Chapter 13

There were tears the next morning when Gavin loaded some clothes and other personal stuff into the van. He gave his mother and sister hugs before shaking Glen's hand and then climbing into the van.

"This is it, I'm actually striking out on my own, I'm actually doing it!" he thought, as the van moved off.

Christine had given him a collapsible wardrobe to keep his clothes in, but other than that he would be living out of bags for a while. He had debated with himself whether to take the cash he had with him too, but decided it was safer left in his bedroom at his parent's house.

The journey across town took only fifteen minutes and he carried the last of his belongings into the right hand side ground floor apartment. Locking the van, he walked into the shell of the apartment and looked around himself. The space was massive - 3,000 square feet with the dimensions 30' by 100', the shorter side being the front and back elevations. Most of that had been opened up - apart from a small number of load-bearing walls.

Fiona had already prepared some sketches to match the initial ideas Gavin had. Despite the fact that the original apartments were four-bedroom, Gavin thought that would be a waste of space for the market he had in mind. He wanted each unit to be converted into a two-bedroom apartment, both with en-suite bathrooms as well as a lounge, kitchen and dining room.

To make the job easier, Gavin planned to have the same layout in each unit. By doing so it would allow his contractors to come up with the most efficient run of pipe work - for both water and gas - and ducting for cabling. He planned to test out contractors on this ground floor apartment first, dangling the carrot of the possibility of work on the other seven units as an incentive.

For now he satisfied himself with organising his meagre possessions and thinking about what he would say to the first potential contractor. He had also hired an industrial sander and his own first job was going to be to strip back the natural wood flooring and then coating it with a clear varnish to protect it.

Fiona's design was beautifully simple and maximised the space available. The two bedrooms would take up the entire space at the rear of the apartment. Side by side, they would be spacious, measuring 13' by 18' each with a further 13' by 8' for their en suites. That would leave a hallway of 4' between them.

The remaining 30' by 74' was going to remain open plan and provide the space for the kitchen, dining area and lounge. Gavin felt the huge open space would be a significant selling point and had stressed its importance to Fiona. Another factor in Gavin's thinking was that keeping such a large open space would significantly cut down on the amount of building work. That would cut the time it would take to renovate each unit.

An initial visit had helped them identify where the various services - gas, electricity and water - entered the apartment, as Fiona needed to factor that into her designs. A dry-riser running up through the building, containing all of the services made things much easier all round.

Gavin's first contractors would be an electrician (a sparkie), a plumber and a joiner (a chippie) and he had a number coming to see him on-site later that day. Each would be given a small job so he could gauge the quality of their work. He hoped to have the first unit finished within six weeks - eight at the outside. Gavin suspected that by offering cash, his contractors would be keen to fit his work in before anything else they might have on their books and he was counting on that.

Putting up the small number of stud walls, re-doing the wiring and the basic piping would be easy enough. The more time consuming work would be fitting the en suites and the luxurious kitchen and also lowering the towering ceilings in the old property. Another factor Gavin was planning to build in was that he would ask each contractor what basic materials they required and then he would purchase them at trade prices and use cash. The contractors wouldn't have the hassle and would simply supply their labour - at a cash based reduced rate of course. There would be no mark up on the materials either.

The next week was a busy one. Both Gavin and Fiona had another big event coming up - their school exam results were due. Gavin had sat his standard grades the year before and achieved an almost perfect seven credits, all of them at grade one apart from German, which was a two. He was now waiting for the results of his highers - five of them; English, Maths, Business, German and Modern Studies. Gavin's choices of subject were all about his vision of a life in business. The language recognised the increasing importance of the European Union and Modern Studies was a mix of ethics, politics and global issues.

Fiona was of course a year behind her brother and her standard grade results were important in establishing what future direction she would go in. Good results might suggest going on to university and that was what she wanted - to go on and study design, possibly with a major in fabrics and fashion.

