The Red Road

by Denise Mina

  A wind so sharp, thought Robert, it could strip a soul of original sin.

  Now his swollen ankle was out in front of him, resting high on a rock. He took the spliff from Simon’s hand, cupping the red tip to stop the wind blowing it out, and took a drag. It scratched down through his throat, a pain familiar from last night. He remembered smoking downstairs now, at least his throat remembered. That was what had happened. He’d been very drunk and blacked out and smoked some weed or something and didn’t know and that was why it all seemed so muddled and crazy.

  Simon was sitting cross-legged, hands tucked inside his tweed cape. He was watching the water for the dolphins to break. His hair was pulled back, ponytail thin as a rat’s tail. The wind held it horizontal with his shoulder, whipping his face sometimes. He’d taken his hat off for safe keeping.

  Robert felt the burning warm flood through him, felt the tingle in his swollen ankle change to a sensation of warmth, a tickle on his skin. He imagined the skin stretching wide, wide, wide over a balloon, so wide the pores were the size of biro tips, comical. He thought of Hamish and Angus as men, holding his ankle as he died and seeing the marks of this particular adventure on his skin. It made him feel nice. He missed them, his kids. He missed Jessica.

  Simon leaned forward, touching the ground with his forehead as if he was bowing to the setting sun, making Robert smile. But he stayed down, his forehead on plastic.

  ‘YOU’RE AGILE,’ shouted Robert over the sound of the wind.

  And then, as if to prove his point, Simon stayed there, absolutely still.

  ‘SIMON: I SAID “YOU’RE VERY AGILE”.’

  He must do yoga, thought Robert, noticing the black shadow creeping out from under Simon’s face.

  ‘DO YOU DO—’ A sudden flash of blinding, brilliant white light blotted out the world as the bullet passed through Robert’s head. He didn’t even have time to wonder before he fell sideways, face down on Simon’s back, bleeding onto him.

  25

  Through the gloomy blue morning Morrow ran, crouching, under heavy fire from the rain until she reached the coffee shop doorway. She was up far too early to feel altogether well and was proactively angry with Atholl. He probably wouldn’t be there, she felt, might not even remember calling her. Even if he was it was presumptuous, asking her to come at this hour, as if she had no calls on her time but the summoning of an earl.

  The place was only technically open. Through the glass door she could see staff dressed in stiff white aprons, one handing metal trays of defrosted raw croissants over the counter to another. They had ovens behind the counter and pumped the smell of fresh baking out into the street to bait passers-by. The furniture was French rustic, scrubbed pine tables and stone floors, so ill-suited to the mucky damp of Glasgow as to seem almost sarcastic.

  She opened the door and stepped in to glares from the staff, their morning faces as raw as the pastry.

  Atholl was slumped in a far corner, watching the door for her. He looked as if he was between two worlds: one side in a warm Provençal kitchen, the other stuck to the rain-warped window. His eyes were unfocused, redder than usual, and he looked as if he had brushed his hair, perhaps for her, which she found ominous. He saw her, raised his chin and tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off. He raised a greeting hand instead.

  Hung-over. She worked her away around the empty seats to his table, remembering Brian offering her another glass of market research wine the night before and how they’d decided they both actually wanted a cup of tea instead. She was ready for a rant at Atholl if he’d forgotten why he’d asked her here.

  He tried to stand up to meet her but his knee buckled and he dropped back in his chair.

  ‘You been out for a run already?’ she said.

  His smile worked this time. ‘Come rain or shine. Old army habit.’

  She sat down opposite him, shedding her wet coat, wondering why she liked him at all.

  Atholl had a small pile of creamy yellow vellum envelopes on the table, sealed and face down, square like invitations, not business letters. The colour of the envelopes matched the whites of his eyes, yellow and so dry she could see the grainy texture of his eyeballs.

  ‘God, you look terrible.’ She noticed her accent was more succinct than normal. ‘Have you even been to bed?’

  Atholl gave a queasy smile. ‘I seem to have contracted a stomach bug, I think. I’ve been ill ...’

