‘Bunch of druggies or something?’ Ernshaw added, ‘Squatting? If that’s it they’ll all be dead by now. Must’ve been minus-ten last night easily.’
Again, Rodwell shrugged.
Kemp’s was a former flax-spinning mill, but it had been closed now for nearly two decades and was a forlorn reminder of prosperous times past. Its tall octagonal chimney was still intact, the square windows arrayed in uniform rows across its dingy frontage were largely unbroken, and most of its ground-floor entrances were supposedly chained shut (there was talk that its industrial/gothic exterior might at some point gain ‘listed building’ status, so some attempts to preserve the place had been made), but, like so many of the derelict buildings around here, it wouldn’t be difficult for determined intruders to force entry.
Snow crunched under their tyres as they slid to a halt on the mill’s southward-facing lot. The gaunt structure lowered over them against the white winter sky. The red bricks with which it had been constructed were hidden beneath soot so thick it had become scabrous. Those pipes and gutterings that hadn’t already collapsed sagged beneath Alpine overhangs of snow. At first glance there was no movement – no sign of life, but the place was enormous; not just a central block, though that in itself might once have housed a thousand workers, but comprising all kinds of annexes and outbuildings. As the van eased forward at a snail’s pace, it dawned on Ernshaw how long it might take them to locate ‘something interesting’ here.
He put his radio to his mouth. ‘1762 to Three?’
‘
Go ahead, Alan.’
‘We’re at Franklyn Road now. Everything looks okay so far. Any further on the complainant, over?’
‘That’s negative, Alan. Could be some prat with nothing better to do, but probably best to check it out, over.’
‘Received,’ he said, adding under his breath: ‘Might take a while, mind.’
They drove in a wide circle around the aged edifice, their tyres sliding as they hit patches of sheet-ice. Ernshaw wound his window down. It was bitterly cold outside – the snow was still dry and crisp as powder – but even if they didn’t see anything untoward, it was possible they might
hear
it.
That they didn’t was vaguely, unexplainably disconcerting.
Christmas morning ought to be deeply quiet, ought to be restful, ought to be hushed by the freshly fallen snow, yet the silence around Kemp’s Mill was somehow uncanny; it had a brittle edge, as if it could shatter at any moment.
They rounded corner after corner, gazing up sheer faces of windows and bricks, networks of ancient piping, hanging, rusted fire-escapes. The van’s wheels constantly skidded, dirty slush flying out behind. They trundled through an access-passage connecting with a row of empty garages, the corrugated plastic roof of which had fallen through after years of decay. On the other side of this they spotted an entrance.
Rodwell braked gently, but the van still skated several yards before coming to rest.
What looked like a service doorway was set into a recess at the top of three wide steps. There was no sign of the door itself – possibly it lay under the snow, but from the state of the doorjamb, which had perished to soggy splinters, this entry had been forced a long time ago. A pitch black interior lay beyond it.
‘2376 to Three?’ Rodwell told his radio.
‘
Go ahead, Keith.’
‘Yeah, we’re still at Kemp’s Mill. Evidence of a break, over.’
‘
Do you want some help?’
‘That’s negative at present. Looks like an old one.’
They climbed out, gloving up and zipping their padded anoraks. Ernshaw adjusted his hat while Rodwell locked the vehicle. They ventured up the steps, the blackness inside retreating under the intense beams of their torches. At the top, Ernshaw thought he heard something – laughter maybe, but it was very distant, very faint and very brief. He glanced at Rodwell, whose dour, pitted face registered that he’d heard nothing. Ernshaw was so unsure himself that he declined to mention it. He glanced behind them. This particular section of the property was enclosed by a high wall. The van was parked close alongside it, the entrance to the garage-passage just at its rear. Aside from the tracks the vehicle itself had made on entering the yard, the snowfall lay unbroken. Of course, flakes had been falling heavily until about two hours ago; so this didn’t necessarily mean that no one had been here during the night.
