McKenzie bent forward, screwing his eyes up. Without his reading glasses he really had to strain his eyes to make out the detail.
“The last time I looked at these I was wearing glasses, but I remember I was looking at the size of all the pipes and voids in the ground. We were looking for any form of tunnel or underground access into the school.” McKenzie replied. “Right now, I can practically see nothing. My reading glasses are at home. What should I be seeing?”
“We’ve all been over this first plan a thousand times, looking for a tunnel, something, anything…but there was nothing of significance. At least, that’s what we thought. There is this pipe or duct… ” she pointed to the map on the wall, “that goes right across the campus under the ground, but according to the scale here, and the figures here, it would only be 8 inches wide at its biggest point. Look… ” Wishart pointed to several numbers on the diagram, and then to a section at the bottom which indicated scale.
“Look, see this figure here… it has two single slashes top right above the number… it’s a bit blurred, but we all took that to mean the old imperial sign for inches. Obviously 8 inches is nothing. A rat can’t even practically squeeze through down there… ” Wishart paused, took a breath, and then continued at pace.
“But… here, look at the new diagram we got. You can see here from the revision marking it’s one of the original versions. Version 1.3. The other one we were looking at was Version 4.5. Anyway, here is the same duct going right across the centre of the campus and disappearing across to the back, but coming forward here, and then appearing to run under the lift shaft in Stair B into the main building… . Look… ” DI Wishart pointed to the course of the duct as it ran across the campus.
“Now… Look here. Look at the scale. On this original it’s not blurred at all. It’s very sharp. You can read it clearly. And there are not two little marks above the number. Just one!”
“Bloody hell!” Anderson exclaimed, probably the oldest amongst them, and quite used to the old Imperial nomenclature. “It’s not 8 inches. It’s 8 FEET! That’s almost two and half metres wide!”
McKenzie bent forward and stared at the numbers on the new chart. Then turning to the copy they had been working from until now, he ran his forefinger across the chart where the number had two little marks appearing above to its right, which seemed to indicate inches not feet.
Still incredulous, he leaned even closer and inspected the two tiny markings. Sure enough, the mark closest to the number was definitely a printed mark, but the second, slightly to its side, was not so pronounced, not so clear. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, it could possibly now be seen as a spurious mark on the paper, or a shadow or blurring of the first mark somehow caused during the photocopying process.
He whistled aloud then laughed.
“I can’t believe it. All this time we’ve been misreading the bloody map. There’s a bloody great tunnel running right under the school from one side to the other, right into the main building and we didn’t see it!”
DI Wishart stood up and stretched.
“Exactly. Well, there is according to the plan. Perhaps it’s not there, but if it is… it explains everything.” She said.
McKenzie turned to face the rest of his team, his back now to the charts which had confused and bamboozled them all up until now.
“DI McLeish, get Gary Bruce here now. Elaine, call the armed squad and tell them to get over here within the next twenty minutes.”
Dropping the three copies of “Remember Me?” onto to the table top, McKenzie stood back from the table, stretched and exclaimed loudly.
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Suit up. We’re going on a bear hunt!”
Chapter 32
Monday
Operation BlueBuilding
Incident Room
Portacabin
15.00
Gary Bruce stared at the chart and shook his head.
Everyone else had left the room apart from him, McKenzie and Brown.
“I didn’t know about this. I’ve been over these charts a thousand times, and just like you and the other detectives, I’ve always read that mark as an indication of inches, and not feet. This is incredible.”
“Mr Bruce, I can see why you would make this mistake. But, and this is a big but, as the prime contractor for this building’s demolition, I can’t help but wonder if you should have made more effort to understand what was under the ground as well as above it?”
“What are you getting at? Are you blaming me for you not being able to read the charts properly?”
“You also complained to me just a few moments ago that you were being questioned as if you were a suspect? I have to say, unfortunately, that that is actually the case. Whereas my gut feel has been that you are not responsible for these killings, there is slowly a body of circumstantial evidence building around you to the contrary that I am no longer able to ignore. Consider this: you have full access to the building. You may have known that there might be a tunnel stretching across the campus - we will soon determine if there is a tunnel or not as soon as the armed squad arrive - and you have been camping out for the past few days, maybe even before - we don’t know - at the school. You were also a pupil at the school so you may have known the deceased and had a reason to dislike them or hold a grudge… ”
“AND KILL THEM? Are you MAD?” Bruce interrupted forcibly. “This is crazy. I’m just as much as victim here as any of those you’ve found murdered in the school. If I don’t get to pull this building down in the next few days, I’m going to be bankrupt! I’ll lose everything! My life will be over… And I’ll tell you what, if that DOES happen, I’ll find the fucking bastard who’s responsible for this and I will kill him. I will… mark my words!”
McKenzie said nothing. Neither did Brown.
Gary Bruce looked at them, from one to the other, searching their eyes desperately.
