THE HEART OF DANGER (7 page)

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 35

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.

36

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

37

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

38

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

39

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 future 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

40

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.

An hour later he said, "I'll work out what it would cost, how many

days

I estimate it will take. Goodbye, Mrs. Braddock. You'll hear from

me."

Three.

The pub was down the road from the launderette, and round the corner,

"You know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." The pub, Basil's 'watering hole', was mean and dirty and dark. There was a

table beyond the bar that was his, out of danger from the darts board.

Basil, one-time detective sergeant, had made the table his own since

retirement from the Metropolitan Police nineteen years back. Most

lunch times, Basil was at the table with Deirdre. "You milk that

one,

my son, because it's cream for the cat. You spin it out, my son."