TWENTY-ONE

HE OFFERED DAWN his resignation the next day.

‘You can’t just … walk out!’ she protested. ‘You’re the only one to have seen Meehan face to face.’

‘He’s the one who’s seen me, not the other way round, and I don’t look exactly anonymous with these stitches all over me. I won’t be able to get within miles of him.’

‘And Angela Fenwick? What’s going to happen when he comes after her?’

‘Your people are going to have to stop him,’ said Alex. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

She stared at him. ‘Alex.’ She hesitated over the use of his name. ‘Please. Don’t make me beg you to finish the job.’

‘It’s more likely to be Meehan who’s finishing the job,’ said Alex wryly, touching his bandaged face.

‘Alex.’ she lowered her voice. ‘You can catch him and you can kill him. You’re the best. That’s why we came to you.’

He glanced over at her. Today she was dressed completely in steely grey – the grey of her eyes. ‘What would it take,’ she murmured, ‘to keep you on the case? In charge of the case, calling the shots?’

Would you credit it, he thought. She’s actually schmoozing me. He closed his eyes. He’d never yet walked away from a challenge.

‘You could have whatever …’

‘Spain,’ he interrupted her flatly.

She stared at him.

‘We have to fly to Spain. There’s someone we need to see.’

He gave her a censored version of the facts. She listened in silence.

‘I don’t see why you can’t simply tell me who this man is, so that I can send someone over to talk to him.’

‘He won’t talk to you or to anyone you send,’ said Alex firmly. ‘It’s got to be me. Once I’ve talked to this guy I’ll hand the information over to you and you can do what you want with it. You brought me in for my specialised knowledge – you might as well get your money’s worth.’

She looked at him uncertainly and he shrugged. If he could help MI5 nail Meehan it might make up in some small way for his negligence towards George Widdowes. It was all that he had left to offer.

‘If anyone knew Meehan,’ Alex continued, ‘it was this guy. Day after day, week after week, down at that bunker in Tregaron … You get to know someone pretty damn well under those circumstances. You talk to each other because there’s nothing else to do. Blokes I’ve trained – I know things about them their wives certainly don’t.’

She nodded, took her mobile from her bag and left the room. By the time she returned he had finished the coffee. Her eyes travelled over the ugly, black-scabbed stitches that cut across his face.

‘Angela’s flying to Washington this morning for two days and I think we can assume she’ll be safe from Meehan during that time. But it means we have to get to Spain pretty much immediately and be back within forty-eight hours. Do you think you can travel in that state?’

They went first-class that afternoon. At the Fairlie Clinic they knew all about short recovery times, and the male nurse who had attended Alex the day before gave Dawn a swift tutorial on the care of knife wounds and packed a kit containing all the bandages, dressings and painkillers that she would need.

At Heathrow, at Alex’s insistence, they had bought a beach bag and swimming kit. In Alex’s case this had meant a pair of blue shorts, in Dawn’s a red bikini that Alex had exchanged for the severe one-piece she herself had chosen.

‘We’ve got to fit in,’ he told her as the plane circled Malaga airport. ‘The more official we look the less he’ll tell us. If we look like a couple of civil servants on expenses I can guarantee that he won’t even speak to us. And we both know you look good in red!’

She’d ignored the last comment and reluctantly agreed, as she had agreed that no official mention would be made of their contact’s name or location, and that whatever she learnt from the visit no criminal prosecution would be set in motion.

‘The other thing you have to remember,’ Alex had told her, ‘is that the world our man occupies is not run by Guardian readers but by hard-core criminals. The deal with girlfriends is that they wear a lot of lipstick, they’re treated like princesses and when it’s time to talk business they make themselves scarce. So when I feel that point’s coming I’ll expect you to do just that, OK?’

‘I don’t know why you need me along at all,’ she complained.

‘To make the whole thing kosher. Our guy’s sure to have some sort of woman in tow and a single male visitor unbalances the household. He constitutes a threat, a sexual challenge, a physical invasion – all sorts of negative things. A man with a girlfriend, however, is quite another matter. You and his chica can push off and talk about blonde highlights or vibrators or whatever and leave the men to put the world to rights over a bottle of ten-year-old malt.’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘Look, we want a result, we’ve got to press the right buttons.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘And all that male-heroic, bimbo-girlie stuff is a million miles from your own enlightened, neo-feminist views, right?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Alex. ‘I’m the original new man, me.’

