‘Not far to Duke Street now,’ Kenny sounded genuinely disappointed. He’d expected more excitement on his guided tour.
‘
WE’VE MISSED SOMETHING
,’ Rhona told McNab.
‘There’s nothing there. You said so yourself.’
Cathy’s body had been badly scratched and bruised. They’d had no explanation as to why, but seeing the encrustation on the tunnels she thought that might be a possibility. Rhona stood in the culvert, under the lee of the wall fronting the goods yard. In the neighbouring car park folk were dashing from the building to their cars, trying to avoid the pelting rain.
The heavy shower had begun as they emerged from the culvert. The plan had been to keep going. According to Kenny, the next section under the railway yard was built with blue engineering brick and was even more remarkable. Rhona didn’t like to point out this wasn’t a sightseeing tour.
Kenny hadn’t refused her request to backtrack, but he kept glancing at the thick grey clouds, as the rain pinged off his yellow macintosh.
‘This is on for a while,’ McNab informed them gloomily.
‘How long before the water level rises?’ Rhona asked Kenny.
‘Half an hour.’
‘We can’t go back in. Not unless this goes off.’ McNab was adamant.
A deep roll of thunder sounded almost directly above them. Rhona counted to seven before lightning cracked the sky. The effect was spectacular.
‘I think we should,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘Why?’ asked McNab.
‘Because Cathy had post-mortem injuries which might be consistent with hitting the encrustation in the CSO.’
Rhona glanced across the car park to the large hole in the ground and the distant brick arches of the old railway building. Judging by the depth of excavation, the railway cellars had gone deep down, perhaps to the level of the burn. She asked Kenny if that was the case.
He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no idea.’
McNab, looking pissed off and miserable, had taken refuge beside her in the culvert. Finally he decided he’d humoured Rhona long enough.
‘Okay, we’re out of here, before the water tops my waders.’
They made their way back to the cathedral car park through the teeming rain. The crowds of visitors had taken refuge in the cathedral or in their cars. Those caught by the downpour in the Necropolis had had to make do with sheltering under trees, or in the lee of a gravestone. The cemetery’s steep downward paths had already been transformed into streams. The monsoon rains had come to Glasgow.
When they reached the vehicles, Kenny pronounced himself happy to continue as soon as the weather
improved. Disappointment bit deep at Rhona, but she didn’t voice it. They’d done their best and found nothing. She declined McNab’s suggestion that she go back with him to the station, saying she was headed for the lab. In truth, she wanted time alone to think.
She drove down Castle Street and took a left into Duke Street. She’d been in this area so often recently, she felt she lived there. The creeping gentrification of the Merchant City would get here eventually. Already inner city regeneration had created a sleek curve of pink and cream flats, just south of the goods yard. Looking at future plans online, she had seen more such architectural wonders in store. Rhona felt quite proud of the planners’ vision. You couldn’t beat Glasgow for big ideas.
She drew in at the lorry entrance to the demolished railway building. From there she had a good view down Duke Street. On her left was the seventies-style block of flats Cathy had called home. Further along on her right was the imposing Victorian frontage of the Great Eastern.
She got out of the car and went to stand over the culvert and watch the water emerge below. McNab had been right to cancel the search. The level was visibly higher now, rushing from one opening to another as sheets of rain moved in from the west. Scenes like these must have driven Noah to build the Ark.
Rhona turned and walked back to the car. She was wasting her time when she could be doing something more useful. She started up the engine and switched the windscreen wipers on full. As she indicated to pull
out, a figure darted across the road in front of her, taking shelter under the portico of the Great Eastern.
Rhona cancelled her signal and peered through the swishing wipers, trying to get a better view. The man took a swift look around before disappearing from sight. Rhona waited, puzzled, expecting him to reappear from behind one of the two central pillars. When he didn’t, she looked up and down Duke Street. There were no cars besides hers. The guy had either vanished into thin air or gone inside the building.
