‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t keep trying to get involved in this. Do not lie to me. Do not go behind my back. Do not break the law. If you do, we’re done.’
‘I won’t.’
The words sounded hollow in his own head so he could only guess how they sounded to her.
She didn’t believe him. She was sure he wanted to mean it but it didn’t sound like he could keep that promise, to her or himself. Got to do this: that’s what he’d said. Promises were easy after that but they didn’t come with the same feeling. She felt sick. Deep in her stomach it felt like something had ended.
Chapter 52
Narey dragged herself back into the station where the team had gathered to be brought up to speed with the events of the night before. Exhausted and nursing emotional bruises, she ached for the comfort of a hot bath or her bed but she had time for neither. Everything was on the line.
Addison was waiting for her outside the door to the incident room and took her by the arm into a corner. ‘Okay, what the fuck is happening?’ ‘That’s what I’m about to tell everyone.’ ‘You can tell them what you like but tell me what is going on. What are we looking at here? I don’t want questions from Crosby I don’t know the answers to. Are we looking at six murders? Because if we are then you’re taking a back seat, whether you like it or not.’ She really didn’t need this. ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s three and I’m getting a lot closer to getting a handle on it.’
‘You sure about that? Because all I see are bodies piling up. Give me what you have. I’m on your side, remember.’
‘It kicked off with the murder of Jennifer Cairns in the Odeon and the other two, Hepburn and Feeks, were done to cover it up. The killer is running scared and was worried they were a threat to him.’
Addison digested the information. ‘And the other three that you brought to me? Wharton, McGlashan and Hart?’
‘I don’t think they’re connected. Certainly not Wharton and Hart. Whatever it’s about, it’s happening now. Hepburn had been at the Odeon and photographed Cairns’ killer. Feeks found the body in the Molendinar.’
Addison’s eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know Hepburn was there?’
‘I’ve got his photographs.’
‘What? How? Where the hell did you get them?’
She hesitated. ‘An informant. Someone who can be trusted. The photos are genuine.’
He wasn’t happy with that. It was nowhere near enough and they both knew it. He was trying to work out what she wasn’t saying and whether he dared let her run with it. She hoped he couldn’t read her mind but feared how well he knew her.
‘You’re taking chances, Rachel, and it’s not like you. Are you sure about what you’re doing? Don’t leave yourself somewhere I can’t help you.’
‘I need to clear this case.’
His voice hardened into a fierce whisper. ‘If you’re gambling your career on this because the pressure’s got to you then you’re not the person I think you are. You’re better than that, Rachel, so act like it. Use your head and do the right thing. What do I need to know?’
He was right, about all of it. In the instant of realizing that, she felt a relief she hadn’t known all morning.
‘The photographs came from Tony.’
Addison said nothing but just looked at her, waiting for the rest.
‘He had been best friends with Hepburn years ago and he . . .’ She paused. ‘He felt the need to find out what happened. He found Hepburn’s camera. He also went out with a group of urbexers to the old railway line at the Botanics and got photographs of them.’
Addison rubbed at his eyes and swore quietly under his breath. ‘Remind me to kill him if you haven’t already done it. Where is the camera now?’
‘Back where he found it in Hepburn’s flat. He just took copies from the memory card.’
‘Did he wear gloves?’
She nodded.
‘Okay, so your informant told you where the camera might be. Go get it and find the photographs for yourself. Anything Tony took at the Botanics is fine - he did it as a member of the public. And as a twat.’
‘What about the briefing?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Get back here in an hour and I’ll postpone it till then. They can moan all they want. Just make sure you get this right.’
She was back in forty-five minutes, the camera found and bagged, the relevant photographs made ready to show to the troops on the PowerPoint. The break, and Addison’s words, had given her back some control. The pressure was still there but she was in slightly better shape to handle it. She had to do her job.
DCS Crosby was there, standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed and a sombre expression. She avoided his gaze and tried to forget he was there at all.
She took the squad through everything they had on Remy Feeks and where she thought he fitted into the timeline. She laid out her theory and watched them take it in. One murder, two more as cover-up. It was her best guess, her gut feeling and the logical conclusion.
Not everyone was impressed and she saw the same sceptical faces wrinkle in doubt: Petrie, Storey and McTeer chief among them. There was chatter and shoulders being shrugged, whispers and shared looks.
It was Storey, not surprisingly, who stood and challenged her. He made a point of looking troubled but she could see he was loving it.
‘What about these other deaths?’ He pointed over to the three faces to the right. ‘Last time we were all in here you were telling us how they were all part of this and now we’ve to forget about them. I’m a bit confused. How much are you just guessing here?’
‘DI Storey!’ Heads turned to see it was Crosby who was shouting at him. ‘If you were listening you’d know the answer to your question. DI Narey is giving you the best analysis she can of a changing situation. If you’re taking advantage of that to score some points then maybe this team isn’t the place for you. Is that what you’re doing?’
Storey shrank. ‘No, sir. Understood, sir.’
