The Red Road

by Denise Mina

  ‘I’m going to make everything all right for you, Rose Wilson,’ he said finally. ‘I’m going to give you a second chance.’

  She threw her head back and looked down her nose at him, wary, angry. ‘What you asking back?’

  ‘I want us to be friends for a long time. I’ll visit you in prison, stay close, take an interest.’

  ‘Right, I’m not fucking you or anyone else, I’m done wi’ that.’

  ‘As a friend.’

  She swallowed her chocolate and considered his offer. ‘OK.’

  4

  Robert McMillan had hired a castle on the island of Mull because he didn’t want to die at home.

  Sitting alone in his car, heavy rain thrumming on the roof, he looked up, disappointed. Really, it was more of a Gothic mansion. It wasn’t big enough to count as a castle.

  His phone was in the passenger seat. He had turned it off as he left Glasgow. He couldn’t bring himself to listen to the messages from Uncle Dawood. Come home, that’s what the messages would say. Come home, we miss you, we’re worried, your mother is worried.

  Uncle Dawood had phoned six times before Robert left Glasgow. He didn’t know that Robert had looked in the back safe, didn’t know Robert understood what they’d been doing. When the police found Robert dead the messages would still be there. Robert wanted them to go and see Dawood after his body was found.

  The fact of his death ambushed him again, horrifying, absolute. Robert held tight to the steering wheel, fingers stiff, palms prickling with sparks of sweat.

  He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. The funeral had started, they’d be singing at the crematorium. Uncle Dawood would give the eulogy. Charity work. All those trips to Pakistan. Kind man. Sugared lies. Robert wondered if it started with Dawood, was it his idea, but it didn’t matter who it started with. It started. That was all.

  Valiant windscreen wipers were engaged in a futile war with fat raindrops. Wipe and ruin, wipe and ruin. Robert found himself charting the hopeless struggle for order instead of looking beyond it to the view. Narrow focus. He was angry with himself. If he had done this a long time ago, looked closer, paid attention to minutiae, he wouldn’t be here now. His father had only told him about the safe in his delirium, but there must have been other clues. He should have paid attention.

  He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, mouth slack, swollen eyes itching, feeling the heat of the engine seep away. The funeral service might be finished already, he wasn’t sure how long these things took.

  Afterwards they would mill outside and then go back to a hotel or something; his mother wouldn’t want people in her house. They’d drink and talk about what a great man he was, how funny, how charming, how community-minded. No mention of Robert or his absence. Margery would get drunk and the gathering of strangers would pretend it was because she had lost her husband. They’d all know, really, that she had an unhappy history with drink.

  Rose would be ushering the kids down the aisle, Francine walking behind, two steps behind. Sometimes, he felt as if Rose and Francine were the real couple, as if he was working to finance their life together.

  The car was getting cold. His buttocks were damp from sitting in the warmed seat on the long drive from the ferry. The rain got heavier suddenly, stealing the light, turning the inside of the car blue and green. Cadaverous, he thought, a coffin car.

  The women would have dressed the kids in appropriate clothes: suits for the boys and a dress for Jessica, black but good quality. They could wear them again for his funeral.

  A sharp knock on the side window made him jump in his seat. The worn crotch of a pair of pink jeans was eye-level with Robert. He flinched away from it. Rather than bend down to look in the window, the owner of the crotch stepped back as if he had a bad back and didn’t want to bend.

  He was an old hippy, had long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail and he was holding a woman’s umbrella, white, frilly and yellowed at the edges where it had been wet and dried.

  ‘Yeah, McMillan?’ The low voice was muffled through the glass.

  Robert sat for a moment, watching him. The rain ran down the window, melting the hippy’s face over and over. Robert thought, this could be the face of death. This hippy could be the one they’d sent to kill him. But he’d probably just have shot Robert through the window if he was. The man’s face was in the shadow of the umbrella but Robert could see his mouth quivering through the rain and saw him try to make a warm, welcoming smile. It withered instantly to a baring of teeth. He wasn’t used to smiling.