  They weren’t in court. They weren’t even in the building and she felt that maybe she could just say it. ‘You need to stop drinking. It’s killing you; I feel like I’m actually watching it happen.’

  He grinned.

  ‘What’s funny about that?’

  Then he gave a wheezy laugh.

  ‘Heard it before?’ She leaned over the table at him. ‘A hundred times, I know, but I can see your eyeballs drying out, for pity’s sake.’

  Atholl chortled to himself, wiping the rough wooden table back and forth. ‘Ah, Alex Morrow.’ He looked up at her. ‘Alex. Alexandra.’ His eyes weren’t dry any more, they were damp but he didn’t look sad. Morrow met his stare and, for a moment all too fleeting, read there the course of a relationship they might have had if things had been different: laughs and fights and an ocean of tenderness. She remembered Brian suddenly and dropped her gaze to the table.

  Atholl reached his hand into her field of vision and let it sit on the table. She didn’t move. His hand slithered back to his side.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Aye,’ she said in her own voice, ‘go on then.’

  Atholl raised his hand to a server behind the counter and the man put the tray down. ‘No,’ called Atholl, ‘no need to come over. Coffee for two, please.’

  ‘Pot of coffee, sir?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Would you like some breakfast?’ asked the waiter. ‘Organic pastries? Granola? French orange juice?’

  Morrow saw Atholl’s eyes stray to a tray of uncooked dough and he bit his lip and shook his head. ‘Just coffee.’

  The waiter went to get it and Atholl turned his attention back to her. He had his work face on. ‘Anyway, good morning and thank you for coming.’

  She was glad. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well,’ Atholl hesitated, ‘uh, a couple of things ...’

  His mind seemed to stray then. He looked out of the window and reached for the letters on the table in front of him.

  Morrow thought of Brian, how she’d had to negotiate a change of shifts with the boys to get here.

  ‘Atholl, what is it you want to tell me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said and drifted, blinking at the table. His skin looked a little blue.

  ‘Are you on medication?’ she said, aware that it was a question she had asked often, usually of people on charges.

  Atholl leaned his head against the glass. His hair stuck to the condensation as he slipped down the pane.

  ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody,’ she assured him.

  The waiter came over with cups and a jug of hot milk. As he set them down and went back to get the coffee pot, Morrow reflected that Atholl didn’t seem irrational but preoccupied by a fluid stream of private thoughts.

  The coffee arrived and the waiter poured them a cup each, retreating back to the counter. Morrow poured herself some milk.

  ‘It’s nice to see you out of court.’ He said it with such solemnity it might well have been what he’d brought her here to say.

  He smiled into his cup as he splashed milk into his coffee and added two rough lumps of brown sugar from the bowl. ‘Where did you grow up, DI Morrow? Originally?’

  ‘Southside.’ She didn’t want to go into that. ‘You?’

  ‘Wiltshire.’

  She could tell that he didn’t either.

  He gave a wry smile. ‘We’re not the same, are we?’

  ‘Polar opposites.’ Morrow lifted her cup to her mouth and drank. The coffee was thick and chocolatey.

  She raised her eyes and saw that Atholl wa
s crying. Not sobbing, his breath hadn’t changed at all, but thin tears oiled from his eyes. He took a beautiful linen hankie from his hip pocket and dabbed them dry.

  ‘Epiphora,’ he told her. ‘My doctors are doing their utmost.’

  He was lying. That might well be what watering eyes were called, but Atholl said the word as if his mouth had never been around it before. She wanted suddenly to get very far away from him.

  ‘Why did you ask me here?’

  He took a deep, uneven breath. ‘Michael Brown has agreed to see you this morning and give you his prints again.’

  ‘He changed his mind?’

  Atholl gave a deep nod to the table.

  ‘When did Brown tell you that?’ They didn’t let prisoners meet their counsel as they left court and Brown couldn’t have phoned him last night. He certainly hadn’t seen him this morning.

  Atholl shook his head. He was giving her nothing.

