Heart of Danger

Eight.

"Yes, I saw her…" It was Jovic's success. The tram ride out to the west of Zagreb, through the old quarter, then out amongst the apartment blocks of the capital's new suburbs. Jovic's success had brought them to the end of the tram route, to where the track ended. Jovic had said that the wood huts used by the construction workers of the last block to be built were now a refugee camp. To Penn it was a desperate place. There had been rain in the night and the puddles glistened in the first sunlight of the morning. The road to the camp would have been gouged out by heavy plant equipment. He stepped carefully, but the mud gathered at the caps of his cleaned shoes. There were children here, but too beaten to play with a football, there were men standing listless and watching their coming. The place had its own aggression. He had seen small gardens carved out of the rubble at the edge of the camp, and thin thorn bushes had been planted round the plots, pitiful little efforts to make a home in a refugee camp. The huts were for communal living. They walked inside, carried more rainwater and mud inside, as others had done before, then into the gloom of a corridor. A line of men waited to use the basins of the wash house, a queue of women waited to use the lavatories. Jovic had given a name, waited, and they had been led by a sullen guide to a bleak and small room. "I had taken food to the cellar in Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse, in the early morning. There had been a halt in the shelling and I was able to go with food. We had only bread to give to the wounded, and the bread was old. It was when I was there, in the cellar, that the firing started again, and I could not leave. I was in the cellar when the village fell, when the Partizans came…" Her name was Sylvia. She shared her wood-walled room with her husband, and he lay on the bed with dead eyes, and Sylvia said he was now diabetic. There were two boys, who she said were aged ten years and seven years, and the older boy twitched all the time and the younger sat across his mother's lap and would not be separated from her. Penn judged her close to nervous collapse, and he wondered whether it was worse now, or had been worse when the village was fought for. She chain-smoked cigarettes. "She had come with the boy from Australia, and she would not leave him. Everyone told her that it was not safe to stay in Rosenovici, and she ignored everyone. Perhaps I understood her, because my eldest son was with the fighters, and I would not leave the village. I cannot say whether she realized properly the extent of the danger but she refused to go. It was early on the Thursday morning that I reached the cellar with the bread. My son was in the cellar.. ." Quietly, Jovic told him what she said. Penn wrote the words fast in his notebook. He was humbled. She had lost her home, and she had lost her future, and her mind was turned, and she dragged hard on the filters of the cigarettes and threw half-smoked ends into an old tin. She said that she had been the secretary to the director of the railway station at Karlovac. "She had come, herself, the previous evening, when there was still shooting, to the church where we were hiding and she had taken clothes that had been torn up for bandages and for dressings, and we had told her then that it was dangerous for her to be with the wounded. She never listened, in the month that I knew her, that she was in the village, it was never her way to listen. When I came into the cellar she was bandaging the wound of my son. I can see it. It is never away from me. I see it each night, and it is near to a year and a half ago. I will never forget it. My son had hold of her wrist. She was trying to bandage the wound at his stomach, but he could not be still because of his pain and it was difficult for her to make the bandage stay. I can see it because there was a pi all candle lighting the cellar. My son held her wrist as she tried to make the bandage and I saw his love for her. They all watched her, where they lay, they all watched her and they all loved her…" He thought of what Mary had told him, stories and pain. "I knew the village could not fight on for much longer, and there was too much firing for me to go back again to the church. I thought that I would be useful if I stayed in the cellar, and I thought I could help the Partizan soldiers to move the wounded after the village fell. I thought they would want help to move the wounded boys to the ambulances to take them to the hospital in Glina. It was in the afternoon on the Thursday that they came into the cellar, but it was not soldiers. The men who came were from Salika, that is the Serb village across the stream from Rosenovici. I knew all of them. The first who came in was the postman from Salika, and quickly after him was the gravedigger, and there was a carpenter who had made the chairs for our kitchen. They were fierce with us. Most of the wounded were kicked. They were shouting at them to stand up, and none of them could stand and they were kicked because they could not stand. She shouted back at them, I do not think they understood her language, but I saw her punch the postman when he kicked one of the fighters. I thought they had a fear of her, I thought they did not know what to do with her. We were taken up the steps from the cellar and she made the postman, Branko, and the carpenter, Milo, and the gravedigger, Stevo, help to lift the fighters up the steps. He was in the garden of Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse.. ." Tasting the coffee, feeling the warmth of Mary's kitchen, hearing the pain stories. He shut them out… "I have shame because I did not have the strength that she. had. They threatened me with a gun, they told me I could not help. I was the last out of the cellar. He was in the garden. They did not know what to do, it was for him to decide what to do. Some of our fighters were kneeling and some were on the grass in the garden, and she held two of them upright, and all the time she shouted at him, and he went to her and he hit her with the end of the barrel of his rifle and she was still shouting at him. I would not say he was a friend, but I knew him well enough, and there were days when I used to accept a ride from him as far as Turanj where he worked and then I would take a bus into Karlovac. She was not shouting at him, pleading, she was shouting at him in anger. I should have called to her, told her not to shout at him, but she would not have listened… They made a line of them. There were some who could walk, just, and there were some who were carried, and she helped two of them. They took them along the little road in the village to the square where there was the cafe and the store and the school. They took them past the school and away along the lane that goes to the fields. He gave the instructions, they took them away down the lane because that is what was ordered by Milan Stankovic…"

