In Place of Death

by Craig Robertson

  ‘I think we should get going,’ Remy announced. ‘If anyone else appears then they can catch us up in the tunnel or the pub.’

  They all seemed happy with that and the group made their way to the tall metal fence topped with barbed wire that would have barred the way into the mouth of the Botanics tunnel but for the fact that it wasn’t padlocked. They passed through the gate, leaving it ajar behind them, and strode into the brick mouth of the tunnel.

  It was pitch black inside but they walked for a while without using torches, the way backlit by the last shards of daylight filtering through from the entrance. Remy looked back over his shoulder and saw the curve of the walls seemingly tinged with green, the reflection from the foliage outside. They had to pick their way carefully as the remains of the line were strewn with bricks and wood and various bits of junk. There were hollows too and the odd puddle of water.

  Remy got himself next to Ally Aitchison and drew him into conversation. ‘So if you’re PencilPusher, that mean you work in an office?’

  The man nodded. ‘Wouldn’t be my choice really but yes. Don’t judge me but I’m an accountant.’

  ‘Not judging. I work in Tesco. I can see why you’d need to get out for a bit of fun though. You done this before then? The Botanics, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe six years ago. It was probably the first explore I did. Me and a couple of mates did it on a Sunday afternoon after talking about it in the pub the night before. We nearly did it on the Saturday night but had the sense not to.’

  ‘And you got the bug?’

  ‘Yeah. My mates enjoyed it as well but that once was enough for them. I got the bug and have been doing it ever since. I go out maybe a couple of times a month. What about you?’

  This wasn’t about him. ‘Much the same. Few times a month. So do you just go on your own then if your mates aren’t into it? Or do you know other people in the city that go?’

  ‘No. Don’t know anyone else really. That’s why I was keen to come along today. Meet some other nutters that did the same thing. Swap some war stories.’

  Remy drifted away from Ally not long after that. Not much point in talking to him if he didn’t know anyone else. That meant he didn’t know Tunnel Man from the Molendinar. Instead, he sidled over towards the young guy, Gopher.

  ‘You just made it today then. Saw you running in.’

  ‘I’m always late for stuff,’ he grinned. ‘I couldn’t get away from work in Dennistoun till five. I didn’t want to miss this though so caught the bus over then jogged the rest of the way.’

  ‘You been doing this for long?’

  ‘Since I was sixteen. I’m nineteen now, so three years. I love going into these old places. It’s a sin when they demolish them or let them rot. At least we get to go in and see them though.’

  ‘You know any of the others?’ He nodded at the rest of the group.

  ‘Not really. I’ve seen the big guy before. Finlay. Seen him around. And I’ve swapped messages with a few of them on the forum. I only really know them from on there.’

  ‘Anyone else you’ve chatted to on OtherWorld who isn’t here today?’

  Gopher shrugged in thought. ‘One or two. There’s CardboardCowboy. He’s never off the forum. He’s posted quite a few explores and takes good photies.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Nope. Never met him.’

  ‘There’s also someone called Ectoplasm. You know him?’

  The boy laughed. ‘He’s a she. I’ve never met her, like. But I remember commenting on one of her photographs and she told me. I think I said “Great picture, man” or something like that. Said thanks but she wasn’t a man.’

  ‘What about JohnDivney?’ A shrug. ‘Don’t know that name at all.’ They were getting towards the other end of the tunnel now, another green semicircle of quickly fading light just a hundred yards or so away. He could see Gabby ahead chatting to Finlay Miller but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their voices just mixed with everyone else’s, a hum that reverberated round the tunnel walls.

  By the far wall, two of the others were talking. Tony whatever his name was and Ally Aitchison. Remy wanted to split them up and interrogate each in turn. Interrogate. Listen to him. Really, what the hell did he think he was doing?

  Winter caught the young guy Feeks looking over again and couldn’t help but notice how nervous he seemed. He was jumpy, chatting to everyone in turn and moving around the group. Maybe it was just his nature, maybe it was something else.

