TWENTY-TWO

‘YOU’RE NOT GOING to throw up again, are you?’ Dawn enquired.

‘I don’t think so,’ whispered Alex. ‘But you couldn’t just ask that waiter for a half of lager, could you?’

‘Are you insane?’

‘No, I know it sounds bad but it works. And since it seems to be impossible to get a decent fried breakfast in this hotel …’

‘This is Spain, Alex, not the Mile End Road. Why don’t you just lie back and get some sun, and stop being so scratchy?’

It was 10.30 and they were on adjoining sun-loungers by the hotel pool. Dawn was wearing the red bikini they had bought at Heathrow, but not even this could raise Alex’s spirits. A bad hangover had coincided with an acute bout of guilt and depression concerning George Widdowes.

The day before had been enjoyable and there had been an air of promise about things – a sense that the mistakes of the past might somehow be redeemed by a little energetic detective work. Now, everything seemed curiously pointless. If he weighed up his career and balanced the harm he had done and the deaths he’d caused against the long-term good, he was unable to state – as he’d once been able to – that on balance the good came out on top. It didn’t. The bad came out on top.

Den Connolly had clearly felt that moving from unattributable operations for the RWW to boosting security vans on the North Circular Road was little more than a side shuffle. It wasn’t a question of going into crime – you were already there. You had already spent so much of your career so far outside the normal boundaries of behaviour that almost anything seemed logical and reasonable.

The trouble with crime, though, was criminals. They were stupid, for the most part, and greedy. And boastful, judging by last night, and sentimental, and seriously lacking in taste. No, he decided, you’d have to put your own outfit together. A few good, reliable blokes. Apply military standards of security, planning and execution.

And then what, assuming you did the bank and made your wad?

Buy a bar and a big telly, and listen to war stories and get fat?

Dawn raised her head from the sunlounger and peered at him irritably. Her face was shining with sunscreen. ‘What was it you said yesterday? Cheer up? Get a life? The sun’s shining?’

Alex turned to face her and felt the day’s first pale flicker of lust. The red lycra strap of the bikini top hung undone on either side of her and a single pearl of sweat lay in the small of her back. For a moment he stared at it, wondering how her skin would taste, then a waiter with a tray approached.

‘Una cerveza para el Señor, por favor,’ murmured Dawn. ‘Y un naranja fresca para mi, gracias.’

‘Si, Señora.’ The waiter nodded and disappeared.

‘That sounded very fluent,’ said Alex.

‘Yes, I told him you needed an enema for your bad mood.’

‘What I need is not to have drunk so bloody much last night.’

‘I expect you’ve done worse in the service of your country.’

He grunted. The knife wounds were beginning to heal, and in consequence to itch like crazy. ‘I forgot to ask – did you manage to rescue my weapon from the river?’

‘The Glock? Yes. Plus your knife and a silenced Sig Sauer that Meehan must have been carrying. And while you were out for the count, by the way, we managed to get tissue scrapings and a couple of hairs from under your fingernails.’

‘Well, I certainly held on tight. But surely you don’t need any proof of who you’re dealing with?’

‘Every confirmation helps. But our main hope is that we might be able to learn something about his whereabouts. The Forensic Science Service can tell you a hell of a lot from a hair.’

Alex looked at her doubtfully. ‘Good luck with that. The hair may well turn out to be more helpful than laughing boy down the road.’

‘If he’s not going to tell us anything, why ask us to come back?’

‘He’ll probably produce something just to swing the immunity deal I promised him. The question is whether we’ll be able to rely on what he produces.’

Dawn frowned at him. ‘Look, about this immunity deal …?’

‘Dawn, the chances are that if you’ve got nothing on him now then nothing’s going to come up in the future. And you can swing it, can’t you, if he leads us to the Watchman?’

‘It’s a hell of a big “if”.’

The drinks arrived. Alex drank down his beer in three long swallows, thought it probable for several minutes that he was going to vomit, then suddenly felt better.

Dressed, they strolled through the port, where Dawn bought herself a scoop-neck top and a pair of skin-tight white jeans, and high-heeled mules. To look the part, she explained. Basic tradecraft.

Back at the hotel she changed into it all, adding a Wonderbra.

