The Road to Hell (34 page)

‘How do you know all of this?’

‘Never mind that now,’ he said sharply, ‘I’ll tell you in good time. Like I said, he’s not pleased to see her. He recognises her all right but, oh no, he’s
not glad to have found her. Not one little bit. Not Moira the beggar, Moira the homeless person. The drunk. He’s disgusted by her, and he doesn’t think to hide it, either. But, does he
invite his wee sister home with him – put the fatted calf on the table for her, as he should?’

She saw no need to answer his rhetorical question, but when she said nothing he became agitated.

‘Well, does he?’

‘No?’

‘Dead right! He does not. He told her he was in a tearing hurry on his way to a meeting, couldn’t stay, emptied out his wallet and gave her all the notes from it. Then he buggers
off. No address, no telephone number, nothing. He leaves no traces. So Moira knows the score. It’s goodbye for ever. He doesn’t want to know her or anything about her. When he was
going, she said he looked terrified – terrified of her.’

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor outside, he rose quickly and flicked a switch on a nearby socket and then returned to his seat. He still held his bundle of damp
washing intact on his knee, staining his jeans.

‘Taff!’ the project manager exclaimed. She stood before him, her fleshy bulk hiding Terry’s small frame from view, until he peered out from behind her shoulder as if playing
peek-a-boo.

‘Aye,’ Taff replied, not moving and fixing her in the eye.

‘Terry needs to use the machine. You’ve finished your washing.’

‘That’s true, I have. But I’m trying to talk to someone here, Mrs Farrell. In private.’

‘Fine. You talk to the lady. No one’s stopping you, but let Terry get on with his washing. You could go upstairs to the drop-in room, couldn’t you? It’s not very full.
Let Terry get on with doing his laundry. Right?’

Taff did not answer, turning his head to one side as if the manager no longer existed. But she was not letting him get away with that.

‘You’ll let Terry get on?’

‘Fine,’ he replied, his head still to one side.

Hearing his agreement, Terry immediately began to unpack his clothes again, and Mrs Farrell, having got her way, left the scene with a spring in her step. Putting his first load into the machine
together with a cup full of washing powder, Terry turned the knob and waited for the sound of water flooding into it. Silence followed. After a further thirty seconds of tranquillity, he kicked the
glass in the front panel. But the machine did not churn into life. Infuriated, he aimed another vigorous kick at it.

‘That fucker disnae work!’ he said crossly, now hopping around the room on one foot.

‘Right enough,’ Taff said, watching him as he danced about the floor.

‘How did you do yours, then?’ Terry said, looking at the clothes on Taff’s knee.

‘By hand,’ Taff replied, quick as a flash, pointing at the sink and adding, ‘in there, and it took bloody ages.’

‘Ah’m no’ doin’ that,’ Terry said, thrusting the washing back into his crumpled bag and storming out of the room.

Once he was certain that Terry was out of earshot, Taff continued speaking. ‘I saw Moira that evening. She’d taken the money he gave her and gone out and bought her usual stuff,
Tennent’s Super Lager, White Strike and a couple of bottles of vodka. She was crying, and pretty far gone, but she’d told me what had happened. It broke her heart, you see. Seeing him,
her own brother, then seeing herself in his eyes, seeing his reaction to her . . . she suddenly saw herself. She told me she couldn’t take any more, didn’t want to live any more.
I’d never heard that from her in all the five years we were pals. You know what happened after that, don’t you? You were at the hearing too. She fell and hit her head when Linda was
having a go at her. The next day she told me she was going to put some flowers on her mum’s grave. Seeing that bastard had stirred memories up for her, more’s the pity. But somehow she
ended up in the Hermitage, and in that lonely, lonely place she died of cold. She froze to death. But no one is to blame, apparently. Well, I don’t agree, you see. Someone bloody
was!’

‘I don’t think that’s what the FAI will conclude. She had a haemorrhage. The hospital doctor did everything he could . . .’

Before she could finish her sentence, Taff shouted, ‘Can’t you see? I’m not talking about him. Someone was to blame all right. But he wasn’t on trial, was he? The
Reverend Duncan McPhee was never called by anyone to explain what he’d done to his sister. Ignoring her, giving her money to buy drink. Like she was no one, less than no one. He just wanted
rid of her. In the chain, he was the first link. But I found him . . .’ He stopped, his breath now rasping, and bowed his head.

