The Watchman (18 page)

She nodded. They continued in silence along the roadside.

Dawn frowned.

"But what would he..."

"Shush a minute," said Alex, cutting her off. The Gidleys' house was just coming into view and he wanted to see it had to see it through the Watchman's eyes. At his side, as he marshalled all his senses and instincts to this end, he was vaguely aware of Dawn bristling with irritation.

Women, he thought.

Meehan would want an OP a place he could observe from without being seen.

Somewhere away from the road and out of range of the dogs, but close enough to check out the arrangements. He'd have planned for at least a week's surveillance.

He wouldn't have compromised with just a day or two. He would have gone up with food and water and a bag to crap into, and noted everything. Where would he have watched from? A building? Were there any other buildings in sight? No. No farm sheds, garages, outhouses, nothing. Their absence would have been one of the factors that attracted Gidley to the house in the first place. So was there anywhere at ground level he could lie up? Didn't look like it, because wherever he lay the wall surrounding the property would block his vision. He wouldn't be able to get enough height on the place. The contours were against him.

Man-made OPs? There were telegraph poles running along the road and connecting to the property, and it was theoretically possible that he'd nicked aBT van and overalls to fit the deactivator. But he wouldn't have been able to stay up there for long enough to establish anything worthwhile within moments of his appearing the Box security people would have been on to BT to check him out.

Trees, then. Alex had reckoned from the start that Meehan had gone for a tree, but he'd wanted formally to eliminate all other possibilities. There were a horse chestnut and a sycamore overhanging the road on either side of the Gidleys' perimeter wall, but he dismissed these. Tempting, but just too close to the house and the orbit of the dogs. Besides, in consideration of the security hazard they posed, all the trees near the property wall had had their lower limbs sawed off.

Climbing them would have necessitated scaling equipment and any climber would have had to take the risk of being seen either from the house or the road.

On the opposite side of the road was a field of young corn bisected by a public footpath. Mature trees stood at the side of this path at irregular intervals. Alex scanned them from the road. The ideal observation point was a large beech, from whose boughs a clear hundred-and-fifty-yard sight line on the house and grounds was available. Without a word, with Dawn sighing behind, he marched down the road, swung his leg over the stile into the field and moved at pace towards the tree.

His head was clear now, his brain singing with the pleasure of the pursuit.

"I'll have you, you bastard!" he murmured to himself.

"I'll fucking have you!"

They arrived at the foot of the beech and Alex climbed expectantly over the elephantine grey roots. Meehan, he was sure, would have climbed the trunk on the far side from the road, using ropes and scaling equipment. Carefully, he examined the trunk. Nothing. No sign, no scar. Shit! It had to be this tree. But the trunk showed no sign at all, not a single scratch, scar or abrasion that might have been made in the last month. After searching the fine grained silvery surface for more than twenty minutes he was forced to concede that if Meehan had used this tree he had not climbed it by the trunk. Nor were there any branches hanging anywhere near the ground.

Dawn remained expressionless, but Alex could tell that his frustration gave her quiet satisfaction. Finally, and meaningfully, she glanced at her watch.

"Come on," he said, marching her further up the path.

The next tree that might have afforded a view over Gidley's property was a horse chestnut. Its large leaves and candle-like white blooms made it a lot harder to see out of but at the same time, Alex noted, a lot harder to see into.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe. Warily, he circled the trunk. Like the beech, it was fine-skinned and any scratch would have shown. But once again, there was nothing.

"Is it possible," asked Dawn demurely, 'that you might just be barking up the wrong..."

"No!" he snapped.

"It bloody isn't. He was here somewhere."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. Now please .. ." Desperately, he scanned the tree's spreading skirts and his eyes narrowed. There was one place, just one, about ten feet from the ground.

"Come with me," he ordered her.

"Step where I step."