‘Blimey!’ said Alex, impressed. ‘All you need now is a forty-a-day Rothman’s habit and a boyfriend on Crimestoppers!’

‘If we hang around at Pablito’s long enough I’ll probably end up with both.’

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you were already taken. Mr Lucky-boy in London.’

Dawn rolled her eyes and swung her bag over her shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’

Pablito’s appeared deserted. The swing doors were locked, the tables untenanted and wasps swung threateningly around an overflowing litter bin.

Checking his watch, Alex knocked at the entrance.

The door was opened by Marie, who was wearing a pink velour tracksuit. ‘Come in. ’Fraid Den’s still sleeping it off. You look a treat, my love. Cup of Nes?’

‘Lovely,’ said Dawn.

When the coffee was ready they carried it upstairs. Above the bar was a small landing giving on to a bedroom and bathroom, and a sun-baked roof terrace. On a large rectangle of plastic matting at one end of this, naked but for a faded pair of Union Jack underpants, lay Denzil Connolly, snoring. An ashtray had overturned at his side and a nine-tenths-empty bottle of Bell’s whisky lay just beyond the reach of his outstretched arm.

‘He likes to sleep under the stars,’ said Marie. ‘I had to put down the matting ’cause the bottles kept smashing and then he’d roll on the pieces in the night. He’s a big feller, as you can see.’ She folded her arms in a long-suffering gesture. ‘Den, love, we’ve got company.’

The sleeping figure stirred and the eyes half opened in puffy suspicion. ‘Wha’ the fuck you …’ Seeing Alex and Dawn, he closed his eyes again, groaned and writhed like a hippopotamus. ‘Wha’s fuckin’ time?’

‘Twelve. And Alex and Dawn are here.’

‘Who? Oh, yeah, right. Give us a hand up.’

He struggled to his feet and Marie led him inside. There were unpleasant noises from the bathroom.

By the time they sat down to lunch on the terrace half an hour later, however, Connolly appeared fully recovered. Bullish, even, in his vast shorts and polo shirt. They ate fish and oven chips with vinegar and mushy peas cooked by Marie and drank ice-cold Spanish beer.

‘You two should get a place over here,’ Connolly said expansively. He winked at Dawn. ‘Can you cook, love?’

‘You betcha.’

‘Well, then. Sorted.’

‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it, Alex?’ said Dawn.

‘I’m afraid I’m not quite in the early-retirement league,’ said Alex. ‘Maybe I could set up a little security outfit, though. Country clubs, golf clubs …’

‘Protection?’ asked Marie brightly.

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly like that …’

The meal, and later the afternoon and early evening, wore on pleasantly enough. Alex had taken a couple more ephedrine tablets at the hotel and so was happy to maintain a steady intake of cold beer. Connolly drank Scotch from the start, occasionally topping up his drink with a splash of mineral water, and by mid-afternoon Alex estimated that the big man had sunk a good third of a bottle. This, he knew, was when you got the best of a heavy drinker: in the five-or six-hour window following recovery. The whisky seemed to have little effect on Connolly other than to cheer him up and he proved a vastly entertaining host, telling story after story about the criminal fraternity who were the bar’s main – if not only – clientele. No mention was made of his own exploits, however, nor of his military past.

At four o’clock Marie drove them to San Pedro, where Connolly was a member of a country club. In practice this simply meant a change of bar and Alex tried to moderate his alcoholic intake. Dawn did her rum-and-Coke trick, always managing to have a full glass at her side, but for Alex it was harder. Connolly, he sensed, needed to know that he was in the presence of a kindred spirit. He needed company on the long alcoholic journey that would end in oblivion in the early hours of the morning. He needed to see Alex keep pace with him. This was the price for the information that he had to offer.

At six they returned to El Angel, where Maria prepared the bar for the night’s trade and microwaved a frozen chicken-and-pineapple pizza to keep them all going. Despite having drunk more than two-thirds of a bottle of Scotch, Connolly appeared solid as a rock and capable of continuing for ever. Alex, by contrast and despite the ephedrine, was beginning to feel decidedly light-headed. It was a very hot day and he had downed a good dozen beers in half as many hours. Surreptitiously palming a glass and a salt cellar from one of the tables he disappeared into the Gents. There he poured a good teaspoonful of salt into the glass, added water and waited while it dissolved. Gritting his teeth, he took a hefty swig. As soon as the salt hit the back of his throat he retched convulsively, bringing up the last few drinks in a warm gush. Twice more, he forced himself to repeat the exercise. By the end of it he was white-faced and nauseated, but reckoned he had probably bought himself another couple of hours of drinking time.