  The man’s eyes narrowed over the roof and then he looked back, suspicious. ‘You McMillan? D’you hire the castle?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Robert through the window and waited. The hippy didn’t shoot him. It was time to get out.

  He opened the glove compartment, pulled out the envelope full of money and opened the driver’s door. He swung a leg out into the lashing rain, watching his suit trousers and the upholstered interior of the car door getting wet. He turned his torso and brought the other leg out. The rain hit the back of his neck, cold, fresh.

  He stood up, shut the car door and handed him the envelope. ‘That’s the money,’ he said.

  The hippy took it, squeezed it as if he could count it by feel and put it in his back pocket.

  Robert found himself looking away from the house, at a path into a deep forest of Scots pine, the floor thick with ferns glittering with silver tears. Even to him, it looked quite beautiful.

  ‘So, yeah.’ The hippy was happy now. He swung a loose hand at the house. ‘Brolly?’

  He was a good deal taller than Robert. Robert stood in the rain, rolled a shoulder, mentally simulating the ungainly walk of a tall and small person sharing an umbrella.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s, just, go inside.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The gangly man set off for the steps leading up to the grand storm doors.

  The doors opened into a stone porch with a glass door beyond into the hallway.

  In the shelter of the porch the hippy put his umbrella down and turned back to the steps, shaking off the rain by flapping it open and shut. It smelled stale, and as he flapped it the whiff of mildew billowed back at them.

  Robert looked out at the view. An angry sea battered the white sands below. High sheer cliffs on either side, topped with high hills, green as felt. The rain was so heavy it flattened the grass on the lawn, bounced five inches off a long bench looking out to sea. And yet, beyond the bay, a wide slanting column of sunshine out at sea.

  ‘Yeah, so, come in?’ said the hippy, opening the door.

  Robert did as he was told and the hippy shut the door behind him.

  The castle was lovely inside. The hallway was painted a cheerful yellow, walls hung with muted, cheerful pictures of no great value. At the end of the short hall a stairwell curled up, the banister a sensuous sweep of warm cherry wood. The hippy must have prepared for him coming and put the heating on because it was warm. A small fire was set in a pink drawing room to their right.

  ‘Warm,’ muttered Robert.

  ‘Yeah.’ The man held a hand up to a corridor leading off the hall. ‘Kitchen.’

  Robert walked where he was told. The hippy followed and rolled through a series of facts: here is the fridge. This is the thermostat. Here is an oven.

  Robert watched him. The man was wearing a woman’s green velvet knee-length coat over an orange suit shirt. Velvet seemed an odd thing to wear in such bad weather. And it was a woman’s coat: he could see the breast darts. It was good lush velvet, the rain had spattered over the hem, sinking deep into the material and one of the sleeves. When he reached over to point at something Robert saw that the lining was pink silk with tiny hummingbirds on it, as if the man had pulled a tiny exotic garden around himself.

  ‘This one’s our cupboard so please don’t use the stuff in it. This is yours.’ He opened the cupboard next to it. The shelf was lined with used goods left by other holidayers: bottles of ketchup, Wa
itrose teabags, salt from Morrison’s, fancy herbs for cooking a special dish – lemon pepper, allspice.

  ‘You live here?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Downstairs. Please don’t come down unless something goes wrong. I don’t like being disturbed. I, uh, do meditation.’

  Robert couldn’t let it go. ‘I thought I had exclusive use of the house.’

  ‘You won’t see me again.’

  ‘But you’ll be downstairs?’

  ‘I’m the housekeeper.’ He walked away. ‘The TV room is down here.’

  Alarmed, Robert followed him down the corridor. He found himself in a small room with a crappy TV in the corner.

  The hippy pointed vaguely at a table. ‘The remotes are in that drawer.’

  ‘Look,’ Robert said firmly, ‘I needed the house to be empty. That’s what I’m paying for, for exclusive use.’

