“What size of place is it?”
Pearson rummaged in his door pocket and pulled out a piece of office paper. He passed it to me, and I saw it was a poor photocopy of a hand drawn building plan.
“Here,” he said. “Have a look for yourself.”
The main part of the complex looked like a letter E, with three parallel wings stretching back from a broad central block. It was connected to the road by a formal driveway at the front, and an apparently random selection of outbuildings was scattered throughout the rest of the site.
“Such was the civic duty of our Victorian forefathers,” Pearson said. “They did a good job though, I suppose, from a constructional point of view. Most of that big main building is still standing. The other odds and sods are mainly gone, though. A stray bomb took out several of them back in ‘42, and the local vandals, junkies, and care in the community victims have accounted for the rest.”
“Which part are we meeting this guy in?” I said to Melissa.
“We’ll find out the exact spot when we get there,” she said. “Leckie’ll be there. He’ll show us.”
“Leckie’s coming with us?”
“Unofficially. I had no choice. His snout wouldn’t agree to meet unless he was there. Would you?”
Pearson didn’t relax his right foot, but the pitching and rolling of the Range Rover subsided a little once we reached the motorway and the road ahead straightened out. The conversation had more or less died away, too, so I took advantage of the lull in proceedings to reach into my pocket for my phone. I needed to text my control and let him know where I was headed, but instead of the phone my fingers closed around a piece of paper. It was the flyer advertising the Elvis impersonator Melissa had given me on the way to the BT tower. At first I smiled, imagining I was on the way to see his show. Then my expression changed, as I thought about the women he’d lured back the hospital basement. And finally, my brain made another connection with last night.
“Melissa, you know you told me Elvis had a hazmat suit in his stash?” I said. “Where did he get it from?”
“From the emergency team that came to deal with the explosion, I should think,” she said. “Why?”
“Something just occurred to me. Remember when we were at the Tower? And Gerard told me the storage room was the kitchen? Did you look inside?”
“No. I was too busy looking out of the window.”
“Well, it was piled high with stuff. Just random junk. But the last thing that had been thrown in there was a coat. And it struck me, what would the owner do when they had to go outside without it?”
“Get cold, I expect. I don’t see the connection.”
“Did you see the place where Elvis kept his stash?”
“No. I just got a list of what was in it. Why?”
“I figured the two places were probably pretty much alike. One with a coat thrown in on top. One with a hazmat suit. And if the first guy was going to get cold without his coat, what was the other guy going to do without his hazmat suit?”
“I don’t know. He’d have a problem, I guess.”
“There’s no mystery,” Jones said. “It was a spare. There were five people in the original team. But only four raiders, right? So one suit was left over. Elvis must have found it.”
“But where did he find it?” I said.
“Who knows?” Jones said. “He’s obviously a kleptomaniac. Who knows how those people work?”
“The original team,” I said. “Had they had time to suit up before they were overpowered?”
“No,” Melissa said. “They were jumped before that.”
“So why would the thieves have taken the fifth suit out of the van?” I said. “Did they abandon anything else?”
“No,” Melissa said. “All their other kit was accounted for.”
“So why this one spare suit?” I said.
“Maybe they didn’t take it out,” Jones said. “What makes you think they did? Elvis could have taken it directly from the van.”
“When the place was swarming with police?” I said. “We’ve seen how he reacts to them. I bet he wasn’t within a mile of the place till the fuss died down. He must have found it somewhere, later. And why would the thieves have left it to be found? It doesn’t match their M.O. at all. Everything else they did was planned and meticulous. This is random and sloppy.”
“No one’s perfect,” Jones said. “And does it really matter how he got it?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But I hate loose ends.”
“I do, too,” Melissa said. “Chances are it’s nothing, but it’ll easy enough to find out. We’ll just go and ask Elvis, himself, when we get back from Luton. Assuming it still matters then. Who knows what this other guy can tell us?”
We left the M1 at Junction Twelve, and I felt a little like a kid reaching the end of a fairground ride. Invigorated, relieved to still be alive, and slightly disappointed the fun had ended, all at the same time. The official status of the vehicle meant Pearson didn’t have to worry about the police, but the way he drove would be more than enough to get you shot in several countries I’d visited. He kept up his speed and aggression on the smaller roads as well, and thirty-three minutes after leaving Thames House I looked out of my window and saw the driveway that led to the workhouse. We didn’t turn into it, though. There would have been no point. The gap in the heavy stone walls was filled with blocks of solid concrete. There were six of them. Each was about five feet square. They were connected with a double line of rusty metal cables. That made a far more effective barrier than the original wrought iron gates would have done, before they were undoubtedly melted down for munitions during World War II. They were nowhere near as picturesque, though. But then, we were in Luton.
Pearson followed the wall along to the end and then around to the left. Trees had grown wild behind it, but through the branches I was able to catch glimpses of the top floor of the main building. It was made of pale stone. The roof was grey slate, though large sections were missing. The facade was perfectly symmetrical, and the remains of an imposing clock face were still visible in the portico above the broad front entrance. There was a pair of bay windows on either side. Each was made of six individual, ornate casements, and even without the glass the skill of the stonemasons was clearly apparent. Taken all together, the place looked more like the ruins of a fairytale palace than a brutal semi-prison, and it was hard to imagine the degree of institutionalised misery that must have lingered for so many years behind its picturesque walls.
We continued for another hundred and fifty yards, then Pearson slowed to a sane speed, pulled sharply to the left, bounced across the curb, and steered the Range Rover through a ragged gap in the wall. We clearly weren’t the only ones to know about this makeshift route, though. I could see other tyre tracks snaking across the rough ground in front of us. One set. Still fresh. They led straight away to our right and disappeared behind a precarious looking mound of bricks and rubble. I turned in my seat and checked the patch of pavement we’d just crossed. It was perfectly clean. I didn’t know who’d arrived before us. But whoever it was, they hadn’t left.
Pearson followed round to our right, and as soon as we cleared the side of the rubble heap I saw another car. A silver 7-series BMW. It was clean and shiny, and had this year’s registration. A car like that would have looked perfectly innocuous on the motorway or in an office car park, but it was as suspicious as hell in that particular location.