‘Good. I trust the rest of you are in the same position. Eyes front, shut up and listen.’
She looked at Crosby and gave him a small, grateful nod of the head and carried on. Even as she did so, she knew his intervention was a mixed blessing. All well and good as long as she was right and some more rope to hang by if she wasn’t.
She took them through Cairns, Hepburn and Feeks, point by point. She went through everything they knew about the locations, the motives and the photographs. Almost everything.
Since the meeting had broken up, she’d gone back to basics herself. She went over it all in her head, brainstorming and questioning every decision she’d made, making a list of names and scribbling notes against each.
She had already been through Winter’s muddled set of notes twice. She’d read each name and nickname from the Botanics and the forum, looked at the photographs and checked out the website again. She’d made a new list, scoring names out, adding them back in again. She’d searched everything available to try to ascertain just who these people were.
There was too much she didn’t know. Did they have one account on this bloody website or two? How could she be sure of their movements at any given time when they could say they were crawling around in some old school or exploring a tunnel somewhere under the city?
She was sure she had a handle on many of the forum user names. Euan Hepburn was CardboardCowboy, Remy Feeks had been Magellan93 and Tony – bloody Tony – was Metinides. Others – PencilPusher, NightLight, Gopher, Spook, Astronut, Vixxxen and Crow – she was able to tick off thanks to the Botanics trip, assuming anyone was telling the truth about who they were. She didn’t know who JohnDivney was but desperately wanted to. He, or possibly she, had interacted with Hepburn just before he was murdered. Narey’s nose was bothered each time she looked at the name.
There was also a strong possibility that the person she was looking for wasn’t among those names at all. She knew why Hepburn and Feeks had been in a reco
gnized urbexing site when they were killed but Narey just couldn’t picture Jennifer Cairns making a habit of breaking nails or getting covered in cobwebs. Much more likely that someone had taken her there. What about her husband? Could Douglas Cairns have been one of these people? There were far too many questions and not enough answers.
She’d secreted herself away in a small, underused office in the depths of the station seeking some peace in which to think. She had only one small lamp switched on over the desk in the hope that no one would realize she was there.
She’d uploaded the photographs from the Botanics to her iPad and sighed at the prospect of going over them a third time. If there had been some magic button, some glamorous short cut, then she’d have pressed it or taken it long before then.
Tony had taken a bunch of scene-setting photos, graffiti on walls, rubbish and foliage where the old track had been, huge girders overhead, moonlight and the odd spot of rain making their way through the ventilation shafts from the park above. Then, increasingly, people appeared in the shots. They were there in ones and twos, occasionally in larger numbers, but always seemingly unaware that they were being photographed.
There weren’t many of these, which was frustrating but understandable. Too much of it and Tony would have become obvious. They would have had to wonder about this guy in their midst who was intent on recording them all.
Remy Feeks was seen staring at the group, his eyes keen but his body language tight and nervy. His friend Gabby was there, a little blonde bundle of energy, flitting from one person to another. The tall, athletic-looking guy who Tony had said was Finlay Miller, Astronut, was frequently by Gabby’s side. Some of them were photographed while they were using their own cameras. He watching them watching him.
He hadn’t managed to get all the group into clear shots but there was something of each of them even if they were partially obscured by the others or seen from behind. She worked her way through them, ticking them off, mentally trying to stitch together the various angles and half-images that there were.
Wait.
She had to look again. There. Half-hidden behind one of the others. And there. Just turning away from the camera. And there. Just half a face but enough. Was it? If it was, then a few things would make sense, pieces of the puzzle would slot into place. Don’t do wishful thinking, she told herself, wait and see.
She enlarged the photographs as much as she could but lost the focus and had to step away from them again. There, that was the best she was going to get. And it was good enough.
Without taking her eyes off the screen, she picked up the phone.
Chapter 53
Sunday evening
Winter sat staring at his laptop for an age, his fingers almost arthritic, tight with anger. The last time he’d sat looking at this screen, this very site, it had ended with Remy Feeks dying - no, not dying, being murdered - while he was just yards away. He knew he was boiling up a seething, simmering rage but he couldn’t put a stop to it even if he’d wanted to.
There was a thing called survivor guilt. He’d once lived next door to a guy named Colin Hurst who was a passenger in a car crash. Colin and a colleague carshared to get to work and this day it was the other man’s turn. The guy’s Mazda was mown down by a lorry that had lost control. Colin suffered broken ribs and whiplash. The driver was crushed to death by his side. Inches more and Colin would have joined him. Not in any way his fault but he didn’t drive for over two years, which was probably just as well as he hit the bottle hard. He became anxious, depressed and guilty. He didn’t like himself much and seemingly set out to make sure other people didn’t like him either. It was no way to live your life.
The driver hadn’t deserved what happened to him but neither had Colin Hurst. Neither had Remy Feeks nor Euan Hepburn. It wasn’t about whether you deserved it. It was about how you dealt with it.
