The Skeleton Road (3 page)

Maggie shook her head, still smiling politely at the room. ‘You know what I think.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘And you’re stubborn. Look, Tess, Mitja wasn’t a boy when we met. He was a very grown-up thirty-two when we ran into each other in Dubrovnik in ’91. I’m not stupid. I knew he must have had a past. A history. A life. But we both agreed that we weren’t going to be defined by what went before.’

Tessa made a derisive noise. ‘Convenient for him.’

‘Convenient for both of us. I wasn’t exactly lacking a past myself. But it’s not me we’re talking about here, it’s Mitja. I always assumed there was a woman tucked away in some Croatian backwater. Maybe even kids. I just didn’t want to know what he’d left behind to be with me.’

Tessa knocked back the remains of her drink. ‘So why would he go back to that? When he had you? He’d already left her for you. He wouldn’t have left you for her, he’d only ever have left you because he had a mission that was irresistible. Overwhelming.’

Maggie took a step away from Tessa, letting her friend’s hand fall from her shoulder. ‘I love that you think so much of me you have to come up with some noble theory to explain why my lover walked out on me.’ She looked around the room, taking in the dancers, the talkers, the drinkers. The vista of the people who loved and respected had no hope of chasing the sorrow away. ‘Whatever I was to him, Tessa, it wasn’t home. That’s why he left. Mitja just went home.’

A
lan Macanespie had once confided to a friend that he was not a man given to introspection. His pal had guffawed, almost choking on his beer. When his coughing fit subsided, he said, ‘Christ, if I looked like you, I’d take introspection over the view in the mirror every time.’ It was a point of view that had been reinforced when Macanespie had split up with his long-term girlfriend a couple of years later.

‘Next time I want to live with a ginger pig, I’ll buy a Tamworth,’ had been her parting shot. Increasingly, when he looked in his shaving mirror, he found it hard to disagree. His ginger hair had grown paler and more sparse, his stubble coarser. His eyes seemed smaller because his face had become fatter. He didn’t want to think about what his body looked like; these days, there were no full-length mirrors anywhere in his flat. When she left, she told him he’d given up on himself. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d been right about that too.

Macanespie didn’t like the way that made him feel. He realised that his career had stalled, but that didn’t mean he’d shirked his job at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. OK, investigating war criminals and helping to track them down wasn’t where he’d imagined his law degree would take him, but it was preferable to writing wills and conveyancing in some scummy wee town in the central belt of his native Scotland. He’d carved out a nice little niche in one of the grey areas between the Foreign Office and the Department of Justice and it suited him just fine. The worst thing about it was having to share an office with that miserable Welsh git Proctor.

But all that might pale into insignificance if today went tits up. His previous boss, Selina Bryson, had what a more charitable man than Macanespie might have called a laissez-faire attitude to her ICTFY operators. Macanespie described it more pithily: ‘She couldn’t give a flying fuck what we do as long as we deliver results she can take credit for and we don’t fart at the ambassador’s cocktail receptions.’ But Selina was history and today the new boy was coming to wave a big stick at him and Proctor. Making them come into the office on a Saturday, just because he could.

He might be lazy but Macanespie wasn’t stupid and he knew forewarned was forearmed. So he’d called one of his London drinking buddies and sought the low-down on the new boss. Jerry had been happy to oblige on the promise of a bottle of Dutch genever the next time Macanespie left The Hague for London.

‘Wilson Cagney,’ Macanespie said. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘What have you heard so far?’

Macanespie made a sardonic face. ‘Too young, too well dressed, too black.’

Jerry laughed. ‘He’s older than he looks. He’s nearer forty than thirty. He’s got enough miles on the clock to dish out plenty of bother. He dresses Savile Row but the word is that he lives in a one-bedroomed shed in Acton and doesn’t drive. Spends all his readies on good suits and all his spare time in the office gym. Sad careerist bastard, basically.’

‘How did he climb the greasy pole? Merit? Backstabbing? Or trading on being black?’

