In Place of Death (34 page)

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.'

‘Sure?
Okay. Well last night I got called to the Gray Dunn biscuit factory. Maybe half an hour after you'd taken your photographs and left. Someone had the sense to realize
that the location fitted with my investigation. I had the pleasure of dealing with that little shit Denny Kelbie but he was the least of my worries. I had another urbexing death. At least number
three, possibly number six. The pressure I've been under ratcheted up another notch. But even
that
wasn't my biggest problem.'

His stomach fell a couple of feet and he wasn't sure he could swallow.

‘I managed to get a couple of hours' sleep and got back in this morning to find the nightshift had called in all the CCTV we could get our hands on. The interesting images were of
three men walking, separately and at different times, towards the factory in the hour or so before the services were called. The images weren't great quality but one of them was recognizable.
If you knew them very well.'

He said nothing. He couldn't speak.

‘I think it was the fleece that gave it away. I bought that for you last Christmas.'

He found a small voice. ‘Rachel . . .'

‘Still, lots of those fleeces, I'm sure. And probably lots of people on urbexing websites that might call themselves Metinides. You know how it is though. I'm a stubborn cow.
So I listened to the tape of the call that Toshney took, the man who phoned in to say that Remy Feeks was the Molendinar witness. The caller had tried to disguise his voice a bit. Couldn't
hide it from me though.
Could you?'

‘No.'

She took in a lungful of air and he recognized the sign. She was composing herself, or trying to, doing her best to keep her temper in check. It was barely working.

‘So you'll understand then why I'd quite like to know just what exactly is going on. I'd like to know what the fuck you've done. And why. And I'd like to hear
it right now or I'll have to walk out of here for good and drive to the station to tell what I know.'

His skin was tingling as if someone had set it on fire and he wasn't sure his throat was connected to his lungs any longer. He said a prayer to a God he didn't believe in and
began.

‘I'll tell you but I need to work out how to do it. I need to tell you this properly.'

‘Damn right you do. But first I'm going to ask you a question that you won't need time to think how to answer. Did you kill Remy Feeks?'

She saw his reaction. It was as if she'd slapped him or punched him in the stomach. His mouth bobbed open in shock and his eyes widened. He couldn't believe she'd asked. It was
written all over his face.

‘No. No, Rach. I didn't.'

She stared hard at him, looking deep into his eyes and searching for signs of a lie. She didn't want to see any but nor would she be fooled into just seeing what she wanted. She needed the
truth from him, whatever it was.

How long had she known him? Six years. You had to know someone by that length of time. Know their nature and their mannerisms. He was holding her gaze, not trying to look away or dodge her.

‘I didn't kill Remy Feeks, Rachel. I didn't -
couldn't
-
kill anyone. You should know that.'

She did. She was sure she did. Yet she needed more from him than that. Much more.

‘Tell me where you were last night.'

He hesitated and she didn't like that. She didn't want him to think, she wanted him to talk. He didn't get to decide how much of anything he told her. She had to make sure he
really knew that.

‘Okay, wait. I'm not sure you're getting this, Tony, and that's where we're going to have a problem. Because you only telling me half a story or some edited version
is not going to work for me. And if it doesn't work for me then you'd better start understanding that it's not going to work for you either. Do you get what I'm saying,
Tony?'

‘You want to know everything. I get that.'

‘No! I
need
to know everything. And if you and I are going to have any chance of getting through this then that's what's going to have to happen. You lie to me here or
hold back on me then we are in big trouble. The kind of trouble that means I can't do my job. The kind of trouble that means I could lose it. The kind of trouble that means we're done
or you go to jail. Do you get
that
?'

He did. Suddenly and forcefully, she saw that he did. There was a flash of fear in his eyes and that scared her too. He nodded.

‘Okay, where were you last night?'

‘I was in the Gray Dunn factory. I had gone there to meet Remy Feeks. He'd messaged me to be there and I turned up. Someone else was there too though. I don't know who he was
but he murdered Remy. He also called the police and I ran.'

She had done this for a long time and knew truth and lies when she heard them. Sometimes though, the truth was still bad news.

‘Why?
Why were you there? What the hell did you think you were doing?'

‘What I had to!'

He knew he probably had no right to shout back at her but he couldn't help it. Her being right just made him more annoyed for being wrong. More than that, it was all falling on top of him.
Euan, Remy, the guy that had attacked him in the factory. All of it.

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Don't give me any cryptic shit. Tell me. Now!'

‘I wanted to find out what happened to Euan Hepburn. I owed it to him. Yes, I shouldn't have stuck my nose in but I did. I'll deal with the fall-out from that. I don't
want any of that fall-out to be me and you.'

He paused, waiting for a response to that, but she didn't indulge him beyond a hard stare.

‘I knew Euan better than I let you think. He was my friend. For a while, he was my best friend.'

He saw the disappointment in her face and it hurt him. She wasn't impressed and he knew it was about to get worse.

‘So you lied to me.'

