In Place of Death

by Craig Robertson

  Now she was thanking him, actually thanking him, for his service. He wondered if she was allowed to deviate from her script at all, if she even knew what she was saying. Gratitude and regret were thrown into the same sentence as if they were compatible when it seemed to him that they weren’t. If they were so grateful for what he’d done and so sorry to let him go then don’t do it.

  He had to sign a compromise agreement as part of the settlement, basically saying that he wouldn’t tell anyone where the bodies were buried. Neither the literal ones nor the metaphorical. In return he got a year’s salary and a pat on the head before they slammed the door in his face.

  ‘I imagine you will want time to consider and have this agreement seen by a solicitor but I must tell you that you have four days to decide whether to accept this offer or else it will be withdrawn and replaced by another, likely lower, offer of redundancy.’

  Winter laughed, his eyes on Baxter rather than the woman from Inhuman Resources. ‘Four days? I don’t think I’ll need that long. Have you got a pen?’

  Baxter’s jowl wobbled as he seemed to struggle in choosing between delight and surprise. The HR woman’s eyes widened and her mouth bobbed open but she composed herself enough to push a silver pen across the desk. Winter picked it up, gave a cursory glance at the page in front of him and signed his name at the bottom. He shoved the paper back across the table and lobbed the pen towards Baxter who fumbled but caught it at the second attempt.

  Winter smiled at Baxter for long enough to make him uncomfortable, nodded at both of them and turned on his heels and walked out of Forensic Services for the last time.

  Chapter 61

  ‘Baxter is a self-righteous prick. A pompous, arrogant—’

  Narey was stalking around her flat, propelled by the anger of hearing his news from a few hours earlier. Winter caught her right wrist as she passed and pulled her back down onto the sofa beside him.

  ‘He’s all those things, Rachel. No doubt about it. But this wasn’t down to him. I dug my own grave. The most he could have done was give me a nudge in the direction of it. Baxter probably thinks he engineered this but he didn’t. I did. I knew my job was hanging by a thread but I still went in search of a pair of scissors. In the end I did them a favour by saving them from making the redundancy compulsory.’

  ‘I still want to slap that smug bearded face of his.’

  ‘There’s a queue of people waiting to do that but thinking like that is how sad tossers like Baxter win. He is never happy unless someone else is as miserable as he is. This is a positive, Rachel. If we want to make it one.’

  She looked at him, bemused. ‘When did you become the glass half-full guy?’

  He smiled sheepishly. ‘When I realized how destructive it is to dwell on the things you can’t change. How guilt and resentment just eat you up from the inside. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Am I getting a new man? I was just getting used to liking the old one. Anyway, how do you plan on making this a positive? It doesn’t look all that sunny from where I’m standing.’

  ‘Well . . .’ He took a deep breath and she could see that he was suddenly nervous. It scared her a bit. ‘It struck me that seeing as how I don’t work for or with the police any more, then the line’s gone. The one that stood between us and caused us problems. There’s no reason I can see that we can’t become a couple. A proper couple. No secrets from the world. You and me together and everyone knowing about it. What do you say?’

  It felt good to be asked. She smiled widely.

  ‘Yes. I say yes. Now that you’re—’

  ‘I haven’t finished.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t finished explaining how we can make this a positive. Do me a favour and don’t stop me in case I lose my nerve. I want us to take my pay-off from the job and put a down payment on a house with it. I’ve . . . shush . . . I’ve been looking and there’s a conversion in Bellhaven Terrace, back of Great Western Road. I think we should buy it.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. It’s a ground-floor and garden apartment. Built around 1870 in solid brick. Private rear garden. Four bedrooms.’

  Her mouth opened wide. ‘What do we need with four bedrooms?’

  ‘Well I thought your dad could come to us a couple of days a week. It’s big enough to hold all of us and we can—’

  She moved forward and her mouth was on his before he could say another word. It was a while before she let him go. When she did it was to tell him to stop talking.

  ‘It’s been a perfect pitch. Don’t ruin it by saying anything else.’

  ‘That’s a yes then?’

  ‘It’s a yes. You do know it’s not going to be easy having my dad live with us even for a couple of days and that it will only get more difficult?’

  ‘I know. But we’ll manage.’

  ‘We’d need some help but there’s a carer at the home. Jess. We could maybe ask her to come out parttime. Tony, I love you. But, hang on a second, how can we afford a four-bedroom in Bellhaven Terrace when only one of us is working?’

  He smiled. ‘Ah. That’s my other bit of news. I’ve got a job.’

  ‘You’ve got a what?’

  ‘Photo journalist with the Scottish Standard. I start in two weeks.’

  ‘But that’s fantastic. I mean, how? What do you know about journalism? And how long have you known about this?’

  ‘Which question do you want me to answer first? I knew about it two days ago. Just in time to take the redundancy package. The timing couldn’t have been better. The Standard liked what I did with Euan’s piece on the Rosewood and they know I can take photographs. I’m a money-saver and seeing as newspapers are run by accountants just like everything else these days, then it’s a no-brainer for them. It’s just a six-month contract but it’s down to me to make a go of it. They also like the fact that I’ve got police contacts . . .’

  Her eyes widened. ‘What? You mean me? No chance. Have you not got us into enough trouble? Have we not been through this? You can take your new notebook and pen and shove it.’

  He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close. ‘Can I quote you on that?’

  She smiled. ‘No comment.’

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  The nature of exploring abandoned buildings often means doing so in a limited window of opportunity before they are either demolished or refurbished. The same complication applies to writing about them. For that reason, and for my own convenience, I have changed the dates that some of the buildings written about lay empty. For example, the Odeon Cinema was demolished in 2013 rather than 2015 and the Central Hotel was temporarily closed in 2006 rather than 2009.

  Given that I was writing about exploration, it is perhaps appropriate that I managed to get hopelessly lost halfway through the creation of this book. I owe a huge vote of thanks to those that rescued me, most notably my agent Mark ‘Stan’ Stanton, my editor at Simon & Schuster, Jo Dickinson, and my patient and brilliant partner Alexandra Sokoloff.

  My greatest thanks go to those that went before: the urban explorers whose reports and photographs opened up a hidden world that cried out to be written about. In particular, I’d like to express my gratitude for the time and knowledge of the only urbexer known to have walked the Molendinar Tunnel, Ben Cooper.