket, but he continued towards the spot it had occupied, keen to get one more look at
it. He peered into the thicket and saw, sticking out of the bushes, a pale, outstretched human hand. He blinked in disbelief. Disgusted, his first instinct was to move away from it, to back away
from it and forget all about it, but he was, he reminded himself, a responsible adult. A fully qualified actuary, no less. Heavens, if
he
shirked his civic duty, what hope was there for the
rest of society?

So, against all his instincts, he crept towards the hand, keeping his eyes on it in case it moved or twitched. Bending to look more closely, he allowed his gaze to travel upwards. A discoloured
arm was attached to the hand, and beyond that he could make out the profile of a yellowish face. The edge of its mouth appeared to have been nibbled away by some beast, exposing all of the back
teeth in the upper and lower jaws and a vast expanse of pale pink gum. The missing area of flesh curved upwards like a crescent moon or a clown’s exaggerated smile.

Without his mobile, Simon McVicar did not know what to do. So he did the first thing that came into his head and released a piercing scream. When nobody responded to it, he let out another one,
higher this time, and saw, to his relief, the portly jogger running towards him.

‘Nobody told me that yesterday,’ Alice said, in between gasps for breath. While Simon McVicar was standing motionless by the dead woman, screaming for help, she had
been tearing up the stairs of St Leonard’s Police Station, taking them two by two in her haste. Arriving sweaty and twenty minutes late, she was informed by an unconcerned DI Manson that she
was supposed to be at Gayfield Square, helping out the short-staffed SART boys again.

‘Nobody said!’ she exclaimed.

‘Well,’ he replied nonchalantly, ‘they should have.’ His feet were resting on his desk.

‘But “they” whoever “they” are, didn’t and as a result I nearly killed myself trying to get here on time . . . and I live just round the corner from Gayfield
Square,’ she persisted, suspecting that he was the mysterious ‘they’.

‘Are “they” responsible for your lateness, then, Sergeant?’ he replied, deliberately baiting her and watching her already high colour rise with indignation.

‘No,’ she conceded, ‘but I would have been on time at Gayfield Square.’

‘But you didn’t know you were to go to Gayfield Square, did you?’ he said, twisting her tail for the pleasure of it, then turning a page of his newspaper and dropping it onto
his desk with a smile as broad as the Cheshire cat.

‘No – but if my car . . .’

She did not have time to finish her sentence as DCI Bell marched into their room. Immediately DI Manson removed his feet from the desk and caught the little woman’s eye, keen to get her
attention and prevent it from straying to his open newspaper.

‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded sharply.

‘Nothing.’

‘Where’s Alistair?’ she snapped, her gaze resting on the copy of the
Scotsman.
The two police officers shook their heads; neither of them had any idea where he was.

Since she had failed to be promoted to Superintendent, Elaine Bell’s scant store of patience seemed to have dried up completely. Had almost anyone rather than DCI Ranald Bruce pipped her
at the post she might have reconciled herself to remaining at St Leonard’s, but his success stung, like vinegar dripped onto a recent wound. He was, in her view, grossly over-promoted
already.

She, of course, was blind to his political skills, although they were the real secret of his success and the key to her own failure. An early morning phone call from him had set her nerves
jangling. Preoccupied, now replaying their conversation in her head, she heard herself admitting that he would be indeed a ‘new broom’ as he had described himself. Silently, she had
added the observation that he would be ideally suited to the role, being made of wood from the neck upwards.

‘Fine, fine,’ she said, her mind still on other things, ‘he’ll be late as bloody usual. Well, he’ll just have to go and fill in at Gayfield instead of you, Alice,
and you can go to the Hermitage with Eric.’

‘Right.’

‘But what’s happened there?’ the Inspector inquired, stretching his arms high above his head and then standing up.

‘Didn’t I tell you? No? A couple of joggers have found a body in the undergrowth there. One of them phoned half an hour ago. It’s a woman . . . oh, and she’s half-naked.
She may have been raped.’

The bulky and inexperienced WPC stationed at one of the boundaries of the crime scene signalled with her arms, revolving and then crossing them like an uncoordinated windmill.
She was trying to attract the attention of two CID officers heading uphill. As they deviated from their original course, turning towards her, a stooped, bird-like figure peeked out from behind her
billowing raincoat. The smaller woman’s posture betrayed her great age, and she, too, was gesturing at them, frantically flapping a hand to hurry them along. Both women knew that it was
pointless to shout, their voices would be lost in the roar of the gale raging around them. The storm had blown in across the North Sea and was running amok up the east coast, spinning weathercocks,
splintering slates and smashing up yachts in harbours as far apart as Coldingham, Musselburgh and Arbroath. Before dawn it had taken possession of the city and was busy playing with the
inhabitants, turning their umbrellas inside out and rattling their chimney-pots.

‘You go, Alice,’ DI Eric Manson shouted, peeling off, heading instead in the direction of a small group of men that he had just spotted in the distance. They were clustered in a
small circle, the majority of them down on one knee, their heads close together like young children absorbed in a game of marbles. Everything about them suggested that they were with the body.

Suddenly one of them rose, chasing a piece of paper as it bobbed in front of him, caught in an up-draught, his hands outstretched as if beseeching the elements to return his property.

