In Place of Death

by Craig Robertson

  Her warrant card was in her hand the moment she’d locked the car door and she hurried to the tape and was glad to see uniforms on it that she recognized. They waved her through and she climbed into protective clothing as quickly as she could, scrambling to put on gloves, hat and overshoes.

  Spotlights had already been rigged up and she stepped into their harsh glare, instantly taking in the stark desolation of the place. The lights threw macabre graffiti shadows onto the walls and made giants from broken stonework and twisted metal. It was like the factory was lying in wait for her.

  Or maybe it had been waiting for Remy Feeks.

  She saw a small army of forensics slipping by, upstairs and down, flitting across boulders and picking their way through debris. They were moving quickly but without a moment of rush. It was a measured haste that she’d seen a thousand times.

  There were still two of them hunched, all but motionless, in the clearing left by the parting of the swarm of bodies in the central courtyard. She was suddenly struck by the bizarre thought of them all standing there like Wise Men and shepherds, the spotlight above the body leading her to it like a guiding star.

  One of the shepherds looked over his shoulder, saw her approaching and spun on his heels towards her. Denny Kelbie looked like a man whose numbers had come up on the lottery when he’d forgotten to buy the ticket. He was furious as he stepped up into her face.

  ‘This is a piece of shit. It’s no way to run an investigation and you’re way out of your depth.’

  ‘Anything else, sir?’

  The DCI clearly had plenty more he wanted to say but she was sure that the phone call he’d have received from Addison or perhaps even from higher up had left him in no doubt that he had no say in this any more. He spat on the ground at her feet and stormed off without another word. That suited her perfectly.

  She walked over to stand above the two forensics working on the body and saw the kid stretched out beneath them. Fair hair and freckles, his face young and bloodless, and a railing puncturing his chest. It was as if someone had murdered the Milky Bar Kid.

  The SOCOs became aware of her presence and looked up as one. She knew them both by sight, Keiran Hardie and Matt McGowan.

  ‘Give me a minute, guys, please.’

  They both got to their feet without dissent and stepped back.

  ‘I take it photographs have been done?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ McGowan confirmed. ‘Tony Winter has been and gone. Probably left about twenty minutes ago. We told him you were on your way but he didn’t want to hang around. Said he was done.’

  Something about that made her uneasy but she didn’t have the time or space in her head to debate it. The main thing was the job had been done. Now she had to do hers.

  She could see something of the boy’s dad in his damaged features. This was Archie Feeks’ son, no doubt about it. A face without a lifetime of smoking or working in a shipyard, a face that wouldn’t grow any older.

  Words came back to her. A promise. She’d been trained not to make promises she couldn’t keep but she’d still made this one. She’d told Archie that she’d look after his boy. Fine job she’d made of it.

  Any doubts she might have had that it was Remy who’d found the body in the Molendinar had vanished. Just where it fitted into the whole mess wasn’t so clear though.

  She glanced around and saw that Jim Ferry, Kelbie’s DS, hadn’t scarpered with his boss. She outranked him and she’d make use of the fact.

  ‘DS Ferry. What do we have?’

  Ferry huffed theatrically but didn’t have much choice. He grudgingly filled her in. ‘Someone phoned 999 and said there was a body in here. That was all they gave. No name, no explanation as to how they knew. Uniforms were here in minutes and we followed on. We’ve searched the place, best we could in a maze like this, and there’s no one else here.’

  ‘The person that phoned, male or female?’

  ‘Male.’

  She turned to McGowan and Hardie. ‘How long’s he been dead?’

  ‘We can’t . . .’

  ‘Best guess.’

  ‘Not much more than an hour.’

  ‘And how does that compare to the time of the 999 call?’

  Ferry shrugged but looked at his watch. ‘The call was made fifty minutes ago. So maybe ten, fifteen minutes between death and the guy calling it in.’

  Whoever had killed Feeks had phoned the police. Why? Why?

