'I am right,' said Alex.
'He's almost certainly watching us right now. Give us a kiss!'
'In your dreams.'
'I mean it. That's what normal couples do when they're looking at houses.
They hold hands. They kiss each other. It means they ..
'I know perfectly well what it means.' Turning, she kissed him glancingly on the left cheek.
He frowned.
'Oh, come on, Bunnykins, you can do better than that. Think how happy we could be here. Think of little Bethany and Jordan and Kylie running into the house with bunches of flowers and bouncing on our bed on Saturday mornings.
Think of the songs you'll sing as you bake the bread and scrub the floor. Think of the jam you'll make.'
'You're sick, Temple.'
'I'm not sick, Bunnykins, I just want a proper kiss. I'm not necessarily talking tongues at this stage, but I do think it should be convincing.'
'Don't be disgusting. And stop calling me Bunnykins.'
'I will if you kiss me right now, mouth to mouth, for a minimum of five seconds. If not, I'm afraid you go on being Bunnykins.'
With a long-suffering sigh she turned to him and placed her arms round his neck. Her mouth was very soft. She even closed her eyes.
'There,' he said finally.
'That wasn't so bad, was it?'
She was silent for a moment.
'I've had worse,' she said.
He placed his arm round her waist, sensed her body stiffen, then felt an answering arm creep unwillingly round his waist.
'How many marksmen?' he asked.
'Most nights two, I think. One somewhere in the front here, one round the back of the house. I doubt anyone could get past them to the house without being seen.'
'I'm not so sure,' said Alex.
'Let's walk around the garden. Lots of pointing to the ground, please. Lots of saying that's where we'll have the sweet peas and let's put some crocus bulbs in here and oh dear, we'll never get camellias to grow in this chalky soil.'
'You're really determined to make me look and feel absolutely as stupid as possible, aren't you,' she murmured.
'No, I'm not. I'm just trying to stop you looking like an MI-5 desk officer someone Meehan would suss at a glance. Like I
said, he's probably watching us right now. If I were him, I'd be. Let's look round the back.'
'What are you hoping to find, exactly?'
'He'll have scouted the place, looking for a way in at night. Somewhere he can get into the property without being bumped by the security people. I'm searching for that way in.
'Do you know how you'd do it?'
'I'm pretty sure I do but I'd just like to walk around for a bit. What about you?
How would you get in?'
'Shoot the guards, perhaps? Silenced rifle with night sights?'
'That'd certainly do it,' said Alex, pointing at the house as if discussing a loft conversion, 'but he hasn't killed anyone except his targets so far.'
'He killed Gidley's dogs.'
'Dogs are just security products. Everyone kills dogs. But my take on Meehan is that he doesn't want to leave a trail of supplementary human corpses. Pride in his work would prevent that.'
'Is this you identifying with him again? Is this the way you see killing? As work to take a pride in?'
He laughed.
'You're the one who's hiring the hit man. You tell me. And follow this path round, please. I want to have a quick look at the river bank.'
'You think he'll come by river?'
'That's the way I'd do it. Quick cuddle here, I think, under the weeping willow.'
'Must we?'
'I'm afraid so. It's just too romantic a spot to miss.
'Oh, yeah? And just what constitutes a romantic spot, in your view?'
'I think anywhere can be, if you're with someone you really, really ..
She folded her arms.
'Go on.'
'Kiss me, Harding!'
Her eyes were as flat as a snake's. Slowly, she placed her arms round his neck and her lips against his. Through his shirt and hers he felt the small pressure of her breasts. Then she stepped back.
'That didn't register very high on the Richter scale,' he protested.
'We're supposed to be married,' she said, turning to look at the house.
'Not in love.'
They continued along the bank. The river was slow and deep, its shining surface almost viscous-looking in the sunlight, the bank-side foliage perfectly reflected. Six feet below, emerald weeds wavered and trailed over polished gravel and chalk.
He's watching us, thought Alex with absolute certainty. And he's saying to himself: are these two the nice young couple that they seem to be, or have they come to hunt me down and kill me?
'Here,' he said.
'This is where he'll come.
Don't stop. Keep walking. He'll approach silently from a couple of hundred yards upstream no one will see him in a black wet suit once the light's gone and he'll climb out between these two banks of bull rushes
'Are you sure of that?'
'I'm positive. It's exactly where I'd do it. You're covered by the bushes on the bank and the rushes in the water, you're the minimum distance from the house you definitely don't want to have acres of lawn to cross plus there's a sort of underwater chalk bar like a step you can use to climb out. He's already tried it.
When we walk back past you'll see a boot scrape in the algae on the chalk bar and a couple of reed clumps that look as if they've been twisted by someone pulling himself out. He's rehearsed it.~ Dawn crouched to examine a clump of yellow flag iris.
'How do you know it was him?'
'Well, who else is going to have been climbing in and out of the river in George Widdowes' garden? He'd probably have been wearing a weight belt to counteract the buoyancy effect of the wet suit and keep himself low in the water on his approach. There was a snapped root where he might've tried hanging the belt in the dark. He wouldn't want to leave the water wearing it.'
'You spotted all that in the time it took us to walk past that bit of bank?'
'I knew what I was looking for. What I expected to see.' He thought of Sierra Leone and the frothing brown torrent of the Rokel.
'I've made the odd river approach myself. Bit rougher than this, but the principle's the same.
'So what are you suggesting? That we have one of the marksmen up a tree, waiting for Meehan to climb out. Sort of a hippo shoot?'
'While your shooters are here he won't come,' said Alex.
'It's as simple as that. Plus he already knows about the lookalike. Probably knows his name, address and home phone number by now.
'So what are you saying?'
'Get rid of the shooters, the lookalike, everything. Pull them all out and move George Widdowes back in. I'll
