The Road to Hell (9 page)

‘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 car, 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.’

‘A dog, mebbe?’

‘Naw, hen. Somethin’ wi’ wee, jaggy teeth.’

‘A rat?’

‘Aye. Could be.’

As he was nattering away to her, an inspired idea had struck him and he rang off with scant ceremony. Of course, it was obvious! They could profit from this stroke of good luck, and there was no
time to waste. Immediately, he called one of his drinking pals from The Jolly Beggars, a journalist, to see if he was interested in his story. The next five minutes had been spent in haggling over
a fee for his world exclusive. Now standing outside the car, he confirmed to the police sergeant that there had been nobody other than himself and McVicar in the vicinity of the corpse.

‘To be honest, I thought it was a woman screamin’,’ he said bending down to peer through the car window at the man weeping inside. Having gawped unashamedly for a few seconds,
he continued, ‘From the screams, I thought a lassie was being raped or somethin’. She, I mean he, was screamin’ blue murder.’

‘Do you know what time it was when you first saw the body?’

‘No, but I can find out,’ he said, drawing his mobile phone from the pocket of his tracksuit. While he was finding the call log, Alice, suddenly suspicious, asked him, ‘Did you
call somebody when you were with the body?’

‘Yes, I called yous.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Aha. I called my wife, and she called me back. Let’s see, 8.52 . . . so I must have found the man at about 8.30, 8.40 or so.’

‘Did you call anybody other than us and your wife?’

He looked up, mobile still in his hand, and met Alice’s direct gaze. He would have to tell her. They could easily check, and he would be in trouble if he had lied.

‘Yes, I did. I called a pal of mine, a journalist with the
News.’

‘And what, precisely, did you tell him?’

‘It was no big deal, Officer,’ he said defensively, putting the phone back in his pocket before continuing, ‘I just told him what I’d found, like. A dead woman with
chunks bitten off o’ her by a rat and wi’ her breeks off an’ everythin’. Like she’d been raped. That’s all.’

‘Did you . . .’ she asked, still holding his gaze steadily, ‘take a photograph of her with your phone?’

He shook his head, but she did not believe him. He was just that type.

‘Sure about that?’

‘Aye. I’m quite sure about that. Simon Vicar or whatever his name is, him greetin’ in your car, stopped me, if you really want to know. He pushed me out of the way just as I
was takin’ my shot. Said it wasn’t “respectful to the dead” or something. So I’ve got no photos. If you don’t believe me you can check my phone, see all my other
ones – my wife, my kiddies . . .’