Jerry breathed in sharply. ‘I hope this is a secure line, mate, saying things like that. HR are bloody everywhere these days. He’s got the qualifications – law degree at Manchester, then a Masters in security and international law, according to our star-struck IT assistant. But he’s the only black face at his grade, so make of that what you will. Put it this way, Alan. He’s not one of us. You’ll never find him down the Bay Horse on a Friday night.’

‘So he’s not coming over to give us a pat on the back and say, “As you were, chaps.”’

‘Word is he’s looking for so-called austerity cuts. Which is spelled c-u-l-l. Watch your back, Alan.’

And so Macanespie, card marked, had determined that he wasn’t going to be the lamb to the slaughter. Welsh lamb, that was a much better option. He’d be the ginger pig, tusks flashing danger signs at anyone who thought he was a pushover. He’d arrived in good time and to Theo Proctor’s astonishment, he set about clearing his desk and tidying his end of the office.

‘You trying to be teacher’s pet, then?’ Proctor demanded.

‘I just looked at this place through somebody else’s eyes and decided it didn’t need to be a pigsty,’ he said, grabbing three dirty mugs and popping them into his bottom drawer. Proctor, clearly uneasy, began straightening files and papers on his desk.

Before he’d made much impression, one of the canteen staff came in with a Thermos jug and a single cup. She consulted a piece of paper. ‘Which one of you is Wilson Cagney?’

‘He’s not here yet, love. And you need two more cups.’ Proctor always managed to sound an officious prick, Macanespie thought.

‘No, I don’t.’ She waved the paper at him. ‘Look: “Order for Wilson Cagney. Black coffee for one.” Can one of you sign for it?’

‘I don’t see why I should sign for it if I’m not getting to drink it,’ Proctor grumbled.

‘Give it here,’ Macanespie said, scribbling his signature on the bottom of the sheet. ‘We’ll not drink it, I promise.’ When she left, he unscrewed the top and inhaled. ‘Aye, that’s the good stuff,’ he said.

‘For crying out loud, Alan, close it up. He’ll smell it.’ Proctor looked panicked, but Macanespie just curled his lip in a sneer as he closed the jug.

Five minutes later, a tall black man in an immaculate charcoal pinstripe suit walked in without knocking. His hair was cut close, emphasising his narrow head and surprisingly delicate features. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said, then poured himself a coffee from the Thermos jug. He glanced briefly at them both then gestured with his cup at Proctor. ‘You must be Proctor.’ Theo nodded. Cagney looked pleased with himself. ‘Which makes you Macanespie.’ This time there was a faint note of distaste in his voice.

Cagney sat down and hitched his trousers at the knee before he crossed his legs. ‘I imagine you know why I’m here?’

‘You’re Selina Bryson’s replacement,’ Macanespie said. ‘Making a tour of the front-line staff.’ He smiled, instantly worrying that he was showing too many teeth in a display of nerves.

Cagney inclined his head. ‘Right. And also wrong. It’s true that I’ve taken over from Selina. But I’m not here to press the flesh and tell you all what a sterling job you’re doing. Because in the case of you two, you’re not.’

Proctor flushed, a dark plum stain spreading upwards from his bright white shirt collar. ‘We’re one small part of a big operation here. You can’t blame us for everything that’s gone wrong.’

Cagney sipped his coffee, clearly savouring it. ‘The UK government is committed to the concept of international law. That’s the main reason we supported the UN in the formation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. It’s why we seconded people like you to work with the tribunal. Everybody knows it’s going to wind up at the end of this year, so we’re all drinking in the last-chance saloon. And some people aren’t happy about that. Would you say that was a fair assessment of the situation?’

Macanespie hung back, waiting to see which way his colleague would jump. Proctor stuck his chin out, his expression belligerent. ‘A tribunal like this is never going to manage to satisfy people’s demands for justice. Stands to reason. After all this time, you can’t expect to develop the kind of evidence that will always stand up to challenge in court.’

Cagney set his cup down. ‘I appreciate that. What worries me is the cases that have never made it to court. The ones where a dossier was put together and a raid was planned to arrest the alleged war criminal. Only, the arrests were never carried out because, by pure chance, the target of the operation was assassinated before we swung into action.’

