THE HEART OF DANGER (3 page)

which the bloom was not quite opened and the stem was wrapped in

tinfoil. She craned forward and looked through the porthole window

and

saw the low grey cloud and the puddles on the tarmac and made a small

joke about the weather. The hostess offered a hand in help and her

eyes showed her sympathy. Again the smile, as if the concern of the

hostess were quite unnecessary, out of place and not required, and

she

stood and shrugged into her raincoat. She looked behind her, once

11

and

briefly, to make sure she had left nothing. She laid the scarf over

her head, then loosely knotted it under her chin. She had the rose.

It

was a small gesture, but she laid her hand quickly on the hostess's

sun-coloured arm, to show her gratitude. She could cope, no problem,

but the concern was appreciated.

She was led by the hostess down the length of the aisle to the cabin

door.

The pilot, coming from the cockpit, ducked his head to her in

embarrassment.

The purser shook her hand, said something into his chest that she

could

not understand, but she smiled back at him warmly, the sham smile.

There was an official from the Airport Authority at the hatch of the

aircraft. She thought that he had probably done it before. He had

no

smile for her and no handshake, and no anodyne small talk. He took

her

grip bag. He unlocked an outside door at the start of the extended

tunnel from the aircraft and gestured that she should follow him.

The

rain and the wind caught her, trapped her skirt against her thighs

and

billowed her raincoat. She followed him down the steep staircase,

skipping the last step onto the apron. The handlers had already

started to unload the baggage from the cargo hatch, and they took

the

suitcases and string-tied cardboard boxes from the hatch and threw

them

carelessly onto the open trailer. There was a young woman from

Customs

edging towards her, unsure, and pushing the documentation under her

nose. She signed with the pen she was offered and the ink ran as

the

rain dripped on the paper. Two men in black suits, the one working

his

jaw round spent chewing gum and the other cradling in the palm of

his

hand a dead briar pipe, waited statuejstill beside the hearse. There

were no more suitcases, no more cardboard boxes coming from the hatch.

The men from the hearse moved forward as if to a signal. She heard

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the

noise of the scraping from inside the cargo hold.

The coffin was of grey sheet metal and it was heavy and awkward to

manoeuvre in the confined space.

The pipe was pocketed, the chewing gum was spat out.

The coffin was lifted clear. She stepped forward. She laid the

single

rose on the coffin's lid beside the documentation that was fastened

to

it with adhesive tape. The wind seemed to come fiercer off the tarmac

and she walked beside the coffin with her fingers steadying the rose

until they were sheltered by the length of the hearse. The back door

closed on the coffin and she could see her rose through the

rain-blurred windows. It was driven away.

Was she being met? No, she had her own car ... Did she need a lift?

Yes, that would be very kind, to the long-stay car park .. .

Mary Braddock had brought her daughter, her Dorrie, home.

"I said we could go out and get something in a pub. I said I'd have a

go at knocking something up. She wouldn't hear of it. Said

something

about being too tired to go out, and something about me needing a

proper meal. She was into her kitchen and putting it all together."

"She's so strong, she's a grand woman."

"Sorry, Arnold, but it's a facade. It was all over her face, she'd been weeping, the poor darling, all the way home. I couldn't go with

her, you see. Well, you know that .. . The contract is eleven million

sterling, it's got to be in day after tomorrow. She said, anyway,

quite definite, that she was going and going alone. Damn the little

bitch ... I married Mary, not her bloody daughter ... You'll have

another?"

Charles Braddock's hideaway, what he called his 'snug', was at the

bottom right corner of the acre of garden behind the Manor House.

The

Manor House, Elizabethan brick and good timber, was hidden from them

except for the tall chimneys by a succession of screens provided by

the

13

old azaleas and rhododendrons, and a yew hedge, and the wooden frame

that supported honeysuckle and climbing roses, and the flint stone

wall

of the vegetable garden. Under the big bare branches of the oak and

beech trees that separated the garden from a farmer's fields, he had

designed, then built, the wooden hut that was his hideaway.

There was power in the hut for a small fridge, and space for a small

cabinet. He came to his 'snug' to read, meditate on problems at work,

sleep through weekend summer afternoons, and curse. Alongside the

hut

was the boundary fence to his neighbour's smaller garden, and set

in

the fence alongside the cage for compost and grass cuttings was a

stout

stile that provided his neighbour access to the ice and Scotch and

gin.

It was the way of things that when Arnold climbed heavily over the

stile and took the offered plastic cup Charles Braddock would do much,

most, of the talking.

"She wasn't easy .. ."

"God, and that classifies as understatement. She was hopeless,

impossible .. ."

"And dead, Charles."

"Are you going to read me the lecture? Mustn't speak ill, that sort of

stuff? If she hadn't been Mary's girl I tell you what, I would have

said "bloody good riddance". I would have said .. ."

"Best you don't, Charles. Not many medals to be won there. I think we

all know what sort of young person was Dorrie. Thank you .. ."

Charles Braddock passed the refilled plastic cup. It was always

plastic cups that were used in the 'snug', no washing up afterwards,

and a bin bag in the corner for the throwaways. He valued Arnold.

He

thought of him as sensible and logical and calm. Probably, he used

Arnold. Senior partner in the practice, major architectural

projects,

country-hopping for business, taking home before tax a minimum of

300,000 a year, he found from Arnold a patience and an understanding.

