‘Yes, but it will be late. I’m catching up with some pals I haven’t seen for a while.’

‘Okay, but make sure you catch up with me too. I have needs.’

She ended the call, breathed out hard and began to walk, leaving Laidlaw’s and her doubts behind.

Chapter 29

Winter slipped the phone back in his pocket with a heavy conscience and stared up at the tenement flat opposite him. At least he hadn’t lied, not quite.

Cordiner Street in Mount Florida was just a corner kick from the national football stadium, Hampden Park. It was a mix of sandstone tenements and neat newer bungalows. Number 13 was a tenement, two doors along from a nail bar.

It had never seemed right to Winter that Euan Hepburn would be homeless yet that was what he’d been presented with. Homeless and living in a hostel with drunks and addicts. Instead he’d been living here on the South Side for at least six months. It had been easy to track an address; no need to have asked Rachel and much less troublesome not to. But it was easy enough for him to have done it while Euan was alive.

There were eight surnames listed on the ground floor of the tenement and Hepburn was on the top floor of four. Winter pressed the intercom against the name just in case the sister had been contacted and had come to sort through his belongings. There was no answer. The name for the flat opposite was Nicol. That would do.

He pressed a couple of the other intercoms and, after a few moments, a man’s voice answered from the second floor. ‘Hello?’

‘I’ve got a parcel for Nicol. Could you let me in?’

There was a hesitation then a sigh. It wasn’t his problem. Why not?

The door buzzed and Winter pushed against it. He climbed the stairs quickly but quietly, turning his face away from 13e and hoping the neighbour wasn’t paying him any attention.

If Euan had been found dead in his flat then the place would have been secured by the police and there would have been next to no chance of Winter getting inside the building, never mind the flat. That wasn’t the case though and he was betting – hoping – that there had been no reason for them to think that someone would try to break in.

Of course the cops would have been through everything in the hope of finding out who had killed him but Winter had a better idea than they did of what to look for. Even if he didn’t have much idea of where to look for it.

They would have taken his PC or laptop away and would be going through his hard drive if they hadn’t already. He’d no idea what they’d find on there but he was aware that he was hoping it wouldn’t be much. For all that he wanted Euan’s killer to be caught, he wanted to do this.

Once he was on the top landing, he took out both a thin piece of plastic and the knowledge that his Uncle Danny had given him. In less than a minute, he was inside.

He closed the door behind him and stood in the near darkness for fully five minutes, waiting to hear if he’d drawn attention on the way in. Not that he could have done much in terms of getting away if he had. He’d locked himself in and if the cops came then the options were capture or a drop from the fourth-floor window.

Standing there in silence, his eyes adjusting to the dim light, he could feel Euan all around him. Nothing supernatural, not even a presence as such, just him. His things. His life. It felt intrusive because it was. He couldn’t help but see his former friend coming through that front door after an explore, making his way along the hallway to the rooms going off it. It made him more than uncomfortable.

Finally, he moved along the hall himself, picking the door at the far end and finding it to be the living room. Euan was everywhere. There was a framed Nirvana poster on one wall. Two shelves full of DVDs that were so him: early Steve Martin movies, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, a box set of The Thick of It and what looked like the entire collection of Bilko. Other than that there was just clutter, mainly clothes strewn about and a large pile of photographic magazines. This was Euan’s flat, no doubt about it.

A desk was pushed against one wall with a comfortable chair in front of it. Behind, there was a tangle of leads that made it clear that it was used as a computer desk. The printer was there but the computer, probably a laptop, was missing as expected.

He sat in the chair and reached out over the desk, imagining Euan doing the same. He ghost-typed, trying to get a feel for where Euan would have looked in the room, for where he would have put things. It was a mistake. All it did was let him feel the absence of his ex-friend, hear him talking and laughing. All it did was ramp up the guilt that he was already suffering.

He shook it off, trying to concentrate on what he’d come for. Information in whatever form he could get it but, above all, the one thing he knew would be able to help him. Euan’s camera.

There hadn’t been one in Euan’s backpack in the Molendinar but there was no doubt he’d have taken one with him. No chance he’d have made an explore like that without a lens. It stood to reason that whoever killed him took that camera, probably for his own protection. Maybe in case he showed up on it.

But if Winter knew Euan owned more than one and would have used a different camera depending on the shoot and his mood. So where was it? Had the cops taken it? Cordiner Street was a decent address but Euan was the cautious type, borderline paranoid even. Not with his own safety, far from it, but with his cameras, definitely. He’d have made sure they were secure, just in case. After all, anyone could break in.

There were no drawers in the desk but then that would have been too easy. Look. See what he would have seen. Think like him. Jesus, this was difficult. He could feel Euan all around him and it wasn’t helping him think straight.

He went through the cupboard that formed the bottom of an inset near the window with more hope than expectation. As expected, there were no cameras to be seen. He looked behind and below the worn leather sofa and found nothing. He moved the clothes on the floor and the magazines, he went back to the sofa and lifted the cushions, looked behind the curtains. Nothing.

There were no cameras under the only bed in the only bedroom, nor in the wardrobe or chest of drawers, nothing in the bathroom. The walk-in cupboard in the hall held a couple of bags and a suitcase plus more magazines. No cameras. Euan clearly hadn’t lived here for long and hadn’t had the time to accumulate much in the way of belongings. What there was had been easy to look through.

He went back to the living room, stung by the very definite sense that he’d missed something. He sat at the desk again and looked, channelling his friend as best he could. The magazines, the DVDs, the lack of much actual stuff. It was all so him.

The desk and the rest of the furniture looked old, maybe second-hand. The wooden mantelpiece over the fire looked original, maybe stripped back and re-varnished by someone who had the sense to see what it was. The fire had Victorian insets and a grate but there was no way it would be working: city by-laws prevented it. It was for show only.

A bell rang somewhere in his past, memories of a conversation in the darkness of a near-ruin on the edge of the Gorbals. He and Euan had crept inside the old Linen Bank building in the wee small hours. It was a dense maze of rubble and dust, cobwebbed spookiness and creaking floorboards. They explored every nook and cranny they could and Winter remembered Hepburn thrusting his hand up each room’s chimney. He’d asked what the hell his pal was doing and was told that if he’d been working in the building then that’s where he’d have hidden cash or bonds or whatever before they finally closed it down. Winter had laughed at him but now he wasn’t so sure.