“Got him,” I said.
“Confirmed,” Jones said, from his position at the other side of the window.
Pearson called Melissa.
“We have visual,” he said into the phone. “Proceed when ready.”
The guy’s bike was facing the side of the site where we’d parked, and he had stopped it in front of a two storey stone building. The doorway and all of its tiny ground floor windows had been bricked up, and the roof was missing completely.
“Is that the asylum?” I said.
Before Pearson could answer I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was Leckie. He was on foot, hands at shoulder height, walking gingerly as if trying to avoid getting too much mud on his shoes. Melissa was three paces behind him. They closed to within three yards of the guy and stopped, their hands still in the air. The guy got down from his bike and hung his helmet on the handlebars. He took a step towards Leckie. And froze as a bullet kicked up a plume of dirt and brick fragments about four inches from his right foot.
Pearson raised his phone and started to shout out a warning, but there was no need. Melissa dived to the side and Leckie sprang forward, knocking the guy to the ground and covering him with his body. Two more bullets struck the spot where he’d been standing. A moment passed in silence, then Leckie rose into a crouch and started to pull the guy along the ground by his collar. He looked completely inert. Melissa joined him and they dragged the guy a couple of yards before he snapped out of his trance, his arms and legs beginning to scrabble desperately over the loose surface.
A bullet took out the motorcycle’s rear tyre and it toppled sideways, away from us. The helmet slipped from the handlebars and started to roll across the uneven surface in a crooked arc, until another bullet split it in half. Leckie and Melissa tugged harder, turning to their right, and hauled the half-crawling biker along the face of the asylum building. Another bullet hit the bike’s rear light, shattering its red plastic cover. Then they reached the corner of the building, threw the guy around it, and disappeared into cover themselves.
Beside me, I heard Pearson exhale loudly. Jones gasped. Outside, the gun was silent. The sniper had no target. Melissa and Leckie had taken themselves and their contact out of his line of sight.
And, I realised, out of ours.
I didn’t hear Pearson’s and Jones’s footsteps pounding along the upstairs corridor until I was half way down the second flight of stairs. They were moving fast, and coming in my direction. I took the remaining stairs two at a time, but when I reached the bottom I didn’t go back into the room we’d passed through before. I headed for the one opposite. It was a similar size. Its floor had a similar covering of debris. Similar graffiti was daubed on the walls. But there was no external door.
None of the windows had any glass left in them, so I crossed to the nearest one and peered out. There was no sign of anyone watching, so I climbed through the empty casement and dropped down between a bush and the wall. I paused, then started towards the far end of the building. The foliage gave me cover for about three quarters of the distance, and I cleared the rest of the ground without attracting any unwelcome attention. That left me at the corner of the west wing, almost directly under the window we’d used for observation.
The motorcycle was still lying on its side, diagonally to my right, with the old asylum building behind it. The bullets that hit it came from the left. That meant I’d either have to go back and find a way to loop the opposite way around the site, or take the direct route and cross the sniper’s field of fire. One option was impractical. The other, undesirable. But time was also a consideration - a major one - so I made the decision. I took a deep breath, drew my Beretta, then broke cover.
The ground was deceptively slippery in front of the asylum building, and I almost lost my footing as I rounded the corner on the far side of the abandoned motorcycle. But at least no one shot at me as I crossed the open space, and straight away I could see that Melissa and Leckie were both in one piece. I wasn’t so sure about the guy from the bike, though. He was lying on the ground between them, not moving, and as I stepped closer I could see his leathers were soaked with blood from a crescent-shaped gash on his neck.
“This isn’t good, David,” Melissa said, when I reached her side.
Leckie turned away from me and slammed the palm of his hand into the wall.
“This isn’t good at all,” she said, and I noticed the right side of her face was splattered with faint droplets of blood.
“What happened?” I said. “I didn’t see him get hit.”
“He didn’t,” she said. “A spent round hit the wall and kicked out a fragment of stone, is the best we can figure it. Unbelievable bad luck.”
I heard footsteps approaching from behind me and a second later Pearson and Jones appeared around the corner of the building. Pearson had a rifle in one hand, and a metal worker’s file in the other.
“We’ll never trace the gun, now, if he rammed this down the barrel,” he said, brandishing the file. “And its owner’s in the wind. Shit. What happened here?”
“Is he dead?” Jones said.
Melissa nodded.
“Did he at least tell you anything?”
Melissa nodded again.
“Two things,” she said. “The thing his group is planning will happen in three days’ time. And it will be bad enough to bring down the government.”
Chapter Twenty
Pearson started by heading back towards the motorway, but changed his mind at the last minute. He wanted us to make our way to London via the chain of towns that straddled the old Midland Railway line, instead. It would take longer, but there would be more people around. He was worried that whoever had taken out Leckie’s informer might be looking to add to their tally for the day.
“Face it,” he said to Melissa. “We all saw the spread of rounds. There was no way someone was just targeting the stoolie. He was bait. They were after you. Or Leckie. Or both.”
Or they were trying to make Melissa look innocent. Or Leckie. Or both.
“And the shooting didn’t start until the moment you two appeared,” he said. “Coincidence?”
No one else seemed in the mood for debate.
“The snitch was sitting on his bike, in plain sight,” he said. “The trigger man knew where he was. He could have taken him at any time. But he waited. Why?”
“You’re sure the sniper was there all along?” Melissa said.
Pearson shook his head, very gently, but didn’t speak.
“Who else knew about the meeting?” I said.
“Colin Chaston, my boss,” Melissa said. “I told him. Pearson knew our destination, but nothing else until we were on the road. You two knew what we were doing, but not where we were going. And of course Leckie knew all about it. I doubt he told anyone, though. He always had the reputation for playing his cards close.”
“So I was right,” Pearson said.
Melissa ignored him.
“What about the informant’s own organisation?” Jones said. “His own people could have been on to him. Followed him, aiming to silence him, and taking the chance to rack up a couple of bonuses at the same time.”