Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
appearing, gathering strength. The words were of anguish. He saw
the
earth wall around the pit, it was what he had seen from the tree line
in the dusk. Going closer, going in stealth. He saw the shape of
the
man who knelt in the pit. Penn looked at the grave, at the burial
place of Dorrie Mowat, and a man knelt in the pit in prayer. An old
man spoke the prayer of a personal agony, and knelt in the pit with
his
head hung. Going closer, drawn forward, he could think of no threat
that would come from an old man, in prayer, kneeling in the pit where
Dorrie Mowat had been buried. Going closer, as to the sett of the
old
badger sow. Crossing the ground where she had been stabbed,
bludgeoned, shot. Going covert, as to the culvert drain where Amanda
Fawcett hid. Stepping silent in the loose slither of the mud over
which had been dragged the joined bodies of her lover and Dorrie
Mowat.
Drawn forward .. . It was luck. His father said that men who got
lucky, most times, deserved their luck. He came at the old man from
behind. He came in a sharp movement, across the small torch beam,
threw an instant shadow, and was over him, and the strength of Perm's
hand was across the old man's mouth. If he prayed at the grave he
could be no threat, if he was no threat then he could be a friend,
and
Penn needed some luck. Into the blinking, staring eyes. Did he
speak
English? The head nodding. Would he shout out? The head shaking
.. .
Penn needed some luck. He took his hand from the old man's mouth,
and
he came around the old man and he saw the tremble in the old man's
body, and he thought of what the fear had done to Amanda Fawcett.
He
took the old man's thin hands in his own and he held them as he had
held his grandfather's hands on the night before death. He squatted
in
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the mud in front of the old man and the small beam of the torch was
beside him. The old man wore a suit and a tie knotted slimly at the
collar of a white shin, and to the thighs the suit trousers were soaked
wet, "Who are you?" "My name is Penn .. ." "Why do you come here to a
place of evil?" "I come to find the truth of the death of Dorrie Mowat
.. ." The old man took back his hands and he reached with his fingers for Penn's face. '.. . I come to find how she died, and to find
who
was responsible .. ." The fingers brushed in gentleness on the
harshness of Penn's jaw and followed the contours of his nose and
his
mouth, as if to be certain that he had not discovered fantasy. '..
.
I come to find the eyewitness, if she is alive, the woman who is called
Katica Dubelj." The old man switched off the torch. He took the
sleeve of Penn's coat, and they stumbled together out of the shallow
pit. Getting closer to the tart mischief of Dorrie Mowat, edging
nearer
to her .. . The old man led Perm away across the wetness of the field.
All together, huddled in darkness, Branko and Stevo and Milo had taken
a position in a ruin that was across the square from the church. They
shivered and chewed on cubes of cheese and had a small corked bottle
of
their own home brew. Nothing, not a cat, not a man, no one could
move
through the village without passing them. Across the stream, the
big
clock in the tower of the church at Salika beat out the chimes of
midnight. The Headmaster wheezed as he climbed the track. "I am
the
Headmaster of the school .. ." Penn wished he would shut his face.
"I
am the Headmaster, but I am now rejected because I have spoken out
against the shame of our people .. ." They made enough noise going up
the track, without adding to the noise with talk. "I should now have been the mayor of the village, but ignorance rules and savagery ..
."
Penn thought that Ham would have punched the old man, the Headmaster,
until he stopped his talk. "When we had only one school, before I
was
Headmaster, the children from Rosenovici came to our school in
Salika,
and Katica Dubelj was one of the women who gave the children lunch.
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Because I know her, I have a responsibility for her .. ." Penn had been led, at a brisk pace, into the woods at the top of the field.
The
tight grasp, sharp fingers, all the time held at the sleeve of his
fatigue coat. He could not see ahead of him, beyond the immediate
drooped shoulders of the Headmaster, and the lowest branches whipped
off the Headmaster and into his face and across his body. He guessed
the path that wound up through the wood was the secret of the
Headmaster and the lowest branches that cut at his face and snapped
back at his body told Penn that the path was rarely used. It was
a
good way to go, and between the brisk pace of the climb there were
rest
halts when the Headmaster gasped for breath and his lowered shoulders
shuddered from the exertion, and Penn heard the chime of the far-away
church for the half-hour and then for the hour. Once there was a
cacophony of noise rushing away from them, the stampeding flight of
a
wild pig or of a grown deer. "We lived together, in the old days,
we
had our friendships across the prejudice of birth, until the madness
came. The madness has destroyed what was a fine community,
destroyed,
because Rosenovici is across the stream from us but always with us.
We
cannot shut away the sight of Rosenovici. We look at what we have
done, every hour of daylight we see what we have done. The heart
has
been torn from us. I help you, Penn, because you have the power to
hurt the madness .. ." It was the smell that first caught Penn. He was wondering who would believe him, Mary Braddock or Basil at Alpha
Security or Arnold Browne, and the smell was of stale excreta. He
was
wondering whether any of them, safe at home and deep in their beds,
would believe that he had trekked behind the lines, gone there because
he had taken the money, and the smell was of unwashed filth. He was
wondering whether Jane would believe him if he shared it, whether
she
would back away from him and hold little Tom clear of him, and the
smell was of lingering dirt. He was wondering if it mattered,
whether
anyone believed him .. . What mattered to him was truth, and the truth
was Dorrie Mowat's smiling cheek, and he had never before searched
after truth. It was in his mind to think about those who rejected
the
truth. They were in their beds and in their chairs in front of the
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droning televisions and in their bars with their elbows slouched on
the
counter, and they were bored with the truth. They were in the other
maisonettes of the Cedars, and in the roads of Raynes Park, and in
the
pubs, and they were hurrying with their bags of washing to the
launderette before it closed, and they were the late workers in the
offices of Five, and they turned their fucking backs on the truth.
