In Place of Death Read online

  During his twenty-year career in Glasgow with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson interviewed three Prime Ministers and attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. He was pilloried on breakfast television, beat Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His debut novel, Random, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was a Sunday Times bestseller.

  Also by Craig Robertson

  The Last Refuge

  Witness the Dead

  Cold Grave

  Snapshot

  Random

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015

  A CBS company

  Copyright © Craig Robertson, 2015

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Craig Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  Gray’s Inn Road

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  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47112-778-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47112-780-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in the UK by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and supports the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  To my much-loved grandmother,

  Mary Robertson 1915–2015

  This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

  Plato

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 1

  23 October, Glasgow, Friday night

  Remy Feeks always felt his heart beat a wee bit faster when he took that first step. It didn’t matter whether it was up a ladder, through a fence or into a tunnel like now. The first step was the no-going-back step. It was the one that meant it had begun.

  It didn’t mean he was scared. He was but it wasn’t that. Not just that. A little bit of fear was natural anyway. Sensible, too. Going into the unknown was supposed to be frightening. And thrilling. Exhilarating. Liberating. All those things and more. It was why he did what he did.

  He shuffled down the bank until he stood in the water, feeling the pinch of cold even through the toes of his waders. Standing still for a few moments, he enjoyed the anticipation and tried to get his head round it. He was going to walk back in time, nearly one hundred and fifty years, deep into the heart of old Glasgow. It was a walk that only maybe a handful of people had ever done. And the good bit, the great bit, was that he couldn’t be sure where he’d end up. Or even if he’d come out at the other end.

  Deep breath. First step. Heart thumping. Go.

  He stepped into the tunnel, the Molendinar Burn at his feet and Victorian Glasgow somewhere in front of him. Man, this was going to be awesome.

  With just one step, the city was above his head, out of sight and almost out of mind. Or maybe he was out of his. He laughed, knowing full well how crazy some people would think he was. The chances were they were right but being their kind of sane was a hell of a boring life.

  Remy worked in a supermarket. A bloody supermarket. Four good Highers had qualified him to round up trolleys that lazy sods couldn’t be bothered putting back in the right place. Hefting a couple of dozen of them back to the front of the store a thousand times a day was like putting your soul in a car crusher. He knew all about living life the boring way. No reason for him to spend his free time living it like that too.

  The stream turned from neon-dappled brown to murky and dark in an instant. No going back. Just on. To wherever the hell it was.

  The beginning of the road to this unknown hell was Duke Street, near to the old Great Eastern Hotel. Or rather, underneath it all. He loved the fact that somewhere above his head people were tumbling in and out of pubs, going into bookies and shops, walking to ordinary places, and they had no idea that he was doing his thing beneath their feet. That was the kick.

  His old man had told him all about the Molendinar, how the burn was here before Glasgow was. St Mungo came to the dear green place, a wood beside the burn, and founded the settlement that grew to become the second city of the empire. His dad knew all that stuff. He was a welder but history was his thing. That and his son were about the only thing he loved more than his twenty-pack of Embassy Regal. And it wasn’t the history that had nearly killed him.

  He’d told Remy how the Molendinar used to mark the eastern boundary of the city and how it provided the water that powered the mills that industrialized the revolution. It split the cathedral from the Necropolis, separating life from death, and had the Bridge of Sighs built above it so that corpses could be carted into the cemetery. Glasgow grew on the back of the burn but it grew so much that it didn’t have room for it any more. In the 1870s, they covered it with a culvert and hid the Molendinar from view. Now it still flowed but under Duke Street, along the length of Wishart Street next to the cathedral, under Glasgow.

  Hardly anyone knew it was there and fewer still knew that there was a way in. That was what made it fun. And what made it scary.

  He was enjoying this. The rush, the edge, the adventure. He’d thought of doing it for ages, after he’d heard about the one guy t
hat was known to have done it before him. Another guy like him. Another guy who did this.

  The tunnel took a sharp turn to the right, a fine curve of stone wall facing him as he ducked under the arch. Rectangular slabs of old stone, two feet by one, perfectly laid. His nose was filling up with the smell, stale and musky. It was the pungent, beautiful smell of decay.

