Screams in the Dark (32 page)

Suddenly there was a deafening bang and she felt herself being shunted hard as her face banged against the back of the front seats. They’d hit something. A horn honked continuously and Raznatovic was shouting furiously at the driver. Rosie felt blood on the side of her eye from the thud, and eased herself up on one elbow. Outside, she could just see a man was striding towards the car shouting abuse at the driver, who was still being barked at by his boss. Rosie steadied herself as the man approached and hammered on the driver’s window. She heard the click of a gun from the passenger seat. This was it. She had to be quick. She slipped her hand so it was on the door handle. In one, seamless movement, she pushed open the door, leapt out of the car and started running. A car swerved to avoid her as she raced across the busy road. She didn’t look back to see if they were following her or shooting at her.

Rosie tore the tape off her mouth and ran for her life, crossing the street and running through the precinct and up a sidestreet. Her lungs were bursting and her heart pounding in her chest, but her legs were pumping like pistons as she kept pushing herself on.

The further she ran the more deserted the streets became, and she found herself up a quiet alleyway that looked like a residential area. She had no idea where she was. There were no bars, no shops, just the basic signs
of life in the windows of the dark-grey stone buildings on either side. She stopped and leaned against a wall, bending over to catch her breath. From the corner of her eye she saw a long shadow coming towards her, and she jumped inside an open doorway, into the cold dark entrance to a block of flats and closed the door. Close by, a door opened on the ground floor and an old woman came out eyeing her suspiciously. She said something in Serbian and waved Rosie away. She thought she heard the word police. Her stomach turned over. She took a step towards the old woman, wiping the blood from her eye and mouth.

‘Please,’ she said, her lip trembling. ‘Please. Help me.’ Rosie looked at the door to the entrance, terrified it was going to burst open. ‘Please let me stay for a moment.’ She shook her head. ‘No police.’

The old woman’s eyes studied her.

‘Please,’ she joined her hands in pleading, tears coming to her eyes.

They stood in silence for a moment, then the woman spoke. ‘You are English?’ She stepped back in the doorway. ‘You are in trouble? You are running away?’

‘Please. Someone is trying to kill me. I am not a bad person. Please help me.’ Rosie felt sick as she tasted blood in her mouth.

The woman looked as though she was going to close the door. Then she raised her hand and beckoned Rosie to follow her. ‘Come.’

Relief flooded through Rosie as she walked behind her along the gloomy hallway. Through the living-room door,
she could hear opera music. An image of her mother listening to an LP of Maria Callas on their old radiogram even as she was in a drunken stupor, flashed into her mind. She followed the woman inside and for a moment they both stood there in silence, with just the strains of the music from an old radio in the corner. Rosie swallowed and stood looking around her at the cosiness of the room, the crochet table covers and chairbacks, and dark wood shelves littered with ornaments. Old family photographs lined the mantelpiece – pictures of a safe normal life. And suddenly she couldn’t stop the tears. She stood wiping them with the palms of her hands as they ran down her cheeks.

The old woman’s expression softened.

‘Sit.’ She motioned her to the small sofa. ‘I make some tea.’

Rosie sat down. Her mobile rang and she took it out of her pocket, struggling to hold it in her trembling hands. It was Adrian. She bit her lip and wiped her nose.

‘Adrian,’ she managed to say.

‘Rosie, where are you? Are you okay?’ He sounded breathless.

‘I’m okay, Adrian.’ She sniffed. ‘I … I don’t know where I am … I’m … In a house … Hold on.’ Rosie turned to the old woman in the kitchen a few feet away, pouring boiling water into a teapot. ‘Excuse me. Please. Can you tell me where I am?’

The old woman put down the kettle and turned towards her.

‘You are bringing trouble to my house?’

‘No. No, please. No trouble. My friend is coming for me. I will tell you what happened. Please. Just tell me the address.’ Rosie went back to the mobile. ‘Hold on, Adrian. Stay on the line.’

A few moments later, the old woman came in carrying a tray with tea, and a bowl of steaming water that smelled of disinfectant. She put it down on the coffee table in front of Rosie and reeled off the address.

‘Tell your friend, go to the Kneza Mihaila and turn right at the top and left for two hundred metres, then after two right turns is my street. I am number twenty-seven. He must ring the bell twice.’

