Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

It was as if the Headmaster called, softly, to a frightened cat, or to a dog, or to a wild crow that should come for food.

The torch beam trapped the narrow mouth of a cave set behind a rockfall.

"I used to come here with food. I used to take the food from my wife's cupboard. You take food from a woman's cupboard and she notices, she questions. She said that if I took more food, for the Ustase bastards, then she would denounce me. Do you understand, Penn, that in the madness in which we live a wife can denounce her husband …? I have my own shame, because I do not bring her food any more …"

The Headmaster tugged at Penn's sleeve and dragged him, hunched low, into the mouth of the cave. He could have been sick, was swallowing back the bile, coughing, the smell was like a cloud. The torch beam played faintly around the walls of the cave where the water dribbled, glistening, then wavered on deeper into the cave.

It was not often that Penn had a big thought, not in his childhood and not with the Service and not with Alpha Security. The rag bundle was cowered in the recess of the cave. Perhaps a big thought could only come in a place such as this. It would only have been a rag bundle if there had not been the brightness of the eyes reflected back by the torch beam. Penn's big thought was that this was the one chance in his life to find truth. She was so small. She was wrapped in sacking rags… He followed the Headmaster down onto the floor of the cave, sat cross-legged.

The Headmaster talked.

Her voice cackled back.

Penn heard the clock chimes come faintly from across the distant stream.

"She saw it herself. She saw them taken past her house and into the field. They had to wait while the bulldozer dug the pit. She could see it from the window. Each of them killed one man, but she says that she saw the girl killed by Milan Stankovic… I have to go back, across the stream. What more do you want?"

Penn said, "I want her to walk me through what she saw, each place and each moment what she saw, right to the killing of Dorrie Mowat."

The Headmaster was glancing furtively at his wristwatch, shining the torch beam onto the hands. He said that he would return the next evening. Did Penn know the risk of staying? But the intoxication of the truth had caught him, and he waved his hand, dismissive, to reject the risk. The Headmaster was gone.

Truth was evidence. Evidence was the naming of Milan Stankovic.

Penn sat on the floor of the cave and could not see her, the eyewitness.

Penn woke, no dreams, deep sleep.

Could recognize nothing. Blinked to get the light into his eyes. Tried to focus. Did not know where he was… It came fast… He kicked back the blanket. He felt the damp in his hip joints and his shoulders and the ache from the rough ground, and was hell's thankful for the hotel's blanket. The smell caught at him. Penn remembered…

The sun threw a long shaft into the recess of the cave. He wondered if she had been there all night, if she had slept, if she had stayed in the crouched posture against the inner wall of the cave. The cave, big in the small light of the Headmaster's torch, seemed shrunken, little more than a cleft. He yawned, stretched. He smiled at her and won back no acceptance of his presence. He tried to smile warmth.

He looked hard at her.

There was little to see of her because there was a shawl of torn cloth across the crown of her head that covered also her ears and her throat. What he could see of the face was a mosaic of age lines, weathered and grimed. Small hands, without spare flesh, were clasped rigidly on her lap, and he saw the deep-set dirt as if they were painted with it. She wore a long dress of black cloth that shrouded her and the cloth had the stale dankness of the cave. Over her dress, open to the waist, was a big overcoat, too large for her sparrow size, and Penn thought it might have been her husband's, and there was a knotted string holding it to her waist. Her short legs were extended in front of her and her stockings, heavy grey wool, were shredded at the knee and her feet were in small-sized rubber boots that came half of the way up her shins. It seemed to Penn as if the shawl and the dress and the coat and the stockings and the rubber boots were moulded to her body… Did she have other clothes? Did she change the clothes? Did she go to a stream and strip and wash?… He was wondering how long it had been since she had changed her clothes, washed herself. In his mind he made small markers. Had she changed or washed since his little Tom had been born? Washed or changed since the acid session with Gary bloody Bren-nard (Personnel)? Changed or washed since he had last laid up rough, through a night, in the undergrowth beside the Network South-East rail track when they were watching the lock-up garage for the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening. His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to the waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself. He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed since she had come to the cave.

He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with him?

Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and make the statement?

Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?

Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman. He did not think she had the strength… They had no language that was common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow position and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall as if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the Headmaster returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him, across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there was an orange… Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with the cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held the roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further back, and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth… She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces. She could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When she had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal. He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails, black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith and fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice dribble from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted the fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened… Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of the cave. A sucked bloody root… She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he would be sick onto the floor of the cave… They would have sucked bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized fucking Europe, and now… He would have the statement when the Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness. He reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie Mowat. Penn showed the face of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held it up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the mouth had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook his head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his hand in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him to the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel door, frightened, sent away and not arguing… The Headmaster sat on the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the matter would be dealt with on his return, later