The Road to Hell Read online

  Muriel caught Margaret’s eye, and seconds later and as if something had been decided between them, she began to speak.

  ‘She appeared to be – how can I put this politely?’ She hesitated. ‘Deranged. Wandered.’

  ‘Or drunk,’ Margaret added, gathering a handful of the hollowed-out orange skins together and beginning to slice them up with an oversized butcher’s knife.

  ‘Yes – or intoxicated,’ her sister conceded, looking at Margaret and remarking, ‘not too coarse, mind. We don’t like huge bits, do we?’

  ‘No, but I don’t like it like Golden Shred either,’ Margaret replied, continuing to slice exactly as before.

  ‘How did she behave?’ Alice asked, enjoying the smell of bitter orange from the boiled pith and peel.

  ‘Not well,’ Muriel began, her wooden spoon now raised like a conductor’s baton. ‘First of all she was talking to herself. Weeping away, too. Muttering incessantly to herself. She seemed to think . . .’

  ‘That someone wanted to sit next to her!’ Margaret chipped in delightedly, finishing her sister’s sentence and banging her knife heavily on the chopping-board for emphasis.

  ‘Margaret!’ Muriel said coldly, gesticulating with her spoon, ‘I thought we’d agreed –’

  Her sister nodded, and a contrite expression passed fleetingly across her flushed face.

  ‘As if anyone would choose to sit beside her! She was sobbing to herself, making awful faces at anyone who came near her. Growling, once, like a tiger or a lion, or a madwoman, when she thought someone was going to sit next to her. People were moving away from her seat in droves. We certainly did. And . . .’

  ‘And,’ Margaret said, standing up, unable to restrain herself any longer in her excitement, ‘imagine. She called the bus driver “a twit”!’

  ‘A twat, actually,’ Muriel corrected her, nudging the final batch of pulp off the chopping board and into the steaming pan.

  ‘Twit. Twat. It’s all the same,’ Margaret shot back peevishly, seated once more, her knife pointing at her sister.

  ‘I think, dear, that you’ll find it’s not,’ Muriel replied, adding menacingly ‘and we agreed, didn’t we, who would speak?’

  ‘Why,’ Alice intervened, ignoring their bickering, ‘did she call him a twit or a twat or whatever it was?’

  ‘A twat. Because,’ Muriel replied, ‘he had braked sharply and we were all thrown about the bus. At the lights at Holy Corner, he misjudged them badly. You know what those drivers are like, careless, in a word, slapdash. Everyone was flung about like so many sacks of potatoes, and she banged into the seat in front. Most likely she got a whiplash.’

  ‘In front,’ Margaret repeated, nodding her head excitedly.

  ‘Anything else about her that either of you remember?’

  ‘To be frank, and we began by sitting directly behind her, she was a bit . . . high? Unwashed, if you know what I mean. She was drinking something or other while she was actually on the bus. I couldn’t see what it was. Cheap sherry, I daresay. Lost all self-respect, I expect. Living homelessly in the Grassmarket or wherever those sort of people live nowadays. Of course, it’s come up a lot lately, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I saw what it was!’ Margaret said, giving her twin a smug glance.

  ‘You did not!’

  ‘I did, really, dear, I did. When we were moving, after she’d banged into the seat in front, I saw her empties. It was beer or lager, you know, that sort of Tennent’s stuff in tins. There were three or four empty ones, lying beside her on her seat.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Muriel replied, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Whereabouts did she get off the bus?’ Alice asked.

  The sisters eyed each other and, having reached another unspoken agreement, Margaret replied breathlessly, ‘No, she did not. She did not get off the bus. Well, not voluntarily, at least. She was forced off it!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . .’ Margaret paused for a moment, searching for the right expression, ‘she’d spent a penny . . . right there, on the bus seat! We’d already moved after she called the driver a twit, but you couldn’t miss it. The driver, “Redface”, we call him . . .’ she hesitated once more, like a timid child checking the policewoman’s reaction to their nickname, ‘Redface manhandled her off the bus.’

  ‘He did no such thing!’ her sister said in a shocked tone.

  ‘He did, Muriel, he did!’ Margaret protested, looking fearfully at her sister.

