'You're sure?'
'I'm sure. Now please .. .' Desperately, he scanned the tree's spreading skirts and his eyes narrowed. There was one place, just one, about ten feet from the ground.
'Come with me,' he ordered her.
'Step where I step.'
Followed by Dawn, he moved into the shadowed, dew-sodden grass. When he was below the lowest point of the bough he motioned her to be still and crouched down. Half closing his eyes, he felt carefully around the wet ground as if he were blind. It took five minutes, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a plug of pressed soil the size and shape of a cigarette packet.
'Got you,' he breathed.
'What is it?' asked Dawn.
In answer he felt quickly around and eased another plug from the ground a foot away.
'He had a ladder,' said Alex.
'He didn't want to go up the trunk using a scaling kit and leave marks, so he used a ladder and a rope and went up here. Then afterwards' Alex held up the soil 'he filled in the places where the feet of the ladder went. It hasn't rained since then, so ..
'Why go to that trouble?' asked Dawn.
'Since we know it's him and he knows that we know.'
'He's a perfectionist,' said Alex.
'It's about doing it right, whatever the circumstances. About leaving no trace.'
'A sort of Samurai code?' mused Dawn.
'That sort of thing,' Alex agreed.
'What I think he did here was to get a decorator's ladder one of those aluminium self-supporting jobs tie one end of the rope to it, throw the other over the branch, pull the branch down and tie off the rope. Then he grabbed the branch and up he went.'
'Dragging the ladder up behind him on the rope. Neat. Too bad we haven't got a rope or a ladder.'
'We've got me,' said Alex.
'And we've got you.
'Oh, no!' said Dawn firmly.
'No fucking way!'
'Way, baby!' said Alex with a grim smile.
'Shoes off.'
'Tree-climbing's not part of my job, baby!'
'And saving your colleagues' life? Is that part of your job? Personally I couldn't give a monkey's, but...'
'Why can't you go up alone?'
'I could, but it would mean my standing on your shoulders and I'm not sure you could manage that.'
'Try me.'
'I'd love to.'
'You know what I mean.'
They tried it. She genuflected; he took her hands and stepped on to her shoulders with his bare feet.
'Do you have any idea how much I paid for this sweater?' she breathed, trembling with strain.
'Take it off,' said Alex cheerfully.
'I won't be shocked.'
'Fuck you!'
She couldn't straighten up. She tried gave it her best shot -but in the end she simply couldn't.
'Why don't we try it the other way round?' he suggested reasonably.
'Why don't we just get a ladder from the house?'
'If this doesn't work we will, OK?'
Sullenly she took off her shoes, placed them together on the wet grass as if on a wardrobe shelf, took his hands, stepped on to his shoulders.
'And.. . up.' He straightened.
'Take your hands away from mine when you're ready. Grab the branch. Good, now pull yourself up. Try and get your leg over.
'I thought that was your speciality,' she gasped. Then she looked down at him nervously.
'What now?'
'Move as close to the end of the branch as possible, so that it's weighed down.'
She did so. He took off his shirt and threw it up to her, ordered her to tie it round the branch, which she did.
'And now these. Tie the legs together so that they make another link of the chain.' He threw her his trousers. She tied them to the shirt. He was now naked except for his boxer shorts.
'How silly do I look?' he asked.
'From up here? Very.'
'You sure the knots are sound?'
'I've done some sailing. Trust me, they're sound.'
He hauled himself up as if using a rope ladder, unknotted his shirt and trousers part of the haul he had bought with Sophie and quickly re-dressed.
'OK, do you want to stay here? Or climb with me.
She hesitated. He could see a small muscle working in her jaw.
'I'll come up,' she said eventually.
'Right. You know what we're looking for. Anything, basically.'
'You really think we're going to learn anything?'
'I think we have to look.'
They climbed for ten minutes, the ground fell slowly away beneath them and the dark-green leaves enveloped them. As they moved upwards they found tiny but unmistakable signs that someone else had recently done the same thing and by dint of hard searching were able to follow a trail of lichen blurs, pressure marks and trodden fungi.
'Look up,' said Alex at intervals, which Dawn correctly interpreted as 'Don't look down.
Finally, breathless, she turned to him.
'I can't get up there.'
'There' was the broad junction of several branches with the trunk some thirty feet from the ground.
'He managed it,' said Alex.
'Well, I can't,' she breathed.
'It's just too long a reach.'
'I'll get you up there,' Alex said.
'Must you?'
'Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where he watched from. I'm going to lift you and sit you there, OK?'
'OK,' she said uncertainly.
He braced himself opposite her, placed his hands on her waist and looked into a pair of grey eyes from which she was struggling to keep all signs of fear.
Beneath his grip, however, he could feel a faint involuntary trembling. When he lifted her she almost made it she was absurdly light, somehow, for someone so bad-tempered but the fine black wool of her sweater gave a poor grip and she slipped down again between his hands. The sweater, meanwhile, slipped up.
'I'm sorry,' he said sincerely, staring at the neatly voluptuous contours of her scarlet satin bra.
'I didn't mean that to happen.'
She wrenched down her sweater. Blimey, he told himself Who'd have thought that beneath that stroppy exterior .. . 'Try again?' he suggested.
Now sheer anger got her up there. Once settled, she stared out over the fields.
He clambered up behind her and saw what she saw. The trunk and the adjoining branches formed a solid enclosure within which, without too much discomfort, it would have been possible to remain for hours. Before them