The seat belt sign came on and a broad swathe of brilliant Mediterranean blue appeared beneath them. It was 4.15 local time.

The drive from Malaga airport took the best part of forty minutes in their hired Mercedes. It was a beautifully clear day, the air was warm and the pace of the traffic on the coast highway leisurely. From Malaga to Marbella seemed to be one long strip of holiday, golfing and marina developments. Some of these were completed, some were still at the bricks-and-mortar stage and all offered extravagantly generous terms to potential buyers.

‘We should put a deposit down on a condo.’ Alex yawned contentedly as they bypassed Marbella. ‘We can retire here and play golf when we finally hang up our shoulder holsters.’

‘Endless boozing with retired villains,’ said Dawn acidly. ‘I think not.’

‘Oh, get a life, girl! The sun’s shining. We’re on the Costa del Sol. Let’s at least try to enjoy ourselves.’

‘There’s something very creepy about this place. Where are all the young people, for a start?’

‘Having sexy siestas would be my guess. That or lying on the beach.’

‘Hm. Planning the next Brinks-Mat robbery more likely.’

‘Look,’ said Alex, ‘there’s the sign for El Angel.’

They drove past the turning and on to Puerto Banus, where they had booked accommodation for two nights. The Hotel del Puerto, they discovered, was a class act. A fountain surrounded by dwarf palms played in the reception area and their luxurious balconied room overlooked the port.

The room was a double. Alex had no reason to suspect that Connolly would check their accommodation, but he knew two singles would definitely spook him in the unlikely event that he did bother. Dawn had not been enthusiastic about a shared bed and Alex had drily promised to sleep on the floor.

And here they were. Beneath them sparkling white yachts rocked gently at anchor, and on the quayside expensively dressed holidaymakers sauntered past the bars and shops. Even Dawn brightened at the prospect before them and when Alex suggested they went down for a snack she readily agreed.

He unzipped his bag on the double bed, stripped uncomfortably to his boxer shorts – the wound in his thigh was particularly painful after the journey – and replaced his jeans and T-shirt with lightweight chinos and a Hawaiian shirt printed with dragons. The stitches he covered up with Elastoplast. ‘How do I look?’ he asked Dawn.

‘Like a beaten-up pimp,’ said Dawn. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll change in the bathroom.’

She re-entered in a short cocktail frock in her signature dove-grey and the faintest suggestion of scent. Her hair and her eyes shone. Alex stared at her.

‘You look …’

‘Yes, Captain Temple?’

‘… as if you’re on holiday.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

They chose a bar more or less at random. It was a little past five in the evening, and the glare had lifted from the sea and the gin palaces in front of them. The tables near them held middle-aged men in yachting gear and much younger women with implausibly huge breasts.

Their food arrived, plus a couple of Cokes. Alex had warned Dawn that some fairly serious drinking lay ahead. From his pocket he took a small plastic container holding a dozen ephedrine tablets. These, drawn from the Fairlie Clinic, had the dual effect of sharpening the senses and keeping drunkenness at bay. ‘Bottoms up!’ He grinned, downing two of them and handing the container to Dawn.

‘Cheers!’ rejoined Dawn rather more soberly. She took two and placed the container in her bag for safe keeping.

‘Glad to see you’re taking deodorant,’ observed Alex, peering down into the bag. ‘Things could get a bit sweaty.’

‘Funny guy,’ said Dawn. ‘It’s actually a can of Mace. Anyone tries any monkey business – including you – they go down.’

‘Riot girl, huh?’

‘You bet.’

The drive took fifteen minutes.

El Angel was a very different proposition from Puerto Banus. Not so much a village as an arbitrary strip of land between the highway and the sea, it comprised a clutch of new and not-so-new hacienda-style developments. The largest of these – a bowling and fast-food centre – was windowless and uncompleted, and from the weathered appearence of its plasterwork had clearly been so for some time. A large painted sign showed the development as its architects had envisaged it – bustling, youthful and cosmopolitan – but in truth it looked merely forlorn.

Parking the Mercedes on the highway, Alex and Dawn followed the track towards the sea. This passed through low scrub and between areas which had clearly once been intended to be gardens. Now, however, they only contained builders’ rubble, rusting angle iron and other construction detritus. The evening breeze carried a strong smell of dogshit.

