"Would you tell me…?"

"What?" he rasped.

"Would you tell me what state he is in, the man who hit you this morning?"

He saw the mischief dance in her eyes.

Penn said, "I would have been done for assault. No, if I'd hit him like I know, then I'd have been done for murder. What state is he in? Probably pretty good, probably he's looking forward to getting pissed up in the pub this lunch time and telling the rest of the select lounge how he put one on me. I served the Process, but that's a small-beer victory…"

Then the mischief was gone and she was serious. "I like winning, Mr. Penn, I expect to win… I want to know how my daughter died, I want to know who killed her, I want to know why she was killed. I want to know."

They had been at the roadblock an hour. They had sat in the jeep and smoked and talked together for an hour before they heard the coughing approach of the truck. The engine would go on the truck if it went on burning the bad diesel that the sanction busters brought in. No point in trying to reach Rosenovici from the Vrginmost road, because there was always a block by the Territorial Defence Force on that route. The last week, when they had been there and digging, they had used the turning to Bovic off the Glina road, then taken the plank bridge short of the village of Salika to get themselves to Rosenovici. The roadblock was at the bridge. There were four TM-46 mines laid out on the bridge. Nasty little bastards, and the Canadian knew that each held a bit over five kilos of explosive. It was the first time that he had tried, in the company of his Kenyan colleague, to get to Rosenovici since the digging, the taking away of the bodies. He had hoped to get back to the village and leave a little food for the old woman, and a little love, to have been discreet. Now there would be no food dropped off, and no love, because they were held at the roadblock