course, flakes had been falling heavily until about two hours ago, so this didn’t necessarily mean that no one had been here during the night.
They entered side-by-side, torchlight spearing ahead, and were immediately faced by three options: directly in front, a switchback stair ascended into opaque blackness; on the right, a passage led off down a long gallery zebra-striped by smudges of light intruding through the ground level windows; on the left lay a wide open area, presumably one of the old workshops. They ventured this way first, their torch-beams crisscrossing, revealing bare brick walls and a high plaster ceiling, much of which had rotted, exposing bone-like girders. Shredded cables hung like jungle creeper. The asphalt floor was scattered with planks and fragments of tiles. Here and there, the corroded stubs of machine fittings jutted dangerously upward. Despite the intense cold, there was a sour taint to the air, like mildew. The scuffling of their feet echoed through the vast building’s distant reaches.
They halted to listen, hearing nothing.
‘This is a wild goose chase,’ Ernshaw finally said, his words smoking. ‘You realise that, don’t you?’
‘Probably,’ Rodwell replied, shining his torch into every corner. From the moment they’d received the call, Rodwell had seemed a little graver of purpose than usual, which was intriguing to Ernshaw. Keith Rodwell had been a copper for so long that he generally sized situations up instinctually. The way he was behaving now suggested that he genuinely believed something untoward was going on here.
‘Okay, I give up,’ Ernshaw said. ‘What do you think we’re going to find?’
‘Keep it down. Even if this is someone taking the piss, let’s catch ’em at it.’
‘Keith … it’s Christmas morning. Why would someone …’
‘Shhh!’
But Ernshaw had also just heard the long, low creak from overhead. They regarded each other in the gloom, ears pricked.
‘Take the front stair,’ Rodwell said quietly, edging across the workshop. ‘I’ll go around the back … see if I can find another way up.’
Ernshaw retreated to the door they’d come in through. He glanced at the van out in the yard; as before, there was no sign of movement. He started to ascend, attempting to do it stealthily though his footsteps rang up the stairwell ahead of him. The first floor he came to comprised another huge workshop. Not all the windows up here were boarded, though their glass was so grimy that only a paltry winter light filtered through. Even so, it was enough to hint at an immense hangar-like space ranging far across the building, filled with stacked crates and workbenches, forested by steel pillars.
Ernshaw hesitated, gripping the hilt of his baton. This time last year he’d been an innocent young student at the University of Hull, so he had no trouble admitting to himself that, while it was bad enough being made to work on Christmas Day – only the older, married guys tended to be spared that pain-in-the-arse duty – it was even worse having to spend it trawling through the guts of an eerie, frozen ruin like this.
A loud crackle from his radio made him jump.
The voice of Comms boomed out as it dispatched messages to patrols elsewhere on the subdivision. Irritated, he turned the volume down.
Ernshaw advanced as his eyes adjusted to the half-light. Directly ahead, about forty yards away, a doorway opened into what looked like an antechamber. For some reason, the rear brick wall of that chamber was lit by a greenish glow.
Green?
A coloured candle, maybe? A paper lantern?
Ernshaw halted as a figure flitted past the doorway on the other side.
‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. Then louder: ‘Hey!’
He dashed forward, with baton drawn and angled across his shoulder.
When he entered the chamber, nobody was there, but he saw that the odd-coloured light had been caused by a sheet of mouldy green canvas fastened over a window. A stairway – an indoor fire-escape, all rust and riveted steel – dropped down through a trapdoor; while a secondary stair rose up to the next level, though this was very narrow, scarcely broad enough for an average-sized man to climb it without turning sideways. He peered up, spying a ray of feeble daylight at the top. When he listened, he heard nothing, though it wasn’t difficult to imagine that someone was lurking up there, listening back.
‘Alan?’ someone asked.
Half-shouting, Ernshaw spun around.
Rodwell gazed at him from the trapdoor, in particular at his drawn baton.
‘Have you …?’ Ernshaw glanced back up the stair, listening intently. ‘Have you been up here once? I mean, have you been up already and gone back down for any reason?’ Rodwell shook his head as he rose fully into view. ‘Thought I saw someone, but …’ The more Ernshaw considered it, the less substantial that ‘figure’ seemed. A shadow maybe, cast by his torch? ‘Could’ve been mistaken, I suppose …’
Rodwell also glanced up the next stair. Without speaking, he ascended it, just about able to slide his big body between its encroaching walls.
Ernshaw followed, discomforted by the tightness of the passage. The floor at the top of this had been partitioned into small rooms and connecting corridors. Even fewer of the windows on this level were boarded, but there were less of them, so a sepulchral gloom pervaded.
Before they commenced exploring, Rodwell lifted a dust-caked Venetian blind and peered down into the yard below. It had occurred to them both, somewhat belatedly, that if this was some daft but elaborate ruse to create a diversion by which to steal a police vehicle, they’d be left with an omelette-sized egg on their faces. However, the van sat unmolested; the snow around it unmarked. From this height, they could see further afield into adjacent streets, or what remained of them. Most of the rows of terraced housing on the south side of Kemp’s Mill had been demolished, but even with the recent snowfall, the parallel outlines of their old foundations were still visible.
There was no sign of anyone around. The nearest habitations were two blocks of 1970s flats about three hundred yards away, beyond a mountain of snow-covered scrap; only one or two lights – the garish neon of Christmas decorations – twinkled from their windows.
‘2376 from Three?’ the voice of Comms crackled from Rodwell’s radio.
‘Go ahead,’ he said, dropping the blind back into place.
‘Anything from Franklyn Road yet?’
‘No offences revealed at this stage. Still searching, over.’
‘Message from Sergeant Roebuck, Keith. Don’t waste too much time there. If it’s just some kids messing around, leave it. There are other jobs piling up.’
‘Roger, received.’
‘That it, then?’ Ernshaw asked hopefully.
‘No,’ Rodwell replied.
They ventured along a central passage, peeking around the first door they came to, seeing what had presumably once been an office. In the middle of it, weak daylight illuminated a single filing cabinet from which a ton of paperwork had overflowed. Ernshaw entered, scooping
