Free The Red Road by Denise Mina Page B

it seems to have occluded my vision.’
    It was Anton Atholl. He laughed at himself and she found herself laughing too, a mad, drunk sort of release. Atholl laughed louder along with her, as if he was frightened and needed it too. He was the best of them, Atholl. Julius always said so. The only decent one among them. She was glad to see him.
    Atholl held his plate of small sandwiches out in apology. ‘Egg and cress?’
    Rose shook her head and backed away.
    ‘You must be Rose,’ he said innocently. ‘I remember Julius telling me about you.’ He was taking a chance, talking to her. He might know what Dawood and Monkton were doing.
    Making a funny play of them not knowing each other, Atholl looked at his hands, found them full and instead held out an elbow, grinning. ‘I’m Anton Atholl.’
    ‘Nice to meet you.’ She met his elbow with her own and they shook, smiling just enough. She looked away.
    ‘ Rose, you meant so much to him .’
    If she met Anton’s eye now she would cry. She kept her eyes down. ‘Thank you.’
    She moved out through the crowd, giving herself leave to gather the children and get out.
    ‘Have you seen Robert?’
    It was Atholl, he was behind, following her. She shrugged, back in character. ‘I’m afraid Robert won’t be here. He’s not well enough to attend.’
    ‘Oh. People are asking ...’
    He didn’t look chaotic now, or hungry or funny. He looked serious and leaned over her.
    Rose muttered, ‘I’ll tell him.’
    ‘Seriously, Julius loved you,’ said Atholl again.
    Drunk already, she thought, and felt her lip curl.
    ‘ Loved having you around.’
    She smiled at her feet and whispered, ‘OK.’
    Atholl was swallowed by the swell of the crowd but still she didn’t look up.
    She needed to get out before they drank more. She scanned the room, spotting the kids beneath the far fireplace. Hamish was sitting on the couch, ostentatiously eating his last bit of cake. Angus and Jessica stood in front of him, watching covetously. Rose hurried over, keeping her line of vision high to avoid eye contact with anyone else.
    She smiled to herself: the centrepiece of the fireplace was a beaten metal relief of a woman in heroic profile, hair billowing, chin tilted up, eyes shut. Her finger was pressed to her lips.
    Rose dropped her eyes and bowled over to the kids. She couldn’t wait to get home and shut the door on the world.

 
     
     
     
    6
     
     
     
     
    Alex Morrow sat in her boss’s office and stared at the printouts on his desk. They were both dumbfounded. Riddell, a slim, pale man with slightly grey teeth and acne scars on his cheeks, opened his mouth and then shut it again. He frowned at the papers on his desk, his eyes running from the printed fingerprint sample taken at the Red Road crime scene to the neat little row of Michael Brown’s ten fingerprints, taken from his criminal record.
    Brown had been locked in a prison cell and simultaneously halfway across the city, touching things and murdering a man in a deserted block of flats. It was too much of a coincidence, the prints being found right now, just when he was about to go down for a long time. What was even stranger than his teleporting stunt was that it wouldn’t get him out of prison. Brown plus others had staged this baffling, elaborate hoax and neither Morrow nor Riddell could work out what the pay-off was to them.
    They’d run through possibles, Morrow suggesting, Riddell dismissing:
Distract attention from the person who actually did it? Too complicated. They’d use prints from someone who might actually have been there.
Draw attention to the dead guy’s link with Brown? But the dead guy had no link to Brown.
Send a message: but no one would ever know Brown’s prints were found there unless the police went about telling people and they had no interest in doing that.
    Riddell said that those higher up wanted the fingerprints issue cleared up thoroughly and quickly. Priority. Put other cases aside. Morrow felt