"What happened to Dorrie Mowat?"

He watched her. The tears streamed on her face. Her fists were clenched and he thought she might hit him. He knew he reopened the wound. He understood why the shame held her. She had been allowed to stay in the garden of the farmhouse. She would have seen the back of her son, walking or carried or supported, and she would have seen the bobbing head of Dorrie between the two young men that she held upright, and she would have seen the guns and the knives, and she would have known. Her words were a torrent breaking on Penn.

"I saw them until they were at Katica's house. The lane bends after Katica's house. I could not see them after they went past Katica's house."

He said, flat, "Who killed them, your son and her boy and Dorrie Mowat?"

Jovic said, "She told you, she saw them taken as far as the old lady's house. She does not know what happened after they had passed the house. She told you that Milan Stankovic gave the order for them to be taken along the lane, past the old lady's house, towards the fields. She told you what she knew…"

"But it is correct that she did not see them killed?"

A bitter flare in Jovic's face. "She buried her son four days ago. Can you not comprehend what these people have suffered, what you make them endure again for your report? She did not see them killed, correct."

A quiet in the room. The husband had not spoken, lay on his back, defeated. The children held their mother. The woman, Sylvia, looked with bruised eyes, into Penn's face.

Jovic said, "She does not understand why it is important, who shot them, who beat them, who knifed them. She says that Katica was in her house when the village fell. She knows that on the previous day Katica's husband went out to the yard to get wood and was shot by a sniper. She knows that Katica was in her house, with the body of her husband. She knows that Katica was not brought out of the village with the others who survived. She has not seen Katica since… Does anybody care what happened to them or who did it, she says, does anybody?"

He said, grimly, "Would you thank her for her time…"

"She says that she has only time left to her. She says, and she says it is what they all said, she says that the young woman was an angel…"

He blundered out of the room and away down the corridor. He shoved his way through the queue of men and women lined up for the wash house. There was a cockroach crawling amongst the feet, going slow because it was already damaged by kicks, and then it was stamped upon by a bare foot. He saw the slime of the destroyed creature. The cockroach was forgotten, the feet tripped past it. He saw himself as the creature, insignificant, gone from memory… but Dorrie was remembered… He could write his report, embellish it for effect, take the money, be a creature squashed and slimed. Perhaps, in life, there was just one chance… Penn felt humbled… He walked fast out of the camp, and Jovic had to scurry to keep at his shoulder, towards the waiting tram at the end of the track.

She came in from her shopping.

She played back the answer phone and there was a message advising the date of the next meeting of the south-eastern branch of the Save the Children Fund, and a query on the availability of the marquees for the garden party at Whitsun in support of leukaemia research, and the secretary who did two days a week would not be coming in the morning because of influenza. She let the tape run. She did not hear the voice. The voice, crisp, competent, was absent from the tape. The dogs were scratching at the kitchen door. She let them out and they jumped at her, happy. Maybe it was just a folly. Maybe she had no right to know. Maybe the dead should sleep. Four times now she had telephoned the number of the hotel in Zagreb, four times in growing annoyance she had left her message and four times in increasing loneliness the message had not been answered. She left her shopping on the kitchen table. She took the leashes from behind the door. Mary walked her dogs through the village. She walked on the drying grass. Next week they would take the flowers away from the grave. She laid her coat on the grass and sat on it. Next week she would bring more flowers. The dogs hunted out fallen wood and lay beside her and chewed and spat the morsels clear. She heard herself, her own words, saying, calmly, that she enjoyed winning, and she wondered what he thought of such stupidity. She heard herself, her own voice, saying that her daughter was a horrid young woman, and she wondered how he had taken such betrayal. Shared her secrets with him, given her secrets to Penn, wretched little private detective, opened herself to him, stupidity and betrayal. For nothing, Dorrie, should have allowed your rest…" He walked with Jovic. Jovic showed him the big German cars speeding on the cobbles and said they belonged to the new elite of racketeers. Jovic said that the country was rotten and that the profiteers fed from the carcass… And every few minutes Jovic would stop, hold out his hand for telephone money and be gone into a bar, and then be back, and not offer any explanation… Each time he was left on the pavement he gazed around him. The city was at ease. The war was forgotten, tucked and hidden behind the cease-fire line that was thirty minutes' drive away. He had never seen a tram before Zagreb, clanking and swaying monsters with raucous hooters to announce their coming, with the passengers clinging inside to the straps, and the lines running polished amongst the worn and smoothed cobbles.

