Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
He should have been working to a system, should have cleared the
bathroom first, then been to the wardrobe and had his shoes off the
floor and his shirts and underwear and socks out of the drawers and
his
jackets and slacks off the hangers, and then he should have been
gathering up everything that belonged to him from the shelf below
the
mirror including the two typed sheets that had gone for the fax
transmission. But there was no system, the pain dictated that there
was no order in his packing. Penn blundered around, collecting,
forgetting, carrying, cursing the aftermath of the alcohol. He
couldn't hold his bloody concentration, not at all. He had the case
on
the bed, and now he was emptying the case because the shoes and the
plastic bag for his toothpaste and his shaving cream and razors were
out of place, should always be shoes at the bottom and washing gear,
and then the dirty clothes and then the clean clothes and then the
folded trousers and then the jackets, and the whole bloody lot were
out
of order .. . Ulrike slept hard as he skirted the bed, and Ham slept
deep as he stepped over his legs and that horrible bloody rifle,
because both would have been awake through the night, watching for
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him.
They were a holiday friendship, he knew, and they would be gone,
belted
out, when the big bird lifted off the tarmac at Zagreb airport. Ships
that pass in the night, that sort of crap. They slept now because
they
had stayed awake through the night and watched his own sleep, and
the
thought of it, through the pain and the confusion of packing out of
order, made Penn feel humility. He wouldn't see her again, nor would
he chase after Ham's woman who had done a runner with her kiddie.
But
they had watched over him while he slept, a lonely woman and a small
scumbag frightened because he hadn't a friend. He might tell Mary
Braddock about them, because they were each in their way a part of
his
finding Dorrie's truth. Or then he might not get to see Mary
Braddock.
When he hadn't the pain in his head he could work it through whether
he would see Mary Braddock, or whether it would just be the fuller
report in a week's time and the full invoice of his charges, sent
in
the post by Recorded Delivery .. .
He had never been drunk incapable when he was a teenager living at
home
in the tied cottage, because that was the example of his mother and
father, his mother taking only a sherry at Christmas and his father
talking of it like it was a devil. He had been drunk incapable once
when a clerk at the Home Office, and taken out to a party in the
Catford flat of another clerk, and thinking afterwards that it might
just have been because he was so bloody boring that they had spiked
the
drinks and had good sport out of him reeling and crashing and throwing
up in the street; and ashamed. He had been drunk incapable once when
with Five, and they had worked seven weeks on a surveillance before
showing out on a shift change into the derelict van with the flat
tyre
that was parked up opposite the safe house, and the Irish target gone
and lost, and the guys going down to the pub when the operation had
been called off with heavy recrimination and an assistant deputy
director general level inquest, and sleeping on the floor of the taxi
home; and ashamed.
Now, he had no sense of achievement. There was no elation. It was
just a report that he had written, as he had written previous reports
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that cut into the lives of the dead and the vanished and the criminal,
as he would write further reports. He wanted out and he wanted home,
and he wanted to sleep out of his system too much goddamn Scotch,
and
he wanted the bastard place behind him, and the fear, the shit, the
pain. It was only a report .. . And the one chance was gone.
He had the shoes back at the bottom of the case, and the washing gear
with them, and the underpants and the socks into the space between
the
shoes and the washing bag, and the dirtied clothes and the ones that
he
hadn't used. He was starting to fold the slacks and the jackets.
The
fatigues that he had worn into Sector North were on the floor near
to
where Ham lay stretched out, holding the bloody rifle like it was
a
baby's toy, and the fatigues weren't going with him, nor the boots
that
were under them, and he heard a brisk knock at the door.
Penn went round the bed and he stepped over Ham's legs.
The knock was repeated, impatiently. He opened the door of the hotel
room.
Penn rocked.
She peered into the gloom. Late morning, closing on midday, and the
curtains of the room were not drawn back. Mary peered past the
shadow-dark figure that rocked in front of her. Yes, she had
expected
surprise, but the man could hardly stand, and the light from behind
her
in the corridor seemed to dazzle his eyes and he could not focus on
her. She came into the room and with her heel she nudged the door
back
shut behind her. Only the light now from the bathroom, and the
shadow-dark figure was backing away from her, away from the narrow
strip of light from the bathroom. She came past the door and into
the
room. The smell in the room was foul, quite defeating the eau de
toilette scent that she had sprayed at her throat and wrists in the
taxi from the airport. On the plane and in the taxi from the airport,
she had rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would be cool
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but
goading, and what she had rehearsed was thrown from her mind. If
she
had wanted to she could not have controlled it, the sharp spasm of
her
anger.
"Good morning, Mr. Penn .. ."
No reply from him, and he was stumbling back further from the bathroom
light as if to hide in the grey gloom of the room.
'.. . How are we, Mr. Penn?"
Just a growl of a response.
She was going forward into the centre of the room, coming closer to
the
bed that he skirted when she saw his case on the bed and the shape
of
the woman on the bed. The blouse of the woman was unbuttoned halfway
down to her navel and she could see the sexless strength of the woman's
brassiere and the white skin. "A little end-of-term party, Mr.
Penn?
Got demob happy, did we, Mr. Penn? Hit the bottle, did we, Mr.
