Never explain, never apologize, a good creed. She must have heard him coming and as he opened the door she was looking up and for a moment there was the startled rabbit stare, and then the forced composure. And what he had to do was remember, and hard, that Alpha Security now paid the mortgage and the gas bill and the electricity and the food, and put the clothes on his back and on Jane's and the nappies on Tom's backside, and split lips and kicks down tower-block steps and solo surveillance were part of the game for a guy heaved out of Five and he had better remember it… She had a public face on. The composure was set as if the nerves and the fear had never been. He closed the door behind him. She was looking at his mouth but she was too polite to remark on the split lower lip and the blood on his shirt. "Mrs. Mary Braddock? I'm Bill Penn "I'm early, the traffic was less than I'd expected…" "It's not a problem," Penn said. "What can I do for you?" "I expect you're a busy man…" "Sometimes." '… So I won't waste your time. My daughter was in Yugoslavia. She was there when the fighting was in Croatia. She disappeared at the end of 1991, she was listed as missing. Last week I was informed that her body had been identified from the exhumation of a mass grave, in that part of Croatia that is now under Serb control. She had been dead for fifteen months, buried and hidden. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know how she died and why she died. She was my only daughter, Mr. Penn." He interrupted, "Isn't this a job for…?" "You should let me finish, Mr. Penn… But since you raise it… Shouldn't this be a job for the Foreign Office? Of course it should. Do you know anything about government departments, Mr. Penn? They're useless. That's a generalization and a true one. Good at cups of tea in a First Secretary's office, good at booking a hotel room, good at platitudes, and they don't give a damn, just some silly woman using up their day.