Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  "What was it you wanted of me?"

  She had her handbag open and she had taken the ointment tube out. She didn't ask his permission. She squeezed the ointment onto her forefinger and reached forward and, casual, gentle, she smeared the salve onto the split of his lower lip.

  "I want you to go to Zagreb for me. I want to know how my Dorrie died, and why."

  He thought her so bloody vulnerable, she shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been in the waiting room that doubled as clients' interview room in a shabby, God-awful, dreary little office. He told her that he would think on it overnight, that if he took it he would come down in the morning, if ... She gave him an address. He would think on it and consider it. He walked her out of the office and they passed Basil on the stairs, and the one-time CID man gave her the look-over of a bloody farmer evaluating livestock. They stood on the pavement outside the launderette.

  "Would you tell me .. . ?"

  "What?" he rasped.

  "Would you tell me what state he is in, the man who hit you this morning?"

  He saw the mischief dance in her eyes.

  Penn said, "I would have been done for assault. No, if I'd hit him like I know, then I'd have been done for murder. What state is he in? Probably pretty good, probably he's looking forward to getting pissed up in the pub this lunch time and telling the rest of the select lounge how he put one on me. I served the Process, but that's a small-beer victory .. ."

  Then the mischief was gone and she was serious. "I like winning, Mr. Penn, I expect to win ... I want to know how my daughter died, I want to know who killed her, I want to know why she was killed. I want to know."

  They had been at the roadblock an hour. They had sat in the jeep and smoked and talked together for an hour before they heard the coughing approach of the truck. The engine would go on the truck if it went on burning the bad diesel that the sanction busters brought in. No point in trying to reach Rosenovici from the Vrginmost road, because there was always a block by the Territorial Defence Force on that route. The last week, when they had been there and digging, they had used the turning to Bovic off the Glina road, then taken the plank bridge short of the village of Salika to get themselves to Rosenovici. The roadblock was at the bridge. There were four TM-46 mines laid out on the bridge. Nasty little bastards, and the Canadian knew that each held a bit over five kilos of explosive. It was the first time that he had tried, in the company of his Kenyan colleague, to get to Rosenovici since the digging, the taking away of the bodies. He had hoped to get back to the village and leave a little food for the old woman, and a little love, to have been discreet. Now there would be no food dropped off, and no love, because they were held at the roadblock ... It was what the Kenyan called 'another peace-advancing day in Sector North'. They would not get the food to the old woman, but that was not good enough reason to back off. Push, smile, probe, smile, negotiate, smile, step by fucking step and half of them backwards, and smile .. . always goddamn smile. The Canadian police sergeant had been stationed at the Petrinja base for 209 days and could tell anyone who asked that his posting had 156 days to run. When he made it back to Toronto, when his colleague made it back to Mombasa, then both of them, bet your life, would never forget how to smile. They were kids, they weren't out of their teens, but the TDF shit at the roadblock had shiny Kalashnikovs, and they had four TM-46 mines to play with, and they were drunk. The Canadian police sergeant reckoned that drunk teenagers with automatic rifles and mines should be smiled at... It would have been easy to have given up and reversed the jeep away from the bridge, away from the scarred village of Rosenovici, and driven back to Petrinja easy, but the abandonment of the old woman would have come hard. It was worth smiling, to keep the road open to the village that was wrecked .. . Rule 1 of Sector North, and Rule 10 and Rule 100, don't argue, don't, at kids with high-velocity hardware and mines and booze in their guts. It was a full hour since he had smiled and asked the first time for the responsible official, please, to be allowed to contact that senior and responsible official, and he would appreciate their courtesy if that senior and responsible and important official had the time to spare, just shit .. . They could barely walk upright, the TDF kids, and every few minutes they'd go move the mines, shove them or kick them, and every few minutes they'd go drink some more.

  The truck came.

  The Kenyan grinned. "You happy now, man?"

  The truck stopped behind their jeep.

  "As a hog in dung .. ."

