In Place of Death (22 page)

But if Winter knew Euan owned more than one and would have used a different camera depending on the shoot and his mood. So where was it? Had the cops taken it? Cordiner Street was a decent
address but Euan was the cautious type, borderline paranoid even. Not with his own safety, far from it, but with his cameras, definitely. He'd have made sure they were secure, just in case.
After all, anyone could break in.

There were no drawers in the desk but then that would have been too easy. Look. See what he would have seen. Think like him. Jesus, this was difficult. He could feel Euan all around him and it
wasn't helping him think straight.

He went through the cupboard that formed the bottom of an inset near the window with more hope than expectation. As expected, there were no cameras to be seen. He looked behind and below the
worn leather sofa and found nothing. He moved the clothes on the floor and the magazines, he went back to the sofa and lifted the cushions, looked behind the curtains. Nothing.

There were no cameras under the only bed in the only bedroom, nor in the wardrobe or chest of drawers, nothing in the bathroom. The walk-in cupboard in the hall held a couple of bags and a
suitcase plus more magazines. No cameras. Euan clearly hadn't lived here for long and hadn't had the time to accumulate much in the way of belongings. What there was had been easy to
look through.

He went back to the living room, stung by the very definite sense that he'd missed something. He sat at the desk again and looked, channelling his friend as best he could. The magazines,
the DVDs, the lack of much actual
stuff.
It was all so him.

The desk and the rest of the furniture looked old, maybe second-hand. The wooden mantelpiece over the fire looked original, maybe stripped back and re-varnished by someone who had the sense to
see what it was. The fire had Victorian insets and a grate but there was no way it would be working: city by-laws prevented it. It was for show only.

A bell rang somewhere in his past, memories of a conversation in the darkness of a near-ruin on the edge of the Gorbals. He and Euan had crept inside the old Linen Bank building in the wee small
hours. It was a dense maze of rubble and dust, cobwebbed spookiness and creaking floorboards. They explored every nook and cranny they could and Winter remembered Hepburn thrusting his hand up each
room's chimney. He'd asked what the hell his pal was doing and was told that if
he'd
been working in the building then that's where he'd have hidden cash or
bonds or whatever before they finally closed it down. Winter had laughed at him but now he wasn't so sure.

He jumped off his chair and made for the fireplace at the far wall. Crouching in front of it, he placed one hand on the mantle and reached up the chimney with the other. Nothing. He groped right
and left and then . . . there. There. His hand brushed against something solid that wasn't brick. He leaned further in so he could twist his arm round, grabbed and pulled it out.

The camera was safe inside a bubble-wrap bag. Typical over-the-top caution from Euan. If only he'd taken half as much care of himself.

It was a Nikon D750 with a 24-120 millimetre telephoto zoom lens. Nearly two and a half thousand pounds worth of kit stuffed up a chimney. Only Euan.

With adrenalin coursing through him, he took the camera back to the desk, sat down, punched the on button and began flicking through the photographs on the memory card. The most recent was dated
14 September, less than a week before the date Euan was thought to have died.

It was a series of shots from Gartnavel Royal Hospital on Great Western Road, the old asylum that was known as the black building. Winter was sure he would have recognized the place inside
anyway but an external shot, an opening scene-setter, gave that game away. Inside there were blistered walls in faded shades of pink and yellow, laden with graffiti. Steel piping lay across the
floor, and an old fire hose, uncoiled. In the next, a table and chairs sat isolated in an empty room surrounded only by fallen plaster. In another, an old bath and sink stood lonely in a room that
had otherwise been gutted. There was shot after shot of decay and neglect.

In one of them, a pale blue room with wooden-panelled walls and a dirty tiled floor, the light from above had reflected the photographer on the glass doors on the far wall. Except he
wasn't alone. Another figure stood by his side, a blurred silhouette standing with his or her arms on their hips. The camera flash had obliterated both heads but Winter had no doubt the
photographer was Euan. Who the hell was he with?