  ‘Why did you ask me here three hours before the start of your working day?’

  He drained his coffee as he thought of a lie. ‘Thought it might be nice to meet for breakfast ...’

  His eye condition kicked in again but he didn’t bring out the hankie. He smiled miserably at his cup as a bin van passed slowly outside, washing the window with orange hazard lights.

  ‘Where I grew up ...’ His eyebrows rose. ‘... Very leafy. Married. Followed my wife up here ... Went to the bar ...’ It felt as if he was trying to tell her his life story but he hated it, as if they were on an ill-conceived first date, early in the morning, under brutal light, tears dripping from his chin.

  She stood up. ‘So, that was lovely coffee.’

  He looked up at her, hopeless and haggard. ‘I think you’ll do the right thing.’

  Morrow stood over him. Atholl was drunk, she decided. He was one of those drunks who topped up, so used to covering up their inebriation that you wouldn’t know they were pissed until they ploughed their car into schoolchildren at a bus stop.

  ‘Alex, I don’t think you’d make the mistakes I’ve made.’

  ‘I need to go.’ She lifted her coat and bag.

  ‘I’d like you to come to my house.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in the holding cells in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Sure.’ He picked up one of the envelopes. ‘An invitation. For you.’

  He held it out imploringly. It had her name and station address written in the same beautiful hand as the note about Brown’s fingerprints. Morrow didn’t want it. She only took it because refusing would start another conversation. She dropped it in her bag.

  ‘Whatever you hear about me ...’ he said, his self-pity in full, glorious flower.

  Morrow stood over him, furious. She wanted to call him a cheeky bastard. She wanted to say that she wasn’t impressed that he was an earl, that she had a lovely man and two beautiful kids that she could drown in the sight of, tell him to take a flying fuck to himself. But she had been open with work contacts before and it never played out well.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said simply.

  She left and was out in the rainy street before she had her coat on. She stood in the doorway struggling with the last arm, rain falling in sheets on the pedestrian precinct in front of her.

  She hated Atholl for flirting with her, for the implied slight on Brian, for being drunk and calling her here so early in the morning. And now she was tired, bad-tempered and had to meet him again in two fucking hours with Michael fucking Brown trying to pull his cock out at her.

  Walking to her car, she took out her phone to call Riddell and left a message saying that they were getting Brown’s prints this morning. The case against him from 1997 was unsafe. Could he notify the Fiscal that Brown’s licence might be revoked so they could decide what to do about it? He’d log the time of the call. She’d get points for that anyway.

  As she dropped the phone back in the bag she saw the corner of Atholl’s envelope. She wanted to drop the party invite in the bin.

  26

  Atholl didn’t turn up. Morrow and McCarthy were waiting to get into the holding cells with the MobileID machine, standing in the chairless reception area, when a guard came through and asked them where they thought they were going.

  ‘We’re booked in to fingerprint Michael Brown.’

  ‘Have you got his CRO number?’

  Morrow didn’t have his record on her, or his number. ‘No, we’re meeting Anton Atholl and he’s taking us in. Atholl’s his counsel.’

  He nodded and disappeared into the back office again. Morrow and McCarthy looked at each other. It was odd. Atholl should have been here by now and he should have informed the front desk before they arrived too.

  The guard came back. He wanted to see their warrant cards. He took their station number and went back into the office, locking the door between them and watching through a small window as he called the number to check up on them. Satisfied at their identities, he reached below the window and was suddenly up lit by a computer screen.

  ‘Something’s gone wrong here,’ he said, reading the screen.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Morrow, ‘Atholl was supposed to be here with Brown. They’re on in court four in twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘We’ve got Brown downstairs,’ the guard told his screen, ‘but we haven’t got Atholl.’

  ‘Has he told you we’re coming?’

  ‘No,’ said the guard as he typed something in. ‘It’s not logged ...’

  They looked at each other across the desk and Morrow realised that she wasn’t getting in.