‘Go on,’ Alice said gently.

‘I will when I can, lass. Give me a minute or two.’

She looked at him, noting for the first time the bluish tinge around his cracked lips.

‘After she died I found him easily enough, through the phone-book,’ he continued. ‘I followed him home a few times, and found out all about the Reverend Duncan James McPhee. On
the Sunday night, late, I trailed after him into the Dean Gardens. He’d that dog with him, the spotty dog. The poor brute came out with me. It was cold, well below freezing. I just wanted to
talk to the man, really. Let him know what he’d done. Tell him about the Hermitage, about her end. Hear him say sorry. But, you see, he didn’t care. He didn’t care that he’d
killed Moira, his own sister. When I broke the news of Moira’s death, a flicker of emotion passed across his face. Just a wee flicker. Know what that emotion was?’

‘No.’

‘Give it a go.’

‘Grief? Surprise? Sorrow?’

‘Wrong. What flashed across his face, just for a moment, but enough for me to recognise it, was relief. A problem solved. He even dared to lecture me, in his pompous way, explaining in
words of one syllable that it had nothing to do with him. “Drink was her downfall,” he said, “not me.” He rabbited on about personal responsibility, moral choices . . . kept
repeating, as if I was a fool, that if she’d died of the cold then no one was to blame. She’d been an alcoholic. He’d certainly played no part in that. And then it came to me. The
big idea. I’d show him something he’d never forget.’

He paused again, his throat sounding dry. Seeing a plastic cup by the sink, Alice filled it and brought it over for him to drink. He took a sip and choked, spilling half the water down his white
shirt and ineffectually tried to wipe it away.

‘I told him to take off his clothes. Of course, he looked at me as if I was mad and refused, and I couldn’t force him. Once I might have been able to . . . not these days, though.
Actually, the old bastard laughed at me, at the very suggestion. So I put my hand in my pocket, moved my comb about in it and told him I had a knife in there. It’s no more than he’d
expect.’

‘So?’

‘He believed me, naturally. No doubt I look the type, to the likes of him at least. Then just to back it up I said if he didn’t strip I’d tell everyone.’ He hesitated
again, watching her face keenly to see her reaction.

‘Tell everyone what?’ Alice asked, taking his bait and watching as a slow smile spread across his face.

‘Tell everyone that the bastard has a mistress! He didn’t believe me, at first. He was all, “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, that kind of thing. So,
I said one word . . .’ He stopped speaking once more.

‘One word?’

‘Her name – Ellie. I told him that I knew where he lived, spelled out his address for him, where she lived, where he worked and his wife’s name. He’d just come from
there, see? His mistress’s place. I said I would tell them all. Mrs Juliet McPhee, the good people of St Moluach’s, his congregation, and his smart friends at 121 George Street. I would
tell them all. Spill the beans about Eleanor.’

‘Eleanor what? Where does she live?’

‘Eleanor Mills, residing in Lennox Terrace in a basement flat. Below that doddery old wifey . . . the one with the Zimmer.’

‘So, what did he do?’

‘He asked me why I was doing this to him. I said, “An eye for an eye”, and that shut him up pretty quick. He got that in one. I explained that maybe he should feel the cold
just like Moira did. Try it. See how he liked it, a taste of his own medicine. He looked at me as if I was a madman, but he saw I wasn’t joking. He still thought I had a knife in my pocket.
He asked me if I’d give him his clothes back at the end, and, of course, I said I would.’

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘Of course not! But I had to say it, to make him take them off, didn’t I? I waited beside him for forty minutes or so . . . by which time he was bloody freezing, chittering like a
frightened dog. Then I walked off with his clothes and everything in them. He managed to speak then, shouting after me that I’d said I’d give them back, but I said to him, “Wish
you’d treated your wee sister a little bit more kindly now, do you?”’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Nothing. His teeth were chattering that much, maybe he couldn’t speak. But he’d showed no remorse, so neither did I. He was afraid of the comb that he thought was a knife,
particularly once he was in his birthday suit. I took his watch and the ring off him too. Why not? I had more use for them than him, and I couldn’t see him going to the police about it. As I
was throwing the stuff I didn’t need into a bin on the corner of Willowbrae Road I laughed myself sick thinking about him racing naked through the streets on his way home, trying to explain
himself to people, to anyone he met. Mighty vulnerable, he’d feel. Let him experience what humiliation, real humiliation, feels like – get a bucketful of it. She knew all about that.
Me, too. We’re experts in that.’