So that was the way the wind was blowing. Someone was getting cold feet about someone else’s black ops. Macanespie shrugged. ‘Rough justice. You’ll not see many tears shed over the likes of them. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.’

Cagney smacked a hand down hard on the table, making the crockery rattle and the teaspoons jingle. ‘Don’t give me that. There was nothing serendipitous about these deaths. At least ten of them. The last one, Miroslav Simunovic, just last week.’

‘There’s still a lot of murdering bastards in the Balkans,’ Proctor said.

Cagney glared at him. ‘Remind me not to recommend you for a diplomatic post. The point I’m making is that, while my predecessor may have been willing to turn a blind eye to whatever programme of DIY justice was going on here, I’m not.’

‘Like you said, it’s all going to be over and done with by the end of the year,’ Macanespie said, his voice surly.

‘So, what? You think I should just let sleeping dogs lie?’ Cagney paused dramatically. The other two exchanged a look. It was apparently enough to create a consensus that the question was rhetorical. They stared at Cagney with expressions of stubborn mulishness. He shook his head, clearly impatient. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? This is the end of the tribunal. This is where we draw the line in the sand. This is where we say to Bosnia and Croatia and Montenegro and Kosovo and the rest of them, “It’s done. Settle down and try to behave like you’re inhabiting the twenty-first century, not the twelfth.” It’s where we tell them that we’ve done our best to mete out justice to the bad men. And now they have to move on. Let the past bury its dead.’

Proctor made a noise halfway between a cough and a dry, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s obvious you’re new to that part of the world. They’re still fighting those ancient battles. They talk about it like it was yesterday. We might think it’s over and done, but nobody on the ground over there thinks like that.’

‘Well, they’re going to have to learn. If they want to be part of modern Europe, they’re going to have to learn to live like modern Europeans, not like the private armies of medieval warlords.’

Macanespie shifted his bulk in the chair and reached for the coffee jug. ‘It’s not that simple. It’s all bound up in ethnicity and religion and tribal factions. It’s like Northern Ireland multiplied by ten. Rangers and Celtic to the power of mad.’ He took a mug out of his drawer and poured. Cagney looked momentarily furious, then mildly amused. But it wasn’t enough to divert him from his course.

‘And how else is it going to change if we don’t impose a higher expectation on them? You think there isn’t a new generation of young people in the Balkans who want things to be different? Who look at the world through the prism of Facebook and Twitter and see another way of living? Who are fed up with the old way of doing geopolitics in their back yard?’

Another look exchanged. Macanespie’s shoulders slumped, confronted yet again by the ignorance of a suit from London who didn’t have a clue how this world worked. ‘Maybe. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.’

Cagney compressed his lips into a thin exasperated line. ‘The killing has to stop. These assassinations – because that’s what they are, let’s not glorify them with words like “rough justice” – they’ve got to be history.’

‘I take your point,’ Macanespie said. ‘But why is that our problem? We didn’t do the killing or commission it. Not even behind our hands.’

‘Because what they all have in common is that every one of those assassinations was a case where we had a key front-line involvement. We, us, this office. We’re the common denominator. Either somebody on our team thinks they’re channelling Charles Bronson or there’s a mole leaking the product of our investigations to a third party who’s got his own programme of Balkan cleansing going on.’

Proctor was visibly shaken and Macanespie suspected he was too. He’d never put it together quite like that. They exchanged another look, this time aghast. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Macanespie hissed under his breath.

‘Like he said. We’re not killers,’ Proctor said, indignant.

Cagney allowed a smile to twitch one corner of his mouth. ‘Now that I’ve met you, I’d have to agree. But somebody is. And I’m making it your job to find who.’ He pushed back from the table and stood up.

‘We’re lawyers, not detectives,’ Macanespie said.

‘You might have been lawyers once. But these past few years, you’ve been hunting dogs, triangulating the whereabouts of a bunch of butchers. This is your last assignment. Find the avenger. You can make a start first thing tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ Macanespie protested.

‘You sound like a shopkeeper.’ Cagney’s contempt was obvious. ‘The sooner you get started, the sooner you can deliver. Then maybe you’ll have a career to come home to.’