Gavin and Fiona, like all the other students in Scotland, knew the week when their results would arrive through the post. They could have gone on-line or even gone into St Andrew's High School to check their results, but they elected to go with the traditional approach and open their envelopes with their parents waiting nervously.

Gavin's mobile phone rang on the morning of Wednesday, August 6th and he knew before he answered it that it would be his mother to tell him his results had arrived.

"Hi, mom," he said before she could speak.

"Oh you! I guess you know why I'm calling, your results came in this morning's post. Fiona's did too. She wants to wait until you're here to open hers so I thought you could maybe come round for dinner?" Christine asked.

"Let me bring something round," said Gavin.

"No, it's alright I'll cook," replied Christine.

"Mom, take a night off for once. I'll bring Chinese and be there about 6pm," insisted Gavin.

When he disconnected the call he looked around him at the transformation that was taking place inside the first apartment. The woodwork framing for all of the new internal walls was finished, as was the frame for the new ceiling. The sparkie he had hired was proving to be a quick study and all of the wiring was finished. The ring main was in, with separate cabling going into the kitchen space for the big appliances and the necessary work for the lighting was also done. The sparkie had said that being able to work in such an open space made his work pretty straightforward. He would need to return once the sheetrock and plastering was done to fit the wall sockets and install the extractors in each of the en suites.

Gavin planned to put the sheetrock up himself before allowing a plasterer to put the thin skin required over the top of it. His chippie had also come up trumps when he had asked Gavin what his plans were for the walls.

"I'm just going to put up sheetrock and then get a plasterer in," Gavin said.

"Listen, I've been working on another job, an old church, and there's some fantastic old oak panelling that might work in here. Why don't you let me do part of this space with it?" he asked.

Gavin liked the idea and negotiated a good price on the reclaimed wood. He marked out the dimensions of the lounge space so the joiner could measure out how much of the panelling would be needed. Today was the day the joiner had said he would return to start working on it.

The next job for Gavin was beginning the sheetrock. He planned to work from the back - where the two bedrooms with en suites were - and had booked the plasterer to begin work on the following Monday. He estimated that was enough time to get quite a bit of his work done so the plasterer could get started and he would work just ahead of him to minimise the time it would all take. The oak panelling would significantly reduce the amount of effort he would have to put in.

He reflected that the past week had been one of mixed feelings. He had been busy and was enjoying the work to bring the apartment up to the luxury finish he wanted. There had been some enjoyable banter with the various contractors - apart from one plumber who had sacked quite quickly for poor workmanship - and he was learning little tricks from them. He admitted to himself that he was missing his family though and was now looking forward to joining them for a family dinner.

Gavin had been dealing with one problem however. Sleeping on his own in the apartment was proving to be difficult. He found himself lying awake in his sleeping bag, feeling the urge to go out and be the vigilante again, to feel the adrenaline, to experience the high of putting himself in danger. It was almost like a drug he thought and without it, life seemed pretty humdrum at times.

By promising to try not to be the vigilante he had also set up something of an internal conflict within himself. His subconscious mind wanted to feel the thrill of being out there while his conscious thoughts dwelled on the fact that what he had done was morally wrong and certainly criminal in the eyes of society. Rationally, he knew that if he was caught he would probably spend the vast majority of his life behind bars - ten murders would add up to a lot of years. But still the urge to go out was strong and he had to battle against it. That led to a few sleepless nights spent tossing and turning.

Drew MacIntosh didn't know whether to be happy that there had been no further genuine vigilante incidents or not. He was still no nearer to identifying his man, despite the countless hours of good old-fashioned police work that had been dedicated to the task. Against all the odds the man hadn't made any vital mistakes, hadn't slipped up on any of the attacks he had carried out.

His informants had confirmed that all of the Glasgow gangs were also desperately trying to identify the vigilante and Drew was determined to get to him first.

Gavin phoned the Chinese take-away closest to his parents home and placed a large order before he left the apartment building. He locked up carefully and turned to take a look at the entrance before getting onto the van. He had decided that a luxury apartment building needed a luxury entranceway and the work on that was almost finished.