The home page of OtherWorld stared back, daring him, telling him to just do it, to go for it.
There was a series of photographs at the top of the page which switched every thirty seconds or so, each one calling out to him, challenging him. They reached into that central core that made all explores irresistible to those with the bug. Each one screamed climb me, enter me, photograph me, save me for posterity.
The longer he looked at the page, the more common sense crumbled. He knew what he was proposing to do was a very bad idea but he also knew that he was going to give in to it. The voice of reason, the conscience sitting on his shoulder, was there on the orders of Rachel. It chirped away at him, telling him to keep safe, to leave it to the cops, to hide nothing from her, to do nothing that would threaten what they had together. However, the other voice came from deep inside him. It told him to remember Euan and Remy.
There was no contest. Bad idea it definitely was but he was going to do it anyway.
He played with the wording, changing it and deleting it, making sure he got it just right. He had to get the response he wanted. The message had to spook him, challenge him, flush him out once and for all.
I have Hepburn’s photographs. They show you and your friend going into the Odeon on the day she died. I think the police would be interested in those. Don’t you?
It wasn’t quite right though. It sounded too obviously like blackmail and not enough like he actually knew what he was talking about. Try again.
I know who you are. I know what you did.
Too vague. Too much I know what you did last summer. The guy had to know that he was serious. Maybe the photograph would be worth a thousand words.
He attached it. The shot of the man clambering down from the Odeon. Euan’s snapshot that cost him his life. Winter couldn’t know if the man was aware that Euan had photographed him at the site but he must have feared that it was a possibility. Winter needed to tap into that fear.
I have this. And I have more. Much more.
That should get his attention but he also needed to make the arrangements. That, as much as anything, was what was scaring him.
Meet me at the Glasgow Tower. Not at the bottom. At the observation deck. Tomorrow at midnight.
He gave it one last look-over and shook his head at the craziness of it. Before he could change his mind, he clicked post and it was done.
Chapter 54
Monday evening
The next day seemed to have lasted for ever. Twenty-four little hours, the song said. It had seemed so much longer than that.
Winter had watched the weather turn, seeing clouds roll in and gather over the city as if they were lying in wait. Big and dark, full of rain above the grey, just killing time until it was the right moment to unleash everything they had.
He’d seen the light come and go, seen day turn to night and night to something even darker. The moon was hidden by a wall of cloud and the sky over the Clyde was a murky, murderous black, like a raven’s wing or a killer’s soul.
No matter how much quicker he’d wanted the clock to tick, the hours had dragged as if weighed down by everything that had happened and everything still to come. At last, at long and weary last, it was time for him to be there.
It was an hour earlier than he’d said in his message. He had said midnight but wanted to be there by eleven, content to wait and desperate to get there first. He stood in the shadow of the tower, hidden in a city full of shadow, and wondered just what the hell he was doing.
It had come to this though and there was no going back. Maybe it had always been leading to this from the day he and Euan Hepburn had climbed this bloody tower and he’d nearly killed himself in the process. Maybe it had been inevitable from the moment Euan had been found in the Molendinar. Whatever, it was finishing tonight. That much he was sure of.
His heart was beating fast and he could feel the nerves bubbling, coming slowly to the boil. He’d done some stupid things in his time but this was right up there with the best of them. Right up there with the last time he climbed this.
As if on cue, the rain started. He looked up and saw it fa
lling in big, heavy drops from the black. It came thick and fast, like the clouds had been unzipped and the whole lot couldn’t get to ground quick enough.
He pulled a black woollen balaclava from his pocket and dragged it over his head and face, put on gloves and finally zipped his waterproof jacket to the neck. There was nothing to be gained from waiting as it wasn’t going to stop raining any time soon. He began to climb.
He moved slowly and deliberately, feeling the pain in his leg from the injury he’d acquired fleeing the factory, and trying to ignore the hammering in his chest and the memories that were pulling at his mind. He made sure every hand on every rung was secure before he moved a foot from the rung below. At this rate, it was going to take most of the hour that he’d given himself just to get up there but the alternative was a quick and bumpy return to earth.
The rain was constant, lashing down as if defending the tower. In no time, his clothes were heavy and sodden, his jacket slick and soaked through. Juicy raindrops sat on each rung, waiting to be squashed by his hands or sent slipping and spiralling. He clung on, skin through wool to water to metal.
There was no sound of other feet on the metal rungs and he couldn’t hear another person’s laboured breath from the exertion of the climb, but he felt the presence. Someone else was climbing as he climbed, matching him step for step and hiding it by keeping in time with him. He slowed and stopped, tried to fox them, but all he could hear were his own feet and the howl of the wind. He knew though the other man was there. He shut the thought out and climbed.
With every step up, his head got heavier and lighter. More memories and less sense. He tried to look straight ahead, see only the rungs, focus only on the rungs. Don’t look down, don’t think about anything else. Don’t think about falling. Don’t think about the last time. Don’t think about when you fell.
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