He watched a flower seller.. Jovic showed him the great circular plaza. It had been the Square of the Victims of Fascism, now it was the Square of Croatian Celebrities… Jovic showed him the Historical Museum, closed for reconstruction, indefinitely… Jovic took him into a yard behind a building and in the yard weeds grew amongst the mighty toppled statues of the former regime in Stalinist bronze, and Jovic said the statues would be cut up and melted down, destroyed as historically incorrect… Jovic said that it was necessary for history to be rewritten in new nationhood, said it and grinned sardonically. Jovic took him to the Tourist Bureau and there were no new guidebooks of the city; the old ones were all recalled for pulping, and the new ones would carry no reference to the Ustase fascists…

A new bar, more money for the telephone, Penn waited outside.

The rain had started again.

The artist said, "There is no record of her coming out. There is a database for refugees who have left the occupied territory, and she is not listed. She is classified a missing person. The detail is small. She is Katica Dubelj, she is eighty-four years old. She was in her eighty-third year when Rosenovici fell. If she had died between then and now, it is the sort of matter that is discussed at the liaison meetings, if her body were returned for burial here then it would have come through the Turanj crossing point, escorted by UNHCR. I cannot help it, but she does not appear on the database… There are a few old people who still live across there, perhaps in the woods, perhaps they are tolerated. She is beyond your reach, alive or dead. It is the end of the road, Mr. Penn. I think you should be satisfied. You know the last weeks and the last days and the last hours of the life of Miss Mowat. Only a few minutes have escaped you… Satisfactory, yes? Do you want me to book the flight for you?"

Penn said he wanted to be alone.

"Shall I come tonight for my money, or in the morning before you fly?"

Penn took out his wallet. He counted out the notes, American dollars. He took the scribbled receipt written on the ripped paper from Jovic's notebook. "I think we did well, I think you will write a good report." Penn shook his hand. "I think that by next week you will have forgotten us, Mr. Penn. We are easy, with our problems, to forget

…" Penn had no pleasantries for Jovic, and he saw the surprise of the man. For the moment he believed he had, at last, unsettled the artist. No banter, no chat, no laughing, and no thanks, as if he had no time for them. There was a confusion on Jovic's face, but he was proud. Jovic, Penn thought, would not have known how to grovel, and was gone, skipping away across the road through the cars, lost in the pedestrians on the far side, never looking back. He had finished, or he had not begun. Finished, not begun, it was Penn's decision… A light rain fell and it brought a dust with it that lay on the cars, and it settled on the shoulders of his blazer. He made room on the pavement for two young men who swung theirjweight on crutches, war amputees. He was the intruder. He prised himself into their lives, into the life of the city, into the lives of the camps. It was Penn's decision on whether he had finished, or whether he had not begun. She had had everything and he had had nothing. She had had privilege and advantage and abused them. She could have walked into college but she declined to. He would have called her, to her face, if he had met her, 'selfish little bitch'. Had had everything while he had had nothing, had been free, and he had never been. It was as if he should have been warned away, kept safe distance. And he had prised, beaten, kicked his way into the life of Dorrie Mowat. "I told you, and you cared not to hear me…" Charles barking and the gin spilling from the glass rim. '… I told you that you were wasting money, but you cared not to listen." "I just wanted to bloody know…" Mary walking the lounge, spinning, like a caged creature, and smoking which was new for her. '… Don't I have the right to know?"

"It's obsession, and obsession will break you."

"I tell you, he wasn't flash. He was well-mannered and he was considerate…"

"Mr. bloody Penn, he's taken my money and he's taken you for a damn great ride. When he's ready he'll be back. When he's back there will be his bill, and there will be a report that is bullshit. They're grubby people and you chose to involve them."

