THE HEART OF DANGER (13 page)

the

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chairs of the pavement cafes were taken. The sun shone, warm enough

for Penn to have turned on his heel after a hundred-yard walk,

collected his room key again, and dumped his coat and his scarf and

his

gloves. A fine morning to walk, and for the second time he passed

the

taxi line in the road outside the hotel. It was all a culture shock

for Bill Penn, and he had the guidebook to tell him that this was

an

old city, historic and finely preserved, and he could not square the

city with what he had seen in his hotel room on the television from

the

satellite news. On the news, across country, was Srebrenica where

a

town was being shelled and starved to surrender, and on the same

bulletin had been clear colour pictures of British squad dies hand-So

ling charred bodies, and a young officer had said his men would need

counselling if they were not to be scarred for the rest of their lives.

And there had been film of an American aircraft carrier, across the

water, taking off with the bomb loads in place for practice runs.

A

war in Bosnia across country, and nothing of it to be seen by Penn

as

he viewed, for the first time, the capital city of Zagreb. He walked

quickly. He was not a tourist. He was on assignment. He had

polished

his black shoes in his room, he wore his charcoal-grey trousers and

his

blazer and he had brushed the flecks from the shoulders. He had his

white shirt and a quiet tie, and he carried his old briefcase, and

it

was difficult for him to realize that the months had passed by, that

it

was not a 'government' assignment. He had a starting place but not

yet

a programme. He went up Haulikova and across Andrije Hebranga and

up

Preradoviceva and came to a wide square. He felt comfortable; he

liked

the feel of the place; he would write a good fast report; he thought

that Jane would have liked the feel of the city .. . On Ilica, looking

left, jumping out of the path of a damned tram, he saw the flag. Red

and white and blue, and looking as if it needed a full wash and tumble,

and hanging limp. It was an old building and there was an arched

entrance to the inner courtyard, and a brass plaque at the side door.

Of course the embassy was Perm's start point. He saw the posters

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on

the stair walls. Edinburgh Castle, British butterflies, a Cotswold

village, badgers outside a sett, Buckingham Palace, it was the world

to

which he had once belonged .. . Inside a small lobby, and the

Englishwoman at the desk smiling and asking him with studied

politeness, "Can I help?" "My name's Penn, Bill Penn. I'd like to see

one of your diplomats, please. It's in connection with Miss Mowat.

It's about the late Miss Dorothy Mowat." It was as if he had sworn, or

unzipped his flies, because the smile was suddenly gone from her.

She

gestured for him to wait, and her face was cold. He wondered if she

had been here, Dorrie, turning the faces cold. He thought that Mary

Braddock would have been here, sitting on the hard chairs in the small

lobby and turning the pages of the English magazines, killing the

smiles. He could see the Englishwoman blurred through the frosted

glass of the adjacent office. He wondered if anyone had jumped when

Mary Braddock had come the first time to start a search for her

daughter and failed. The blurred shapes meandered across the face

of

the glass and towards the door. He thought the papers would have

been

sorted here, stamped here, duplicated here, for the repatriation of

the

corpse. The Englishwoman stood in the door and gestured Penn

forward,

and stepped aside. The room had been large once, perhaps the salon

of

a well-proportioned apartment, but it was now sub-divided into rabbit

hutches. There was a tall man, in shirtsleeves and braces, rather

young. He didn't offer a handshake. Cigarette smoke curled from

an

ashtray. He didn't give his name. The desk was a confusion of

paper.

He stood. "I'm the First Secretary. Who do you represent, Mr.

Penn?"

"I represent Miss Mowat's mother. I've been hired by Mrs. Mary

Braddock." "And what are you, Mr. Penn?" Pederast, no ... pusher, no

... pimp, no ... private investigator, yes .. . "I am a private

investigator, I have been employed by Mrs. Braddock to examine the

circumstances of her daughter's murder." "Why do you come here?"

Penn

bridled. "As a starting point. She was British, I'm British,

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natural

enough to attend Her Britannic Majesty's talking shop .. ." "We gave Mrs. Braddock every possible help, she left here knowing as much

as it

was humanly possible to know." "Can't accept that. She wrote a note,

Mrs. Braddock, of what she had been told, which I read. She had

been

told nothing. If she hadn't been told nothing, then I wouldn't be

here. Because .. ." It was a sharp little voice, reedy. "We have a

full load of work and about half the staff necessary to accomplish

it... No, don't interrupt, listen. Mrs. Braddock was told

everything

about her daughter's death that it was possible to discover,

everything. I wouldn't imagine that private investigators have too

much time to read newspapers. If you read a newspaper regularly then

you would know that there was a pretty horrible war going on down

here,

and facts, truths, tend to be rather a long way down the order of

priorities. Where Miss Mowat died only a lunatic would have been.

She

died because she was a fool. As regards facts, in that dirty little

war some 20,000 Croatians lost their lives, more than 30,000 were

wounded, 7,000 are missing presumed dead, 250,000 have fled their

former homes .. . Do I make myself clear? There has been an

earthquake

here of human misery, and against the reality of that destruction

the

demands of a mother for a fuller investigation into the death of one

young lunatic woman is quite unreasonable. First day here, is it?

Well, get yourself a map, Mr. Penn, learn a bit of geography. Where she died is behind Serb lines, where she was killed is closed

territory. I wouldn't want to see you or hear of you again, Mr.

