Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

"Yes, Mr. Browne."

"You don't patronize by thinking and considering, you bloody well get on with it."

"Yes, Mr. Browne. Thank you, Mr. Browne."

He slapped down the telephone. Yes, rare for him to lose his temper, and he felt no better for it. His anger was because of his memory of Dorrie Mowat, and God alone knew what a pain the child had been…

He had left home early.

He had left home while Jane was still feeding Tom. He had called once from the front door, and she must have been distracted because she hadn't called back to him from upstairs. She was too damned often distracted.

He had driven down through the countryside to the Surrey/ Sussex border.

Penn was thirty-five minutes early for his appointment at the Manor House.

He parked up the Sierra in the space beside the shop. There were old half-casks outside the shop filled with bright pansies, and there was a notice congratulating the community on a runners-up prize in the Tidy Village competition. Bill Penn and Jane and baby Tom, in the maisonette, lived in Raynes Park, near the railway station, and there were no Tidy Village competitions where he lived. Time to kill, and he went walking. Away from the Manor House, away from the shop, past the village cricket pitch where the outfield grass was wet and the square was thick with worm casts, towards the church. Below the church was the graveyard. He saw her in the graveyard. Penn felt a shiver. She was sitting on the grass and her weight was taken by an arm braced to the ground. She was beside the heaped earth on which was the bright carpet of flowers. Her head was ducked and her lips might have moved, as if in quiet conversation, and the two dogs were close to her. The two dogs, cream-white retrievers, were on their sides and chewing at each other's ears and pawing each other's faces. She wore old jeans and a baggy sweater and sat on her anorak; he wondered if Mary Brad-dock would have gone home and changed and presented the controlled appearance to him if he had arrived at the time given him. He went through the church gate and his heels crunched the gravel path. Because she had still not seen him, he paused for a moment to check that his tie was straight, to check there was no dandruff on his blazer, to check that his shoes had not been scuffed. When he came up off the path and onto the grass, the dogs were alerted. They bounded away from her, and from the grave, and their leads trailed crazily behind them, and their hackles were up. He knew the basics of dogs; Penn stood still and talked gently to them as they circled him, and he kept his hands still. She looked up at him, seemed to mutter something to the flowers, then pushed herself up. He knew what he would say, and he had rehearsed it in the car, just as he had rehearsed it in bed while Jane had slept beside him… "I said, Mrs. Brad-dock, that I would think on the assignment, that I would consider it. I am a free agent, Mrs. Braddock, I am not owned by anyone, most certainly not by the Security Service who sacked me, most definitely not by Arnold bloody Browne who did not stand in my corner. What I do not need, Mrs. Braddock, is you ringing Arnold bloody Browne, so that I get a quite unwarranted bollock-ing down the phone, when I am thinking and considering taking an assignment…" It was the same as when he had spied on her in the waiting room of Alpha Security. She shed her sadness, summoned up her composure. What he had rehearsed was gone from his mind. "Good morning, Mrs. Braddock." "Thank you for coming, Mr. Penn." She walked well, tall, out of the churchyard, and he followed a half-pace behind her. The dogs looked back at the grave and the flowers, whined once together, then trailed after her. It didn't seem to matter that he had left his car beside the shop. She led him back through the village. She walked him up the wide tarmacadam drive of the Manor House. The climbing roses on the brickwork were drooped dead, and the honeysuckle was ragged, not yet in leaf. The sort of house that was photographed, For Sale, in the magazines left in his dentist's reception. She took him into the hall, and there was furniture that he would have noticed through the windows of showrooms when he was doing central London surveillance. She did not tell him where she was taking him. Up the stairs, wide, polished oak. Along a corridor, dark and panelled. Through a small door. A bright and airy room. A child's room. A neat and cleaned child's room. She waved him to a chair, and he carefully moved the soft bears and made himself the space to sit. She was on the bed. Bill Penn had been brought to the shrine… She said briskly, "My daughter, Dorothy, was a horrid young woman. She could be quite foul, and enjoy it. My husband, her stepfather, he says she was "rubbish", he's usually right about things. I am a spoiled woman, Mr. Penn, I have everything that I could possibly want, except a loving daughter. She was a messer, a waster, and costly. I think she took a pleasure in hurting me… and, Mr. Penn, she was my daughter… and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot… and, Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty shown to my Dorrie. Do I carry you with me, Mr. Penn?" He nodded. "We'll go down to the kitchen, Mr. Penn, I'll make us some coffee… I called her "horrid", and when we have some coffee I'll give you examples I don't believe in putting dirt under stones, Mr. Penn… By the by, this isn't the room she left when she went away. I had it redecorated. I made the room the way it should have been. The room is a fraud. New curtains, new duvet, new carpet. I went out and bought new books and new toys. A stupid woman trying to believe she could start again… We'd taken her up to London and put her on a plane to Brisbane. The last we saw of her was her going through the departure lounge, and she didn't even bother to look back and wave, and we were so damned relieved to see her gone that when we were back here, home, my husband split open a bottle of champagne. Am I boring you, Mr. Penn? The morning after she'd gone I rang the decorators. I come in here each morning, Mr. Penn, while my husband is dressing, and I cry. Do you know anything about Yugoslavia, Mr. Penn?" He shook his head. "Somebody else's problem, isn't it? Somebody else's war, correct? My trouble is that "somebody else" is me

