Heart of Danger

Two.

He had been sat in the Sierra since before first light. He had the engine idling and the heater going and every few minutes it was necessary for him to wipe the inside of the windscreen hard, bully it, to clear the mist that hazed his view of the target house. He had parked up in a side street a full fifty yards from the main road on which the target house was one of a line of low-set terraced homes. Four hours back, when he had first parked his Sierra in the side street, he had felt a small glow of satisfaction; it was a good place to be parked because it gave him the option of going right or left up the road without the clumsiness of a three-point turn, it was the way he would have done it before the slip, slide, out of the Service. But it was different now from his Service days, and this was solo surveillance and he was working cheapskate, this was shoestring stuff. In the Service days, when he was with Section 4 of A Branch there would have been one to watch in the car and one to drive, and at the far end of the road, also tucked in at a side street, there would have been the back-up car and two more. In the bloody Service days there would have been bodies committed on the ground to cope with target surveillance, those who would stay with the cars and those who could duck out and dive for the Underground if that was how the target chose to move… But there was no point bitching, nothing gained from moaning. Dreaming of the Service days was crap and pointless. He was on his own and just bloody lucky to have found a parking space off the double yellows in the side street, and he would be going well if the target came out of the target house and used a car, and he would be going bad if the target came out from the target house and ignored the target car and walked four hundred yards right to the Piccadilly line Underground or two hundred yards left to the Central line. The big decision for Penn: to have another cigarette or to unwrap another peppermint. There was a cigarette packet's cellophane on the carpet by his feet, and silver paper from the peppermint tube. He sat in the passenger seat of the Sierra, pondered, made up his mind, and lit another cigarette. He sat in the passenger seat because that was the drill, because then the locals would imagine that he was waiting for the driver and be less suspicious of a stranger in their street. What they had said on the training course, before he had gone to Section 4 of A Branch, the watchers, was that personnel should be 'nondescript'. A good laugh that had raised and Penn had the starter to win the bonus because he was reckoned good and proper 'nondescript', like it was going out of fashion. He was the man who did not stand out. Penn was the guy in the crowd who made up the numbers and was not noticed. Funny old business, the chemistry of charisma… at the first course he had actually been called out of the crowd by the instructor and held up, grinning and sheepish, as the example of what a watcher should be like. Penn was ordinary. He was average height, average build, naturally wore average clothes. His hair was average brown, not dark and not light, and average length, not long and not short. His walking stride was average, not clipped and mincing, not busy and athletic. His accent was average, not smart and privileged, not lazy and careless with the consonants. Penn was the sort of man, damn it, who was accepted because he made few ripples… and wanting to make waves, wanting to be recognized, was what had pitched him out of the Service. Dragging on the cigarette… The door of the target house was opening. Stubbing the cigarette into the filled ashtray… He saw the target. Coughing the spittle of the Silk Cut and remembering the woman from Section 4 of A Branch who had come to the garage they used under the railway arches in Wandsworth and slapped a No Smoking sticker on the door of the glove compartment and dared him, and bloody won… The target had turned and carefully locked the front door of the house and was walking. The target was coming towards the parked and heated-up Sierra. He made a note on the pad, time of departure, and he eased his average weight across the gear stick and the brake handle and slid in behind the wheel. Naughty little boy, the target, and not playing it straight with the lady, the client. Penn was taking 300 a day, a half to the company, for ten hours a day, cooking in his car with the Silk Cut smoke up his nose so that the lady, the client, should not be conned out of her fancy salary. It was mid-morning and the car would have stunk anyway from his socks that were damp and his trousers that were still wet from the rain when he had walked round the back of the target house to check whether there was a rear exit, and a hell of a good thing that there wasn't because this was solo surveillance. The target was the fourth male out of the house that morning. The target had followed a West Indian in building site overalls, and an Asian, and a student with an armful of notebooks and college books. The target wore old jeans and a loose sweater, and a baseball cap back to front, and the target came past him whistling. A miserable morning with more rain in the air did not faze him. Enjoy it, sunshine, because it won't be lasting. Bit late, sunshine, to be heading off for the office. Good and modern sense of dress in that office, sunshine. The target went on down the road, and it was kid's play because the target had no suspicion that he was watched and took no evasive precautions. The target didn't swivel, didn't cross the road fast, didn't grab a taxi, didn't dive for the Underground. Penn followed him down the road, crawling the car, watched him cross at the lights, and it was pretty obvious where he was heading on a Thursday morning. Too easy for a man trained in surveillance to the standards of Section 4 of A Branch. The target was a Turkish Cypriot, tall and good-looking and with a rakish step, and hadn't a job and was living in bed sit land, and the gravy time was just about up. The target had milked a good number until the client had walked into Alpha Security, SW19, and been allocated the new boy on the staff. The client was a plain woman, thirty-six years old, with a high-quality brain and a low threshold of loneliness, who earned a salary of 60,000 plus a year by flipping gilts and bonds in an investment team. The client had fallen hard for the target and now wanted to know whether the love of her life was all he cracked himself up to be. It was bad luck for the client that she had chosen the target to fall for because sure as hell the target was living a little lie and the claimed job in property development was economical, skinflint, with the truth.