Soon, the first customers started to arrive and the routine of the night began to repeat itself. Connolly appeared to be in expansive form again, greeting every new arrival with huge enthusiasm, roaring with laughter at their jokes and dispensing drinks liberally.

Alex began to despair of ever getting him alone. Had the big man, he fell to wondering, remembered a single detail of their conversation the night before? Or had he and Dawn simply been two vaguely recognised faces who, for reasons unknown, had turned up to keep him company?

The evening passed in a beery, pissed-up blur. He had drunk himself sober, Alex found, and with every minute that passed his irritation grew. He should have known better than to force through this trip on the word of a known head case like Stevo. All that he had done was compound his failure to protect Widdowes by promising information that, when push came to shove, he couldn’t deliver. ‘I’m not confident about all of this,’ he confided to Dawn at about 11 p.m. ‘Last night I was convinced he had something to tell us but now I think he’s just stringing me along. That is, if he remembers what I said to him last night, which I’m seriously beginning to doubt.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ said Dawn. ‘I think he’s trying to come to a decision. I think we’re in the best place we could be right now.’

Alex stared at her, amazed. Her tone was both complicit and intimate. Her usual operational scratchiness was nowhere to be found.

‘Trust me, Alex,’ she added, turning her back to the bar and placing a proprietorial hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing from informants before. It’s a sort of dance they do, like cats walking round and round a place before they sit down.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Alex, pleasantly conscious of the small pressure of her hand. ‘I was going to say that I thought we’d blown several grand of your agency’s budget on a wild-goose chase. That you might have some serious explaining to go through when you get back to Thames House. Swanky hotels and bikinis and all the rest of it.’

‘Oh, the bikini won’t be wasted,’ said Dawn airily. ‘But take my advice. Let Connolly come to you. He knows why you’re here, all right.’ She winked. ‘Trust me!’

‘I do trust you.’

‘Well, I’m not sure if I should trust you with all these Costa Crime femmes fatales. I’ve seen a couple of real vampires eyeing you up.’

‘Well, then your observational skills are better than mine, girl, because I haven’t clocked them.’

She tapped the mobile phone in her jeans-jacket pocket. ‘Would it surprise you that there was a call made to the hotel this morning asking to be put through first to your room and then to mine?’

‘And?’

‘And the caller discovered what he wanted to know, which is that we had the same room number. That I’m really your girlfriend, not some scalp hunter from Box or Special Branch.’

Alex smiled. ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got that straight.’

She gave him a long, cool glance. ‘Will you do something for me?’

‘What?’ he asked, inhaling the smoky jasmine of her scent.

‘If we get anything from Connolly will you go all the way for me?’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘What exactly do you …’

She leant towards him, took his bottom lip between her teeth and bit him. Not hard, but not softly either. ‘Stay on the case. You and me together. As equals. No more bullshit, no more fighting. After all,’ she murmured, ‘we are supposed to be sleeping together.’

He stared into her level grey eyes, dazed by her closeness.

‘So, lovebirds, whassup?’

It was Connolly, swaying in front of them.

And Marie. ‘Dawn, love,’ she said, ‘I’ve come to borrow you. You know the words to “Stand by Your Man”, don’t you? We need more chorus members.’

‘Ooh, lovely,’ trilled Dawn.

Connolly waited until the women had gone, then nodded towards the stairs.

On the roof terrace they drew up chairs. A bottle of Paddy’s whiskey, two glasses and Connolly’s cigarettes were arranged on a low table. The fat man poured the drinks. ‘Joe Meehan, then,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘What’s the story, morning glory?’

‘How much do you know about what you were finishing him for?’ asked Alex, sipping the whiskey, feeling the dark burn of its descent.

‘Officially, nothing. Except that it was clear he was going over the water. And going in very deep, given the attention he was given. And I also knew that he was very good. Almost certainly the best man I ever trained.’

‘No one told you anything?’