Dawn winced as thistles tore at her ankles. ‘Perhaps I’m not so ideally dressed after all,’ she remarked, glancing down at her strappy sandals.

‘You look fine,’ said Alex.

The path led on to a custom-built road flanked by white-rendered houses. Some of these were occupied and had cars on their drives and defiant little gardens of bougainvillea and hibiscus in front of them, but most stood empty.

Alex was struck by the desolation of the place. These deserted villas were, in a very real sense, the end of the road. You would come here and slowly forget everything.

Dawn must have been feeling the same, because to his amazement she slipped her arm through his. ‘In every dream home a heartache,’ she murmured.

‘Yeah. I’m beginning to feel seriously in need of a drink.’

‘This bar is actually on the sea, is it?’

‘That was the impression I got,’ said Alex. ‘Shall we ring one of these bells and ask?’

They looked at each other, laughed nervously, then Dawn strode over to the nearest house. The sign read ‘Tangmere’.

The door was opened by an elderly man in a cravat and an RAF blazer. A vague housecoated figure, presumably his wife, peered nervously behind him.

‘We’re looking for Pablito’s,’ began Alex, shielding his stitched-up ear with his hand.

‘Over the road, face the sea, track at eleven o’clock between Sea Pines and Casa Linda. ETA three minutes. Calling on young Denzil?’

‘Yes.’

‘First-rate chap. Darkish horse, of course, but then that’s the rule rather than the exception out here. Tempt you inside for a minute or two? Raise a lotion to the setting sun?’

‘Perhaps some other time,’ said Alex guiltily, seeing the poorly concealed desperation in the other man’s eyes.

‘Very good. Dunbar’s the name. Usually here.’

Alex and Dawn set off down the track and saw the bar almost immediately. It was a blockhouse of a place, finished in a rough brownish render which matched the stony seashore. A neon design, not yet illuminated, showed palm trees and a sunset. Around the building stood half a dozen wooden benches and plastic-topped tables. A rusting motorcycle leaned tipsily against one wall.

‘I am definitely overdressed,’ said Dawn, picking her way awkwardly over the shingle.

‘Whereas my pimp’s outfit is spot on.’ Alex grinned.

As they approached Pablito’s they saw that they had taken a very indirect back route and that, in fact, a narrow road led straight to the front entrance. The swing doors in front of the building were half open. Inside, the place looked more spacious than its exterior suggested. A bar ran the length of one wall and on one of its stools a fat, heavily tanned man in a sarong, perhaps forty-five, was watching football on a wall-mounted television. Behind the bar a twenty-something woman with bleached blonde hair polished lager glasses. A cigarette smoked in an ashtray at her elbow.

As Dawn and Alex peered over the swing doors, the woman assumed a practised smile. ‘Come on in, loves. We’re still in injury time, as you can see, but make yourselves at home. What can I do you for?’

Alex turned to Dawn. From the corner of his eye he could see the blonde woman staring at the dressings on his face. ‘What’s it going to be, pet?’

Dawn smiled sweetly at him. ‘Ooh, I think a Bacardi Breezer might just get me going!’

‘One BB coming up. And for you, my love?’

‘Pint would be nice.’

The man on the stool scratched his stomach and looked up. ‘Tell you, that Patrick Viera’s a bloody liability. Someone’s going to put his lights out one of these days. Staying locally, are you?’

‘Puerto Banus,’ said Alex.

‘Very nice. Come over on the 1615?’

Alex nodded, helped Dawn on to a bar stool and with due consideration for his lacerated thigh, sat down himself.

‘Exploring the area, then?’

The features were puffy with alcohol, but the eyes were shrewd. And beneath the gross brick-red body, Alex saw, were the remains of a disciplined physique. On the broad forearms were the marks of tattooes removed by laser.

‘We wanted to get away from things for a few days.’ Alex winked at Dawn and allowed his hand to stray to the dressing on his cheek. ‘And as you can see, I’ve had a bit of a bang-up in the motor. We reckoned we were due some quality time.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place for that.’ The fat man’s eyes flickered over the knife wounds. ‘What game you in, then?’