They entered side-by-side, torchlight spearing ahead, and were immediately faced by three options: directly in front, a switchback stair ascended into opaque blackness; on the right, a passage led off down a long gallery zebra-striped by smudges of light intruding through the ground level windows; on the left lay a wide open area, presumably one of the old workshops. They ventured this way first, their torch-beams crisscrossing, revealing bare brick walls and a high plaster ceiling, much of which had rotted, exposing bone-like girders. Shredded cables hung like jungle creeper. The asphalt floor was scattered with planks and fragments of tiles. Here and there, the corroded stubs of machine fittings jutted dangerously upward. Despite the intense cold, there was a sour taint to the air, like mildew. The scuffling of their feet echoed through the vast building’s distant reaches.
They halted to listen, hearing nothing.
‘This is a wild goose chase,’ Ernshaw finally said, his words smoking. ‘You realise that, don’t you?’
‘Probably,’ Rodwell replied, shining his torch into every corner. From the moment they’d received the call, Rodwell had seemed a little graver of purpose than usual, which was intriguing to Ernshaw. Keith Rodwell had been a copper for so long that he generally knew what was what without even having to think about it. The way he was behaving now suggested either: a) that he was bored and was treating this like a real mystery purely to liven things up (though that hardly ever happened – Keith Rodwell was never more content than when sitting vegetating on an uneventful shift); or b) that he genuinely believed something untoward was going on here.
‘Okay, I give up,’ Ernshaw said. ‘What do you
think
we’re going to find?’
‘Keep it down. Even if this is someone taking the piss, let’s catch ’em at it.’
‘Keith … it’s Christmas morning. Why would someone …’
‘Shhh!’
But Ernshaw didn’t need to be shushed. He too had just heard the long, low creak from overhead. They regarded each other in the gloom, ears pricked.
‘Take the front stair,’ Rodwell said quietly, edging across the workshop. ‘I’ll go around the back … see if I can find another way up.’
Ernshaw retreated to the door they’d come in through. He glanced at the van out in the yard; as before, there was no sign of movement. He started to ascend, attempting to do it stealthily though the slamming impacts of his feet rang up the stairwell ahead of him. The first floor he came to comprised another huge workshop. Not all the windows up here were boarded, though their glass was so grimy that only a paltry winter light filtered through. Even so, it was enough to hint at an immense hangar-like space ranging far across the building, filled with stacked crates and workbenches, forested by steel pillars.
Ernshaw hesitated, gripping the hilt of his baton. This time last year he’d been an innocent young student at the University of Hull, so he had no trouble admitting to himself that, while it was bad enough being made to work on Christmas Day – only the older, married guys tended to be spared that pain-in-the-arse duty – it was even worse having to spend it trawling through the guts of a eerie, frozen ruin like this.
A loud crackle from his radio made him jump.
The voice of Comms boomed out as it dispatched messages to patrols elsewhere on the subdivision. Irritated, he turned the volume down. Like Keith had said, it was always best to catch them at it – whoever
they
were.
He advanced as his eyes adjusted to the half-light. Directly ahead, about forty yards away, a doorway opened into what looked like an antechamber. For some reason, the rear brick wall of that chamber was lit by a greenish glow.
Green?
A coloured candle, maybe? A paper lantern?
Ernshaw halted as a figure flirted past the doorway on the other side.
‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. Then louder:
‘Hey!’
He dashed forward, now with baton drawn.
When he entered the chamber, nobody was there, but he saw that the odd-coloured light had been caused by a sheet of mouldy green canvas fastened over a window. A stairway – an indoor fire-escape, all rust and riveted steel – dropped down through a trapdoor; while a secondary stair rose up to the next level, though this was very narrow, scarcely broad enough for an average-sized man to climb it without turning sideways. He peered up, spying a ray of feeble daylight at the top. When he listened, he heard nothing, though it wasn’t difficult to imagine that someone was lurking up there, listening back.
‘Alan?’ someone asked.
Half-shouting, Ernshaw spun around.
Rodwell gazed at him from the trapdoor, in particular at his drawn baton.
‘Have you …?’ Ernshaw glanced back up the stair, listening intently. ‘Have you been up here once? I mean, have you been up already and gone back down for any reason?’ Rodwell shook his head as he rose fully into view. ‘Thought I saw someone, but …’ The more Ernshaw considered it, the less substantial that ‘figure’ had seemed. A shadow maybe, cast by his torch? ‘Could’ve been mistaken, I suppose …’
Rodwell also glanced up the next stair. Without speaking, he ascended it.