  They were an odd mix but that was the nature of it, he guessed. He’d never explored with anyone other than Euan Hepburn but knew enough about the type of person likely to do it. Youngish, mostly single, adventurous, fit, loners sometimes, sociable others.

  David Haddow had told him he was in sales. Kitchens and bathrooms. He was maybe mid-thirties with something slightly flash about him that probably came with his job. He seemed friendly enough though and happy to chat.

  ‘So what do you do? That camera for work or just a hobby?’

  ‘Bit of both. This one’s just for play but yes, I’m a photographer for my day job.’

  ‘Yeah? What sort of stuff?’

  Winter paused just long enough to sound casual. ‘Weddings mainly. Some portrait stuff.’

  ‘Don’t think I’d have the patience for that. Arranging whole families into position, getting them all to smile, trying to make the bride look good. Must be a load of kids to deal with too. Doesn’t sound like fun.’

  ‘It’s not that bad. And it pays well.’

  ‘You never think of doing press photography, newspapers and stuff?’

  ‘Not my kind of thing. I don’t need the hassle. Weddings, people are usually in a good mood. How’s the sales business?’

  Haddow shrugged. ‘People always want new kitchens but they can’t always afford them. My job is to persuade the wife to persuade the husband that they can afford it. I always go after the woman.’

  ‘Bit sexist, no?’

  ‘It’s the way of the world. I don’t sell, I don’t earn. You do what you have to do.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  The group emerged together onto the underground platform at the Botanics, the gardens themselves above their heads. For all that this was kid’s stuff compared to most of the explores in Glasgow, Remy couldn’t deny that it was still an eerie sight.

  Sure, the place was defaced, overgrown, decrepit and a bit dangerous but it also took you back a hundred and twenty years to when this place bustled with people making their way from the West End to the city centre.

  Now it was a ghost station. Bare and windswept, century-old brick covered in graffiti and a rustic lane where the track used to be. The lightwell above them ran almost the length of the platforms, letting moonlight slip through the gaps left by the great girders.

  A lot of the scrawling on the walls was just mindless stuff but there was some pretty good art as well. One section of brown brick was daubed with the white-painted inscription Meat For The Beast and beside it was a drawing of some poor screaming soul being devoured by a ghoul. The dripping maw of another fearsome creature was further along, only the feet of a victim sticking out of the mouth. On another dark section was written When The Wolves Come Out Of The Walls. Simple but effective if you want to scare the shit out of people.

  Of course it made him think of the Molendinar and the man left in there. How could it not? It also made him think of the beast that cut the man’s throat. Demons and victims.

  They milled around both platforms and the line in ones and twos. Gopher, Ally and Lorna were taking photographs, lining up arty shots using the lights by the look of it. Metinides was working his camera too, taking shots of graffiti and down the platforms into the tunnel but also photographing the group. No one else seemed to notice and it looked like that was the way that Metinides wanted it.

  The longer Remy watched, the more he was sure of it. The guy was snapping a piece of graffiti or the line but he was always doing it as one or
more of the group crossed his path. What the hell was he up to?

  Chapter 32

  Narey’s incident room had changed out of all recognition. Three new faces on the wall and a host of new faces, not all exactly friendly, in front of her. In not much more than twenty-four hours, she had gone from having one murder case and the probability of losing another to holding the hottest ticket in town. The danger of that was getting her fingers burned.

  She turned her back for a moment on the assorted detectives of MIT, and looked at the five faces on the wall. Euan Hepburn, looking straight at the camera in a press accreditation shot. Jennifer Cairns, smiling in a publicity picture taken for her website. Derek Wharton, young and stern in his driver’s licence photo. Then two police mug shots. Christopher Hart with a scar on his cheek and a smirk on his face. Davie McGlashan appearing soft and bashful with a thick grey beard.

