THE HEART OF DANGER (5 page)

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

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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

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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

25

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

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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

27

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

28

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