Ernshaw followed. The floor at the top of this had been partitioned into small rooms and connecting corridors. Even fewer of the windows on this level were boarded, but there were less of them, so a sepulchral gloom pervaded.
Before they commenced exploring, Rodwell lifted a dust-caked Venetian blind and peered down into the yard below. It had occurred to them both, somewhat belatedly, that if this was some daft but elaborate ruse to create a diversion by which to steal a police vehicle, they’d be left with an omelette-size egg on their faces. However, the van sat unmolested; the snow around it, almost blinding-white after the dimness of the interior, was unmarked. From this height, they could see further afield into adjacent streets, or what remained of them. Most of the rows of terraced housing on the south side of Kemp’s Mill had been demolished, but even with the recent snowfall, the parallel outlines of their old foundations were still visible.
There was no sign of anyone around. The nearest habitations were two blocks of 1970s flats about three hundred yards away, beyond a mountain of snow-covered scrap; only one or two lights – the garish neon of early morning Christmas decorations – twinkled from their windows. The rest were still curtained.
‘2376 from Three?’
the voice of Comms crackled from Rodwell’s PR.
‘Go ahead,’ he said, dropping the blind back into place.
‘Anything from Franklyn Road yet?’
‘No offences revealed at this stage. Still searching, over.’
‘Message from Sergeant Roebuck, Keith. Don’t waste too much time there. If it’s just some kids messing around, leave it. There are other jobs piling up.’
‘Roger, received.’
‘That it, then?’ Ernshaw asked hopefully.
‘No,’ Rodwell replied.
They ventured along a central passage, peeking around the first door they came to, seeing what had presumably once been an office. In the middle of it, weak daylight illuminated a single filing cabinet from which a ton of paperwork had overflowed. Ernshaw entered, scooping up some of the documents: work rosters yellowed by age; dog-eared time-and-motion sheets. He tossed them away, moving through the next doorway into another identical office. Sometime in the past, vandals had scribbled slogans all over the walls in this one. Almost unavoidably, he paused to read – the depths of the perverted imagination never ceased to fascinate and revolt him.
‘Kids have been in here, alright,’ he said. ‘Dirty little buggers too. Seen this … “My little sister gave me my first blowjob. She’ll do you too for a fiver”. There’s even a fucking phone number. “Every day I wank into my mum’s knickers – now she’s pregnant again. Oh shit”.’ Getting no response, he turned.
Rodwell had not come into the room with him.
Ernshaw went back to the door and glanced into the office with the filing cabinet; Rodwell wasn’t in there either.
‘Keith?’ he said.
A footfall sounded behind him. He whirled around – to find that he was still alone. But on the far side of the room another door stood ajar.
Hadn’t it been closed previously?
Ernshaw approached it, suddenly suspecting that someone was in the next room. Hand on baton again, he yanked the door open – entering yet another deserted corridor, the contents of more gutted offices spilling into it from adjoining doorways.
‘Keith?’
Still there was no reply.
Ernshaw proceeded forward. At the extreme end there was another stairway, but when he reached this, it was only short and it led up to a closed door beyond which a crack of bright daylight was visible.
‘Keith? You up there, mate?’
Again, nothing.
He ascended – slowly, body half-turned so that he could watch both in front and behind. At the top, the door swung open easily and he entered the most spacious office he’d seen to date – a good forty foot by thirty – the sort of palatial residence an MD might once have inhabited. It possessed several large windows, all intact, none covered by planking or sheets of icky green canvas. The walls were even papered, though the floor comprised loose boards, several of which had warped and sprung. It contained no furniture; just a scattering of broken bricks and, in one corner, rather curiously, a wheelbarrow rimmed with hardened cement, with a pick and sledge-hammer standing against it.
But none of this captured Ernshaw’s attention as much as the strange object on the farthest side of the room.
He walked forward.
It appeared to be a section of new wall; a seven-foot wide rectangle rising almost floor to ceiling. The paper and plaster had recently been torn away, and the ancient stonework beneath demolished; new, yellowish bricks had been mortared into the resulting cavity. But what
really
caught his eye hung in the middle of this: a sheet of white paper with a message emblazoned on it in startling crimson. The paper was fresh and new; when Ernshaw took it from the wall it had been fixed there with a blob of Blu-Tack, which proved to be soft and pliable – so that was new as well.