The Road to Hell

by Gillian Galbraith

  ‘Riley.’

  Alice shook her head, stunned by the information. The name was only too familiar to her, the man too. A vicious-looking face, freckled as a bird’s egg and topped with carrot-coloured hair. Riley seemed to function in life without conscience or empathy, and twice she had helped to ensure that he was returned to prison in Saughton. He was also responsible for a recurring nightmare of hers. It had been triggered by her discovery of his last victim, his own wife, in horrific circumstances. Less than six months earlier, she had found the woman on the floor of their kitchen in Muirhouse, still curled in the foetal position to protect herself from further attack by him, with dark, arterial blood spurting from a knife wound in her thigh. More was flowing freely from a gash to the stomach. A carving knife lay beside her.

  While waiting for the ambulance, Alice had made a makeshift tourniquet from her own scarf but it had come loose. Fastening it a second time she had gone to look for the ambulance, and in her absence Mrs Riley, herself, had undone it. By the time she returned, the woman had lost consciousness, and lay, like an island, surrounded by a sea of her own blood. In the dream, Riley stood laughing beside her, pointing at the dead woman and guffawing, inviting her to appreciate the joke. Looking at him and then at the knife, she heard herself, in the dream, beginning to chuckle.

  ‘He’s back home in Muirhouse,’ DCI Bell said.

  ‘How did that happen?’ Alice asked. ‘The jury found him guilty, they were unanimous. With his record, he should have been put away forever.’

  ‘I know. But, unfortunately, in the judge’s charge to the jury he went over the top in hinting at Riley’s guilt. So, he’s out again, thanks to the appeal court and silvery tongue of Mr Thriepland QC. Frankly, I don’t know how some of them sleep at night.’

  Back in Broughton Place, Alice unpacked her rucksack. Quill was to remain with her sister for a couple of weeks, enjoying himself in the country and in the company of another dog, and the flat felt unnaturally empty, unnaturally quiet. Everywhere she looked there were reminders of Ian. Each one hurt. His toothbrush sat next to hers in a mug in the bathroom, his dirty socks were on the chair by the bedroom window and his favourite cup, unwashed and with a rim of coffee, had been stacked by the sink. With all his belongings there, it was as if he had walked out of the flat to buy a bottle of wine and would be returning in ten minutes. But ten minutes passed, and the next ten minutes and then the next until it was midnight.

  As she got into bed, the familiar scent of his body arose from the warmed sheets and she wept, exhausted, feeling anew the rawness of it all, the impossibility of solid flesh and bone and the life within him disappearing into nothingness. One minute there had been a man, one like no other, talking, laughing and loving; and the next, simply cold, meaningless, indistinguishable matter. Lifeless flesh. It was impossible to take in.

  And Elaine Bell’s news went round and round in her head, tormenting her. Suppose he had ‘launched’ himself into the oncoming traffic, was it because he had been unhappy, heedless of what might happen to him, or because he was drunk and did not know what he was doing? But why would he have been so drunk? He normally took no more than he could handle, two or three pints at most, so why should he have drunk so much more on this occasion? Could it be because of their stupid row, when she had been so cold and unrelenting towards him, annoyed by his forgetfulness, jealous of Cici? But she had kissed him the next morning, and there had seemed to be all the time in the world to make peace.

  And, surely to God, she had not been that cold towards him, that bad? It had only been a trivial falling out, not some kind of cataclysmic break-up with harsh, unforgettable words exchanged. And he had drunk the bloody stuff, she had not made him do it. It was not her fault. That way lay madness. Work alone would keep it at bay, fill her mind with a million other things and leave no room for grief. Concentrating on the job would keep her sane, it would be her salvation, she could lose herself in it.

  The next morning she was the last to arrive in the office.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ Eric Manson said, pulling out her chair for her to sit on. It was something he had never done before; she knew it was his way of showing his sympathy for her, and extraordinarily eloquent in its way.