Followed by Dawn, he moved into the shadowed, dew-sodden grass. When he was below the lowest point of the bough he motioned her to be still and crouched down. Half closing his eyes, he felt carefully around the wet ground as if he were blind. It took five minutes, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a plug of pressed soil the size and shape of a cigarette packet.

"Got you," he breathed.

"What is it?" asked Dawn.

In answer he felt quickly around and eased another plug from the ground a foot away.

"He had a ladder," said Alex.

"He didn't want to go up the trunk using a scaling kit and leave marks, so he used a ladder and a rope and went up here. Then afterwards' Alex held up the soil 'he filled in the places where the feet of the ladder went. It hasn't rained since then, so ..

"Why go to that trouble?" asked Dawn.

"Since we know it's him and he knows that we know."

"He's a perfectionist," said Alex.

"It's about doing it right, whatever the circumstances. About leaving no trace."

"A sort of Samurai code?" mused Dawn.

"That sort of thing," Alex agreed.

"What I think he did here was to get a decorator's ladder one of those aluminium self-supporting jobs tie one end of the rope to it, throw the other over the branch, pull the branch down and tie off the rope. Then he grabbed the branch and up he went."

"Dragging the ladder up behind him on the rope. Neat. Too bad we haven't got a rope or a ladder."

"We've got me," said Alex.

"And we've got you.

"Oh, no!" said Dawn firmly.

"No fucking way!"

"Way, baby!" said Alex with a grim smile.

"Shoes off."

"Tree-climbing's not part of my job, baby!"

"And saving your colleagues' life? Is that part of your job? Personally I couldn't give a monkey's, but..."

"Why can't you go up alone?"

"I could, but it would mean my standing on your shoulders and I'm not sure you could manage that."

"Try me."

"I'd love to."

"You know what I mean."

They tried it. She genuflected; he took her hands and stepped on to her shoulders with his bare feet.

"Do you have any idea how much I paid for this sweater?" she breathed, trembling with strain.

"Take it off," said Alex cheerfully.

"I won't be shocked."

"Fuck you!"

She couldn't straighten up. She tried gave it her best shot -but in the end she simply couldn't.

"Why don't we try it the other way round?" he suggested reasonably.

"Why don't we just get a ladder from the house?"

"If this doesn't work we will, OK?"

Sullenly she took off her shoes, placed them together on the wet grass as if on a wardrobe shelf, took his hands, stepped on to his shoulders.

"And.. . up." He straightened.

"Take your hands away from mine when you're ready. Grab the branch. Good, now pull yourself up. Try and get your leg over.

"I thought that was your speciality," she gasped. Then she looked down at him nervously.

"What now?"

"Move as close to the end of the branch as possible, so that it's weighed down."

She did so. He took off his shirt and threw it up to her, ordered her to tie it round the branch, which she did.

"And now these. Tie the legs together so that they make another link of the chain." He threw her his trousers. She tied them to the shirt. He was now naked except for his boxer shorts.

"How silly do I look?" he asked.

"From up here? Very."

"You sure the knots are sound?"

"I've done some sailing. Trust me, they're sound."

He hauled himself up as if using a rope ladder, unknotted his shirt and trousers part of the haul he had bought with Sophie and quickly re-dressed.

"OK, do you want to stay here? Or climb with me.

She hesitated. He could see a small muscle working in her jaw.

"I'll come up," she said eventually.

"Right. You know what we're looking for. Anything, basically."

"You really think we're going to learn anything?"

"I think we have to look."

They climbed for ten minutes, the ground fell slowly away beneath them and the dark-green leaves enveloped them. As they moved upwards they found tiny but unmistakable signs that someone else had recently done the same thing and by dint of hard searching were able to follow a trail of lichen blurs, pressure marks and trodden fungi.

"Look up," said Alex at intervals, which Dawn correctly interpreted as "Don't look down.

Finally, breathless, she turned to him.

"I can't get up there."

"There' was the broad junction of several branches with the trunk some thirty feet from the ground.

"He managed it," said Alex.

"Well, I can't," she breathed.

