The Watchman (34 page)

"Fine by me. Just run through the schedule."

"We'll do a single pass past the place, see what we can see. Then push on for a couple of miles and park up I've chosen somewhere on the 1:15,000 map a car park by a transport cafe. Then we'll cut back across country there's a streamside path that should take us to the boundary of the estate work our way round, and see what there is to be seen."

"You think we'll find him?"

"Who knows what we'll find. Or how long we'll have to wait."

"This is just a recce, right? You're cool with that?"

"Just a recce," Alex confirmed.

"On the other hand, if you get him bang to rights..

"You don't get men like Meehan "bang to rights"," said Alex flatly.

"Negative thought leads to negative action," said Dawn.

"Spare me the fucking zen, Harding." He intertwined and cracked his knuckles. The slow drip of adrenalin into his system had begun.

"Don't worry, you'll get a corpse, one way or another."

Two and a half hours later they were driving north from Tavistock across the western plain of Dartmoor Forest. The roads were narrower now, and Dawn edged the Range Rover carefully between high banks edged with fern, hawthorn and bracken as a solitary kestrel pinwheeled above them. At intervals, as the banks fell away, a vast and baleful reach of heather revealed itself.

"Follow the sign for North Brent Tor," said Alex, 'and then for either Chilford or Hamble."

To their left a series of rocky outcrops stood like iron teeth against the sky. This was the Watchman's terrain, Alex was sure of it.

"We should pass Black Down House on our right any minute now," said Alex.

"Take it as slowly as you can without looking suspicious."

They drove for ten minutes down a side lane which was little more than a farm track. Not many people came down here, Alex reflected, noting the lane's poorly maintained surface and overgrown verges.

And there the house finally was, set well back from the road, its windows boarded and its decades-old paintwork weather-streaked and flaking. Beyond it the ground fell away sharply towards the river. There was no sign of any other buildings. Nor, apart from a temporary steel baffler which had been erected in front of the former gateway, was there any indication that the property had been developed in any way since its sale. No structural supports had been erected, and the overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the building had clearly been untouched for years. The air of neglect surrounding the place was palpable.

"Not the most inviting place in the world," said Dawn as the property slid from view.

"I think that's rather the point," Alex observed.

"Like the fact that you can't see much of it from the road. There's a church and several outbuildings down there somewhere, plus twenty-odd acres of woodland."

"No vehicle anywhere near it."

"No. Which makes me think he might not be around. After all, he'd have no particular reason to to hide it."

"But it does beg the question as to where the hell he is," said Dawn worriedly.

"First things first," said Alex.

"If we're going to recce the place I'd much rather he wasn't around.

As long as your boss goes straight from Thames House to the Chelsea flat she should be safe enough assuming the security's everything you say it is."

Five minutes later they parked the Range Rover on the cinder forecourt of the Cabin Cafe. For appearance's sake they went in for a cup of tea and a slice of sponge cake. There were several other people in there, the majority of them wearing brightly coloured anoraks and carrying map cases.

Alex's and Dawn's appearance, by contrast, was decidedly sombre. Alex was wearing grey wind-proof trousers and an old combat smock; Dawn had on black jeans and a lightweight forest green jacket, and her hair was concealed beneath an army surplus jungle hat. Both were wearing nondescript hiking boots.

When they had paid, Alex and Dawn began to walk back up the road in the direction from which they had come. Both were carrying rucksacks and Alex now had a pair of high-powered binoculars round his neck. Once out of sight of the cafe, the pair cut left-handed into a field and descended the few hundred brambled yards to the river.

Or to the stream, for the Hamble was hardly a river. Not at this time of year, anyway. Such water as it contained tumbled quietly from pool to shallow pool, brimmed darkly for a moment and hurried on. A sheep path ran above it, disappearing at intervals but soon reprising its dry erratic track. Hanks of wool hung from a barbed-wire fence.