‘No, we were left to draw our own conclusions. I’ll tell you something, though. They made a big thing about the secrecy of the operation. It was an RTUable offence even to mention it.’

‘Well, notes are being compared now.’

Connolly waited, his glass steady in his hand, immobile.

Alex leant forward. ‘You were right about Ireland, obviously. He went in deep, joined the Provies, worked his way up.’

‘Brave lad.’

‘He was,’ agreed Alex. ‘Until the whole thing went arse-up. They turned him, Den.’

‘Not possible,’ said Connolly flatly. ‘They never turned that lad, I’d bet the bar on it. He was the best I ever saw. The most committed. He’d never have fallen for all that tinpot Armed Struggle bollocks.’

‘They turned him, Den,’ Alex repeated. ‘He joined Belfast Brigade’s Nutting Squad. Made bombs for them. Personally tortured and murdered those FRU blokes – Bledsoe and Wheen.’

‘Not possible, mate,’ said Connolly again matter-of-factly, tapping the filter of a cigarette on the table and lighting it. ‘I just don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true and it’s verified. The province’s worst nightmare, and the Regiment and Box put him there.’

Connolly shook his head in disbelief. Closed his eyes, briefly. ‘So now you’re after him, yeah?’

‘Look, I don’t know what happened over the water, Den, but the man’s certainly killing people now. Three in the last couple of months.’

‘And so you’ve been pulled in to kill him.’ Connolly took a drag of his cigarette, sipped reflectively at his whiskey and stared out over the sea.

‘I need to find him. Put any spin on that you like.’

Connolly shook his head. ‘You can fuckin’ whistle, chum.’

‘Den, mate, you’ve got a nice set-up here, and you’ve been good to me and Dawn. But do you really want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, worrying that someone’s going to grass you up? Worrying that every new customer might have an extradition order and a warrant in his pocket? Armed robbery, Den. Think about it. It pulls down a heavy score.’

From the other man’s expression Alex could see that he had thought about it, often. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘No. What I’m saying is that I can make that worry disappear. For ever. But I’m going to have to have something very solid to offer in return. If you’ve nothing to give me I’ll disappear, and everything will carry on as it was before.’ He emptied his glass and poured himself another. ‘I’m not threatening you, Den, I’m just making you an offer. Take it or leave it.’

For several minutes they both stared out at the sea. From below them, in the bar, came the muted sound of singing and laughter.

‘There was a thing Joe told me once, about his childhood,’ Connolly began abruptly. ‘He spent his teens, it must have been, with his dad in the West Country – Dorchester, was it, somewhere like that – and every summer they’d go caravanning. Lake District, New Forest, Norfolk Broads, all over. Just the two of them. Now on one of those trips, he told me – can’t remember which – his dad parked up the caravan and they set off for a hike across country.

‘Usual enough story – they went a bit too far, weren’t quite sure of their bearings, weather turned nasty on them, so rather than footslog it back they decided to try and find a bed and breakfast. No B&B for miles, as it turned out, but what they did find was the entrance to a big old house. Deserted, with boarded-up windows and that kind of thing. The place had obviously been secured at some point, but the padlocks and the notices on the gate had been vandalised and it was pouring with rain and in they went. It was getting dark by then, and the plan was to shelter for the night and make tracks back to the caravan park in the morning.

‘So anyway they got inside, found a dry corner and got their heads down. The old man’s a bit worried by this point, being a law-abiding sort of bloke, but the boy’s in heaven: he and his dad are having the adventure of a lifetime! Morning comes and they find that there’s not just the house – there’s a ruined church and a river and some falling-down cottages and a couple of shops – a whole village. All completely deserted. Obviously been locked away for years.’

‘Like Imber, on Salisbury Plain? Or what’s that Royal Armoured Corps place in Dorset – Tyneham?’

‘Exactly. Just like that. So they have a bit of an explore. The dad’s still a bit jumpy but as I say, the boy’s having the time of his life. He climbs into the church through a window, jimmies a door open and finds his way down to the crypt. Now I can’t remember the exact details but somewhere down there, locked away in boxes or cupboards or something, is all this antique gear.’

‘Gear?’