  The Canadian smiled. He looked out through the front windscreen of the jeep. He knew the man. He had met Milan Stankovic on the third day of his posting to Sector North; he had known Milan Stankovic for 206 days. And Milan Stankovic had only himself to blame. The big mouth of Salika, the big boasting militia boss. It was the big mouth and the big boast that accounted, the Canadian thought, for the shit-sour face of Milan Stankovic. The kids were trying to stand tall, and the kids were telling it to the shit-sour face of Milan Stankovic that they had obeyed the orders and stopped the UNCIVPOL jeep from reaching Rosenovici. The Canadian smiled big, and he knew they would not be going over the bridge, and there would be no food for the old woman, and he held the smile.

  The shit-sour face was at the window of the jeep.

  "You cannot go over."

  The Kenyan said, pleasantly, "It is part of our patrol area, sir."

  "It is forbidden for you to go."

  The Canadian said, friendly, "We have never had a problem in the past, sir."

  "If you do not leave, immediately, you will be shot."

  "We are only doing our job, a neutral job, sir."

  "One minute, and it will be me that shoots you."

  "Perhaps another day, perhaps we can go over another day, sir."

  "Get the fuck out."

  The Canadian was still smiling as he reversed the jeep away from the bridge, away from the track that led to the ruin of Rosenovici, away from where they had dug the previous week. He smiled all the time that they were watched by the drunk kids and Milan Stankovic. The jeep lurched back onto the Bovic road, and he lost the smile and cursed quietly to himself. He had never seen the old woman, but he had heard she was there, in the woods above the village, and he had three times left food for her and the food had been taken. Perhaps it was just a story, that the old woman was there, perhaps it was the stray and abandoned dogs that took the food. The Kenyan said, "Maybe he has a problem with his bowel movement. Our good friend did not seem happy .. ." "Not as happy as a hog in dung." The Canadian knew. It was the big mouth. The big mouth had said, "There have been no atrocities here. We Serbs have always treated our Croat enemies correctly and with care." It was the big boast that said, "There are no hidden graves here. We have nothing to be ashamed of." The big mouth and the big boast in the grimy dining hall of the administration building at the TDF camp in Salika, and all the guys around him to hear it. The Canadian had put in his report, and he had heard that Milan Stankovic was called to the summit chat in Belgrade, and the village was a headless chicken, and the Professor had been dragged off the Ovcara dig for the day .. . The Canadian could smile when he remembered how they had been, the mothers in the village, the old men and the kids, when the jeeps had shown up in the week before, and not been able to deny that he had the permission of old shit-sour face to go hunting a mass grave. The Canadian could smile when he imagined old shit-sour face coming back from the Belgrade knees-up to find a nice corner of a dug field, empty .. . "Mister, do you think we could have given him something for his bowel movement, a pill, something to make him happy .. . ?" The Canadian said, "A stone turned, under the stone was a secret, and the secret's abroad and public knowledge, that might just have stopped his bowel movement." "But, mister, you're not talking evidence."

  The Canadian police sergeant, far from Toronto and Yonge Street, and far from the whores and the pushers of home, had not caught a good night's sleep since they had prised the black-grey earth from a young woman's face. No, he was not talking evidence ...
It was that sort of place, Sector North, the sort of place where evidence did not come easy.

  It was rare for Arnold Browne to lose his temper.

  '.. . Don't ever do that to me again, Penn, or you're lost, forgotten. Just remember what you are, and you are ex, Penn. You are ex-Five, you are ex-A Branch. You may once have, stupidly, harboured the illusion that there is a way back let me tell you, Penn, that the way back is not via spitting in my face. You don't think on it, you don't consider it, you damn well jump to it, and I was doing you a favour ... I can get a score of ex-Herefords who would give the right cheek of their arses for a job like this, and I gave your name .. . Got me?"

  "Yes, Mr. Browne."

  "You don't patronize by thinking and considering, you bloody well get on with it."

