Storey shrank. ‘No, sir. Understood, sir.’

‘Good. I trust the rest of you are in the same position. Eyes front, shut up and listen.’

She looked at Crosby and gave him a small, grateful nod of the head and carried on. Even as she did so, she knew his intervention was a mixed blessing. All well and good as long as she was right and some more rope to hang by if she wasn’t.

She took them through Cairns, Hepburn and Feeks, point by point. She went through everything they knew about the locations, the motives and the photographs. Almost everything.

Since the meeting had broken up, she’d gone back to basics herself. She went over it all in her head, brainstorming and questioning every decision she’d made, making a list of names and scribbling notes against each.

She had already been through Winter’s muddled set of notes twice. She’d read each name and nickname from the Botanics and the forum, looked at the photographs and checked out the website again. She’d made a new list, scoring names out, adding them back in again. She’d searched everything available to try to ascertain just who these people were.

There was too much she didn’t know. Did they have one account on this bloody website or two? How could she be sure of their movements at any given time when they could say they were crawling around in some old school or exploring a tunnel somewhere under the city?

She was sure she had a handle on many of the forum user names. Euan Hepburn was CardboardCowboy, Remy Feeks had been Magellan93 and Tony – bloody Tony – was Metinides. Others – PencilPusher, NightLight, Gopher, Spook, Astronut, Vixxxen and Crow – she was able to tick off thanks to the Botanics trip, assuming anyone was telling the truth about who they were. She didn’t know who JohnDivney was but desperately wanted to. He, or possibly she, had interacted with Hepburn just before he was murdered. Narey’s nose was bothered each time she looked at the name.

There was also a strong possibility that the person she was looking for wasn’t among those names at all. She knew why Hepburn and Feeks had been in a recognized urbexing site when they were killed but Narey just couldn’t picture Jennifer Cairns making a habit of breaking nails or getting covered in cobwebs. Much more likely that someone had taken her there. What about her husband? Could Douglas Cairns have been one of these people? There were far too many questions and not enough answers.

She’d secreted herself away in a small, underused office in the depths of the station seeking some peace in which to think. She had only one small lamp switched on over the desk in the hope that no one would realize she was there.

She’d uploaded the photographs from the Botanics to her iPad and sighed at the prospect of going over them a third time. If there had been some magic button, some glamorous short cut, then she’d have pressed it or taken it long before then.

Tony had taken a bunch of scene-setting photos, graffiti on walls, rubbish and foliage where the old track had been, huge girders overhead, moonlight and the odd spot of rain making their way through the ventilation shafts from the park above. Then, increasingly, people appeared in the shots. They were there in ones and twos, occasionally in larger numbers, but always seemingly unaware that they were being photographed.

There weren’t many of these, which was frustrating but understandable. Too much of it and Tony would have become obvious. They would have had to wonder about this guy in their midst who was intent on recording them all.

Remy Feeks was seen staring at the group, his eyes keen but his body language tight and nervy. His friend Gabby was there, a little blonde bundle of energy, flitting from one person to another. The tall, athletic-looking guy who Tony had said was Finlay Miller, Astronut, was frequently by Gabby’s side. Some of them were photographed while they were using their own cameras. He watching them watching him.

He hadn’t managed to get all the group into clear shots but there was something of each of them even if they were partially obscured by the others or seen from behind. She worked her way through them, ticking them off, mentally trying to stitch together the various angles and half-images that there were.

Wait.

She had to look again. There. Half-hidden behind one of the others. And there. Just turning away from the camera. And there. Just half a face but enough. Was it? If it was, then a few things would make sense, pieces of the puzzle would slot into place. Don’t do wishful thinking, she told herself, wait and see.

She enlarged the photographs as much as she could but lost the focus and had to step away from them again. There, that was the best she was going to get. And it was good enough.

Without taking her eyes off the screen, she picked up the phone.

Chapter 53

Sunday evening

Winter sat staring at his laptop for an age, his fingers almost arthritic, tight with anger. The last time he’d sat looking at this screen, this very site, it had ended with Remy Feeks dying - no, not dying, being murdered - while he was just yards away. He knew he was boiling up a seething, simmering rage but he couldn’t put a stop to it even if he’d wanted to.

There was a thing called survivor guilt. He’d once lived next door to a guy named Colin Hurst who was a passenger in a car crash. Colin and a colleague carshared to get to work and this day it was the other man’s turn. The guy’s Mazda was mown down by a lorry that had lost control. Colin suffered broken ribs and whiplash. The driver was crushed to death by his side. Inches more and Colin would have joined him. Not in any way his fault but he didn’t drive for over two years, which was probably just as well as he hit the bottle hard. He became anxious, depressed and guilty. He didn’t like himself much and seemingly set out to make sure other people didn’t like him either. It was no way to live your life.

The driver hadn’t deserved what happened to him but neither had Colin Hurst. Neither had Remy Feeks nor Euan Hepburn. It wasn’t about whether you deserved it. It was about how you dealt with it.

The home page of OtherWorld stared back, daring him, telling him to just do it, to go for it.

There was a series of photographs at the top of the page which switched every thirty seconds or so, each one calling out to him, challenging him. They reached into that central core that made all explores irresistible to those with the bug. Each one screamed climb me, enter me, photograph me, save me for posterity.

The longer he looked at the page, the more common sense crumbled. He knew what he was proposing to do was a very bad idea but he also knew that he was going to give in to it. The voice of reason, the conscience sitting on his shoulder, was there on the orders of Rachel. It chirped away at him, telling him to keep safe, to leave it to the cops, to hide nothing from her, to do nothing that would threaten what they had together. However, the other voice came from deep inside him. It told him to remember Euan and Remy.

There was no contest. Bad idea it definitely was but he was going to do it anyway.

He played with the wording, changing it and deleting it, making sure he got it just right. He had to get the response he wanted. The message had to spook him, challenge him, flush him out once and for all.

I have Hepburn’s photographs. They show you and your friend going into the Odeon on the day she died. I think the police would be interested in those. Don’t you?