‘Covert resistance stuff. Transceivers, morse sets, one-time pads, time-pencil detonators – that sort of thing, all packed away in greaseproof paper. So he takes some bits and pieces up to his dad, who can’t believe his eyes, because although the gear’s all World War Two vintage it’s still in mint condition.’

‘A cache in case of enemy invasion,’ suggested Alex.

‘That’s what they eventually figure. And they find other stuff, too, hidden away beneath the other houses. Electrical bits and pieces, radio components, ironmongery, what have you. A real Aladdin’s cave for a young lad.’

‘So how come no one had found this stuff before them?’

‘I dunno. I’m guessing that it was because the only other people who’d been near the place for decades had been dossers and tramps. A few bikers, perhaps, and maybe the local satanist coven but …’

Alex nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, the boy’s all for helping himself to the gear but the old man puts his foot down. They haven’t committed any offence yet, he says – it’s not trespassing to walk through an open gate, after all – and he doesn’t object to their having a look at all this stuff, but they’re not taking it away. So they poke around, Dad explains how it all works, and then they pack it away again, reseal the boxes and off they go, make their way back to wherever they left the caravan.

‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, Joe persuades the old boy to shift the caravan to a farm a couple of miles away and they go up to the old house every day – creeping around like a couple of commandos, Joe said, and having a good old sticky beak at all this secret resistance gear. Happiest time he ever knew, Joe says. Best days ever. And when it’s time to go home, he tells me, he does a funny thing. He goes and buys his own padlock and chain, and locks the place up properly. Puts up all the old notices again – MOD Property, Strictly no Entrance to the Public and so on.’

‘Why does he do that?’

‘Not sure. My guess is that it was something to do with deep-freezing the experience. Sealing it away. And also to do with the fact that his dad could have made a lot of money out of flogging the gear without anyone being any the wiser but chose not to out of principle. There were a few of the old Mark III transceivers down there, apparently – the SOE suitcase jobs. They’d have to be worth a few grand apiece now. I suppose Joe didn’t want anyone else having them away.’

‘You know what I’m going to ask you next, don’t you?’ said Alex.

‘Yeah and I’m afraid I honestly don’t know the answer. I really don’t. All I can remember is that the place was on the edge of one of the national parks – Peak District, Snowdonia, Dartmoor … You must’ve trained people yourself – you know how you listen to what they say and you don’t quite listen, and sometimes you deliberately forget.’

Alex nodded. He knew what the other man meant. Part of you kept friendship at arm’s length when you were sending a man into a situation of acute danger. ‘So why was he telling you all this?’

‘It was a place we went in Wales – an MOD property in Eppynt Forest we were using for an escape and evasion exercise. There was a line of clapped-out cottages there and he said it reminded him of this place he’d once discovered with his dad, and told me the story.’ Connolly frowned and blinked, and downed his whiskey. ‘There was one other thing. The last time I saw him before the Box people came to take him away, we were up at the camp at Tregaron. We shook hands and I wished him luck, and he smiled and held up a key. At the time I had no idea what he was on about, but …’

‘You think it was the key to that property?’

Connolly shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘And you can’t think of any detail that might point to where this place was?’

‘Alex, it was a dozen years ago. Anything was possible in those days and everyone you met had a weird story to tell. These things wash over you.’

‘Happiest time he ever knew?’ mused Alex.

‘Best days ever,’ confirmed Connolly and flicked his cigarette butt over the low parapet on to the beach.

‘Leaving out Scotland for the moment,’ said Alex, thoughtfully kicking off his deck shoes, ‘you’ve got the Lake District, the Peak District, the Cheviots …’

They had been back from Pablito’s for less than ten minutes. Marie had called them a taxi and they’d left the hire-car at El Angel.

‘… the North York Moors, the Dales, Kielder …’

‘Alex,’ said Dawn quietly, turning to the open hotel window and the twinkling lights of the port, ‘could you please shut the fuck up and kiss me?’

Alex blinked. A warm tide of ephedrine-tempered alcohol raced through his bloodstream but for some imponderable reason his mind was clear. He stared at her. The Dawn Harding that stood before him now was no relation whatever of the vengeful bitch that he had been so unwillingly paired with in London. This Dawn Harding’s face was flushed, her eyes were bright, her posture was challenging and expectant. A warm breeze touched her hair. With great care – this was definitely no time to fall flat on his face – he crossed the room towards her. His hands found the small of her back. Her eyes closed at his touch, her lips parted and she pressed against him, breathing hard. Wanting all of her at once – mouth, eyes, neck, breasts – he practically lifted her off her feet.

