The Skeleton Road (18 page)
Authors: Val McDermid
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #International Mystery & Crime, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #General, #Mystery
It was clear right from the start that Dubrovnik was hopelessly under-defended. The only regular military unit in the city was a light infantry platoon stationed in the Napoleonic fort on Srdj hill, near Varya’s house. According to Mitja, that would be a target for enemy forces. ‘You need to move out,’ he insisted.
‘How can I just turn my back on them? They’ve been really kind to me since I got here.’
‘Anyone who can leave the city is getting out. You think they’ll take you with them if they decide to make a run for it? Trust me, Maggie, you’ll go home one day and find the house empty and the cupboards bare. At a time like this, people look to their own first. And that’s what I’m doing here. If you insist on staying, I want you to be somewhere safe.’
And so I caved in. He was right about Varya’s family, though. They were gone by the end of the week, throwing themselves on the charity of relatives in Slovenia. Ironically, their house remained untouched in the subsequent artillery attacks, while Mitja’s idea of safety turned out to be the opposite of safe. Because he was proud of his country and its heritage, it was inconceivable to him that the Serbs would bomb the hell out of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. So he moved us into an apartment in the very heart of the Old Town, a stone’s throw from the cathedral, with a view of a slice of the harbour from the bedroom window. It had been the home of a friend of his, a UNESCO bureaucrat, who had fled the city as soon as hostilities had broken out in Vukovar. I’ve often wondered whether he feels guilt or shame at abandoning his friends and neighbours when he thinks about Dubrovnik. Probably not; that’s the kind of emotional response that makes it hard to continue with a fulfilled life.
The apartment was spacious and comfortably furnished. Rado’s idea of a kitchen store cupboard was packets of instant noodles and bottles of Scotch. When we moved in, I laughed at that. It wasn’t long before I changed my tune and regularly sent up a prayer of thanks for his prescience. In a city under siege, having any kind of food staple is a powerful bargaining chip. And a glass of whisky at the end of the day becomes one of the true glories of life. Having Mitja there some of the time was the icing on my personal cake, the MSG in my instant noodles.
Even though I was buoyed up by love, life soon became pretty grim. The major offensive against Dubrovnik began on the first day of October. The army came at us from the south-east, from the north and from the west. The artillery attacked Srdj hill; the booming echo of the guns vibrated through the city at irregular intervals. I still can’t hear unexpected fireworks without my chest constricting. And the air force’s MiG-21s pounded Komolac to the west of us, destroying our access to electricity and fresh water.
We were without either from then until the end of December.
We take the staples of modern life so much for granted until we’re deprived of them. People do live quite well without what we consider to be basics, but they manage because they’ve never been de-skilled by their presence. To lose them when you’ve lived all your life with power at the touch of a switch and water at the turn of a tap is shocking, then unsettling, then grindingly depressing.
There were a few generators in the city, but fuel was at a premium and they were only used sparingly. Most people had a small stock of candles, but they soon ran out. The city fell into the habit of going to bed when it grew dark. It was unusually cold that year, and being under the covers was one way to stay warm. Besides, within days, there was a blackout rule and a curfew. Those of us who’d been trying to meet up in the evenings to maintain a vague pretence of intellectual life as normal were soon stymied.
Mitja was seldom home. It’s hard to imagine in this world of instant communication, but in the whole city under siege there was one single satellite phone and fax machine which was moved almost on a daily basis to protect it from the bombardment, and more often than not Mitja was with the phone. The enemy helicopters buzzed the city constantly, trying to spot the satellite dish. Whenever they did, the MiGs would follow, attempting to shoot it out of commission.
Even worse than the strafing fire of the MiGs was the constant shelling. First they attacked the fort on Srdj hill. Then the Belvedere Hotel. Then the Argentina Hotel. And so on. I remember standing in the Inter-University Centre with a bunch of refugees from the surrounding countryside, watching the pines of Srdj hill burst into spikes of flame as they were fire-bombed. It felt completely unreal, to see the bright orange and yellow flame along the whole ridge, then darker gouts of flame feeling their way down the hill towards the city. And suddenly, clouds of butterflies were all around us, escaping from the inferno that their habitat had become. It was a surreal moment.
