'OK.'
TWENTY-THREE.
'OK,' said Angela Fenwick.
'The position is this .
It was 10.30 a.m.' and Alex and Dawn were seated with the deputy director in her office. Florence Nightingale looked benignly down from the walls; the cafetiere steamed on the table between them.
Despite her overnight flight from Washington Fenwick looked fresh, groomed and alert. Alex and Dawn, by contrast, who had taken an 8 a.m. flight from Malaga, were looking rather less impressive. Alex, in particular, had a raging thirst and a cracking headache that reminded him of its presence with every step that he took. The knife cuts, well on the mend now, were itching crazily.
Dawn, for her part, was paler and quieter than usual. They had not discussed the events of the night before their departure from the hotel to the airport had been a hurried one nor had her behaviour towards him changed greatly. But there had been little things. In the queue for Customs she had turned to him and pressed her face into his shoulder. In the taxi from Heathrow she had settled herself, catlike, beneath his arm. There was a complicity between them.
And for all that he was feeling lousy, the time spent with Dawn and the few hours spent in bed with her had reshaped things in Alex's mind. He didn't want to back out now, he wanted to go all the way, whatever the cost. He wanted to see the Watchman dead at his feet.
And it was possible more than possible. Meehan had seemed uncatchable but he wasn't uncatchable. He was a man and men sooner or later made mistakes.
Confiding his childhood memories to Denzil Connolly had been Meehan's first mistake and sparing Alex's life had been his second.
'We got the analysis of those Meehan tissue samples back yesterday evening from the Forensic Science Service labs,' Fenwick continued.
'And they told us something rather interesting.'
She opened her briefcase and removed a paper.
'The hair that Captain Temple extracted for us has been confirmed as Meehan's against DNA samples from the other crime scenes, and it showed abnormally high medium-term traces of a substance known as perchloroethylene. Known as PCE, perchloroethylene is a solvent used in the tanning process. Due to its high toxicity I won't bother you with the details PCE is on the European Community's black list of chemicals whose use is strictly controlled. In this country, however never a front-runner in environmental terms these controls are regularly ignored by industry and run-off from tanneries into rivers is often accompanied by excess PCE levels.
'Now we've been on to the various ministries overnight, and we've talked to the National Rivers Authority and all the water companies this morning, and between them they've provided us with a list of nine tanneries from which high levels of PCE run-off have been ..
There was a knock at the door, and a hurried entrance by a young man holding a folded document and a book.
'Excuse me, ma am,~ he said, handing the articles to her.
'These have just been couriered over from Room 1129 at the MOD.'
'Excellent,' said the deputy director.
'Thank you.' She glanced at the document - a map, as it turned out.
'Dawn, would you be so good?'
Taking the map, Dawn rose from her seat and pinned it out on the display board opposite them. It was a map of England and Wales, flecked with larger and smaller areas of red.
'Following your call early this morning about the possibility of our man holing up at an old MOD property,' said Fenwick, 'I spoke to a couple of people in Whitehall. This map apparently shows everything, large and small, that they own. Quite a portfolio, isn't it? Billions of pounds' worth of land.'
Alex stared at the map, daunted by the sheer scale and number of the holdings.
There had to be several hundred of them.
'If we could add the tanneries, please, Dawn,' said Fenwick, handing the younger woman a printed list.
Dawn stared at it, and reached for the first black mapping pin.
'Hurley, Staffordshire,' she read out.
'On the River Blithe.'
And the second: 'Mynydd, Powys, on the Afon Honddu.'
And the third: 'Beeston, Lanes on the River Douglas.'
She continued to the end of the list.
She stood back and the three of them stared at the map. The pins were spread erratically over the country, with a slight cluster detectable between Birmingham, Coventry and Northampton.
'From what the FSS people say,' Fenwick went on, glancing down at the report, 'PCEs in this sort of concentration would only to be encountered within a few miles of source. So in the case of somewhere like Hurley, for example, we don't have to follow the river system seventy miles across country to the coast. We can just draw a circle of a few miles' diameter around the plant. The ESS figure was three miles, so let's say six to be on the safe side. Any of these locations strike anyone as the sort of area you might take your son on a caravanning holiday?'
'The mid-Wales one looks good,' said Alex.
'So does the north Yorkshire and the Dartmoor. Any of those three, definitely.'
Fenwick nodded.
'Dawn, take all the data down to the computer people. We need Ordnance Survey printouts of the tannery areas, with all suitable MOD properties highlighted. It's almost certainly safe to eliminate airfields, working bases et cetera the details of the various properties seem to be listed in this book they sent over.
Dawn nodded briskly and gathered up the materials.
When she had gone Fenwick turned enquiringly to Alex.
'Everything healing satisfactorily? I understand you put up quite a fight in poor George's defence.'
'The Watchman did what he came to do,' said Alex shortly.
Fenwick pursed her lips and looped an errant gunmetal tress behind one ear.
She was a handsome woman, Alex thought, if a bit on the cold side. Those blue eyes could freeze you to the bone in seconds.
'It doesn't take a Nobel prize winner to work out that the next in line for Mr. Meehan's attentions is myself,' she said with a slight smile.
'I'm afraid it looks that way,' Alex agreed.
'What precautions are you taking?'
'As few as possible, I'm afraid. I have to continue doing my job and I have to continue to be seen to do it.'
'Have you moved house? Varied your routine at all?'
'There's no point, I'm afraid. I live as if expecting an assassin as it is and I have done ever since I inherited the Northern Ireland desk. I know you have your doubts about some of our people, Captain Temple, but I assure you the arrangements in place are good. Apart from anything else I have to receive ministers and diplomatic visitors and, well, all sorts of people. I can't just up sticks and move to some suburban safe house.'
'Bet you wish you could at times,' said Alex. The image flashed into his mind of Fenwick lying in a pool of blood with a nail through her head. She was certainly keeping up appearances, he thought. Perhaps she's worried that if she looks rattled or fails to show up for work she could lose out on the directorship.
'Perhaps I do, Captain Temple.' Fenwick folded her hands in her lap for a moment, then one of the phones on her desk started flashing, and she marched over and picked it up.
'I'll wait outside,' said Alex and left the office.
A minute later Dawn reappeared in the ante-room. In a couple of sentences Alex told her of his concerns for her boss's safety.
'She lives in a private block in a gated estate in Chelsea,' said Dawn.
'It's one of the most secure addresses in London. There's CCTV everywhere, a security guard on the entrance, passes to get in and out, everything.
