The Road to Hell Read online

  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.’

  ‘Can you show it to me, once you’ve finished here?’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied, picking a fragment of dried heather out of his green paper suit. ‘It’s fairly close by her. We found it maybe ten metres or less from the body.’

  A lone red leather sandal rested upside-down on a patch of flattened grass. After a good look at it, Alice moved towards the group of men assembled at the edge of a thicket of squat, bare bushes. DI Manson, one side of his raincoat open and flapping in the wind like a loose sail, was bent double, inspecting the body.

  ‘That’s what you get in the countryside,’ he said for her benefit, hearing her approach. His lips
were pursed and he was shaking his head in disgust.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ she asked, bending down beside him to get a better look at the woman. They had had this argument of old. In his view nature was red in tooth and claw, and to be despised. Man and his works were placed above it, had to control it.

  ‘The wild beasts have been at her,’ he replied, gesturing at the corpse’s savaged mouth with a wave of his hand.

  ‘They didn’t kill her though. That’ll been one of us city dwellers,’ Alice replied.

  ‘Don’t start with any of your . . . your . . . animal rights nonsense, Sergeant,’ he said testily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  Alice looked at the dead woman’s face. Both of her eyes were closed and one side of her mouth curved upwards in a grotesque lop-sided grin. Something had widened her smile. A small, yellowish bruise extended from below her hairline over her right temple, and her wiry grey hair was matted, with twigs and leaves protruding from it. Scratches, as straight, deep and well-defined as claw marks, disfigured the front of her nose and a semi-circular area of flesh was missing from an earlobe.

  Slowly, Alice’s eyes travelled down the body. The only clothing remaining on it was a black bra and it looked ill-fitting, unnaturally loose, as if it had been undone. Her mud-encrusted jeans lay a few feet from her bare legs, and her exposed kneecaps looked red and raw, contrasting with the pale fesh of her torso as sharply as blood spilt on snow. A pair of black pants, with grimy, clay-coloured fingerprints all over them, encircled an ankle. Raised, angry-looking abrasions were visible on her naked arms, and below her bloodied elbows her hands were dirt-smeared, her fingernails black as a navvy’s.

  ‘This place gives me the creeps,’ DI Manson said, looking round and shivering theatrically to underline his distaste for it. Straightening up and catching sight of the rooks circling above him, he added, ‘Look! Bloody vultures! You don’t get them in the city centre either. Remind me not to die in a place like this.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Professor McConnachie yet?’ Alice asked. With all her attention focused on the woman’s disfigured face, she had hardly registered his dig.

  ‘Yes,’ the DI replied, jangling the coins in his trousers pockets noisily as he searched for his lighter. Finding it, he tried unsuccessfully several times to light his cigar. Eventually, a colleague held his hands up to shield the flame.

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘He’s still mulling things over, but he reckons that we should treat it, for the moment, as some kind of sexual homicide. He’s not happy about the bruise on her head. She may have died from the blow that caused it, or hyperthermia or both. Or something else altogether. He can’t say yet. He needs to open her up first.’

  ‘Have we any idea at all who she is?’ Alice asked, finally dragging her eyes from the disfigured face and turning towards the Inspector.

  ‘Nope. All we know is that she’s been food for the beasts.’

  ‘We’ve nothing to go on at all?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  Manson drew on his cigar deeply, hoping that the inhaled smoke would, somehow, warm him. After holding it in for a few seconds, he partly exhaled, filling out his cheeks like a hamster before releasing a few puffs through partly opened lips. ‘There was nothing in her clothes except a few coins, and no handbag’s turned up either. You’ll need to speak to the two joggers as soon as possible. They’re both in a squad car together.’ He added, ‘One or other of them followed the ferret and found her.’

  ‘The ferret?’ Alice said incredulously. ‘That seems unlikely. After all they don’t usually roam wild, they’re domesticated.’

  ‘A ferret – a weasel – a sodding skunk!’ he interrupted her, now blowing a stream of blue smoke forcibly through his lips. ‘How the hell do I know? What does it matter? As you said yourself, Sergeant, whatever it was didn’t kill her. So we don’t really need to identify the brute right now, do we?’

  Watching inside as drops of rain started to run down the windscreen of the car only to be blown straight across it, Simon McVicar made plain his reluctance to leave the shelter of the vehicle. He appealed to the female sergeant; he had on his running clothes and nothing else, and they were thin and wringing wet. Surely he could be interviewed in the warmth, inside the car? Outside, the air was turning arctic and it had begun to drizzle. He would freeze in the wind, he protested.

  Patiently, Alice explained again to both the witnesses that they each had to be seen on their own, either outside the car or in the station, she did not mind where it was. Calculating that the trip to and from the station, plus the likely waiting around, would rob him of a full morning’s work, Simon McVicar finally capitulated and stepped out onto the damp ground. The wind slammed the car door shut behind him.