"Sorry what sort of day was it?"

"A bloody awful day."

"He could have rung me back, could have talked to me. Sorry

She went to her kitchen, started the supper. What hurt was that she had thought Mr. Penn cared.

The media had hit the hotel.

Penn, rueful, sat in the bar and nursed the fourth beer, might have been the fifth.

The circus had hit the hotel.

Penn listened, and he watched.

It was reunion time for those from Sarajevo and those from Vitez and those from Mostar. There was embracing and kissing and bellboys bent under the weight of equipment boxes. He sat apart from them, listened, and his hand twitched to his tie; no ties on show in the circus, no blazers, no pressed slacks, no shined shoes. Penn listened because the talk was of staying alive.

Staying alive was paying the welding company in Sarajevo to fit the shrapnel-proof sides onto the reinforced Land-Rover chassis: "I'd have bought it, too bloody right, 81-mm chunks coming in." Staying alive was not going to Srebrenica across country on foot: "Crazy place, place to get killed, not worth the hassle." Staying alive was laughing for the wild man in Sarajevo who had brought a cow across the airport runway, under the snipers' guns: "Best bloody milk in the city." Staying alive was getting down to the mortuary in Mostar after the shelling: "He was about twelve, he'd got new trainers on, sticking out under the blanket, the trainers made it front page, and it syndicated."

To Penn, listening, they made staying alive just about possible. They were in town for a wedding. They were going back to Sarajevo and Vitez and Mostar in thirty-six hours. It was his decision, whether he had finished, or not begun. It was as if her freedom laughed at him, as if the laugh was recklessly loud in a cavern of silence. As if she danced in front of him, feral, a creature of his childhood woodland, challenging him to follow where she led. He had never been free, had he? Bloody structured, bloody trapped. Duty, stability, discipline, commitment, Penn's gods. It was as if she had never been defeated, not even in death… as if he had never succeeded, not even in life. He had not known freedom, would never know it unless he followed… It was like a pain in him. He finished his beer. Penn went out of the hotel, to walk, think. He sat in his kitchen and he fastened the belt that held the holster at his waist. The carpenter, Milo, bent beside the table and eased off his shoes, then dragged on his old boots, and he heard the intake of breath from his wife because the boots shed dried mud onto the floor that she had washed. He went to the refrigerator and took an apple and put it into the pocket of his heavy coat. It was a good refrigerator, the best that could have been bought in Zagreb, but the door was always open because he had learned that to close the door meant the gathering of mildew on the inner walls. There was no power in Salika. It was near to a year and a half since the carpenter had made the two journeys, with the wheelbarrow, across the river and come back with the refrigerator from Franjo and Ivana's kitchen and the television from the house behind Rosenovici's store. They both looked well in the carpenter's home and he spat back at his wife each time that she declared them useless because there was no power. With the holster at his belt, with the apple in his pocket, he took the hurricane lamp down from the shelf above the sink. He could no longer use the big flashlight because the batteries were exhausted. He lit the lamp and clumped in his old boots across the kitchen floor, and left more mud. He went out into the night. He went to his store shed and he took from the nail the sharp bow saw and his big jemmy and the lump hammer. He went past the house of the Headmaster, where a small light burned, and he groped down and found a stone in the road and threw it hard so that it rattled the upper planking of his house. He went past the house of the Priest, the old fool, and past the house of the gravedigger, Stevo, and called out to him, and past the house of the postman, Branko. Short of the bridge, he shouted forward. There would be young men on the bridge, guarding, and it was best to call forward. He yelled his name into the night. The light swirled around him and beyond the light was blackness. No moon that night and he could not see the ruin of the village nor the trees beyond it, nor the outline against the skies of the higher ground. It was to please Milan Stankovic that he went with his pistol and his apple and his bow saw and tools out into the night. They were good boys on the bridge, good laughter when he came to them, and they pulled aside the frame that was laced with barbed wire so that he could go onto the bridge… He considered Milan Stankovic the finest man in the village of Salika. He hated to see it, what he saw every day now, the sullen and hostile and bleak face of the best man he knew. Milan had said, that morning, that Evica had complained of the table in the kitchen. It was too old, and the glue was dried out, and the surface was too scratched to scrub clean. There were fine timbers to be had in the ruins… The wind was around him as he walked up the lane towards the village of Rosenovici, and there was light rain, and once he stumbled and nearly fell because he had been looking ahead to the edge of light thrown by the hurricane lamp and he had not seen the deeper hole left by the jeeps that had come for the digging… He did not understand the recent mood of Milan Stankovic. The carpenter thought that he could bring the life smile back to the face of Milan when he presented him with a new kitchen table. At the edge of his light, he saw a cat sprinting away, stomach down, and he kicked a stone fiercely towards its starved ribcage… There were none in the village who would come with the carpenter to Rosenovici at night, the scared farts, but he would gather up sufficient seasoned wood from the timbers and haul it back that evening and work through the small hours, catch some sleep, then work again through the day, and have the table ready for the next evening.

