The Keeper of the Gate Page 3

  I found the first corpse seconds later.

  We are inured against death by our merit procedures. That, and the walk to the chamber when our time has come, means I have lived my whole life in the warren without seeing a dead person.

  It is not pretty.

  Pieces of dried skin hung in flaps from white bone. I was so appalled that it took me seconds to spot the important fact. The dead man had not been wearing a suit. He had died while there was still an atmosphere in the cave system.

  Not being an expert, I had no way of telling how long ago that might have been, but judging by the decomposition of the clothing, I guessed that many years had passed.

  I kept going, but I was no longer convinced I would meet anyone yet alive.

  The corridor opened into a wider chamber, an eating area of sorts.

  Bodies lay strewn everywhere, lying on mounds or pairs. Skeletal arms were wrapped around broken necks, skulls showed signs of having been bashed in against tabled and floor. They had all killed each other in a frenzied melee.

  As I bent to inspect the closest, I saw the cause.

  The darkness danced in their eye-sockets, a deeper shadow. It was full of stars where the sky had fallen in and got them.

  The more I looked, the more I saw it; there in the shadow where a body hung over an overturned chair, there in the corner under the food processors, but mostly in the eyes, dancing and twinkling, mocking my horror.

  I stumbled past more bodies than I could count, searching for a reason, an answer as to what had happened. The empty eyes followed me everywhere I went. There was a door opposite me, and I went through, hoping for some small escape from the terror.

  I recognised where I was. The corridor structure almost exactly mirrored the structure of the warren here. Indeed, I began to fear for my sanity, thinking I had inadvertently returned home to find you all dead, all taken. There were no bodies in this part of the system, just long empty corridors, but that somehow only made matters worse.

  I went deeper.

  Although I was still safe inside the suit, the air seemed somehow thicker here, more oppressive; a faint trace of blue mist hanging in the air. If I were home, I knew I would be approaching the bionic plant. Despite the terrors of the eating area above, I was almost eager to visit the working parts of the site, as there may even be something salvageable there, something that would further prolong our own time here in the warren.

  I descended a stairwell and walked out into their bionics plant.

  Scores of pairs of eyes turned and looked at me, reflecting like twinkling stars in my helmet light.

  They had once been human, that much was obvious. What was equally obvious was that they had not been so for some time. The skin was pale, almost translucent, their eyes large, like saucers in heads too small to hold them. They scrambled, on all fours, amid a pile of slurry that seemed thicker in places.

  I gagged when I saw the first rib cage, the first thighbone.

  They started to crawl towards me, piteously mewling like hungry kittens. Stars danced in their eyes.

  I fled.

  I will not tell of my flight from that place, save to say that I have deleted the co-ordinates from the systems. If you want the ore, you will have to send out another flyer.

  But I would advise against it, for the darkness will come back with them. The sky will fall, and your eyes will fill with stars. The darkness will get inside, and it will consume you, as it did to those poor things in the bionics lab… as it has started to do to me.

  It is vast, it is empty, and it does not care.

  It just does not care.

  Eeny Meeny Miney Mi-Go

  A MIDNIGHT EYE FILE

  I wasn't even looking for a case that night. I had my favorite seat in a back booth at the Bon-Accord, and I was working my way along the taps of their new ale arrivals. I do some of my best work when I’m drunk… and some of my worst. The trick is to know which is which.

  The night the trouble started I scarcely knew my arse from my elbow. My on-again, off-again, relationship with Liz was currently off, Doug was away at a conference on medieval middens somewhere in Germany and I had money to burn… or rather, to drink. I arrived in the pub at lunchtime, and didn’t intend leaving until I had to. Davie at the bar kept anyone who looked like they wanted to talk away from me, and I drank, whisky chased down with beer and smoke. As my auld ma would say, I was scunnered and crabbit – no fit company for man or beast.

  Beer helped. Beer always helps, if you have enough of it. I hadn’t had enough of it yet, but I was working on it.

  Some time in the late evening I became aware that there was a man I didn’t know sitting across the table from me. He looked thin, to the point of emaciation, and intense, with a stare that told me he didn't like to be crossed. Everything about him from the set of his mouth to the cut of his suit looked too tight – prissy, to use another of my auld ma's words. He had a half-pint glass of beer in front of him, which was enough to tell me he wasn’t a local. And he drank like an amateur, with small, careful sips, wiping the froth fastidiously from his lips each time. I already didn’t like him, and he hadn’t even spoken yet.

  "Mr. Adams," he said. There was an accent there, for sure, but I couldn’t quite place it. "I have a proposition for you. I have no problem with money, and I have plenty of it that could see its way into your wallet… if you are interested?"

  It had taken me long enough, but I started to pay attention. I didn’t stop drinking though, so perhaps my attentiveness wasn’t all that it should have been. I only found that out later, of course. That first evening, the story had sounded plausible enough. I ordered another beer and let him talk.

  "I need you to find me a man," he started.

  "You’re in the wrong bar for that," I said. "Although there’s a few down in the Town Center…"

  He didn’t seem to mind my interruption, but went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  "My son has gone missing," he said.