  Standing a few yards away from the car, he felt vulnerable in his scant, clinging kit, exposing his goose-pimpled legs to the world. He was also consumed with anxiety. Upset. It all seemed to him, in some ill-defined but real way, inappropriate. ‘Out of order’, as people said. Those assisting the police in a murder enquiry, he thought, should be properly dressed, not clad in over-tight, skimpy shorts. So clothed, he felt sure he lacked solemnity and weight. In a word, dignity. To compensate for this perceived deficit he became pompous in his speech, determined to prove to the detective that he was a man of substance, someone to be taken seriously, not some kind of unemployed gym-bunny.

  ‘I understand that you found the body?’ Alice began.

  The man’s hands, which hung loosely by his side, had begun to tremble. ‘Correct, Officer. I was the unlucky one,’ he answered, opening and closing his fists in a deliberate attempt to stop them shaking. He was aware that she had noticed the movement.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Certainly. Very shortly after I had departed from the main path I stopped for a while to . . .’ he hesitated briefly and then continued, ‘admire the view. At that moment in time I saw a stoat, an ermine, and I followed it. As a result of following it I chanced upon the lady.’

  ‘Had you ever been to the place where you found her before?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No, I’ve never been here before. This is my first time and I can assure you,’ he added bitterly, ‘my last.’ He edged closer to the police vehicle, now leaning against it in an attempt to protect himself from the wind which was whipping about his unprotected legs.

  ‘When you found the lady, was she dead?’ Alice asked him.

  ‘How d’you mean? What d’you think?’ he said in disbelief, his voice quavering, outraged, sounding as if he was on the verge of tears, ‘Have you seen her? She’s been eaten, for pity’s sake! Of course she was already dead!’

  ‘When you found her was there anyone else about? Did you see anyone else nearby?’ Alice persisted.

  ‘No,’ McVicar replied, ‘I was completely on my own. All alone – not a soul in sight. I shouted for help. I’d not got my mobile with me so I shouted for help instead, for assistance. Dan, the fellow in the car with me, heard me and came to see what the matter was. He phoned . . .’ As if he had run out of air, the man’s voice petered out and he suddenly covered his face with both hands, hiding his eyes and breathing in and out steadily and deliberately.

  ‘I’ve never seen a dead body before,’ he said quietly, bowing his head as if in shame.

  ‘I quite understand, Simon,’ Alice said, putting an arm around him, ‘and it must have given you an awful shock. I have, too many times, but not many like her, thank God. Do you think you could help me with just one more thing?’

  He nodded his head, shoulders hunched, his hands still protecting his face from her gaze.

  ‘Do you know what time it was when you found her?’

  ‘No. I left my watch at home and, to be honest, I’ve lost all sense of time. The best I can do is – and it’s just an estimate – I reckon I found her an hour ago or so. I don’t know what the time is now.’

  Once he was back alone in the privacy afforded by the squad ca
r, Simon McVicar began to weep, accidentally releasing a single, loud heartfelt sob. Appalled and ashamed at his own reaction, he wiped his tears quickly away with the bottom of his damp white singlet and blinked hard, trying to prevent any more teardrops from forming. But they continued to cascade down his cheeks, and he knew why. The dead woman had looked, at first glance, horribly like his own mother, and on first seeing her, his heart had missed a beat. Suppose it really had been her, lying in the dirt with her pants about her ankles? Assaulted, raped. No, murdered. It was too unbearable to consider. He must, must, must get the lock on her back door fixed, this very day, and he must tell her only to walk the dog in broad daylight and in public parks. Snib the windows too. Take her mobile with her at all times. Jesus! No one was safe in this city.

  How had this happened? Today had started like every other day in his life, every other ordinary day, and now, somehow, whether he liked it or not, violence had sidled up to him and, against his will, made his acquaintance. Kissed him. Raped him too, if you please. If only, he rued, I could put the clock back, I would get up and go straight to work, omit the morning run, and never place myself within a country mile of Hermitage of Braid.

  The traumatised man’s temporary running mate, Dan Purvis, had been whiling away his time in the police car playing ‘Snake’ on his phone. In his full-length, breathable tracksuit, the cold did not trouble him. He was a butcher by trade, used to refrigeration rooms, and had manhandled enough lifeless animal flesh in his working days to blunt the sensibilities of a Sunday school teacher. Seeing the dead woman he had not recoiled from her, but had bent down closer to get a better view. When he had had his fill of the sight, he had, finally, responded to his companion’s repeated, hysterical requests and called the police. While waiting for them to arrive he entertained himself by making calls on his mobile phone. The first person he spoke to was his wife, and he described everything in Technicolor detail to her.

  ‘Somethin’s been gnawin’ at her face, I reckon.’