Winter enlarged the reflected areas of the image as best he could but there was nothing more to be gained. The other person, surely a man from what he could see, wore a dark hooded sweatshirt
and jeans but even a guess at build or height was distorted by the glass and the glare.

He scrolled quickly back through the images, over weeks, desperate to see what Euan had been working on and where he had been in the time leading up to his murder. He saw no other shadows, no
other strangers. In a few seconds, he was back seven weeks to a series of dark and stark images. The Rosewood Hotel. He'd never doubted Rachel had been right about that but there was all the
proof that was needed. Depressing, disturbing proof.

Men barely awake, barely alive, with sunken eyes, sharp cheekbones and discoloured skin. Rooms littered with bottles drained of booze. Close-ups of vomit and discarded needles. Bedsheets stained
with God knows what. Men curled sleeping in corridors and on stairs. Men fighting each other. Feral faces that could have come from a Dickens novel or the siege of Paris.

The photographs were irresistible. Like a car crash or a public execution. Ghastly images of a descent into a hellish existence, men beyond care and way beyond caring for themselves. He and Euan
had spent countless hours together in abandoned buildings but these were abandoned people, out of sight and out of mind just like the decaying places they'd taken such an interest in. No one
gave a damn.

Except maybe Euan. He'd had put himself on the line to take these.

Winter forced himself to move on, flipping through the camera's images, on past the shame of the Rosewood and back towards Gartnavel and the most recent pictures. There were a couple of
external photographs of the City Mission and some pretty uninteresting shots of what looked like the inside of a Victorian primary school ready for demolition. Nothing that grabbed his
attention.

Then, with the date showing just a week before the Gartnavel photos, came a series that stopped him like a brick wall. They were internal shots of a building that was all but empty. A series of
steeply banked rooms and a warren of corridors. The flash showed walls that were blue and flaking, a sweeping arc of stairs, a labyrinth of little box rooms and the remains of a section of ornate
decoration.

It was the Odeon. Winter's heart jumped. It was the fucking Odeon.

‘Jesus, Euan. What the hell have you done?'

A return to the Rosewood wouldn't have been Narey's first choice given the couple of days she'd had but choice wasn't something that was in plentiful
supply. Neither Doig nor Cochrane were working the front desk and the tall, skinny guy who was there didn't put up much of a fight when she showed him her warrant card and said she was going
upstairs. She was sure that he got on the phone to the owners as soon as her back was turned but she couldn't care less about that.

She made her way up the stairs, dodging drunks and discarded bottles, stepping over vomit and doing her best not to breathe. A couple of residents took an interest but she pushed past them with
a stare that made them think twice.

The TV room was in enough darkness for you not to be able to tell if it was noon or Norway but the set was glowing in the corner, showing just the sort of mindless daytime crap that these men
didn't need. In its reflection, she saw him sitting in a chair, his head slumped to one side and propped up on one arm.

The man looked a year older than he had the last time she'd seen him. He was emerging from the wrong side of a massive hangover and he wore the pain of it all over his face. His eyes were
red and his skin blotchy and puffy. Drink had been taken and plenty of it.

He didn't notice her until she was standing right over him. He raised his head sluggishly and took a moment to remember who she was. When he did, he also remembered his manners and tried
to get out of his chair. She gently pressed him back into place with a hand on his shoulder.

‘How are you, Walter?'

He managed a feeble smile. ‘Not so great, to be honest with you, hen. All my ain fault but I've definitely felt better. My head's in more bits than a Lego set. How's
yourself?'

‘I'm fine. Do you maybe fancy some fresh air?'

He looked around the room and took her meaning. Some things were better not overheard.

‘Fresh air might kill me or cure me but it's a risk I take every day. Help an old man up, will you?'

She got him to his feet and together they shuffled out of the day room and slowly downstairs until they shrugged off the stink of the Rosewood and found themselves in the overcast gloom of a
Glasgow afternoon. They walked and talked, his arm in hers, in the mutual pretence of him giving her support. It was the same unspoken deal she had with her dad.

‘Thanks for phoning me, Walter. It helped a lot.' ‘Nae bother, hen. Had he been at the Mission right enough?'