‘Thank you.’ Rosie sniffed, and relayed the information to Adrian.

‘I will be there as soon as I can. Not long. You are okay, Rosie. Don’t worry.’

Rosie felt the tears again and blinked them away while the old woman poured tea into cups. She spooned sugar into one and handed it to Rosie.

‘For the shock,’ she said. ‘You have had a shock and the sugar will help you.’ She smiled and Rosie saw the laughter lines around her eyes and high cheekbones on what had once been a lovely face. ‘So. You can tell me what has happened to you. I see you are very frightened.’

Rosie stretched out her hand.

‘My name is Rosie Gilmour. Thank you for helping me.’ She paused, not really knowing what to say next. ‘You speak very good English.’

The woman smiled. ‘Yes. I travelled in Europe when I was young. My name is Katya. I played second violin in
the national orchestra – when we were Yugoslavs. I meet many people from Western Europe – in Germany, France, Italy … and one time in England. London. In the good days …’ She looked beyond Rosie at a photograph on the polished sideboard of a young woman with a violin and sighed. ‘Before everything changed.’ She looked at Rosie. ‘But what happen to you? What brings a young woman with blood on her face to my house?’

Rosie sipped her tea, trying not to wince at the sweetness. Katya lifted the cloth out of the water and wrung it out, then dabbed it onto Rosie’s face. She stiffened as the disinfectant stung.

‘It will help. In case of infection.’ Katya said. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I am a journalist,’ Rosie said. ‘I am in Belgrade investigating a story, and someone … some people … are trying to stop me. They came to my hotel tonight and they kidnapped me. I escaped because they crashed the car. I kept on running and I found myself here.’

Rosie decided not to tell her about Gerhard Hoffman. His face contorted in terror flashed through her mind and she blinked it away. He had come to help her and paid with his life.

The old woman pursed her lips and shook her head.

‘So many gangsters these days. All criminals everywhere. Streets are not safe any more. In the old days, before this war with the Bosnian people, everyone was together. We were Yugoslavs, respecting each other. But now …’ She sighed wearily. ‘So much has been lost.’

‘I know.’ Rosie caught the sadness in the old woman’s eyes. ‘I am trying to expose bad people, Katya. When my friend comes, we will go back to Scotland where I live. And I can tell my story in the newspaper where I work.’

‘Ah, but the British newspapers. The television. Always they tell stories about the Bosnian people. Always the Serbian people are bad it says.’ She looked at Rosie. ‘I am ashamed of so many of my people for what they do to innocent Bosnians. But I tell you … we have lost people too. Serbian people are destroyed by this war – Not only the innocent people who are killed. We are destroyed in our hearts.’ She glanced at a photo on a table by her hearth of a young man squinting in the sunshine on a beach somewhere. ‘I lost my son Jebril.’

They sat in silence. Rosie didn’t want to speak in case she would say the wrong thing. Eventually she felt she had to say something.

‘Was your son killed in the war?’

Katya took the framed photograph in her hand and gazed at it sadly. ‘No. Not killed.’ She brushed her hand over the picture. ‘But he might as well be. He is gone now. Like so many other young Serbian men. He went away to avoid the terrible things they were being forced to do. He ran away, so he cannot come back. He is somewhere in Europe. Greece, the last time I heard from him.’

‘Your only son?’

The woman nodded. ‘My daughter, his little sister, she die when she was only seven. I was already a widow then.’ She put the picture back on the table. ‘I am alone now.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rosie said.

Katya looked resigned and shook her head. ‘Every day I wish my daughter could be with me,’ she said. ‘There is an old saying, maybe you also have it in Britain … A son is a son till he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter the rest of her life … But sometimes is not the case. Sadly for me, it wasn’t.’

Rosie watched her, thinking of her own mother and how she would have loved to sit in the warmth of a room with her as she grew older, telling her the stories of her work and her life.

They sipped their tea in silence. The purity of the music made Rosie want to cry again.

The doorbell rang twice, making Rosie flinch.

‘Your friend is here.’ Katya smiled at her nervousness. ‘You are safe now.’

They both stood up and walked along the hallway.

‘Adrian,’ Rosie said, her ear at the door. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes. It is me. Hurry. We must go.’

Katya and Rosie stood looking at each other.

‘Thank you, Katya. You have saved my life.’ Rosie’s voice caught in her throat.

