'I won't, Karen. I promise.'
For now, though, there was something he had to follow up and he made his way to a knot of old lags who were clustering around the RSM at the bar.
'Afternoon, Alex, you warry old bugger. I mean sir,' said the RSM, addressing his beer glass.
'Word is you enjoyed yourself last night!'
The others smirked.
'I may have taken a drink,' admitted Alex.
'Or two.'
'In mixed company?'
'That's not impossible either.'
The RSM nodded.
'Well, you look like shite today. Serves you right. Poor old Don, eh.'
'Poor old Don,' Alex echoed.
'He had a very bad last minute and I hope Karen never hears the details of that. But you should have seen him hanging out of that chopper with the SLR and Kalashnikov rounds screaming around him, blazing away with the old five point five. Talk about Death from Above.'
The RSM nodded approvingly.
'I hear you didn't do so badly yourself?'
Alex shrugged.
'We were lucky. We could easily have lost a lot more guys.
Next time they should just let the hostages get eaten or chopped to pieces or whatever.'
'You said it,' said the RSM, wordlessly handing his glass back for refilling. He glanced at Alex's suit.
'Heard you'd been pulled out of Freetown ahead of time.
Spooky business, I heard.'
'That sort of thing. I'm trying to get hold of someone you may be in touch with. Denzil Connolly.'
The NCOs looked at each other.
'Long time since I heard that name,' said a sniper team leader named Stevo.
His tone was careful.
Alex said nothing. There was no communications web more intricate, secretive and subtle than that which existed between British army sergeants. He had been part of it once, but it was closed to him now. He could only file his request and wait.
'There was some strange stuff with Den Connolly,' said the RSM, glancing at Alex.
'And that looks like an empty glass in your hand. I thought you officers were supposed to set an example.'
For the time being, Alex knew, that was as far as things would go. An overfull pint glass was handed splashily over. Someone spoke through a microphone over the laughter and hubbub. There was going to be an auction of Don Hammond's kit, with the proceeds going to Karen and Cathy.
Two hours later Alex's head was singing with Stella Artois and the shock of seeing Meehan at the funeral had receded. Stepping out into the sudden silence of the evening drizzle, he made his way across the tarmac to the guardhouse. After the original Sterling Lines barracks in Hereford, the Credenhill camp seemed a vast high-tech sprawl more like a software park or an airport than anything else.
Sticking his head into the guardhouse, he asked if someone could ring for a minicab to take him back into Hereford. As it turned out, one of the duty policemen was going that way and offered him a ride.
Denzil Connolly. The name bounced back and forth in Alex's mind. In case anyone just happened to remember anything, he'd left his mobile number with Stevo and the
RSM.
There were two ways to catch a predator like Meehan. One was to peg out a bait and lure him into the open, the other was to find his lair and stake it out.
If necessary, Alex intended to try both.
Back at the flat; he rang Sophie. Her home number was engaged, her mobile switched off. Depressed by the afternoon's events, fuzzy-headed with alcohol, he considered giving Gail a ring. For a long and tempting moment he felt her body against him, soft and unresisting.
At the last minute he decided otherwise. Changing into a sweat top and shorts, he made his way outside to the pavement and began jogging towards the outskirts of the city. It was raining harder now, the light was beginning to go and most of the shops were closed. The pavements were all but deserted, but once again Alex was visited by the unpleasant suspicion that he was being watched.
Get a grip, he told himself Paranoia isn't going to help.
Soon he was on an empty road leading southwards. The rain, cold and clean, lashed his face and hands, his breathing steadied and found its rhythm, and his mind began to clear. He had to watch his step, he told himself, or at least be a bit more discreet. Last night he would probably get away with on the grounds that his best friend had just been killed and everyone was entitled to go crazy from time to time, but if he made a habit of it people were going to start thinking he was losing his grip. And when that occurred, well, you only had to look at Frank Wisbeach to see what happened when a good soldier started to unravel.
Fired with a new resolve, he pushed himself hard on the five miles or so back to Hereford. The rain continued, it was lancing down now as the light faded, and he could feel the beginnings of a new blister on one heel.
Back in the flat he showered and tried Sophie again. Same result: home engaged, mobile switched off. Quickly he dressed, packed a suitcase, locked up the flat and climbed into the pearl-white Kaman-Ghia. Pointing the bonnet towards the Ledbury Road, he set out for London. He was glad to have the car back and to feel the cheerful growl of the 1835cc engine as the rain lashed the windscreen in front of him. Ray Temple had accepted the thirty- year-old shell in lieu of a debt two years earlier and rebuilt the car from the wheels up, selling it to his son for the altogether bargain price of,~50OO.
The car could really move, but on this occasion Alex made sure to keep well within the speed limit. Whatever the alcohol limit was these days, he was uneasily certain that he was in excess of it. He'd only had a couple of pints at the funeral well, perhaps it had been three but there had probably been a fair bit left over from the night before. Having said that, he'd run the best part of ten miles before starting to drive, which would have burnt off a few units, surely?
Best to take no chances, to take a leaf out of the Dawn Harding school of motoring. While waiting at traffic lights outside Cirencester he dialled her number.
'So what are you up to?' he asked her.
'What business is that of yours?'
'What's his name, Harding?'
'Grow up, Temple.'
'Can we make a date for tomorrow morning?'
'Any particular reason?'
'Nothing I can talk about on an open line. How about breakfast?'
'OK. Eight o'clock outside my office building.'
The phone went dead.
In Western Avenue, as he entered London, he spotted a rose seller standing in a lay-by. He was unlikely to find any florists open, Alex thought, so he bought twelve quid's worth the rest of the man's stock. Mindful of Dawn's words, he took off the cellophane wrappers and bunched the blooms all together. The roses were pretty knackered- looking and certainly had no scent to speak of- they still looked as if they'd been bought in a lay-by, in other words but they were better than nothing.
Half an hour later he was parking the Kaman-Ghia in Pavilion Road, off Sloane Street. The rain had stopped and the pavements and the roads shone silver beneath the street lights. Tucking the roses under one arm and tidying his hair with the fingers of the other hand, he made his way towards the building containing Sophie's flat.
Glancing up at her window he saw her, wearing the white to welling bathrobe 'that she'd stolen from the Crillon Hotel in Paris. She was in her bedroom, staring out eastwards over the city. And then a second dressing- gowned figure appeared beside her, placed an arm round her shoulder.
