The Red Road

by Denise Mina

  He looked out of the window at the fierce waves trying again and again to claw their way up the sheer cliffs and he took comfort in the knowledge that though he would die, he’d be taking the right people with him. The hippy was annoying anyway. He didn’t do meditation, Robert guessed he was smoking cannabis down there. He probably grew it himself. He talked like a stoner too: delayed speech, odd clothes, and he hadn’t even left home. So better him than the kids or Rose and Francine or his mother, or the people in a local hospital.

  He was damp. His suit was sticking to him. He had a poly bag in the car with other trousers in it. He went downstairs, feeling in his pocket for the car key.

  ‘Hey.’ It was the hippy. He was in the drawing room, standing in front of the small fire, as if he had been there a good long time, waiting for him.

  Robert touched his damp jacket. ‘I need to ...’

  The hippy pointed to a small table standing at the elbow of a comfy couch. Sitting on it, glinting invitingly, were two large crystal glasses. In each was a finger of dark amber liquid.

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Aberlour. Twenty-five years old. Take it. Drink.’

  Robert forgot the damp prickle of his clothes; he kept his eyes on the whisky and went into the warm pink room.

  5

  Darkness was falling, winter-early, as heavy rain stole what was left of the day. The Bath Street traffic crawled respectfully around two black Daimlers parked outside the Glasgow Art Club.

  Passing drivers craned to see the funeral party, the sleek solemnity of the big cars, the blackness of the mourners’ dress. They slowed for a glimpse of the memento mori, briefly remembered how sad it was that death was always happening to strangers, before driving onwards towards bland lunchtime sandwiches and afternoons squandered as if their own lives would go on for ever.

  Rose stood by the car holding a big umbrella over the door. The children scrambled out, giggling at the frantic rain ricocheting off the pavement, nipping at their ankles.

  The Art Club was in an elegant Georgian townhouse in the centre of the city. A broad staircase swept up from the street, furnished with cast-iron boot scrapes. It led up to twin doors of elaborate carved oak, branches to frame the heavy leaded glass looking into the club’s lobby. Margery had booked it for the funeral drinks. Rose didn’t see why. It meant that they had to go all the way back into town from the crematorium, with three frustrated children, to a room full of already quite drunk lawyers. Rose did not like her kids there, in a room like that. It felt unsafe; small people near big, drunk people. She didn’t like the company either, their phoney, aggravating cynicism, barks of laughter that depended solely on the speaker’s status. It was exhausting remembering who she was supposed to be with them.

  She clucked and harried her gaggle up the steps to the door. They were only here to imprint them with the memory of the event. They didn’t need to participate in the party. She guessed thirty, forty minutes would be long enough. Fifty, if there were speeches. Please don’t let there be speeches. She didn’t want to be here a minute longer than she had to be.

  From the shelter of the doorway she turned back to see Dawood, Francine and Margery coming out of the front car. Dawood hung back, watching as Margery walked slowly to the steps. She took hold of the handrail, sighed and began the climb. She was only sixty-three. Francine held onto the opposite handrail, paralleling. They walked up the steps in tandem, brackets around the chasm between them.

  Behind them, through the veil of grey rain, Rose saw the funeral cars skulk back into the stream of traffic, panthers returning to the hunt.

  Margery arrived in the porch. As the Art Club member she was the only one who could press the buzzer and be let in, but she made them wait. She stood in the oak porch and critically appraised the children, then Francine. Francine stood with her hands passively at her sides until Margery was finished, too tired to resist. Only Dawood escaped the inspection.

  ‘You,’ aloof, Margery pointed at Rose, ‘you wait here. We’ll go in first. Wait for a moment, then come in.’

  Rose dropped back on her heels, enveloped by the dark corner. She looked down and found Jessica grinning up at her, baring her gappy teeth, too young to be embarrassed at her granny belittling the staff. Hamish, ten years old and young enough to believe in fairness, glared at his grandma, his mouth tight and furious.

  Margery didn’t care; she had turned away to press the buzzer and put her flat hand on the ornately carved door, waiting for the lock to snap. The door dropped open, a growl of chat and laughter yawned out at them.