“But that doesn’t mean I killed the teachers in the building… they’ve got nothing to do with me.”
Brown replied. “How do you know they are teachers?”
Gary Bruce laughed.
“You’re kidding, right?” He started to pace the room. “I think DCI McKenzie mentioned it, or someone. It’s not been a secret from me. Everyone’s been talking about it openly as I’ve walked or guided your team around the building. Don’t start trying to pin this on me.”
“Okay, okay, let’s all calm down.” McKenzie interjected. “I understand your worries and your concerns, and your anger… but I would advise that when we do find the murderer or murderers that you take no independent action. In the meantime, it would help the investigation and yourself if you do put yourself in our position when we ask you questions, and you try to answer them as clearly and honestly as possible. If you assist us, if and when we require your assistance, as helpfully as possible, then I promise to help move this investigation forward as fast as possible and work with my superiors and other authorities in obtaining permission to complete the demolition as soon as we can. The likelihood of that happening will all depend upon if we now find a tunnel and what it leads us to.”
There was a knock at the door. The now familiar face of Galbraith, the officer in charge of the armed response team, stuck his head around the door.
“Me again. Ready for business, again… ”
-------------------------
Monday
The bottom of Stair B
15.30
Four armed officers, fully equiped to support advancing into a possibly dark and confined space, entered through the glass doors at the bottom of Stair B.
Immediately behind them McKenzie, Brown and the rest of his team followed in single file.
A few moments before, they had stood outside in the foyer entrance to the old school and received a briefing from McKenzie.
“According to the map, the duct or tunnel comes into the building below or just to the side of the lift shafts in Stair B. We don’t have any schematics or diagrams of h
ow… I think that’s all detailed in another plan which we don’t have. So, we’re going into the building and checking the floors and walls around the lift shaft and underneath the stairs to see if we can find any indication of an entrance or exit from the tunnel or duct or whatever it is, leading out into the building itself. We’ve suspected from day one that there has to be a way to get into the building that we didn’t know about, so this has to be it! Now, if there is a duct, it’s a possibility that the air might be stale, contaminated or even poisonous. We’ve agreed that if anything is found, Sergeant Galbraith will be first into the tunnel and will assess the air quality. If it’s poor, only he and his team will be allowed in, aided by their breathing equipment. We’ll take their lead. For now, no talking, and silence at all times. Don’t bang anything, and be careful where you put your feet. We don’t know who’s at the other end of the tunnel. Any questions?”
There were none.
Everyone just wanted to get on with it.
Once inside, using brooms, plastic bags, thick rubber gloves, dustpans and even shovels, they cleared away the debris and trash that covered the entrance area in front of the lifts, often just tossing it outside into what used to be the playground of the school.
Gary Bruce stood outside with another member of his team, watching on and champing at the bit.
He’d been forbidden to go inside and follow them in spite of his vehement protestations.
In the old days, pupils would enter Stair B through a double set of glass doors which led directly to two lifts standing side-by-side, both of which serviced the first four floors of the building. Pupils who didn’t wish to ride the lifts could walk around the lift shaft to its right, and then around another corner to the back of the lift shaft where a flight of metal stairs led upwards, twisted around on itself and then led upwards to the next four floors, one after another.
Between the metal staircase and the edge of the concrete encased lift shafts was a small gap. Large enough for a person to slip between.
On the other side of the gap there was effectively a hidden space on the right occupying the underneath of the first flight of stairs. On the left was the wall of the lift shafts.
Rubbish was piled up high on either side, both against the back of the lift shaft and the other wall on the right of the staircase.
The space stunk to high heaven. Needles and dried human excrement were everywhere. The place was a midden.
Everyone held their noses, except for the armed response team, all of whom now wore respirators.
On the left-hand wall at the back of the lift shafts, there was a large piece of plasterboard, covered with tiles, and a selection of rubbish, which on closer inspection, seemed to have been stuck to it by hand.
To inspect the walls for any opening, Galbraith reached out to pull the top edge of it away from the wall and let it fall towards the floor, but the moment he did so, he realised that something was holding it to the wall, and resisting his pull.
Cautiously he leant towards it, and inspected it from the top and its sides.
The top of the board seemed to be attached to the wall. Switching on his torch and directing its light behind the large piece of plasterboard, he saw what looked like a rectangular line or edge marked in the wall.
Possibly a panel in the wall to which the plasterboard was attached.
To disguise its existence.
Which it did brilliantly.
“Okay, this could be it.” Galbraith announced, and waved at a colleague to take the other edge of the plasterboard panel. “On the count of three, we pull the top of the panel away from the wall.”
There was no real resistance.
With a little more strength, the plasterboard and a panel moved horizontally away from the wall.
Immediately behind, there was a large opening, wide enough for a bended man to climb through.
As McKenzie and Brown huddled closer around the entrance, Galbraith flashed his torch into the opening.
A small flight of metal stairs led away from the entrance downwards to a concrete floor beneath.
