In Place of Death (14 page)

‘You could say that. So it was you I heard moving around earlier?'

‘Either me or the ghost of the woman who fell down the lift shaft. You can never be sure somewhere like this. You know what this is?' He nodded at the razorclad closet.

Winter shook his head.

‘It's an art installation. Weird, huh? I'd heard about it. One of the reasons I wanted to explore in here. Look, how about I buy you a pint to make up for it.'

‘A
pint?'
Winter looked at his watch. ‘It's only seven thirty.'

Hepburn smiled mischievously. ‘Another quick scout round here and then a wee stroll to the Saltmarket. The Whistlin Kirk opens at eight. Need to get a breakfast with the beer, right
enough. It's the law.'

‘What kind of pub opens at eight in the morning?'

‘One that works what they call Grandfather Terms. So they can sell to shift workers. And I feel we've put a shift in going round here. What do you say?'

Winter laughed. ‘Why not? My mouth's so dry—'

‘It thinks your throat's been cut?'

‘Exactly.'

The Whistlin Kirk was in Greendyke Street, just a stone's throw from the Clyde and just enough time to take your tie off if you'd walked from the High Court. It was
only just gone eight but already there was a small, happy band with pints of lager in front of them on round tables. Plates held sausage, bacon and egg or filled rolls. The crowd was pensioner age,
most pitched somewhere between sixty and eighty, and they all looked happy to be out of the house and still alive.

Hepburn led Winter to the bar where they were greeted with a nod by a woman in her thirties with blonde bobbed hair and a red apron over a black top. She sized them up and didn't see any
trouble she couldn't handle.

‘Help you, boys?'

‘Two pints, please. A lager and a Guinness. And a bacon roll.'

‘Needs to be a roll each. It's the law.'

They found a couple of seats in the corner, a bit along from a clean-shaven man in a hoodie who sat looking down silently into a pint of lager, a plate of square sausage and beans sitting
untouched beside him.

The bar still had the stale whiff of last night's booze but that was slowly disappearing through the open door along with the hangovers. Some customers chatted quietly, some cracked jokes
and told each other lies. They all got what they wanted from it.

‘Nice place,' Winter said quietly.

‘It is actually. Never any bother, keep a good pint, folk are friendly. Not my bit of town but I'd drink in here if I was local. And it's cheap.'

Winter supped on his Guinness, deliberately letting a creamy crescent settle on his lip before licking it off. ‘You not got a job to go to today?'

‘Nothing till later. I work for myself so can generally choose when I come and go. I'm a freelance journalist.'

‘Yeah? What kind of stuff do you report on?'

He grinned. ‘Anything that pays. I do some undercover stuff but whatever pays the bills and lets me not work nine to five is fine by me. What about you?'

‘Photographer?'

‘Really? I know plenty but never seen you. Who do you work for?'

Winter dropped his voice. ‘The cops. Not long started.'

Hepburn laughed. ‘That explains it then. Obviously most of the guys I know are snappers for the papers.'

‘That's not for me. So were you in the Central doing some undercover work?'

‘Jeez no. Just exploring. If I started exploring it to get paid, it would take all the fun out of it. I have a couple of cameras and tend to use one for work and one for
urbexing.'

‘Really? I do the same. One for work and one for me, although I usually take both to a job with me. Just habit, I guess. So where have you explored?'

They took turns to reel off places they'd been. The old Merkland Street station, the public baths, Govan dockyards, Woodilee Hospital out at Lenzie, the Titan at Clydebank, a succession of
old schools, factories, churches and disused railway lines. It turned out they'd unknowingly been following in each other's footsteps across the city. They were each other's
shadow.

‘This makes a change,' Hepburn grinned. ‘I never get the chance to talk to other urbexers. Man, I didn't even know I
was
an urbexer till I read about it online.
Until then I thought I was the only eejit going into places I shouldn't.'

‘I guess there's a few of us. Guy I met reckoned there were maybe about nine or ten in Glasgow doing it. Can't be sure though. We all just do our thing and no one talks about
it – we hardly ever meet each other. How did you get into it?'

Hepburn tilted his head in thought. ‘My old primary school was getting knocked down and made into flats. I thought it was a shame and wanted to have a look around before they flattened it.
They said I couldn't, chance had gone. So I figured I'd go in anyway. Getting in was a piece of cake. Looked around the classrooms and the gym, went into the head's office seeing
I got called there on a regular basis. I even sat at a couple of my old desks. Amazing how the memories came back. Just as well I went in when I did though because the place burned down a week
later.'

Winter groaned. ‘Let me guess. They found something inside. Asbestos maybe? The developers couldn't get planning permission and then the place mysteriously caught fire.'

‘That's exactly it. Amazing how many times that happens in Glasgow.'

‘Always just a coincidence though. Feel good when you were back in the school?'

‘Felt great. Being in there but also being in there because they'd told me I couldn't. I got a buzz out of that. They're always telling us we can't go places or
can't do things. They treat us like kids, man. Beware of this, danger of that, don't even think of going there. Load of crap. If I get hurt then it's my own fault. I'm not
going to sue anyone. Tell me I can't and I want it all the more. You know?'

Winter knew all right. Every word that Hepburn spoke felt like it had come from his own mouth. It was oddly reassuring to find someone of the same mindset. Maybe he wasn't as strange as
he'd thought.

It seemed Hepburn was thinking the same thing. ‘Do you ever want to do some explores but don't because it's a bit dangerous or too bloody stupid to do them on your
own?'

He considered the implication of the question. ‘Yeah. What are you suggesting?'

