The entry was dark and fetid, the smell from a choked toilet filling the hall and wending up the tight stone staircase. I climbed up and up, checking the view out of the broken windows to the back green at each full turn of the spiral. I got to the top and stood quietly till my breathing calmed. There were two doors. Number 8, Hugh’s single-end, was straight ahead. Number 7 would be the room and kitchen of the other family, the missing family. Someone was in. I could hear a child screaming in a temper tantrum behind the door of number 7. I stepped towards it and gave it a good bash. The noise stopped and then started again. I heard footsteps and the door opened. A young woman with a hectic face stood there with a tartan shawl wrapped round her, a baby rolled inside it. A snotty lad of four or five keeked out behind her pinny. His face was red with rage and greeting.
‘What has he done noo?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know who you think I am, missus, but I’m just here to ask a couple of questions.’
‘You the polis?’
‘No, I’m…’
But she was already shutting the door. ‘We don’t want anythin’…’ she was saying. I stuck my foot in the door.
‘If you don’t clear off, pal, I’ll scream blue murder and the neighbours will fling you oot, so they will!’
‘All I want is to ask you what happened to the other family, the ones before you,’ I called desperately through the closing door.
Slowly the door began to open again. ‘Why?’
I looked at her sharp face with its suspicious eyes. Honesty seemed best. And my old accent. ‘Because they’re gonna hang an auld pal of mine for something he didnae dae.’
She appraised me up and down and we both looked towards the other door, Hugh’s door.
‘Him?’
‘Hugh Donovan.’
‘I’ll tell you this. We wouldnae have ta’en this hoose if we knew who was next door. Murderin’ sod. You say he didnae do it? How do you ken? Have you got a fag?’
I gave her one, took one myself and lit us both. We both took a sociable drag and I told her I was working for Advocate Campbell on the appeal. That I thought it was a police set-up under pressure to find the real murderer.
‘Ah’m no’ surprised at anythin’ the polis dae. They took ma man in and gave him a gid hiding the other week. He was a bit fu’, right enough, but it was the other fella that started it.’
I smiled sympathetically. ‘Is there anybody living there now?’ I nodded towards number 8.
‘You must be jokin’! The factor says he’ll no’ be able to rent it for at least a year. Who wants to sleep in there wi’ a’ that blood and grief? And ghosts, like enough.’ She shuddered and wrapped her shawl tighter round her. Her son wiped his nose on her pinny and she cuffed him absentmindedly, raising another howl.
‘Did you know the family before you?’
‘Reid, they were ca’d. But we never met them.’
The boy chipped in, ‘Yon wee boy came back, mither.’
She was about to clip him again but stayed her hand. ‘You’re right enough, Jim.’ She turned to me, reluctantly. ‘One of Mrs Reid’s weans came by about twa months ago. They were here for their granny’s funeral over at Townhead. Said his mammy had left some bits of washin’ on the line, they were that much in a hurry to go.’
‘Why the hurry, do you know?’
She looked around her as if the stairs had sprouted ears. ‘Ah heard from the factor that they’d come into a bit of money. Something about an aunt doon the Clyde. Arran way.’
Arran? Off the west coast of Ayrshire. A perfect place to lose an inconvenient witness. It was a big island, with villages and isolated houses scattered all round its shoreline. Where would you start?
‘Do you have an address on Arran?’
She shook her head. But at the same time, wee Jim tugged at her skirt and looked up at her.
‘Whit is it noo, son?’
‘The wee boy said he could watch the boats come in every day, so he could. Said it was amazing. So it was. Can we go doon the water at the fair, mither?’
‘Maybe. If your faither’s no’ in the jail. And if you stop gien’ me a headache. Ma lugs are fair bleedin’, so they are.’
I dug in my pocket and found a threepenny bit. I held it out to the boy. ‘Well done, Jim. You’ll make a good detective when you grow up.’
The boy looked at my hand and then at his mum. She nodded and his hand took the coin like a striking cobra.
I turned to go. ‘Apart from the factor, has anyone been in the house since Donovan left?’
She was about to shake her head, but then she said, ‘Just the once. A big fella. About your height, but heftier. I heard him mucking about with the key. I came out just as he opened the door. He said he was checking the place was all locked up and tidy for the factor.’
‘A big man, you say? Anything else about him?’
‘He had a ’tache, a wee ginger one. But I think it was to hide the lip. A hare lip, ye ken. It looked like he was grinnin’ a’ the time.’
I could have hugged her but she might have called the neighbours.
‘You’ve been a great help, missus. I really appreciate it. I think I’ll take a wee look inside now.’
‘How will you get in?’
‘Could I borrow a safety pin? And a kirby grip? And it would really help if you had a knitting needle or a crochet hook.’
Locks had been a fascination for me since my dad found me playing with some old padlocks he kept in his shed at the allotment. She gave me a look which wasn’t all admonishing and went inside. She came back with a selection of possible tools. I strode to the door of number 8. I felt Jim’s eyes on me, bulging with excitement at this cavalier approach to others’ property. There were two locks: a big padlock and a mortise. I chose the crochet hook and slid it into the big padlock. I soon felt it ease and open. I pulled back the hasp. I tried the kirbies then the knitting needle on the mortise and scrubbed at it till I felt the pins lock up in the mechanism. I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
It was dark and sour inside. Dust covered the bare wood floor and eddied up as I stepped in. I doubted the gas lights would work, so I stepped across to the window and drew back the torn curtain. Behind me the woman and boy stood looking in with fascination at the murderer’s den. Their looks soon turned to disappointment.
There wasn’t much to see in a room that was barely ten feet by twelve. There was a recessed bed with a curtain over it, a warped Formica table and one wooden chair, a sink and a tiny stove with two rings. There was no sign of who had lived here or what had happened. No splashes of gore. I don’t know what I was expecting.
I pulled back the curtain concealing the bed in the wall. There was no mattress or bedclothes, just the bare boards. I assumed everything had been carted off by the police for forensics. I gazed round the tiny room and thought about Hugh Donovan spending his last months here. Lonely, sometimes drugged to the eyeballs, and perhaps always wondering if he would have been better off going down in his plane after all. I used to envy Hugh’s life. There were eight of them: four boys, two girls and his parents all on top of each other in a big messy house in the next close. Quarrelling and laughing, fighting and loving, a real family. For an only child like me they made a strong case for a Catholic approach to contraception. When I called in to see if Hugh was coming out to play, I was simply swept up in the family currents; plied with jeelie pieces, regaled by some story about the neighbours, taking sides in an argument about football. I was an honorary Donovan. Apart from the hair of course; eight blue-black heads to one ruddy brown.