‘Den, love, leave the poor man alone,’ said the woman, clattering over to the optics in her high-heeled mules. ‘He hasn’t set foot in here more’n two minutes and already you’re …’

‘No, it’s OK,’ said Alex. ‘I’m a physical training instructor. And Dawn, well, Dawn’s one of my best customers, aren’t you, pet.’

She giggled. ‘I hope so.’

This was the explanation that they had agreed on. If pressed, the suggestion was to be that Dawn was married to someone else.

The fat man nodded and returned to the football, shaking his head at intervals to mark his disapproval of Arsenal’s failure to wrest control of the game from Sturm Graz. As the final whistle blew he swung round on his bar stool and extended a large hand to Alex. ‘I’m Den. Big Den, Dirty Den, Fat Bastard, whatever.’ He moved behind the bar and slapped the woman’s tight, white-denimed rump. ‘And this is Marie. Pull us a bevvy, love.’

‘Leave off! And for Gawd’s sakes put on a bleedin’ shirt.’ The woman reached for a lager glass and winked at Dawn. ‘He wouldn’t stand for it if I went about with my chest hanging out – I don’t see why I should when he does!’

‘When you’ve got a body like mine,’ said Den, ‘you should share it with the world.’

He emptied a half-glass of Special Brew in a single swallow, slapped his vast belly, reached for his cigarettes and leant confidentially towards Dawn. ‘You know, I’m known locally as something of a fitness guru,’ he murmured.

Dawn giggled again. ‘Well, I approve of your gym,’ she said, looking around her at the football pennants and the signed EastEnders posters.

Other customers began to arrive. Alex and Dawn nursed their drinks at the bar and listened to the amiable banter around them. Everyone else, it was clear, was a regular. Equally clear was that this unremarkable beach bar was a meeting place for expatriate criminal aristocracy. For the most part they were expensively if a little garishly dressed. The women looked a lot more like Marie than Dawn, favouring bleached-blonde feather cuts and uncompromising displays of orange cleavage. The men went for Ross Kemp buzzcuts, pastel leisurewear and extensive facial scarring.

Den acted as host, drinking steadily and determinedly himself and ensuring that others’ glasses were full. To Alex there seemed to be no clear line between paid-for and complimentary drinks. No money was demanded of him and he assumed that he and Dawn were running up a tab.

At nine o’clock on the dot the Dunbars appeared, nodded courteously to Dawn and Alex, shook hands all round, drank a whisky and soda and a gin and tonic respectively, and left.

‘The old boy flew Spitfires over the Western Desert,’ Den told Alex afterwards. ‘Ten confirmed kills. Now he’s living on twenty-five quid a week. I let him run up a tab and then cancel it when Remembrance Sunday comes round. Least I can do.’

Alex nodded.

‘I get him talking sometimes,’ Den continued, lighting a cigarette. ‘Dogfight techniques. Aerial combat. And I tell you, get him on to all that stuff and you see the old hunter-killer light come back into those eyes. Know what I mean?’

Alex nodded again. He could feel the ephedrine now, racing through his system. Beside him Den ashed his cigarette and took a deep draught of Special Brew. The big man was sweating. Behind them the wives shrieked, Dawn among them.

Alex excused himself. He needed a piss.

Edging through the crowd he made his way outside into the neon twilight and peered around. By the palm trees would do. Behind him he heard feet crunching on the shingle – some other bloke on the same errand, he guessed.

Then something determined in the tread – some grim regularity – told him that it wasn’t. As he half turned, glimpsing a heavy-set silhouette topped with the shine of a shaven head, a massive forearm locked chokingly round his throat.

‘Forget the fitness bollocks, chum, who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?’

The voice was low – almost a whisper. Alex struggled desperately to break free and lashed back with heels and elbows. The blows landed on flesh and bone but without result. The arm at Alex’s throat was as solid as teak and tightening. Pinpoints of light appeared before his eyes and there was a rushing at his ears. His attacker clearly didn’t expect an immediate answer.

It was probably the ephedrine that gave Alex the extra couple of seconds of consciousness in which his scrabbling fingers found the other man’s crotch. Grabbing a sweaty handful of trouser, he clamped his left fist tight over the other man’s scrotum and squeezed with all the force he could muster.

A high-pitched gasp of pain sounded in his ear and the arm at his throat loosened a fraction. Enough for Alex to whirl around, still clutching and twisting the other man’s groin in his left hand, and hammer two rock-hard punches into his lower ribs with his right.