‘That’s not what happened though – him running naked through the streets, I mean.’

‘No?’

‘No. He didn’t make it. He died right there in the Dean Gardens . . . of cold, as far as I know.’

‘Did he now? I never knew that.’ He paused for a little while, continuing in his hoarse voice, ‘But, so be it. He had a chance. He was alive and kicking when I left him. She
had no chance whatsoever. But, supposedly, nobody killed her, did they? Just being alone in that cold place did it. Anyway, thinking about it, his death seems like poetic justice to me.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I told you. Because someone should know. And there won’t be a trial,’ he added, ‘even if he did die like that. So it might never come out.’

‘How can you be so sure that there won’t be a trial?’ she asked, surprised by the certainty in his voice.

‘Take a good look at me, Sergeant,’ he replied, stretching out his bony arms as if to invite a full inspection. He did, indeed, make a pitiful spectacle. His clothes hung on his
fleshless body as loosely as a shroud on a corpse, and his eyes were dull, as if the spark of life had long since departed.

‘How long have you got?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. A matter of weeks, probably. A month at most. They want me to go into hospital, but I’ve refused. What’s the point? They can’t do anything, after
all. I’d rather stay out and about for as long as I can. I won’t plead guilty to anything, if you take me in. No one was found guilty of Moira’s death. McPhee certainly felt no
guilt, so, I can assure you, I feel none either. Even after you telling me that he died. It’s happening to us all.’

They both looked up as a man, dressed in blue overalls, came into the room. Mrs Farrell followed behind him and Terry, like a pet dog, pattered along a few paces behind her.

‘You still here?’ she said cheerily to Taff as she walked by, but then, suddenly, she stopped dead and turned to face him.

The other two, meantime, set to their task, cursing as they battled to move the washing machine away from the wall. When they failed, the little man squeezed himself behind it to act as a human
jack and lever it away from the wall with his legs.

‘You’ve done it again, haven’t you?’ Mrs Farrell said to Taff. Her narrowed eyes drilled into his.

‘What?’ He sounded quite innocent.

‘You’ve turned off the bloody switch!’ she said. Without waiting for him to answer, she turned round and ordered the two men to stop.

Terry and his companion looked up in surprise as the manager strode over to the nearby socket and turned the switch back on.

‘Do that again, Taff . . .’ she said, threateningly, leaving her sentence unfinished.

‘Or you’ll . . . ?’ he replied, his expression eloquently informing her that he did not care what she did.

‘I’ll . . .’ she hesitated.

‘Throw you out, you bastard,’ Terry chimed in, standing as before behind her protective bulk.

‘And I’ll . . . I’ll kiss you!’ she added, laughing, puckering her lips into a grotesque pout and bending towards Taff as if to carry out her threat.

‘On you go, love,’ Taff said insouciantly, offering his thin cheek to her and closing his eyes as if in expectation of bliss.

‘I will!’

While, to Terry’s unconcealed distaste, they continued bantering, Alice’s phone went. It was DC Cairns.

‘Just to let you know the results of the post mortem on McPhee, Sarge . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘He died of a heart attack. All his coronary arteries were furred right up. Hypothermia may have played a minor part. There were no signs of any injury and the Prof found those Wenceslas
ulcers again. No evidence of anything else – no cuts, bruising or anything that couldn’t be explained away innocently. He’s told the DCI that he doesn’t think it was a
suspicious death. So we’re to stand down.’

‘But what does she think happened? What about his clothes, the watch and so on?’

‘The DCI’s satisfied that he took them off himself like Moira Fyfe did. Then someone must have come along later, over the railings, and stolen them. Nobody’s sure, they
can’t be, but they can’t think of anything else, including the Professor. You tracked down the ring and that led to a dead end, didn’t it?’

‘Alex Higgins, you mean?’

‘Yes, to a dead man. Presumably he’s the one who originally found the corpse and the clothes, and took the lot. He was a down-and-out wasn’t he? He might well have had use for
the clothes, not to mention the man’s valuables. The dog might have followed him out, mightn’t it?’