  As she looked at all five of them together, she began to lose the courage of her convictions. Could they really all be linked and was the connection really urbexing? Some of the bastards sitting and waiting behind her would doubtless be ready to laugh it out of court. Shit, part of her was wishing she’d never made this happen. Too late now though.

  Addison was going to kick it off. It was officially under his command but they knew she was running the investigation. It was her half-baked theory and it would certainly all be hers if it went wrong.

  ‘Okay, listen up. DI Narey is going to bring everyone up to speed on where we are with Euan Hepburn and Jennifer Cairns. The enquiry has widened and we are looking at three other possible, I stress possible, deaths in connection with this investigation. You’ll all be going away from here with leads to follow so pay attention.’

  She rose, feeling unusually nervous, and began going through the five victims one by one. Some of it was old ground for a few of them but that didn’t matter. It would be much more of a mistake to leave something out than to repeat it. She began with Hepburn and worked her way through them.

  She saw a few faces wrinkle in scepticism and made a mental note not to forget who they were. DS Aaron Petrie, sore at her getting promoted rather than him. DI Bill Storey who probably thought the case should have been given over to him. DS Lewis McTeer who had just never liked her and had probably never liked any woman. Fuck them.

  Not everyone had been so antagonistic though. She’d already made phone calls on the other three deaths and the lead officers had been keen to help. Actually doing so proved more difficult though.

  DS Dugald Lindsay had talked to her about the body found on the ruined floor of the seminary but couldn’t provide much in the way of answers.

  ‘I just don’t know. I always felt there could be more to it but I couldn’t find anything to prove it one way or the other. Maybe I was always bugged by the fact that if someone did want to stage an accident then a place like the seminary, which was remote even before it fell into ruin, would be perfect. It just seemed too neat, you know? No chance of witnesses or CCTV.

  ‘Wharton did have gambling debts and I looked into it but didn’t get anywhere. It wasn’t a lot of money, just a few grand. And plenty of people owe that without getting killed for it.

  ‘His family said he did visit abandoned places as a hobby but they didn’t really understand it. I wish I could tell you more but I can’t.’

  DI Martin Telfer at Organized Crime had filled her in on what they had on Christopher Hart’s death but had to confess it was nothing concrete.

  ‘Crispy Hart worked for the Mullen brothers, did a bit of everything, basically whatever they told him to do. Thief, bagman, hard man, dealer. Whatever. It’s possible he stepped out of line and Mullen punished him but we don’t think so.’

  She thought it best not to mention that she’d just heard the same thing from the horse’s mouth.

  ‘Mullen was having troubles with Jack Hulston around that time. The usual territory crap, turf wars. Maybe Hart was done as part of that but we’ve no intel to back it up. A guy like that would have had a hundred enemies and a handful of mourners. Often with these gangland killings, we know who did it and we just can’t stick it on them. Usually someone’s shooting his mouth off and that gets back to us but there was none of that this time. Not a word. I can’t see how it fits with these other cases of yours though.’

  Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it does.

  The death of Davie McGlashan hadn’t even merited a detective on the case. She spoke to Constable Elaine Paton, one of the two who’d been called when the man’s body had been found. She was surprised to get the call from MIT, thinking the matter was closed.

  ‘We did a sweep of the saw works, ma’am. There were bundles of clothing and little things like a toothbrush and empty food tins that certainly made it look like he’d been there for some time. Certainly more than one night. No sign there had been more than one person there though. Just Mr McGlashan as far as we could see. Forensics came in, took photographs, did their stuff then moved the body out. It was all pretty routine.’

  ‘Nothing strange about it at all that you can remember?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Like I say, it was . . . Well maybe there was one thing. Maybe nothing.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Well it seemed likely that the man had died in his sleep. The way he was positioned, still under his blanket. But there were two bottles of Buckfast near the body. Neither of them had been opened and that struck me as a bit odd. I don’t know many drinkers that wouldn’t have had at least some before they’d gone to sleep. Most would have had at least one of the bottles.’

