Witness the Dead by Craig Robertson Read Free Book Online

the Clyde, as she was doing now, or north, as she’d done earlier. As she got older, the hop got a little smaller. At least it did if other people were around. Now it was heading for one in the morning and she was half cut. She gave a proper, six-year-old’s hop.
    As the bridge turned into road, she gave another hop as she landed on dry land, accompanying it with a stifled giggle. On the other side of the road were the gardens belonging to the Central Mosque, its red-brick wall and railings soon giving way to the mosque itself with its glass-domed roof and minaret. It was one of her favourite landmarks on the walk home. On she walked, singing quietly to herself and happy in her place in things. On past the multis on one side of the road and the Citizens Theatre on the other.
    When she got to the junction where Gorbals Street forced Cleland Street to become Bedford Lane, she made a point of crossing to the other side of the road. The building on the side of the street that she’d been walking on had always freaked her out. People called it the old Linen Bank building and said it was the last of the old Gorbals tenements. She’d never known it anything other than disused, standing lost and alone like a survivor of a nuclear holocaust. The bricked-up door and boarded windows, the red ashlar walls, gothic scrolls and weird head carvings all gave her the heebie-jeebies. She hurried past it and tried not to look.
    Her next landmark was the Brazen Head, another few hundred yards up the street and more than halfway home. Its famous – or infamous – green and white walls marked where Gorbals Street became Cathcart Road, not long before she’d take a left onto Caledonia Road. It was a route she knew like the back of her hand. She could see the pub up ahead, peeping at her under the railway bridge, its lights still blazing. As she passed, she heard raised voices and the threateningly cheery chink of glasses.
    Immediately after the pub there was the strange, low, bricked archway to her left that led onto Laurieston Road. She always found herself taking a few steps to her right, away from its dark recess, an instinctive reaction to the possibility of someone stepping out from the gloom. A few strides more and she was under the next railway bridge, its rusting blue hulk throwing the pavement into near darkness. On cue, a train rattled overhead, deafening her with its roar through the bridge supports.
    As the train faded, she wouldn’t have been able to say when she heard the footsteps behind her, or when she realised that they had been in time with her own but now were gaining. All she knew was that it dawned on her with a cold, creeping certainty.
    The Brazen Head shrank into the distance and the giant twin multis on Caledonia Road seemed much further away than they had a few moments before. Her pulse was racing and something that must have been her heart was crashing into her ribcage.
    Up ahead on the left, a hundred yards or so away, were the remains of the old Caledonia Road church, sitting marooned in the triangle created as Cathcart and Laurieston Roads came together. She couldn’t see its tall, obelisk tower for the eaves of the railway bridge but knew it was there all the same.
    She looked over her shoulder and saw the shape, dark and hunched, gaining on her with every step. If she walked, he would probably catch her. If she ran, he would run after her. She ran.
    Shit. Running was harder when you were a bit pished. And much harder when you were wearing heels. Run. Her thoughts were tangled, tripping over each other. Scared. Very scared.
    She needed somewhere to go into that would be safe, but the church had lain empty for nearly fifty years, since local neds burned the insides out. All that was left to offer her any kind of sanctuary was the gaunt, foreboding shell. And yet, maybe if she could get to the far end where the acropolis pillars stood high on the wall, she’d be in the open and someone would see her. And see