grass to find shooting cover beside the apple trees, he could see across the field, and across the narrow stream, and across more fields, to the village where his friend had lived. He could see the house in the village across the stream, and there was no roof on the house, and where the side wall of the house had collapsed he could see the bright cream and red of the wallpaper of the room that had been his friend's. Most days in summer he had waded the ford in the stream or his friend had come the same way to him, and most days in winter when the stream was high he had gone across the plank bridge or his friend had come that way to him. And now he knew that his friend was an Ustase enemy, and he knew that the parents of his friend and all in the village across the stream had planned to slit the throats of their Serb neighbours… He knew it because he had been told it by his father. He had wondered, often, if his friend would have come in the night with all the other Ustase enemies, and carried a knife, and cut his throat. It was too much of a betrayal for him to care to find another friend. Marko's game died. A car screamed down the lane towards their house. The car braked and scattered mud in front of the house, and his father was jumping from the car while it still moved and was running towards the big door. The dog was barking and running after his father and into the house. Marko came from the orchard, hurrying. He whistled for the dog to come to him. The dog had no name now, but it came to the whistle. There were five men in the car and they were crashing magazines into their weapons. The dog was his. He had saved the life of his dog. The dog had belonged to the family of his friend who was now an Ustase enemy. It had been before the battle for the village across the stream that his friend had gone with his family, all packed with cases and bedding into the Yugo car. He had watched it from behind the apple trees. He had been behind the apple trees because for a week the snipers had fired across the narrow stream, and his mother would have beaten him if she had known he was at the back of the house. They had left the dog. He had seen how the dog had run after the weighed-down Yugo car, and he had heard his friend's father curse the dog for running beside the wheels, and the dog had run after the car until they were gone from his sight. It had been a week after the battle that he had heard the dog barking in the night from beside his friend's house, and his father had said that he would go shoot the dog in the morning, and he had cried for the dog in a way that he had not cried for his friend… His father had crossed the stream and brought the dog home, and his father had said that there was no point in giving the dog a new name because it would not respond, and they could not use the old name of the dog because it was an Ustase name. He had hold of the dog's collar when his father exploded from the big door of the house. His father carried his army pack and a small radio and his rifle. There was the roar of the car leaving. Marko ran to the gate onto the lane. Up the lane, in the square of the village, he saw more cars gathered, and he heard more shouting. His mother had hold of his shoulder. He should be inside the house. He should not be out of the house. His mother told him that his father had gone to lead the search for Ustase spies, who had crossed over the Kupa river, who were in the forest and the hills above Rosenovici village. All the rest of the afternoon Marko stood at the window of his bedroom and he gazed across the narrow stream into the curtain of trees that covered the hillside. She paid the taxi off fast, thrust the note at the driver and did not wait for the change. The drizzle was back, and the wet clung to Charles's shoulder. Typical of him to wait on the pavement for her. She reeled off her excuses, the weather, late train, no taxis… She saw his expression, set hard and annoyed. 'Sorry, sorry…' He marched up the wide office steps. 'I saw your Mister Penn. I told him his figures were ludicrous
…' 'And…?' '… I told him they were extortionate.' 'And… ?' 'He said that was his rate.' 'And…?' 'He said that if I didn't like it, I could shove it up my…' 'And…?' 'He was pretty damn lucky to catch me happy. He won.' Charles Braddock grinned, sourly. 'He said that he would be leaving for Zagreb in the morning. But don't think you'll be getting anything more than a load of paper… He was pretty damn lucky.' She kissed her husband's cheek. 'Thank you. I rather liked him. What I liked about him was that he told me to mind my own business. Doesn't grovel too much, not to you, not to me…' 'Come on.' They were going to the lift. The commissionaire had the doors open for them, wore his medals proudly, and ducked his head in respect to them. Penn had told her husband that if he didn't like the terms he could shove the assignment, and he had told her to mind her own business… quite amusing. The lift doors closed. Mary said, 'My guess is he's been badly used. He's rather sweet but so naive…' 'If we could, please, just enjoy a normal evening…' It was the usual type of gathering for which Mary Braddock hiked to London, her husband's senior colleagues and the design team and the clients. She thought that her Mister Penn would not have stood a cat in hell's chance, would have been kicked away down the lift shaft if it hadn't been that the clients had put ink on the contracts that very day. She wafted through the salon, she meandered into and out of conversations. Her mind was away, away with the man who would be travelling to Zagreb, away with her daughter who was dead, buried, gone… A thin little weed of a man approached, her husband's financial controller, and he had caught her. 