  ‘Were there empties? Maybe he’d drunk something else.’

  ‘No, ma’am. None. He hadn’t had a drink.’

  That little nugget didn’t seem to impress many of the detectives in the incident room. One or two took notes but most seemed to shrug it off. Seeing it, she gave them the lecture about every little thing being important even though she knew it would just turn a few further against her.

  As she spoke, she saw Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Crosby, the lead on Major Crime, slip into the back of the room. Great. Just what she needed. Crosby, known obviously enough as Bing, stood with his arms folded across his chest and listened intently. A couple of heads turned to see him standing there but she pulled them back.

  ‘There is a community out there in Glasgow, right now, continuing to explore old buildings, enter abandoned premises and disused tunnels. They are doing this out of sight and by the nature of it, out of our protection. We have no reason to think that whoever is responsible for these deaths will kill again but equally, we have no reason to think they have stopped.

  ‘We’re on the clock here. We need to work all sides of this and get a result as quickly as possible. Becca Maxwell has information sheets for everyone on urbexing, who does what and where. Read them.’

  She saw a couple of them, Petrie and McTeer, whispering to each other and both had grins on their faces. Arseholes, the pair of them. She’d sort them but doing it in front of Bing Crosby wasn’t the way.

  Minutes later, the briefing was over and the detectives were dispersing with varying degrees of enthusiasm. She allowed herself to catch McTeer’s eye, just enough to let him know she was on to him.

  She turned back to see Crosby deep in conversation with Addison. He was shaking his head a lot and occasionally gesticulating with his right arm. For his part, Addison was bending his head forward and speaking quietly so no one else could hear. It looked for all the world like a pissed-off Detective Chief Superintendent and a defensive DCI. She didn’t like it.

  Crosby left with a final shake of his head and, once he was out of the room, Addison approached her.

  ‘Let me guess, he wants to offer me a promotion.’

  ‘Not quite. It was all I could do to stop him reprimanding you. He’s gone to cool off and you’d better hope he does.’

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know but had to ask. ‘What’s he so mad about?’

  Addison loomed over her
. ‘Not just him. I told you not to go near Bobby Mullen. What the hell did you think you were doing, Rachel?’

  ‘Ah. That.’

  ‘Yes, that. He got a call from Ken Bryson to say you’d been seen going into Mullen’s pub. It’s a toss-up whether Bryson or Crosby will have you sacked first. You were talking about a ticking clock on this case, Rachel. Well it’s ticking for you too. You’d better get a result.’

  Chapter 33

  They’d gone straight to Oran Mor for a drink after the walk to the Botanics. It had been Remy’s idea. The place used to be a church before it was turned into a pub so what better for them than an old building that had survived more or less intact after it hadn’t been wanted any more. Okay, so it had been tarted up inside but it wasn’t quite gentrified. They’d also be able to get in a corner and talk without too much chance of being overheard.

  It was all dark wood and panelling inside, pillars and pews and low ceilings. It was shadowy, intimate even. Like another tunnel but this time with alcohol. Remy would be going easy though; no boozing for him but he’d make sure everyone else had plenty. He got the first round in, encouraged a ‘proper’ drink for those that said no and got himself a lager shandy that looked like a real pint.

  When he came back with the tray of drinks, he saw Gabby and Miller were sitting next to each other, heads tight together in conversation. He didn’t like that much but maybe later he could get something out of her of what the arse was saying. He needed to get whatever he could from all these people because he wasn’t sure he’d be seeing them again.

  He handed out the glasses and parked himself next to Lorna the NightLight who had ordered a glass of white wine. She’d actually asked for a small glass but he’d got her a large. She was so skinny that he couldn’t imagine she’d be able to hold much alcohol at all. That made him feel bad, but he needed people to talk.

  ‘That was fun,’ she said. ‘Thanks for organizing it. I’d only ever been there with an ex-boyfriend before. It was good to do it as a group. It felt like we were occupying the place.’