‘It wasn't so much a lie as not telling you everything.'

‘Sounds like a lie to me. How did you know him?'

‘I didn't mean not to tell you. When you told me the dead guy was Euan . . . I panicked. And I was shocked. It brought lots of old memories back and I didn't know what to tell
you.'

‘But you knew you should have.'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me now.'

So he did. And she didn't like it.

Knowing someone so well that you are on the point of committing to spending the rest of your life with them. Then finding out something. She wasn't sure she could take
many more surprises for one day and it wasn't yet noon.

‘Why did you never tell me that you went urbexing?'

‘Because I'd stopped. There didn't seem much point in telling you, seeing I didn't do it any more. And it didn't finish well. Euan and I fell out badly and I hated
the idea of urbexing. Hated to think about it, far less talk about it. The longer we were together, the harder it was to mention it. It was much easier not to.'

‘And that's it?'

‘That and guilt. It was my fault that Euan and I stopped talking but I put it all on him. I hate myself for that. If we hadn't stopped then he might still be alive.'

She was mad at him but loved him. She was mad at him but felt his pain.

‘You can't know that.'

‘No. Not for sure. But it doesn't stop me feeling it, thinking it.
That's
why I had to do it. For him. To make up for what I'd done in letting him down.'

He wasn't getting away with this. Guilt and self-pity couldn't be an excuse for fucking everything up.

‘You did it for
you
. You got right in the middle of a police investigation,
my
investigation, for yourself. Your guilty conscience isn't a passport to playing at being
a policeman. Or to screwing up everything between us.'

‘What if I did? What if I fucking did do it for me? Am I not allowed to do something for myself?'

‘Not if it messes with us. It can't just be about you. Can't you see that?'

‘I had to do it, Rachel. And
you
need to see that. If you can't understand that I had to help my friend, that I had to get this out of my system before it fucked me up
completely, then we are in trouble. Of course it's not just about me but it
is
about me too.'

They were nose to nose now, both shouting. They were standing on the same tightrope and if one fell then they both would.

‘I did this for us as much as for me. Look, I couldn't live with knowing that he'd died and I could have been in a place to have stopped it if I hadn't been such a prick
to him. I had to put that right so that I could be right for us. And because it was the right thing to do.'

‘Right thing? You think you did the right thing? Christ, Tony, that's crazy talk. I need to know you're with me. That you understand what can and can't happen. I need to
be able to trust you.'

‘And you need to
know
me. Euan was murdered. From the minute the body was found in the Odeon, I knew both were connected and both were connected to urbexing. I know that world and I
could use that. I could do something about it. What kind of friend, what kind of man would I be if I didn't want to help make it right for him?'

She wanted to slap him, shake him, grab him and send them both falling off the rope without a safety net.

‘You'd be
my
man if you just told me what you knew rather than buggering about on your own. You'd be on my side.'

‘Of course I'm on your side. Always am, always will be.'

‘Christ, Tony, you don't know what you're doing or what you're talking about. You say Hepburn and Cairns are connected but we
don't
know they're
related to each other. All I know is that they're connected to urbexing.'

‘Yes we do. I do.'

She stopped breathing for a second. It wasn't just what he said, it was how he said it. Certainty.

‘What?
How can you know that?'

‘I went into his flat.'

‘Hepburn's flat? You
broke
in
?'

‘Yes. Like I said, I had to.'

‘We searched the place. There was nothing to see.'

‘You didn't look hard enough or in the right places. I knew what I was looking for.'

She didn't like the sound of that on any grounds. ‘Which was what?'

‘Euan's second camera. He used two. I figured whoever killed him had one of them. I wanted to see the other and I found it. It had photographs taken at the old Odeon.

She held her breath again and said nothing. She thought he could hear both their hearts beating over the silence in the room.

‘The Odeon? Photographs that
he
took at the Odeon?'

‘Yes.'

‘You think Euan Hepburn . . .' She was trying to take it all in. ‘Are you telling me he killed Jennifer Cairns?'

‘Well . . .' He paused, not quite sure where to go next. ‘Maybe you should take a look at the photographs.'

Winter opened his laptop and brought up a file of images that he'd copied from the memory card on Hepburn's camera. He set the laptop on the table in front of them
and began to slowly scroll through what was there. Her eyes were wide.

He could see why the building had drawn Euan: a part of Glasgow history that was about to be demolished and a small window of time in which to do it. It was a perfect urbexing location,
intriguing and forbidden and right in the heart of the city centre. The kind of site that would have had him itching to explore back in the day and the sort that Euan would have found
irresistible.

Winter worked his way through a series of images showing the inside of the cinema, nothing particularly exciting but enough to let her see that that was indeed where it was. The call to the
discovery of Jennifer Cairns' body was all too fresh and left no doubt that the narrow corridors, steeply banked rooms and wide staircases in front of them were the Renfield Street site.

He moved on to what looked like an entry shot, a window that didn't seem to have any merit but showed how Euan had got in.