They slid down the nettled bank to the water and for twenty minutes Alex set a fast pace up the stream bed. The day was a warm one, despite the fact that afternoon was swiftly becoming evening, and soon they were both sweating.

Alex's thigh swiftly began to throb where the stitches pulled at the wound, but he consigned the discomfort to a distant part of his mind.

They covered the ground fast. The banks of the stream were eight or nine feet high and the foliage had clearly not been cut back for years, allowing them to stay well-concealed from any watching eyes. Despite the absence of any vehicle, Alex was not convinced that the Black Down estate was unoccupied and a careful study of a large-scale map had convinced him that this was the safest approach. Meehan could not watch the entire half-mile perimeter, he could only patrol it, and Alex suspected that he slept through the day.

The estate, they soon discovered, was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. This was not new long streaks of rust discoloured the galvanised metal but at ten feet high it was still effective enough. The banks flattened at the point the stream met the perimeter, so that the lowest chain-linked strands went to within inches of the stream bed. The fence continued in both directions and there was every reason to suppose that it surrounded the estate entirely. It was clearly not proof against determined assault, but it would undoubtedly have deterred the curious over the years.

Alex and Dawn crouched in the shadows beneath the bank.

"What d'you reckon?" asked Dawn.

"I reckon I'm going to have to go in underneath it," Alex answered.

Removing his rucksack, he took out a lightweight folding shovel and began digging in the stream. After ten hard minutes, and having hauled out several large rocks by hand, he had cleared a twelve-inch space beneath the lowest strands of the fence and the stream bed.

"OK, all clear?"

They looked around them and Alex quickly undressed. Naked, he burrowed up the stream bed and under the fence.

The water was surprisingly cold. When he was through Dawn wrapped his clothes in a bin liner and threw them to him over the fence. The other kit followed.

"Remind me to take those stitches out," she hissed as Alex re-dressed.

Quickly, they ran through their contingency plans. She would wait where she was and call him on his mobile if there was anything to report, and he would attempt a search of the Black Down estate. Switching his mobile to vibrate, he melted into the woods. His progress was slow. He moved in total silence, continuously scanning the ground in front of him for trip wires and booby traps, and the landscape as a whole for any sign of surveillance.

Soon he was at the edge of the woods and from a well-concealed position among a patch of overgrown thorn bushes was able to rake the area with his binoculars. There was no sign of life and as far as he could see the area of tall grass, nettles and cow-parsley in front of him was untrodden.

Slowly, and with infinite care, he moved from the cover of the woods into the shadowed stream-bed. The water was deeper here and he was soon soaked to the waist. It wasn't the approach route he would have chosen, given a choice, but unlike the nettle-choked field, the exposed rocks would leave no trace of his passing. The day was still warm. The sugar in the tea that he had drunk had made him thirsty and with a flash of irritation Alex realised that he had not filled his canteen. Drinking the stream water, as they had discovered from the forensic samples, was probably inadvisable.

Rounding a corner he saw the church. It had a square tower and a blankly ruined look. Where there had once been windows there were now gaps around which, at some long-ago point, mortar had been roughly tro welled. At one time a road had led past the main house and down alongside the river. The church and its small graveyard lay at the end of this road, or what remained of it. Trees and bushes had forced their way through the dried-out surface and long-unchecked vegetation pressed from both sides. Beyond the church was a line of dilapidated single-storey dwellings.

Having noted the layout of the place, Alex drew himself back into invisibility beneath an overhanging alder bush. With his binoculars he used the slowly failing light to scour the area around the church and then rang Dawn.

"I'm in position," he murmured.

"Since I've got no idea where our man sleeps or even if he's here, I'm just going to hang back and sit tight. How are you?"

"OK. Nothing to report here."

Where would Meehan stay, Alex wondered. In the house? In the church? In the crypt, underground? Did the house have cellars? Wherever it was, it would be somewhere where he would have plenty of warning of any arrivals.