  She made up her mind to look round the rest of the factory, not expecting to see anything that had been missed but just because she had to do something. Also, it gave her time to think and a little more time before she had to make a visit that she was dreading.

  Narey breathed deeply as she stood in front of the door of the flat in Adelaide Street. It really didn’t get any easier but this was going to be more difficult than most. She became aware that she was feeling the same depths of anxiety she did before she stepped into her dad’s care home. Not knowing what reception she was going to get but doubting it would be good. She paused again, made a silent prayer then knocked.

  After a few moments, the door swung back but, rather than Archie Feeks, she was greeted by a rounded, middle-aged woman wearing a raincoat over a black turtleneck jumper. Narey held her warrant card up.

  The woman responded by lifting the card on a lanyard round her neck. She kept her voice low. ‘Jill Henderson. Family Liaison. I only got here five minutes ago. As requested I haven’t said anything but he’s very worried. He’s asked me three times if anything has happened to his son.’

  She cursed herself for getting there after the FLO. It wasn’t going to have helped the old man’s state of mind to have been kept waiting and worrying.

  ‘What have you told him?’

  ‘Only that you were on your way and you were in a better position to talk to him. That you had all the relevant information.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. But I wish that were true.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘All the relevant information. There’s far too much that I don’t know. He’s in the living room?’

  Henderson gave the briefest of nods.

  Narey went through the door and saw the man sitting in his armchair, his body small and tight with the fear of anticipation. He looked up to see her standing there and she saw him shrink even further.

  ‘Mr Feeks, I’m really sorry to—’

  ‘No!’ He was on his feet, his eyes wide. ‘No, no, no. Don’t. Not in my house. No. You can’t.’

  ‘Mr Feeks, your son . . .’

  His hands flew to his ears, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth twisted in pain. He must have been sitting imagining the worst since the liaison officer turned up and now it was ticking in front of him, ready to explode. She recognized the signs of denial: he was like her dad when he was corrected on things he didn’t want to believe.

  Archie spun on his heels, unable to look at them. Henderson moved warily across the room towards him, her arms seemingly changing their minds as to whether to reach out to him. She stood close but let him breathe.

  Narey had no choice but to finish what she’d started.

  ‘Mr Feeks, I know this is not what you want to hear but I need to tell you it. A body was found tonight in the former Gray Dunn building in Kinning Park.’

  ‘No!’

  His yelps were painful and she wanted to soothe them but, for the moment at least, could only make them worse.

  ‘We believe that the body is your son, Remy.’

  The man doubled at the waist, his arms hugged round himself. His breathing was convulsive, drinking from a well that was suddenly empty. All colour drained from him and Narey feared a heart attack as well as the loss of breath.

  He was as pale as the horse that death rode, ageing before their eyes. His hands trembled and silent tears streamed down his cheeks as he coughed. He sucked in air hard, expelling it again just as quickly as his body went into overdrive. Narey was well used to holding her emotions in check but this wa
s hard. She just wanted to hug him.

  It was a couple of minutes, every second of it an age of agony for all of them, before Archie had settled enough to speak. He looked at the liaison officer beside him.

  ‘Is it definitely him?’

  Narey answered. ‘Yes, Mr Feeks. It is.’

  He got shakily to his feet, his face contorted in anger.

  ‘I didn’t ask you.’ He jabbed a finger towards Narey.‘You said you’d look out for my son. You said you’d look after him. You told me not to worry. Well how’s that worked out for me, eh? Not so fucking good, I’d say. So don’t mind me if I don’t want to listen to what you’ve got to say.’

  ‘Mr Feeks—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, hen. I don’t want to hear anything from you. Not a word.’

  Jill Henderson stepped between them, the FLO taking the man gently by the arm. He shrugged her hand off but still let her guide him back into the chair. Henderson kneeled to talk to him but the man’s eyes were beyond her, glaring at Narey.