He had opted for a warm 'pink' marble that complemented the red sandstone of the building. The main door was of thick glass with brushed steel fixings and the glass had frosting that proclaimed the building as 'St Mungo's Heights'. St Mungo was the patron saint of Glasgow and the name had appealed to him. Work had also begun on the door entry system that was mounted on the wall just outside the doorway.

The overall look and feel was exactly what he wanted, it shouted luxury and he knew it would make a wonderful first impression on prospective buyers when the time came. Smiling proudly, Gavin climbed into the van and set off to pick up the Chinese.

When he arrived at his parent's he could see that Fiona was very nervous. There was no point in putting off the ceremonial envelope opening until after dinner - she wouldn't be able to eat in her current state - so Gavin suggested they get it over with. Glen and Christine looked almost as nervous as Fiona did and the only one that appeared calm was Gavin. He might appear outwardly calm, but Gavin was a little nervous. He felt confident he would get the results he needed for entrance to university, but there was always the chance that one of his exams had gone horribly wrong.

Gavin let Fiona open her envelope first. She struggled a little to rip her way into it, but eventually she pulled out the award certificate and scanned her results.

"I've passed all of them!" she squealed.

They could only smile at Fiona's antics, as she danced about the sitting room excitedly.

"I've passed them all! I've passed!"

Christine managed to take the certificate out of Fiona's hand as she danced past and had a look at her daughter's results for herself.

"Oh my, not only have you passed, you've beaten your brother as well. Seven credits and all of them at level one! That's one more than Gavin managed last year. Congratulations and well done, baby. All your hard work has paid off," Christine exclaimed.

Gavin was happy for his sister; not concerned in the least that her performance had exceeded his own at standard grade. He turned his attention to his own envelope and pushed his thumbnail under the flap, ripping along its length. He snagged the certificate inside and pulled it out, quickly scanning his results.

"Four As and one B," he said, a sense of relief washing over him.

"German?" his mother asked.

"Yip, and I thought I had put in more work on that than anything else," Gavin replied.

"Well done, son. We're really proud of both of you. I guess you really are going to university then!" said Christine.

Fiona danced over and threw herself into Gavin's arms.

"We passed, we passed! Yes!" she cried.

"We did, sis, we did. Now, anybody else feeling hungry?" asked Gavin, swinging Fiona round in the air.

Gavin had ordered up the full Chinese banquet and there was probably enough to feed eight people. There was Chow Mien, Curry, Sweet and Sour as well as Kung Po, something in black bean sauce and a Foo Yung. Side dishes of spring rolls, spare ribs and rice filled things out nicely and all four of them were soon helping themselves to tasters of each dish.

Fiona complained about having to go back for the new school term a full three weeks before Gavin's university course would start.

"It's not fair, how come you get more of a holiday?" she pouted.

"If you can call putting in ten or twelve hours a day on the apartment a holiday!" Gavin shot back.

He enjoyed the family chat and just being in company again. One of the problems with moving out was being on his own every night and he realised he missed this simple pleasure. He was also excited and pleased with himself. He had passed all his exams and was definitely off to university.

"Well done me!" he thought to himself.

At one point in the evening he came up behind Fiona and whispered in her ear.

"Maybe you should come round to the apartment early tomorrow to see how things are going. We could take the chance to celebrate our results together."

"Oh god, bro. Your breath on the back of my neck makes me feel all weak inside, so does the idea of 'celebrating' with you. What time should I be there?" she asked.

"Best to let the parents get off to work first. None of the contractors will be there before 9:30 anyway, so there should be lots of time for us."

Fiona had studied her brother so closely over the years that she could probably read his moods better than anybody could. She knew he was really excited about passing his exams, but was just better at appearing calm than she was. She also knew that Gavin being excited wasn't necessarily a good thing and she was determined to keep 'her man' safe.