Evading a furious, windmilling series of counter-punches Alex staggered back, gagging for breath. He could see the man clearly now, a muscle-bound enforcer with a spider’s-web tattoo inked across his thick neck. Alex had vaguely registered him in the bar earlier. The tattoos were certainly prison work.

His face distorted with pain, the gorilla advanced on Alex, who backed away fast. This wasn’t about interrogation any more, it was about revenge. At that moment a slender figure rose from the shadows beside the entrance and a jet of spray cut the air.

The enforcer roared with the unaccustomed shock, pain and anger. His hands clamped themselves to his eyes, and Alex took advantage of the moment to kick him as hard as he could in the balls. With an agonised sigh, the man crumpled to the shingle.

‘Can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I,’ said Dawn, stepping into the light from the neon sign and returning the Mace to her bag with a self-satisfied smile.

‘I guess not,’ said Alex, his heart pounding with adrenalin. He looked down at the groaning figure at his feet. ‘Did you follow me out?’

‘Put it like this – I thought all that traditional East End hospitality was a bit too good to last.’

‘Well … Thank you!’

‘What the bloody ’ell’s goin’ on ’ere, then?’

Framed in the bar’s entrance was Connolly, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. From the surprised look on his face the scenario was not at all the one he expected. I was supposed to be the one on the ground, thought Alex. Begging for mercy and admitting to being a police officer, presumably.

Connolly’s look of surprise was quickly suppressed and he gave the fallen man a brisk kick in the guts. ‘Get up, yer big fuckin’ nelly!’

The enforcer writhed and Connolly turned concernedly to Alex. ‘Sorry, chum, was Kev here being impertinent?’

‘He asked me a question and then tried to strangle me before I had a chance to answer.’

Connolly shook his head, marched into the bar and returned with a jug of water, which he emptied over Kev’s head. ‘You just can’t get decent help for love nor money these days …’

Slowly and unsteadily Kev dragged himself to his feet, clutching his groin. His T-shirt was sodden and a dark orange stain covered the left side of his face, where the Mace pepper spray had struck him. He managed a rueful grin, his eyes still streaming, and extended a shaky hand to Alex. ‘Sorry, mate, overreacted a bit there!’

‘No problem,’ said Alex, amazed that the man was able to stand at all. Now that the adrenalin from the fight was ebbing away the stitches on his own face were beginning to throb.

‘All friends again?’ asked Connolly with a dazzling smile. ‘Marvellous. Kev, take the lady inside, open a bottle of champagne – the Moët, not that dago muck – and make her comfortable. And wipe yer boat race while you’re about it!’

The gorilla nodded meekly and signed that Dawn precede him through the swing doors.

‘I’m sorry about that, mate,’ said Connolly, turning back to Alex. ‘But you’ll understand I’ve got to keep an eye on the security side of things.’

Alex nodded.

‘You’re not Old Bill, I know that much. But you’re something. That’s no sunlamp tan on your hands and neck, any more than those are car crash injuries on your face and arm. And I didn’t see the rumble just then, but …’

‘Stevo sent me,’ said Alex quietly. ‘I didn’t want to alarm Marie.’

Connolly emptied his glass. ‘Stevo? I don’t know any Stevo.’

‘Jim Stephenson from “B” Squadron in Hereford. That Stevo. I’m Regiment, Den.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m in “D” Squadron. Seconded to RWW, like you were.’

‘So when did you join?’

For five minutes Connolly subjected him to a series of questions about Regiment personalities, extracting details that only an insider would have known. He slipped in a trick question, asking if that idle short-arse Tosh McClaren was still around and Alex confirmed that yes, Tosh McClaren was still around, and he was still 6 foot 2 tall. After a time, Connolly appeared satisfied that Alex was who he said he was.

Sensing this, Alex looked him in the eye. ‘Listen, Den, I’m not trouble, OK? I just want to talk.’

Connolly stared at him in silence. He looked tired, puffy-faced and a little sad. And strangely vulnerable, thought Alex, for a man who had once been known as the SAS’s toughest NCO.

‘You’re not a talker, son, you’re a shooter. It’s written all over your face.’

‘I’m looking for someone, Den, that’s all. Help me and you can rest easy about the Park Royal job. No more cover stories, no more looking over your shoulder for the cops.’

