The driver’s door swung open as we appeared behind the car and a man emerged, slowly swinging his legs around and placing his feet tentatively on the uneven ground. It was Stan Leckie, but he was dressed for the office rather than a demolition site. He paused, nodded to Melissa, then approached Pearson’s side of the Range Rover.
“Good, then, you’re here,” he said, as Pearson hit the button to lower his window. “Let’s get on with it. Our boy will probably be a bit spooked, already. Let’s not keep him waiting. It’ll only make him edgier. Melissa and I will stay in the vehicles till you boys give us the word you’re in position.”
“OK,” Pearson said, handing him plan of the site. “Where’s the rendezvous point?”
“Pretty much dead in the centre,” Leckie said, pointing to a spot in the middle of the page. “At the entrance to this charming place. It was the workhouse asylum. You can imagine the kind of things that used to go on in there. In fact, whenever I’m in a sticky spot, I think of it. I tell myself that whatever kind of trouble I’m in, I can’t be worse off than the poor sods who ended up in that hell-hole.”
“Probably not,” Pearson said. “And we’ll find the place, no problem.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure our boy’s working alone,” Leckie said. “But I’d suggest you do one more sweep of the perimeter anyway, to be on the safe side. Then if you set up where you can see him waiting, we’ll get the show on the road.”
Chapter Nineteen
We all walked together as far as the BMW, then Pearson, Jones and I continued under cover of the rubble heap.
“Your man’s picked a good spot,” Pearson said when we out of Leckie’s earshot. “It’s the easiest place to surveil from multiple vantage points.”
“You’ve used this site before, then?” I said.
“A few times,” he said. “The question is, has he?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“And the way he spoke to Agent Wainwright,” he said. “They’ve worked together before, have they?”
“Not since I’ve known them,” I said. “But why here? It’s hardly a convenient location for you.”
Pearson shrugged.
“It just works for us, being out of town,” he said. “People feel comfortable with it, for some reason. We’ve done dead-drops. Snatch jobs. Set ups. Covert meetings, where people don’t want to be seen leaving. Or meetings where people don’t leave at all. Although we generally use a different part of the site for that.”
“The buildings are in better shape than I’d imagined,” Jones said. “The main one is, at least.”
“It’s in amazing shape,” Pearson said. “Apart from that section, over there.”
He was pointing to the narrow wall at the end of the middle bar of the E. It looked fine from the first floor up, but three holes had been punched in the stonework, four feet from the ground. They were roughly circular, about three feet in diameter. The first was almost dead in the centre, and the other two were equally spaced out between it and the edge of the wall.
“Did someone hit it with a canon?” I said.
“No,” he said. “A wrecking ball. Attached to a mobile crane that was here for a while.”
“That’s a strange way to kick off a demolition job.”
“It would be. If demolition was what you had in mind.”
“There are other uses for a wrecking ball?”
“Somebody found one.”
“What was it?”
“A tongue loosener. Someone took five people. Four men and a woman. They fixed them to the wall, spreadeagled, by their wrists and ankles. Then they started pounding away. One chance to talk. One swing each.”
“Five people? There are only three holes.”
“The police found two empty sets of shackles hanging from the wall. They’d definitely been used. There was plenty of blood and skin cells on them.”
“Creative.”
“Psychotic.”
“Imagine holding out while three of your friends are crushed by a wrecking ball, a few feet away.”
“Maybe there are worse things than the asylum block after all.”
“Who did it?”
“I don’t know. The police never nailed anyone.”
“Any suspects?”
“A few. None panned out, though.”
“When did...” I said, when Pearson stopped dead and held up his hand for silence. Then he gestured towards a clump of bushes that was sprouting from the remains of what looked like a greenhouse.
“Sorry,” he said, after a moment. “I thought I saw something moving.”
“It looks clear to me,” I said.
“I think you’re right. Anyway, we better not dawdle. Come on. Follow me. And keep your eyes open, just in case.”
Realistically, there was no possibility of the three of us conducting an effective sweep of the area. It was too large. There wasn’t enough time. And even if you forgot about all the invitingly ruined buildings and outhouses, you would still have a sniper’s paradise to deal with given the uneven, overgrown terrain. What we were doing was no better than window dressing. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was too early to tell if the shortcomings of the plan were by accident or design.
We reached the corner of the main building without any further alarm, and Pearson led the way to the first of four doors that were evenly distributed along the length of the external wall.
“Ready?” he said, reaching for the handle.
Jones and I nodded, and we followed him inside. The door opened directly into a rectangular room, about thirty feet by sixty. The space was empty and unbroken, except for a line of square pillars that ran along the centre. The floor was strewn with slabs of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Large chunks were missing from the walls, too, revealing coarse red bricks beneath. Most of the sections that had remained intact were covered with crude graffiti, and half a dozen spray cans had been discarded along with some candle stubs and a burnt out packing case.
“What was this room used for?” I said.
“No idea,” Pearson said, already fifteen feet away from me. He was striding towards the opposite corner, throwing up clouds of grey dust with every step he took. “We’re just using it to get to the stairs. Come on. We need some height.”
We went up two flights, to the top floor, and Pearson set off into a long, narrow corridor. Doors on either side led to a series of identical square rooms, each with a pair of windows. I guessed they’d been dormitories of some kind, but decided against asking him about them. I just followed him in silence until we reached the last door on the right hand side.
“Keep your head down,” he said, and slipped inside, beckoning me to keep up with him. “Take the window on the left. Can you see our boy?”
I took up a position at the corner of the window and peered down to the ground below. I saw a man about forty feet away. He was sitting on a motorcycle. A skeletal, lightweight machine designed for riding off-road. The engine wasn’t running and the guy was sitting upright, his hands on his hips. He was slender. Probably about five foot six. I couldn’t tell his age or hair colour, because his head was covered by a skull and crossbones bandana. He was wearing a set of blue and white racing-style leather overalls, complete with pretend advertisements, and he had a blue helmet with a mirrored visor tucked under his left arm.