The carpenter would have said that he was afraid of nothing.

He reached the village.

There was an owl in a tree up the hill.

He had been back to the village many times, never with Milan. The timbers would not be at the square, not at the store nor the cafe, because the headquarters of the Ustase had been there, and the greatest concentration of tank fire had been there. He had been back for the refrigerator and for the television, and to help others round up the cattle left there, and back for the shooting of the dogs that had been abandoned there, and back to look and to search among the homes for hidden jewellery, and he had been back to stand in the group that had watched the digging. Milan had never been back. There was fine wood in the roof of the church but what had been burned had fallen, and the rest of the roof spars were too high for him to retrieve. The farmhouse with the cellar had not been burned, but it had been dynamited, destroyed, the timbers would lie under plaster and stone rubble. Milan always found an excuse for not returning to Rosenovici.

He stood in the square. The wind played at his face, coming from the east and cold. The light caught at the houses that had been destroyed. The carpenter could see up the road along which they had marched as escort to the wounded. He was not frightened of darkness. He thought he knew in which house he would find seasoned timber. Out of the square and along the lane. He had brought up the rear, pushed them, driven them. It was the lane up which the bulldozer had been directed, following them. He was not frightened of darkness but the silence around him was broken by the wheeze of his breathing and the stamp of his boots, and the carpenter shivered, felt the cold of the wind. Ahead of him, at the edge of the light, was the collapsed gate, then the black expanse of the field. It was through the gate that they had taken them, and then the bulldozer had followed, and the bulldozer had clipped the gate post, collapsed the gate. Short of the field, where the lane bent, was the small house which had not been destroyed. It might have been the postman, Branko, or it might have been the gravedigger, Stevo, but both had claimed to have shot the old bastard Ustase. He could remember it, seeing the flash of her face at the window, the old bitch Ustase, as he cursed them to go faster, and he could remember the face of the girl. It was only a hovel. The carpenter reckoned he would not have put pigs in the house of the old bastard and the old bitch, but the hovel had been there since the time he was born and the timber would be good, seasoned. In his mind, they were both together, the face of the old bitch at her window, and the face of the girl… The door groaned as he pushed it. The hurricane lamp threw its light inside the one room. He smelled the damp of the room. It was close and small and he saw the sacking in the corner, as if it was used for a couch bed. Not a place for a pig, not for cattle. He had to work quickly because the oil was poor quality in the hurricane lamp and burned faster than good oil, but good oil was no longer available. He began to rip the wide panel strips from the wall, the best wood and seasoned. He used the jemmy, and then the lump hammer to hack away at the last holding nails. The noise was around him and the dust of the plaster lathe. He often thought of the girl. It need not have happened to the girl. She could have gone, with the other women. The postman, Branko, had tried to pull her away from the two wounded men, tried to save her, and she had fought the postman, had hurt him. The dust clogged at his nose. And when the wide panel strips were free, he reached up and belted with the lump hammer at the ceiling plaster that cascaded on him. The beams were good. He wanted two lengths of beam, each his own height, for the legs of the table he would present to Milan. Making room with the jemmy and the lump hammer for his bow saw… The blow caught him. He was turning in the grey white of the dust storm. The shrivelled figure, black, and the hurricane lamp guttering, and the stick raised as a club. His eyes watering from the blow, his vision hazed. He clung to the stick, the club, wrestled it away. Claws in his face. Feeling the drag of the nails, razor lines of pain, on his face. Clutching at thin wrists, seeing the bony fingers reaching for his eyes. The shrivelled figure, black, gone in the mist of grey white, gone into the darkness of the door. He staggered to the door. He had his pistol out from the holster. There was only silence around the carpenter. He fired the pistol up the lane and down the lane and the crash of the shots burgeoned at his ears. He had no target. He did not know where to fire. He emptied the magazine of the pistol, and he ran. He left behind him his bow saw and the jemmy and his lump hammer, and the failing light of the hurricane lamp. He ran down the lane, he splattered the potholes of rainwater, and he ran through the square. He was panting hard when he reached the bridge and he shouted out his name that the guards should not shoot him. He found them