Page 24 of Shake Your Boo Thang

“And we’re trying to figure out what was there prior to the car park,” I add.

Jane taps her chin thoughtfully. “All right. Let me go and pull a few older maps.”

She comes back with several. The 1980s map still shows us a car park, and Callum jots that down.

“So it stayed that way for at least two decades,” I murmur.

Then Jane lays out a map from the 1970s next, and that’s when we hit pay dirt.

The rectangle at our address this time around isn’t empty. Instead, there’s an abbreviation that says Textile WHSE.

I point to it. “What does that mean?”

Jane leans in closer. “A textile warehouse, by the look of it.”

Callum’s eyes glint with triumph. “Yes, that’s what we needed. How can we find out more about this warehouse?”

“For what period of time?” Jane asks.

“Let’s say from 1970 to 1980.”

She clears the maps away and has an assistant return them for her then leads us back to her computer.

“For that, we’ll need to switch our avenue of inquiry to our Building Control and Building Act records.”

“What might we find in those records?” I ask.

“Anything from building applications to architectural plans, inspection reports, correspondence, and district surveyor records. We might even be able to find information on whoever owned the building during that decade.” Jane types away on her keyboard for a couple of minutes and then smiles. “Hold on a second. I’ve located a file number that might be relevant. We haven’t managed to digitize a lot of this older stuff yet, so I’ll have to grab the physical file for us to look at.”

She scurries off into the back, and we wait.

Callum sits in his chair and jiggles his leg nervously with barely contained energy. Watching him, I can see how much he loves investigating. Having a mystery to solve and tracking down clues really seems to do it for him. Even I have to admit, I’m having a lot more fun than I expected. When I help spirits, I’m usually all by my lonesome, so having a partner is a bit of a novelty for me. Also, my past efforts never involved this amount of mystery and intrigue. I’m not sure that I have the makings of an amateur sleuth, so I defer to Callum’s expertise on such matters, but I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.

Our archivist returns and carefully sets down a brittle, yellowed file on the table. “This is the earliest information I was able to pull.”

When she opens it up, we see a Victorian-era warehouse plan from the 1880s. It’s for a four-story building with a brick exterior and big arched windows. The blueprints indicate an old freight lift, service corridors, storage rooms, and what I think was a basement or cellar.

“This place would have been massive,” I marvel.

We continue to carefully flip through the documents and soon find an old black-and-white picture of the warehouse in the early 1890s.

“Wow!” I whistle. “How cool was that?”

Jane’s eyes shine with similar enthusiasm. “Lots of warehouses like this were built when industry was booming in London. However, by the 1960s, a lot of the industries that had been critical during the Victorian era moved elsewhere or ceased entirely. Buildings were abandoned and fell into disrepair. There’s every possibility this one might have been torn down to make way for that car park in the 1980s.”

Callum looks at her sharply. “Is it possible someone might have renovated and repurposed the building for commercial use? I was thinking it may have been used as a nightclub in the ’70s.”

Well, that would certainly explain our disco-loving ghosts and their musical preferences, that’s for sure.

Jane closes the file and selects another from her stack, this time from the 1970s. “Very possibly,” she says. “Quite a number of old warehouses were converted for nightlife purposes during the late ’60s and early ’70s. Others were then later renovated into lofts or condos. Sadly, many were simply torn down.”

Callum and I both gulp as she carefully opens the file. Immediately, she locates an application for alterations to the premises that’s dated early in 1977. The attached plan shows ground-floor renovations, and a note in the plan’s margin indicates existing basement to remain.

“So it definitely had a basement,” Callum says.

Jane shrugs. “I can’t say for absolute certain, but given the paper trail we’ve looked at so far, it seems highly probable. How developed that space was, I couldn’t say.”

I study the document. “It looks like part of this application might be missing. I don’t see anywhere that says what the alterations were for.”