‘What the fuck’s the Park Royal job?’

‘Den, I’m family. Trust me.’

‘Oh, yeah? So who’s the girl? Well handy with the Mace, it looked like.’

‘She’s just a girl. Nothing to do with anything.’

Den stared at his empty glass in silence, flipped his cigarette into the gathering darkness and nodded. For a moment, behind the flushed features, Alex saw the taut wariness of the Special Forces soldier. Then the dazzling smile returned and a large hand was placed on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Come on, son, we’re wasting good drinking time. Tonight’s on the house, yeah?’

He steered Alex back inside and moments later Marie was sliding Alex a glass of champagne and a shot-glass of Irish whiskey. Someone, to applause and laughter, began to sing ‘My Yiddisher Momma’.

Some time later Dawn reappeared beside him. Her cheeks were flushed and she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself. Under the circumstances it seemed natural for Alex to slip his arm round her waist, and for her in response to incline herself against him. For a moment he felt the soft pressure of her breast against his side.

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘That could have turned nasty, one way or another. How are you getting on with the gangster wives?’

She placed her champagne thoughtfully on the bar. ‘They’re good fun. I like them. Any progress?’

‘I’ve dropped a name or two. Told him who I really am. Not who you are, though. Far as he’s concerned, you’re just my girl.’

‘Mm. Lucky me.’

‘The main problem is that he thinks I’m some sort of hit man. Possibly even come over here to whack him. He’s very jumpy. I think the best thing I can do is to tell him the real reason I’m here and hope that calms things down.’

‘I agree. And this is looking like a rather serious conversation if I’m supposed to be some no-brain blonde bimbo.’ She pouted. ‘Which I clearly am!’

He ran a finger down her cheek. ‘It’s just that you play the part so well.’

‘Now why am I suspicious of a compliment like that, I wonder?’ she asked.

There was another burst of singing from the floor of the room. Someone had sat themselves at a piano and was banging out old Cockney songs.

‘Are we within earshot of Bow Bells here, do you think?’ mused Dawn, throwing back the remains of her drink.

‘Basildon, maybe,’ said Alex. ‘Not that I’ve got any quarrel with that, as an Essex man myself.’

Den Connolly suddenly appeared beside them, sweating and massive. ‘Before I’m too pissed to understand a word you’re saying,’ he asked Alex, ‘who exactly was it you was after?’

Alex dismissed Dawn with a nod of his head and a pat on her dove-grey behind. ‘Joseph Meehan. Code-named Watchman. You finished him for Box.’

Connolly nodded. ‘I ain’t officially here,’ he said eventually, his words slurring. ‘I ain’t officially anywhere. But you know that.’

Alex nodded. ‘I know the score from Stevo. No one hears your name. Ever. And if you can give me what I need you can rest easy about that other business.’

‘You gimme your word on that?’ Connolly glanced meaningfully down at the assembled company. ‘My friends’d be very pissed off if … They’re my family now, y’understand – forget fuckin’ Hereford, RWW, all that old bollocks.’

Alex looked him in the eye. ‘I give you my word.’

Connolly pursed his lips and nodded slowly and vaguely to himself. ‘Tomorrow. Lunchtime. Bring your …’ He gestured vaguely towards Dawn, who was whispering confidences to Marie. ‘Meanwhiles, order anything you want. Open bar, like I said.’

They left around 2 a.m. Not because Alex thought that Connolly might relent and talk to him that night, but because he felt that he needed to prove his credentials to the ex-NCO. He had to show proper respect. Leaving early would have been regarded as very graceless. So he had stuck around, downing drink after drink, and looking suitably impressed by the tales of blags, slags, grass-ups, fit-ups, bent coppers, unnumbered shooters and all the rest of the hard-man mythology. Dawn meanwhile rested wide-eyed at his side, with her arm draped lightly round his waist. They looked, in short, like any impressionable young couple who happened to have stumbled into a bar full of criminals.

When the last goodbyes had been said and they’d finally reached the car, Dawn blinked hard several times and reached in her bag for the key.

‘You OK to drive?’ asked Alex blearily.

‘I’ve actually drunk comparatively little,’ said Dawn. ‘I always get rum and a Coke in that situation – that way you can just keep your glass filled with Coke and no-one’s the wiser.’