  Today, everyone was reacting differently to her. As she had climbed the stairs to the Murder Suite, a couple of constables she knew, thought of as friends rather than simply colleagues, had passed by her, saying nothing, averting their eyes from her in their embarrassment, unable to think what to say. But one man, a civilian employee, only recently stationed at St Leonard’s, stopped her in the corridor and immediately expressed his sorrow at her ‘sad bereavement’. Facing him, she found herself temporarily lost for words, worried that she might loose control, but she managed to mumble something about her gratitude for his ‘kind words’. In her own ears, her answer sounded odd, artificial and clichéd, but she meant what she said, and his directness of approach had given her some slight comfort. Best of all, now they both knew where they were.

  At lunchtime DC Littlewood appeared at her desk. In one hand he held his own meal, sushi followed by a fresh fruit salad, and in the other he held the food he had, unasked, chosen for her. A small Scotch pie, a packet of crisps and a can of Irn-Bru. Handing them over to her, he nodded shyly and said, ‘Comfort food, Sarge. I know your tastes,’ before continuing to his own desk.

  She spent the early hours of the afternoon familiarising herself with everything that had happened in her absence, and occasionally DC Cairns or one of the other members of the squad would explain something, often correcting each other, occasionally arguing passionately.

  ‘I see we had a call from a bus driver, Derek Burnett, doing the Braid Hills route. Why have we not followed him up?’ Alice asked no one in particular.

  ‘Because, Sarge,’ DC Gallagher said patiently from his desk at the back of the room, having responded to a few of her earlier inquiries, ‘the woman was found in the Hermitage, mind? The bus doesn’t go anywhere near that place – there’s not a stop anywhere near it.’

  ‘So what? She could have walked there. She could have walked some distance from a stop.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, thinking as he spoke, ‘aye, sure enough, she could have, I suppose, but no bus ticket was found on her.’

  ‘Quite. But no bag was found on her either, no wallet, no keys, nothing. The absence of a ticket, alongside the absence of all those other things, is hardly conclusive. I’m going to arrange to see the man, he might have something to tell us.’

  The bus driver, an unshaven, fleshy man with forearms like hams, was watching television when Alice and DC Elizabeth Cairns entered his living room. He did not turn it off and kept half an eye on the screen. On it a football match was being shown, although, in their honour, the volume had been slightly turned down.

  ‘This woman, the one you called us about, what was she wearing?’ Alice asked him. His wife, who had shown them in, resumed her seat, picked up her newspaper and retired behind it as if it might make her invisible.

  ‘I cannae mind now, but like what they said in the paper. She was dressed that way. A wee bit shabby-like.’ He glanced in the direction of the two policewomen and then his eye moved on, looking for somewhere to put his plate and the remains of his pizza.

  ‘Where did she get off, which stop?’ Alice asked him, trying to catch his eye, prevent it from returning to the screen.

  ‘No bloody stop. I threw her off.’ He hesitated and then bawled at the TV, ‘Come on! Come on, wee man, get it into the back of the net!’

  ‘Why did you throw her off?’ DC Cairns asked, the excitement in his voice drawing her eyes to the match too.

  ‘Eh?’ Having risen half out of his seat, he appeared not to have heard the question. After a second he sat down again heavily.

  ‘Why did you throw her off the bus?’ she repeated.

  ‘Goal! It’s a goal! One–nil and only another minute to go!’ he shouted, jumping up from his chair, ecstatic. ‘See that? D
id you see that?’

  Lowering her paper, his wife looked at him, and shook her head slowly, muttering under her breath, ‘Big bairns, men, the lot o’ them.’

  The instant he returned her gaze, annoyance on his face, she dipped back behind the paper again.

  ‘Mr Burnet,’ Alice said, raising her voice to get his attention, ‘can you tell us why you threw the woman off your bus?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ he said, taking a sip from his can of lager, ‘I threw her off because she was annoyin’ everybody, greetin’ away tae herself. She called me names an’ all. Then she done it.’

  ‘She done it?’

  ‘She wet herself on my bus. The filthy bitch.’

  ‘Whereabouts did you throw her off?’

  ‘Eh . . . somewhere at the end of Morningside Road, before it changes into Comiston. I dae ken exactly, see I made a special stop for her, like. Tae get her off.’

