In Place of Death (19 page)

He sat and looked at it for a couple of minutes, drinking it in and searching for familiar names among those that had posted. He didn't recognize any but then he'd been gone for a
while and most of those he was looking at were from elsewhere in the UK.

Did his login still work? That was the question. Only one way to find out. Login name, Metinides. Password, snapper1. He pressed enter again and he was in. He was still one of the crowd.

From the moment Remy had sent the messages about the walk to the Botanics, he'd been fretting over their return. He'd refreshed his inbox often enough that the F5
key was in danger of being worn out. It didn't bring replies in any quicker but gave him something to do.

He'd ventured out to check on his dad a couple of times, taking him food and company, making both of them feel a little bit better. That apart, he'd stared at the screen, willing it
to change. It turned out that his psychic powers were not all that they might be.

There was a lot of waiting. Replies came in slowly or didn't come in at all. Ironically, the first was from Vixxxen and he had to steel himself before seeing what Gabby had to say about
it.

The
X
at the end was a very good sign and managed to put a smile on his face for the first time in five days. She was making fun of him and that was fine. Of course she
hadn't actually said whether she'd go but he could tell that she would. Whether he wanted her there he wasn't quite so sure about but he couldn't not ask her.

After that they'd come in in dribs and drabs, each greeted like a message from above.

Astronut said yes and so did NightLight. Hermit said it wasn't his or her thing. LilythePink couldn't make it. PencilPusher, Spook and Gopher said yes. Crow said maybe.
CardboardCowboy, JohnDivney, Tubz, Digger9, BigTomDog and Ectoplasm didn't bother to reply.

Of course, it might have been that one of them didn't reply because he was dead.

It was enough, he supposed. A quorum of sorts. He'd done it. He'd actually organized an outing of the Glasgow urbexers. He suddenly wasn't sure just why he'd done it. Or
that he really wanted to go.

He thought of Gabby and the poor bugger in the tunnel and momentarily found some courage. He thought of all that he didn't know and couldn't do and lost it again. This wasn't
him, this wasn't what he did. He rounded up bloody supermarket trolleys. That's who he was.

The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. But it was done now. He couldn't reach down the line and grab those messages back.

Narey's eyes were tired and her head was beginning to hurt. Sitting in front of the screen wasn't helping and neither was the amount of information she was having
to take in. This really was another world. How the hell was all this going on and she knew nothing about it?

While most of Glasgow slept, others were creeping in and out of its history, climbing its past and exploring its near future. There were so many buildings that she knew and had forgotten about.
She'd driven past so many of these places time and time again without thinking to step inside. She walked past so many of them without bothering to look up and be reminded that they were
there.

Some of the images posted on the site were remarkable. There were photographs of the old ballroom at Gartloch Asylum and she could hardly take her eyes off them. She'd been to the building
once before, with her dad when she was maybe seventeen, but they'd done no more than look in a window. It was incredible. The centre part of the tall ceiling was like the upturned hull of a
ship in mosaics of cornflower blue and white. The walls were stripped of paint or paper but were still magnificent with pillars and ornate cornicing. The floor was in pieces, all rubble and old
spars, but one look was enough to imagine ghosts dancing across it.

She had to stop herself from being engrossed in them. There were stunning shots from cranes, of old schools and churches, railway lines and subway stations, all places that she knew so well, or
so she'd thought. This
wasn't
another world. It was right here, right under her nose and everyone else's. All they'd ever had to do was look.

So who were they, these people who'd looked where she and the rest hadn't? It was a world of mystery, all user names and hidden faces. A lot of fun for them she was sure but not a
lot of use for her. They got their kicks in the shadows, playing out of sight and undercover. In investigative terms, it was a frigging nightmare.

Maybe she could petition the court, get the website to cough up email addresses behind the user names, force service providers to give up addresses. It was a logistical and legal minefield but
it could probably be done. It would take forever though and just what use it would turn out to be she wasn't sure.

Who was Astronut? Who was LilythePink or CardboardCowbo
y
? Who the hell was Digger9 who had climbed the university roof? Or Hermit who had photographed the old Transport Museum. Or . . .
she stopped. Who was Metinides?

She shook her head. It had been a long night and had already turned into day. Her mind was all over the place and she was seeing tricks when they weren't there. The site was obviously used
by lots of amateur photographers. It wasn't that surprising. A bit odd but not so surprising.

She checked names against posts, looking in vain for someone who had recently walked the Molendinar or explored the Odeon. No one had done the cinema but there was one report on the burn, all of
seven years earlier. That didn't hold out much promise but she'd try to check it out.

What she got from the website, more than anything, was that it all felt right. The kind of person that might walk the Molendinar would have been on OtherWorld. It was their home. And the Odeon
too. It just fitted. Where it left her or the investigation, she didn't know but she was on the right page. That much she was sure of.

Winter had sometimes wondered how many people on the site had ever wondered about his user name. Chosen after Enrique Metinides, the great Mexican tabloid photographer. The man
who'd chased fires, crashes, shootings and suicides on the streets of Mexico City for over fifty years. The man who inspired Winter to pick up a camera and photograph dead people for a
living.

Even if some knew or guessed then they wouldn't think too much of it. Most of the forum users took photographs; it was intrinsic to the whole thing. Sure, some just went where they went
and did nothing more than look but most took images away with them. Some for their own records, some to share the spoils with others, some just to show off. It didn't matter, each to their
own.

There were two messages lying unread in his inbox. One just an administrative memo about forum changes, the other from a name from the past. PencilPusher.
Haven't seen you online for a
while, mate. Hope you're
doing okay. Stay safe.
It was dated four years ago.

