"Just fill me in again on what happened. The Gidleys were having a party, yeah?"
"A dinner party," said Widdowes.
"A dinner party for four Service colleagues and their partners. They would have arrived at about the same time that you left Freetown to keep your appointment with the RUF."
"And you weren't there?" asked Alex.
"No," said Widdowes, a small note of annoyance creeping into his voice.
"I wasn't, as it happens."
"And the deputy director?"
"The DD was there, yes. In all including Craig and Letitia Gidley ten people sat down to eat. By half past midnight the guests had all left, and Craig Gidley locked the front gate and let the dogs out."
"They were Dobermanns, right? Attack dogs?"
"That's right. They'd been shut up in their kennels while the guests were around. Normally they had the run of the grounds - a couple of acres in all. Better than any alarm, as you can imagine."
"Not on this occasion," said Alex soberly.
"Well, no, as it happened. Not on this occasion." Widdowes rubbed his eyes. It occurred to Alex that the MI-5 man had probably had as shitty a day as he had.
"Shortly afterwards Letitia Gidley saw her husband lock the front door.
She went up to bed they had separate bedrooms -and he went into the study announcing that he was going to have a finger of Scotch and spend half an hour on the computer. That was the last time she saw him alive. She found him here at 9.30 this morning and called the DD."
"Where's what's her name Letitia Gidley now?"
"At a colleague's in London. In a fairly bad way, as you can imagine. Let's go outside."
Gratefully, Alex followed him into the hall and thence to the porch. The front door was of heavy steel-backed oak.
"This how he got access?" asked Alex.
"Yes. Picked the lock. Very expertly. Come through." Widdowes led him the fifty yards or so past the parked cars to the front gate, where he pointed to a telegraph pole.
"See that little box on the line running to the house?" Alex recognised it at a glance.
"It's a sonic deactivator. Sends a false "secure" signal to the alarm monitoring station.
"That's right. Have you ever used one?"
Alex chose to ignore the question.
"And it was just the house that was alarmed?"
Widdowes looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before nodding.
"Just the house. These two little charmers kept an eye on the garden.
He led Alex along the lawn. In the herbaceous border, doubled up among the lupins and delphinia, were the stiffened bodies of two Dobermann pinschers.
Alex whistled appreciatively.
"He's good, this guy. And the wife heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
Alex nodded. At the front door the two men he had met earlier were loading a body bag into the boot of one of the cars. Ritchie, cigarette in mouth, was giving them a hand.
"How would you have taken out Gidley?" asked Widdowes.
"I'd have done pretty much as this guy did," Alex answered.
"Wait until everyone's inside and the party's under way, then climb the telegraph pole and disable the alarm. He wouldn't have gone inside the grounds at that stage because of the dogs."
"How would he have known about the dogs?" asked Widdowes.
"He would have seen them," said Alex.
"He'd have had this place under surveillance for days, maybe even weeks. He'd have known the dogs' names, when they were fed, everything."
"So then?"
"Then he would have pulled back from the target and positioned himself somewhere he could count the cars out at the end of the evening. Field, maybe, or a tree. He probably had binoculars. Soon as he was sure the Gidleys were alone, he'd have returned and gone over the wall."
"What about the dogs?"
"See the way they're lying?" asked Alex, pointing to the twisted bodies.
"I'd put money on his having used poison, meat laced with strychnine. You whistle the dogs over, throw down the meat and then assume a submissive posture face down on the ground. Instead of going straight for your throat the dogs just piss on you. Once they've symbolically dominated you, you see, you're no longer a threat and they can get on with the meat."
"Big mistake," murmured Widdowes drily.
"Very big," agreed Alex.
"They're dead in seconds. Then our man takes a quick trot to the front door, boosts the lock and..." He shrugged.
"That's the how of it, anyway. As regards the why, you tell me."
"Let's go back to the DD," said Widdowes.
They returned to the back of the house, where the deputy director was making notes in a small ring-binder. The two men sat down. It was several seconds before she looked up.
"So, Captain Temple, give us your assessment of the perpetrator of this murder."
Alex hesitated.
"Why me?" he asked her.
"Why pull me out of the Sierra Leone jungle when you could have had Hereford chopper a bloke down this morning? Why waste the best part of a day?"
The deputy director gave the faintest of smiles.
"Because I wanted you, Captain Temple, not just some "bloke". I've been led to understand that you're the best."
Alex looked away.
"Who told you that?" he asked sardonically.
"Commissioned from the ranks at thirty-four after a decade's exemplary service. RW~[ team leader while still a captain .
The facts speak for themselves."
Alex shrugged. He guessed that, one way or another, he'd managed to keep his nose clean over the years. And managed it without brown-nosing the brass, which he privately considered to be his real achievement.
"Let me get this right," he said.
"You're in the process of trying to locate the man who murdered Feun and Gidley. Assuming that you do locate him, you want me to move in and eliminate him.
"That's about the shape and size of it."
Alex nodded.
"If I'm going to do that, I'm going to need to know everything you've got on him."
"That's not a problem.
"And I'm going to need to ask you some pretty sensitive questions."
"And I'll do my best to answer them, Captain Temple.
There'll be no secrets between us. We want this man taken off the streets, and fast. For reasons I'm sure I don't have to go into, I want the whole thing tied up before the police get wind of it.
Or, God help us, the press. That means days, Captain Temple.
Not weeks. All of this is urgent."
Nodding his assent, Alex looked out across the evening stillness of the garden. Midges whirled in the scented air. Was it his imagination or had she emphasised the word 'captain', as if to suggest that promotion would accompany success. Or that demotion would follow refusal, perhaps .. . Not that he had a hope in hell of getting out of this.
"OK." He nodded.
The deputy director swept her papers together.
"Good," she said briskly.
"I'll see you in my office at 9 p.m.
tomorrow. By then we'll have photographs and the bulk of the forensic information, and I can give you some of the background to all of this. Meanwhile you'll be liaising with Dawn, who'll take you back to London. Anything you need, just ask her." With that she got up, briefly extended her hand to Alex he pressed it, perhaps more gingerly than was strictly polite and swept into the house.
"I'll wrap up here, Dawn," said George Widdowes.
"Why don't you and the captain make a move? Unless of course' he turned to Alex 'there's anything else you need to see?"
"I don't think so," said Alex and turned his attention for the first time to the woman who had been sitting in silence at the far end of the table.
SEVEN.
Alex's first impression was of toughness: tough grey eyes, tough posture and tough attitude. She had nondescript blonde hair, hadn't bothered with make-up and was wearing a black short-sleeved sweater, black trousers and flat-heeled elastic-sided boots.