Penn
.. . ? The bottle and a bit of skirt, Mr. Penn?" "It's not what
..
." "What I think? You wouldn't have the faintest idea what I think, Mr. Penn. If you had had an idea then you would not have ignored
my
telephone calls to this hotel. You would not have bloody well
abandoned me." "You wouldn't know .. ." "What it was like? Just a
silly woman, Mr. Penn? A silly woman incapable of understanding?
A
woman to be fobbed off with a two-page fax?" The growl spluttered
in
his throat. She saw the gleam of his teeth and his words came
haltingly. "She wasn't my daughter." "What the hell does that mean?"
"She wasn't my daughter, and if she had been my daughter then she
would
not have been bad-mouthed to every stranger I could get my claws on."
She laughed, shrill. "We make judgements now, do we, Mr. Penn? We know more than a mother does about her daughter, do we, Mr. Penn?
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Exactly what I need, wonderful .. ." And she was following him
through
the grey gloom of the room, and the woman on the bed stirred. He
said
to her, and the life had gone from his voice, and there was only a
tiredness, "If it was just anger then you wouldn't have come, if it had
just been anger then you would have stayed away. You came because
of
the guilt .. ." "Don't lecture me." "Because of the guilt, because of
the shame, because she was your daughter and you didn't know her ..
."
She was following him. She was drawn to him. Suddenly there was
a
startled grunt in the darkness ahead of her and she saw the heaped
clothes that stank and the sudden movement of the body in front of
her,
and the rifle was coming up and the muzzle caught against her stocking
at the knee.
'.. . It's fine, Ham, it's Dome's mother. It's Dorrie's mother
who's
come."
Perhaps it was the calm that had come to the voice now, perhaps it
was
the gentleness that tinged the voice. Perhaps it was the smell of
the
bodies and the damp of the clothes on the floor, perhaps it was the
rifle and the emptied bottles. Perhaps it was the woman scowling
from
the bed and the man crouched down hostile on the floor, perhaps it
was
the suitcase that was packed. Perhaps it was the guilt. She spat
it
out.
"You were going home?"
"I was hired to write a report."
"Worth two pages, was she? Two pages and that's time to come home?"
"I have written a preliminary report, I will write a fuller report
when
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I am home."
"And that is your idea of the end of it?"
"It's what I was hired to do, what I have done to the best of my
ability."
"Enough, is it, just to write a report .. . ?"
"It's what I was asked to do, hired to do."
She could not see into his face. The worst for Mary was the calmness
in his voice. And with the calmness was the gentleness. She could
remember her tears because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could
remember when she had thrown things, saucepans, books, clothes,
hurled
them because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember
Charles's accusations because of what Dorrie had done to her, and
how
she had gone sobbing up the stairs to beat her fists on the locked
door
because of what Dorrie had done to her. And the guilt roved in her
..
.
Her voice rose. "So you walk out, you walk away?"
"I don't know what else I can do."
"It was just empty words?"
"It was to write the report you requested."
"What the politicians said, what that American said, just empty ..
. ?
Fine words or empty words?"
"You wanted a report, you have a report."
She stood her height. "Was it just empty words? Didn't they talk
about a second Nuremberg, didn't they talk about war crimes'? Didn't
they talk about a new world order where the guilty would be punished,
where they'd be locked up and the key thrown away? Didn't they talk
..
. ?" The voice calm and gentle. Not the businesslike voice from
the
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graveyard in the village. Not the brusque voice from the kitchen
of
the Manor House. "It's the sort of thing people say, politicians.
It's
not to be taken seriously." "You saw the man who killed her .. ."
"I
saw him." "You found the evidence of an eyewitness .. ." "I found the
eyewitness." "You know where to go .. ." "I know where he is, and I
know where to go for the eyewitness." She could not see into his
face.
She saw the grey shadow and the dark sockets of the eyes. "Do you
think I am just a woman to be humoured? Do you think I am just a
silly
woman who is obsessional?" "I wrote my report." She said, hard,
"If
there is a will then there can be a prosecution .. . "Sources and
Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction" and "Offences Against the Person, Geneva Conventions" and "Treatment of the Wounded" and
"Conflicts not of an International Character". If there is
determination then there can be a prosecution .. ." "What do you want?" She said, brutally, "I want those empty words thrown back down
their bloody throats. I want them to choke on those empty words.
I
want that man before a court, I want to hear your evidence against
him
.. ." "What can I do?" She looked into his eyes, pitilessly. "Go back. Take him. Bring him. Bring him to where they cannot hide
behind their empty words. Go ... take .. . bring ... Or are you going to walk out on me?" He turned away from her. He was at the window.
His hands reached up to the curtains. And her voice died. The
silence
held the grey gloom of the room. Quite suddenly, the daylight was
flooding the room, and the curtains were heaved back. It was the
bruises on his face and the cuts and the scarring that she saw first.
She gazed at him, and she felt shame. There was a weal on his throat,
and on his chest deeper bruises and wider cuts and abrasions.
"I didn't know .. ."
"I will go back behind the lines and take him and bring him out. Will you please listen to me, Mrs. Braddock, will you please not
interrupt
me ... I will bring him out, but not for you. You, Mrs. Braddock,
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are
owed nothing ... I don't think listening comes easily to you, I doubt