A shrug of the shoulders. ‘Sometimes it might make sense to keep an eye out for each other. Places where you'd want someone to be there if you got stuck or fell.'

‘Don't know. I'm used to doing this on my own.'

‘Christ, I'm not suggesting we get married or anything. Just when it suited.'

‘Could give it a go, I guess.'

They clinked their pints together and the deal was sealed.

That's how it started. They climbed all the cranes on the Clyde, they explored most of the buildings that tried to keep them out and they photographed wherever they went.
Both of them had a feel for historic buildings and made a vow to get into as many as they could of the ones that were marked for demolition. It was their small rebellion against the gentrification
that was cleaning up by tearing down. Schools, offices, factories, libraries, banks. Anywhere that couldn't be turned into a pub or converted into overpriced flats ran the risk of being
obliterated so that the land could host some throw-me-up new build.

It helped that they both worked weird hours and they forged a bond by being up and about when most of the city was asleep. If it was three in the morning and you were in the darkness in a former
mental asylum then you needed to be able to trust the person you were with.

For three years it was great. Then it stopped. Euan packed up and moved to London.

He and Winter had already stopped urbexing together by then but that was a different story, one that he didn't like to think about.

Tuesday evening

Remy Feeks could only stare at his laptop screen. The Odeon. A woman's body. The news report hadn't said much more but then it didn't need to. Not for
him.

It couldn't have been anything else. Not after the Molendinar. It was just too much of a coincidence. The Odeon meant urbexing. It had to.

He sat for an age, looking at it open-mouthed and with the feeling that something was crawling over his skin. He'd barely left the house, refusing Gabby's pleas and threats to meet
up, instead just sitting there obsessively poring over every bit of news he could find online. Then he'd found this. The Odeon.

He'd been scared before but now he was terrified. For him and for Gabby. More for her. He was hiding away at home and she was out there, exploring places like the Sentinel Works without
him there to look out for her. It couldn't be safe. He grabbed his phone and texted her, urging her to be careful, asking her not to go out. She got back ten minutes later to say she already
had a mother and didn't need another one.

He had to do something and while he didn't know what that was, at least he thought he knew where to look.

OtherWorld was the main UK urbexing forum. He'd used it for about five years, almost as long as he'd known that exploring old places even had a name. People would gather online, post
their photographs, chat and get ideas for places to explore or share leads for new locations.

He didn't think anyone would urbex in Glasgow without knowing of OtherWorld. Most probably, although you just couldn't know, every urbexer would use it.

It was a community of sorts. People who largely didn't know each other but knew enough to say hello in the passing online. Not so different from the real world these days. There were those
quick to congratulate someone on a good explore but there were also those quick to criticize and find fault, keyboard warriors who took what pleasure they could in being a pain in the arse to
others.

Most people were cool though. They just loved what they did and wanted to share. Photography was a huge part of it, not just proof that you'd done what you'd said but to let others
see what was out there. Often it was a case of capturing it before it disappeared. In a city like Glasgow which was doing pretty well, places tended to be abandoned for less time. They'd
either be quickly demolished or tarted up into something else and pressed back into service. Their job, and lots of them saw it that way, was to get photos for posterity while they could.

It was all pretty much anonymous and that was the way it had to be. What they were doing was basically illegal, even if it was just common trespass, and that was the first reason not to put your
real name to it. But also, it was just the nature of the beast. You got in, got out, no need to shout about it. They all liked the fact that it was a bit cloak and dagger. They were evening
explorers. Night Ninjas.

At least that was the way it had seemed until now.

Secret identities had seemed cool and exciting. Now though it looked like the forum was hiding something. It was hiding everyone and everything and he didn't like it. The forum was full of
names that he knew by sight, but he could brush past these people in the street and wouldn't know who they were. But maybe they'd know him.

Tubz. Digger9. BigTomDog. Ultrabex. DrJohn. SkeletonBob. Jonesy78
.

All these stupid names. Did they hide witnesses or victims? Did they hide a killer?

His own user name was Magellan93. It had seemed like a good idea at the time but now it just sounded a bit wanky. He wasn't a real explorer. He collected trolleys, he didn't
circumnavigate the earth.

He had to figure out what he wanted, what he hoped for. Help, reassurance, friends, answers. All of those. Maybe most of all he wanted to be told that everything would be all right. It was
something that he'd doubted even before he read about the Odeon. From the moment he did, he knew there was something seriously bad going on.

The forum had a search facility and he put
Glasgow
into the keyword field and combed through the results. He went through every post and jotted down the name of every user who had replied
on it in the past few years and their location. It was a long and laborious process, maybe a pointless one, but he had to feel he was doing something.

There was seven years' worth of reports and a long list of people who'd either posted them or commented on them. All those made-up names, all those masks. The only one he knew in
real life was Vixxxen, who was Gabby. He divided the others up into three separate lists. Glasgow. Rest of Scotland. Outside Scotland. He counted how often they'd posted and when. After an
hour, he was confident he had the names of all the regular Glasgow urbexers. He had his list.

Tunnel Man was probably among them. In fact, Remy was sure he was. The person that killed Tunnel Man? It scared him silly that he - or she - might be in there too.

There were just fifteen names, a manageable number for what he had in mind. He sent all of them the same private message. If he was right, then at least one of them would be unable to reply. And
maybe one of them would be unable to resist replying.

He pushed send and immediately wondered just what the hell he'd done.

Wednesday morning

‘Jacko. What have you got?'

‘Quite a bit, Rachel. Let's just say that Saturn are of interest to us. A colleague has them on his list so I didn't know all I might have but I'm up to speed
now.'