“There’s your tunnel!” shouted Galbraith. “I think we’ve just solved how your murderer squirrelled the victims into the school without being seen.”
McKenzie took one look and turned to Anderson.
“Just to be sure, can you go and escort Gary Bruce and all his coworkers into the portacabin. Take one of the armed officers with you. Keep them there and don’t let them leave.”
“Are they under arrest?”
“No. But if it is one of them, once they find out we’ve found a tunnel, I don’t want any of them running away.”
The Sergeant nodded, peered one last time into the tunnel, then turned and left.
A moment later, McKenzie could hear a stream of protest coming from an even more irate Gary Bruce.
Ignoring it, McKenzie pointed to the tunnel and gave the signal to proceed.
Galbraith bent down and stepped through the entrance.
Once inside he lifted his hand and indicated for the others to move away from the entrance. As they stepped back, wondering what Galbraith was up to, Galbraith lifted a rope that was dangling from the wall and started to pull it towards him inside the tunnel. As soon as he did, the panel and the plasterboard which now stood outside of the tunnel entrance started to slide back towards the tunnel mouth. A moment later it had covered the entrance, once again making it almost invisible and hiding it away from anyone on the outside. Located as it was at the back of the lift shaft and in the shadow of the stair, no one would ever accidently see it or discover it. The mess would easily deter anyone from going anywhere near it, especially the needles which had lay dotted around the floor. Which, McKenzie now realised, was deliberate. The mess was part of the disguise.
As they waited, the panel and plasterboard slid back out towards them, away from the wall.
Galbraith peered out, lifted his respirator and spoke quietly.
“It’s very easy to control from the inside. Easy to open, and easy to close once inside. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide this tunnel. There’s a lot of dust in here on the floor, but I can clearly see footprints around the bottom of the ladder. People have definitely been going back and forward through here in the recent past.”
Galbraith indicated for the rest of his team to follow him into the shaft and waved at McKenzie to hang back.
“I’ll send for you as soon as we’ve cleared the tunnel and its safe. I’ve already deployed two of my men in the street around the back of the school, just in case someone pops up into a garden somewhere as we approach the end of the tunnel, wherever it goes. There has to be an entrance at the other end, somewhere.”
McKenzie turned back to his team and issued some more instructions.
“Dean and McLeish. Get outside as fast as possible and drive round to the back of the school. Drive around and look to see if there’s any obvious exit points on the other side.”
McKenzie closed his eyes again and recalled his mental picture of the map which they’d left upstairs in the Incident Room. Before they’d come down, they’d taken another look, in particular looking where the duct led underneath the school, and where it went.
The problem they then realised, was that the scale of the campus area shown on the map was larger than the campus area which now existed.
At first it hadn’t computed. It didn’t make sense.
Then McLeish had spotted an obvious answer.
The original plans they were now looking at were for a first phase of building for a new school, the then new Portobello High School. At the edge of the grounds on the map there were several buildings marked which clearly didn’t exist now and according to Gary Bruce had not been demolished by him.
Clearly, since the first round of building of the school in the sixties, changes had been made.
These included selling some of the ground of the school at the very back, and the building of a new hall which Gary pointed out as exis
ting now, but which didn’t appear on the plans, and which contained a swimming pool.
The ground which had been sold, was now occupied by several rows of houses.
More problematically, on the original plan, the school campus extended all the way out to the park – the local Figgate Park.
It wasn’t obvious to the team in the Incident Room where the end of the tunnel or duct would be in relation to the new houses which had been built and the new edge of the Figgate Park.
For a few moments they had discussed whether to get new plans and figure out where the tunnel ended before looking for it.
“And if it doesn’t exist? We waste hours, maybe a day, getting plans of the new houses, and taking measurements and figuring out what’s what. No, we haven’t got time for that!” McKenzie answered them, remembering the voice on the answering machine. “The threat to life is real. Every second we stand here discussing this, could delay us preventing another death.”
Decision made, he’d authorised the search for the tunnel to go ahead, and everyone had assembled below outside the entrance to Stair B.
In hindsight now, McKenzie wondered if he’d been a little rash. If someone had heard them opening the entrance to the tunnel up, or if it had been alarmed in some way, anyone at the other end may have scarpered and escaped before Dean or the armed response team figured out where the other entrance was.
Worried that he might have just made his first mistake of the investigation, McKenzie tried to focus on the positive: now they’d found the tunnel, there was no way they’d let anyone else be murdered in the school!
Chapter 33
Monday
Underneath the Portobello High School
16.00
Galbraith edged along the tunnel. His night-sight vision headset lit up the darkness in front of him, revealing a large metal pipe suspended from the roof and supported up off the floor, effectively running down the right-hand side of the duct. Every ten metres, another pipe joined it from the left, also suspended from the ceiling, but easy to duck under. Occasionally a pipe a few centimetres off the ground forced them to step carefully over it.
Remember Me 2 Page 8
