TWENTY-THREE

‘OK,’ SAID ANGELA Fenwick. ‘The position is this …’

It was 10.30 a.m., and Alex and Dawn were seated with the deputy director in her office. Florence Nightingale looked benignly down from the walls; the cafetiere steamed on the table between them.

Despite her overnight flight from Washington Fenwick looked fresh, groomed and alert. Alex and Dawn, by contrast, who had taken an 8 a.m. flight from Malaga, were looking rather less impressive. Alex, in particular, had a raging thirst and a cracking headache that reminded him of its presence with every step that he took. The knife cuts, well on the mend now, were itching crazily.

Dawn, for her part, was paler and quieter than usual. They had not discussed the events of the night before – their departure from the hotel to the airport had been a hurried one – nor had her behaviour towards him changed greatly. But there had been little things. In the queue for Customs she had turned to him and pressed her face into his shoulder. In the taxi from Heathrow she had settled herself, catlike, beneath his arm. There was a complicity between them.

And for all that he was feeling lousy, the time spent with Dawn – and the few hours spent in bed with her – had reshaped things in Alex’s mind. He didn’t want to back out now, he wanted to go all the way, whatever the cost. He wanted to see the Watchman dead at his feet.

And it was possible – more than possible. Meehan had seemed uncatchable but he wasn’t uncatchable. He was a man and men sooner or later made mistakes.

Confiding his childhood memories to Denzil Connolly had been Meehan’s first mistake and sparing Alex’s life had been his second.

‘We got the analysis of those Meehan tissue samples back yesterday evening from the Forensic Science Service labs,’ Fenwick continued. ‘And they told us something rather interesting.’

She opened her briefcase and removed a paper. ‘The hair that Captain Temple extracted for us has been confirmed as Meehan’s against DNA samples from the other crime scenes, and it showed abnormally high medium-term traces of a substance known as perchloroethylene. Known as PCE, perchloroethylene is a solvent used in the tanning process. Due to its high toxicity – I won’t bother you with the details – PCE is on the European Community’s black list of chemicals whose use is strictly controlled. In this country, however – never a front-runner in environmental terms – these controls are regularly ignored by industry and run-off from tanneries into rivers is often accompanied by excess PCE levels.

‘Now we’ve been on to the various ministries overnight, and we’ve talked to the National Rivers Authority and all the water companies this morning, and between them they’ve provided us with a list of nine tanneries from which high levels of PCE run-off have been …’

There was a knock at the door, and a hurried entrance by a young man holding a folded document and a book. ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said, handing the articles to her. ‘These have just been couriered over from Room 1129 at the MOD.’

‘Excellent,’ said the deputy director. ‘Thank you.’ She glanced at the document – a map, as it turned out. ‘Dawn, would you be so good?’

Taking the map, Dawn rose from her seat and pinned it out on the display board opposite them. It was a map of England and Wales, flecked with larger and smaller areas of red.

‘Following your call early this morning about the possibility of our man holing up at an old MOD property,’ said Fenwick, ‘I spoke to a couple of people in Whitehall. This map apparently shows everything, large and small, that they own. Quite a portfolio, isn’t it? Billions of pounds’ worth of land.’

Alex stared at the map, daunted by the sheer scale and number of the holdings. There had to be several hundred of them.

‘If we could add the tanneries, please, Dawn,’ said Fenwick, handing the younger woman a printed list.

Dawn stared at it, and reached for the first black mapping pin. ‘Hurley, Staffordshire,’ she read out. ‘On the River Blithe.’

And the second: ‘Mynydd, Powys, on the Afon Honddu.’

And the third: ‘Beeston, Lancs on the River Douglas.’

She continued to the end of the list.

She stood back and the three of them stared at the map. The pins were spread erratically over the country, with a slight cluster detectable between Birmingham, Coventry and Northampton.

‘From what the FSS people say,’ Fenwick went on, glancing down at the report, ‘PCEs in this sort of concentration would only to be encountered within a few miles of source. So in the case of somewhere like Hurley, for example, we don’t have to follow the river system seventy miles across country to the coast. We can just draw a circle of a few miles’ diameter around the plant. The FSS figure was three miles, so let’s say six to be on the safe side. Any of these locations strike anyone as the sort of area you might take your son on a caravanning holiday?’

‘The mid-Wales one looks good,’ said Alex. ‘So does the north Yorkshire and the Dartmoor. Any of those three, definitely.’

Fenwick nodded. ‘Dawn, take all the data down to the computer people. We need Ordnance Survey printouts of the tannery areas, with all suitable MOD properties highlighted. It’s almost certainly safe to eliminate airfields, working bases et cetera – the details of the various properties seem to be listed in this book they sent over.’

