The Watchman (16 page)

"Dawn, I need to see what Meehan's exact movements were the night before last. If I'm going up against him, I have to know how he operates."

"I very much doubt there'll be anything to see.

"That depends on what you're looking for. Trust me, I'm not going to be wasting your time."

She regarded him expressionlessly for a moment and nodded.

"OK, then, but like I said, I'm tied up this afternoon. It'll have to be tomorrow morning."

"I guess that'll have to do. Tell me something off the top of your head."

"What?"

"Why is Joseph Meehan murdering the MI-5 officers who ran him?"

"I heard you ask Angela Fenwick the same question.

She said she didn't know."

"I heard her say it. But what do you think?"

"I think he went native, like George said." She shrugged.

"Why do any terrorists do what they do? It's an armed struggle. We're the enemy.

"But why choose such an extreme method of killing people? And why take out Fenn and Gidley who, let's face it, were pretty much at the fag-end of their careers?"

"He killed the people he knew. To Meehan, Fenn and Gidley represented the heart of the British Establishment. As do George Widdowes and Angela Fenwick, presumably."

Alex shook his head.

"I don't think he killed them for symbolic reasons. As Brit oppressors or whatever. I think he killed them for a specific reason."

She narrowed her eyes.

"What makes you think that you can see inside this man's head?"

Alex shrugged.

"We're both soldiers. Soldiers are methodical. They believe in cause and effect. What's the point of carrying out an elaborate, ritualistic murder that no one will ever know about? That you know will be immediately covered up?"

"Perhaps he's mad."

"Do you know something?" said Alex.

"For a moment there we were almost having a conversation."

Dawn held his gaze for a moment, then reached to the floor for her briefcase. When she straightened she was her usual brisk, businesslike self.

"As well as the photographs and reports on Fenn and Gidley I've got some keys for you. They're for a top-floor flat in St. George's Square in Pimlico. You can stay there if you need to or' she hesitated for a fraction of a second 'you can make your own arrangements."

"Thank you," said Alex neutrally.

Barry Fenn, he saw, had been a weaselly, narrow shouldered man. From the photographs, in which he was wearing bloodstained pyjamas and was sprawled half in and half out of bed, it was clear that he had been woken from sleep. According to the pathologist's report he had struggled briefly and ineffectually before being struck on the back of the head with some sort of cosh. The six-inch nail had been hammered into his temple while he was semiconscious and his tongue, it appeared, had been hacked out as some sort of afterthought. Livid and hideous, it had been placed in the unused glass ashtray beside the bed alongside a book of matches. There was less blood than there might have been.

Looking at the photographs, Alex realised that his earlier identification with Meehan had been dangerous and stupid. Beyond their training and a similarity in age, he had nothing whatever in common with this maniac. Dawn was right: the man was a psychopathic murderer and had to be stopped.

The pathologist's report on Craig Gidley indicated that, like Barry Fenn's tongue, the victim's eyes had been cut out after the fatal hammer blow had driven the nail through his temple. To Alex this confirmed that the mutilations were there for a purpose other than to cause suffering. As a message, perhaps?

But a message for whom? For MI-5 as a whole? For George Widdowes or Angela Fenwick in particular? Whatever the message, it was clear that either Widdowes or Fenwick was next on the Watchman's list.

Would he get them? Alex wondered dispassionately. Would he catch them and kill them? Forewarned and with all the protective resources of MI-5 at their disposal, they would be much harder targets than Fenn and Gidley had been.

But then the Watchman was clever. He had been taught by the best in many cases the same people who had taught Alex and he had clearly forgotten none of it. The combination of professionalism, sadism and sheer insanity he embodied was terrifying.

What did he want? What was the man trying to achieve?

Alex stared at the photographs of Meehan as if his gaze could somehow penetrate their surface and unlock the man portrayed in them. But the more he shuffled them around, the less they seemed to reveal. Just those pale, skinned whippet features and that watchful, guarded gaze.

