The Road to Hell (26 page)

‘For the sake of completeness,’ James Brand began, folding his arms beneath his black gown, ‘can you tell us what happened to the accommodation that you arranged in Niddrie for
Miss Fyfe?’

‘Yes. Something that quite often happens in that sort of situation with our service-users. Something that, in many ways, goes to the heart of the problem. We got her moved in, the place
redecorated. I helped her with that myself, and we found her furniture again. But in less than two months things started going pear-shaped. It’s very difficult for them, you see.
They’re often isolated or whatever. Sometimes they’re near-suicidal, they’re so lonely. At a hostel they’ve had company, whether they like it or not, but in the flat
they’re on their own again, with their own thoughts. Some of their pals from the hostel turn up and beg to stay for a couple of nights. Before you know it, they’ve got four or five, or
more, of their friends dossing down on the living-room floor. So, there’s noise, mess, complaints – you can imagine. Next thing the police are involved . . .’

‘So what exactly happened in Moira Fyfe’s case?’ the Procurator Fiscal said. Standing with his legs wide apart, he had moved squarely in front of the witness as if about to
challenge him to a gunfight.

‘Just that. Her pals, Taff and the rest, came to visit her and she allowed them to stay. Of course, they’d drink on them and shared it with her, so all the months and months of good
work we’d done with her went down the plughole. There were fights, the neighbours complained and the police had to warn her about her behaviour and the disturbance and noise at all hours. The
next thing I heard was that she was on her way back from London. Apparently, she’d left her flat, got herself south somehow and been living rough around King’s Cross. After her money
and her phone had been stolen while she was dossing in a bus shelter she managed to persuade St Martin’s to give her a ticket on the next bus back to Edinburgh. From then onwards she was
either with us or in one of the Bethany Trust places, Salvation Army, Streetwise or the Cyrenians. She took whatever was on offer. She had to.’

After lunch the Procurator Fiscal attempted to question Linda Gates about the events at the hostel on the night of 13 January. With the end of her nose scarcely visible above
the top of the witness box, she stared defiantly at her questioner. She was, as before, prepared to cooperate only to the extent of providing her name, which she uttered in a high, childish voice.
When, after repeated denials, she was finally told off by the Sheriff she appeared to relent slightly, adopting a new tactic.

‘So, you were present in the TV lounge of the hostel at about 8 p.m. on the Sunday evening?’ the Procurator Fiscal asked wearily, repeating yet again the same question.

‘Sorry, pal, I cannae mind,’ she replied, grinning broadly as if pleased with her new gambit and allowing her eyes to roam freely around the courtroom as if for applause.

‘Can you recall if you were in the TV lounge at all that evening?’

Loud, liquid-sounding coughing from the back of the courtroom made her answer inaudible. A group of four people, all seated in the back row of benches, were watching her, and one of their number
was bent double, shoulders heaving, as he tried desperately to stifle the hacking coughs with his hands.

‘Nah,’ she repeated, unasked, once silence had returned.

‘Can you recall if you were in the hostel at all that evening?’

‘Nah. I’ve lost my memory, see? Substance abuse can dae that tae ye, ken.’

‘Perhaps,’ James Brand said crossly, fixing the woman with narrowed eyes, ‘I should remind you, as the Sheriff did earlier, that you are on oath.’

The witness, now panicking, looked first at her interrogator and then up at the bench. Seeing the judge’s implacable expression, the remains of her smile vanished and she nodded her head
as if, finally, she had understood. This was not a game, or, if it was, it was not one she could win. Thinking things over again, she managed to recall that she had, indeed, been in the TV lounge
with Moira Fyfe.

‘At any time whilst you were both there, did you accuse Moira Fyfe of having stolen money from you?’

‘Aye, answer that one, Linda,’ a man’s hoarse voice rasped from the public benches. His words were followed by a ripple of applause from his companions, and a tall, thin woman
with dark, greasy hair stood up and let out a muted whoop. Looking up from her note-taking, startled by the commotion, the Sheriff threw down her pen and bellowed, ‘Silence at the back of the
court! This witness is trying to give her evidence and I am trying to hear it, so there will be no interruptions, NO interruptions from the public benches.’

In the ensuing stunned silence, the tall woman resumed her seat. The Sheriff returned her attention to the witness. Catching her eye, she said, in a measured tone, ‘Could you now answer,
please, Miss Gates?’ The order was thinly disguised as a question, but this time the witness recognised its imperative quality.

‘Aye,’ she replied, ‘I did. Because she had. I’d left thirty pounds in my room that afternoon and I’d telt her I’d got the money from the social, like. She
was skint and begged a couple of pounds off me. I even gave them her. When I went back to my room after tea it had all gone. A couple of hours later Moira comes back all tanked up and she’d
bought a whole load of stuff with her. Bacardi in her cardie, voddy in her body. Where did she get the money for all that from, I wonder, eh? From my bloody room! Where else?’