  ‘Is there anyone you’d like me to call, Mr Feeks?’ Henderson was asking. ‘Someone who can come and sit with you. A relative or a friend, maybe?’

  ‘No. I just want to see my son.’

  ‘I understand that and DI Narey will make sure that—’

  ‘No! I don’t want her to do anything. I don’t want her near me or my laddie. Do you understand that? I just want to see my son and I want her the fuck away from me. Get her out of my house. Now.’

  She was helpless and scorned, knowing she’d let him down and could do nothing to put it right. All she could do was have someone else care for him. Someone to do what she couldn’t.

  The FLO turned and looked at Narey, both of them knowing Henderson didn’t have the authority to tell her to leave as the man wanted. There was a higher authority though and Narey knew it. She wouldn’t stay.

  She wanted to tell the man that she was sorry for his loss, that she’d do everything in her power to bring him some justice and that she burned with guilt for letting it happen. She couldn’t do any of that though, not to any good purpose.

  She nodded at them both and let herself out, a little piece of her dying inside as she crossed the threshold.

  Chapter 49

  Sunday morning

  She managed four hours in bed and slept for maybe three of those. She couldn’t shake the tortured image of Archie Feeks any more than she could rid her thoughts of his son lying murdered amid the rubble.

  Half-awake or half-asleep, she hadn’t been able to tell the difference. Her mind worked it over and over in both states and when she was finally sure that she was awake and getting up, she was exhausted before the day had begun.

  It was still dark when she rolled into the station, flipping the lights on in the incident room and watching them flicker slowly into life. The place would be buzzing before long, full of bodies and shouts, people demanding to know what had happened and where the hell it left them. She didn’t know what she was going to tell them.

  She had to be in first, to get her thoughts into some sort of proper order. If she didn’t know the answers then at least she had to be aware of the questions. And she’d ask more of the team, get them to ask more of themselves. Some of them would be on board more than others and some of them would wallow in it, relishing seeing her fail. Fuck them. This all had to stop and she’d be the one to do it.

  She fixed a poster-sized portrait of Remy Feeks to the wall, standing back to see him alongside Euan Hepburn, Jennifer Cairns, David McGlashan, Christopher Hart and Derek Wharton. Below each was a photograph of the site where they were found, urbexing sites all. She stared at them for an age, weighing up what she knew and what she didn’t. The latter was way too much for her liking.

  Her guts told her to change the set-up. She rearranged the displays, pushing Hepburn, Cairns and Feeks to one side, and the remainder to the other. It wasn’t what she knew, it was what she felt. She’d just finished and was looking at the faces afresh when she heard footsteps behind her.

  A constable had walked in, mug of tea in hand, and was waiting to speak to her.

  ‘DI Narey? You’d asked for CCTV footage to be pulled overnight. We’ve got some images for you.’

  She felt a rush that she knew was the first sign of good news in a long time. ‘Great. Let’s go see them.’

  The constable, Tom Brightman, stood beside her as another, Lyndsay McEwan, operated the video. The image that came up was typically grainy and not helped by the falling light at the time it was filmed.

  ‘We have shots of three people, we think all men, all going separately towards the Gray Dunn building on Stanley Street,’ Brightman explained. ‘None of the images are particularly good and I’d say at least two of them were making an effort to keep their heads down and faces out of sight.’

  ‘Show me.’

  One by one, the operator showed the stop-start images. The digital time display in the top corner stated that there were eighteen and then twelve minutes between the men appearing on the corner of Stanley Street. The first was about six foot tall and wore a light blue fleece with his head kept low. After him came Remy Feeks, his fair hair obvious and the only one of the three not shy of being seen. Maybe he ought to have been. Finally, came a taller man wearing a hoodie and what might have been a dark balaclava.

  The camera had picked each of them up a couple of times and had done the same for two of them, Feeks and the hoodie-wearer, on Milnpark Street.