Bad luck, Miss Client.

He parked up.

Tough shit, Mr. Target.

He locked his Sierra.

Penn sauntered along the pavement to the Department of Social 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 room, into the drab little room that hadn't enough light, nor enough comfortable chairs, nor any recent magazines. She was half an hour early. It was because she was coming that he had hurried the Service of Legal Process, blundered in, and caught the right fist to the lower lip. She was a tall woman, almost beautiful, and she wore clothes of a cut that wasn't seen every day in the office of Alpha Security above the launderette. She had her head down and there was a tissue in her hands that she squashed, pulled, squashed, in a nervous rhythm. She wore a good suede coat and a long black skirt, and there was a bright outsize scarf looped over her shoulders. He thought it was the first time for her, first time in the office of a private investigation company. She had quality diamond stud earrings and he could see the pearls at her throat. Penn accused, "Didn't you offer her a coffee?" Deirdre bridled. "Stupid fart, Henry, didn't put the milk back in the fridge last night, milk's off. I can't just swan off and leave the phones…" "I want some coffee and I want it now." "You're not much of a sight, Mr. Penn, not for a new client." "Bugger the phones," he said. "Coffee, now…" And that would go back to Basil, soon as he trooped in, mid-morning. A sledging from dear Deirdre, that Mr. Bill Penn, quite aggressive, quite rude, and no call

… but she was collecting her handbag. He had a split lower lip and blood on his shirt and he strode to the door of the waiting room. Never explain, never apologize, a good creed. She must have heard him coming and as he opened the door she was looking up and for a moment there was the startled rabbit stare, and then the forced composure. And what he had to do was remember, and hard, that Alpha Security now paid the mortgage and the gas bill and the electricity and the food, and put the clothes on his back and on Jane's and the nappies on Tom's backside, and split lips and kicks down tower-block steps and solo surveillance were part of the game for a guy heaved out of Five and he had better remember it… She had a public face on. The composure was set as if the nerves and the fear had never been. He closed the door behind him. She was looking at his mouth but she was too polite to remark on the split lower lip and the blood on his shirt. "Mrs. Mary Braddock? I'm Bill Penn "I'm early, the traffic was less than I'd expected…" "It's not a problem," Penn said. "What can I do for you?" "I expect you're a busy man…" "Sometimes." '… So I won't waste your time. My daughter was in Yugoslavia. She was there when the fighting was in Croatia. She disappeared at the end of 1991, she was listed as missing. Last week I was informed that her body had been identified from the exhumation of a mass grave, in that part of Croatia that is now under Serb control. She had been dead for fifteen months, buried and hidden. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know how she died and why she died. She was my only daughter, Mr. Penn." He interrupted, "Isn't this a job for…?" "You should let me finish, Mr. Penn… But since you raise it… Shouldn't this be a job for the Foreign Office? Of course it should. Do you know anything about government departments, Mr. Penn? They're useless. That's a generalization and a true one. Good at cups of tea in a First Secretary's office, good at booking a hotel room, good at platitudes, and they don't give a damn, just some silly woman using up their day. I have been to Zagreb, Mr. Penn, I was there when Dorrie, my daughter, was missing, and I was there to bring her body home. I thought it was their job to help people like me, and I was wrong. Arnold is a good friend. Arnold gave me your name…" High excitement coursing, yesterday, when he had been told by Deirdre that Arnold Browne had left the message for him to call, immediately. He had sat in the cubbyhole area where Basil had given him the desk, and savoured the moments before he had picked up the telephone. All some mistake, a mistake to have let him go, and of course they wanted him back… or

… pretty bad cock-up, losing him, but the Service had plenty of scope for work by outsiders who were trusted and proven, nice little one for him, and of course he was not forgotten. And what brutal disappointment crushing him, yesterday, when he had dialled the direct-line number, spoken to Arnold bloody Browne, been told that a neighbour had a problem, needed a bit of uncomplicated ferreting, needed a good plodder was what the bloody man meant… He ran his tongue over his lower lip.

"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 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 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."