Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

He had been sat in the Sierra since before first light. He had the engine idling and the heater going and every few minutes it was necessary for him to wipe the inside of the windscreen hard, bully it, to clear the mist that hazed his view of the target house. He had parked up in a side street a full fifty yards from the main road on which the target house was one of a line of low-set terraced homes. Four hours back, when he had first parked his Sierra in the side street, he had felt a small glow of satisfaction; it was a good place to be parked because it gave him the option of going right or left up the road without the clumsiness of a three-point turn, it was the way he would have done it before the slip, slide, out of the Service. But it was different now from his Service days, and this was solo surveillance and he was working cheapskate, this was shoestring stuff. In the Service days, when he was with Section 4 of A Branch there would have been one to watch in the car and one to drive, and at the far end of the road, also tucked in at a side street, there would have been the back-up car and two more. In the bloody Service days there would have been bodies committed on the ground to cope with target surveillance, those who would stay with the cars and those who could duck out and dive for the Underground if that was how the target chose to move… But there was no point bitching, nothing gained from moaning. Dreaming of the Service days was crap and pointless. He was on his own and just bloody lucky to have found a parking space off the double yellows in the side street, and he would be going well if the target came out of the target house and used a car, and he would be going bad if the target came out from the target house and ignored the target car and walked four hundred yards right to the Piccadilly line Underground or two hundred yards left to the Central line. The big decision for Penn: to have another cigarette or to unwrap another peppermint. There was a cigarette packet's cellophane on the carpet by his feet, and silver paper from the peppermint tube. He sat in the passenger seat of the Sierra, pondered, made up his mind, and lit another cigarette. He sat in the passenger seat because that was the drill, because then the locals would imagine that he was waiting for the driver and be less suspicious of a stranger in their street. What they had said on the training course, before he had gone to Section 4 of A Branch, the watchers, was that personnel should be 'nondescript'. A good laugh that had raised and Penn had the starter to win the bonus because he was reckoned good and proper 'nondescript', like it was going out of fashion. He was the man who did not stand out. Penn was the guy in the crowd who made up the numbers and was not noticed. Funny old business, the chemistry of charisma… at the first course he had actually been called out of the crowd by the instructor and held up, grinning and sheepish, as the example of what a watcher should be like. Penn was ordinary. He was average height, average build, naturally wore average clothes. His hair was average brown, not dark and not light, and average length, not long and not short. His walking stride was average, not clipped and mincing, not busy and athletic. His accent was average, not smart and privileged, not lazy and careless with the consonants. Penn was the sort of man, damn it, who was accepted because he made few ripples… and wanting to make waves, wanting to be recognized, was what had pitched him out of the Service. Dragging on the cigarette… The door of the target house was opening. Stubbing the cigarette into the filled ashtray… He saw the target. Coughing the spittle of the Silk Cut and remembering the woman from Section 4 of A Branch who had come to the garage they used under the railway arches in Wandsworth and slapped a No Smoking sticker on the door of the glove compartment and dared him, and bloody won… The target had turned and carefully locked the front door of the house and was walking. The target was coming towards the parked and heated-up Sierra. He made a note on the pad, time of departure, and he eased his average weight across the gear stick and the brake handle and slid in behind the wheel. Naughty little boy, the target, and not playing it straight with the lady, the client. Penn was taking 300 a day, a half to the company, for ten hours a day, cooking in his car with the Silk Cut smoke up his nose so that the lady, the client, should not be conned out of her fancy salary. It was mid-morning and the car would have stunk anyway from his socks that were damp and his trousers that were still wet from the rain when he had walked round the back of the target house to check whether there was a rear exit, and a hell of a good thing that there wasn't because this was solo surveillance. The target was the fourth male out of the house that morning. The target had followed a West Indian in building site overalls, and an Asian, and a student with an armful of notebooks and college books. The target wore old jeans and a loose sweater, and a baseball cap back to front, and the target came past him whistling. A miserable morning with more rain in the air did not faze him. Enjoy it, sunshine, because it won't be lasting. Bit late, sunshine, to be heading off for the office. Good and modern sense of dress in that office, sunshine. The target went on down the road, and it was kid's play because the target had no suspicion that he was watched and took no evasive precautions. The target didn't swivel, didn't cross the road fast, didn't grab a taxi, didn't dive for the Underground. Penn followed him down the road, crawling the car, watched him cross at the lights, and it was pretty obvious where he was heading on a Thursday morning. Too easy for a man trained in surveillance to the standards of Section 4 of A Branch. The target was a Turkish Cypriot, tall and good-looking and with a rakish step, and hadn't a job and was living in bed sit land, and the gravy time was just about up. The target had milked a good number until the client had walked into Alpha Security, SW19, and been allocated the new boy on the staff. The client was a plain woman, thirty-six years old, with a high-quality brain and a low threshold of loneliness, who earned a salary of 60,000 plus a year by flipping gilts and bonds in an investment team. The client had fallen hard for the target and now wanted to know whether the love of her life was all he cracked himself up to be. It was bad luck for the client that she had chosen the target to fall for because sure as hell the target was living a little lie and the claimed job in property development was economical, skinflint, with the truth.

Bad luck, Miss Client.

He parked up.

Tough shit, Mr. Target.

He locked his Sierra.

Penn sauntered along the pavement to the Department of Social Security office. He went inside and found a place on the bench near the door and he watched the slow shuffling queue that was edging towards the counter where a bleak-faced girl stamped the books and doled out the money. He watched the target going forward in the queue. He lit a cigarette and his hand shook as he held the flaming match. It was where Penn had so nearly been. If it had not been for Alpha Security and the partners, three tired guys looking for a fresh pair of legs to take on the dross of the donkey trade, then Penn might just have been in that queue, going forward slowly. He sat it out, and he went through two more cigarettes. He waited until the target had reached the security screen at the counter and given the sour face a winning smile and won something back from her, and she had pushed the money through the hatch to him. The target scooped the money and slid it into a thin wallet. The target was whistling again when he left the DSS office.

Penn made his way back to the Sierra.

In his mind, as he drove south across London, he mapped out the report that he would make for the client.