  A Cairn terrier came into the room and immediately sprang up on to the man’s lap, getting a couple of affectionate pats on its rump as it settled down.

  ‘Can you tell us anything else about her?’

  ‘Like what?’ he asked, his eyes fixed on the screen again.

  ‘Well, what she looked like, what she sounded like, that kind of thing?’

  ‘That was a bloody foul!’ he shouted, gesticulating wildly. ‘Has the ref no eyes in his heid? Yellow card, ref. Come on, book him! The wee cheat took a dive!’

  ‘The woman?’ Alice began again.

  ‘Aye,’ he answered, briefly coming to as if from a dream and looking at her. ‘I cannae mind what she looked like. No’ bonny, that’s for sure. I knew when I phoned yous but I’ve forgotten now. She was old, middle-aged anyway, and she had that big red blot on her cheek. And I can tell you one other thing for free – she stank.’

  ‘Of?’ DC Cairns asked excitedly, pressing the bridge of her glasses onto her nose.

  ‘She’d peed herself, what d’you think? Perfume?’

  ‘Her voice,’ Alice said. ‘Did she have any sort of accent that you recognised? Was she Scottish, for example, English, Irish or whatever?’

  ‘She didnae sound a bit like you do, hen, that’s for sure. Proper, you’d call it, maybe? Right posh or English, I’d say. No, she talked like me. Scottish.’

  He hesitated for a second, then hit his fist on the arm of his chair, screaming, ‘Red card, this time! It should be a red card now. Get him off the park, ref, right now!’

  Startled by the blow, the dog, its tail now between its legs, looked up at its master and then launched itself onto the floor. Once there, it scuttled behind its mistress’s legs for shelter, whining from the safety of its hiding place.

  ‘Are there any regulars on that route? Any passengers whose names you know?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ the man asked, unable to take his eyes off the screen. A penalty was about to be taken and he was hunched forward, tense, mentally readying himself to take the kick.

  ‘Aye,’ his wife answered, looking first at him and then at the two police officers. ‘He’s mentioned them to me. There’s a pair of twins always get off at the same stop, right at the end of Morningside. Done it for years. He calls them –’ she hesitated, trying to remember, ‘the something or others . . . Derek, what d’you call them?’ She folded her paper tidily on her lap.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They twins – you know, the ones who dress the same. What’s their name?’

  No answer was forthcoming.

  ‘Derek,’ she said crossly, ‘what’s their name?’

  ‘Aaaw, Jesus!’ her husband sighed, his head now in his hands. ‘Why d’you let that plonker take it! An open goal and he’s nowhere near it . . . send him back to Czechoslovakia or wherever you bought him from! What a tosser!’

  ‘The name, Derek,’ his wife insisted.

  ‘Eh . . .’ the man said, coming to again as the final whistle was blown, ‘. . . Fitz. The Miss Fitz. The misfits, see?’

  ‘That’s their name – Fitz?’ his wife chipped in, trying to help.

  ‘Aye. They’re no’ though.’

  ‘Not what?’ DC Cairns asked.

  ‘Fit – if you get my drift.’

  He laughed, stretched his arms above his head, jubilant at his team’s win and now relaxed and prepared to talk. ‘She was trouble, that one. A barefaced troublemaker, if you know what I mean. When I told her to get off, she showed me her ticket as if it entitled her to stay – she stayed sitting, never even apologised. Said she couldn’t help it.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I tore the ticket up in front of her face. Into wee pieces and dropped the bits onto the floor. I can put anyone I want off my bus, for cheek, violence, anything. I’m allowed, it’s my bus.’

  ‘Where was her ticket for?’

  ‘Eh . . . I’m not sure. I think it was Fairmileheid. But I couldn’t swear it.’

  ‘Anything else you can remember about her?’ Alice inquired.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the flowers?’ his wife prompted, picking up the dog and cuddling it.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘He gave me flowers, in cellophane. Pretended they were from him, didn’t you, Derek? Is it coming back to you now? But I seen the ticket. He said they were from Lisa’s but they weren’t, they were from Flora’s Flowers. He didn’t even know what they were. Eventually I got it out of him, didn’t I, Derek?’