  ‘No,’ Muriel said, arming herself with oven gloves and taking the bubbling pan off the hob, ‘you mustn’t exaggerate like that to the police, dear. Not the police. Redface never laid a finger on her. That would be an assault, wouldn’t it, officer? A crime. No, he just sounded very, very cross, looked like a big angry bull, and that was enough!’

  ‘Where did she get off?’

  ‘Ah . . . just before our stop. At the end of Morningside Road. We get off by Hermitage Terrace, then it’s a short walk home,’ volunteered Muriel.

  ‘How long would it take to walk to the Hermitage from the end of Morningside Road?’

  ‘At a brisk pace, no dawdling, say, fifteen minutes?’ Margaret replied, looking at her sister for confirmation.

  ‘No dawdling, ten minutes,’ Muriel said, ‘at my pace, anyway. Now, jars, Margaret. Where have you put them?’

  The grounds of the Salvation Army Hostel on Ferry Road betrayed the fact that the Victorian edifice was no longer in domestic use but had become an institution. Branches of trees had grown, unchecked, across its lower windows, obscuring the view and blocking out the light, and the lawn, once an even green sward, was now ragged and punctuated by untidy yellow tussocks. A faded blue plastic frisbee rested on the face of a broken sundial and the flowerbeds and the lawn had merged, sprigs of leggy privet invading them both.

  The place felt desolate and unloved, and that first impression was only confirmed by the men and women mooching about by the front door, some seated on a bench talking to each other, one or two standing alone, most with cigarettes in their hands. Tracksuits, T-shirts and denim, in one combination or another, were worn by them all and the staff of the hostel were distinguishable from the residents only by the identity cards hanging around their necks.

  As the police car with the two policewomen inside it crunched over the sparse gravel, one of the smokers, a squat woman with a pitted complexion, flicked her cigarette end in front of its wheels. Her eyes remained fixed on the spot, spellbound, until the car had run over the butt, as if crushing a dog-end was an exciting spectator sport.

  The hostel manager’s writing desk was cluttered with papers, and on top of her computer sat a couple of spindly Spanish dolls, their tiny, pea-sized heads adorned with black mantillas. As she bent to pick up a red biro from the floor, breathing noisily, she confirmed that she did not recognise the woman from the description that DC Cairns had given her over the phone. Waddling across her office in her scuffed trainers to circle a date on the calendar, she explained that she had been working in night shelters in Aberdeen for the past year and had only very recently relocated to the capital. So she was not yet familiar with all of their regular service-users. Such things took time, they would appreciate.

  ‘Have any of your service-users gone missing from the hostel over the last few weeks?’ Alice asked.

  ‘We call them “lifehouses” nowadays – like lighthouses. Gets rid of the stigma, you see.’

  ‘Sorry, anyone gone missing from the lifehouse?’

  ‘Some. Some always do,’ the woman replied, ruffling her crew-cut hair with her hand as she talked. ‘But we’ve not heard anything bad from the hospitals, or from you lot, about them. As you know, our residents come and go as they like. Sometimes they depart in a hurry, leaving all their possessions behind. Sometimes they come back and collect them. Often they don’t.’

  ‘Have any of your female residents gone missing within the last two weeks?’

 
‘Aha. Two, but I doubt either of them is your lady. They’re both young, under twenty-five. One’s gone down to London and I’ve no idea where the other is at present. She’s got a mum in Port Seton, but they fell out. She might have gone to stay in her house, if they’ve made up again. Your best bet, to get your lady recognised, identified or whatever, is to speak to the residents in the TV room.’

  Eager to get on with her own tasks, she added, ‘Come on, I’ll take you there. I need to see Ruth anyway.’

  They followed her along a grand corridor with doorways every few yards. Its scarlet-painted ceiling had a heavy white egg-and-dart cornice, and their footsteps echoed off its marble-tiled floor. The characteristic clicking sound of snooker balls emanated from the first room they passed. The next room had been turned into a kind of laundrette, and a couple of overweight women in T-shirts and leggings leant against its doorway, chatting as they watched the small procession pass.

  ‘I need to speak to you, Ruth,’ the manager said in a slightly threatening tone, nodding at one of them as she walked by.