  ‘McCarthy, you wait here,’ she said and went back out to the rain, pulling her collar up as she ducked through the two locked doors next to the loading bay. She had to look up at the camera both times, show her face and wait for the door to buzz.

  Back on the street, thoroughly wet, she walked around the corner to the scrum of smokers and pushed through to the doors.

  Dexie let her jump the queue. He hadn’t seen Atholl this morning, nor had the receptionist, a plump man of infinite patience. Seeing how desperate she was he called up to the chambers and waited on the line until someone answered. Atholl wasn’t there either. He now had ten minutes before the case started.

  Morrow didn’t know what else to do. She was standing, wondering how the hell she was going to tell Riddell that she’d made a mistake, when she saw the solicitor who had sat with Atholl coming out of the toilets in the dark corridor under the stairs.

  ‘Excuse me?’ She hurried over. ‘Excuse me, d’you remember me?’

  The woman looked at her, wary at first but then relaxing when she realised it was a polis. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Atholl asked me to meet him at the entrance to the holding cells this morning.’

  ‘Atholl’s not coming in, we’re getting a continuation.’

  She said it so languidly Morrow wanted to kick her shins. ‘Why’s he not coming in?’

  ‘He’s sick.’

  Morrow imagined him asleep on his desk. ‘We need to fingerprint Brown this morning,’ she said. ‘Atholl authorised it. Will you come with us?’

  They couldn’t do it if he didn’t have counsel with him and the solicitor could easily have said no. She didn’t seem to be aware of that though. ‘Did Atholl say—’

  ‘Atholl said to meet him at the entrance to the holding cells. Michael Brown wants us to fingerprint him again.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ll meet you up there.’ And she shuffled off to a door at the back of the court.

  Morrow hurried out through the main door, back through the rain, around the corner and again gave her face and warrant card to the cameras on the holding-cell entrances. Her hair was plastered to her head when she got back to McCarthy’s side.

  She only realised she was breathless when the solicitor showed up in the back office with the guard.

  He lifted a flap on the reception desk and came through to them.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to direct you
back through to the main entrance for a security check. Wait at the reception desk and Mrs Toner will come and collect you from there.’

  ‘Back?’ said Morrow.

  ‘We don’t have an X-ray machine and you can’t bring equipment in here in case it’s a bomb.’ He held a hand up to the exit. She knew it was the voice he used on prisoners: expressionless, slightly too loud, leaving no room for negotiation.

  Morrow and McCarthy went out into the rain, through the two doors, around the corner and into the now empty lobby of the high court. Dexie waved them through, X-raying the MobileID bag and glancing at the screen for the contents. He opened it and looked through, poking down the side with a pencil, before flapping the lid shut and handing it to McCarthy.

  Dexie smiled. ‘Last time I saw a mobile that old a nun was using it.’

  McCarthy smiled back but the joke was lost on Morrow.

  They stood at the reception desk and Morrow dabbed at her hair with a paper tissue as they waited. A screen hanging from the ceiling like a flight departures board detailed which cases were in session: HMA v Hancock – Assault with intent to injury: in session; HMA v Mullolo – Robbery: in session; HMA v Brown – continued.

  They waited. Morrow’s eyes strayed to the lettered frieze around the room. Some of the letters were carved deeper than others, some of the letters were bigger. Quite suddenly she realised that the frieze didn’t say:

  TURNS OF SPEECH

  RIDDLES;

  She had read it with half an eye before, grouping words together, distorting as she forced a pattern from them. Read properly the frieze said:

  SHE UNDERSTANDS TURNS OF SPEECH

  AND THE SOLUTIONS OF RIDDLES;

  ‘What is that?’ she asked the receptionist.

  The receptionist looked up. ‘That’s from the Wisdom of Solomon. You know, in the Bible.’

  Morrow didn’t know it, but she read it now:

  SHE KNOWS THE THINGS

  OF OLD

  AND INFERS THE THINGS TO COME;

  She looked down and saw Finchley coming out of court four with his briefcase. He stopped when he saw her, his mouth falling open a little. He put his head down and came over, shaking both their hands.