… I didn't even know she was there, I thought she was still in Australia… Will you go there, please, Mr. Penn?" "If we sort out my fee, my expenses, yes, I think I would consider it." It was boorish of him. "You were in the Security Service, that's correct, isn't it?" He said, sharply, "That's not an area I can discuss." She looked at him, direct. "I just wondered why you left. If I'm to employ you… I just wondered why an officer of the Security Service ended up where you've ended." "Wonder away, but it's not your business." Not her business… Not anyone's business but his and Jane's. His and Jane's business, and all the bastards that he had looked to for support. No, there hadn't been written commendations that would lie in his personal file. Yes, there had been congratulations, back-slapping, snake words, but nothing to lie in his file. He had gone to his team leader, to his section leader, and to his branch leader, all graduates. He had requested their support for his application to be accepted into the inner core of the Service, General Intelligence Group… and he had gone to Gary Brennard in Personnel. It was not her business… In the new-style Service the men of the Transit van teams were dinosaur history. The new style was squatting in front of a computer screen. The Middle East squad was being wound up. The trades union squad was being cut back. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament squad was being phased out. The future, without a degree, was being stuck, tied, trapped in front of a computer screen with the other middle-aged, passed-over no-hopers. The future was scanning the surveillance photographs from the hidden cameras in railway stations and shopping precincts and over busy pavements. The future was searching for men with scarves across their faces, women with their coat collars turned up, carrying bags and dropping them into rubbish bins, to hurry away before the bloody Semtex detonated… It was not her business that he had tried for Belfast, not told Jane, and been rejected, told it wasn't for 'marrieds', not at his level. Dougal Gray, best mate, divorced, had won the Belfast appointment… Not her business that he had believed in his work, reckoned he protected his society, taken a pleasure that the great bloody ignorant unwashed snored in their beds at night, safe, because he sat in the damn Transit van with a piss bottle for company and a Leica… Not her business that in the last two years there had been bloody kids, graduates, set in charge of him and lecturing him on procedures, and running up the bloody ladder that was denied him… Not her business. He felt no warmth towards her, no gentleness. Another rich woman at war with another rich child… But there was just a flicker, in her weakness. Just a moment, in her pleading… His mother and father lived in a tied cottage, his father was a farm labourer who most days drove a tractor, his mother went out most mornings and dusted and cleaned in the big house on the estate. He hadn't much time for the rich. And she took him downstairs to the kitchen and heated the old iron kettle on the Aga and made him instant coffee, and told him horror stories of the behaviour of Dorrie Mowat.