  ‘Okey dokey,’ Ruth replied, raising a middle finger behind the woman’s retreating back and smiling slyly at the passing police officers.

  At the end of the corridor, the manager opened another solid wood-panelled door for them and immediately turned round to go back, saying nothing, now preoccupied with thoughts of her imminent confrontation with Ruth.

  In one corner of the room, a woman lay on a settee, moaning. Her face was turned to the wall, and she was wrapped from the waist down in a coarse grey blanket. Loud rap music blared out from a huge television screen ,and a female and two male residents in the room were talking to one another, one of them striding about as he did so, his arms waving constantly as if he was engaged in some kind of dance. Twitching and constantly jerking his head from side to side, he was as lean as a whippet.

  ‘Would you mind,’ Alice said, moving to the centre of the room and raising her voice to be heard above the racket, ‘having a word with us?’

  ‘Who’s she?’ the female resident, Donna, asked DC Cairns. As she spoke, a half-smile transformed her heavy features. Behind her thick glasses her light blue eyes appeared huge and owl-like, and they shone with genuine curiosity. Buttresses of thick yellow plaque separated all of her lower teeth.

  ‘Police,’ Alice said, but seeing an instantaneous expression of alarm on the faces of the residents, she quickly added, ‘but we’ve just come here for information. We’re not after any of you.’

  ‘Just as well,’ the whippet snapped, shaking his head. ‘This is our house. This is where we live, like. None o’ us invited yous in. You’ll no’ have a warrant either.’

  ‘Shut it, Ronnie,’ his companion said, wagging his finger in the boy’s face. The man was in his sixties and had a massive, leonine head that dwarfed the rest of his body. Like the girl, he was now smiling at the two police officers and had drawn closer to them.

  ‘No, you shut it, Rab,’ Ronnie said, head jerking to and fro as he began pacing up and down again. After one circuit, and as if irritated by the noise, he turned off the TV.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Rab asked Alice, ignoring the boy, and looking DC Cairns up and down so hungrily that she felt the need to fold her arms in a vain attempt to stop his gaze stripping her further.

  Alice gave them a description of the dead woman and they all listened intently to her words, gradually clustering around her, but saying nothing. From a corner of the room the swaddled woman let out a series of animal-like whimpers.

  ‘Ssshh!’ Ronnie castigated her, blinking rapidly in his annoyance, and when she continued to moan, grabbed a lighter from his pocket and threw it at her.

  ‘Your woman sounds a bit like Moira,’ Donna said, ‘or maybe Cathy?’

  ‘Aye,’ Rab agreed, ‘could be Moira. She’s got that kind of frizzy hair and she had that red mark on her cheek and all. But Cathy’s not got anything like that on her face, has she?’

  ‘No,’ Ronnie said, joining in, ‘she’s not.’

  ‘Do you know where Moira is? Where she lives – or lived?’

  ‘No, I don’t bloody know where she is,’ Ronnie said, flicking his thumbs and index fingers rapidly over each other and looking annoyed, ‘’cause that lot done it to her, didn’t they?’

  ‘Did what?’ DC Cairns asked, following him with her eyes as he set off around the room again, arms lashing the air.

  ‘Made her homeless! When she was here she couldn’t give a receipt for the vouchers for clothes they gave her, because she’d spent the money, so they kicked her out, didn’t they! Taff told me all about it.’

  ‘She’d spent the money on clothes?’ DC Cairns asked, trying to follow the boy’s meaning.

  ‘No. No’ on clothes . . . on cider, beer, maybe. But they made her homeless. That’s the point.’

  ‘She’d gone against the contract,’ the girl said primly. ‘No drink, no drugs inside here. That’s the rule.’

  ‘Did any of you know her well?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No’ really, but Taff does,’ Ronnie said, brushing an imaginary fly from the side of his face.

  ‘Where would I find him?’

  ‘He’s no’ well. Got cancer of the lungs or the liver or something. He’s on that radiotherapy. He’ll probably be at the drop-in centre in Cromarty Street. He likes that place for his breakfast – you get a great breakfast there for fifty pence. Egg, sausage, bacon, black pudding and beans.’

  ‘Miss,’ the girl said, sidling up to Alice, grinning widely and displaying all of her coated lower teeth, ‘you’re a policewoman, eh? I got my exams. I’d like to be a policewoman an’ all.’

