After a time, Connolly appeared satisfied that Alex was who he said he was.
Sensing this, Alex looked him in the eye.
"Listen, Den, I'm not trouble, OK? I just want to talk."
Connolly stared at him in silence. He looked tired, pufFy-faced and a little sad.
And strangely vulnerable, thought Alex, for a man who had once been known as the SAS's toughest
NCO.
"You're not a talker, son, you're a shooter. It's written all over your face."
"I'm looking for someone, Den, that's all. Help me and you can rest easy about the Park Royal job. No more cover stories, no more looking over your shoulder for the cops."
"What the fuck's the Park Royal job?"
"Den, I'm family. Trust me.
"Oh, yeah? So who's the girl? Well handy with the Mace, it looked like."
"She's just a girl. Nothing to do with anything."
Den stared at his empty glass in silence, flipped his cigarette into the gathering darkness and nodded. For a moment, behind the flushed features, Alex saw the taut wariness of the Special Forces soldier. Then the dazzling smile returned and a large hand was placed on Alex's shoulder.
"Come on, son, we re wasting good drinking time. Tonight's on the house, yeah?"
He steered Alex back inside and moments later Marie was sliding Alex a glass of champagne and a shot-glass of Irish whiskey. Someone, to applause and laughter, began to sing "My Yiddisher Momma'.
Some time later Dawn reappeared beside him. Her cheeks were flushed and she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself Under the circumstances it seemed natural for Alex to slip his arm round her waist, and for her in response to incline herself against him. For a moment he felt the soft pressure of her breast against his side.
"Thank you," he said again.
"That could have turned nasty, one way or another. How are you getting on with the gangster wives?"
She placed her champagne thoughtfully on the bar.
"They're good fun. I like them. Any progress?"
"I've dropped a name or two. Told him who I really am. Not who you are, though. Far as he's concerned, you're just my girl."
"Mm. Lucky me."
"The main problem is that he thinks I'm some sort of hit man. Possibly even come over here to whack him. He's very jumpy. I think the best thing I can do is to tell him the real reason I'm here and hope that calms things down."
"I agree. And this is looking like a rather serious conversation if I'm supposed to be some no-brain blonde bimbo." She pouted.
"Which I clearly am!"
He ran a finger down her cheek.
"It's just that you play the part so well."
"Now why am I suspicious of a compliment like that, I wonder?" she asked.
There was another burst of singing from the floor of the room. Someone had sat themselves at a piano and was banging out old Cockney songs.
"Are we within earshot of Bow Bells here, do you think?" mused Dawn, throwing back the remains of her drink.
"Basildon, maybe," said Alex.
"Not that I've got any quarrel with that, as an Essex man myself' Den Connolly suddenly appeared beside them, sweating and massive.
"Before I'm too pissed to understand a word you're saying," he asked Alex, 'who exactly was it you was after?"
Alex dismissed Dawn with a nod of his head and a pat on her dove-grey behind.
"Joseph Meehan. Code-named Watchman. You finished him for Box."
Connolly nodded.
"I ain't officially here," he said eventually, his words slurring.
"I ain't officially anywhere. But you know that."
Alex nodded.
"I know the score from Stevo. No one hears your name. Ever.
And if you can give me what I need you can rest easy about that other business."
"You gimme your word on that?" Connolly glanced meaningfully down at the assembled company.
"My friends'd be very pissed off if... They're my family now, y'understand -forget fuckin' Hereford, RWW, all that old bollocks."
Alex looked him in the eye.
"I give you my word."
Connolly pursed his lips and nodded slowly and vaguely to himself "Tomorrow. Lunchtime.
Bring your..." He gestured vaguely towards Dawn, who was whispering confidences to Marie.
"Meanwhiles, order anything you want. Open bar, like I said."
They left around 2 a.m. Not because Alex thought that Connolly might relent and talk to him that night, but because he felt that he needed to prove his credentials to the ex-NCO. He had to show proper respect. Leaving early would have been regarded as very graceless. So he had stuck around, downing drink after drink, and looking suitably impressed by the tales of blags, slags, grass-ups, fit-ups, bent coppers, unnumbered shooters and all the rest of the hard-man mythology.
Dawn meanwhile rested wide-eyed at his side, with her arm draped lightly round his waist. They looked, in short, like any impressionable young couple who happened to have stumbled into a bar full of criminals.
When the last goodbyes had been said and they'd finally reached the car, Dawn blinked hard several times and reached in her bag for the key.
"You OK to drive?" asked Alex blearily.
"I've actually drunk comparatively little," said Dawn.
"I always get rum and a Coke in that situation that way you can just keep your glass filled with Coke and no-one's the wiser.
Well, ephedrine or no, I'm well and truly bladdered, I'm afraid," Alex slurred.
"But mission accomplished, sort of' "Get in," said Dawn.
At the hotel they stood together for a moment in front of the open window. The port and the yachts were lit up now, and the sea was an inky black below them. A tide of drunken benevolence washed over Alex.
"You were great," he said feelingly, placing a hand on her warm shoulder.
"Especially Maceing that bonehead of Connolly's."
She smiled and inclined her cheek to his hand.
"You've already thanked me for that. I enjoyed myself What d'you think tomorrow holds?"
"Dunno. All that lunch invitation stuff was just to buy himself time. The more of his hospitality he can persuade us to soak up, the less bad he's going to feel about us leaving empty-handed. At the moment he accepts that I'm kosher and you're just the sweet thing I happen to be travelling with, but he's worried about who comes after me. Where it's all going to end."
"What's he got to hide, Alex?" she asked gently.
"Enough."
"So what promises did you make him?"
Careful, Alex told himself woozily. She doesn't know about the Park Royal job.
"Oh, I strung him along..."
"You think he'll talk to you tomorrow?" Dawn asked sharply.
"Because tomorrow's all we've got. In thirty hours Angela gets back from Washington and any time after that..."
Alex nodded. She didn't need to spell out the danger that Meehan posed. Privately, he was far from convinced that Connolly would talk to him, but he couldn't see how else the situation could have been handled. The alcohol was pounding at his temples now and the knife cuts were beginning to pulse in unison.
"Why don't I get those dressings off?" she asked him.
"Let a bit of fresh air at your poor face.
Lie down on the bed?"
He could quite easily have removed the dressings himself, but lay there breathing in her jasmine scent and her smoky hair, and the faint smell of rum on her breath. She was OK, was Dawn, he decided. A bit of a bitch at times and the most irritating bloody driver he'd ever met, but what the hell? She had a tough job. He could live with her downsides.
And she really was quite seriously pretty with those cool grey eyes and that soft, secretive mouth. Without especially meaning to, and with a vague stab at discretion, he glanced down the grey linen front of her dress as she inched the dressing from his cheek.
She didn't seem to be wearing any sort of bra and he recalled with a rush of pleasure the feel of her breasts against him in the bar.