  ‘I can hopefully pick them up elsewhere and trace them back a bit but it’s a real needle in a haystack job,’ McEwan told her. ‘There’s not a lot of cameras down there so it will be a case of guessing where they’d come from. I’ll do my best but it will take time.’

  Narey said nothing. Her mind was working overtime, joining dots and hoping against hope.

  ‘This is what we’ve got of them on the way out,’ McEwan continued. ‘Just man number three. He’s in a hurry and goes onto Admiral Street and that’s where we lose him. He’s probably headed for Paisley Road West but as yet we haven’t picked him up again. If he changed his jacket or ditched the balaclava—’

  ‘What about man number one?’ She hardly dared to ask.

  Brightman shrugged. ‘If he came back out onto Stanley then we haven’t been able to see him.’

  ‘Show me him again.’

  It was the way he walked, hunched and hurried. It was the fleece he was wearing. It was the height and the build.

  More than that. It was Euan Hepburn. It was the forum user with the login name of Metinides. It was curtailed conversations and a feeling of distance. It was a lack of questions about a case that would normally have produced far too many. It was the feeling in her guts that had been niggling away at her for over a week.

  She excused herself and hurried back to the incident room, to the phones where the anonymous call had been received about the witness in the Molendinar. The tip-off about Remy Feeks. She checked the log then called up the recording.

  The voice was slightly muffled and deliberately low. The man was putting it on, trying to disguise himself. It might have fooled most people but not her. Not for a moment. She felt her stomach sink and lurch. The room had shifted on its axis and her throwing up was a distinct possibility.

  ‘DI Narey?’

  She put the phone down and stepped away from it before she turned. Constable Brightman was by the door.

  ‘Sorry, DI Narey, but do you want me to get these images on Stanley Street enlarged and sharpened up so they can be made available for posters or media use?’

  She looked back at him. The question should have been expected but it managed to take her by surprise.

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘All three men?’

  She paused just for a heartbeat. ‘Yes. All three.’

  Chapter 50

  Winter woke on Sunday morning with the biggest hangover he’d ever had without touching a drop of alcohol. Sleep had come late if it had come at
all and he’d tossed and turned the whole night, plagued by memory and guilt as much as by the pain in his leg and his back.

  He’d dragged himself into the shower and suffered the sting of the jets of water against his bruised and broken skin. However painful it was, he deserved it.

  Somehow, when the buzzer went at the front door, he knew instantly who it would be. It didn’t occur to him that it could be anyone other than Rachel.

  A couple of minutes later, he stood at his open door and watched her come up the stairs with the wind at her back. Her speed didn’t mean that much in itself; for her that kind of urgency could mean many things. He sought clues in her eyes but couldn’t quite read her. She wasn’t happy but he could have told that without looking. The question was whether she was unhappy with him. And how much.

  She paused briefly as she got to the door, a hand rising unexpectedly and caressing the side of his face as she looked into his eyes. Her touch electrified him as if she’d plugged his veins into a power socket. He was still trying to work out just what it signified when she walked past him into the flat. He trailed in her wake, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his leg and doing his best not to limp. She slipped off her coat and dropped it onto a chair before dropping herself onto the sofa.

  She let her eyes slide shut and air escape wearily from her lips like someone who’d been told they’d only have to run one more marathon that day. When she opened them again, her eyes were full of questions. She kept them to herself for a bit, weighing him up as if deciding whether to kiss him or kill him.

  When she finally spoke, she sounded tired but there was also a low flame under her voice that scared him. ‘What the hell are we in the middle of here, Tony?’

  Truth or lies? Maybe it was too late for either. ‘Nothing good.’

  She laughed softly and with no humour. ‘Oh I’d figured that much out. I’ve had a lovely night and a fun morning. Do you want to hear about it?’

  He was a mouse and she was the cat, flicking him from one clawed paw to the other.

  ‘Sure.’