Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

He saw the kind care of Ulrike, different to the stand-off mischief love of Dorrie. Perhaps it was 'old home comfort', perhaps it promised 'a bit of a cuddle'. Probably it was getting 'well pissed'.. . He might ring Jane in the morning, and he might not. He might get a plane in the morning, and he might wait until the afternoon… The city moved noisily below the window of the hotel room. It would be a long time, Penn thought, before he heard again a silence like that of Rosenovici village, and the lane past Katica Dubelj's house to the field, and the grave pit in the field.

"Don't come back empty, squire."

Penn let himself out of the room. He walked down the corridor towards the wide central staircase, and the sharpness of the pain in his body was replaced by a stiff ache that was everywhere. There was a television crew in the lobby with their boxes around them and their light meters and clipboards and their self-importance and they noticed him as he came down the stairs, and the plasters and the cuts and the bruises and the grazes seemed to amuse them.

He asked for a bottle of Scotch at the reception, soonest, charged to his room, and he gave the woman on reception the two sheets of paper for the fax.

"Yes, send it now, please…"

"Good God, didn't realize it was so late…" Henry Carter had a watch on his wrist and there was the big digit clock on the wall, and it was many hours since he had looked at either. Past midnight, and time did not seem any more to matter that much, not now that he had reached the chronological moment when the fax sheets assumed relevance. The supervisor, apologetic, as if it were an intrusion to disturb him, handed him a bacon sandwich. '… That's really too kind, that's very considerate. The time just seems to have run away with me." As it had… The dragon of the day shift would not have brought him a bacon sandwich, not if he had been faint with hunger, and the dragon would most certainly not have permitted the transistor radio that played jazz piano. Rather a pleasant atmosphere, if he had not had the photocopies of the fax sheets in front of him… He pushed them aside so that the diced onion filling would not fall on them. It was as if they tolerated him as a harmless fool, without snap or bite, but the old desk warrior had the hard core of experience that helped him to understand only too well the compulsion that pushed men forward. One memory hurt him the worst. Mattie Furniss, running a section, revered and respected, had been held in a torture cell in the Iranian town of Tabriz and had broken out. Mattie Furniss, given up for lost, had walked alone to the mountains on the Turkish border. Proud Mattie Furniss had declined to admit that the pain of torture had broken him… They'd sent for Carter, summoned the weasel. Carter, the weasel, had destroyed good old Mattie Furniss and won from him the truth. Of course there were bloody casualties in this life.. . Mattie Furniss, with the shotgun barrel in his mouth and his toe on the trigger, was a casualty. He could see as yesterday the church, hear as yesterday the hymns, recall as yesterday the shame as he had sat far from the altar and the widow with her daughters. The file on the desk in front of him, taking on an ordered shape, scratched the memories.

"Totally illegal, cooking on the premises. We've had to invest in a very powerful deodorant spray, the sort for the most sweaty armpits

… Are you going through the night, Mr. Carter?"

"Looks like it. I'm hoping to get away at lunch time, mid-Wales. To tell you the truth, this isn't the sort of file that I'd want to leave over until next month…"

"Interesting one?"

He spoke through a mouthful of the bacon sandwich, so good, plenty of fat left on the bacon. "Not just interesting, rather tragic, and it's a text book on interference, what happens when you shove your nose in without thinking through the end game… Sorry, that's rather a heavy speech… If you'll excuse me… Oh, and thank you so much for the sustenance."

The supervisor of the night shift drifted away and his feet glided and his hips swayed with the motion of the jazz beat. There were many triggers to what had happened, to the tragedy, but he thought the two sheets of the photocopied fax message were at the heart of the matter. The music was gentle, lulling him, but he was too old a dog to be seduced by atmosphere. Gentle music did not ameliorate a barbarity. The two sheets of paper sent from the hotel in Zagreb would have been a sledgehammer knocking down the doors of Mary Braddock's home. He returned to them, drew the blood from them…

REPORT ON THE DEATH OF DOROTHY MOW AT (MISS) by William Penn Alpha Security Ltd

(Prelim, report interviews)

GOVT. CROATIA WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATOR: Is preparing evidence for future use in war crimes prosecution. No interest shown in this particular case of killing of Dorothy Mowat (DM), a foreigner.

PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY, UCLA: Supervised exhumation of DM. Killed with Soviet-made Makharov pistol. "A fine young woman because she did not have to be there, because she stayed with the wounded' from the battle for Rosenovici tho' she herself was not a casualty. Could have made her own escape. At the end DM was trying to shield one young wounded fighter from 'the knives and the blows and from the gunshot'.