Dawn nodded briskly and gathered up the materials.

When she had gone Fenwick turned enquiringly to Alex. ‘Everything healing satisfactorily? I understand you put up quite a fight in poor George’s defence.’

‘The Watchman did what he came to do,’ said Alex shortly.

Fenwick pursed her lips and looped an errant gunmetal tress behind one ear. She was a handsome woman, Alex thought, if a bit on the cold side. Those blue eyes could freeze you to the bone in seconds. ‘It doesn’t take a Nobel prize winner to work out that the next in line for Mr Meehan’s attentions is myself,’ she said with a slight smile.

‘I’m afraid it looks that way,’ Alex agreed. ‘What precautions are you taking?’

‘As few as possible, I’m afraid. I have to continue doing my job and I have to continue to be seen to do it.’

‘Have you moved house? Varied your routine at all?’

‘There’s no point, I’m afraid. I live as if expecting an assassin as it is and I have done ever since I inherited the Northern Ireland desk. I know you have your doubts about some of our people, Captain Temple, but I assure you the arrangements in place are good. Apart from anything else I have to receive ministers and diplomatic visitors and, well, all sorts of people. I can’t just up sticks and move to some suburban safe house.’

‘Bet you wish you could at times,’ said Alex. The image flashed into his mind of Fenwick lying in a pool of blood with a nail through her head. She was certainly keeping up appearances, he thought. Perhaps she’s worried that if she looks rattled or fails to show up for work she could lose out on the directorship.

‘Perhaps I do, Captain Temple.’ Fenwick folded her hands in her lap for a moment, then one of the phones on her desk started flashing, and she marched over and picked it up.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Alex and left the office.

A minute later Dawn reappeared in the ante-room. In a couple of sentences Alex told her of his concerns for her boss’s safety.

‘She lives in a private block in a gated estate in Chelsea,’ said Dawn. ‘It’s one of the most secure addresses in London. There’s CCTV everywhere, a security guard on the entrance, passes to get in and out, everything. No one – no window cleaner, no visitor, no one – gets within fifty yards of the building without security clearance. The whole place is fully modified for at-risk personnel – one-way windows, departure from an underground car park, the police a couple of minutes away in Lucan Place …’

‘He’ll be checking the place out,’ said Alex. ‘Probably even as we speak.’

‘I know,’ said Dawn. ‘And that’s why we’re checking out anyone who goes near it and pulling in anyone who can’t be personally vouched for by a resident or security staff member. Believe me, the job is being done and done properly.’

‘Does she live alone?’

‘Drop it, Alex, please,’ Dawn said sharply. ‘Our job now is to find the wasp’s nest – the place he always returns to – and kill him there.’

He nodded. ‘OK. Just wanted to …’

‘I know. Let’s go back in.’

For a couple of minutes Dawn’s fingers raced over one of the keyboards on Angela Fenwick’s desk and the large flat-screen display on the wall opposite them flickered into life.

First, an enlarged area of Ordnance Survey map came up, with the village of Hurley, Staffordshire at its centre.

‘No National Park or particular tourist area nearby,’ said Dawn. ‘There’s Blithfield Reservoir, but I don’t think Meehan Senior would have driven a caravan halfway across the country to see that. Otherwise, the area on the screen is at the central point of a square formed by Stoke, Derby, Wolverhampton and Telford. Not high on the list of tourist must-sees, I’d say.’ She struck the keyboard and two small areas of red appeared on the screen. ‘Vis-à-vis suitably sized MOD properties in the area, we’ve got an RAF storage facility here near Yoxall and an old TA depot outside Colton but neither of them is less than a couple of miles from the River Blithe.’ She looked up at Alex. ‘I’m assuming that the conclusion we’re drawing is that he is staying beside the river and using it for drinking water, rather than gathering water from the river and drinking it somewhere else.’

Alex nodded. ‘He’s probably got some sort of filtration system, but obviously nothing too sophisticated. Could well be using standard issue Puritabs. In the UK you tend to allow for water-borne bacteria and pesticides but not for heavy-duty chemical toxins like these PCEs or whatever they’re called. And yeah, he’ll definitely be holed up somewhere with its own water source rather than transporting a heavy canteen several miles across country. He’ll be on the river itself – we know he likes them.’

Angela Fenwick nodded grimly. ‘Next possibility?’

Another section of map flashed up.