  That told me a lot more than he thought. He didn’t want the police involved, so something wasn’t quite kosher… and he’d come looking for me in particular, so it was probably something funky. My reputation was getting around. It kept me in work, but I was starting to yearn for the days when the strangest thing I encountered was a cat in a coat or a husband in his wife’s underwear.

  I had missed a bit while ruminating and forced myself to pay attention.

  "He was last seen outside the house last night," he said. "And I need him back, urgently. There is a certain time constraint in play here. If I do not have him back in forty-eight hours, then you don't get paid. If you are willing to undertake a promise to return him to me on time, I am willing to promise you five thousand pounds on delivery."

  The rest was unspoken.

  No delivery, no payment.

  I’d read that much in his eyes. I don’t usually work that way. Then again, I don’t usually earn five grand for a couple of days work either.

  "This isn't a kidnap case is it? Because that's the cops domain, not mine,"

  He shook his head.

  "As far as I know, the boy has taken it into his head to go walkabout," he said. "And at the most inopportune moment imaginable. I merely want him back home, no questions asked. Now, do you want the five grand or not?"

  I nodded, and put out a hand to be shaken. He looked at it as if it was a small naughty dog.

  "I don’t do physical contact," he said, primly.

  "I’d guessed that already," I replied, but the innuendo went straight past him without stopping. "Tell me about the boy."

  He took another small sip from his beer. I was near the bottom of mine, but he’d barely supped half an inch from his. I considered offering him another, but old age might get me before he got round to finishing it. Then, for the first time in our chat, he showed some animation as he talked of his son; his eyes lit with fervor, and something that looked too close to fanaticism for my liking.

  "Andrew is my son and h
eir, what else do you need to know? He's five ten, twenty five, big built, and strong."

  "Any distinguishing marks?"

  He rolled up a sleeve and showed me a tattoo, a golden-yellow squiggle on the inside of his wrist; it could be anything, from a snake inside a circle, to a kid's impression of a squinting eye. But it would be recognizable enough.

  "Andrew has one of these, exactly the same, in the same spot."

  I got a tickle, the feeling I wasn't getting details that I was going to need. That is the moment when I should have walked away. I can see that now, looking back on it. But a combination of booze and the thought of making an easy five grand had me bewitched. I just sat there as he described some peculiarities that would ensure I would recognize the boy when I found him.

  I ordered another beer for myself, he passed me a business card, nodded briskly, and left.

  Professor E. Penderton, and a Glasgow phone number. I turned it over. There was no address. I considered following him to check him out, but I couldn’t trust myself to be discreet with so much booze in me. I concentrated instead on my beer.

  At some point later I staggered home and fell asleep.

  I didn't dream.

  My first port of call in the morning was Old Joe downstairs in the newsagents. He passed me two packs of Marlboro Reds and I asked him about the Prof.

  "I ken the man you mean," the old man said, swaying from side to side as he spoke as if balancing his weight equally on his feet. "Some kind of physicist I think; stars and planets, sky stuff like that."

  "Sky stuff, eh? Sounds technical."

  Joe laughed.

  "You ken me, lad. Football, bookies and lines of credit I can handle, but hard sums is another matter. But if it is the man I'm thinking of, he's got a house out Balloch way, and one of yon big telescopes in his garden. I only ken because I ken a man who kens the man who built the observatory for him."

  Joe knows a lot of men who know a lot of other men, but he couldn't help me with Penderton's son. He smiled as I had to move aside to let a customer approach the counter.

  "Sorry, Derek; I just ken about the sky stuff."

  Over a smoke and a coffee I spent some time at my laptop upstairs. There weren't many Andrew Pendertons in Glasgow, and only two with current phone numbers. When I dialed the first I got a retired Govan brickie who was very chatty, and more than a bit sad; I liked him, but I liked the idea of five grand better, so didn't rise to the bait of his attempts to get into a conversation. The second number rang out to voicemail but I didn’t leave a message; I prefer legwork when I can get it, it brings me into closer contact with places I can buy a drink. My reverse look-up app gave me an address in the West End only a mile or so from my office, it wasn't raining, and I was developing a thirst, so I headed out and up Hyndland Road in search of adventure. Admittedly, there's normally not a great deal of that to be found at the top of Partickhill Avenue, and that morning was no exception.

  The streets were quiet, it being both a work and school day. I was heading for number 23, and the only other person on the road was an elderly lady, out on her doorstep throwing lumps of bread at a flock of squalling pigeons, seagulls and crows as if she was trying to hit them with it.

  "Give one a skelp for me," I shouted as I walked past.

  "Go fuck yourself," was her measured response, and one that set the tone for much of what followed that day.

  Number 23 sat back a bit from the street, almost hidden in shadows cast by the taller red sandstone buildings around it. It was a typical example of an older Glasgow tenement, spruced up just enough to be rented out to students more worried about cost than comfort. There wasn't a front door; an open, tile-lined close led into a cold drafty hallway. They had one of those old things by the side where you could press a button to check if the person was in, but it hung halfway off the wall, loose wires showing. I'd have had better luck in standing in the street and shouting, but I wasn't in the mood for a grand entrance.