I couldn’t understand why the Serbs wanted to destroy Dubrovnik. It had no value as a strategic target. Its walls made it almost impossible to capture; destruction was the only tactic that could be used against it. But why destroy a place if your goal is to absorb it into your wider empire? One evening when Mitja had returned late with a box of scented candles someone had ‘liberated’ from a gift shop, we sat in the flickering light and I asked him that question. ‘It feels like any building that’s tagged as a heritage site, or a hotel, or a hospital is fair game. Every bloody church and monastery except the Serb Orthodox church. There’ll be nothing left but rubble. Why are they doing this to the city?’
‘Precisely because it’s a tourist honey-pot,’ he said. ‘They want to make a point. To say we can’t hide behind our history. To show the world they can’t be intimidated by what outsiders think is important. And they also thought we’re a soft target that would surrender at the first sound of gunfire. They miscalculated badly. They didn’t understand how much we love our history. Our heritage. Our country.’
I sighed. ‘You’d think that’s one thing they would understand. You’ve been fighting for a thousand years in the Balkans over the same ground.’
He filled up our glasses with more whisky, his expression both grim and weary. ‘And we’ll probably be fighting for the next thousand over the same things. In a strange way, it’s almost appropriate that this should be happening in Dubrovnik. It’s a medieval war in a medieval city.’
He was wrong, of course. It was a thoroughly modern war because Dubrovnik was also a modern city. We relied on our home-grown criminals – men who had been smugglers, with their fast, silent boats, men who knew every channel on the Dalmatian coast, men who raced between the Serb ships and the rocky shorelines to bring in weapons and water, medicines and milk. They kept us alive.
The Serbs hated to be outwitted. And so one day they fire-bombed the old harbour. Late that night, after the all-clear, after the curfew was set, a few of us sneaked down to the harbour to take a look. It was a bright moonlit night; I remember thinking we were taking a hell of a chance because the MiGs would be able to see their targets clearly, if they’d chosen to do a night run. The streets were silent and sinister with shadows. But from the harbour, we could see the bright flares of a dozen or more burning boats being carried out to sea by wind and tide. Burning, then sinking. The Irishwoman standing next to me muttered, ‘A terrible beauty is born.’
That was the first time I’d ever spoken to Tessa Minogue. I knew who she was; the IUC was too small for anonymity. But our paths had somehow never crossed properly before. We walked back up from the harbour and it turned out she was living just round the corner from our flat. I invited her in for a drink that night and a friendship was born, a friendship that persists. To this day, Tess is the first person I turn to in times of trouble, perhaps because our relationship was forged under fire.
It makes me slightly uncomfortable to say this but the two relationships that mean most to me in this world came out of the Croatian war. Mitja probably wouldn’t have been in Dubrovnik when I was there had it not been for the imminent threat of war. And I might never have bonded with Tess but for that moment by the harbour.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not so egocentric as to think that war isn’t a bad thing if such positive outcomes can result from it. Rather, what I feel is a kind of shame, that out of the hell that was the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century, I gained so rich a reward.
K
aren was surprised to find Phil chopping vegetables in the kitchen when she arrived home in the middle of the afternoon. At her rank, there was no such thing as overtime. But she worked long hours and weekends with few complaints, so she reckoned she was entitled to head out early when there was nothing urgent on her desk. Besides, she always thought better outside the office. ‘What are you doing home at this hour?’ she asked, hugging him from behind and planting a kiss on the back of his neck.
He shivered pleasurably. ‘Careful, these knives are sharp. Everything went tits-up this morning. We had him staked out at home from yesterday teatime. But when we went in mob-handed this morning, the bird had flown.’
‘How come?’ Karen took off her jacket and slung it over the nearest chair.
‘Nobody’s taking responsibility, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the late-night stake-out lads decided he was in for the night so they nipped off at some point for a coffee or a curry or a kip. And either our boy dropped lucky and happened to leave for the airport at the right moment by chance, or else he was staking out the stake-out.’
‘The airport?’
‘Aye. According to his wife, he’s away to Liechtenstein for a few days. Presumably to say hello to his money.’