It wasn't someone he knew, not as such. They'd swapped messages online, talking about places they'd been or would like to go.
Stay safe.
That advice would have been
better sent to someone else.

Winter's fingers moved to the search function and he typed in
PencilPusher.
A flurry of results came up, the most recent being just ten days old. Nothing remarkable about the post,
just talk of a potential explore. It meant PencilPusher was still on the go though. Someone he could talk to. All he had to do was send him a message.

Damn it. He still wasn't sure this was something he wanted to do and knew it was something he shouldn't. This stuff was supposed to be locked away in a drawer marked
history,
only to be opened in memories and even then only when he was sufficiently drunk to turn maudlin.

You couldn't always pick your moments though and sometimes it came to him when he least expected or wanted it. Like when his mind drifted back to the last time. To the one that made him
give it up.

Six years earlier

He hadn't wanted to make the climb. Not that night anyway. It was too wet and too windy and it was madness to even consider it in conditions like that. Euan was adamant
that they should do it though. You didn't chicken out of climbing Everest because there was snow on the mountain, he'd said. If they waited for a dry night in Glasgow, they'd be
waiting a long time.

The argument went on for a while. Winter's position had been pretty simple. The Glasgow Tower at the Science Centre was a big beast and needed to be respected. Climbing it in the rain when
they didn't have to was plain stupid. Euan said they'd picked a night to do it and should stick to it. He'd already told his girlfriend Lisa that he and Winter were going for a
drink that night and he'd be out late. Winter had said that was fine - they should just go for the drinks instead. No, Euan insisted, they'd checked the tower out, knew where and when
to climb, it was all in place and they should just do it. Winter had said the risk wasn't worth it. Euan responded by saying the risk was what made it worth it. Then he accused Winter of
being scared. It was a simple tactic but always effective. Few men were capable of resisting it even though they knew that was why it had been said.

Winter hadn't been happy, far from it, but he'd finally given in.

As they stood at the foot of the tower looking up into the night sky, they stared into rain swirling in the black and the neon. The tower itself was a ghostly white, rising ominously for as far
as they could see.

‘You know this is stupid, right?'

‘It's going to make us legends, mate. Anyone can do it when it's dry. Come on, let's climb this bad boy. You know you want to.'

Did he want to? He really wasn't sure. Part of him did. The part that got him into this in the first place was desperate to do it, rain or not. On the other hand, he was pretty sure if
Euan wasn't standing there goading him on then he'd have turned round and gone home, waiting for another day. But he was, so they climbed.

The tower was one of those typically Scottish things that people could be proud of yet took the piss out of at the same time. It was a hundred and twenty-seven metres high and the tallest tower
in Scotland. It was actually the tallest tower in the world capable of turning through three hundred and sixty degrees. Capable was the key word as it hadn't worked for more than 80 per cent
of its life. Instead it just stood there, crying out for a pair of idiots like them to climb it in the rain in the middle of the night.

They had to scale the outside of the tower, within the wide cage of curved white metal beams that was attached to the main structure and rose with it into the night. The loops that he and
Hepburn passed through flamed almost orange in the artificial light and they at least gave Winter a grudging sense of security. They weren't climbing the loops though but the frame that
fastened them to the tower and provided a ready-made ladder all the way to the sky. It was the scenic route.

Euan went first, climbing arm over arm, occasionally glancing down to grin infuriatingly at Winter. See, he was saying, told you we should have done it. You can't tell me it doesn't
feel good. And it did.

The handholds were wet but manageable under gloved hands. They called for care and attention to be paid but maybe that was a good thing, concentrating the mind as it did. It was a long way
straight back down. Euan, being Euan, said it was fine because if he fell then he'd land on Winter.

He had to admit it felt great. Clambering higher and higher, the city spreading out before them like food on a plate, there to be devoured by his eyes and his camera. The adrenalin rush grew
with every rung that he scaled, surging through him, empowering him. Higher and higher, bolder, stronger. The rain continued to fall but Euan was right, it was only rain. The risk was why they went
urbexing at all, a huge part of the thrill of it.

They were almost at their target, the maintenance platform just a few metres below the observation deck, so maybe a hundred metres from the ground, and Winter felt like Glasgow was his.

The Squinty Bridge was winking at him, its purple arc reflected in the midnight black of the Clyde. The Science Centre and the BBC headquarters blazed in blue while the Finnieston Crane glowered
disapprovingly grey from the opposite bank. Beyond all that, the city celebrated his ascent in a glow of twinkling gold. What a picture.

That's when his foot slipped.

In an instant, the skyline swept past in a blur of neon and a rush of blood, metal handhold after handhold racing past the desperate grab of his hands. His right wrist smashed against a beam,
his left knee did the same, his face clattered into something hard and his heart and stomach lodged somewhere tight beneath his throat. He plummeted, hurtling through the metal frame towards the
ground, his hands flailing at the crossbars, his camera swinging wildly but strung to his shoulder.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to die. He fell. Maybe it was no more than thirty feet but it felt like a hundred and more to come. The world and his life flashing before his
eyes. He saw Hepburn staring down, eyes wide and mouth open.

Then he hit another of the loops: hard. He heard and felt a loud crack in his leg, pain exploding through him, and something in his chest or ribs went too. He grasped desperately with his right
hand and somehow it stuck. Pain surged through his shoulder and he felt something wrench where it shouldn't as the entire weight of his body was thrown onto a couple of muscles.

Weirdly, it was only then that he was actually frightened, scared that his grip would loosen. The force of the sudden halt caused his body to shudder and swing, nearly wrenching the hand away.
He threw up his other arm and held on for his life.