  ‘Aye,’ came a low, slurred voice from the bundle on the settee, ‘that’d be right, Donna. Then you could arrest yourself, eh? Ya thievin’ junkie bastard!’

  They headed off through the mid-morning traffic to the drop-in centre, taking a left along Ferry Road and catching the lights onto Inverleith Row, making speedy progress until they were forced to idle in a queue at Canonmills. Ten minutes later, the North Bridge was clear and they turned down the Royal Mile past the round tower of the Scandic Crown hotel and into a small, dark side street with metal bars guarding all of its lower windows.

  The centre had a shield-shaped red sign swinging listlessly above its doorway with ‘The Salvation Army’ written across it in white lettering. A woman, holding a couple of carrier bags in one hand and smoking a cigarette, flattened herself against an oversized grey wheelie bin so they could pass up the steps to the building.

  The door was open. ‘This place is like a beauty parlour,’ DC Cairns whispered, wonderment in her voice. ‘I think I’ll have a bikini wax while I’m here.’

  Overhead spotlights flooded the centre with a mellow, tinted light, illuminating newly-painted beige walls and reflecting off a flooring of shiny beige tiles. But a brightly-coloured poster on the wall proclaiming ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ dispelled any illusion that tanned beauticians in close-fitting white nylon might be found there.

  There was no answer at the first door they tried, but when they knocked on the second, marked ‘Grace Shelley: Senior Project Worker’, it was opened by a rather startled-looking woman. As Alice explained why they had come, she seemed to relax, chattering easily before, finally, giving them the benefit of her opinion.

  ‘Take it from me, eh? Taff will probably not talk. Our service-users generally don’t.’

  ‘I expect you’re right, but could we, at least, see if he’s here? Then find out if he is prepared to talk to us?’ Alice asked.

  The woman nodded, and they followed her out of her office, waiting as she locked its door then, meticulously, tried the handle. Upstairs in the Meeting Room about eight people were seated on plastic chairs, one of whom was an old man. He was unshaven and wore a black baseball hat with its peak low over his eyes. He was leaning over a round table, sketching with charcoal, his tongue poking out as he concentrated on his picture. By his hand lay a plate with the rem
ains of a bacon roll on it, and a can of Sprite beside it. On the wall behind him was printed in capitals ‘THE ART GALLERY’ and twenty frames had been painted onto it awaiting pictures. But there were no pictures and all the frames were empty.

  At a nearby table sat a young woman, her thick tresses of auburn hair held in place by a gold Alice band. Her long, crossed legs pointed towards the old man.

  ‘What you doing here?’ she demanded in a hostile tone, seeing the two women, ‘You inspectors? You come to inspect us?’

  ‘They just want to know if Taff’s here, love,’ Grace Shelley said, smiling at the girl as if to reassure her.

  ‘No’ now,’ the old fellow mumbled, blending one of his charcoal lines with the heel of his palm, the blackened cuff of his shirt dragging over the paper.

  ‘I’ve checked the register,’ DC Cairns said quietly in Alice’s ear.

  ‘Any entry for him?’

  ‘Yes. His name appears between “Lad” and “Minnie Mouse” and it says he arrived at ten o’clock. There’s no time given for when he left.’

  Overhearing her, Shelley asked, ‘Anyone know where Taff’s gone?’

  Nobody answered, and looking at Alice she shrugged her shoulders, turning as if to leave the room.

  ‘Anyone here know a middle-aged woman called Moira?’ Alice asked, more in hope than expectation.

  At first her words were met with silence, then the girl said, unnecessarily loudly, ‘No!’

  Having made her contribution, she got up and sidled past the policewomen, keeping her eyes on them as if they were snakes and might strike at any moment. Her departure from the room was followed by the sound of her high-heeled boots clattering down the tiled stairs. Apparently oblivious to the noise, the old man’s head remained bowed, his nose almost touching the paper as he continued working, cross-hatching his drawing with small, cramped strokes.

  ‘Excuse me,’ DC Cairns said, getting closer to him in case he was deaf, ‘but do you know Moira, Taff’s friend?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, brushing the charcoal dust aside with his sleeve.