In Place of Death by Craig Robertson Page A

basement, the boiler room and the upper floors. They’d roamed the disused Gray Dunn biscuit factory in Kinning Park, searching its spooky warren of
floors.
    They explored the shell of St Columba’s Episcopal Church at midnight, having their own mass as a full moon streamed through the remaining stained-glass windows. They got into the former
Transport Museum where they walked the cobbled street and sat in the Black Maria and imagined they were chasing themselves. They had an impromptu picnic on the rubble behind the façade of
the old Woodilee Hospital at Lenzie.
    They’d even climbed onto the roof of Glasgow University, clinging on for dear life and trying not to giggle as they looked down on the inner quadrangle and the chapel. They couldn’t
believe the little walkways, doors and balconies that were up there. It was a bird’s-eye view of Hogwarts.
    It hadn’t all been urbexing. They’d go out for drinks, as friends did. She’d been round at his dad’s flat a couple of times, one Christmas Eve and once for his old
man’s birthday. He even got an invite to her sister’s wedding as her plus-one on the strict understanding that everyone would know that he wasn’t
with
her.
    So they stuck to old buildings and a platonic relationship that killed him a little. The year before they’d climbed the Finnieston Crane on his birthday, both with a bottle of beer tucked
in their backpacks, and then sat high above the Clyde to toast him being twenty-six. A couple of weeks after that they’d nearly got caught ‘swimming’ in the empty pool of the old
Govanhill public baths.
    They did all that and much more and yet he never had got round to asking her if maybe, you know, one day, they might actually go out on what normal people might consider to be a date. In a
normal place. He knew why he hadn’t asked. In the back of his head he was scared that if he did then she’d say no and it would all be over.
    His phone beeped to signal a text. It was her.
    Fancy trying to get into the Sentinel Works at Polmadie?
    If anyone would know it would be her; she knew him better that anyone else. If he didn’t get his shit together then she’d see through him in two seconds flat. She had this knack of
interrogating him, staring at him until he couldn’t stand it any more and he’d crack every time. He certainly didn’t need any of that.
    Not feeling well, he texted back.
    So he stared down onto London Road watching people walking back and forth as if nothing had ever happened. For all he knew, Tesco’s car park was covered in rogue trolleys and there was a
long line of lazy shoppers just standing waiting for them to magically appear at the front of the store. He couldn’t give a toss.
    He wasn’t eating either. Just a couple of slices of toast and some cereal. Sometimes he thought it had all been a weird dream and he hadn’t even been down the tunnel in the first
place. That was tempting to believe but he knew the truth. He could still feel the fabric of the guy’s jacket and the sense of the arm crumbling under his touch. He could still smell the body
lying on top of him.
    He’d washed his hands a hundred times over the past few days. Scrubbed at them, used every soap and shampoo he had. He could still feel it though. Still knew it was there.
    Come on loser. U can’t be that sick. I hear the Sentinel is well worth a look.
    He ignored it.
    Okay if not the Sentinel, how about we go to the old biscuit factory? It’s ur favourite place.
    He ignored that too.
    Okay please urself. Going on my own. Ur loss.
    Great. Now Gabby was mad at him too. How the hell had it come to this?

Chapter 9
    Narey and Toshney parked up outside the Rosewood, got out of the car and looked at each other. They’d have been as well painting
POLICE
on the side of her car. And
on their foreheads come to that. Neither of them was wearing uniform but