Penn,

because if I see you or hear of you again then it will mean you have

caused trouble. I've enough to concern me without freelancers

interfering in sensitive areas and making trouble .. ." He had torn a

sheet of paper from a notepad. He wrote fast on it, passed the paper

to Penn. '.. . I imagine you have to justify an inflated fee. I

don't suppose you speak fluent Serbo-Croat, no? That's an

interpreter.

Second is the name of the man who runs the Croatian war crimes unit,

he

won't know anything, but he'll be impressive on your report. By the

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by, do you know how Mrs. Braddock came to know that her daughter

was

here? A demand for money. Do you know how she came to know her

daughter was missing? The money wasn't collected, it was sent back.

Didn't she tell you? We're not talking about a very caring young

woman, you know ... Go away, Mr. Penn, and I suggest you allow the

dead to sleep." He walked to the door and opened it for Penn. Penn took himself past the Englishwoman to the main door. He went out

onto

the street, numbed. It was as if a cold wind had come. The hunger

strike was spreading on the third floor. Men were smoking more in

the

sleeping rooms and she had shouted and threatened. She had more

families coming from Bosnia in the morning and the accommodation area

was already saturated. She had received, smiling and cheerful and

a

sham, a delegation that afternoon from the Swedish Red Cross. It

was

close to midnight and she was exhausted. She had had the police in,

accusing the children of stealing in the town. Men from Prijedor,

on

the second floor, had been close, almost, to a riot at the counter

for

"Onward Movement'. Another day ending for Ulrike Schmidt as she

slipped, dead on her feet, out from the high heavy doors of the Transit

Centre. She went to her car, parked in the square, and she did not

look back at the old barracks building that was the Transit Centre

for

Bosnian Muslim refugees. The end of another eighteen-hour day and

she

had no need to look back on the building. The building consumed her

attention, eighteen hours a day. She slumped behind the wheel of

the

little Volkswagen Beetle, bit at her lip, turned the ignition key.

Ahead of her was a cold supper in the fridge of her apartment, a

night's heavy and unrewarding sleep, the clamour of an alarm clock.

That was the life of Ulrike Schmidt, paid by the United Nations High

Commission for Refugees to administer the Transit Centre at Karlovac.

The men were on hunger strike because they had been promised entry

with

their families to Austria, the papers were in place, but the visas

were

delayed. The members of the delegation of the Swedish Red Cross were

disarming and friendly, but adamant that they could offer only

medicines, not entry permits. If the men smoked in the rooms of the

barracks where the floors were covered with mattresses, where each

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family made personal boxes from hanging blankets, then the fire risk

was just appalling. If the police came in and demanded the right

to

search, and if the police took away children for thieving, then there

would be fighting. And if more families came in the morning, and

the

resident families had to be pushed into making room for them ... if

more entry permits were not available at the "Onward Movement'

counter

.. . She drove away. She left it behind her, for six hours, the misery

of 2,400 refugees who were her charge. Ulrike Schmidt had told the

delegation of the Swedish Red Cross that the Bosnian Muslim refugees

were the most traumatized people in the world. She had told them

that

where they stood, grasping their fact-sheets, was the most

traumatized

place in the world. How did she cope? she was asked by a

severe-faced

woman from Gothenburg. "When you fall over you have to pick yourself up, wipe off the dirt, start again." And she had smiled, and they

had

all laughed, and they did not understand what was her life for

eighteen

hours of the day. She drove through the deserted streets of the front

line town towards her apartment. It was the day a letter usually

came

from her mother in Munich. Her life, her emotions, were shared only

with her parents who wrote to her once every week. She allowed no

one

else access to her emotions. The jeep passed her. Her headlights

caught the open back of the jeep, and then the vehicle, arrogantly

driven, cut across her. She braked. She slowed. There were four men

in the back of the jeep. Her headlights snatched at their faces that

were indistinct from the dirt and the camouflage cream. The jeep

stopped hard outside the sandbagged entrance to the old police

station.

She was at crawl speed. Three men out of the back of the jeep,

jumping down, pulling after them their weapons and their backpacks.

One man left in the jeep. As she went by him she looked into his

face.

The man sat in the open back of the jeep and his hands were locked

onto the barrel of his rifle. He was older than the others and he

had

weight at the jowls and the cheeks of his face. The eyes were full

of

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fear and shock. She saw the trembling of the body of the man and

he

blinked into the headlights of her car, and he had made no movement

to

climb down from the jeep. She saw the filthy uniform that was

mud-covered and soaked wet. Ulrike Schmidt understood. She drove

on.

The fear and the shock and the trembling belonged to those who came

from behind the lines, across the Kupa river. After her six hours,

after the alarm had gone in the morning, she would be at the crossing

point at Turanj and she would meet the new party of refugees, for

whom

she had no space at the Transit Centre, and she would see the same

fear

and shock and trembling in those who had come from behind the lines.

She speeded her car.

A silent little prayer played at her lips that the letter from her

mother would be waiting at her apartment.

Five.

Sitting upright, uncomfortable, Jovic was waiting. Penn had learned

to

use the staircase rather than wait for the interminable lift. He

paused at the angle of the stairs, and saw the young man immediately.

The hotel lobby was filled for the gathering, before the first