‘Bummer.’
‘Indeed. Mind you, it’s partly our own fault. I should have checked his schedule with the wife.’
‘You reckon he knows you’re after him?’
Phil shook his head and tipped a pile of chopped shallots and red peppers into a smoking skillet. ‘I don’t think he did. But I’m worried the wife will tip him off. She swore blind she wouldn’t. Although she’s refusing to give evidence against him, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to stand in the way of us taking him off the streets. But you never know. When she’s face to face with him, who knows how it’ll go.’ A hissing cloud of steam enveloped them both in a rich aroma as he crushed garlic and added it to the pan.
‘That’s crap. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live your life terrorised by the person who’s supposed to love you.’
Phil turned and grinned at her. ‘Oh, I get the odd inkling.’
‘That’s not funny,’ she said, smiling.
‘So what brings you home?’ He returned his attention to the pan, stirring vigorously and adding a chopped head of fennel and a handful of diced chorizo.
‘I need to have a think about my next move. Plus I’ve not stopped since we found the skeleton on Saturday.’
‘So where are you up to?’ It was how they’d worked best when they’d been on the same team, bouncing ideas off each other. Neither saw any need to stop now they were working on completely different things. Technically, they shouldn’t be talking about confidential police matters outside their own group. But Karen had never cared about rules she couldn’t see the point of and Phil had caught the habit from her.
Karen brought him up to speed with the day’s developments. ‘I wish I could have been there to break the news to Maggie Blake myself. I’d like to have seen her reaction. Not that I think she’s a suspect. If she was going to bump him off, she would have had plenty of opportunity to do it in a much less complicated way.’
‘But it’s always good to see how the spouse takes it.’ Phil transferred the vegetables to a saucepan and added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a handful of torn basil leaves. ‘Did we leave any red wine last night?’
‘I think there’s half a glass in the bottle.’ Karen went to fetch it from the living room. On her way back in to the kitchen, she said, ‘If you ask me, whoever did this came from his past. From the Balkan wars. He was there all the way through, you know. In the Croatian Army for the Croatian war, with NATO intelligence for Bosnia and then with the UN for Kosovo. Plenty of chances to make enemies. When he went missing – which is presumably when he was murdered – all the indictments at the war crimes tribunal had been handed down, but obviously the trials were still going on. And a fair few of the accused hadn’t been arrested yet. So it wouldn’t be surprising to find someone from the old days with powerful reasons to want Petrovic out of the picture.’
Phil tipped the remains of the wine into the pan. ‘I’m just going to leave that to simmer,’ he said.
‘Maybe a wee bit of chilli?’ Karen did a big-eyed pleading pose.
‘Oh, all right. But only because I love you, right?’ Phil took a grinder of dried chilli from the cupboard and gave it a couple of twists over the pan.
‘Plus one of the guys from the climbing club said that when Petrovic went buildering, he went with somebody he’d known from back in Yugoslavia.’
‘So, somebody based over here, you reckon?’
‘Either that or someone who used to come over regularly. But according to Maggie Blake, he didn’t see much of anyone from the old days.’
‘Which might suggest that he had good reason for avoiding people from the past?’
‘That’s not such a daft idea. With him being in intelligence, he probably knew all sorts of stuff that certain people didn’t want out in the open.’ Karen picked a pear out of the fruit bowl and began eating absently. ‘Maybe even some of our people,’ she added, thinking about Macanespie and Proctor. Maybe their visit had been bullshit. Maybe they’d just been fishing for what she actually knew.
‘So how are you going to find out about his mysterious past?’ Phil pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘I suppose we must have high-ranking soldiers who knew him from Kosovo?’
‘Yeah, but they’re not going to tell the likes of me anything useful. Especially if they’re in intelligence. And even if they’re retired, they still keep their mouths shut. No, I’ve got a better idea. I went to the bookshop up by the university and checked out the books they’ve got about the Balkan wars. I was amazed how many there were. There’s a lot of people like Maggie Blake making a living from other people’s misery. It’s like true crime. Anyway, I looked at the indexes, and I found his name in one of them. The author mentions meeting Petrovic after the siege of Dubrovnik when he was just a colonel. Describes him as one of the rising talents, the ones that held out some hope for building a future that wasn’t as mental as the past.’
