He jumped off his chair and made for the fireplace at the far wall. Crouching in front of it, he placed one hand on the mantle and reached up the chimney with the other. Nothing. He groped right and left and then . . . there. There. His hand brushed against something solid that wasn’t brick. He leaned further in so he could twist his arm round, grabbed and pulled it out.

The camera was safe inside a bubble-wrap bag. Typical over-the-top caution from Euan. If only he’d taken half as much care of himself.

It was a Nikon D750 with a 24-120 millimetre telephoto zoom lens. Nearly two and a half thousand pounds worth of kit stuffed up a chimney. Only Euan.

With adrenalin coursing through him, he took the camera back to the desk, sat down, punched the on button and began flicking through the photographs on the memory card. The most recent was dated 14 September, less than a week before the date Euan was thought to have died.

It was a series of shots from Gartnavel Royal Hospital on Great Western Road, the old asylum that was known as the black building. Winter was sure he would have recognized the place inside anyway but an external shot, an opening scene-setter, gave that game away. Inside there were blistered walls in faded shades of pink and yellow, laden with graffiti. Steel piping lay across the floor, and an old fire hose, uncoiled. In the next, a table and chairs sat isolated in an empty room surrounded only by fallen plaster. In another, an old bath and sink stood lonely in a room that had otherwise been gutted. There was shot after shot of decay and neglect.

In one of them, a pale blue room with wooden-panelled walls and a dirty tiled floor, the light from above had reflected the photographer on the glass doors on the far wall. Except he wasn’t alone. Another figure stood by his side, a blurred silhouette standing with his or her arms on their hips. The camera flash had obliterated both heads but Winter had no doubt the photographer was Euan. Who the hell was he with?

Winter enlarged the reflected areas of the image as best he could but there was nothing more to be gained. The other person, surely a man from what he could see, wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and jeans but even a guess at build or height was distorted by the glass and the glare.

He scrolled quickly back through the images, over weeks, desperate to see what Euan had been working on and where he had been in the time leading up to his murder. He saw no other shadows, no other strangers. In a few seconds, he was back seven weeks to a series of dark and stark images. The Rosewood Hotel. He’d never doubted Rachel had been right about that but there was all the proof that was needed. Depressing, disturbing proof.

Men barely awake, barely alive, with sunken eyes, sharp cheekbones and discoloured skin. Rooms littered with bottles drained of booze. Close-ups of vomit and discarded needles. Bedsheets stained with God knows what. Men curled sleeping in corridors and on stairs. Men fighting each other. Feral faces that could have come from a Dickens novel or the siege of Paris.

The photographs were irresistible. Like a car crash or a public execution. Ghastly images of a descent into a hellish existence, men beyond care and way beyond caring for themselves. He and Euan had spent countless hours together in abandoned buildings but these were abandoned people, out of sight and out of mind just like the decaying places they’d taken such an interest in. No one gave a damn.

Except maybe Euan. He’d had put himself on the line to take these.

Winter forced himself to move on, flipping through the camera’s images, on past the shame of the Rosewood and back towards Gartnavel and the most recent pictures. There were a couple of external photographs of the City Mission and some pretty uninteresting shots of what looked like the inside of a Victorian primary school ready for demolition. Nothing that grabbed his attention.

Then, with the date showing just a week before the Gartnavel photos, came a series that stopped him like a brick wall. They were internal shots of a building that was all but empty. A series of steeply banked rooms and a warren of corridors. The flash showed walls that were blue and flaking, a sweeping arc of stairs, a labyrinth of little box rooms and the remains of a section of ornate decoration.

It was the Odeon. Winter’s heart jumped. It was the fucking Odeon.

‘Jesus, Euan. What the hell have you done?’

Chapter 30

A return to the Rosewood wouldn’t have been Narey’s first choice given the couple of days she’d had but choice wasn’t something that was in plentiful supply. Neither Doig nor Cochrane were working the front desk and the tall, skinny guy who was there didn’t put up much of a fight when she showed him her warrant card and said she was going upstairs. She was sure that he got on the phone to the owners as soon as her back was turned but she couldn’t care less about that.

She made her way up the stairs, dodging drunks and discarded bottles, stepping over vomit and doing her best not to breathe. A couple of residents took an interest but she pushed past them with a stare that made them think twice.

The TV room was in enough darkness for you not to be able to tell if it was noon or Norway but the set was glowing in the corner, showing just the sort of mindless daytime crap that these men didn’t need. In its reflection, she saw him sitting in a chair, his head slumped to one side and propped up on one arm.

The man looked a year older than he had the last time she’d seen him. He was emerging from the wrong side of a massive hangover and he wore the pain of it all over his face. His eyes were red and his skin blotchy and puffy. Drink had been taken and plenty of it.

He didn’t notice her until she was standing right over him. He raised his head sluggishly and took a moment to remember who she was. When he did, he also remembered his manners and tried to get out of his chair. She gently pressed him back into place with a hand on his shoulder.

‘How are you, Walter?’

He managed a feeble smile. ‘Not so great, to be honest with you, hen. All my ain fault but I’ve definitely felt better. My head’s in more bits than a Lego set. How’s yourself?’

‘I’m fine. Do you maybe fancy some fresh air?’

He looked around the room and took her meaning. Some things were better not overheard.

‘Fresh air might kill me or cure me but it’s a risk I take every day. Help an old man up, will you?’

She got him to his feet and together they shuffled out of the day room and slowly downstairs until they shrugged off the stink of the Rosewood and found themselves in the overcast gloom of a Glasgow afternoon. They walked and talked, his arm in hers, in the mutual pretence of him giving her support. It was the same unspoken deal she had with her dad.

‘Thanks for phoning me, Walter. It helped a lot.’ ‘Nae bother, hen. Had he been at the Mission right enough?’

‘He had, yes. They told him not to go anywhere near the Rosewood but he went anyway. And it turns out his name wasn’t Brian. It was Euan.’

‘Euan? I don’t understand. Why would he lie to me?’ ‘He wasn’t lying to you, Walter. He had his reasons, good reasons. But it wasn’t about lying to you.’ ‘Do you know what happened to the laddie?’ ‘Not yet. But I’ve got some other things I want to ask you that might help. I don’t want you to grass on anyone and I don’t want you to get into any bother with the others in the Rosewood. If you don’t want to then it’s fine.’