In Place of Death (11 page)

They added more and more screens and took away more and more of the magic. He wasn't even sure of the last picture he'd seen there. It might have been
Wall Street
or maybe
Rain Man,
something like that in the late 1980s. Long time ago now. Seemed like another world.

And now he was part of the team that was going to blast the Odeon into smithereens. He didn't exactly feel good about that but he was just the hangman: someone else had been the judge and
jury. Just following orders, the oldest excuse in the book.

The front façade would be kept, safe from the other ravages, and would form the centrepiece of a new ten-floor office development. Nobody seemed to give a flying fuck for the rest of it
though.

He walked through what was the main foyer, images of usherettes in tartan dresses and male staff in dark suits tumbling through his mind. The stairs rose from here to the old upper foyer where
there had once been a bar, a walk he'd made a hundred times but never like this. This time, the likelihood was that no one would ever make it again.

He walked further back into the building, his torch-light leading the way down memory lane. Jackie had been in a few times since it closed in 2006, including before it had been stripped out.
Since then it had lain dormant and such a waste, bang in the middle of the city centre and nothing happening to it.

It was so quiet back here. Only the occasional creak of the building and the distant scurry of rodents broke the silence. He liked that though. It gave it an atmosphere it deserved.

The rooms were all bare but he'd been there when the floors were still covered in dark blue carpets, dotted dirty grey where the chairs had been and marked with the sticky stains of old
popcorn and spilled juice. The stage was for ghosts now, the old screens long since taken away and sold off.

There were no numbers on the rooms any more but he still knew which was which. The rooms got smaller as the numbers got bigger. Something great had been chopped up into little bits of something
ordinary. Cinema 1 had still been a good size but by the time you got down to what had been Cinema 9 then it was pretty claustrophobic and banked steeply from back to front. It was the space that
had been 9 that he went into now, breathing in fifty-plus years of his own thoughts.

He stood and listened, closing his eyes and remembering. It was so small and dark that you could almost hear projectors whirring, reels clacking and people shushing each other. You could feel
that buzz, the one you got when the whole crowd felt the same thing at the same time. Fear and amusement and sadness and relief. He could imagine dust whirling in the light of the projector and
dancing through it were glimpses of car chases and Westerns and custard pies.

He could still smell popcorn and hairspray, hot dogs and sickly orange juice. He could smell sweat and hope and teenage troubles. There was something else though, something newer and yet older.
It was the stench of decay. Maybe the smell of the old place finally about to breathe its last.

Jackie wandered down the steep bank to where the screen would have been, seeking one last bit of nostalgia before he left. He'd always wanted to be up there; not that he'd ever dared
tell anyone for fear of them laughing at him. He'd imagined himself in a shoot-out with Clint Eastwood or a punch-up with The Duke. Maybe in a love scene with Sophia Loren. Jeez, his pals
would have wet themselves if he'd told them that.

He was up there now though. The silver screen. Even if it hadn't been so much silver as dusty grey. The walls to the side a shabby, peeling blue. Jackie gave a little soft-shoe shuffle,
like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, and put his hands out like it was show business.

He even gave a little bow to the ghosts and turned as if to walk off into the screen. That's when he saw it. That's when he realized that the smell of decay wasn't just from
the building.

It was tucked into a little recess to the side of where the screen would have been, partly covered by a sheet of plywood. There was a foot sticking out though. An ashen-white foot that barely
seemed real but he knew that it was.

Jackie really didn't want to look any further. He backed away then stopped himself, breathed hard and went forward again. He took hold of the plywood and lifted it, the stench flooding his
nose as he did so. All at once he saw the rotten corpse of a woman, naked and eaten, her flesh chewed and decomposed.

This time, he backed away with his mouth open for three steps until he tripped over the lip of the small, raised stage. He was on his knees when he threw up.

Jackie got to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, not daring to look at the body again. He hadn't seen anything like that on the big screen, not once. With his back to
it, he ran as fast as his overweight body could take him, up the slope and out of what had been Cinema 9.

Narey climbed out of her car onto Renfield Street and saw the old cinema looking like she'd never seen it before. Blue flashing lights threw shadows onto the grimy white
walls and the tall windows, somehow looking apt on the 1930s design. It was the opening night for a horror movie.

Half the street had been blocked off to accommodate the two squad cars, two unmarked vehicles and the ambulance that would only be needed to take a body away. Uniformed cops stood guard in front
of the crime scene tape while others helped direct the traffic chaos that they'd caused. Between them flitted white-suited ghosts who were waiting to carry out forensic duties.

There was some wire fencing round the exterior, more for show than a real attempt to keep anyone out. She noticed the sign on it as she passed.
Development
by Saturn Property. Premises
Protected by Mullen
Security.
Neither protected nor secure, she thought.

She nodded at the cops on the tape and pushed past them with DC Becca Maxwell at her heels, ignoring the shouts from the journalists who wanted answers as to what was going on. Another officer
pulled back the recently reopened front door and let them through. When it closed behind them, Narey allowed a solitary shiver to pass through her as she thought how much the old place felt like an
indoor cemetery, quiet and cold. It might only have held a single recent corpse but it still held the presence of a thousand more.

A uniformed sergeant, a broad, dark-haired man in his mid-forties, looked up to see her and Maxwell approaching and dismissed one of his constables with a quiet word before stepping forward to
meet them. He tipped his head in greeting, his eyes battle-weary. ‘DI Narey? I'm Jack McVean. What do you need to know?'

‘Well . . . who found the body for starters.'

‘Demolition man found it. Name of Jackie Doran. He's over there.'

Narey followed his nod to see a balding man in his sixties sitting on his own and looking dazed. He was cradling a mug of something hot and probably wishing it was something stronger.