‘Mynydd, Powys. Much more deserted, obviously. Area of outstanding natural beauty and definite tourist area in the summer months. Good for fishing, too, and we know Meehan and son enjoyed that. But no MOD properties nearby. The army and marines pass through the place pretty regularly on exercise but we don’t actually own anything in the catchment area at all. Not so much as a Nissen hut on the Afon Honddhu.’

‘Go on,’ said Angela Fenwick.

‘Beeston, Lancashire, on the Douglas, halfway between Wigan and Southport. No MOD facility on or near the river. Nothing touristy about the area, particularly.’

‘Go on.’

They went through all nine of them. For Alex’s money there was one definite front runner – a small tanning plant on a stream named the Hamble, which ran off Black Down on the western boundary of Dartmoor. This was the one he would have chosen – this or the Mynydd one in Wales. Both were remote but served with metalled roads; both were close to popular tourist destinations; both offered vast areas of wild country in which, if need be, an experienced soldier could survive for weeks. ‘It’ll be one of the two, I’m sure of it,’ he said.

‘We’ve got nothing registered to the MOD on either river,’ said Dawn doubtfully.

‘Suppose the MOD has recently sold the property,’ suggested Alex. ‘For the last hour we’ve been looking for MOD properties and for a small village with a church, because we know that Meehan specifically mentioned the existence of a church. But if the property was classified secret, at some point, and so not marked on any map, and was recently sold …’

Fenwick nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true. There’s no reason to suppose that it’s marked on current maps – I can’t believe the MOD bothers to inform Ordnance Survey whenever it sells and declassifies property. And of course it wouldn’t be included in the MOD’s current portfolio either.’

‘From Meehan’s story,’ said Dawn, ‘doesn’t it sound as if this place, or at least its original purpose, has been forgotten? That nobody really knows why it was classified in the first place? It can’t have been set up much later than 1940 and there’s been a lot of inter-departmental paper shuffling since then.’

Fenwick reached for a phone, pressed the scramble button and dialled a number. ‘Is that 1129? Jonathan? Angela Fenwick here … Yes, bless you for that, Jonathan. Look, I want you to do something further for me. Go back five years and check for top-security-rated but untenanted MOD properties abutting the following rivers and within five miles downstream of the following grid references. Got a pencil?’ As Dawn scrolled back through the maps, Fenwick read out the tannery locations. ‘And if five years doesn’t throw anything up,’ she continued calmly, ‘then try ten and then fifteen … Yes, soonest, please. Ring me back the moment you find anything.’

Replacing the phone, she turned to the others. ‘With a bit of luck he won’t be too long,’ she said. ‘Shall we call up for some more coffee and some sandwiches?’

In the event, they finished the sandwiches before the call from Room 1129 came in. As she listened, Fenwick took notes. ‘And that’s the only one?’ she concluded. ‘Right. I’m grateful. Thank you.’ She turned to Dawn. ‘Can you get the Hamble map back up?’

Alex felt a sharp prickle of excitement.

From her chair, Fenwick aimed a red laser pointer at the screen display. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘A recent source of perchloroethylene pollution is this building here – a small tanning plant presently engaged in litigation with the National Rivers Authority. One and a half miles downstream of the plant is Black Down House and its outbuildings, including the shell of a church, standing on some forty acres of land. Evacuated in August 1940 by order of the War Office for reasons pertaining to national security and later classified as a secret location under the Act in relation to Operation Gladio. For the last eighteen months, following sale by auction, Black Down House and its outbuildings have been the property of Liskeard Holdings, an Exeter-based property development company. Their present condition is unknown.’

The three of them looked at each other.

‘What was Operation Gladio?’ asked Alex.

‘An anti-communist stay-behind network set up immediately after the war by SOE and MI6, and funded by the CIA. To be activated in the event of a Soviet invasion. The idea was that agents should be put in place and materials hidden at secret locations so that any Western European country that was rolled over would be in a position to resist, communicate with the outside world et cetera.’

‘And Black Down House was one of those locations?’

‘So it seems,’ said Fenwick.

‘So all that kit Meehan found as a kid has sat there for fifty years, waiting for an invasion that never came?’

‘Longer, probably. Britain established a stay-behind force as early as 1940 in case of German invasion. After the war a lot of the facilities were simply reassigned. Everything to do with Gladio and the stay-behind units has been classified top secret ever since, although bits and pieces have come out, particularly in Italy. Returning to the present day, however, it looks as if we might have found our man’s base. Congratulations, captain.’

‘How do you want to handle it?’ asked Dawn.

‘I think I should just get down there as soon as possible,’ said Alex. ‘Stake the place out, try and identify him, and, uh, kill him, basically.’

‘Killing him would be best,’ confirmed Angela Fenwick.