by Andrew Grant
“OK, hands up,” she said. “Which one of you was it?”
“Which one of us, what?” I said.
“Which one of you prayed for a miracle?” she said. “Because it looks like we might have come across one. From a most unlikely source.”
“Excellent,” I said. “You can’t beat a spot of divine intervention in a case like this. Who was it? And what did they tell you?”
“It was Stan Leckie. Head of Hospital Security. He just took a call from one of his old snouts. One from way back, when he used to work here. The guy has something that could help us, apparently.”
“Can we trust him?”
“Leckie? I think so. We’ve re-done all the background checks. And he’s doing the right thing, passing this on to us. As for the snout, your guess is as good as mine. But for what it’s worth, Leckie’s sure the guy is who he claims to be. He says his material was always A1 in the past. And the group he was embedded in have the capability to handle something like this. Or did, when Leckie was running this guy.”
“Why did he contact Leckie?”
“Leckie recruited him. When Leckie moved on, the guy dropped out of sight. Some snouts are like that. They don’t like being passed to a new handler.”
“And he’s just resurfaced now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he found out something too important to ignore. I hope.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Who knows? It might come to nothing. But it’s better than a poke in the eye. Leckie’s putting together a meet, right now. You guys pound through a few more of those forms. I need to dig up some old files. I have a feeling our morning’s about to get a whole lot brighter.”
It turned out Melissa hadn’t contented herself with running background checks. She’d also snagged us a car. By the time we stepped outside thirty minutes later a black Range Rover was already sitting at the kerb, waiting for us, with its engine running. The driver was standing next to it, ready to shake hands. Bright blue eyes scanned us from beneath bushy eyebrows, and between his neatly combed fair hair and pinstriped blue suit, he looked every inch a banker or stockbroker. I wondered if he picked the outfit to match the car, or if he dressed like that out of choice. I also wondered if he’d be open to the idea of stopping at the nearest Starbucks.
“Pleased to meet you all,” he said, climbing back in behind the wheel. Melissa took the passenger seat, and Jones and I slid into the back. “My name’s Pearson. Nigel. Thanks for getting me out of the office, today.”
“We’ll get you out whenever you want, if you help us get a result today,” Melissa said.
Pearson smiled, and was silent for a moment as he squeezed the Range Rover between two black cabs. From the general direction he was taking, I guessed we were heading for the start of the M1. I felt a surge of nostalgia for the area, involuntarily thinking back to all the times my father took me to the RAF Museum in Hendon when I was a kid. But this was quickly replaced by other memories, less wholesome, of my various visits to the police training college just down the road.
“Do you know much about this place we’re heading for?” Melissa said.
“A little,” he said. “You?”
“Not much, beyond the address.”
“Well, if it was a private party, I wouldn’t be fighting you for tickets. In terms of location, it’s awful. But then, it’s in Luton. What more can you say?”
I’d been to Luton many times as a kid and a teenager, and under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be high on my list of places to revisit, either.
“Whereabouts in Luton?” I said.
“A horrible, decrepit part, about four miles north of the city,” he said. “An industrial suburb called Frankston. Ever heard of it?”
“I’ve heard of it. I’ve never been there, though.”
“You’ve not missed much. The specific place we’re going to started life as a workhouse. It would have been grim enough in the 1840s. And it’s worse, these days.”
“Most of those places have been turned into apartments, by now.”
“Right. And if this one hasn’t, what does that tell you?”
“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.
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 sai
d, 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.