Bells began to go off in Rhona’s head. She locked the car and went for a look. The heavy front door was closed and locked. If the man had gone inside, he’d locked the door behind him. In the redevelopment plans for the area, the Great Eastern was due to be converted into flats, with a nursery built on the waste ground behind. Maybe the man had been an official from Glasgow City Council here on a visit?
Rhona walked the length of the building. There were no lights on inside, despite the gloom caused by the rainstorm. If a councillor was taking a tour, he was doing it in the dark. When she reached the end of the building she decided on impulse to take a quick look around the back.
A mess of outbuildings littered the rear, including a couple of corrugated iron sheds. On the Duke Street side, the hotel was five storeys high. Here it was seven. Rhona had never really noticed how close the basement was to the level of the burn. If there were cellars, they would be at water level or even lower. The Great Eastern had been built as a Victorian cotton mill. No
doubt the works had used water from the burn in some capacity.
Rhona checked each of the back entrances, but the majority of them were firmly sealed. Only one gave her some hope, its padlock hanging loose from the rotten wood of the door. She stood for a moment, working out whether to take a look herself or give Bill a call. Then she saw a light flicker past a broken shutter on a basement window.
Rhona gently pulled the padlock free and slipped silently inside. In the dim light she made out a row of deep sinks and surmised this had been a laundry. She passed through swing doors into a long narrow corridor and turned west in the direction she’d seen the light.
What had been built as a workshop for cotton machinery had been divided by wooden partitions into numbered cubicles for homeless men. The effect was like a prison, apart from light filtering through the lattice work atop each partition wall.
The corridor ended in a set of stairs going downwards. Rhona decided to go no further until she told someone where she was, then cursed herself when she realised she would have to go outside to get a decent signal. Curiosity finally won over caution. The staircase grew darker the lower she went. Assuming the man she was following had come down here, whatever source of light he carried was well out of sight by now.
Rhona was already working out her position in relation to the burn, and decided she must be nearly level with it. The police had searched this building and
found nothing, but Rhona couldn’t shake off the feeling that if there was access to the culvert from here, it would be an ideal location to lose a body.
The foot of the stairs gave onto another dark corridor. Rhona cursed herself for not thinking of bringing the torch from the boot of the car. It was pointless going on without light. She might as well sit in the car and wait for the mystery man to emerge.
Standing in the semi-darkness, her senses on high alert, Rhona heard a faint female cry. For a moment she thought she’d imagined it. Then she heard it again. If she were hearing a ghost, it was the wrong sex. Any troubled spirits here would surely be those of lonely men.
RHONA STOOD STOCK
still, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting. The faint cry came again, from somewhere below her. Her first instinct was to run. She stood poised for flight, adrenalin coursing through her veins, but didn’t move or call out. Whoever was in the building had no idea she was there. Until she knew what was going on, Rhona wanted to keep it that way.
She edged along the lower corridor, seeking a way down, wondering whether Terri was in the hostel and had been all along. When she reached the end, she found nothing but a brick wall. Rhona felt her way around one more time, in case she’d missed an opening in the dark, but it was definitely a dead end. If a lower level did exist, she couldn’t get to it from there. She grimaced in frustration and disappointment. There had been no repeat of the muffled cry in the last ten minutes and she was beginning to wonder if she’d simply fashioned it from the dead whisperings of an empty building. Rhona gave up and began to retrace her steps.
The return journey caused her more unease than the trip out. Then, she’d been intent on following the sound. Now she sensed that she was being followed,
and it was making her uneasy. Rhona stopped and glanced behind her for the umpteenth time, finding nothing but darkness.
As she approached cubicle eleven, a low rustling brought her to a halt.
‘Terri?’ Rhona tried the handle.
When there was no response, she put her weight against the door. On the second push the lock gave way and the door swung open. Grey light filtered into an empty room and a torn curtain flapping at a broken window was revealed as the source of the sound.
