David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (24 page)

       
“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.

       
“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.”

       
“That’s possible,”
Melissa said.

       
“What do we know about
the informer?” I said.

       
“Not enough,” Melissa
said. “I’ll do some digging.”

       
“We should find out more
about the group he was embedded in,” I said. “And I’d like to know more about
Leckie’s
history with him.”

       
“I’ll find out,” Melissa
said. “The Deputy DG’s called an emergency briefing for first thing tomorrow.
I’ll try to have something by then.”

       
No one spoke much for a
while after that. The afternoon’s excitement had left everyone irritable and
out of sorts. There wasn’t much evidence of the interdependence Melissa had
told me about, instinctive or otherwise. I wondered how much truth there was in
everything else she’d said. I began to sift her words, starting from when our
paths first crossed, and just as we were approaching the vehicle entrance to
Thames House something triggered a connection in my head. It was in an
unanswered question from earlier. I didn’t say anything straight away, though.
Because what I what I wanted her to do would definitely be outside the scope of
normal
behaviour
.
The more people
that knew, the less chance she’d agree.
Specially because there was a
good chance it would leave us both barking up the wrong tree.