  Margery, matriarch of her clan, entered her club. Francine followed behind, eyes radiating fervent apologies back at Rose. Rose gave her a reassuring blink and cupped the back of Hamish’s head as he passed her.

  The door shut between them. Keeping her face neutral for the children, Rose watched them through the fingered glass. The family of Julius McMillan assembled, braced themselves and processed into his funeral party.

  The slight stung. They shouldn’t treat her like that. But then, she countered to herself, they were bereaved. Julius was a terrible, shocking loss to them, and Robert might be dead for all they knew. Plus, Margery was Margery. She was a doll in her day, Mr McMillan used to say. Though her charm and looks were gone she still retained the mannerisms of someone with massive social cachet. She treated all women, even seven-year-old Jessica, as a potential rival.

  So although Rose was slighted and upset and scared, she knew that she had been those things before. She had been those things very recently and she knew she wouldn’t die of them. She could choose the thoughts in her head. She decided to use this time alone to remember who she was here. It had been a hard week, confusing, sore and busy. I’m a nanny, she thought. She corrected herself and smiled – I’m the nanny. I don’t go out. I don’t meet people. I’m the nanny. The shy, nearly thirty, nanny. I don’t have hobbies. I have no past. I’m the nanny. The persona came over her like a cassock. Her shoulders rolled forward, her eyes dropped, her jaw loosened.

  So she knew who she was, and still there was time to waste. She glanced around and found herself alone, quite invisible to the passers-by hunched in the heavy rain. She could remember Mr McMillan. Rose took a step out towards the darkness of the street, shut her eyes and raised her face to the sky.

  Small rain speckled her cheeks and forehead. She saw Mr McMillan, his face, his baggy old eyes, his tar-yellowed teeth and fingers. She saw him and she said a prayer to him, in her own accent, her old accent: thank you, Mr McMillan. Thank you for your kindness in this shitty fucking dump of a world.

  Mr Julius McMillan, LLB (Hons), sprinkled soft rain down on her and smiled. She saw him opening a chocolate bar. She saw him smoking a fag. She saw him weep because Diana was dead. Because of Mr McMillan she didn’t think compunction was a weakness any more. She didn’t see it as a chance. She saw it as a state of grace, a window for redemption. Not that he was the best man who ever lived, but Mr McMillan was her redeemer.

  The Art Club door opened at her back, catching her heel. Two men, not with the funeral party, were coming out, a little tipsy, smiling. Rose caught the door on the back swing.

  Inside, she kept her eyes to the floor and tracked the murmur of the funeral party. Through a grand hallway and a large door, across a bar, through a small door. She had never been in here before and stopped at the threshold to take it in.

  It was a gallery room. Two storeys tall and as wide as the town house itself, the ceiling had a long window running the full length of it, lending natural light to an exhibit of paintings. In the centre of the room sat a black grand piano with its lid down, slick and glossy as the funeral Daimlers.

  At each end of the room, echoing each other, stood tall, dark, wooden fireplaces. A sign on the wall declared that the fireplaces were by Rennie Mackintosh but said that they were too early to show his later, bolder style. An insert panel had a broken clock, in the other a beaten metal panel of a woman in profile, chin tilted upwards, gor
geous hair billowing out behind her.

  The party was thin and almost exclusively male. The one or two women were dressed like men, in business suits and heels. Lawyers. Julius and Margery had few friends; they didn’t socialise as a couple because of Margery’s depression.

  Rose lingered by the door, reluctant to enter and be among them. She looked for the children but couldn’t see small scampering bodies tumbling around the wooden floor. She raised her eyes and looked for Francine, saw her standing by the near fireplace, nodding as a man monologued over her head.

  Francine reached out and took Rose’s elbow as the man talked. He was glassy-eyed, reciting a story about fishing or something. It was full of obvious signifiers that Rose didn’t get: Deeside ..., he said, three rods ... beats. And names, as if they would know them, Jonny Blahblah, Gunter Blah Von Blah, as if they all knew the same people and cared about the same things. Lost in his own frame of reference, he was good enough to glance down and notice that Francine’s attention had been lost, that Rose was waiting to talk to her. He broke off and floated away.