  By way of reply the man shrugged his shoulders, grinning widely.

  ‘The woman had left them on the bus . . . that’s right, isn’t it, Derek?’

  Alice first became aware of a new, strange sensation, a prickling feeling at the back of her neck, as she was hurrying down Leith Street on her way home. She looked behind her, suddenly convinced that someone was following her, watching her. She was sure of it. Rain was falling hard about her, smashing onto the pavements and overflowing the gutters, pouring out of the black sky.

  She glanced back up the street again, searching for the person, but everybody seemed to be on the move, desperate to reach shelter. Her wet hair fell over her eyes and she shook her head, instinctively trying to shed the water and see better. But it was useless, and with the rain still cascading down, her vision became blurred once more.

  To cap it all, as she waited to cross the east end of York Place, she was suddenly deluged with water. A pool had collected by the pedestrian crossing, deep enough to overflow onto the pavement, and a bus ploughed through it at speed, careless of the nearby pedestrians, soaking them, leaving only waves in the brown puddle where it had passed. Among the sharp intakes of breath from the other people at the crossing, she cursed angrily and out loud.

  Again she turned round, still trying to see who was following her. The other pedestrians were now crossing the road, rushing to take advantage of the green man. In seconds she was the only one on the pavement. She wiped her eyes, and then scrutinised the streets in all directions, but no one stood out. All the shoppers, students, traffic wardens, commuters, schoolchildren and others appeared to be on the move, striding purposely towards some destination or other. Nobody was standing still, mirroring her movements or lack of them, waiting to take a cue from her before moving on. It must be all in her head, she decided, an overheated fancy, her imagination working overtime. Stress could, she knew, play strange games with the mind.

  But the odd physical sensation would not go away, and it felt real enough. She turned to look behind her several more times as she made her way down the hill, unable to shake off the conviction that someone was tailing her. Her body would not lie. Deliberately taking a diagonal course across the mouth of Broughton Place she thought, for a second, that she had caught a glimpse of a man stopping for a moment to watch her. But when she turned round to get a proper look at him he had gone, merged into one of the small groups of people still braving the downpour. It was ridiculous, she told herself, this fear – childish, irrational
and unjustified.

  She looked up at the windows of her flat and, seeing them unlit, thought for a single second that Ian must still be busy in his studio. Then it came back to her, how things were, that she was on her own. Glancing up Broughton Street for a final time, she pushed open the door of the tenement.

  8

  When Muriel Fitz opened the front door of the spotless villa in Nile Grove that she shared with her twin sister, the smell of boiling marmalade billowed out like a sweet cloud. Warning Alice what to expect, she led her into the kitchen. There, the other twin, Margaret, the youngest of the pair by ten minutes, was perched on a three-legged stool, scooping out the insides of Seville oranges into a large pan. On the stainless steel hob, the mixture was bubbling and frothing like hot lava.

  ‘We’ll have to carry on, I’m afraid, as we’re mid-boil. I hope that’s all right with you, officer?’ Muriel said in her brittle Morningside accent. Showing Alice to a chair, she immediately re-armed herself with a wooden spoon and dipped it experimentally into the brew. Both women were dressed in fawn cashmere polo-neck jerseys and matching fawn flannel slacks, and to protect their good clothes each wore an oilcloth pinny, tied tight at the waist. A large railway clock ticked in the background, its pendulum swinging steadily below it. In the heat, the sisters’ cheeks had reddened and Muriel had her long, straight grey hair scraped back into a neat ponytail. Margaret had elected to cover her head with a floral shower cap, a few thin wisps of her fringe escaping from it.

  ‘On the phone, Miss Fitz, you told me that you remembered the woman I described?’ Alice said, watching them as they rhythmically dipped their spoons into the softened pulp and dug it out. She had no idea which of them she had spoken to earlier or, for that matter, which of them would answer her now.

  ‘We do. We certainly do. She was a memorable individual,’ Muriel replied, and Margaret looked up briefly, nodding her head to communicate her agreement with her sister’s comment.

  ‘Can you tell me what you remember about her?’