THE HEART OF DANGER (50 page)

He should have been working to a system, should have cleared the

bathroom first, then been to the wardrobe and had his shoes off the

floor and his shirts and underwear and socks out of the drawers and

his

jackets and slacks off the hangers, and then he should have been

gathering up everything that belonged to him from the shelf below

the

mirror including the two typed sheets that had gone for the fax

transmission. But there was no system, the pain dictated that there

was no order in his packing. Penn blundered around, collecting,

forgetting, carrying, cursing the aftermath of the alcohol. He

couldn't hold his bloody concentration, not at all. He had the case

on

the bed, and now he was emptying the case because the shoes and the

plastic bag for his toothpaste and his shaving cream and razors were

out of place, should always be shoes at the bottom and washing gear,

and then the dirty clothes and then the clean clothes and then the

folded trousers and then the jackets, and the whole bloody lot were

out

of order .. . Ulrike slept hard as he skirted the bed, and Ham slept

deep as he stepped over his legs and that horrible bloody rifle,

because both would have been awake through the night, watching for

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him.

They were a holiday friendship, he knew, and they would be gone,

belted

out, when the big bird lifted off the tarmac at Zagreb airport. Ships

that pass in the night, that sort of crap. They slept now because

they

had stayed awake through the night and watched his own sleep, and

the

thought of it, through the pain and the confusion of packing out of

order, made Penn feel humility. He wouldn't see her again, nor would

he chase after Ham's woman who had done a runner with her kiddie.

But

they had watched over him while he slept, a lonely woman and a small

scumbag frightened because he hadn't a friend. He might tell Mary

Braddock about them, because they were each in their way a part of

his

finding Dorrie's truth. Or then he might not get to see Mary

Braddock.

When he hadn't the pain in his head he could work it through whether

he would see Mary Braddock, or whether it would just be the fuller

report in a week's time and the full invoice of his charges, sent

in

the post by Recorded Delivery .. .

He had never been drunk incapable when he was a teenager living at

home

in the tied cottage, because that was the example of his mother and

father, his mother taking only a sherry at Christmas and his father

talking of it like it was a devil. He had been drunk incapable once

when a clerk at the Home Office, and taken out to a party in the

Catford flat of another clerk, and thinking afterwards that it might

just have been because he was so bloody boring that they had spiked

the

drinks and had good sport out of him reeling and crashing and throwing

up in the street; and ashamed. He had been drunk incapable once when

with Five, and they had worked seven weeks on a surveillance before

showing out on a shift change into the derelict van with the flat

tyre

that was parked up opposite the safe house, and the Irish target gone

and lost, and the guys going down to the pub when the operation had

been called off with heavy recrimination and an assistant deputy

director general level inquest, and sleeping on the floor of the taxi

home; and ashamed.

Now, he had no sense of achievement. There was no elation. It was

just a report that he had written, as he had written previous reports

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that cut into the lives of the dead and the vanished and the criminal,

as he would write further reports. He wanted out and he wanted home,

and he wanted to sleep out of his system too much goddamn Scotch,

and

he wanted the bastard place behind him, and the fear, the shit, the

pain. It was only a report .. . And the one chance was gone.

He had the shoes back at the bottom of the case, and the washing gear

with them, and the underpants and the socks into the space between

the

shoes and the washing bag, and the dirtied clothes and the ones that

he

hadn't used. He was starting to fold the slacks and the jackets.

The

fatigues that he had worn into Sector North were on the floor near

to

where Ham lay stretched out, holding the bloody rifle like it was

a

baby's toy, and the fatigues weren't going with him, nor the boots

that

were under them, and he heard a brisk knock at the door.

Penn went round the bed and he stepped over Ham's legs.

The knock was repeated, impatiently. He opened the door of the hotel

room.

Penn rocked.

She peered into the gloom. Late morning, closing on midday, and the

curtains of the room were not drawn back. Mary peered past the

shadow-dark figure that rocked in front of her. Yes, she had

expected

surprise, but the man could hardly stand, and the light from behind

her

in the corridor seemed to dazzle his eyes and he could not focus on

her. She came into the room and with her heel she nudged the door

back

shut behind her. Only the light now from the bathroom, and the

shadow-dark figure was backing away from her, away from the narrow

strip of light from the bathroom. She came past the door and into

the

room. The smell in the room was foul, quite defeating the eau de

toilette scent that she had sprayed at her throat and wrists in the

taxi from the airport. On the plane and in the taxi from the airport,

she had rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would be cool

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but

goading, and what she had rehearsed was thrown from her mind. If

she

had wanted to she could not have controlled it, the sharp spasm of

her

anger.

"Good morning, Mr. Penn .. ."

No reply from him, and he was stumbling back further from the bathroom

light as if to hide in the grey gloom of the room.

'.. . How are we, Mr. Penn?"

Just a growl of a response.

She was going forward into the centre of the room, coming closer to

the

bed that he skirted when she saw his case on the bed and the shape

of

the woman on the bed. The blouse of the woman was unbuttoned halfway

down to her navel and she could see the sexless strength of the woman's

brassiere and the white skin. "A little end-of-term party, Mr.

Penn?

Got demob happy, did we, Mr. Penn? Hit the bottle, did we, Mr.