  Rose touched Francine’s elbow. ‘Lots of doors. Did you get in OK?’

  ‘Fine. I’m sorry about Margery,’ said Francine, looking to the far end of the room. ‘They’re through that door.’

  Rose stood on tiptoe and kissed her cheek gently. She went off to find them.

  The kids were having a carry-on in the bathroom. She could hear them from outside the locked door. She rapped once, heard Jessica squeal and felt a thump against the wood.

  ‘Open it,’ she ordered. The latch slid back, the door fell open. The floor was wet. Hamish had washed Angus’s hair in the basin and stood, shamed and smirking by the wall. Angus’s shirtsleeve was soaking wet.

  Rose sighed and pulled a towel off the wooden rack, wiping it hard against Angus’s arm to dry it.

  ‘Silly,’ she muttered, not wanting to make a big thing of it, not today.

  She squeezed the towel around his arm, trying to get the worst of it out. Jessica was at the sink, showily washing her hands, to be the good one, because Rose was always nagging them to wash their hands.

  Hamish stood by Rose, his arm pressing against her side. Assuming he wanted reassurance she said, ‘I’m not very happy with you at all.’

  ‘Grandma was rude to you,’ he said, deflecting blame.

  She stood up, folding the towel to find a dry spot. ‘It’s been a bad day, Hamish.’ But she was pleased that he said that.

  She rubbed Angus’s arm again, squeezing his collar with the towel. The shirt was half see-through but if they left his jacket off it would be dry soon enough.

  She stood up and looked at the trio. ‘Right. We’re going out there together. We’re going to behave really well. We’re going to speak when spoken to, tell people how old we are, and in twenty minutes we’re going home to hot chocolate and a DVD. Is this agreed?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘But only for good behaviour,’ warned Rose.

  They went back out. The children saw trays of sandwiches and mini brownies on a far table and galloped off. Margery was sitting on a sofa under the broken clock, sipping white wine, in the middle of a group of men performing for her benefit, talking too loud across her as she listened. One of the men, sitting on her left hand, wasn’t focused on Margery. He was staring at Rose, at her face.

  She knew him, actually: £45k to Quetta, 7.5% fee, quarterly. She could feel his eyes boring into her. She knew the needful look but chose not to look back. Making a mental note to check the book, to see if he was due or owed, she pictured the back safe and it brought to mind the overwhelming store of chores she hadn’t managed yet. Here, she was the nanny and she was shy and she knew no one.

  She strode across to the children. They each had a plate in their hands and a white linen napkin and were behind a stout man, waiting for access to the brownie tray to clear.

  ‘Two each,’ she said, seeing that the cakes were small and dry and probably wouldn’t be very nice anyway.

  Jessica groaned in complaint. The stout man turned to Rose.

  ‘Hello.’

  She nodded a greeting back, not really looking at him, but he persisted. ‘D’you remember me?’

  She felt her bowels drop: but she was a nanny here. She looked up, it was fucking Monkton. He’d ballooned but still fancied himself. Rose gave a nondescript smile, looked down. ‘I don’t, um ...’

  He held out his hand. ‘I’m David Monkton.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’ She was pinned in on either side by the swarm around the buffet and had no option but to shake his hand. Suddenly Dawood was next to them.

  ‘Lovely, what you said about him,’ she said, hoping he was here to take Monkton away. They didn’t move to leave. Dawood and Monkton stood so close to her in the buffet scrum that she couldn’t see past them. She was worried that the children were slipping away from her.

  ‘Rose, we met years ago.’ Monkton was insistent. ‘Do you remember? With Julius.’

  She didn’t answer. He shouldn’t be talking to her, he must want something. Or know something. And if he knew something he would use it because that’s what Monkton did: found things out and used them.

  ‘So, David,’ said Dawood, reining his doggy in, ‘how did you get here?’