He looked tough. Not in the sense of being intimidating, but in the sense of being a hard man to break. He'd duck and he'd dive but one way and another he'd keep on going. There were a thousand looking like him on the streets of Belfast dingy, forgettable figures hunched into donkey jackets. Alex could see why he'd been such a perfect undercover man.

Would MI-5 find him? Meehan would have to make a serious mistake first and there was nothing to indicate that that was going to happen. Mad he might be, but careless he clearly wasn't.

Alex turned to the large map of Britain on the wall. Where would Meehan be hiding out? No, turn the question round. Where would he Alex be hiding out if he were Meehan? In a city, among the crowds? No, he'd be in danger if he revisited his old London stamping grounds. He couldn't risk going anywhere there was an Irish community.

The arm of the IRA, like its memory, was long.

Meehan would know that MI-5 would leave no stone unturned in their search and that unless he had built up a completely watertight new identity they would find him. He'd have to have a new passport, driving licence, social security number everything. Just checking in and out of bed-and-breakfast houses was not going to be enough. He'd have a base somewhere. Somewhere he could hide.

Somewhere he could plan the next killing.

Alex arrived back at Sophie's flat shortly before seven, having arranged to meet Dawn Harding at nine the next morning. She'd pick him up, she told him, where she had dropped him off the night before outside the Duke of York's Headquarters in the King's Road.

He found Sophie changing.

"We're going out," she told him, swinging round so that he could zip up the fastening of her cocktail dress.

"One of my clients Corday is launching a new fragrance range and I've helped organise a little party for them. The perfume's called "Guillotine" and all the women have to wear a red velvet ribbon round their necks as if they've been beheaded."

"Do you mind if I give it a miss?" Alex asked wearily, loosening his tie.

"I'm not really in the mood."

"Oh, don't be boring, darling! I'm sure you've had a horrible day doing whatever secret things you've been doing but so have I. It's been impossibly grim at the PR coal face. Come and drink some champagne at Corday's expense, and then ..

"And then?"

"And then you can take charge of the evening. How's that?"

Alex agreed. If Five were going to leave him twiddling his thumbs while they pursued their investigation, then he might as well enjoy himself And he wanted to please Sophie who, after all, was putting him up. He didn't even have to drive the next morning Dawn would be doing that, presumably at her usual infuriating crawl.

So he might as well chill out.

"So where are we going?"

She raised her chin to tie her red velvet ribbon.

"Hoxton Square."

'~W~here's that?"

"Alex, sweetie, which planet have you been living on for the last few years?

Hoxton is only the most desirable quarrier in London. You can barely throw a stone without braining some famous artist, model or designer. It's celebrity city!"

"Right, well, just introduce me as a friend of your brother's. Say I work in security or something."

She frowned and pouted into the mirror, checking her makeup.

"Security's a bit dingy-sounding, darling. Can we manage something a bit more upscale?

Something dot. com perhaps?"

"OK. I'll have a think." He rubbed his eyes. Various subconscious worries were still nagging at him.

"I realised something dreadful today, that I'd left a rebel sentry a boy, can't have been much more than ten tied to a tree in the middle of the Sierra Leone jungle a couple of days ago."

Sophie wriggled her toes experimentally in her raw-silk shoes.

"I know. It's awful how forgetful one gets. Do you want to ring someone about it?"

Alex stared at her disbelievingly.

"He's probably dead by now, or at the very least missing an arm.

"Shall we go?"

As they swerved through the traffic in the silver Audi TT, with Sophie impatiently cutting up every vehicle that had the temerity to draw alongside her, Alex tried to improve his mood. Things could be worse, he told himself He was being paid to waste time in London an opportunity that most soldiers would give their eye-teeth for and he was sleeping with a rich, beautiful and highly sexed girl who gave every sign of thinking he was the cat's pyjamas. He was on his way to a party to drink champagne with said highly sexed girl, and in two or three hours they would tumble into bed and tear each other to pieces.