  The man looked at him for a moment, his mouth hanging open. Robert sounded too fervent, he knew he did. He could see the man run through the possibles: you’re going to hang yourself in my kitchen. You’re planning to burn the place down. Robert saw him decide to be firm and grind his teeth in preparation.

  ‘No. I live downstairs,’ he said unequivocally. ‘I’m the housekeeper.’

  ‘You live here?’ Robert pointed to the floor. ‘All the time? It was my understanding, from the conditions in the lease, that I would have sole use of the castle for the duration of my stay here.’

  The hippy was looking at Robert’s mouth, trying to process what he had said. ‘I live downstairs,’ he repeated. ‘I’m just there if there are any problems.’

  ‘What sort of problems?’

  ‘Boiler can be a tricky. The wood might run out.’

  ‘I wanted sole use of the castle.’

  He processed the thought. ‘D’you want your money back?’

  ‘No. I want you to go away.’

  The lights were off and they stood in the dark of a faux night, looking away from each other.

  After a while the hippy sidled past Robert to the corridor, careful not to touch him, and continued with his speech. ‘There’s a toilet there. The flush is sticky but just give it a good yank. The library is in here.’

  He went through a large door. Robert followed, his heart racing. The hippy couldn’t be here. Men were coming to kill Robert and they’d kill a housekeeper or a gardener without a thought.

  The library was a newer addition to the building, a large square room with double height ceilings and windows that peeped around the shoulder of the house to the sea. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were built from a red wood, not terribly nice and hardly varnished at all. An upright piano sat in the corner, next to a large mahogany writing desk. The fireplace was huge, flanked by well-loved couches and a large square table between them with drawers for keeping games in.

  The hippy pointed out the wood basket for the fire and the matches, the newspaper kindling.

  ‘There’s extra wood outside.’

  ‘Couldn’t you go away?’ said Robert desperately. ‘If I pay extra?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t want to.’

  ‘I’ve got cash.’

  The hippy looked very suspicious now. He glared down his nose at Robert. ‘When are the rest of your party coming?’

  He clearly thought Robert was ill and was hoping someone else would come and look after him.

  ‘Probably tomorrow,’ lied Robert.

  He grunted, looked out of the window as if he hoped to see them there, unexpectedly early. ‘Suppose the afternoon ferry’ll be cancelled because of the storm.’

  The hippy turned away then, heading back for the hallway. Robert followed him. As the hippy slunk down the corridor Robert saw him reach out a hand without glancing around, his fingers running across an ornament on the window sill. Robert hurried after him and, glancing down, saw a small brass statue of Pan. The furry-trousered god was blowing two pipes and skipping a dance on a grey marble plinth. The patina of the statue was black except for one hoof which was rubbed a shining bronze; it caught the light from the kitchen. The hippy had been here for a very long time. Robert thought suddenly that he must have grown up here.

  He was waiting for Robert at the bottom of the stairs. ‘The bedrooms are upstairs,’ he said, and set off.

  Upstairs he pointed to two doors. ‘Master bedroom. Bathroom adjoining.’

  He opened a door and Robert followed him in. A four-poster bed with a tester covered and canopied in blue toile and a matching bedspread. Windows looking out over the castellated entrance porch and beyond to the bay. The patch of sun at sea had gone, nothing but grey rain. The white sand of the beach had a filthy black rim.

  ‘Are you the owner?’

  The hippy seemed uncomfortable at that. He pointed at a door. ‘Bathroom.’ He hesitated then, and turned away, leaving the room.

  Robert watched him walk away, noting the slight blush on the back of the man’s neck.