The cubicle smelt strongly of decay, the walls spotted with damp. Rhona pulled the curtain aside and let daylight stream in. In the light the marks on the wall looked more like smears of old blood, but without her kit to test she couldn’t be sure. Anyone could have dossed down in the derelict building. Finding blood on a wall might have nothing to do with the current investigation. Rhona checked out the rest of the small cubicle, but apart from a metal bed frame and a broken chair there was nothing.
Intent on her examination, she almost forgot about the man she’d followed until she heard the heavy slam of the front door. Rhona made for the stairs, but by the time she got to a window, whoever had left by the main entrance was long gone.
Irritated, she retraced her steps to the laundry room. She would contact Bill, tell him what had happened. He could check with the council and find out who might have been visiting the building. Whatever the
outcome, she would urge another search of the hostel, particularly the lower levels.
When she pushed open the swing doors, the shadowy space of the old laundry echoed to the drumming of heavy rain on its corrugated roof. If she ventured outside, she would be soaked in seconds. Rhona decided to try and call Bill from where she was, despite the poor reception.
As she selected his number, she was suddenly aware that someone had stepped up behind her. Before she could cry out or turn, the muzzle of a gun jabbed the left-hand side of her head.
‘Drop the phone.’
Rhona released the mobile and it clattered to the stone floor. A kick from her hidden assailant sent it spinning into the shadows.
‘I’m . . .’ she began.
‘I know who you are.’
He pulled her backwards towards the swing doors.
‘I’ve called the police,’ Rhona tried to disguise the panic in her voice.
‘You’ll be dead by the time they arrive.’
‘
WE’VE BROUGHT IN
Craig Minto,’ Janice said. ‘Liz Paterson from the food van reported him going into a pub in the Gallowgate. We have him in an interview room, if you want to speak to him.’
Bill couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more.
Minty’s cheek tattoo said ‘No Surrender’, and he had one to match across his left hand. Bill assumed it was a religious war cry and not a message for the police. Minty was a big guy, more so in the confines of the interview room. Not the definitive wee Glasgow hard man, but his expression of malevolent defiance was the same as every other drug dealer and gangland member Bill had ever brought in. His baldness was made up for by thick eyebrows meeting in the middle of a jutting forehead. Minty was a perfect illustration of the missing link. Glasgow’s answer to Neanderthal man.
Forensic had found Minty’s prints all over the equipment in the flat, so there was no way he could get out of that one. What interested Bill was any link with the deaths of Lucie, Cathy and the disappearance of Leanne.
‘Lucie Webster,’ Bill said.
Minty cocked his head to one side, like a dog that doesn’t understand a command.
‘We found your semen in her body.’
A storm gathered between the big man’s brows.
‘Mine and who the fuck else? Wee bitch was doing it more than she told me.’
‘So you killed her.’
Minty looked offended. ‘I don’t kill my bitches.’
‘You just knock them about.’
‘I teach them what’s mine.’
‘What about Leanne Quinn?’
‘She wasn’t mine.’
‘She owed you money.’
‘Half of fucking Calton owes me money. If I killed them, how would I get it?’
‘Cathy McIver.’
‘Too old for my stable.’
‘Not a junkie, you mean?’
Minty gave Bill a withering look. ‘You’re fucked. You know that? You’ve no fucking idea who killed Lucie or Cathy, so you bring me in to look fucking good.’
There was an element of truth in what Minty was saying. Picking him up looked like a success. Against constant failure that was a plus.
‘What if we do a deal? You give us what you know, we’ll tell the judge you helped.’
Bill’s suggestion was met with a blank look. He tried another tack.
‘Father Duffy gave Leanne money to pay you off.’
Minty looked surprised. ‘So that’s where the wee bitch got it.’
‘Leanne brought you the money?’
Minty shook his head.
Leanne had been terrified of Minty, what if she’d asked someone else to deliver? Bill went for it.
‘Cathy brought you the money, didn’t she?’
Minty’s expression was a picture of wounded innocence.
‘She pissed you off, so you shot her.’
‘I don’t have a gun.’
‘There was a print on the gag used to shut her up.’
‘A gag? Not surprised. Cathy always was mouthy.’