  I went into the hall and started climbing the dark staircase up to flat six in search of Andrew Penderton, who had used the address when registering his phone some four months previously. The place reminded me far too closely of my own student digs. They were spent in a flat much like this, less than two miles from the spot; too hot in summer, too cold in winter, too damp the rest of the year, and always smelling faintly of stale beer, fried food and pish. It carried far too many memories for one staircase. Nobody answered at my knock on the door of number six, and I wasn't all that disappointed, for I could imagine what might lie on the other side – more memories I didn't need to have surfacing. I was about to turn away and head for the first beer of the day when the door of number five opened at my back.

  "I don't what you're selling, mister, but there's naebody here as will buy it."

  I fixed on my best smile before turning to face her; a wizened old woman, bent with age and arthritis, with a face like old leather and eyes as blue and clear as sapphires.

  "You're not selling anything, are you?" she said, looking me up and down and immediately gauging the cost of my suit and finding it wanting. "What are you? Polis? They should pay you enough to get a better jacket."

  "No, not Polis," I said. "I’m looking for the Penderton boy – his faither is worried for him."

  "That'll be a first," the old lady said, cackled like a crone, and did something disgusting with her top set of false teeth, sliding them in and out as if they were an extra, hard, tongue.

  "You know the boy?"

  "I know them all, son. I'm like their auld grannie; they all come to me with their problems, but mainly I think they just like my biscuits. Would you like a cup of tea? There's nobody in across there; I think they're all down at the Uni or over in The Rock playing pool."

  "The Rock? They drink in there?"

  "They spend most of there time in there; I don't know when they get time to study. Tea?"

  Just another lonely soul, desperate for a voice, any voice, to fill the empty spaces in front of the fireplace. Normally I'd have gone in – old Scottish women always have great biscuits and fancies, it’s a law I think. But the five grand wasn't going to wait.

  "I'll take a rain-check," I said. "But if I don't find the lad by tea time I'll be back."

  "You'll not find him here after dark either," she replied as she backed away, leaving me one last look at her falsers sliding in and out. "They're off down to yon big old church in Duke Street tonight for a party."

  The Rock bar on Hyndland Road has changed hands more often than an inveterate wanker over the years. Every so often a new owner upgrades the décor in the hope of getting a better class of clientele. But no matter what the management do, the same locals and each new generation of students just keep coming, meeting in the bar and over the tables in a shared love of beer, card games and pool. The older locals make enough money off the young students' naivete, and the students go away happy thinking they've got an authentic slice of Glasgow life. Things hadn't changed since I'd been one of those students, more years ago now than I care to remember.

  Now I was one of the locals. Gerry at the bar was pouring my pint while I was still walking across the floor towards him.

  "A wee Goldie to go with that?" he asked, and motioned at the whisky optics.

  "Nah, I'm working," I replied. "Save me one for later."

  "Working? In here?"

  I nodded toward the pool table where four male students were currently playing.

  "You wouldn't happen to know if one of them is Andrew or Andy Penderton?"

  Gerry followed my gaze.

  "There is an Andy with that crowd usually – well built lad, posh accent…"

  "… tattoo on the inside of his arm?" I asked. "A squiggly yellow golden thing?"

  Gerry nodded.

  "That's his pals at the table now, but I haven't seen him for a few days. Is he in trouble?"

  "His auld man's looking for him, and is willing to pay good money to get him home. So far, that's all I know.
I'll go and talk to this lot, but if you see him, you've got my number… there's fifty quid in it for you if I find him before tomorrow night."

  I took my beer over to the pool table.

  I didn't introduce myself, just watched them play, then put some money on the edge of the table, indicating that I'd play the winner of the current game in play, double or nothing on my stake.

  It was like taking candy from babies.

  After an hour I was thirty quid up, I'd bought them all a few drinks and, softly-softly, got them round to the subject of their flat, and their absent friend.

  "Aye, his old man's been on the phones this past twenty-four hours," one of them, a lanky streak of pish called Stevie said. "Is Andy in trouble?"

  I shrugged.

  "Not with me. His father asked me to check in on him, that's all."

  Stevie had drunk more than a few beers, and that, and youthful bravado, shone through strong.

  "Tell the old man what Andy told him yesterday," he said. "Tell him Andy says Fuck Off."

  "They don't get on?"

  Stevie's voice dropped low so that only we round the table could here.

  "It's weird shit, man," he said. "Andy says his father has gone gaga. Fucking UFOs and aliens and all that crap. He wants Andy to help him with some kind of experiment, but Andy's having none of it."

  I pressed, not too hard, for more, but there wasn't much more to be had, beyond the fact that I knew where my target was going to be later; at a party in the big converted church in Duke Street with the rest of them.

  Now that I knew where my man was going to be I was in no mood for pounding the streets; not when there was beer on hand. I spent the next few hours playing pool, cribbage and dominoes, eating stale cheese rolls and shooting the breeze with old pals, and new.

  I thought I'd got all I could out of Penderton's flatmates, but I was proved wrong later that afternoon; Stevie, the thin lanky one, joined me in the Beer Garden for a smoke, and lowered his voice, as if someone might be listening in.