Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  Two.

  He had been sat in the Sierra since before first light. He had the engine idling and the heater going and every few minutes it was necessary for him to wipe the inside of the windscreen hard, bully it, to clear the mist that hazed his view of the target house. He had parked up in a side street a full fifty yards from the main road on which the target house was one of a line of low-set terraced homes. Four hours back, when he had first parked his Sierra in the side street, he had felt a small glow of satisfaction; it was a good place to be parked because it gave him the option of going right or left up the road without the clumsiness of a three-point turn, it was the way he would have done it before the slip, slide, out of the Service. But it was different now from his Service days, and this was solo surveillance and he was working cheapskate, this was shoestring stuff. In the Service days, when he was with Section 4 of A Branch there would have been one to watch in the car and one to drive, and at the far end of the road, also tucked in at a side street, there would have been the back-up car and two more. In the bloody Service days there would have been bodies committed on the ground to cope with target surveillance, those who would stay with the cars and those who could duck out and dive for the Underground if that was how the target chose to move .. . But there was no point bitching, nothing gained from moaning. Dreaming of the Service days was crap and pointless. He was on his own and just bloody lucky to have found a parking space off the double yellows in the side street, and he would be going well if the target came out of the target house and used a car, and he would be going bad if the target came out from the target house and ignored the target car and walked four hundred yards right to the Piccadilly line Underground or two hundred yards left to the Central line. The big decision for Penn: to have another cigarette or to unwrap another peppermint. There was a cigarette packet's cellophane on the carpet by his feet, and silver paper from the peppermint tube. He sat in the passenger seat of the Sierra, pondered, made up his mind, and lit another cigarette. He sat in the passenger seat because that was the drill, because then the locals would imagine that he was waiting for the driver and be less suspicious of a stranger in their street. What they had said on the training course, before he had gone to Section 4 of A Branch, the watchers, was that personnel should be 'nondescript'. A good laugh that had raised and Penn had the starter to win the bonus because he was reckoned good and proper 'nondescript', like it was going out of fashion. He was the man who did not stand out. Penn was the guy in the crowd who made up the numbers and was not noticed. Funny old business, the chemistry of charisma ... at the first course he had actually been called out of the crowd by the instructor and held up, grinning and sheepish, as the example of what a watcher should be like. Penn was ordinary. He was average height, average build, naturally wore average clothes. His hair was average brown, not dark and not light, and average length, not long and not short. His walking stride was average, not clipped and mincing, not busy and athletic. His accent was average, not smart and privileged, not lazy and careless with the consonants. Penn was the sort of man, damn it, who was accepted because he made few ripples .. . and wanting to make waves, wanting to be recognized, was what had pitched him out of the Service. Dragging on the cigarette .. . The door of the target house was opening. Stubbing the cigarette into the filled ashtray .. . He saw the target. Coughing the spittle of the Silk Cut and remembering the woman from Section 4 of A Branch who had come to the garage they used under the railway arches in Wandsworth and slapped a No Smoking sticker on the door of the glove compartment and dared him, and bloody won .. . The target had turned and carefully locked the front door of the house and was walking. The target was coming towards the parked and heated-up Sierra. He made a note on the pad, time of departure, and he eased his average weight across the gear stick and the brake handle and slid in behind the wheel. Naughty little boy, the target, and not playing it straight with the lady, the client. Penn was taking 300 a day, a half to the company, for ten hours a day, cooking in his car with the Silk Cut smoke up his nose so that the lady, the client, should not be conned out of her fancy salary. It was mid-morning and the car would have stunk anyway from his socks that were damp and his trousers that were still wet from the rain when he had walked round the back of the target house to check whether there was a rear exit, and a hell of a good thing that there wasn't because this was solo surveillance. The target was the fourth male out of the house that morning. The target had followed a West Indian in building site overalls, and an Asian, and a student with an armful of notebooks and college books. The target wore old jeans and a loose sweater, and a baseball cap back to front, and the target came past him whistling. A miserable morning with more rain in the air did not faze him. Enjoy it, sunshine, because it won't be lasting. Bit late, sunshine, to be heading off for the office. Good and modern sense of dress in that office, sunshine. The target went on down the road, and it was kid's play because the target had no suspicion that he was watched and took no evasive precautions. The target didn't swivel, didn't cross the road fast, didn't grab a taxi, didn't dive for the Underground. Penn followed him down the road, crawling the car, watched him cross at the lights, and it was pretty obvious where he was heading on a Thursday morning. Too easy for a man trained in surveillance to the standards of Section 4 of A Branch. The target was a Turkish Cypriot, tall and good-looking and with a rakish step, and hadn't a job and was living in bed sit land, and the gravy time was just about up. The target had milked a good number until the client had walked into Alpha Security, SW19, and been allocated the new boy on the staff. The client was a plain woman, thirty-six years old, with a high-quality brain and a low threshold of loneliness, who earned a salary of 60,000 plus a year by flipping gilts and bonds in an investment team. The client had fallen hard for the target and now wanted to know whether the love of her life was all he cracked himself up to be. It was bad luck for the client that she had chosen the target to fall for because sure as hell the target was living a little lie and the claimed job in property development was economical, skinflint, with the truth.

