to his car, started it and drove inside.
The runway was all grass and surprisingly short considering it hadn’t been cut in a generation. There was a small strip of tarmac which led up to the few buildings and he turned and drove towards them. The largest building which was two storeys had at one time been painted white. Now it was a mix of shades including algae green in places and peeling in others. There were some windows from which he could see only one was broken. At the corner of an outbuilding he could see that a large tree had grown. Infusing itself with the building it had caused large cracks and disruptance in the masonry.
Bonomi stopped his car and got out. He reached for the folder on the passenger seat and opened it.
“No water. No electricity supply,” he read out loud.
He closed the folder and had a quick walk around the outside of all the buildings. Some of the doors were rusted off their hinges. In many cases the wood was rotten. He found a small outside toilet of the old type with the cast iron cistern high on the wall. He pulled the chain but he already knew there would be no water to flush. The toilet bowl itself was layered in decades of dirt and dust. In a small storage room next door the branches of the tree had grown through the window and were pressing against the ceiling. To the main building there were steps that led up and Bonomi ascended them slowly. They led to a room with a large double window that looked out over the entire site.
Bonomi looked towards the gates he had opened. He could see that the chain-link fence ran around the entire complex. It was intact apart from one concrete post which had at some point in history snapped and was hanging while pulling the fence either side of it down.
There was no sign of the prospective client yet. He looked at his watch. Five more minutes to go.
Bonomi turned away from the window and surveyed the room. Black, dirty cobwebs littered the ceiling and walls. Their hosts long since dead. On the floor were small pellets scattered about. He was sure they were rat droppings.
There was an old wooden desk by the large window and a very old wooden chair. Both were covered in layers of dust. On the table was a very old radio transmitter with an old style microphone on a stand placed on top of it. Both were extremely dusty. There were some dusty papers strewn across the desk. Bonomi picked a sheet up and blew dust from it. It was about a change of proceedures and was signed and dated July 1981.
“Thirty years ago,” Bonomi said out loud.
The airfield had been in use during World War II.
Bonomi put the paper down. Then noticing the radio transmitter was still plugged in to a wall socket he began flicking switches at random. The transmitter was dead. He went over to the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing.
There was no electricity to the building. It had been disconnected years before.
Not wanting to sit on the filthy seat in his suit Bonomi went back to his car to read about the purchase. The site had potential and was worth the three hundred thousand euro asking price for the land alone.
Bonomi sat back in his car and began to read the file again. Then he put it aside and turned the CD player on and turned the volume down low. He closed his eyes and thought of Claudia. A few minutes later the track ended and before the next one started his ears heard the distant drone of an airplane engine. He looked around for it. He couldn’t see anything but it was coming closer. The sun was bright and he put his hand up to shield his eyes. Then he saw it. A small aircraft approaching the airfield. He got out of his car and for effect he put his mirrored sunglasses on again. He smoothed down an already impeccable suit and reached up a foot and rubbed a smear from his shiny shoe.
The plane swooped in low, coming out of the sun. It bumped the grass runway then all wheels were down and the plane slowed and Bonomi could now see that it was a lear jet. The letter ’D’ preceding the numbers told him it was registered in Germany. Up til now that was the