  "Yes, Mr. Browne. Thank you, Mr. Browne."

  He slapped down the telephone. Yes, rare for him to lose his temper, and he felt no better for it. His anger was because of his memory of Dorrie Mowat, and God alone knew what a pain the child had been .. .

  He had left home early.

  He had left home while Jane was still feeding Tom. He had called once from the front door, and she must have been distracted because she hadn't called back to him from upstairs. She was too damned often distracted.

  He had driven down through the countryside to the Surrey/ Sussex border.

  Penn was thirty-five minutes early for his appointment at the Manor House.

  He parked up the Sierra in the space beside the shop. There were old half-casks outside the shop filled with bright pansies,

  and there was a notice congratulating the community on a runners-up prize in the Tidy Village competition. Bill Penn and Jane and baby Tom, in the maisonette, lived in Raynes Park, near the railway station, and there were no Tidy Village competitions where he lived. Time to kill, and he went walking. Away from the Manor House, away from the shop, past the village cricket pitch where the outfield grass was wet and the square was thick with worm casts, towards the church. Below the church was the graveyard. He saw her in the graveyard. Penn felt a shiver. She was sitting on the grass and her weight was taken by an arm braced to the ground. She was beside the heaped earth on which was the bright carpet of flowers. Her head was ducked and her lips might have moved, as if in quiet conversation, and the two dogs were close to her. The two dogs, cream-white retrievers, were on their sides and chewing at each other's ears and pawing each other's faces. She wore old jeans and a baggy sweater and sat on her anorak; he wondered if Mary Brad-dock would have gone home and changed and presented the controlled appearance to him if he had arrived at the time given him. He went through the church gate and his heels crunched the gravel path. Because she had still not seen him, he paused for a moment to check that his tie was straight, to check there was no dandruff on his blazer, to check that his shoes had not been scuffed. When he came up off the path and onto the grass, the dogs were alerted. They bounded away from her, and from the grave, and their leads trailed crazily behind them, and their hackles were up. He knew the basics of dogs; Penn stood still and talked gently to them as they circled him, and he kept his hands still. She looked up at him, seemed to mutter something to the flowers, then pushed herself up. He knew what he would say, and he had rehearsed it in the car, just as he had rehearsed it in bed while Jane had slept beside him ... "I said, Mrs. Brad-dock, that I would think on the assignment, that I would consider it. I am a free agent, Mrs. Braddock, I am not owned by anyone, most certainly not by the Security Service who sacked me, most definitely not by Arnold bloody Browne who did not stand in my corner. What I do not need, Mrs. Braddock, is you ringing Arnold bloody Browne, so that I get a quite unwarranted bollock-ing down the phone, when I am thinking and considering taking an assignment .. ." It was the same as when he had spied on her in the waiting room of Alpha Security. She shed her sadness, summoned up her composure. What he had rehearsed was gone from his mind. "Good morning, Mrs. Braddock." "Thank you for coming, Mr. Penn." She walked well, tall, out of the churchyard, and he followed a half-pace behind her. The dogs looked back at the grave and the flowers, whined once together, then trailed after her. It didn't seem to matter that he had left his car beside the shop. She led him back through the village. She walked him up the wide tarmacadam drive of the Manor House. The climbing roses on the brickwork were drooped dead, and the honeysuckle was ragged, not yet in leaf. The sort of house that was photographed, For Sale, in the magazines left in his dentist's reception. She took him into the hall, and there was furniture that he would have noticed through the windows of showrooms when he was doing central London surveillance. She did not tell him where she was taking him. Up the stairs, wide, polished oak. Along a corridor, dark and panelled. Through a small door. A bright and airy room. A child's room. A neat and cleaned child's room. She waved him to a chair, and he carefully moved the soft bears and made himself the space to sit. She was on the bed. Bill Penn had been brought to the shrine .. . She said briskly, "My daughter, Dorothy, was a horrid young woman. She could be quite foul, and enjoy it. My husband, her stepfather, he says she was "rubbish", he's usually right about things. I am a spoiled woman, Mr. Penn, I