  You maybe wouldn’t think that was something you would like, right? Takes all sorts. It’s nothing weird. It just smelled of the history of the city. His city. His old man’s city. You could smell every year of it.

  The arch of the ceiling was less than a foot above his head but he enjoyed the luxury of that while he could. He knew it would get a lot lower. Maybe so low that he wouldn’t be able to get through. Time would tell. The stone slabs gave way to brick showing orange and white and grey in the beam of the torchlight. The burn flowed over his ankles, cold as the grave.

  The first time he’d done an explore, he’d climbed high rather than hit a tunnel and it had scared him enough that he’d nearly crapped himself. He’d started off full of courage that was poured from a tap in the Hielan Jessie but that beer buzz evaporated in an instant when he realized just how high the roof of the cathedral was. High enough to die from, that’s how high. For five long minutes, he’d clung on to the one spot, petrified. It wasn’t until he was back on the ground and in one piece that he breathed and told himself he’d enjoyed it.

  But all the next day, he was buzzing in a way that no amount of beer had ever done for him. He’d actually done that. And it felt fucking good. From then on he was hooked.

  This explore was everything Remy had wanted it to be. The buzz ran through him like he’d known it would. Like a charge. Like drugs. Like something you couldn’t resist even if you wanted to.

  The brick lining changed to concrete, low stuff that had him bent double and his pulse throbbing. It was a good fear though, he told himself. Sensible. He went on because it was what he did. No going back after that first step.

  Jesus Christ. Steel piping. He never expected that. A glistening silver tunnel that spiralled in front of him, the water golden at his feet. It was almost mirrored as the steel walls threw corrugated images from one to the other. Man, this was a mindbender. It was like he was tripping and maybe, in his own way, he was.

  He had three rules when he did his stuff. The same three everyone who did this had. Be safe. Don’t break in. Take nothing away with you. The least important of those was being safe. That was the one he only paid nodding observance to.

  The other two were sacrosanct. Never break in anywhere. For a start, it means criminal damage and that means jail time. And it’s cheating. Use your brain instead. Don’t take anything because the idea is to uncover, to celebrate these old places as they were. Leave them that way.

  The steel piping came to an end like all good things do but it was replaced by a beautiful burrowing tunnel of red brick that let him stand upright again. Maybe the worst of it was over and he’d be able to walk upright the rest of the way. Anyway, he enjoyed it while he could, a long stretch of walkway, a long stretch of the leg and the back.

  When it changed, he wasn’t sure whether to celebrate or not. He was forced to duck again, not just because of the reduced height but also the stalactites that appeared like daggers from the ceiling. He bent low beneath them, on and on until the forest became a field, so many spears that the brick disappeared and he’d have sworn he was in a cave. He wasn’t back a hundred and fifty years; it was more like a thousand, ten thousand.

  He was at half-height now and getting lower still. The walls grew around him, thick with solidified deposits that crowded in and suffocated. No going back. It was a stupid rule but it was his.

  The ceiling was no more than two feet high now and his back was at breaking point. If he still had an adrenalin rush, he couldn’t hear it above his breathing or the pounding in his chest. It was hard work and it might be going nowhere. Nowhere that he could get through.

  He was firing his torch straight ahead in the desperate hope of seeing more than the miserable amount of space he was being forced to crawl through. Wait. What was that? Darkness blocking the way forward. His heart sank at the prospect of it being the end of the journey. Another bit of him was secretly glad. Enough was enough on this jaunt.

  He inched closer and saw that it wasn’t the tunnel closing up but a shape much the same size as him. Holy shit. His heart nearly stopped. It was someone else. He could make out a backpack, like the one he always took with him. Some other mad bastard was doing the same thing.

  ‘Hey! Are you stuck down there?’

  No answer.

  ‘You hear me? Can you not get through? Maybe we’d better both back up.’

  He waited for the reply that didn’t come. No way the guy couldn’t hear him. Shit. He crept closer, the walls tightening around him, barely able to squeeze any further. Maybe the guy was stuck.

  When he got near enough, he reached out for the man. His arm extending cautiously, despite a voice inside him screaming the truth. In one moment he could see that the man had enough room not to be stuck. He saw this just as the smell hit him and he put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and tugged.

  When the entire arm came away in his hand, he screamed so loud that it must have been heard all the way to Duke Street and back again.

