[Quinn 04] - The Silenced

nothing else.”

Quinn didn’t like it, but Julien couldn’t keep watch twenty-four hours a day. “Okay.”

“I get a little sleep and come back before our friends upstairs even wake up.”

“Any contact from your client?”

“No. I’ll call them in the morning with an update. It’s fun making up stories, you know. Easy money.”

“Just be careful,” Quinn said.

“If I was careful, I would have become a demolition expert like my brother.” Julien laughed.

“Might still be worth considering,” Quinn said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

Quinn hung up satisfied that the situation in Paris was under control, but no closer to falling sleep. He pulled his jacket on and headed back outside. He’d been hired for a job, so he might as well earn some of the money Wills was paying him.

According to the information Wills had given Quinn in New York, the body was located in the Alexander Grant Building in the financial district, not too far from the Lloyd’s of London and the Swiss Re buildings, both modern landmarks of the city.

“This is good,” Quinn told the cabbie, a block from Lloyd’s. As soon as they pulled to the curb, he paid the driver and got out.

This was the land of the briefcase and business suit, uniforms of daytime animals who, at near midnight, would be miles away, either tucked in bed or sitting at an after-hours bar. Any that did remain were the workaholics trying to impress a boss or the fearful trying not to lose their jobs. In both cases, they would be chained to their cubicles and offices.

Quinn found the Alexander Grant Building several streets away. He kept to the other side of the road and slowed his pace.

The information had claimed the Grant Building was due to be demolished. But one look at the place had Quinn wondering why it hadn’t happened sooner. It was sitting on a corner lot, so the land was worth a considerable amount of money. But the building?

The best words he could come up with to describe it were “unremarkable,” “rundown,” and “aging.” Eight floors of grimy stone. The kind of place a person could walk by every day for years and never notice. It was just there.

Scanning upward, he saw that most of the windows on the upper floors had been removed. So the demolition’s already under way, he thought. No wonder Wills’s client is anxious to get the body removal started.

But why did he need Quinn to do it? Any decent cleaner could handle the project with no problems. Didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. It was another question for Wills when they met up.

He was about to walk around the block when he saw a light flicker in the building. He stepped into a darkened doorway a few feet away and crouched down.

The main entrance to the Grant Building was at the midpoint of the ground floor. Two glass doors led into what had been a darkened lobby. Only now a flashlight beam was lighting up one of the walls. A moment later an overhead light came on, revealing a security guard at the far back of the room.

He walked up to the front door, unlocked it, then stepped through. Super cop he was not. Five foot eight, about twenty-five pounds overweight, and bored. He strolled along the front of the building to the three-foot gap between the Grant Building and its neighbor, then turned and walked back past the entrance and around the corner, disappearing from sight.

Quinn held his position, counting off the time in his head. It was just over four minutes before the guard reappeared. When he did, he was speaking into a walkie-talkie. Quinn couldn’t make out the guard’s words, but a tinny, overamplified voice responded through the receiver, “… second floor …” Quinn glanced up at the darkened windows, but saw nothing of interest.

The guard spoke again, then clipped the radio to his belt and finished his walk to the front door. A moment later he disappeared inside, turning the lobby light off as he passed. Quinn retrieved his phone, accessed the camera, and switched to night vision. He took several pictures, then used the zoom to check the street in both directions.

London was a city that lived under the camera’s eye. Thousands of closed-circuit television cameras, CCTVs, were installed throughout the metropolis, where they passively watched everyone and everything. When people like Quinn worked in London, they had to take this citywide surveillance into consideration—altering appearances, doing nothing to attract attention, and, whenever possible, keeping real business to those dead zones with no coverage.

Occasionally, some of the quieter streets fell through the city’s video net. Quinn was pleased to see the street the target building was on among them.

Minor good news, but good news nonetheless.

He settled in and waited for the guard to reappear so he could gauge the schedule of rounds. When the lobby light came back on, Quinn checked his watch. An hour and seven minutes.

Say an hour to an hour and a half between rounds. He watched as the door opened again and the man stepped outside. Interesting.

While the pattern was the same, the guard was not. This was a younger guy, probably early thirties, and in a bit better shape. So there are at least two of them, he thought. For an abandoned building this size, Quinn could see it go as high as three, but no more.

For the first time that evening, he could feel sleep hanging behind his eyes. As he had hoped, getting out and doing some work had helped him to relax. Now, maybe, he could get a few hours’ rest before he met up with Wills.

When the guard disappeared around the side of the building, Quinn slipped out of his hiding place and returned down the street the way he’d come. At the end of the block, he took a look back at the building.

Easy.