The Red Road by Denise Mina Read Free Book Online Page A

this.’
    ‘I’m here to help you.’
    A sharp smirk, quick as a blink. ‘ Help me? How’s my life not going to be shit anyway?’
    He looked up. There was no self-pity, no real sorrow. Rose Wilson was resigned to desolation. She had fully, without rancour, surrendered to the pity of life. He saw her next to the car in the Paris tunnel, shrugging. He pictured her at the gates of Buchenwald with her hands resting in her tracksuit pockets, sorry about the queues of women and children, but accepting. He saw her through every catastrophe in history, standing at the side, an impassive witness.
    He asked her, ‘Did you hear about Princess Diana?’
    She fell back in her chair, shrank into the tracksuit and whispered in a voice channelled from elsewhere, ‘She was young to die ...’ Her eyes brimmed with trembling tears and she said, ‘And those boys ...’
    They sat at the table, heads bent as if in prayer. They stayed there for a while. When he looked up Julius saw wet tear tracks on her cheeks.
    Quite abruptly, because of the tears maybe, Julius recognised her. He had seen her before. She was the girl. Of course, Samuel McCaig, the deceased, it was Sammy the Perv. Of course it was her. He never thought he’d meet her face to face, but she was sitting here right in front of him. She could make everything all right for him.
    ‘What age are you, again?’
    ‘Fourteen.’
    Fourteen. Illegal. It was perfect. And he had her here, in his sole and exclusive power and he had the power to keep her close.
    ‘I can help you,’ he said, not certain he could but certain he wanted to. Confused by his adamance, he said it again, ‘I can help you.’
    The flashing smirk again, softer now because she had been crying. ‘You gonnae give the judge chocolate?’
    ‘This,’ Julius lifted a finger to the room, ‘I know how to work this .’ His turn to whisper. He said it as if they were conspiring children.
    Intrigued, she nodded him on.
    ‘I knew Samuel. I know what sort of man he was.’
    ‘He was a perv.’
    ‘That’s what they called him, wasn’t it? Sammy the Perv.’
    She nodded.
    ‘He had a string of convictions for sexual offences against young girls. Did you know that?’
    ‘Yeah. ’S how they called him Sammy the Perv.’
    ‘OK, Rose.’ He put down his pen. ‘Rose, this could end in a long sentence for you or a short one. Either way you’ll get detention, understand?’
    She nodded, listening intently.
    ‘The way we tell the story is what will decide if it’s a long or a short sentence.’
    She leaned in. ‘Get a short one.’
    ‘Yes, we want to make it short. So here’s the story we need to tell: you didn’t know he was called Sammy the Perv. You didn’t know he had a string of convictions. You thought he was a friendly man, you’re a lonely child, be a child on the stand, in interviews, OK? No more swearing. They don’t want that. No more “my life’s shite anyway”, no one wants to hear that from a child.’
    ‘What do they want?’
    ‘They want you to hope.’
    ‘Hope what?’
    ‘To have hope.’
    ‘What kind of hope?’
    ‘Hope you’ll be a pop star, hope you’ll be a vet, find true love, things like that.’
    She looked at him for a moment, hardly believing him, and barked a startled laugh. ‘Mr McMillan—’
    ‘That’s what people want from children. You need to act like that. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing. And try to cry.’
    ‘I don’t cry.’
    He loved her for that, because she had cried over Diana.
    ‘Just think of something that makes you cry and do it.’
    Looking into a distant corner, she thought about it for a while. ‘How long do I need to keep that up for?’
    ‘Long as you can. After the trial anyway. Can you do it?’
    She held her hands up in surrender, palms scarred with a thousand years’ hard labour. ‘I’ll try.’
    ‘Here’s our story: you were lonely and you met Sammy and he was friendly. You got in his car and he attacked you,