THE HEART OF DANGER (36 page)

appearing, gathering strength. The words were of anguish. He saw

the

earth wall around the pit, it was what he had seen from the tree line

in the dusk. Going closer, going in stealth. He saw the shape of

the

man who knelt in the pit. Penn looked at the grave, at the burial

place of Dorrie Mowat, and a man knelt in the pit in prayer. An old

man spoke the prayer of a personal agony, and knelt in the pit with

his

head hung. Going closer, drawn forward, he could think of no threat

that would come from an old man, in prayer, kneeling in the pit where

Dorrie Mowat had been buried. Going closer, as to the sett of the

old

badger sow. Crossing the ground where she had been stabbed,

bludgeoned, shot. Going covert, as to the culvert drain where Amanda

Fawcett hid. Stepping silent in the loose slither of the mud over

which had been dragged the joined bodies of her lover and Dorrie

Mowat.

Drawn forward .. . It was luck. His father said that men who got

lucky, most times, deserved their luck. He came at the old man from

behind. He came in a sharp movement, across the small torch beam,

threw an instant shadow, and was over him, and the strength of Perm's

hand was across the old man's mouth. If he prayed at the grave he

could be no threat, if he was no threat then he could be a friend,

and

Penn needed some luck. Into the blinking, staring eyes. Did he

speak

English? The head nodding. Would he shout out? The head shaking

.. .

Penn needed some luck. He took his hand from the old man's mouth,

and

he came around the old man and he saw the tremble in the old man's

body, and he thought of what the fear had done to Amanda Fawcett.

He

took the old man's thin hands in his own and he held them as he had

held his grandfather's hands on the night before death. He squatted

in

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the mud in front of the old man and the small beam of the torch was

beside him. The old man wore a suit and a tie knotted slimly at the

collar of a white shin, and to the thighs the suit trousers were soaked

wet, "Who are you?" "My name is Penn .. ." "Why do you come here to a

place of evil?" "I come to find the truth of the death of Dorrie Mowat

.. ." The old man took back his hands and he reached with his fingers for Penn's face. '.. . I come to find how she died, and to find

who

was responsible .. ." The fingers brushed in gentleness on the

harshness of Penn's jaw and followed the contours of his nose and

his

mouth, as if to be certain that he had not discovered fantasy. '..

.

I come to find the eyewitness, if she is alive, the woman who is called

Katica Dubelj." The old man switched off the torch. He took the

sleeve of Penn's coat, and they stumbled together out of the shallow

pit. Getting closer to the tart mischief of Dorrie Mowat, edging

nearer

to her .. . The old man led Perm away across the wetness of the field.

All together, huddled in darkness, Branko and Stevo and Milo had taken

a position in a ruin that was across the square from the church. They

shivered and chewed on cubes of cheese and had a small corked bottle

of

their own home brew. Nothing, not a cat, not a man, no one could

move

through the village without passing them. Across the stream, the

big

clock in the tower of the church at Salika beat out the chimes of

midnight. The Headmaster wheezed as he climbed the track. "I am

the

Headmaster of the school .. ." Penn wished he would shut his face.

"I

am the Headmaster, but I am now rejected because I have spoken out

against the shame of our people .. ." They made enough noise going up

the track, without adding to the noise with talk. "I should now have been the mayor of the village, but ignorance rules and savagery ..

."

Penn thought that Ham would have punched the old man, the Headmaster,

until he stopped his talk. "When we had only one school, before I

was

Headmaster, the children from Rosenovici came to our school in

Salika,

and Katica Dubelj was one of the women who gave the children lunch.

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Because I know her, I have a responsibility for her .. ." Penn had been led, at a brisk pace, into the woods at the top of the field.

The

tight grasp, sharp fingers, all the time held at the sleeve of his

fatigue coat. He could not see ahead of him, beyond the immediate

drooped shoulders of the Headmaster, and the lowest branches whipped

off the Headmaster and into his face and across his body. He guessed

the path that wound up through the wood was the secret of the

Headmaster and the lowest branches that cut at his face and snapped

back at his body told Penn that the path was rarely used. It was

a

good way to go, and between the brisk pace of the climb there were

rest

halts when the Headmaster gasped for breath and his lowered shoulders

shuddered from the exertion, and Penn heard the chime of the far-away

church for the half-hour and then for the hour. Once there was a

cacophony of noise rushing away from them, the stampeding flight of

a

wild pig or of a grown deer. "We lived together, in the old days,

we

had our friendships across the prejudice of birth, until the madness

came. The madness has destroyed what was a fine community,

destroyed,

because Rosenovici is across the stream from us but always with us.

We

cannot shut away the sight of Rosenovici. We look at what we have

done, every hour of daylight we see what we have done. The heart

has

been torn from us. I help you, Penn, because you have the power to

hurt the madness .. ." It was the smell that first caught Penn. He was wondering who would believe him, Mary Braddock or Basil at Alpha

Security or Arnold Browne, and the smell was of stale excreta. He

was

wondering whether any of them, safe at home and deep in their beds,

would believe that he had trekked behind the lines, gone there because

he had taken the money, and the smell was of unwashed filth. He was

wondering whether Jane would believe him if he shared it, whether

she

would back away from him and hold little Tom clear of him, and the

smell was of lingering dirt. He was wondering if it mattered,

whether

anyone believed him .. . What mattered to him was truth, and the truth

was Dorrie Mowat's smiling cheek, and he had never before searched

after truth. It was in his mind to think about those who rejected

the

truth. They were in their beds and in their chairs in front of the

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droning televisions and in their bars with their elbows slouched on

the

counter, and they were bored with the truth. They were in the other

maisonettes of the Cedars, and in the roads of Raynes Park, and in

the

pubs, and they were hurrying with their bags of washing to the

launderette before it closed, and they were the late workers in the

offices of Five, and they turned their fucking backs on the truth.

They

were 900 miles from him, and they had not the space in their hearts

to

yearn to find truth. Bloody good, old chummies, wash your hands of

it,

scrub them with soap, old girls. Lucky old you, old chummies and

old

girls, because the truth is boring .. . The torch beam now shone ahead,

and the Headmaster mouthed small cries, as if warning of their

approach. Penn thought, from what the torch beam showed, that in

daylight he would have walked right past the mouth of the cave, but

he

would not have walked right past the smell.

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

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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.

Twelve.

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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

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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