was only silence around the carpenter. He fired the pistol up the lane and down the lane and the crash of the shots burgeoned at his ears. He had no target. He did not know where to fire. He emptied the magazine of the pistol, and he ran. He left behind him his bow saw and the jemmy and his lump hammer, and the failing light of the hurricane lamp. He ran down the lane, he splattered the potholes of rainwater, and he ran through the square. He was panting hard when he reached the bridge and he shouted out his name that the guards should not shoot him. He found them scared, cringing, hiding down behind the sandbags, and they had their own light which they shone in his face. He wiped his cheeks. He did not know what he could tell the young men who guarded the bridge across the stream. His own blood stained the palm of his hand. Finished, or not begun. Penn sat on a bench in the park, the darkness around him. Penn thought he had made the decision. To go to the end, that was his father's code. Doing it properly, that was his mother's code. On a bench in Zagreb, with noisy basketball played open air under floodlights beyond the darkness, he thought of them. His father, looking at him direct, pipe clamped in his teeth, would have said that he had taken the money and that if he hadn't wanted shit in his face then he should not, first, have taken the money. His mother, averted head and pursed lips and wiping her hands, would have told him that he was under obligation, but that he should go carefully. When he had swotted for the exams that had lifted him from the countryside, prompted by his history master who had helped with the forms, he had sent off an application for work as a clerk in government. He was going back into the rock of previous years, now, chiselling for guidance. Taken on at the Home Office. He wondered how they would have reacted, at the Home Office, to his query as to whether he had finished or whether he had not begun. Working with paper, pushing paper, annotating paper, moving paper, discarding paper, for the Prison Service department of the Home Office. They would have said, the ones who had worked with him in the clerks' pool, who were still there working in the clerks' pool, that he had finished. Five o'clock, old chummy, time to be gone, always finished at five o'clock, old chummy. One late night and there was a panic meeting between the Home Office and Security Service and an assistant under secretary stamping empty corridors, searching for a file fetcher, finding Bill Penn, clerk. He had run half the night down to the basement and back up to the third floor with the files they had needed. He had brought the coffee. He had gone out for sandwiches. He had kept the files coming, and the coffee and the sandwiches, when their heads were on their bloody knees in tiredness, and a week later the job offer had come through, clerk grade in Library at Curzon Street, then at Gower Street. In Five's Library they would have said he had finished. Into F Branch, pushing paper on 'subversives'. Into A Branch, working with the 'watchers'. The guys in F Branch and the guys in A Branch, they would have said, too damned right, he had finished. The guys in F Branch and A Branch would have been quoting training courses, evaluating back-up, querying days in lieu for extra days worked. But there was no training, there would be no back-up… It was Penn's decision. He had the obligation, and he would go carefully. It would be for her, Dorrie… Not for Mary Braddock in the Manor House, not for Basil and the creeps at Alpha Security, not for Arnold bloody Browne who had not lifted a finger when he'd needed help, not for his Jane and his Tom and the paying of the mortgage for the roof over their heads, but for the love of Dorrie… He had the photographs of her. The photographs were in the inside pocket of his blazer, dry, safe, close to him. He thought that what he wanted, wanted most in the world, was to share in the love of Dorrie. He saw the face that was loved, the face of mischief, sparkle, hatred, bloody-mindedness, courage, the face that was putrefied and drawn from the ground and wounded with cuts and blows and a pistol shot…
And all the rest was shit…
It was as if she called. It was as if he should follow. He knew that he wanted her love, certainty, more than anything he had wanted in his life. He craved the freedom that had been hers. As if he heard her loud laughter, daring him.
Not finished, because it was not begun.
Ham saw him come through the door. Then he was looking round, checking the tables, searching for a face.
'Hello, squire, funny seeing you in this shit heap…'
Most evenings Ham ate alone. Couldn't abide the crap they served up in the old police station. Most evenings he asked the guys if they'd come down the town and join him, and most evenings they had a reason not to, fuck them. He ate alone in the cafe on Krizaniceva inside the walls of the old city. He pushed out the chair opposite him.
'… So what brings you down the sharp end, what brings you to sunny Karlovac?'
'You wanted a bit of tracing done. You wanted to know where your wife was, and your kiddie. I'll do that.'
Ham said quickly, 'Can't pay a fancy fee…'
'No fee, no charge.'
Ham said, suddenly doubtful, 'Not for fucking charity. What's the game, squire?'
'For a favour.'
'You tell me, what's the favour?'
'You said you'd walked into Sector North. I want a route. I want to know where to go, where not to go. That's my fee for the trace.'
Wide-eyed, Ham said, 'That's fucking dumb talk…'
'No charge for the trace, but you give me a route so as I can walk to Rosenovici.'
Ham said, 'You don't get me to go…'
'I want a route, to go on my own.'
Nine.
There was the same message on each of the boxes, different languages. The boxes were stacked high to the ceiling cross struts. Baby Food (Nutritional) Gift of the People of Germany. Pasta (Shapes various) Gift of the People of Italy. Medicines Antenatal/ Postnatal Gift of the People of Holland. Rice -Gift of the People of the United States of America. Tents (with blankets) Gift of the People of the United Kingdom. The biggest section of boxes was labelled as a mobile operating theatre Gift of the People of Sweden and there were cigarettes in boxes, and alcohol, and soya, and hospital drugs. Penn was walked down the corridor between the boxes that filled the shed. He read each label. He thought of the advertisements he saw in the papers back home, and those on the commercial radio stations. He thought of the kids standing in the High Street where he lived and rattling collection tins, and he thought of the women who knitted warm clothes for refugees, and he thought the business was dirty. He had not been brought to the shed for food, medicines, drugs, nor for cigarettes nor alcohol. The mercenary had brought him to the shed because that was where he could buy a gun. Anything could be bought, that was what Penn had been told. Anything he had the money to pay for he could buy in the shed. Ham had brought him out from the old quarter of Karlovac, out through the modern city, and he had seen the scar marks of the shelling, and they had crossed over the Kupa river and headed into the industrial estate. It was a dead city. No smoke from the chimneys, no lorries carrying away finished products. The city had died because the city sat astride the front line. There had been two 5 -series BMWs parked outside the shed, and an Alfa. A giant man had come quickly through the door of the shed and his gaze had been hostile, intimidating, before he had seen Ham. There was an office space at the far end of the corridor between the cardboard and wooden crates. Ham had said he should take a gun. Ham had said that walking into Sector North without a gun was about the same as going in bare-arsed. Ham had said that he should pack a gun before he packed his toothpaste. Three men were in the partitioned office at the end of the shed. They lolled back in easy chairs and there was a haze of cigar smoke, and one listened at a telephone and one was talking local language into a mobile, and each wore designer jeans and a loose-fitting designer leather jacket as if for uniform. They were all under thirty years of age. Penn stood distant in the doorway and each casually shook Ham's hand, but the enthusiasm was the mercenary's, and they seemed to Penn to regard Ham as dog shit on the pavement. What sort of gun did he want? Penn shrugged, like they should tell him what was on offer, and there was a big peal of laughter from the heavy man who was not listening on the telephone. Good English spoken. He could have a T-54 tank (Soviet), he could have a 120mm howitzer (American), he could have an RPG-7 rocket launcher (Soviet), he could have a Stinger ground-to-air (American), if he could pay… The mocking laughter subsided… He could have a Heckler amp; Koch machine pistol, or an Uzi high-fire-rate sub-machine gun, if he could pay… The eyes were locked on him… Ham had said to him, where he was going, every male understood the workings of firearms, their culture,