They
were 900 miles from him, and they had not the space in their hearts
to
yearn to find truth. Bloody good, old chummies, wash your hands of
it,
scrub them with soap, old girls. Lucky old you, old chummies and
old
girls, because the truth is boring .. . The torch beam now shone ahead,
and the Headmaster mouthed small cries, as if warning of their
approach. Penn thought, from what the torch beam showed, that in
daylight he would have walked right past the mouth of the cave, but
he
would not have walked right past the smell.
It was as if the Headmaster called, softly, to a frightened cat, or
to
a dog, or to a wild crow that should come for food.
The torch beam trapped the narrow mouth of a cave set behind a
rockfall.
"I used to come here with food. I used to take the food from my wife's cupboard. You take food from a woman's cupboard and she notices,
she
questions. She said that if I took more food, for the Ustase
bastards,
then she would denounce me. Do you understand, Penn, that in the
madness in which we live a wife can denounce her husband .. . ? I
have
my own shame, because I do not bring her food any more .. ."
The Headmaster tugged at Penn's sleeve and dragged him, hunched low,
into the mouth of the cave. He could have been sick, was swallowing
back the bile, coughing, the smell was like a cloud. The torch beam
played faintly around the walls of the cave where the water dribbled,
glistening, then wavered on deeper into the cave.
It was not often that Penn had a big thought, not in his childhood
211
and
not with the Service and not with Alpha Security. The rag bundle
was
cowered in the recess of the cave. Perhaps a big thought could only
come in a place such as this. It would only have been a rag bundle
if
there had not been the brightness of the eyes reflected back by the
torch beam. Penn's big thought was that this was the one chance in
his
life to find truth. She was so small. She was wrapped in sacking
rags
... He followed the Headmaster down onto the floor of the cave, sat
cross-legged.
The Headmaster talked.
Her voice cackled back.
Penn heard the clock chimes come faintly from across the distant
stream.
"She saw it herself. She saw them taken past her house and into the field. They had to wait while the bulldozer dug the pit. She could see it from the window. Each of them killed one man, but she says
that
she saw the girl killed by Milan Stankovic .. . I have to go back,
across the stream. What more do you want?"
Penn said, "I want her to walk me through what she saw, each place
and
each moment what she saw, right to the killing of Dorrie Mowat."
The Headmaster was glancing furtively at his wristwatch, shining the
torch beam onto the hands. He said that he would return the next
evening. Did Penn know the risk of staying? But the intoxication
of
the truth had caught him, and he waved his hand, dismissive, to reject
the risk. The Headmaster was gone.
Truth was evidence. Evidence was the naming of Milan Stankovic.
Penn sat on the floor of the cave and could not see her, the
eyewitness.
Twelve.
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Penn woke, no dreams, deep sleep.
Could recognize nothing. Blinked to get the light into his eyes.
Tried
to focus. Did not know where he was ... It came fast ... He kicked
back the blanket. He felt the damp in his hip joints and his
shoulders
and the ache from the rough ground, and was hell's thankful for the
hotel's blanket. The smell caught at him. Penn remembered .. .
The sun threw a long shaft into the recess of the cave. He wondered
if
she had been there all night, if she had slept, if she had stayed
in
the crouched posture against the inner wall of the cave. The cave,
big
in the small light of the Headmaster's torch, seemed shrunken, little
more than a cleft. He yawned, stretched. He smiled at her and won
back no acceptance of his presence. He tried to smile warmth.
He looked hard at her.
There was little to see of her because there was a shawl of torn cloth
across the crown of her head that covered also her ears and her throat.
What he could see of the face was a mosaic of age lines, weathered
and
grimed. Small hands, without spare flesh, were clasped rigidly on
her
lap, and he saw the deep-set dirt as if they were painted with it.
She
wore a long dress of black cloth that shrouded her and the cloth had
the stale dankness of the cave. Over her dress, open to the waist,
was
a big overcoat, too large for her sparrow size, and Penn thought it
might have been her husband's, and there was a knotted string holding
it to her waist. Her short legs were extended in front of her and
her
stockings, heavy grey wool, were shredded at the knee and her feet
were
in small-sized rubber boots that came half of the way up her shins.
It
seemed to Penn as if the shawl and the dress and the coat and the
stockings and the rubber boots were moulded to her body .. . Did she
have other clothes? Did she change the clothes? Did she go to a
stream and strip and wash? ... He was wondering how long it had been
since she had changed her clothes, washed herself. In his mind he
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made
small markers. Had she changed or washed since his little Tom had
been
born? Washed or changed since the acid session with Gary bloody
Bren-nard (Personnel)? Changed or washed since he had last laid up
rough, through a night, in the undergrowth beside the Network
South-East rail track when they were watching the lock-up garage for