'Sincerest condolences, dear Mary, such a dreadful time for you…' Sincerity, he wouldn't know what the word meant. 'Heartfelt apologies, Mary, that I couldn't make the funeral, just not enough hours in the day…' No, he wouldn't have taken time off for a funeral from the small type of a contract. 'Still, she was so difficult, wasn't she? We have to hope, at last, that she lies in peace. Your Dorothy, she was such a trial to you.' She did it expertly, and fast. She tipped her Cointreau and ice against the left side of his pale-grey suit jacket. She thought it would be a lasting stain, hoped it would defeat the dry cleaner. The amber ran on the grey. 'Dorrie, she was mine, damn you, she was mine…' She was sitting in the chair by the door and watching him. She didn't help him to pack. 'How long are you going to be there?' His suitcase was on the bed. His clothes were stacked close to the case and he tried to make a mental note of what he would need. 'Where are you going to be staying?' She had the baby, Tom, on her shoulder and she gripped him tight. Her statements came like machine-gun bullets, hurting him, wounding. 'What's the point of it all?' His shoes went into the bottom of the case with his bag for washing kit and toothpaste and razors, and a guidebook of former Yugoslavia, and around their bulk went his socks and his underclothes. Penn told his wife, quiet voice, that he thought he would be away for a minimum of a week and he told her the name of the hotel where he was booked and he told her about Mary Braddock. On top of his socks and underclothes he laid two pairs of slacks, charcoal-grey. 'So, I'm just supposed to sit here and wait for you to show up again?' All his shirts were white. It was like a uniform to him, that he wore charcoal-grey trousers and white shirts and quiet ties. He had always worn the uniform when he had gone to work at Gower Street. The jeans and the sweaters and the casual shirts that were right for Section 4 of A Branch had been kept in a locker. 'If you hadn't made such a fool of yourself then you wouldn't be running round with that deadbeat outfit, would you?' Their home, two bedrooms, one floor, had cost 82,750. Their mortgage was 60,000. They could not have bought the house and furnished it without the help of her father, digging into his building society savings. They were not quite 'negative equity', but damn near. They could not sell the house without slashing into what her father had loaned them, or what the building society had advanced them. They were trapped in the bloody place. And it was not a home any more, but a little brightly painted prison. He thought there was enough in the case for a week, and something to spare. 'What you do now, it's grubby, isn't it? It's prying into people's lives. How do you hold your head up?' Well, he held his head up because there was a cheque coming into the bank each month, and that should have been a good enough reason to hold his bloody head up. He would wear his blazer on the aircraft, not fold it away in the case. He did not take Jane home any more to his parents and the tied cottage, and they had not yet seen their grandson, Tom. Nothing said, but understood amongst them all, that he did not take Jane home. If his mother rang and Jane answered the telephone then his mother just rang off. The maisonette was a brightly painted prison and the marriage was a locked cell door, but he hadn't the time to be thinking about solicitors and he hadn't the money to be thinking about new rent to go with the old mortgage. He closed the case and fastened the lock, and put the case on the floor at the end of the bed. 'And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?' It was the way of her, to goad him. He looked into the frightened small eyes of her face, and they were reddened from crying from before he had come home. She was looking at his lip, which was better now, but still ugly. Penn said softly, 'I am not going into a war zone, the war zone is Bosnia. I am going to Croatia, the war finished in Croatia more than a year ago, the war's gone on by to Bosnia… I am going to trawl round the embassy, I am going to see the ministries there, I am going to interview and get transcripts from a few refugees, I am going to write a report. That's what they're going to get, a nice little typed-up report. I am going to get a good fee from it, and they're going to get a good typed-up report…' The tears had come again. 'You'll be sucked in.' 'No chance.' He couldn't talk it through with her. Never had been able to, but it was worse now. It was his habit with her, to hide behind the denials. He could have talked it through with Dougal, his best mate in the Transit team, but Dougal Gray was in Belfast, had extended his tour, and the postcards with the dry tourists' messages didn't come any more. It was only with Dougal that he had ever talked through work problems and Jane problems… and had a few laughs… and once substituted white paint thinner for milk in the silver tops of an old misery's house… and once… the best times in the Transit were with Dougal, and then Dougal hadn't been around to talk through his being dumped by the Service. And Dougal had been long gone when he had spent the worst, foul, hour of his life, going home on the train, walking