Katya smiled, again the wrinkles showing the fineness of her features.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you must be careful. You should go home. Go away from here.’

‘I am.’ She squeezed her hand, then turned and opened the door.

Adrian stood in the hall, his face pale but relieved when he saw her.

‘Rosie. You are all right?’

Rosie nodded, throwing her arms around him. He hugged her hard.

‘Come. We must be quick.’ He whispered. ‘Risto is hurt. He has lost a lot of blood. We must drive now to Bosnia, because we cannot stop here.’

Rosie turned around.

‘Goodbye Katya. Thank you.’

‘Goodbye Rosie.’ The old woman watched until they disappeared out of the main door.

CHAPTER 33

Rosie and Matt sat in a cafe close to the clinic where Adrian had taken Risto. It had been a terrifying journey from Belgrade, with Adrian driving at breakneck speed in the ancient Volkswagen Polo, which at one point had flames coming out of the engine, forcing them to stop to let it cool for a few minutes. Risto had lain in the back seat, his trousers saturated with blood. The makeshift tourniquet wouldn’t have held up much longer, and he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last twenty miles. Adrian had made a phone call to a contact, and the clinic was waiting for Risto by the time they arrived.

Rosie rubbed her face with both hands, and her eyes stung from tiredness and tears.

‘You all right, Rosie?’ Matt stretched across the table and squeezed her wrist.

Rosie nodded. She was conscious that she hadn’t said much for most of the journey. Once the initial adrenalin had burned out after her escape from Raznatovic’s clutches,
the horror of Gerhard Hoffman’s face kicked in. The reality of what he’d done to help the investigation haunted her, bringing back memories of Emir that first day they’d met at the Red Road flats. She thought of Mags Gillick, of Taha, of Tanya, and the people who had died or risked their lives to help her investigations. Guilt washed over her.

‘To be honest, Matt,’ Rosie leaned her head back on her shoulders and gazed up at the cloudless sky, ‘I can’t get Gerhard Hoffman out of my mind. It was me who contacted him. He didn’t seek me out. Same with Emir.’ She shook her head. ‘If I had left these people alone, never gone near them, they would still be alive today.’

‘You can’t afford to look at it like that, Rosie,’ Matt touched the back of her hand. ‘Thoughts like that will drive you nuts. Don’t even go there.’ He poured some more tea into both their cups. ‘Hoffman was already a marked man from what he’d done years ago. And the fact that he was back and forth to Belgrade, still investigating, it was only a matter of time before somebody took a pop at him. As for Emir … That’s just very sad, Rosie, but that’s what happens. This is what we do. We’re journalists, not missionaries.’

Rosie nodded, staring beyond Matt.

‘Yeah, I know. We do our job, then we zip it up and move on to the next big story.’

‘Exactly. It’s how it has to be.’

‘I just wonder what happened in those last couple of hours with Gerhard. The arrangement was that he would phone me and come to the hotel, and he obviously did
come because he left the envelope with the picture. Somebody must have been watching him.’

‘Yeah. Well, from what that bastard Raznatovic said to you, they must have known you were here. So they’d know he was here too. Maybe Gerhard got suspicious and didn’t have time to meet you or think it was safe, so he came earlier and dropped the message off. But they got him at the hotel.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, Rosie, but you can’t torment yourself with that.’

Rosie nodded. But she knew the thought of Gerhard’s final moments would haunt her.

Her mobile rang. It was McGuire. Rosie looked at Matt as she lifted it off the table to answer it, mouthing McGuire to Matt, who gave her the thumbs-up as she answered.

‘Gilmour! Where the fuck are you?’ McGuire barked. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Hi Mick. Yeah, I’m fine. Er … I’m back in Bosnia. Had to get out of Belgrade fast.’ Rosie grimaced at Matt.

‘I’ll say you did, Rosie. I’ve got fucking cops onto me from Interpol. They say there was a dead body in your hotel bedroom. What the fuck, Rosie? Is this true?’

‘Er … well … Yes, it is, Mick.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Sadly, it was Gerhard Hoffman.’

‘Who?’

‘Hoffman. Gerhard Hoffman. The German reporter who exposed the company in the first place, remember? I told you about him.’

‘What the fuck was he doing in Belgrade? I didn’t know you were meeting him. Christ, Rosie!’