The South Lawn Plot Read Online Free PDF Page A

a few more times to bring his day's work to a close. He well understood that all his efforts might be for naught. The difference between good and outstanding was not really in his hands on a day like this.
    He had lodged his backpack and camera bag behind an outcrop of rocks about a hundred yards back down the beach. Folding his arms about the tripod and nestling the camera under his chin, Pender began to make his way back to the rocks. They seemed to be miles away. His mind wandered ahead of his feet. It embraced memories of Africa and the steamy heat that had made him dream longingly about places like this: the Lake District, the Shetland Islands, west of Ireland. Somewhere in the world, he thought, there just had to be a happy medium.
    Pender reached the rocks and slumped against the largest of them. It offered some protection from the wind though not the rain, now more intense than the earlier drizzle. Pender tucked his head as deeply into his upturned collar as he possibly could and corkscrewed his rear end into the stones.
    Every fraction of an inch counted. Quickly, and expertly, despite his numbed hands, he broke down the tripod, packed the camera into its bag and pulled both backpack and bag to each side of him. He was facing inwards, towards the land. The alternating shadows and shards of light raced over the shoreline on the far side of the channel, upwards over the stone walled fields and beyond them up the bare slopes of the mountain.
    Pender scanned the channel's landside beach, a sandier affair than the one on which he was huddled. His eyes rested at the point where the path began. It snaked its way through rocky outcrops before ending abruptly at a line of stunted trees, the grizzled sentinels marking out the garden.
    He narrowed his eyes against the wetness and could just about make out the house. The lights were on. Or at least one was, in the living room, the one with the big window.
    Pender picked up a gray colored stone about the size of his palm and turned it over. It would probably be still here a hundred years from now, he thought.
    He tried to keep his thoughts focused on the stone, a simple thing. But it was useless of course. Jonas Sem was close by, his body all twisted and bloodied.
    They had taken no chances with Sem. At least half a dozen AK47 magazines had been unloaded into the room. It was as if the bastards were trying to kill the entire building.
    Pender's photos of the assassinated rebel leader had been sensational. Not surprising since the man's blood was still flowing when he had taken them. The shots had appeared in just about every significant newspaper andmagazine on the planet. They had sealed his growing reputation as the man who got the big ones.
    Prizes and awards had followed. Someone else always had to collect the bronze cameras and framed certificates on his behalf, because Pender was invariably lost in some war-crazed hellhole, daily witnessing death so seemingly casual that it had become just that.
    Sem had been the start of the casual phase. He had no regrets. The bastard had died too quickly, really. And his death had probably saved hundreds of lives, maybe thousands. It had been a good thing. So why was he thinking of it again now? Here in this rain purified place.
    Pender shivered, stood up, gathered his gear and began to walk back to the house. Fifteen minutes later he stood in the doorway gazing into the main room of the cottage.
    There was no sight or sound of Manning. He had, Pender remembered, mentioned something about a walk up the mountain. And they laughed at mad dogs and Englishmen, he thought.
    Figuring that he had a few minutes to himself, Pender walked straight to the writing desk against the far wall. Manning kept a diary. Over the past couple of nights Pender had noticed that the last thing that the Irishman did before bed was to write for about three or four minutes in a leather-bound journal.
    Pender flicked through the pages. Most of them referred to