The Red Road by Denise Mina

the warmed seat on the long drive from the ferry. The rain got heavier suddenly, stealing the light, turning the inside of the car blue and green. Cadaverous, he thought, a coffin car.
    The women would have dressed the kids in appropriate clothes: suits for the boys and a dress for Jessica, black but good quality. They could wear them again for his funeral.
    A sharp knock on the side window made him jump in his seat. The worn crotch of a pair of pink jeans was eye-level with Robert. He flinched away from it. Rather than bend down to look in the window, the owner of the crotch stepped back as if he had a bad back and didn’t want to bend.
    He was an old hippy, had long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail and he was holding a woman’s umbrella, white, frilly and yellowed at the edges where it had been wet and dried.
    ‘Yeah, McMillan?’ The low voice was muffled through the glass.
    Robert sat for a moment, watching him. The rain ran down the window, melting the hippy’s face over and over. Robert thought, this could be the face of death. This hippy could be the one they’d sent to kill him. But he’d probably just have shot Robert through the window if he was. The man’s face was in the shadow of the umbrella but Robert could see his mouth quivering through the rain and saw him try to make a warm, welcoming smile. It withered instantly to a baring of teeth. He wasn’t used to smiling.
    The man’s eyes narrowed over the roof and then he looked back, suspicious. ‘You McMillan? D’you hire the castle?’
    ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Robert through the window and waited. The hippy didn’t shoot him. It was time to get out.
    He opened the glove compartment, pulled out the envelope full of money and opened the driver’s door. He swung a leg out into the lashing rain, watching his suit trousers and the upholstered interior of the car door getting wet. He turned his torso and brought the other leg out. The rain hit the back of his neck, cold, fresh.
    He stood up, shut the car door and handed him the envelope. ‘That’s the money,’ he said.
    The hippy took it, squeezed it as if he could count it by feel and put it in his back pocket.
    Robert found himself looking away from the house, at a path into a deep forest of Scots pine, the floor thick with ferns glittering with silver tears. Even to him, it looked quite beautiful.
    ‘So, yeah.’ The hippy was happy now. He swung a loose hand at the house. ‘Brolly?’
    He was a good deal taller than Robert. Robert stood in the rain, rolled a shoulder, mentally simulating the ungainly walk of a tall and small person sharing an umbrella.
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s, just, go inside.’
    ‘Yeah.’ The gangly man set off for the steps leading up to the grand storm doors.
    The doors opened into a stone porch with a glass door beyond into the hallway.
    In the shelter of the porch the hippy put his umbrella down and turned back to the steps, shaking off the rain by flapping it open and shut. It smelled stale, and as he flapped it the whiff of mildew billowed back at them.
    Robert looked out at the view. An angry sea battered the white sands below. High sheer cliffs on either side, topped with high hills, green as felt. The rain was so heavy it flattened the grass on the lawn, bounced five inches off a long bench looking out to sea. And yet, beyond the bay, a wide slanting column of sunshine out at sea.
    ‘Yeah, so, come in?’ said the hippy, opening the door.
    Robert did as he was told and the hippy shut the door behind him.
    The castle was lovely inside. The hallway was painted a cheerful yellow, walls hung with muted, cheerful pictures of no great value. At the end of the short hall a stairwell curled up, the banister a sensuous sweep of warm cherry wood. The hippy must have prepared for him coming and put the heating on because it was warm. A small fire was set in a pink drawing room to their right.
    ‘Warm,’ muttered Robert.
    ‘Yeah.’ The man held a hand up to a