  Bad luck, Miss Client.

  He parked up.

  Tough shit, Mr. Target.

  He locked his Sierra.

  Penn sauntered along the pavement to the Department of Social Security office. He went inside and found a place on the bench near the door and he watched the slow shuffling queue that was edging towards the counter where a bleak-faced girl stamped the books and doled out the money. He watched the target going forward in the queue. He lit a cigarette and his hand shook as he held the flaming match. It was where Penn had so nearly been. If it had not been for Alpha Security and the partners, three tired guys looking for a fresh pair of legs to take on the dross of the donkey trade, then Penn might just have been in that queue, going forward slowly. He sat it out, and he went through two more cigarettes. He waited until the target had reached the security screen at the counter and given the sour face a winning smile and won something back from her, and she had pushed the money through the hatch to him. The target scooped the money and slid it into a thin wallet. The target was whistling again when he left the DSS office.

  Penn made his way back to the Sierra.

  In his mind, as he drove south across London, he mapped out the report that he would make for the client.

  When he gave the client the report, she might weep and she might mess the little make-up that she wore on her plain face.

  Back at the office above the launderette in the road behind the High Street in Wimbledon, Deirdre gave him the note.

  "Just gave his name as Arnold. That's his number. Said you should call him .. ."

  She would not cry, not where her tears could be seen. Mary walked from the church door, and she had the offer of Charles's arm and declined it. The undertakers' men were immediately ahead of her and they carefully manoeuvred the steel frame trolley that carried the coffin over the loose chippings of the path. It had been a good service. Alastair walked beside her. Alastair usually came
up to scratch when it was required of him, damned hopeless when it was taking the Confirmation classes for the village kids, useless when it came to counselling the pregnant teenage girls, but always good at taking a service when the grief was heavy in the air. Alastair had been vicar to the village on the Surrey/ Sussex border for seven years, had come from an industrial parish in the West Midlands, and liked to say that he had been hardened to misery. He had been taught to say the right things, and say them briefly. Mary thought he had made a useful job of the address, highlighted the positive points, which must have taken him some soul searching, of a young life taken. He had said that only the superficial side of human character is displayed and it was arrogance for the living to dismiss un shown quality in the dead .. . Well done, Alastair. She stopped. Charles stumbled because the halt was sudden. His wretched mind would have been absorbed with the Seoul contract and he had let her know, and no mistake, that the funeral of his step-daughter did not come convenient. She stopped and Charles stumbled because the undertakers had halted to get a strong grip on the trolley that carried the coffin. They lifted the trolley from the path, onto the grass. The coffin was heavy, expensive, the last gesture of throwing money at a problem, and the wheels of the trolley sank deep into the wet grass. They moved forward again, slow because of the sodden ground. Justin, her first husband and Dorrie's father, coughed behind her, it might have been a snivel. The reptile had a cheek being there and it was rotten of him to have paraded his second wife, the little shrew. It had been Justin's going, running off with the little shrew, that had been the kick-start of the problem. An open and pleasant child had become a moody and awkward and bloody-minded horror story, and hadn't grown better. She hated herself for it, for thinking of those times, but they lined up in her memory, the times when her daughter had driven her beyond distraction point .. . The autopsy report said that her daughter had suffered a knife wound at the throat and a compressed fracture of the lower front skull as with a blow from a blunt instrument, and a gunshot wound (entry) above the right ear. She despised herself for thinking the bad memories of her child, her daughter, who had been knifed and bludgeoned and shot to death.

  She knew nothing.

  She followed the trolley and the coffin as they skirted the old stones and the trolley wheels squealed as the burden was directed around the plots. They were old stones and old plots and they belonged to the village. Mary and Charles Braddock were the newcomers, new money, in the Manor House. There was a good turn-out; it was respectful of the old villagers to come to the funeral of the troubled daughter of the new wealth. She had seen them in the church: the woman who helped in the house and the man who helped in the garden, and the woman from the shop and the man from the post office, and the woman who came in two days a week to type the letters for the charities that Mary involved herself with, and the women from the committee of the Institute, and the man who captained the cricket side who was there because Charles had bought the team's pads and stumps and bats at the start of the last season. Oh, yes, most certainly, her Dorrie would have given them something to whisper about and titter over, bloody little rich girl.

  God, the poor kid .. . the kid had a knife wound and a bludgeon wound and a bullet wound .. .