‘He had, yes. They told him not to go anywhere near the Rosewood but he went anyway. And it turns out his name wasn't Brian. It was Euan.'

‘Euan?
I don't understand. Why would he lie to me?' ‘He wasn't lying to
you,
Walter. He had his reasons, good reasons. But it wasn't about lying
to you.' ‘Do you know what happened to the laddie?' ‘Not yet. But I've got some other things I want to ask you that might help. I don't want you to grass on
anyone and I don't want you to get into any bother with the others in the Rosewood. If you don't want to then it's fine.'

He considered it for a moment then breathed hard. ‘If it's not grassing, we'll call it helping and I'm fine with that. What's the worst that can happen to me
anyway? I'm well past halfway to dying, so they can bugger off. Pardon my French, lass. What do you need to know?'

‘Do you know a man called David McGlashan?'
‘Davie
McGlashan? Aye, I know him. Used to stay in the Rosewood till some bam beat him up for the sake of a packet of fags.
He left the next morning and never came back. That'd be about . . . hell, I don't know, all the days run into one after a while.' ‘It would be about two months ago.'
Walter scratched at his head. ‘Aye, I reckon that would be about right. What about him?'

‘He died, Walter. Was he a friend of yours?'

Tears came to the old man's eyes. ‘Jeez, hen. You're kidding. Him as well? Me and big Davie got on just fine. I liked the guy. What the hell happened to him?'

‘We're not certain yet. It looks like it might have been a heart attack. I'm sorry, Walter.'

The man aged in front of her eyes. Another friend lost and not many left. His pain hurt her too and she couldn't help but think of her dad.

‘What can you tell me about Davie? Anything might help.'

He looked confused. ‘You said it was a heart attack. So what do you need to know?'

‘It's probably nothing but I'm just checking everything out. It might help me find out what happened to Euan. To Brian.'

Walter shrugged and looked lost. ‘Davie was all right. A daft boy with a drink in him but they're all the same. He wasn't a fighter or a thief. Just a poor soul. Never much to
bother anybody.'

‘So no one would have had reason to do him any harm?'

‘You think somebody did?'

‘I'm just making sure, Walter.'

‘Nobody that I know of, hen.'

‘Davie had been sleeping in an abandoned building, an old saw works in Anderston. Why'd you think he'd be in there?'

‘Was it warm and watertight? Nobody to bother him? As good a place as any then and better than most. Better than the one he left, that's for sure. It's no rocket science, Miss
Narey. If Davie had found somewhere free, safe and dry then he'd be as happy as a pig in shit. Pardon my French.'

She took it in and nodded. It did make sense.

‘There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, Walter. I hope you don't mind but I did some digging after I spoke to you last time.'

‘Oh?' He didn't look best pleased.

‘You said you'd had to leave the place you lived in. I got the impression you were forced to leave. Is that right?'

All she got was a non-committal shrug of the shoulders.

‘Well I made a call to social security and your last address was in Charleston Street in the East End. Except it isn't there any more. There's new housing in its place, mostly
rentals. Rent probably about four times what you were paying.'

‘And the rest. Why are you interested though? It's nothing to do with the laddie dying and what's done is done. I'm in the Rosewood now and I'm no blaming anybody
but maself.'

‘No, it's nothing to do with the case I'm working but I get angry when people are treated badly. What happened? Did they make you move out?'

Walter squirmed uncomfortably and lifted his shoulders. ‘What could I have done, hen? No one was going to listen to me. I took some money to give up my lease and I left the
place.'

‘Were you threatened, Walter?'

He looked away, not keen on letting her catch his eye.

‘Were you?' she repeated.

‘Ach, listen, it's not as simple as that. It's not like I could prove anything. Not like they came straight out and said it. It was more how they said it.'

‘What did they say?'

‘Without putting it in so many words, if I stayed I might have found myself pretty unlucky. Like having my house burn down while I was still inside it. I didn't fancy that much. Get
paid off or get burned alive? It was a no-brainer.'