  Out of the window the dark hills glowered. Whoever they had sent to kill him might be here already, they knew where he was all the time. They might have caught the ferry before him and could be out there now, on the hills, watching the lights flick on in the rooms, tracing their movement through the house. Robert wanted to shout out to the hippy, tell him that if he stayed here he would die. He should run, get out, visit a friend or a relative, just get out. But if Robert did that the man would call the police. Robert couldn’t have the police here. Worse, he might call a doctor – Robert did seem strange, he knew that already. He hadn’t changed his suit in two days and he had been drinking. He probably smelled odd. They would take him to the local hospital, they’d hear that his father had died. They’d mistake his terror for grief and sedate him, so that he couldn’t even think for the last few hours of his life. And then the murderer would kill whoever else got in their way.

  As he processed these thoughts the hippy stared at him from the corridor. The house was terribly silent.

  ‘Why do you want to be alone?’ he asked.

  Robert didn’t know what to say. ‘My father’s ...’ He didn’t know what to say. ‘Just died.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked at the floor and then pointed at another door. ‘Twin room.’

  Robert looked out of the window. He could hear the hippy padding around the house, now outside the door, now on the stairs. Robert didn’t move. He watched the sea claw at the beach. He watched the sky bicker with the land. He watched the opposing cliffs growl at each other. He had tried to remove himself, to make it safe for other people. He could just as well have gone to a Premier Inn by a motorway and paid with a credit card.

  There were family pictures around the room. Robert registered it as the home of a nice, old-money family. His parents’ house wasn’t old money or nice money. His family home was a big Bearsden status symbol but inside was dirt and chaos, misery running down the walls, dripping from the curtains, everything sticky dirty because Margery met the cleaning woman at the door twice a week and paid her to go away.

  In moments of calm like this Robert knew that he was at a crisis point in his life. He was drinking too much, like his mother, making bad decisions, like his father. A lot of men went through a nihilistic period in their lives, when they wanted to die, he was sure. But in it, right in the eye of the storm, he felt certain it was true and that the periods of his life where he had hoped and loved and felt connected to other people, those were the times when he had been pitifully deluded.

  He couldn’t honestly remember the ages of his kids. Nine, eight and seven, was it? Was Jessica seven yet? He hoped she was. Give me the man until he is seven, as Nietzsche said.

  He didn’t see that much of them. He got in from work after they went to bed, left for work before they got up. He worked most weekends. He didn’t know them.

  Every year they went on holiday to his father’s villa in Nice. It was like going away with cantankerous strangers. Robert remembered the holiday this year, sitting on tha
t sun lounger at the edge of a hotel swimming pool. He was sitting in the sun, pretending to read the same shit book that everyone else was reading that year, minding the children in the pool while Rose and Francine went shopping. The kids were screaming at each other, pushing each other around, the seven-year-old (was she seven yet?) was shouting ‘You’re ugly’ at her brother. Robert knew he should do something, take control, get in the pool and make them behave, but he looked at them and realised he didn’t know these people. A waiter, a stranger, would have had more sway over them. He didn’t know them. He sat there, listening and wondering if he was lying to himself, if he just couldn’t be bothered getting up and was making excuses. He wasn’t. He didn’t know these people. He’d started to cry, just quietly, and then he realised the children weren’t shouting any more. He looked up. They were staring at him, waiting for him to tell them to shut up. And everyone around the swimming pool knew that he was in charge and he’d done nothing, and now that he was crying.

  Better this way. His father and himself gone within weeks of each other. A sad story for later in their lives but the stain dealt with in a short brutal swipe. He half hoped they would make it look as if he had committed suicide, so that the story would end with his funeral instead of dragging out through an investigation and possibly a trial. He had seen those families worn thin by the long slow process of a murder trial, seen them wait and hope and dream that they would feel better soon. He had witnessed the crushing fury at the end: the sentence was never long enough, the culprit never sorry enough. They all made the mistake of thinking the trial was for their benefit. Arrogant in a way, the assumption that all the institutions of State would whirr into action to lessen their loss.

  Tomorrow, probably. The storm was gathering strength. Even if they hired a private boat they would have trouble getting over tonight.

  This would be his last night then. He thought of final meals, watching TV, building a fire, a good sleep. He didn’t really want any of those things. He didn’t want anything but for it to be over. He was ready to die.