  They had reached the freshly dug grave. She noticed the sweat running on the back of the neck of the largest of the undertakers. She tried to picture her Dorrie, an image without the wounds. Slight build but the shoulders thrown back in perpetual challenge, a sparky little mouth pouted in bitter defiance, crop-cut hair that was a statement, messy and crumpled clothes so that when they had dragged her to Sunday morning drinks there were arguments at home and apologies to hosts afterwards. Her honeymoon with Charles .. . Christ .. . and not a relation that she owned who would have the girl, Dorrie, and certainly not her damned father, and the child accompanying them, disaster .. . She hated herself for remembering. A dinner party for Charles's clients and the music battering through the Manor House from her room and down the panelled staircase, and Charles going upstairs, and the clients hearing the obscenities shouted back at him, catastrophe .. . The memories queued for her attention. She felt herself shamed for remembering. The village boys were at the funeral. The village boys, work clothes and casual clothes and trainer shoes and earrings, had come and parked their beaten-up cars and their motorcycles at the churchyard gate, and hung their heads as if they cared. The coffin went down, Alastair recited the last prayer.

  Mary took off her glove and took the wet earth in her hand and threw it to splatter over the coffin lid.

  She stood beside Charles at the gate to the churchyard.

  She shook the hands that were offered and smiled automatically as the mourners mouthed lies of condolence. The woman who helped in the house .. . Charles glanced down at his watch. The man who helped with the garden .. . Charles bit at his lip, impatient. The woman from the shop and the man from the post office .. . Charles had made the arrangements for as early in the morning as Alastair would do it. The woman who typed her correspondence .. . Charles had a London meeting at noon. The women from the committee of the Institute .. . Charles was fidgeting to be off and he had a floral tie in his pocket that would be exchanged for the black tie as soon as he was in his Jaguar.

  The village boys walked past her, like she was no part of their loss.

  Arnold was the last in the line. Solid and lovely and dependable Arnold, who did 'something in Whitehall', and she never asked what he did and she was never told, only that it was 'something in Whitehall'. Charles kissed her cheek, murmured about being back late, squeezed her hand, and was off and hurrying for his car.

  He had a calm voice. Arnold said, "I thought it went well."

  "Yes."

  "And nice of those young fellows to show."