‘Quick,’ she murmured, her fingers in his hair. ‘Get me out of these clothes.’

Alex kissed her again until she was gasping and her fingers had left his hair and were scrabbling at the buttons on his shirt.

She tore the last two, but by then he had pulled the tight white top over her head and unsnapped the fierce little Wonderbra. Her breasts were pale, their upper curves touched by a slight pinkness from the morning’s sun and very faintly damp. She tasted of sweat and smoke.

Falling to his knees, he forced himself to slow down, explored her stomach with his mouth, ran the tip of his tongue down the line of tiny translucent hairs that descended towards the gilt stud of her jeans. Popping the stud, he eased down the zipper and began to pull down the jeans.

They stuck. He pulled again and she staggered, giggled drunkenly, and fell on to the bed with her legs in the air and the white Versace jeans around her knees. Taking one of the leg-ends, he tried to pull it over her feet. ‘They’re too bloody tight,’ he breathed, swaying.

‘Come on, Captain,’ she said, looking up at him archly. ‘If you can take down a Scud launch site behind enemy lines, surely you can manage my jeans in a hotel bedroom!’

Bracing his foot against the edge of the bed, Alex gave an extra-hard tug. They jeans came off in a rush and he fell heavily backwards on to his stitched thigh. The pain was intense and for a moment he lay there on the floor in his own half-undone trousers, swearing and laughing.

After a moment Dawn peered over the edge of the bed and saw the blood rapidly beading through the cotton. Lowering herself to Alex’s side, she eased the trousers off and then hurried to the bathroom for cotton wool and surgical spirit. ‘That’s rather blown the romantic mood, hasn’t it?’ she murmured, pressing a swab to the wound. ‘Still, while I’m down here I might as well have a look at the rest of the damage.’

As she poured and dabbed, Alex said nothing. The surgical spirit was cold against his skin. The sway of her small, neat breasts over his body proved a very effective anaesthetic.

He lay there as she eased off the dressings on his face and arm. He had been right in his early guess that a sensuous body lay beneath all that formal puritan grey. Her palely curvaceous form was overlaid with the faint musculature of one who exercised when there was nothing better to do with her time, but not otherwise. Her stomach was flat but soft, tapering towards the dark-blonde scribble of her pubic hair.

To tend to his arm she hunkered down over his hand. As bees to honey – as she must have known they would – his fingers moved upwards to meet her. She closed her eyes, pressed herself briefly and slickly against his palm, then continued in a businesslike way with her ministrations. ‘Wait,’ she told him a moment later. ‘I’m concentrating.’

‘So am I!’

‘Let me get these bandages off – I’m not into sex with Egyptian mummies.’

To remove the dressings from his face, she sat astride him so that Alex could feel the damp heat of her crotch against his chest. But her expression was serious, and when he reached for her breasts she frowned absently and slapped his hands back down to his chest. ‘I hope you don’t behave like this with all those army nurses.’

‘We don’t get nurses in the SAS,’ breathed Alex. ‘We get some sweaty corporal called Dave or Ginge.’

‘I told you to leave them alone. I’m going to have to be very rough with you if you don’t.’

‘I’ve been roughed up by experts.’ Alex grinned. ‘I can take it.’

A moment later she straddled him and lowered herself on to him. For a moment she was still, then he felt a series of hot, updrawing waves. Nothing mattered except the absolute intensity of the feeling that – for all their antagonism – he knew they shared at that moment. And then, with a desperate dying cry which might have come from either or both of them, it was over and Dawn gently subsided on top of him. She seemed very young – almost childlike with her scrubbed face and sleepy eyes. ‘That was fun,’ she murmured. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘It beats arguing.’

She settled herself against his shoulder. ‘Please, will you be nice to me from now on?’ she asked. ‘I mean really, really nice?’

‘I promise,’ murmured Alex.

‘And will you kill for me?’

He looked at her.

She wrinkled her nose at him and grinned. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Will you?’

He smiled. ‘OK.’