the alignment of the heavy, densely leaved chestnut branches afforded a perfect longdistance view of the Gidleys' property. Only the area directly behind the house was invisible.
'He was here,' said Alex.
'He was here for days. Look, you can see the worn place in this fork where he wedged his foot.
And here, this shined place where he sat. This was where he planned Gidley's murder.'
'If I weren't so utterly terrified of heights,' said Dawn quietly, looking around her, 'I'd say it was rather beautiful up here.'
Alex stared at her.
'You're really afraid of heights? Phobic?'
She returned his stare openly and frankly.
'Like I said, terrified. This is the highest I've ever been off the ground outside a house. Skyscrapers make me feel faint. I couldn't even go up the Eiffel Tower.'
'So why didn't you tell me?'
She looked him in the eye.
'You didn't exactly make it very easy, did you?'
He was silent for a moment.
'I guess not. I'm sorry. You're a trooper, Dawn Harding, and I'm a bastard.'
She nodded thoughtfully.
'Yes, I'd pretty much go along with that. I might add the words 'patronising' and 'sexist' while I was about it.'
'Fair enough.'
'And request that if we're going to continue working together you don't take out your frustrations on me every time you get an order you don't like, or your Sloaney girlfriend gives you a hard time, or you don't get laid, or whatever.'
'OK.'
'And most importantly that you get me to the ground in one piece.'
'I promise.'
Together, as best they could, they searched the branches around them for anything that Meehan might have left. In the end it was Dawn who found it: an inch-long stub of pencil slipped into a knot hole near their feet. Working it out with his pocket knife, Alex managed to slip the pencil into his shirt pocket without directly touching it.
'Forensics'll be interested to see that,' said Dawn.
'Do you think there's anything else?'
They searched every inch, but found nothing else. Ten minutes later they were back on the first branch, ten feet above the ground.
'Ever done a parachute course?' Alex asked her.
She shook her head.
'OK, I'll jump and then catch you.'
He hit the ground, rolled and stood himself up. Soon, she was hanging from the branch with her bare feet on his shoulders. One after the other, he took her hands.
She wobbled.
'OK,' he said.
'Now put my hands under your arms.
'No funny business?'
'As if]' Gently, he lowered her down the front of his body. When their faces were level and her mouth inches from his, he stopped. He looked into her eyes. Was there the ghost of a smile there?
They had lunch in a nearby pub. Ploughman's lunches, with in his case a beer and in hers mineral water. A sharp morning had turned into a warm day and they sat outside at a bench.
'You did something today you wouldn't have thought yourself capable of,' Alex began.
'Oh, spare us the squaddie pep talk, please. I went up that tree this morning because...'
'Because the thought of being bested by a yob of a soldier was something you couldn't face. Worse even than your fear of heights, right?'
She shrugged and smiled.
'Perhaps. I never said you were a yob, though.'
'No?'
'No. Though you certainly are one. And proud of it after all, it's a solid-gold chick puller, isn't it, being in the Regiment?'
'Didn't you get laid last night either?'
'As a matter of fact I did,' said Dawn mildly.
There was a heartbeat's silence.
'So, who's the lucky guy?' Alex asked, rather more sharply than he intended.
In answer Dawn just laughed and shook her head.
'That pencil was a good find,' she said, cutting a pickled onion in half 'Forensics can get stuck in. There should be dabs.'
'There won't be,' said Alex.
'He meant us to find it. It's a message.
'How d'you know that? How d'you know he didn't make a mistake? Just leave it there?'
'He wouldn't do that. He doesn't make mistakes.'
'That's just your ego talking. You're Regiment-trained, he's Regiment-trained.
In your mind you can't make a mistake, therefore he can't make a mistake.'
'All that I'm saying is that trained guys like him don't make mistakes concerning operational procedure. You arrive at an OP with a pencil, you leave with a pencil, end of story.'
'OK. So what, in your opinion, is the message?'
'I think it's part and parcel with the nails. Some kind of reference to the undercover days. That knot hole was rather like a dead-letter drop, didn't you think? Perhaps returning the pencil is his way of saying that things have gone beyond words. That the only possible medium of communication left is murder.'
She stared at him.
'My guess is that he's way ahead of us,' said Alex.
'My guess is that he knew you'd bring in someone like me and so he put that pencil where only someone like me would find it.'
'I found it,' said Dawn.
'You know what I mean. It's a message for me. As if to say hello, brother. I was wondering when you'd be along.'
'You think he wants to be caught?' asked Dawn.
'I don't know about that but I know he means to do a fair bit more killing first.'
Dawn frowned.
'I'm not supposed to tell you this, but there's something that probably wasn't in those reports you were given. They analysed the nails that were used to kill Fenn and Gidley, and found something very strange indeed.'
Alex looked at her.
'They were well over fifty years old. Nails haven't been made by that process or of that particular alloy since before the Second World War.'
'The pencil,' said Alex. Using a paper napkin he removed it from his shirt pocket. It was of dull, plain wood, and bore no marking of any kind.
They peered at it.
'I'll bet you anything you like it turns out to be the same age,' said Dawn.
'Any idea what that's all about?'
'Search me.' Dawn half smiled.
'Except that you've already done that once today, haven't you?'
