Chapter 45

Even from the other side of Stanley Street, in the industrial warren of Kinning Park, Winter could hear traffic roaring by on the M8. Only the ruins of the biscuit factory stood between him and fifteen lanes of motorway. It felt strange, the silence of redundancy all around him in complete contrast to what was beyond the building.

He knew a bit about the place even though he’d never been inside. There had been a biscuit factory on this site since the mid-1800s. It was eventually taken over by Rowntree’s and they churned out millions of Blue Ribands, caramel wafers and custard creams until the company went bust in 2001. The place had been shut since then and he’d heard it was in a sorry state. He’d soon find out.

He’d taken the subway to Kinning Park and made his way through the industrial estate on foot. There were one or two people about but he kept his head down and avoided eye contact with anyone. Ten minutes later, he could see the motorway elevated on the horizon and a big building on his left. A succession of arched windows on the ground floor were boarded up and the frontage was fenced off. Danger Keep Out, read the sign on the fencing. Sure thing. He lifted, moved, breathed in and squeezed through.

He was inside and half an hour early. He wanted to scout the building out, maybe find a good place to stand where he could watch Remy come in. See before he was seen.

Immediately, he saw that was going to be easier said than done. The factory was enormous, six storeys high, a desolate labyrinth of a place that would have made a good set for a post-apocalyptic movie. It was graffiti central too. Every wall seemed to have been scrawled over with names or drawings. It was a huge, tangled mess.

He found himself standing in a central courtyard area with the building rising high above and around him on three sides; a one-storey building behind him let the rush-hour sounds of the motorway flood in. It was like standing in the worst council housing estate imaginable; somewhere no cop would be crazy enough to come no matter how much trouble was reported. Rubbish and rubble were strewn everywhere, so much so that he could hardly find a spot to stand. There was brick and concrete, broken chairs, twisted metal frames and discarded trolleys. Above him in the darkness, the building glowered down like it was ready to eat him.

Daylight had slipped away but he could still see that almost all the windows on the floors above had been smashed. An army of people could have been standing behind the broken panes and he’d have been none the wiser. He felt small and vulnerable standing down there. He needed to get up higher and out of sight.

The concrete stairs corkscrewed up, past flaking walls painted in battleship grey. He got off on the first level and wandered into a vast, cavernous room with bare concrete floors, a forest of support pillars as far as the eye could see. The floor was damp and cracked in places and nothing seemed particularly safe.

The ceiling felt low even though it wasn’t, dirty white-painted girders over his head squeezing down on him and reducing the feeling of space. He followed the beam of his torch as the room stretched on forever, dotted with empty aerosol cans, broken glass and pieces of wood. He came across an old wooden writing desk and he counted three large Avery weighing machines, two of them tipped onto their sides.

Finally, the level came to an end and he climbed once more, skipping the second floor and making for the top. On the way up, he passed a couple of open lift shafts and couldn’t help but stare down into the gloom. The brick walls dropped straight down away from him, rusting metal rungs descending to the bottom.

The top floor was the same dark concrete that had presumably once been covered in linoleum or carpet. Now cabling snaked across it and loose stones made an untidy line down the middle. Girders ran above his head here too but there was no ceiling and the room rose up past them to the underside of the roof. Further on, a white computer workstation and chair sat isolated in the middle of the room, a monitor perched precariously on the top shelf.

He turned a corner and picked his way through a minefield of half-bricks, his way barely lit by his torch. Stepping in water, he stopped and strobed the area in front of him and saw it was flooded, dotted with discarded metal and planks of wood. He shone the beam on the wall ahead and stepped back. What the hell?

Inching warily forward into the puddle, he cast his torch across the wall and a vicious alien face with sharp teeth appeared out of the gloom. It had large green eyes, pointed ears, dark green scaly skin and drooling jaws. As graffiti went, it was pretty scary in the dark. Scarier than he needed right now.

He moved away from it, eager to get onto the roof and find himself a viewing spot. He breathed what he realized was a sigh of relief when he got into the open air again and stood facing out with his back flat to the wall, the brick shrouding him in darkness and the M8 in front of him. It was stirring to see so many cars rush past, so near and yet no one aware that he was there.

A long-forgotten feeling came back to him. The notion that if he was still enough for long enough then he could become part of the structure. Building and bones and bricks and blood. The factory was part of the city and so was he. It wasn’t easy to separate the people from the place.

It was like the thundering motorway before him. It ran through the city like an artery, pulsing night and day, cutting east to west on the northern fringes then plunging south like a dagger into its heart. The motorway was a stranger to the old factory, a stranger it saw every day. That’s the way it was when a city constantly reinvented itself without moral planning permission.

He shook himself out of it and stepped away from the wall, walking round until he could look down from the roof into the central courtyard. It was pitch black and he couldn’t see the ground below, reluctant to use his torch for fear of giving himself away just yet.

Was that something or someone moving down there? A darker shadow from the left corner. It was under the eaves now and he couldn’t be sure what he’d seen. There was a crash of metal and the noise made him jump. He stood still and listened but could hear nothing.

Another crash. Like metal being thrown onto the concrete. Or the other way round. It was harsh and reverberated through the darkness, even cutting through the noise from the M8. This noise was further to the right, near the stairs. And closer. Then another noise, quieter but way to the left. Two people? Or one moving very quickly?

Suddenly, it all seemed like a bad idea. He didn’t even know where exactly in the vast building he was going to meet Remy, even if he was really sure that’s who the message had come from. Shit, this was stupid. The building seemed even more claustrophobic than it was just a few moments before. He had to make a decision, to stay or go.

There were more noises below, more movement. Maybe the decision was being taken out of his hands. He just had to calm the fuck down. This was what he was here for, to meet the guy and get the information he needed.

Someone screamed. A floor or two below. It stopped almost as soon as it had started. He couldn’t be sure but . . . there it was again. Longer this time. The sound cut through the night like a samurai sword.

Decision made. He was going back down there. He was shaking, balling his left hand into a fist as he walked, the torch in his right. Breathing fast, almost as fast as his heart was pumping. He began down the stairs warily, no idea what was round the next bend, his left leg leading the way but ready to brace and either fight or flee.

There was another noise. Something heavy crashing. It sounded like . . . his mind told him it was like a body hitting a concrete floor but then that wasn’t a noise he’d ever heard before. He reached the second floor and passed one of the open lift shafts. He’d gone a full pace beyond the shaft when an inner voice told him to go back and look in it. Cursing himself, he turned.