He walked further back into the building, his torch-light leading the way down memory lane. Jackie had been in a few times since it closed in 2006, including before it had been stripped out. Since then it had lain dormant and such a waste, bang in the middle of the city centre and nothing happening to it.

It was so quiet back here. Only the occasional creak of the building and the distant scurry of rodents broke the silence. He liked that though. It gave it an atmosphere it deserved.

The rooms were all bare but he’d been there when the floors were still covered in dark blue carpets, dotted dirty grey where the chairs had been and marked with the sticky stains of old popcorn and spilled juice. The stage was for ghosts now, the old screens long since taken away and sold off.

There were no numbers on the rooms any more but he still knew which was which. The rooms got smaller as the numbers got bigger. Something great had been chopped up into little bits of something ordinary. Cinema 1 had still been a good size but by the time you got down to what had been Cinema 9 then it was pretty claustrophobic and banked steeply from back to front. It was the space that had been 9 that he went into now, breathing in fifty-plus years of his own thoughts.

He stood and listened, closing his eyes and remembering. It was so small and dark that you could almost hear projectors whirring, reels clacking and people shushing each other. You could feel that buzz, the one you got when the whole crowd felt the same thing at the same time. Fear and amusement and sadness and relief. He could imagine dust whirling in the light of the projector and dancing through it were glimpses of car chases and Westerns and custard pies.

He could still smell popcorn and hairspray, hot dogs and sickly orange juice. He could smell sweat and hope and teenage troubles. There was something else though, something newer and yet older. It was the stench of decay. Maybe the smell of the old place finally about to breathe its last.

Jackie wandered down the steep bank to where the screen would have been, seeking one last bit of nostalgia before he left. He’d always wanted to be up there; not that he’d ever dared tell anyone for fear of them laughing at him. He’d imagined himself in a shoot-out with Clint Eastwood or a punch-up with The Duke. Maybe in a love scene with Sophia Loren. Jeez, his pals would have wet themselves if he’d told them that.

He was up there now though. The silver screen. Even if it hadn’t been so much silver as dusty grey. The walls to the side a shabby, peeling blue. Jackie gave a little soft-shoe shuffle, like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, and put his hands out like it was show business.

He even gave a little bow to the ghosts and turned as if to walk off into the screen. That’s when he saw it. That’s when he realized that the smell of decay wasn’t just from the building.

It was tucked into a little recess to the side of where the screen would have been, partly covered by a sheet of plywood. There was a foot sticking out though. An ashen-white foot that barely seemed real but he knew that it was.

Jackie really didn’t want to look any further. He backed away then stopped himself, breathed hard and went forward again. He took hold of the plywood and lifted it, the stench flooding his nose as he did so. All at once he saw the rotten corpse of a woman, naked and eaten, her flesh chewed and decomposed.

This time, he backed away with his mouth open for three steps until he tripped over the lip of the small, raised stage. He was on his knees when he threw up.

Jackie got to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, not daring to look at the body again. He hadn’t seen anything like that on the big screen, not once. With his back to it, he ran as fast as his overweight body could take him, up the slope and out of what had been Cinema 9.

Chapter 14

Narey climbed out of her car onto Renfield Street and saw the old cinema looking like she’d never seen it before. Blue flashing lights threw shadows onto the grimy white walls and the tall windows, somehow looking apt on the 1930s design. It was the opening night for a horror movie.

Half the street had been blocked off to accommodate the two squad cars, two unmarked vehicles and the ambulance that would only be needed to take a body away. Uniformed cops stood guard in front of the crime scene tape while others helped direct the traffic chaos that they’d caused. Between them flitted white-suited ghosts who were waiting to carry out forensic duties.

There was some wire fencing round the exterior, more for show than a real attempt to keep anyone out. She noticed the sign on it as she passed. Development by Saturn Property. Premises Protected by Mullen Security. Neither protected nor secure, she thought.

She nodded at the cops on the tape and pushed past them with DC Becca Maxwell at her heels, ignoring the shouts from the journalists who wanted answers as to what was going on. Another officer pulled back the recently reopened front door and let them through. When it closed behind them, Narey allowed a solitary shiver to pass through her as she thought how much the old place felt like an indoor cemetery, quiet and cold. It might only have held a single recent corpse but it still held the presence of a thousand more.

A uniformed sergeant, a broad, dark-haired man in his mid-forties, looked up to see her and Maxwell approaching and dismissed one of his constables with a quiet word before stepping forward to meet them. He tipped his head in greeting, his eyes battle-weary. ‘DI Narey? I’m Jack McVean. What do you need to know?’

‘Well . . . who found the body for starters.’

‘Demolition man found it. Name of Jackie Doran. He’s over there.’

Narey followed his nod to see a balding man in his sixties sitting on his own and looking dazed. He was cradling a mug of something hot and probably wishing it was something stronger.

‘He was back in the building having a last look around before they got ready to bring the place down. Says he used to come here when he was a kid. Didn’t we all? I think he nearly crapped himself when he found the woman. He was pretty shook up, still is, but he phoned it in. Constables Dixon and Corry responded and they’ve interviewed him. The building’s been shut since 2006, stripped out years ago and nothing but rats been in since. Mr Doran says it was last checked out a couple of months ago and been locked up in between. They were about ready to push the button and demolish it.’

‘Yeah, I saw it on the news. Shame. Okay, let’s see the body then and obviously I’ll want to talk to Mr Doran and the constables.’

‘This way.’

McVean led her and Maxwell back into the building, through narrow corridors and plasterboard walls marked with painted numbers. She’d been here plenty of times but never quite like this. Her mum and dad had brought her at least once a month, packets of Munchies as a treat, the rare school-night visit if she was lucky. Then she’d been with various friends and boyfriends, fending off groping arms when it suited her. It was positively weird being in here now though.

They got deeper into the shell until they came to a single door in the far recess. McVean opened it and stepped back to let them through. The room banked steeply away in front of her to where a small scrum huddled together near the far wall, the whole tableau illuminated by temporary lighting which threw long shadows onto the walls. Campbell Baxter was there and she recognized Paul Burke as being one of the SOCOs under his white suit and mask.