have everything that I could possibly want, except a loving daughter. She was a messer, a waster, and costly. I think she took a pleasure in hurting me ... and, Mr. Penn, she was my daughter .. . and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot .. . and, Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty shown to my Dorrie. Do I carry you with me, Mr. Penn?" He nodded. "We'll go down to the kitchen, Mr. Penn, I'll make us some coffee ... I called her "horrid", and when we have some coffee I'll give you examples I don't believe in putting dirt under stones, Mr. Penn ... By the by, this isn't the room she left when she went away. I had it redecorated. I made the room the way it should have been. The room is a fraud. New curtains, new duvet, new carpet. I went out and bought new books and new toys. A stupid woman trying to believe she could start again .. . We'd taken her up to London and put her on a plane to Brisbane. The last we saw of her was her going through the departure lounge, and she didn't even bother to look back and wave, and we were so damned relieved to see her gone that when we were back here, home, my husband split open a bottle of champagne. Am I boring you, Mr. Penn? The morning after she'd gone I rang the decorators. I come in here each morning, Mr. Penn, while my husband is dressing, and I cry. Do you know anything about Yugoslavia, Mr. Penn?" He shook his head. "Somebody else's problem, isn't it? Somebody else's war, correct? My trouble is that "somebody else" is me ... I didn't even know she was there, I thought she was still in Australia .. . Will you go there, please, Mr. Penn?" "If we sort out my fee, my expenses, yes, I think I would consider it." It was boorish of him. "You were in the Security Service, that's correct, isn't it?" He said, sharply, "That's not an area I can discuss." She looked at him, direct. "I just wondered why you left. If I'm to employ you ... I just wondered why an officer of the Security Service ended up where you've ended." "Wonder away, but it's not your business." Not her business .. . Not anyone's business but his and Jane's. His and Jane's business, and all the bastards that he had looked to for support. No, there hadn't been written commendations that would lie in his personal file. Yes, there had been congratulations, back-slapping, snake words, but nothing to lie in his file. He had gone to his team leader, to his section leader, and to his branch leader, all graduates. He had requested their support for his application to be accepted into the inner core of the Service, General Intelligence Group .. . and he had gone to Gary Brennard in Personnel. It was not her business ... In the new-style Service the men of the Transit van teams were dinosaur history. The new style was squatting in front of a computer screen. The Middle East squad was being wound up. The trades union squad was being cut back. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament squad was being phased out. The future, without a degree, was being stuck, tied, trapped in front of a computer screen with the other middle-aged, passed-over no-hopers. The futur
e was scanning the surveillance photographs from the hidden cameras in railway stations and shopping precincts and over busy pavements. The future was searching for men with scarves across their faces, women with their coat collars turned up, carrying bags and dropping them into rubbish bins, to hurry away before the bloody Semtex detonated ... It was not her business that he had tried for Belfast, not told Jane, and been rejected, told it wasn't for 'marrieds', not at his level. Dougal Gray, best mate, divorced, had won the Belfast appointment.. . Not her business that he had believed in his work, reckoned he protected his society, taken a pleasure that the great bloody ignorant unwashed snored in their beds at night, safe, because he sat in the damn Transit van with a piss bottle for company and a Leica .. . Not her business that in the last two years there had been bloody kids, graduates, set in charge of him and lecturing him on procedures, and running up the bloody ladder that was denied him .. . Not her business. He felt no warmth towards her, no gentleness. Another rich woman at war with another rich child .. . But there was just a flicker, in her weakness. Just a moment, in her pleading .. . His mother and father lived in a tied cottage, his father was a farm labourer who most days drove a tractor, his mother went out most mornings and dusted and cleaned in the big house on the estate. He hadn't much time for the rich. And she took him downstairs to the kitchen and heated the old iron kettle on the Aga and made him instant coffee, and told him horror stories of the behaviour of Dorrie Mowat.