They turned to where the tech was sitting, fingers above the keyboard of the computer they’d moved from Garland’s cellar, and looking at a pop-up box which was open and flashing on the screen.
‘What’s that?’
‘A chat function. I took the chance of opening it and we have a visitor. They came on almost as soon as I opened it.’
Inside the chat box, the name of the caller was listed at the top. Matthew Marr. Below was his opening line.
Where the hell have you been, Ethan? It should be done by now. He should be dead.
They froze. Cops. Forensics. IT techs. None of them trusted their eyes to read it only once. It demanded to be checked.
He should be dead.
In the absence of a response, the screen flashed again.
Ethan?
Salgado motioned Geisler out of the chair and took his place. With a final look at O’Neill, he began typing.
I’m here.
The pause seemed huge but was probably no more than ten seconds. No one in the cellar dared breathe until they saw the icon shift and knew the person on the other end was typing. In a heartbeat, the reply appeared on the screen.
Goodbye.
CHAPTER 8
Sinky worked in the Blue Lagoon in Gordon Street, serving fish suppers to the masses. The chippy was right next to Central Station and within staggering distance of a hundred pubs and clubs, so the place was always rocking and likely queuing out the door any time after 11 p.m. at the weekend. And it was Glasgow, so the weekend ran four or five days long. Sure you had to deal with your share of bams, but most of them were civil enough. Even the junkies were polite.
Sinky’s superpower was knowing who was going to order a deep-fried Mars Bar with chips. He could spot them a mile off. First off, chances are they were tourists. Hear an English accent in the queue and it was a good bet they’d be eying up the DFMB. Liverpudlians were the worst for it. You’d see them nudging their mates – Go on, dare you.
Chip shop hours weren’t exactly nine to five, even in Glasgow, so when he got the chance of a night off, he grabbed it. Most free nights he’d head out for a few beers with his best mate Titch, and then anything could happen. Titch was the kind of guy that could get Mother Teresa into trouble. As long as she’d had a few pints of Best.
So it was that they were walking in Springburn at half one in the morning. They’d got a taxi from town and Titch had insisted the driver dropped them a quarter of a mile from where they going. Just in case.
Titch wasn’t small. He was a good six foot, but his first name was Richard so it was the law that he be called Titch. He was a student. Sort of. He was doing a course in social sciences at Glasgow Caley. Sort of. He’d dropped in and out and was always spinning them some line as to why he had to defer another year before he picked it up again. He was a year shy of thirty now and still going strong with the studying. Sinky had never quite worked out what social sciences actually was and he couldn’t ask anymore.
Titch was the one that was always coming up with plans for them. Sinky figured it was because he had plenty of time on his hands to do it. So it was this night. Titch had been reading on some forum about how the old Highland Fling pub on Cowlairs Road was haunted. The bar had been abandoned for years and was supposed to be in a hell of a mess inside but, of course, Titch being Titch, he was dismissive of any suggestion of spirits other than whisky, vodka or rum.
If Sinky’s superpower was detecting potential purchasers of deep-fried confectionery, Titch’s was pubs. He quite literally knew them inside out, including knowledge passed on lovingly by his dad and grandad, and his mission this night was to prove that the Highland Fling was haunted by nothing more than neglect.
‘Ghosts my arse,’ he said for the umpteenth time as they staggered up Millarbank Street. ‘Some wee neds fucking about maybe. But ghosts my arse. We’re going to see some genuine Glasgow history, Sinky. And we’re going to prove that shitehawk on the forum is talking through his hole.’
Sinky had given up arguing. When Titch was on one it was best just to let him get on with it. Anyway, Sinky was rubbered.
‘My granda says the old Highland Fling was a great night out. Live music all weekend. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. There was a house band but the talent was the locals. Sandie Shaw impersonators. Maurice Chevalier too, whoever he was, and some guy called Wee George who could do every hit of the day in a Donald Duck voice. Can’t buy that stuff, Sinky.’
Sinky nodded even though Titch wasn’t looking.
‘My da was in the Fling one morning, seven o’clock it was. Cops had been tipped off it had been opened to serve booze to boys over from Ireland for the Walk. Lifted gey near the whole pub. Never got to court though. Half the Springburn polis were in there having a bevvy with the boys so they had to let them all go.’
They neared the corner of Cowlairs Road, a glazier’s on their left, and Titch saw what they were looking for. ‘There you go, wee man. The Highland Fling. Or what’s left of it.’
All Sinky saw was a whitewashed wall and a boarded-up window, a shutter down over the door and a red sign above that had faded to a poorly pink. They turned the corner and saw the whitewash, not so white anymore, stretch fifty yards down the street. It was a single-storey concrete block with little in the way of windows, a sure sign of a pub to be avoided, according to Sinky’s dad. Above the wash, in white lettering on red, you could just about make out the words ‘The Highland Fling’. As long as you knew what they were.
‘Mon, wee man. We go in here.’
The opening was just about wide enough to let one of them walk through at a time. Neither it or the thought of what was inside made Sinky feel very good about the adventure. Titch, on the other hand, was full of lager and vodka and had the confidence of a social scientist.
He led the way and Sinky followed. They put on the torches on their phones and picked their way across broken glass and strewn rubbish: chair legs and crates, ashtrays and coils of wiring. The light picked out a pool table with a strange white crust that turned out to be fallen plaster. It was an island in an ocean of plastic tumblers, beer cans, empty bottles and carrier bags.
‘Wee vandal bastards,’ Titch complained.
They moved into another room, one ringed with a sweeping arc of leather seating that hugged the wall. It, like everything else in the abandoned Highland Fling, had seen better days. It might have been dark green or black under the dirt. If Sinky didn’t know better he’d have sworn it was covered in pigeon shit. The smell suggested he didn’t know better.
There were chunks out of the walls and furniture trashed for the fun of it. Graffiti named the culprits but they’d never face justice. The old pub looked like a bomb had gone off.
They were looking round the room seeing torn leather, cracked and blackened mirrors, all under the thin stream of mobile phone light. From the corner of the room, or maybe somewhere beyond, Sinky heard a scurry that confirmed his worst fears. He stepped to the side and a polystyrene cup cracked under his foot, sending the sound round the room and his pulse rate soaring.
‘The ghost,’ Titch made exaggerated bunny ears with his fingers, ‘was supposedly seen in the cellar. So that’s where we’re going, my man.’
Great, Sinky thought. What could possibly go wrong, tripping around in the dark in a shithole like this?