'It is forbidden for you to go.'
The Canadian said, friendly, 'We have never had a problem in the past, sir.'
'If you do not leave, immediately, you will be shot.'
'We are only doing our job, a neutral job, sir.'
'One minute, and it will be me that shoots you.'
'Perhaps another day, perhaps we can go over another day, sir.'
'Get the fuck out.'
The Canadian was still smiling as he reversed the jeep away from the bridge, away from the track that led to the ruin of Rosenovici, away from where they had dug the previous week. He smiled all the time that they were watched by the drunk kids and Milan Stankovic. The jeep lurched back onto the Bovic road, and he lost the smile and cursed quietly to himself. He had never seen the old woman, but he had heard she was there, in the woods above the village, and he had three times left food for her and the food had been taken. Perhaps it was just a story, that the old woman was there, perhaps it was the stray and abandoned dogs that took the food. The Kenyan said, 'Maybe he has a problem with his bowel movement. Our good friend did not seem happy.. .' 'Not as happy as a hog in dung.' The Canadian knew. It was the big mouth. The big mouth had said, 'There have been no atrocities here. We Serbs have always treated our Croat enemies correctly and with care.' It was the big boast that said, 'There are no hidden graves here. We have nothing to be ashamed of.' The big mouth and the big boast in the grimy dining hall of the administration building at the TDF camp in Salika, and all the guys around him to hear it. The Canadian had put in his report, and he had heard that Milan Stankovic was called to the summit chat in Belgrade, and the village was a headless chicken, and the Professor had been dragged off the Ovcara dig for the day… The Canadian could smile when he remembered how they had been, the mothers in the village, the old men and the kids, when the jeeps had shown up in the week before, and not been able to deny that he had the permission of old shit-sour face to go hunting a mass grave. The Canadian could smile when he imagined old shit-sour face coming back from the Belgrade knees-up to find a nice corner of a dug field, empty
… 'Mister, do you think we could have given him something for his bowel movement, a pill, something to make him happy…?' The Canadian said, 'A stone turned, under the stone was a secret, and the secret's abroad and public knowledge, that might just have stopped his bowel movement.' 'But, mister, you're not talking evidence.'
The Canadian police sergeant, far from Toronto and Yonge Street, and far from the whores and the pushers of home, had not caught a good night's sleep since they had prised the black-grey earth from a young woman's face. No, he was not talking evidence… It was that sort of place, Sector North, the sort of place where evidence did not come easy.
It was rare for Arnold Browne to lose his temper.
'… Don't ever do that to me again, Penn, or you're lost, forgotten. Just remember what you are, and you are ex, Penn. You are ex-Five, you are ex-A Branch. You may once have, stupidly, harboured the illusion that there is a way back let me tell you, Penn, that the way back is not via spitting in my face. You don't think on it, you don't consider it, you damn well jump to it, and I was doing you a favour… I can get a score of ex-Herefords who would give the right cheek of their arses for a job like this, and I gave your name… Got me?'
'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.