So what was pissing him off, exactly? Was it that he seemed to be spending his life being shuffled about by women? Alex had nothing against working with women but right now his life seemed to be run by them. In the past whenever girlfriends had started making noises about permanence and commitment, Alex had started making noises about the incompatibility of soldiering and married life.

And he had meant it. He had seen his colleagues go down like ninepins, their tiny independence skewered by the demands of ratty, frustrated wives. The wives hadn't started ratty and frustrated, but they soon got that way when they discovered that the system could only accommodate them and the kids as sideline players. As Stan Clayton had once explained to him: getting the trouble-and-strife up the duff before an overseas posting was like spitting in your beer before you went for a piss!

Seeing the results vengeful, careworn wives, fragged-out blokes worrying about money and their families' security from dawn till dusk Alex had sworn to have nothing to do with any of it. As far as he was concerned the deal was that you promised nothing that you weren't prepared to give, had a good time for as long as it lasted and got out before things turned nasty. He had a sort of honour system, which went something along the lines that if a woman made it plain from the start that she wanted marriage and kids then you didn't waste her time.

Otherwise, you went for it.

Something told him, though, that with Sophie it was going to be different. For a start he was not in control of things. He didn't automatically call the shots, as he'd always done before. She moved easily and fluently through a world in which, if he was honest, he felt insecure. And while she respected his skills and knew that there was another, darker world in which he moved with ease and fluency, she never allowed herself to be overimpressed by him.

Ultimately, he wasn't sure of her. This made things exciting, but it also made things .. . difficult.

As they swerved round a traffic island in the TT, tyres sc reaming, Alex told himself that he ought to take a train up to

Hereford and pick up his car. Behind the wheel of the KarmanChia he could at least pretend that he was in control of his life. For the time being, though... What the hell?

TWELVE.

When they reached Hoxton Square Sophie ignored the double yellow lines and parked right outside the venue. This was a former electricity showroom turned gallery, and paparazzi were already drawn up at either side of the entrance. As Alex and Sophie hurried in there was a brief burst of flash presumably in case they were celebrities whom no one yet recognised.

The party was on the first floor and the place was already crowded. On the far side of the room Alex caught sight of Stella laughing with a group of models. The sound system was playing Juliette Greco, two women in tri colore hats were spraying perfume at anyone not fast enough to get out of their way, and the sharp smell of "Guillotine' cut the air.

"Come and meet Charlotte," said Sophie, taking Alex's hand and sidling purposefully towards a slight, dark-haired woman who seemed to be dressed in 1970s wallpaper.

"She's the oldest of the Corday sisters. You've heard of the Corday fashion house, haven't you?"

"Why don't I go and find us a drink?" Alex suggested, disengaging his hand.

Within moments he had been swallowed up by the crowd. Around him brief snatches of conversation and shrieks of laughter rose like waves above the music and were inaudible again. A gravel-voiced broadcaster whom he vaguely recognised but had never met threw her arms round his neck, kissed him on the mouth and asked how the new restaurant was going. He told her that it was still serving human flesh and moved on, leaving her open-mouthed.

People pushed past, flickered a glance at him in passing to establish for certain that he was not someone that they needed to know and vanished. Alex wanted to speak to none of them -he simply couldn't summon up the interest. Over the months that he'd been seeing Sophie he'd attended quite a few of these occasions and he'd come to the conclusion that London society was peopled almost entirely by fuck wits From the outside it looked glamorous, all late-night restaurants and beautiful girls and champagne, but in truth, he had discovered, it was very, very dull. For every genuine achiever there were a hundred style journalists, fashion parasites and cokehead aristocrats desperately jockeying for recognition. None of them seemed to have any awareness of a world beyond their own tiny circuit, and listening to the endless loop tape of their conversation about clothes, accessories, drugs and parties bored him out of his mind.

There were exceptions. He liked Stella and of course he liked Sophie more than liked her, in fact.

But why was it, he wondered, that the whole scene that she was involved with made him feel so dead inside? And equally importantly why was it that situations involving real death made him feel so acutely alive? How was he supposed to square those facts with the idea of- one day, at least settling down?