‘Well, ephedrine or no, I’m well and truly bladdered, I’m afraid,’ Alex slurred. ‘But mission accomplished, sort of.’

‘Get in,’ said Dawn.

At the hotel they stood together for a moment in front of the open window. The port and the yachts were lit up now, and the sea was an inky black below them. A tide of drunken benevolence washed over Alex. ‘You were great,’ he said feelingly, placing a hand on her warm shoulder. ‘Especially Maceing that bonehead of Connolly’s.’

She smiled and inclined her cheek to his hand. ‘You’ve already thanked me for that. I enjoyed myself. What d’you think tomorrow holds?’

‘Dunno. All that lunch invitation stuff was just to buy himself time. The more of his hospitality he can persuade us to soak up, the less bad he’s going to feel about us leaving empty-handed. At the moment he accepts that I’m kosher and you’re just the sweet thing I happen to be travelling with, but he’s worried about who comes after me. Where it’s all going to end.’

‘What’s he got to hide, Alex?’ she asked gently.

‘Enough.’

‘So what promises did you make him?’

Careful, Alex told himself woozily. She doesn’t know about the Park Royal job. ‘Oh, I strung him along …’

‘You think he’ll talk to you tomorrow?’ Dawn asked sharply. ‘Because tomorrow’s all we’ve got. In thirty hours Angela gets back from Washington and any time after that …’

Alex nodded. She didn’t need to spell out the danger that Meehan posed. Privately, he was far from convinced that Connolly would talk to him, but he couldn’t see how else the situation could have been handled. The alcohol was pounding at his temples now and the knife cuts were beginning to pulse in unison.

‘Why don’t I get those dressings off?’ she asked him. ‘Let a bit of fresh air at your poor face. Lie down on the bed?’

He could quite easily have removed the dressings himself, but lay there breathing in her jasmine scent and her smoky hair, and the faint smell of rum on her breath. She was OK, was Dawn, he decided. A bit of a bitch at times and the most irritating bloody driver he’d ever met, but what the hell? She had a tough job. He could live with her downsides.

And she really was quite seriously pretty with those cool grey eyes and that soft, secretive mouth. Without especially meaning to, and with a vague stab at discretion, he glanced down the grey linen front of her dress as she inched the dressing from his cheek. She didn’t seem to be wearing any sort of bra and he recalled with a rush of pleasure the feel of her breasts against him in the bar.

‘That’s not fair,’ she said reproachfully.

‘What’s not fair?’

‘Here I am, doing my big Florence Nightingale number and all you can do is stare down my front, panting like a dog. You’re supposed to be an officer and a gentleman.’

‘No one ever said anything about being a gentleman,’ said Alex. ‘And I’m not panting, I’m breathing.’

‘Well, stop it. And shut your eyes, or I’ll rip your ear in half again and you wouldn’t like that, now would you?’

Alex smiled, and tried not to think about George Widdowes’ ears lying grey and bloodstained against the pillow. The same thought evidently occurred to Dawn, for her movements abruptly hardened and became businesslike.

When she had finished she stepped out on to the balcony with her mobile phone. ‘Can you give me a moment?’ she asked, punching out a number. ‘Personal call.’

He took himself into the bathroom. The boyfriend, he thought, and felt a sudden urge to hit Dawn’s unknown lover very hard in the face. Several times, preferably.

He glanced in the mirror, at the angry black stitch-tracks across his face. You look like shite, Temple, he told himself. You’d be lucky to trap some swamp donkey from Saxty’s looking like that, let alone this foxy little spook. Get real.

By the time she returned he was down to his boxer shorts and looking for the Nurofen.

‘Turn round,’ she said. ‘Let me look at that thigh.’

Alex obeyed. Five minutes later she folded her arms. ‘OK,’ she began. ‘This is the deal. You get the bed and the blankets from the cupboard, I get the quilt on the floor.’

‘I’ll go on the floor. You take the bed.’

‘Normally I’d accept like a shot, but given the extent of your injuries I’ve decided to be generous. No arguments, Temple, OK?’

Alex inclined his head and climbed into the bed. Dawn went into the bathroom. When she returned to the quilt on the floor she paused for a moment in front of the window, a slight and entirely feminine figure in her white T-shirt and knickers.

Alex groaned. For the first time that day he found himself in severe physical pain.