Who the fuck was that, Alex asked himself, his heart plummeting. Stella, perhaps? But he already knew it wasn't Stella. Running back to the car he rummaged inside his travel bag, pulled out a pair of image-stabilised Zeiss binoculars and focused on the two figures.
It was a bloke. Some fashionably stub bled fucker. And very much at home, thank you very much, with his arm round
Sophie, who looked like the cat who'd had the cream. Well, she certainly hadn't wasted any bloody time, had she?
Stupid bastard, he thought, hurling the roses up the middle of Pavilion Road.
Stupid bastard!
SEVENTEEN.
'So,' said Dawn, stirring the cup of brick-red tea that the cafe owner had just placed in front of her.
'Is this going to be a long argument or a short one?'
'I've paid for a long one,' said Alex.
She regarded him bleakly. His call to her after the funeral, Alex realised, had counted as a mark against him. She thought that he was getting flaky, that he had started seeing things.
'Look, I've got a hell of a lot to get on with. What is it you want?'
'I want to talk to you about George Widdowes. I don't think your lookalike idea is going to work. I think the only way we're going to stop Meehan is by setting a trap. By putting the real man back into the house as bait.'
'No way. We're on top of the Widdowes business. The man we've got looks very like George indeed. He's wearing George's clothes, driving George's car into London every day...'
'Meehan will have guessed that you'd try that,' said Alex impatiently.
'He'll have checked him out.'
'Only from a distance, going by our find at the Gidleys'. That tree must have been a hundred and fifty yards from the house. He'll never know the difference from that sort of range
'The tree was a general OP for watching security procedures and checking out the dogs. He'll have had a closer look than that at Craig Gidley before killing him, believe me. Probably set himself up at the side of the road earlier in the day and checked him in through the gates. He knew Gidley, just like he knows Widdowes. A glance would have been enough. And a glance has probably been enough to tell him that you're using a lookalike right now.
That's why nothing's happened. That and the fact that the area is almost certainly swarming with Box employees with sniper's rifles. You have to remember that our man's served in Belfast and South Armagh. He's got a nose for that sort of thing.'
Her silence told him that he was right about the concealed marksmen.
She placed her teaspoon carefully in her saucer and frowned.
'Look, at least as things stand we're keeping George Widdowes alive.'
'Sooner or later Meehan's going to discover where you're keeping him,' said Alex.
'He'll follow him back from work. There are only so many exits from Thames House and yes, I know about the underground car parks and the tunnel and the rest of it and so, sooner or later, will he. Meehan will stake them all out, one by one. It may take a month, it may take him a year, but sooner or later he'll do it. He'll catch Widdowes leaving the building and follow him back to wherever it is you've put him. Where is it that Widdowes lives, officially?'
'Hampshire,' said Dawn.
'All these guys tied up in Hampshire while Widdowes goes off his head in some crummy safe house in Docklands or Alperton or Gants Hill, waiting for a bullet between the eyes? At the moment Meehan's calling all the shots we've got to stop retreating and take control of this thing.'
Dawn pursed her lips thoughtfully.
'At least put the idea to Fenwick,' Alex continued.
'And if she agrees in principle, then let's go down to Widdowes' place and check out the possibility of setting up an ambush.'
'I can't promise anything,' she said eventually.
'But tell me what you want to do and I'll put it to the deputy director.'
'Can you please slow down,' said Dawn, 'we're not going for the land speed world record.'
They were heading up the M3 to Hampshire, this time in the Kaman-Ghia.
Alex had told her that he didn't think he could take another journey with her at the wheel and she had retorted that she was perfectly happy to be driven it would make a change, in fact.
To Alex's surprise and to Dawn's irritation, he suspected -Angela Fenwick had agreed to his request to recce Widdowes' house with a view to returning the agent there and luring Meehan into a trap.
George Widdowes lived a short distance outside the village of Bishopstoke in the Itchen valley. Longwater Lodge, where he lived alone, had once been attached to the much larger Longwater House, now a management college. Surrounded by trees and shrubberies, and set back some fifty metres from the road, the lodge was bordered at its far end by a carrier stream of the River Itchen, which flowed through the grounds of the main house.
Alex and Dawn had parked a quarter of a mile away outside the Pied Bull pub in the village's main street and had ambled out towards Longwater Lodge as if they were a young couple who, on impulse perhaps, had taken the day off. After the rain of the previous day the fields had a summery freshness and the steady hum of bees rose above the grumble of the distant main road.
The Lodge looked empty. The curtains were drawn, no cars stood outside it and a brand-new For Sale sign stood at its gate. The sign had been Dawn's idea and she had somehow ensured that it was up within the hour. Any enquiries to the London estate agent whose name it bore would have been met by the explanation that while the owner of the property wished to announce his intention to sell in the near future, the agency had not yet received full instructions.
Alex had been surprised by the speed with which the idea had been implemented and that Winchester estate agents were quite so receptive to sweet talk from the security services.
'Oh, we've got friends everywhere,' Dawn had glibly informed him.
'We're quite big players in the property market.'
The purpose of the sign had been to enable her and Alex to reconnoitre the property. If we want to have a good look, she had told him, then we might as well do it the easy way and walk straight up the drive. Anybody watching will simply assume that we're a couple who are interested in buying.
Turning his back on Longwater Lodge, Alex scanned the surrounding countryside. Still green cornfields bordered by hedgerows and oak trees on the higher ground; water-meadows in the valley, with willows and poplars shading the river. Hundreds of acres visible and a thousand places where an experienced man might be lying up. The Watchman was out there somewhere, keeping the house under observation, but you could send in a battalion of paratroopers with dogs and helicopters and still not find him. With the first indications of a search he would simply fade away.
Alex stared over the road into the sunlit green valley. He knew he would never be offered an obvious give- away like the flash of a binocular lens, but for an optimistic moment or two he stared anyway.
From the humpback bridge crossing the river, the two of them examined the Lodge and its surroundings. The property comprised about an acre and a half in total. The road on which they stood swept right-handed round the front of the garden, and was separated from it by a wall of about five feet in height and a neatly clipped yew hedge.
'That's where our people go in at night,' Dawn told him.
'They climb over the wall once it's dark and keep the place under surveillance through night-vision goggles.'
'How do they get here?'
'By Land Rover. Park up a hundred yards away round the corner.
'He'll have sussed them out on night one,' said Alex.
'You can count on that.'
Dawn shrugged.
'You may be right.'