  She should have known this would happen. Julius dead, Robert missing and suddenly everyone was misbehaving. She’d need to find out what they were up to. But not now.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, dipping her shoulder to squeeze through the forest of suits. She was just in time to witness Jessica cramming two squares of brownie in her mouth while she had two on her plate.

  Rose reached over to her, took the plate out of her hand and dropped it on the table. She held Jessica by the back of the neck, guiding her through the suits and out of the crowd. In the clearing beyond the scrum, Rose found that her hand was trembling. It wasn’t about Jessica.

  Jessica wasn’t worried, she was laughing and little boulders of brownie tumbled down her black dress. ‘Come on, Jessica, I said two only.’

  The buffet-hungry crowd were behind Rose, a dark forest of suits, but in front of her was Jessica, laughing, her black eyelashes intertwined, top and bottom, crumbs of dry chocolate sponge raining down her chin. Rose leaned in so that Jessica’s opalescent pink skin filled her vision. She watched the girl chortle, saw spongy crumbs bounce off her little chest and she felt overwhelmed by love. Here was all goodness, and sweetness, and brutal honesty. Rose felt, not for the first time, that she wanted to uncouple her jawbone, fit her mouth around the top of Jessica’s head and swallow her whole.

  She stood up and pushed Jessica away from the food. ‘Move it.’

  Seeing her set on her way, she dived back into the crowd for the boys. She found them by the table. Angus had dropped his plate and was looking on the floor for his brownies. Hamish had done something wrong, she couldn’t tell what, but he stood stiff with a plate of two brownies, looking shifty.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’ She had a boy on each hand, was pushing through the crowd, when she looked up and saw them: Uncle Dawood and David Monkton still standing together when they shouldn’t, staring at her when they shouldn’t. Rose looked straight back at them defiantly, heart hammering, guts churning. They used to be frightened of her. Not anymore. They knew what she’d done, that she was a spent force.

  She stared, expressionless, until they looked away. She wasn’t done. There was nothing to link her to Aziz Balfour. She still had the book and the contacts, she was Julius’s heir and she would make them pay for the impertinence of that look. She couldn’t do it again, though, she just couldn’t do that again, ever. But she didn’t need to do it again, she could pay someone else.

  An innocent, glancing bump on her shoulder spun her around, ready to fight. The boys slipped her hands, took their chance and escaped.

  ‘Sorry!’ A smile, unsure, his hands full of a double whisky, a plate piled with sandwiches draped in a napkin shroud. ‘Beg pa
rdon. I’m so greedy, it seems to have occluded my vision.’

  It was Anton Atholl. He laughed at himself and she found herself laughing too, a mad, drunk sort of release. Atholl laughed louder along with her, as if he was frightened and needed it too. He was the best of them, Atholl. Julius always said so. The only decent one among them. She was glad to see him.

  Atholl held his plate of small sandwiches out in apology. ‘Egg and cress?’

  Rose shook her head and backed away.

  ‘You must be Rose,’ he said innocently. ‘I remember Julius telling me about you.’ He was taking a chance, talking to her. He might know what Dawood and Monkton were doing.

  Making a funny play of them not knowing each other, Atholl looked at his hands, found them full and instead held out an elbow, grinning. ‘I’m Anton Atholl.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’ She met his elbow with her own and they shook, smiling just enough. She looked away.

  ‘Rose, you meant so much to him.’

  If she met Anton’s eye now she would cry. She kept her eyes down. ‘Thank you.’

  She moved out through the crowd, giving herself leave to gather the children and get out.

  ‘Have you seen Robert?’

  It was Atholl, he was behind, following her. She shrugged, back in character. ‘I’m afraid Robert won’t be here. He’s not well enough to attend.’

  ‘Oh. People are asking ...’

  He didn’t look chaotic now, or hungry or funny. He looked serious and leaned over her.

  Rose muttered, ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Seriously, Julius loved you,’ said Atholl again.

  Drunk already, she thought, and felt her lip curl.

  ‘Loved having you around.’

  She smiled at her feet and whispered, ‘OK.’

  Atholl was swallowed by the swell of the crowd but still she didn’t look up.