  Mary said, "I used to tell her that it was unsuitable for her to liaise with boys from the council estate Charles used to call them "moronic louts". Won't you be late up to London?" "Won't be missed, not these days. Someone who might be of help to you, I've a number .. ." She heard the slam of the Jaguar's door. The gravedigger had reached the earth mound, and there was a wisp of smoke from his mouth and he leaned for a moment on his spade. She wondered if, when he had finished his cigarette, before he started to shovel back the earth, he would drop the filter tip into the grave. "Thanks, but it's about time the Foreign Office did something. The embassy was precious little help in Zagreb, all the time she was missing, and last week. Frankly, they didn't want to know .. . So, you've sorted me out with some red-hot little civil servant who's going to beaver, at last .. ." She heard her own sarcasm. She smiled, small, weak. '.. . Sorry, I'm grateful to you for digging someone out. I mean, she was a British citizen. I want to know, very badly, what happened to her. It's because, I think, Dorrie loathed me. I can recognize it, obsession .. . However awful she was, I have to know. Do I come to him, the Foreign Office man, or will he come down here? I suppose it's all about war crimes, isn't it? What that American said, last year, "You can run, but you can't hide." I suppose it's all about gathering evidence and preparing a case against the guilty, whoever they are." Arnold said, and there was sympathy on his dried and thin lips, "Don't be disappointed, never helps to set the sights too high. I'm afraid it is the best I can do .. ." He passed her a small piece of paper. She read a name and the address of Alpha Security, and a telephone number. '.. . I'm sorry that I can do so little." He was walking away. She said after him, soft, "And women with obsessions are always tiresome, correct?" "God, what's happened to you?" Deirdre stared up at him from her desk behind the typewriter. Not that he had interrupted her typing, and her magazine of knitting patterns lay across the keys. Penn said, "Just, the chummy didn't want to take it .. ." He tried to grin, and that hurt his lower lip, but his pride was hurt more than his lower lip. He was learning the business of 'skip-tracing', the trade's vernacular for the locating of debtors, and learning also that not everyone enjoyed being pitched out of bed at dawn and greeted at the front door with the Service of Legal
Process. Chummy was a little taller than average, a little heavier than Penn, and had stood in his doorway, his belly bulging his singlet, and swung a mean right jab from nowhere. The pride was hurt because Penn was trained to hit where it mattered and to hit so that a man stayed down, but to hit now was to invite a counter charge of assault. So he had dropped the Legal Process on the front mat and beetled it back to his car. The split lower lip was not bad enough for stitches in casualty, but blood had run down onto his shirt front. "You look a right mess, Mr. Penn .. ." And he felt a right mess .. . and he felt a right wimp .. . and a toe rag who was behind on the payments to the finance company for a four-year-old Vauxhall had stuck one on him. "Does it show?" Deirdre was secretary to Alpha Security. She ruled the outer office, and she probably had a thing going with Basil, one-time CID, who had founded the private investigation agency nineteen years back along with Jim, one-time Fraud Squad, and Henry who had once been with Telecom as an engineer. He definitely thought she was an item with Basil, and that anything that crossed her laser vision would go back, pretty damned fast, to Basil. It would go back to Basil that the new boy, young Penn, had come back from Service of Legal Process with a split lower lip ... Good for his battle honours, another medal to set alongside the kick down the flight of stairs from the boot of the man who was wanted as a defence witness, filling up the trophy cabinet. Deirdre snorted, not necessary for her to tell him that his split lip was viewable at a hundred paces. "Your client's here." He had his handkerchief out and he dabbed the wound, and that hurt hard. He looked through the glass and into the waiting room, into the drab little room that hadn't enough light, nor enough comfortable chairs, nor any recent magazines. She was half an hour early. It was because she was coming that he had hurried the Service of Legal Process, blundered in, and caught the right fist to the lower lip. She was a tall woman, almost beautiful, and she wore clothes of a cut that wasn't seen every day in the office of Alpha Security above the launderette. She had her head down and there was a tissue in her hands that she squashed, pulled, squashed, in a nervous rhythm. She wore a good suede coat and a long black skirt, and there was a bright outsize scarf looped over her shoulders. He thought it was the first time for her, first time in the office of a private investigation company. She had quality diamond stud earrings and he could see the pearls at her throat. Penn accused, "Didn't you offer her a coffee?" Deirdre bridled. "Stupid fart, Henry, didn't put the milk back in the fridge last night, milk's off. I can't just swan off and leave the phones .. ." "I want some coffee and I want it now." "You're not much of a sight, Mr. Penn, not for a new client." "Bugger the phones," he said. "Coffee, now .. ." And that would go back to Basil, soon as he trooped in, mid-morning. A sledging from dear Deirdre, that Mr. Bill Penn, quite aggressive, quite rude, and no call .. . but she was collecting her handbag. He had a split lower lip and blood on his shirt and he strode to the door of the waiting room. Never explain, never apologize, a good creed. She must have heard him coming and as he opened the door she was looking up and for a moment there was the startled rabbit stare, and then the forced composure. And what he had to do was remember, and hard, that Alpha Security now paid the mortgage and the gas bill and the electricity and the food, and put the clothes on his back and on Jane's and the nappies on Tom's backside, and split lips and kicks down tower-block steps and solo surveillance were part of the game for a guy heaved out of Five and he had better remember it ... She had a public face on. The composure was set as if the nerves and the fear had never been. He closed the door behind him. She was looking at his mouth but she was too polite to remark on the split lower lip and the blood on his shirt. "Mrs. Mary Braddock? I'm Bill Penn "I'm early, the traffic was less than I'd expected .. ." "It's not a problem," Penn said. "What can I do for you?" "I expect you're a busy man .. ." "Sometimes." '.. . So I won't waste your time. My daughter was in Yugoslavia. She was there when the fighting was in Croatia. She disappeared at the end of 1991, she was listed as missing. Last week I was informed that her body had been identified from the exhumation of a mass grave, in that part of Croatia that is now under Serb control. She had been dead for fifteen months, buried and hidden. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know how she died and why she died. She was my only daughter, Mr. Penn." He interrupted, "Isn't this a job for ... ?" "You should let me finish, Mr. Penn .. . But since you raise it ... Shouldn't this be a job for the Foreign Office? Of course it should. Do you know anything about government departments, Mr. Penn? They're useless. That's a generalization and a true one. Good at cups of tea in a First Secretary's office, good at booking a hotel room, good at platitudes, and they don't give a damn, just some silly woman using up their day. I have been to Zagreb, Mr. Penn, I was there when Dorrie, my daughter, was missing, and I was there to bring her body home. I thought it was their job to help people like me, and I was wrong. Arnold is a good friend. Arnold gave me your name .. ." High excitement coursing, yesterday, when he had been told by Deirdre that Arnold Browne had left the message for him to call, immediately. He had sat in the cubbyhole area where Basil had given him the desk, and savoured the moments before he had picked up the telephone. All some mistake, a mistake to have let him go, and of course they wanted him back ... or .. . pretty bad cock-up, losing him, but the Service had plenty of scope for work by outsiders who were trusted and proven, nice little one for him, and of course he was not forgotten. And what brutal disappointment crushing him, yesterday, when he had dialled the direct-line number, spoken to Arnold bloody Browne, been told that a neighbour had a problem, needed a bit of uncomplicated ferreting, needed a good plodder was what the bloody man meant ... He ran his tongue over his lower lip.