14

God, the man knew just about every secret in the life of Charles

Braddock and his second wife, Mary .. . But then Arnold was good with

secrets.

And it was secrets that paid him a salary considerably less than

fifteen per cent of Charles's gross. They talked about Charles's

work,

interminably, and about Charles's domestic scene, often. Charles

knew

the exact nature of Arnold's job, and it was off limits and his family

was not mentioned. They stood in the front of the hut, huddled in

their overcoats straight from the day's work in London and the 6.17

train from the capital. Charles knew that Arnold was always on the

6.17 down to the Surrey and Sussex border village, and he had made

the

big effort to be on the same train and home early.

"Is there anything I can do, or say?"

"She doesn't know how Dorrie died, in the middle of a war zone. She doesn't know what the wretched girl was doing there, in a village

that

was fought through. She doesn't know what happened. She says that

she's the right to know .. . You know Mary, it'll nag and fret and

worry with her. The bitch, living, damn near ruined our marriage,

now

the bitch, dead .. ."

"I'd like to speak to Mary."

The cups were finished, thrown into the plastic bag. The Scotch was

placed back in the cabinet. The light was switched off and the door

of

the hut slammed and locked. They hurried in the dark along the path

of

slab paving that wound around the azaleas and rhododendrons and under

the wooden frame and past the vegetable garden wall. Charles was

a big

man, sixteen stones, and his neighbour was slighter and barely filled

out his high-street coat. They ran as best they could through the

rain

and towards the kitchen door. They came to the long thrown light

from

the kitchen window.

His wife was sitting at the wide refectory table in front of the Aga

15

cooker.

Charles Braddock cursed. "The bloody girl, dead, and hurting worse

..

."

His wife had her head in her hands.

"She's the right to know," Arnold said quietly. "I promise that I'll do what I can."

His wife shook in her sobbing.

The journey had taken all of the day and all of the night.

It had taken all of the day because the tyres of the car had been

bald

and the front left had punctured on the road between Belgrade and

Bijeljina, and it had been at pistol point that they had persuaded

the

owner of the garage in Bijeljina to replace it. And the rear left

had

gone between Derventa and Miskovci which was a bad place and close

to

the front line, and not even a pistol had won a replacement tyre from

the garage in Miskovci because there were none, and they had had to

wait while the puncture slash was repaired.

It had taken all of the night because, after the punctures, in

darkness, the car had run out of gasoline on the road between Banja

Luka and Prijedor, under the Losina mountain of the Kozara range,

and

the youngest of them had walked to Prijedor to the barracks, and taken

four hours for it. No tyres and a shortage of gasoline, the bastard

sanctions, and dawn before the car had reached the bridge over the

Una

river which was the crossing point from Bosnia, and they had reached

Dvor.

Always the rain. The whole of the journey in rain, and uncomfortable

in the Mercedes of the man from Knin because there were three of them

on the bench seat in the front and four of them crammed onto the back

seat.

No break in the rain, but the bitter angry mood of Milan Stankovic

had

16

lessened as they approached Glina. Coming closer to home, coming

closer to the fields, farms, villages, woods, hills that were his

place. The policeman was to be dropped at Glina, he would be next

after the policeman, and then the car would head on south for Knin.

And

when he had been let off then, see if he cared, they could have four

punctures, and they could have a dry tank, and they could walk ten

kilometres for new tyres and new gasoline .. . The policeman insisted

they stopped, all of them, in Glina. They banged up the cafe on the

main street, by the bridge, and they hit the brandy. He was close

to

home, and the brandy was good. Banter and laughter in the car and

talk

of the meeting in Belgrade, and the hotel into which they had been

put,

and the fine sheets in the hotel, and the bar in which nothing was

paid. And good speeches for them in Belgrade, and the hall full for

each of the five days. Speeches of the Serb nation, and the Serb

victory, and the Serb future, and nothing about the bastard sanctions

and no tyres to be had and no gasoline .. . They took the Bovic road

beyond Glina and they came into the village that was his home and

his

place. He wanted the big Mercedes to be seen in Salika, and he wanted

to be seen with the big men from Knin. He took his time at the door

of

the Mercedes, punching shoulders through the opened window and

slapping

cheeks and clasping hands. There would be enough in Salika who would

see that Milan Stankovic was the friend of the big men from the

government in Knin, and those that did not see it would be told. He

walked home. He wore his suit, his best suit that was usual for

weddings in the village, the suit that had been right for the speeches

in Belgrade, and he carried a small suitcase and slung on his shoulder

was his AK47 assault rifle with the metal stock folded back. The

brandy was in him and he smiled and waved and called out his greeting

to those who were already out in the street of Salika, his home, and

it

puzzled him, through the alcohol, that none came forward to him.

When

he was near to the river, when he turned into the narrow lane beside

the wire farm fencing that led to his home, he called the name of

his

son and smiled. The boy was running to him. Heh, the little ape,

and

not out of his pyjamas, barefoot and running in the mud of the lane.

The boy, his boy, Marko, six years old, was running to him and jumping

17

at him. He dropped his small case and he held the boy and hugged

him,

and the boy was chirping excitement, and the head of his boy was

against the barrel of the AK47. He carried his Marko the last metres