  Chapter 2

  The tug on the guy’s arm put Remy fully on his knees, the cold water of the burn surging over his lower legs. Worse, much worse, the man’s body toppled back onto his. Suddenly he could barely breathe, suffocated by this fucking corpse that was on top of him.

  He leaned back but the body simply came with him, the head falling so it was next to his and staring at him through blank eyes. Oh Jesus Christ, the eyes had been eaten away. Remy stretched his head as far from the other as he could, straining his neck muscles to put distance between him and the flaking, decomposing face that leered at him.

  He took it all in at once, the full horror of it. The man’s throat had been cut. From behind by the look of it. Slit from side to side and his front was washed in blood. The blood was rusty and dry, like spilled gravy, all over the white T-shirt and navy-blue fleece. Man, his face was all purples and reds, like a patchwork quilt. There were chunks out of it too, rats probably and whatever the hell else was down here.

  And the smell. It was horrendous, like nothing he’d ever smelled before. He knew what it was though. Death. Decay. It filled his nostrils and made him gag.

  He was desperate to get the thing, the man, or what was left of him, off him but there wasn’t enough room to extend his arms and push the body away. Instead, he pulled his arms in so that he could push up, not wanting to touch it but having no choice. He shoved at the body and at the same time tried to scrabble out from underneath. The man’s back felt thin and wet and he knew that the cloying, sweet stink was now all over his fingers. Gagging again, he levered the body higher, dragging his own knees along the floor of the burn as he slid away.

  He kept his hands under the corpse even once he was free of it, lowering it gently onto the ground in front of him. He took his hands away as quickly as he could and thrust them into the water. He scrubbed at them, rubbing them together as he stared at the body.

  He brought his hands out, drying them on the front of his jacket, and all the while edging away from the dead man. The murdered man. He backed up as far and as fast as he could, until he could stand up again. Then he ran.

  Remy sat in his car, parked just a couple of hundred yards from the opening to the burn, and shivered. He didn’t know how much was cold and how much was shock. He just knew he couldn’t stop shaking. A puddle of water had formed at his feet and he stared into it, watching the drips land.

  Did that really just happen? To him? Remy Feeks, the man nothing ever happened to? He’d never seen a dead body before. Who the hell had? No one he knew. And not just dead, obviously murdered. What the hell was he going to do?

  Report it. He had to call it in to
the cops. But. He didn’t want to be part of this. He wanted to go back to collecting trolleys at Tesco and looking after his dad. He didn’t want this. He shouldn’t have been down there in the first place. He’d been trespassing. He had the guy’s DNA all over him. Holy shit. They’d think he did it. That’s what they do.

  It took him a while to realize that there were tears running down his cheeks and trickling into the puddle at his feet. When it dawned on him, he drew the back of his hand across his eyes then rubbed at his nose. Grow a pair, he told himself. You’ve no reason to feel sorry for yourself: think of that poor bugger killed in the burn. He did think of him and remembered that his hands had been on the man’s rotting corpse and felt sick that they’d just been on his eyes.

  He flipped the angle of the rear-view mirror and stared at his reflection. His eyes were red and wide. ‘Arsehole!’ he shouted at himself, then got scared in case anyone had heard him.

  He twisted and reached into the back seat where he grabbed his trainers. He pulled off the waders and changed into his proper shoes. With one final look at himself in the mirror, he got out of the car before he could change his mind and went looking for the first phone box that worked.

  He walked half of Duke Street before finding one and had nearly given up and jumped in to use the one in the Crown Creighton instead. But that would have been just as stupid as using his mobile. He’d found some guts but not enough for that.

  ‘Emergency. What service do you require?’

  ‘Police. And ambulance, I guess.’

  ‘What is your emergency?’

  ‘There’s a body. A dead . . . I mean . . . I just . . . found it.’

  ‘What is your name, caller?’

  ‘No . . . I . . . I don’t want to . . . Look, someone’s been murdered. I need to go. Just let me tell you where.’

  ‘Can you give me your name, please, caller?’

  ‘No. Listen, the body’s in the Molendinar Tunnel. Under Wishart Street. Or maybe further, I’m not sure. You get in at the entrance near the Great Eastern. The man’s been murdered.’

  ‘Calm down, sir. Are you sure this person is dead?’