scared, cringing, hiding down behind the sandbags, and they had their own light which they shone in his face. He wiped his cheeks. He did not know what he could tell the young men who guarded the bridge across the stream. His own blood stained the palm of his hand. Finished, or not begun. Penn sat on a bench in the park, the darkness around him. Penn thought he had made the decision. To go to the end, that was his father's code. Doing it properly, that was his mother's code. On a bench in Zagreb, with noisy basketball played open air under floodlights beyond the darkness, he thought of them. His father, looking at him direct, pipe clamped in his teeth, would have said that he had taken the money and that if he hadn't wanted shit in his face then he should not, first, have taken the money. His mother, averted head and pursed lips and wiping her hands, would have told him that he was under obligation, but that he should go carefully. When he had swotted for the exams that had lifted him from the countryside, prompted by his history master who had helped with the forms, he had sent off an application for work as a clerk in government. He was going back into the rock of previous years, now, chiselling for guidance. Taken on at the Home Office. He wondered how they would have reacted, at the Home Office, to his query as to whether he had finished or whether he had not begun. Working with paper, pushing paper, annotating paper, moving paper, discarding paper, for the Prison Service department of the Home Office. They would have said, the ones who had worked with him in the clerks' pool, who were still there working in the clerks' pool, that he had finished. Five o'clock, old chummy, time to be gone, always finished at five o'clock, old chummy. One late night and there was a panic meeting between the Home Office and Security Service and an assistant under secretary stamping empty corridors, searching for a file fetcher, finding Bill Penn, clerk. He had run half the night down to the basement and back up to the third floor with the files they had needed. He had brought the coffee. He had gone out for sandwiches. He had kept the files coming, and the coffee and the sandwiches, when their heads were on their bloody knees in tiredness, and a week later the job offer had come through, clerk grade in Library at Curzon Street, then at Gower Street. In Five's Library they would have said he had finished. Into F Branch, pushing paper on 'subversives'. Into A Branch, working with the 'watchers'. The guys in F Branch and the guys in A Branch, they would have said, too damned right, he had finished. The guys in F Branch and A Branch would have been quoting training courses, evaluating back-up, querying days in lieu for extra days worked. But there was no training, there would be no back-up… It was Penn's decision. He had the obligation, and he would go carefully. It would be for her, Dorrie… Not for Mary Braddock in the Manor House, not for Basil and the creeps at Alpha Security, not for Arnold bloody Browne who had not lifted a finger when he'd needed help, not for his Jane and his Tom and the paying of the mortgage for the roof over their heads, but for the love of Dorrie… He had the photographs of her. The photographs were in the inside pocket of his blazer, dry, safe, close to him. He thought that what he wanted, wanted most in the world, was to share in the love of Dorrie. He saw the face that was loved, the face of mischief, sparkle, hatred, bloody-mindedness, courage, the face that was putrefied and drawn from the ground and wounded with cuts and blows and a pistol shot…

And all the rest was shit…

It was as if she called. It was as if he should follow. He knew that he wanted her love, certainty, more than anything he had wanted in his life. He craved the freedom that had been hers. As if he heard her loud laughter, daring him.

Not finished, because it was not begun.

Ham saw him come through the door. Then he was looking round, checking the tables, searching for a face.

"Hello, squire, funny seeing you in this shit heap…"

Most evenings Ham ate alone. Couldn't abide the crap they served up in the old police station. Most evenings he asked the guys if they'd come down the town and join him, and most evenings they had a reason not to, fuck them. He ate alone in the cafe on Krizaniceva inside the walls of the old city. He pushed out the chair opposite him.

'… So what brings you down the sharp end, what brings you to sunny Karlovac?"

"You wanted a bit of tracing done. You wanted to know where your wife was, and your kiddie. I'll do that."

Ham said quickly, "Can't pay a fancy fee…"

"No fee, no charge."

Ham said, suddenly doubtful, "Not for fucking charity. What's the game, squire?"

"For a favour."

"You tell me, what's the favour?"

"You said you'd walked into Sector North. I want a route. I want to know where to go, where not to go. That's my fee for the trace."

Wide-eyed, Ham said, "That's fucking dumb talk…"

"No charge for the trace, but you give me a route so as I can walk to Rosenovici."

Ham said, "You don't get me to go…"

"I want a route, to go on my own."