‘And that’s all he says?’
‘It’s all he says by name. But this guy clearly knew everybody who was anybody. He’s a journalist. He covered the Balkans right through the wars and beyond. Did a lot of stuff for the BBC as well as the print media. I managed to track him down. He’s in Brazil now. Apparently they’ve got some big sporting stuff going on down there later this year?’ She paused for effect and Phil poked his tongue out at her. ‘So I’ve arranged to FaceTime him in a couple of hours.’ She grinned. ‘I have the distinct impression that the Macaroon thinks I’m out of my league on this one. I’m looking forward to proving him wrong.’
Theo Proctor dropped into his desk chair like a stone. ‘I’m fucking exhausted,’ he complained. ‘All that running around, and for what? If we’d just waited instead of chasing Maggie Blake around Glasgow, we’d be exactly where we are now. I should be at home, having a cold beer before dinner.’
Macanespie shrugged and turned on his computer. ‘If all you’re going to do is whinge, why don’t you just bugger off and do that?’ He glowered at the screen, fat fingers flying over the keys to bring up the spreadsheet he’d created back when they still thought Dimitar Petrovic was their vigilante assassin.
‘What else do you want me to do?’ Proctor took off his jacket and threw it on to the desk next to his like a petulant child.
‘We’ve got the best chance of finding some solid evidence in the most recent case. Miroslav Simunovic in Crete. Book us tickets on the first flight out. There must be something in the morning. It’s the tourist season. Check the records and find out who the Greek investigating officer is. Then email him and let him know we’re coming to review the case.’
Proctor’s jaw dropped at this display of decisiveness. ‘Have you lost your mind?’
‘Did you not understand what Cagney was saying? Failure’s not an option here. We’re going to be nailed to the wall if we don’t deliver what he wants from us. Now, this might just be a ploy to flush you and me down the toilet. But if it is, I’m not going without a fight, all right?’ He turned back to his screen and studied it, frowning intensely.
‘And you think the Greeks will just cooperate? “Hello, we’re coming from The Hague to show up you bumpkins for not doing your job properly.” What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Well, I’d have thought we could manage a wee bit more subtlety than that. Maybe along the lines of, “We’ve got one or two suspects in other, similar cases and we want to take a look and see if anything jumps out at us.” People they couldn’t possibly know were of interest. That sort of thing. How hopeful we are that they might have gathered the crucial piece of evidence that’ll make our case. It’s called flattery, Theo.’
‘And what are you going to be doing while I sort all this out?’ The Welshman’s scowl was the perfect representation of a man hard done by.
‘I’m going through the spreadsheet line by line. We need to narrow down where the bloody inside leak has come from. I’m eliminating everyone who wasn’t on the team here at Scheveningen for the whole period of the killings. We’ve got a definite start-point now. If they weren’t on staff when Petrovic disappeared, they’re not in the running. And if they’d gone by the time Simunovic was killed, they’re also off the list. We didn’t work the list hard enough before. Be honest, Theo. We weren’t that bothered and we thought we could just busk it.’
‘Fair enough. But I think you’re over-reacting. Cagney can’t just fire us, for God’s sake. There are procedures.’
Macanespie rolled his eyes. ‘Christ. You were the one rabbiting on about not wanting to lose your pension, giving me the bleeding heart stuff about having a wife and kids to support. Bleat, bleat, fucking bleat.’
‘Yes, well, that was before I thought things through. Before you dragged me off to Glasgow to play at James Bond. The more I think about that, the more insane it sounds.’
‘I didn’t drag you into it. It was your idea in the first place, remember? You were perfectly willing when you thought it was a shortcut to Wilson Cagney’s good books.’ Macanespie gave him a look of utter disgust. ‘Now, are you going to get your namby-pamby arse in gear or are you going to fuck off out of my road and let me get on with some proper work? I’m damned if I’m going to be beaten to the draw on this by that wee fat lassie from Police Scotland.’
Muttering under his breath, Proctor turned on his computer and started looking for flights.