"It's just too long a reach."

"I'll get you up there," Alex said.

"Must you?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where he watched from. I'm going to lift you and sit you there, OK?"

"OK," she said uncertainly.

He braced himself opposite her, placed his hands on her waist and looked into a pair of grey eyes from which she was struggling to keep all signs of fear.

Beneath his grip, however, he could feel a faint involuntary trembling. When he lifted her she almost made it she was absurdly light, somehow, for someone so bad-tempered but the fine black wool of her sweater gave a poor grip and she slipped down again between his hands. The sweater, meanwhile, slipped up.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely, staring at the neatly voluptuous contours of her scarlet satin bra.

"I didn't mean that to happen."

She wrenched down her sweater. Blimey, he told himself Who'd have thought that beneath that stroppy exterior .. . "Try again?" he suggested.

Now sheer anger got her up there. Once settled, she stared out over the fields.

He clambered up behind her and saw what she saw. The trunk and the adjoining branches formed a solid enclosure within which, without too much discomfort, it would have been possible to remain for hours. Before them the alignment of the heavy, densely leaved chestnut branches afforded a perfect longdistance view of the Gidleys' property. Only the area directly behind the house was invisible.

"He was here," said Alex.

"He was here for days. Look, you can see the worn place in this fork where he wedged his foot.

And here, this shined place where he sat. This was where he planned Gidley's murder."

"If I weren't so utterly terrified of heights," said Dawn quietly, looking around her, "I'd say it was rather beautiful up here."

Alex stared at her.

"You're really afraid of heights? Phobic?"

She returned his stare openly and frankly.

"Like I said, terrified. This is the highest I've ever been off the ground outside a house. Skyscrapers make me feel faint. I couldn't even go up the Eiffel Tower."

"So why didn't you tell me?"

She looked him in the eye.

"You didn't exactly make it very easy, did you?"

He was silent for a moment.

"I guess not. I'm sorry. You're a trooper, Dawn Harding, and I'm a bastard."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, I'd pretty much go along with that. I might add the words "patronising" and "sexist" while I was about it."

"Fair enough."

"And request that if we're going to continue working together you don't take out your frustrations on me every time you get an order you don't like, or your Sloaney girlfriend gives you a hard time, or you don't get laid, or whatever."

"OK."

"And most importantly that you get me to the ground in one piece."

"I promise."

Together, as best they could, they searched the branches around them for anything that Meehan might have left. In the end it was Dawn who found it: an inch-long stub of pencil slipped into a knot hole near their feet. Working it out with his pocket knife, Alex managed to slip the pencil into his shirt pocket without directly touching it.

"Forensics'll be interested to see that," said Dawn.

"Do you think there's anything else?"

They searched every inch, but found nothing else. Ten minutes later they were back on the first branch, ten feet above the ground.

"Ever done a parachute course?" Alex asked her.

She shook her head.

"OK, I'll jump and then catch you."

He hit the ground, rolled and stood himself up. Soon, she was hanging from the branch with her bare feet on his shoulders. One after the other, he took her hands.

She wobbled.

"OK," he said.

"Now put my hands under your arms.

"No funny business?"

"As if]' Gently, he lowered her down the front of his body. When their faces were level and her mouth inches from his, he stopped. He looked into her eyes. Was there the ghost of a smile there?

They had lunch in a nearby pub. Ploughman's lunches, with in his case a beer and in hers mineral water. A sharp morning had turned into a warm day and they sat outside at a bench.

"You did something today you wouldn't have thought yourself capable of," Alex began.

"Oh, spare us the squaddie pep talk, please. I went up that tree this morning because..."

"Because the thought of being bested by a yob of a soldier was something you couldn't face. Worse even than your fear of heights, right?"

She shrugged and smiled.

"Perhaps. I never said you were a yob, though."

"No?"

"No. Though you certainly are one. And proud of it after all, it's a solid-gold chick puller, isn't it, being in the Regiment?"