As Alice drew closer to the large policewoman, the old lady dodged in front of her human windbreak, almost blown off her feet as she did so, but determined to get her say in first. One hand was
clamped over her crocheted yellow-ochre bonnet, and from the other swung a nylon dog lead. It was blowing to and fro in the strong gusts as if weightless. Her head, which shook constantly, was sunk
deep into her shoulders. Looking up at Alice like a tortoise from inside its shell, she blinked and said dolefully, ‘Teazel – Teazel’s gone off! I’ll need to get him back.
I’m very sorry.’

‘Where did he leave you?’ Alice asked, leaning towards the woman and trying to project her voice over the noise of the wind.

‘I don’t know. I lost him a while back, some place before the raised bridge. But he always races on. I think he may be in there,’ she said, pointing at the sectioned-off area,
the blue-and-white tape that marked it writhing like an eel in the shifting gusts. Then she added pensively, ‘He shouldn’t be, should he? But dogs don’t know the law, do they?
They can’t read and write. But I’m very sorry, officers . . . for your . . . all your trouble.’

‘That’s the problem, you see, Sarge,’ the large WPC said slowly and unnecessarily. ‘He may be in there, disturbing things, mucking up the evidence. What should we
do?’

‘I’ve been shouting for him,’ the old lady volunteered, adding, ‘she gave it a go and all, didn’t you, love? But it’s hopeless.’

‘Yes,’ the WPC agreed, and as if to prove the point she bellowed out, ‘TEAZEL! TEAZEL!’, her words disappearing into nothingness, carried away by the next blast which
rushed past them and blew their hair into their eyes. Looking desperate, the old lady joined in, adding her cracked treble to the chorus and scanning the horizon with her bespectacled eyes.

‘Come on, Teazel, ye wee devil!’ she implored, suddenly losing patience with her pet and whirling the lead in her hand as if it was a lariat and she was about to lasso a recalcitrant
steer. From behind a trio of distorted hawthorn bushes a few hundred yards away, the missing Border terrier appeared on the skyline. Seeing them, he bounded towards them as if overjoyed at finding
them again. His tail wagging furiously, he leapt up onto his owner, leaving muddy pawprints all over her grey raincoat and all but bowling her over. Only the policewoman behind her saved her from
falling. Dangling from the dog’s mouth was the limp body of a long-dead rabbit, its skeletal legs terminating in over-large furry paws. The old lady bent down and, with surprising dexterity,
removed the corpse from her pet’s jaws and clipped the lead back onto his collar. Then, nodding, but saying nothing more, she set off hastily in the direction of the big house. The dog
followed jauntily behind her.

‘Did you get her name?’ Alice asked, watching them as they hurried away.

‘Yes. She’s called Irma Goodbody.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Christ, I forgot all about her address,’ the WPC said, a look of panic on her face.

‘Better catch her then. Off you go. We’ll need a full statement. She may have seen something useful.’

Nodding, the sturdily-built policewoman jogged after the pair, her arms flailing as she battled to keep her balance on the uneven ground.

‘Over here, Sarge,’ a man’s voice shouted. Turning and catching sight of the speaker, Alice went to join him. He was standing on a muddy footpath, holding the fringed ends of
his tartan scarf over his ears, determined to stop his earache from getting any worse. The path on which he stood zigzagged between clumps of dead bracken. In the nearest clump lay a light yellow
anorak. Part of it was covered by the dark, slimy fronds of the plant and as she got nearer one of the wet sleeves broke loose with a sound like the crack of a whip. In the strong breeze it blew
freely, waving cheerily at them as if it had a life of its own.

By the time Alice had reached the man her shoes were sodden, but she was feeling pleased to be there, out in the fresh air, glad to have stumbled across this oasis of countryside hidden in the
heart of the suburbs, murder or no murder. Whoever it was who had failed to tell her that she was supposed to be starting her working day in Gayfield Square with the SART boys had done her a
favour. But for that she would be traipsing in and out of the pawnshops in Leith, inhaling exhaust fumes and dodging the gobs of chewing gum that studded the pavements. Instead, here she was,
outside, exploring this unexpected find of a place. She made a mental note to tell Ian all about it later – he would love it and so would their dog. A walk here would be a treat, making a
fine change from the tamer, more familiar landscapes of Arthur’s Seat, the Meadows and Inverleith Park. In this wilderness, there were acres of proper woodland, tangled undergrowth and a
reed-fringed burn meandering its way through its own marshland.

A photographer, following behind Alice and conscientiously videoing the scene from every angle, failed to notice a rabbit burrow and put his foot in it, tripping over and falling to the ground
with a thud. A heartfelt obscenity issued from his lips. Immediately he inspected his camera lens, wiping a smear of mud from it with his sleeve.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked him, and when, still prone, he nodded, she pointed at a couple of empty cans near his feet. They lay on a patch of burnt earth, their ends touching the
soot-blackened stones of a makeshift fireplace.

‘Did you get them?’ she asked, and then, spotting a nearby Scene of Crime Officer, she waved at him, summoning him to come over and plot their location.

‘Have you found anything else?’ she asked the SOCO as he hunkered down on his knees trying to get a closer look at them. Neither can was rusty; a crumpled one had contained beer and
the other, cider.

‘More rubbish, you mean?’ he replied, his kneecaps now waterlogged, sounding unimpressed by her find. Rising stiffly, he added grudgingly and as if it was of as little significance,
‘A high-heeled shoe. It’s probably hers. I can’t think who else would be leaving their footwear about in a place like this.’