‘He was back in the building having a last look around before they got ready to bring the place down. Says he used to come here when he was a kid. Didn't we all? I think he nearly
crapped himself when he found the woman. He was pretty shook up, still is, but he phoned it in. Constables Dixon and Corry responded and they've interviewed him. The building's been
shut since 2006, stripped out years ago and nothing but rats been in since. Mr Doran says it was last checked out a couple of months ago and been locked up in between. They were about ready to push
the button and demolish it.'

‘Yeah, I saw it on the news. Shame. Okay, let's see the body then and obviously I'll want to talk to Mr Doran and the constables.'

‘This way.'

McVean led her and Maxwell back into the building, through narrow corridors and plasterboard walls marked with painted numbers. She'd been here plenty of times but never quite like this.
Her mum and dad had brought her at least once a month, packets of Munchies as a treat, the rare school-night visit if she was lucky. Then she'd been with various friends and boyfriends,
fending off groping arms when it suited her. It was positively weird being in here now though.

They got deeper into the shell until they came to a single door in the far recess. McVean opened it and stepped back to let them through. The room banked steeply away in front of her to where a
small scrum huddled together near the far wall, the whole tableau illuminated by temporary lighting which threw long shadows onto the walls. Campbell Baxter was there and she recognized Paul Burke
as being one of the SOCOs under his white suit and mask.

As she got closer, she saw a single foot poking out between the forest of legs, the instep turned onto the dirty floor. The sea parted as Narey neared and she saw the corpse lying there on its
back, one leg tucked under the other and the head broken.

It was badly decomposed and had suffered from however long it had been hidden away in the old cinema. The building must have been full of rats and mice and the body wasn't a pretty sight.
The woman had been left naked, stripped of dignity and her life as well as her clothes. Left there to end up under rubble when the place was flattened.

Narey stood silently for a moment, contemplating the type of bastard who would do that to another human being.

‘Was she killed where she's lying?'

Paul Burke shook his head. ‘There's tissue and blood spatter on the corner of the stage over there. Every indication that's where it happened.'

‘When did the demolition guy find her?'

‘Less than an hour ago,' McVean told her. ‘We had a car here within ten minutes.'

‘Anyone estimated how long ago she died?'

Baxter made a face. The one he pulled when making out he'd been asked to make a definitive judgement when all she really wanted was some rough idea to work with.

‘I'm not in the business of guessing, DI Narey. If you—'

Another voice cut in. ‘I'll make a guess. Five to six weeks by the look of it.' It was Winter, walking across the stage towards them with camera in hand and his kit bag over
his shoulder.

She glared at him, resenting both his sudden presence and his manner. She'd known, of course, that he'd be on his way but was still irked at him turning up like this, far too
familiar in front of the others. There was a line when they were at work, her line, and he knew he was crossing it. Most of all though, she begrudged the fact that she was going to have to step
aside and let him get at the body first.

‘Mr
Winter,' she addressed him coolly. ‘This is Sergeant McVean. You know everyone else. Do what you have to do and then let us get on with it.'

He walked past her, his eyes fixed on the body and a strange, almost troubled look on his face. She'd seen him photograph victims many times and had been bothered by the enthusiasm, almost
zeal, with which he approached his work. This time his lips were pursed tightly and his brows knotted anxiously. Maybe he had finally developed a sense of fitting solemnity but she doubted it.

‘What's up?' she whispered as he readied himself over the corpse.

‘Just doing my job,' he murmured back. ‘I won't be long.'

She stepped away, unsure how to reply and keen to avoid arguing with him in front of the others. Winter dropped his bag a few feet away from the body and raised his camera to his eye.

The truth was he'd been disturbed since the moment he'd got the call. Not the body or the length of time it had lain there: they were just different shades of an old routine. It was
all about the location.

He got to work, doing what he had to do, but with a real and unusual sense of unease. The woman filled his lens in an ugly mass of welts and blistered skin, a war of purples, blues and reds. Her
hair was the only thing intact: long and dark it curled in waves under her caved skull. He photographed her from every angle, in whole and in part. Open mouth, twisted leg, outstretched arm,
desecrated torso.

He got to his knees and squeezed into the recess off stage so that he could photograph what was left of her face in situ. She could have been anything from early thirties to mid-forties, so
difficult to tell. One arm was up near her face, unnaturally so and maybe trapped when she was dumped there. Her nails were still a well-manicured red, their shine barely dimmed.

It made him think of what was probably Enrique Metinides' most famous photograph,
The Death of Adela Legarreta Rivas.
Two cars crashed on Avenida Chapultepec in Mexico City and she
was run over on her way from the beauty parlour to a book launch. Metinides photographed her, hand outstretched, eyes open, make-up done perfectly, nails immaculate.

It was the thought of the Mexican photographer that made him tilt his camera slightly and catch the circus that was gathered above and beyond this poor woman's head. Forensics and police,
Rachel among them, game faces on, itching to get to work. Well fuck them, they could have her.

He got to his feet, stepped back a couple of paces and took one final, all-encompassing shot before tilting his lens to the floor. Job done but far from happy.

She was by his side, speaking quietly. Obviously trying to suss out why he'd been so short with her earlier.

‘Two dead bodies in creepy places in such a short time. You must think it's Christmas.'

‘Not really. You know I don't believe in God.'

‘Tony? What's wrong?'

‘A woman's been murdered and left to rot. I just don't think it's funny.'

He knew she didn't quite buy it but she could hardly argue with his reasoning: the truth of that lay in front of them. It wasn't the truth about why he was troubled but he
wasn't ready for telling her that, not quite yet.

Back on Renfield Street, the air was thick with the sound of car horns being thumped by frustrated drivers. The building was on a busy interchange and traffic had ground to a
halt thanks to the cop cars and ambulance that were taking up part of the road.