Penn

.. . ? The bottle and a bit of skirt, Mr. Penn?" "It's not what

..

." "What I think? You wouldn't have the faintest idea what I think, Mr. Penn. If you had had an idea then you would not have ignored

my

telephone calls to this hotel. You would not have bloody well

abandoned me." "You wouldn't know .. ." "What it was like? Just a

silly woman, Mr. Penn? A silly woman incapable of understanding?

A

woman to be fobbed off with a two-page fax?" The growl spluttered

in

his throat. She saw the gleam of his teeth and his words came

haltingly. "She wasn't my daughter." "What the hell does that mean?"

"She wasn't my daughter, and if she had been my daughter then she

would

not have been bad-mouthed to every stranger I could get my claws on."

She laughed, shrill. "We make judgements now, do we, Mr. Penn? We know more than a mother does about her daughter, do we, Mr. Penn?

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Exactly what I need, wonderful .. ." And she was following him

through

the grey gloom of the room, and the woman on the bed stirred. He

said

to her, and the life had gone from his voice, and there was only a

tiredness, "If it was just anger then you wouldn't have come, if it had

just been anger then you would have stayed away. You came because

of

the guilt .. ." "Don't lecture me." "Because of the guilt, because of

the shame, because she was your daughter and you didn't know her ..

."

She was following him. She was drawn to him. Suddenly there was

a

startled grunt in the darkness ahead of her and she saw the heaped

clothes that stank and the sudden movement of the body in front of

her,

and the rifle was coming up and the muzzle caught against her stocking

at the knee.

'.. . It's fine, Ham, it's Dome's mother. It's Dorrie's mother

who's

come."

Perhaps it was the calm that had come to the voice now, perhaps it

was

the gentleness that tinged the voice. Perhaps it was the smell of

the

bodies and the damp of the clothes on the floor, perhaps it was the

rifle and the emptied bottles. Perhaps it was the woman scowling

from

the bed and the man crouched down hostile on the floor, perhaps it

was

the suitcase that was packed. Perhaps it was the guilt. She spat

it

out.

"You were going home?"

"I was hired to write a report."

"Worth two pages, was she? Two pages and that's time to come home?"

"I have written a preliminary report, I will write a fuller report

when

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I am home."

"And that is your idea of the end of it?"

"It's what I was hired to do, what I have done to the best of my

ability."

"Enough, is it, just to write a report .. . ?"

"It's what I was asked to do, hired to do."

She could not see into his face. The worst for Mary was the calmness

in his voice. And with the calmness was the gentleness. She could

remember her tears because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could

remember when she had thrown things, saucepans, books, clothes,

hurled

them because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember

Charles's accusations because of what Dorrie had done to her, and

how

she had gone sobbing up the stairs to beat her fists on the locked

door

because of what Dorrie had done to her. And the guilt roved in her

..

.

Her voice rose. "So you walk out, you walk away?"

"I don't know what else I can do."

"It was just empty words?"

"It was to write the report you requested."

"What the politicians said, what that American said, just empty ..

. ?

Fine words or empty words?"

"You wanted a report, you have a report."

She stood her height. "Was it just empty words? Didn't they talk

about a second Nuremberg, didn't they talk about war crimes'? Didn't

they talk about a new world order where the guilty would be punished,

where they'd be locked up and the key thrown away? Didn't they talk

..

. ?" The voice calm and gentle. Not the businesslike voice from

the

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graveyard in the village. Not the brusque voice from the kitchen

of

the Manor House. "It's the sort of thing people say, politicians.

It's

not to be taken seriously." "You saw the man who killed her .. ."

"I

saw him." "You found the evidence of an eyewitness .. ." "I found the

eyewitness." "You know where to go .. ." "I know where he is, and I

know where to go for the eyewitness." She could not see into his

face.

She saw the grey shadow and the dark sockets of the eyes. "Do you

think I am just a woman to be humoured? Do you think I am just a

silly

woman who is obsessional?" "I wrote my report." She said, hard,

"If

there is a will then there can be a prosecution .. . "Sources and

Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction" and "Offences Against the Person, Geneva Conventions" and "Treatment of the Wounded" and

"Conflicts not of an International Character". If there is

determination then there can be a prosecution .. ." "What do you want?" She said, brutally, "I want those empty words thrown back down

their bloody throats. I want them to choke on those empty words.

I

want that man before a court, I want to hear your evidence against

him

.. ." "What can I do?" She looked into his eyes, pitilessly. "Go back. Take him. Bring him. Bring him to where they cannot hide

behind their empty words. Go ... take .. . bring ... Or are you going to walk out on me?" He turned away from her. He was at the window.

His hands reached up to the curtains. And her voice died. The

silence

held the grey gloom of the room. Quite suddenly, the daylight was

flooding the room, and the curtains were heaved back. It was the

bruises on his face and the cuts and the scarring that she saw first.

She gazed at him, and she felt shame. There was a weal on his throat,

and on his chest deeper bruises and wider cuts and abrasions.

"I didn't know .. ."

"I will go back behind the lines and take him and bring him out. Will you please listen to me, Mrs. Braddock, will you please not

interrupt

me ... I will bring him out, but not for you. You, Mrs. Braddock,

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are

owed nothing ... I don't think listening comes easily to you, I doubt