By the property's new owners, for example. Angela Fenwick had discovered that Liskeard Holdings were having trouble securing planning permission for the hotel and conference complex that they hoped to build on the site, and that was why the property remained in its ruined state. But presumably there had been a fair amount of coming and going by architects and others.

Alex reasoned that Meehan probably slept and concealed himself somewhere beneath the church. The chances were that if the house had a cellar it would be damp and uncomfortable, and subject to occasional visits the church was much older and much more securely built. Church crypts were stone-walled. They were usually dry.

At 8 p.m. Dawn rang.

"Still waiting for Godot?" she asked.

"Yup, you?"

"The light's almost gone, as you can see. I was thinking I should get back to the Range Rover. Twitchers don't twitch in the dark."

"OK. Be in touch."

Two hours later his thigh was itching unbearably and his back aching from immobility. How many hours have I spent lying up like this, he wondered. A hundred? More? And how many times has the whole thing ended in failure, in merely getting up and going back to base?

He was going to have to make a decision, sooner or later, about whether to risk taking a closer look at things. Was Meehan due back tonight? Was he already there? Was he, at this minute, watching Alex the hunted turned hunter?

Alex shuddered, both at the thought of being scoped out by Meehan and at the memory of the former agent's terrifying strength.

No, he thought. I'll go in now.

Slowly he eased himself from cover and continued the silent passage upstream that he had started hours earlier. In his pocket, fully loaded, was the Glock.

Soon, the house was in view above him. The ruins of a flight of steps led down from the road fronting the house to the stream at the bottom of the slope. If he started to climb, he would greatly increase the chance of being spotted if Meehan was in residence. If he stayed where he was, however, he would never learn anything.

A step at a time, he moved up the slope. With the passage of years and neglect, the brickwork steps had cracked and he could feel their uneasy shift beneath his feet. Finally he reached the top and the front door. Was it locked? No, the lock had been kicked in and the flaking door swung open easily. Glock in one hand, Maglite torch in the other, Alex went in. He was in a front hall, a place of rotting floorboards, fallen masonry and the smell of dead animals. Fag ends and empty bottles greyed with plaster dust lay about and there was an old coat in the fireplace. Anything of any conceivable value had been stripped away -there was nothing there except walls and floor.

Taking a pair of thick socks from his rucksack, Alex pulled them over his boots. They would muffle the crunching sound of his movements and help conceal the tracks of his Danner boots on the floor. Quickly he moved from room to room on the ground floor, but found nothing. A few empty tins and a gutted mattress lay around, but there was no sign that the place had been occupied by anyone other than tramps and vagrants -and that a long time ago. There was no cellar.

Upstairs the story was the same: gutted rooms, fallen plaster- work and the darkness of the boarded-over windows. At some point a pigeon had trapped itself in there and its half-feathered skeleton lay on a bedroom mantelpiece.

Where had Meehan and his father slept that night all those years ago? Wherever it was, there was no sign that he had bothered with the place since.

Outside, it was now quite dark. Pulling on his night-vision goggles so that the scene leapt into eerie green daylight, Alex descended the slope again. At his ear was the tiny mosquito whine of the goggles' battery-powered electronics.

Carefully he made his way towards the dilapidated cottages. As with the church, a rough attempt had been made to make these safe by slapping mortar around the gaps where there had once been windows. One of them the only one with an intact roof- seemed to have been designated a store of some kind, and its back room proved to be packed with ancient cardboard boxes containing electrical and woodworking items. Raising the goggles and flicking a pen torch beam on these, Alex identified dark-brown bakelite transformers and junction boxes, rows of dusty radio valves, plaited electrical flex, fibrous early Rawlplugs and other items whose use he could only guess at.

And nails, of course. From half-inch to six-inch. Alex pocketed a couple for the forensics team, flicked off the pen torch, lowered the goggles and went outside again.

The mobile throbbed against his thigh.

"You OK?" asked Dawn.

"Looking around," murmured Alex.

"No sign of him yet. This is definitely the place, though I've found a stack of those old nails. You OK?"

"Fine. Take care."