The girl shook her head in disgust, reliving the anger again she had felt on discovering the theft, and looked hard at the line of people seated at the back of the room. None of them said a
word. Having, to her own satisfaction, stared them all out, she sniffed, wiped the side of her nose with her hand and turned her hostile gaze once more to the Procurator Fiscal.

‘How did Moira Fyfe react to your accusation?’ the man said calmly, ignoring her aggressive stare and looking down at his notes instead.

‘She went radge. She tried to attack me, but I was too quick for her. I moved to the side and she fell over, never laid a finger on me.’

‘When she fell over, did she hit anything before she landed on the floor?’

Tired of having to cajole, pressurise and threaten the witness to get anything useful out of her, the Procurator Fiscal had already resigned himself to a denial, further evasion or another
sudden loss of memory. Linda Gates, however, surprised him. Shaking her head again, she giggled, putting up her hand to cover her mouth like a naughty schoolgirl, and said, ‘Aye. The daft old
bitch split her heid on a wing chair on the way down. Served her right for taking ma wad.’

The group at the back of the courtroom took little notice as the Macer led a plump lady towards the witness box. They did not, initially, recognise her. Only when she gave her
name in a soft Irish brogue did they exchange glances, sit up, and start to whisper to each other.

Because, for her court appearance, Maureen McKee had transformed herself. Her normally scrubbed face was now heavily made up, lips a dark red, and her distinctive bushy eyebrows had been trimmed
and plucked into perfect arches. Abandoning her habitual T-shirt and jeans, she now sported a figure-hugging black polo neck, a tight maroon skirt and black knee-length boots.

In contrast to Linda Gates, she appeared entirely at ease and seemed to view the giving of evidence as some form of theatrical performance. Speaking slowly, she willingly filled in some of the
missing details, providing a fuller, more colourful account of the night’s events. Only when asked what Moira Fyfe had said before and after the fall did she hesitate for a second. Then,
taking a deep breath, she repeated the litany of swear words that Moira Fyfe had unleashed, enunciating each one as if it came from a lexicon entirely foreign to her.

Getting into her stride, she told the Procurator Fiscal about the journey to the hospital and her charge’s truculent manner in the casualty department.

‘She kept saying, “I’m fine, I don’t need to see nobody.” But I was having none of it. It would have been more than my job was worth not to follow the proper
procedures . . .’

When James Brand asked her if she knew what treatment Moira Fyfe had received, she appeared to be taken aback by the question. Then, in a mildly offended tone, she told him that she had no idea
what treatment she had received, adding acidly that their service-users had a right to privacy just like anyone else.

Aware that his witness was on the verge of losing confidence in him, he asked half-heartedly, ‘But given Miss Fyfe’s condition, which you’ve already outlined to us, how could
you be sure what she would tell the doctors or nurses? If they were to treat her properly they’d need an accurate account of the accident, wouldn’t they?’

As Maureen McKee grasped the full implications of the question, including the sly suggestion that she might have failed in her duty, her indignation rose. Leaning over the edge of the witness
box as if to get at her antagonist, she put her hands on her hips and proclaimed: ‘If you, Sir, think that it is proper to go behind the curtain with someone then that is your business. But I
do not. What goes on behind the curtain is private, private between the doctor and the person. Anyway, if I could tell that she was drunk, then, for pity’s sake, so could they, couldn’t
they?’

‘I’ll ask the questions, thank you, Ms McKee,’ Mr Brand said curtly, shifting his weight uneasily from one foot to the other and then back again as he tried to reassert
himself.

‘Well, all that I’m saying is true, isn’t it?’ she replied.

Turning to face the Sheriff, she added plaintively, ‘I took her to the doctors, Your Honour, so they could see the condition that she was in. There was nothing to stop any of them asking
me about anything, anything at all, if they felt the need to, but none of them did. Were you expecting me to go behind the curtain with Moira, as if she was a child or something? It’s against
human rights, and besides, Moira would have had something to say about that, let me assure you!’

The last hour of the day was devoted to evidence relating to the finding of the deceased’s body in the Hermitage. By then the courtroom was hot, the air dry and an
occasional snore could be heard from the benches at the back. Everyone was tired. The Macer sat slumped in his seat, staring vacantly into space, and James Brand’s voice sounded hoarse. The
Sheriff seemed to have shrunk into herself, looking from afar like little more than a wig perched on an empty gown.

The scene was set by Simon McVicar, the first person to find the body, and he, too, presented a very different picture from the traumatised, scantily-clad jogger interviewed by the police on
that cold Tuesday morning. In his sharp suit, he was crackling with nervous energy, nodding incessantly as if his head was on a spring, licking his lips and answering questions before Mr Brand had
finished asking them. Only when called upon to describe the dead woman’s appearance did he show any emotion, faltering for a second and putting his hand to his mouth as if he was gagging and
might vomit. As he spoke about the flesh missing around the corpse’s mouth and earlobe, an audible gasp came from the back of the court.