EYEWITNESS I/MARIA…

And the sledgehammer would have brought a cold wind into Mary Braddock's home. "They get on wonderfully, but then Jocasta's such a caring girl, and Tarquin's so easy. It's such a relief…" It was prawns and crab with cubes of turbot, done in a cheesy sort of sauce, for the first course. Guests didn't talk, not these recession-ridden days, about the value of their houses, nor about the cost of the school fees, nor about their Jules Verne holidays. Houses were repossessed, children had to be withdrawn from schools, holidays for some were impossible. Safe talk, talk that would not, in ignorance, wound, was about how first-marriage children tolerated second-marriage children. Charles always poured the neighbours fierce gins before bringing them into the dining room, he was good at giving the conversation a hefty kick-start, and children were safe talk. "I don't know how I'd do without Emily, she wants to be a nanny, poor sweetheart. She's getting the training with Ben, don't know how I'd do without her." The Belgians hadn't finished eating. Mary wondered if they slept together, the big Belgian with the stomach and the little Belgian with the shaved head. They hadn't finished and they hadn't said much, as if the offspring melding of first- and second-marriage children was low down on their agenda. Well, it would be, wouldn't it, if they slept together… It was prattle conversation, washing over her, and when the bloody Belgians had finished she could get back to her kitchen and heave the bloody lamb out of the Aga oven. "Tanya's become really excellent at soccer, that's because Jake is so marvelous with her. But I do worry for Jake. Jake gets more soccer with Tanya than with his father. His father's quite hopeless…" Mary stood. If the bloody Belgians didn't like her crab and prawns and turbot, in a cheesy sort of sauce, then they could bloody go without. One perfunctory "Can I lend a fist, Mary?" from Giles, the bankruptcy accountant, and a curt shake of her head. She put the bowls on the tray. "We were allowed to have Jocasta for Christmas, but only after a solicitor's letter… lovely, darling, quite delicious… she's so much happier with us…" She carried the tray out of the dining room. She left the door ajar. If the Manor House had not been listed, Grade 2, then they'd have been able to knock a hatch through from the kitchen, but Charles had said that a hatch knocked through would be an act of heritage vandalism. She toed open the door of the kitchen and clattered the tray down onto the table. She was by the Aga. She was away from them, and they could talk now freely, ditch the safe talk. She heard them. "Do you think she's getting over it, Charles?… God, what a trial for you both, Charles… She put you both through a hell of a hoop, Charles, but Mary particularly… I think you showed the patience of saints… Don't take me wrong, Charles, but I think Dorothy was quite wicked, and God knows where that came from.. . Time's a great healer, Charles, like an open window with a smell, time will make her forget…" Mary heard their voices, and she heard the low bleeping from her den room, not much more than a broom cupboard, off the kitchen. She had the lamb in the basting dish out of the Aga oven and onto the table. She was tipping her vegetables, potatoes and carrots and leeks, everything that was boring, into the serving dishes. If the bloody Belgians hadn't taken so long then the cutlets wouldn't have dried out. She tilted her head, and she could see over the back of the settee in her den room to the fax machine on the table beside the television, and she saw the paper spilling out. And Judy with her tail, silly wagging tail, had broken the plastic frame that caught the completed faxed messages, and Liz would chew anything that was paper or cardboard, and Judy and Liz were craning from their baskets on either side of the Aga, alerted by the working sounds of the machine. She left the vegetables and the lamb cutlets and the gravy and the jelly, she strode off into her den room on her mission of protection for the fax message. She picked the first sheet off the floor, and the second sheet was rolling. She read the address of the headed notepaper, and the title of the message, and the name of the sender. She sat on her sofa, and the dogs came against her legs, and she read. She heard the voices through the opened door of the kitchen, across the hall, through the opened door of the dining room. '… So much love for such an undeserving child… I think she's coming to terms with it, the reality that Dorothy was just a shameful little minx… Such a dreadful place she went to, I won't read about in the newspapers, I switch the telly off when it's Sarajevo. She's got to wash it out of her mind. It's not our responsibility if they want to behave like animals there… I think she's on the mend… You should take her away, Charles, about as far away as you can go, where that dreadful girl can be forgotten…" She read what she had demanded to know… EYEWITNESS 1/MARIA: Refugee from Rosenovici. DM had come to the village with a Croat/Australian boy who joined village defence force, was wounded. DM carried wounded back from front line to the cellar. There when village surrendered. "She was an angel in her prettiness, an angel in her courage." EYEWITNESS 2/ALIJA: Muslim Bosnian refugee, trapped in Rosenovici. DM organized collection, under fire, of dressings for wounded. After surrender DM was brought with wounded from cellar, beaten by Serb militia, but refused to be separated from the wounded. "She was so brave… she was an angel." EYEWITNESS 3/SYLVIA: Refugee from Rosenovici. During the battle DM, alone, nursed the wounded. After the surrender, the Serbs attempted to separate DM from wounded, she fought them. The wounded were taken down a lane, DM helped carry two of them, DM was beaten. "The young woman was an angel." CROATIAN DEFENCE FORCE LIAISON OFFICER (name withheld): Rosenovici is now a 'dead' village, destroyed so that its inhabitants have nothing, ever, to return to, even the cemetery bulldozed. Names MS (see below) as local militia commander, who would believe himself safe from accountability for death of DM and wounded. SIDNEY E. HAMILTON: Mercenary, serving with Croat Defence Force, ex-3 Para, provided necessary info, weapons and general material for my entry to Sector North, Rosenovici area. BENJAMIN (BENNY) STEIN: Crown Agent lorry driver, Brit aid convoy, rescued me (life threatened situation) from Sector North at considerable risk to himself, his colleagues and the future shipment of aid through Serb-occupied territory.