Whatever the message, it was clear that either Widdowes or Fenwick was next on the Watchman's list.
Would he get them? Alex wondered dispassionately. Would he catch them and kill them? Forewarned and with all the protective resources of MI-5 at their disposal, they would be much harder targets than Fenn and Gidley had been.
But then the Watchman was clever. He had been taught by the best in many cases the same people who had taught Alex and he had clearly forgotten none of it. The combination of professionalism, sadism and sheer insanity he embodied was terrifying.
What did he want? What was the man trying to achieve?
Alex stared at the photographs of Meehan as if his gaze could somehow penetrate their surface and unlock the man portrayed in them. But the more he shuffled them around, the less they seemed to reveal. Just those pale, skinned whippet features and that watchful, guarded gaze.
He looked tough. Not in the sense of being intimidating, but in the sense of being a hard man to break. He'd duck and he'd dive but one way and another he'd keep on going. There were a thousand looking like him on the streets of Belfast dingy, forgettable figures hunched into donkey jackets. Alex could see why he'd been such a perfect undercover man.
Would MI-5 find him? Meehan would have to make a serious mistake first and there was nothing to indicate that that was going to happen. Mad he might be, but careless he clearly wasn't.
Alex turned to the large map of Britain on the wall. Where would Meehan be hiding out? No, turn the question round. Where would he Alex be hiding out if he were Meehan? In a city, among the crowds? No, he'd be in danger if he revisited his old London stamping grounds. He couldn't risk going anywhere there was an Irish community.
The arm of the IRA, like its memory, was long.
Meehan would know that MI-5 would leave no stone unturned in their search and that unless he had built up a completely watertight new identity they would find him. He'd have to have a new passport, driving licence, social security number everything. Just checking in and out of bed-and-breakfast houses was not going to be enough. He'd have a base somewhere. Somewhere he could hide.
Somewhere he could plan the next killing.
Alex arrived back at Sophie's flat shortly before seven, having arranged to meet Dawn Harding at nine the next morning. She'd pick him up, she told him, where she had dropped him off the night before outside the Duke of York's Headquarters in the King's Road.
He found Sophie changing.
'We're going out,' she told him, swinging round so that he could zip up the fastening of her cocktail dress.
'One of my clients Corday is launching a new fragrance range and I've helped organise a little party for them. The perfume's called 'Guillotine' and all the women have to wear a red velvet ribbon round their necks as if they've been beheaded.'
'Do you mind if I give it a miss?' Alex asked wearily, loosening his tie.
'I'm not really in the mood.'
'Oh, don't be boring, darling! I'm sure you've had a horrible day doing whatever secret things you've been doing but so have I. It's been impossibly grim at the PR coal face. Come and drink some champagne at Corday's expense, and then ..
'And then?'
'And then you can take charge of the evening. How's that?'
Alex agreed. If Five were going to leave him twiddling his thumbs while they pursued their investigation, then he might as well enjoy himself And he wanted to please Sophie who, after all, was putting him up. He didn't even have to drive the next morning Dawn would be doing that, presumably at her usual infuriating crawl.
So he might as well chill out.
'So where are we going?'
She raised her chin to tie her red velvet ribbon.
'Hoxton Square.'
'~W~here's that?'
'Alex, sweetie, which planet have you been living on for the last few years?
Hoxton is only the most desirable quarrier in London. You can barely throw a stone without braining some famous artist, model or designer. It's celebrity city!'
'Right, well, just introduce me as a friend of your brother's. Say I work in security or something.'
She frowned and pouted into the mirror, checking her makeup.
'Security's a bit dingy-sounding, darling. Can we manage something a bit more upscale?
Something dot. com perhaps?'
'OK. I'll have a think.' He rubbed his eyes. Various subconscious worries were still nagging at him.
'I realised something dreadful today, that I'd left a rebel sentry a boy, can't have been much more than ten tied to a tree in the middle of the Sierra Leone jungle a couple of days ago.'
Sophie wriggled her toes experimentally in her raw-silk shoes.
'I know. It's awful how forgetful one gets. Do you want to ring someone about it?'
Alex stared at her disbelievingly.
'He's probably dead by now, or at the very least missing an arm.
'Shall we go?'
As they swerved through the traffic in the silver Audi TT, with Sophie impatiently cutting up every vehicle that had the temerity to draw alongside her, Alex tried to improve his mood. Things could be worse, he told himself He was being paid to waste time in London an opportunity that most soldiers would give their eye-teeth for and he was sleeping with a rich, beautiful and highly sexed girl who gave every sign of thinking he was the cat's pyjamas. He was on his way to a party to drink champagne with said highly sexed girl, and in two or three hours they would tumble into bed and tear each other to pieces.
So what was pissing him off, exactly? Was it that he seemed to be spending his life being shuffled about by women? Alex had nothing against working with women but right now his life seemed to be run by them. In the past whenever girlfriends had started making noises about permanence and commitment, Alex had started making noises about the incompatibility of soldiering and married life.
And he had meant it. He had seen his colleagues go down like ninepins, their tiny independence skewered by the demands of ratty, frustrated wives. The wives hadn't started ratty and frustrated, but they soon got that way when they discovered that the system could only accommodate them and the kids as sideline players. As Stan Clayton had once explained to him: getting the trouble-and-strife up the duff before an overseas posting was like spitting in your beer before you went for a piss!
Seeing the results vengeful, careworn wives, fragged-out blokes worrying about money and their families' security from dawn till dusk Alex had sworn to have nothing to do with any of it. As far as he was concerned the deal was that you promised nothing that you weren't prepared to give, had a good time for as long as it lasted and got out before things turned nasty. He had a sort of honour system, which went something along the lines that if a woman made it plain from the start that she wanted marriage and kids then you didn't waste her time.
Otherwise, you went for it.
Something told him, though, that with Sophie it was going to be different. For a start he was not in control of things. He didn't automatically call the shots, as he'd always done before. She moved easily and fluently through a world in which, if he was honest, he felt insecure. And while she respected his skills and knew that there was another, darker world in which he moved with ease and fluency, she never allowed herself to be overimpressed by him.
Ultimately, he wasn't sure of her. This made things exciting, but it also made things .. . difficult.
As they swerved round a traffic island in the TT, tyres sc reaming, Alex told himself that he ought to take a train up to
Hereford and pick up his car. Behind the wheel of the KarmanChia he could at least pretend that he was in control of his life. For the time being, though... What the hell?
TWELVE.
When they reached Hoxton Square Sophie ignored the double yellow lines and parked right outside the venue. This was a former electricity showroom turned gallery, and paparazzi were already drawn up at either side of the