M
aggie Blake went to pull the heavy drapes across the window of her sitting room. Catching sight of the full moon, she paused, looking out over the silvered rooftops towards the dreaming spires of central Oxford. St Scholastica’s College was far enough out to feel a little aloof from the hurly-burly of the tourist-trap heart of the city, but from her suite of rooms on the third floor of Magnusson Hall she looked over gleaming slates punctuated by chimney pots, across the blank space of the University Parks towards Keble, the Pitt Rivers Museum, and beyond that, slivers of the crenellations, towers and stone facades of a variety of college and university buildings. She was one of the few remaining fellows of the college who lived within its walls and she was grateful for the privilege. It freed up more of her income to travel for pleasure, not purely at the dictates of her research grants. And she loved the view from this room, where she read and wrote and met the handful of postgraduate students she supervised.

Because this had been a day shot through with memories, she recalled the first time she had brought Mitja to her rooms. They’d both been war-weary, sleep-deprived and aching from two days in the back of a truck that had dropped them off on the Banbury Road in the small hours. The college had been still, only a couple of lights burning in student rooms. The bathetic quacking of a mallard duck had disturbed the peace as Maggie had fumbled her key into the front-door lock of Magnusson Hall, and Mitja had chuckled. ‘Dinner,’ he said softly.

They’d climbed the stairs slowly. Maggie remembered the straps of her rucksack biting into the tender places on her shoulders and the tremble in her quads as she’d headed up the final flight.

And then they were in her sitting room, and the moonlight bathed the panoramic skyline. Mitja dropped his bag like a sack of stones and made for the windows as if drawn by a tractor beam. He leaned his forehead against the glass and groaned. ‘Do you remember when Dubrovnik was as beautiful as this?’

She wriggled out of her rucksack straps and crossed the room, wrapping her arms around him, leaning round his shoulder to see a little of the view she’d missed. ‘I remember. The first time I saw the city at night, I thought it was like something from a fairy tale. The city walls. The grid of streets. The bulk of the cathedral like a treasure chest. The harbour glittering in the moonlight. The floodlights at Fort St Ivan reflected like columns in the water.’

‘And now it’s rubble. It’s ruins.’ He straightened up and pulled her round to his side, drawing her close with an arm tight across her back. ‘I don’t understand why my people never grow up. You English —’

She dug an elbow in his ribs. ‘Scottish, remember?’

He shook his head, impatient. ‘You see, you may be as bad as we are.’ There was indulgence in his tone, but weariness too. ‘OK, then.
Those
English had a civil war. But they got over it. You don’t have cavaliers and Cromwell’s men still hating each other and killing each other. They had their wars of roses as well, those English, but people from Yorkshire and Lancashire don’t fight in the streets.’

‘Only over football, I believe.’ Maggie couldn’t help being facetious; being back in Oxford was filling her with deep joy, like a reservoir recovering from a long drought.

‘I am serious.’

‘I know you are. But it’s late and I am beyond tired. I have whisky. Shall we take a glass to bed?’

This time, he laughed. ‘You know exactly how to make things better.’

They had taken the bottle to bed, but hadn’t got past that first glass. The unfamiliar combination of warmth, comfort and the absence of fear made them easy prey for sleep, and not even the desire that sprang constantly between them could keep it at bay.

That night had been the start of a new phase in their relationship. Like every other phase, it had been complicated, tumultuous and glorious. No life plan Maggie had ever concocted had included anyone like Mitja. But then, it hadn’t included underground universities or civil wars either.

Leaving the curtains open, Maggie sat down at her desk, deliberately angled at forty-five degrees to the window so she had to turn her head to get the full benefit of the view. She should be heading for bed. It had been a long and stressful day, the unwelcome party shading into an unwanted dinner for twenty, and she was physically tired. And yet her mind was still busy, jumping restlessly from one encounter to another, and always coming back to the one who wasn’t there.

Without thinking about it, she ran her fingers over the touch pad and wakened her Mac. Maybe it was just the wine talking, but what if it was time to give in to the nagging voice at the back of her mind that kept suggesting she needed to write about her time in the Balkans? She’d addressed it professionally, of course.
Balkan Geopolitics: An Archaeological Approach
had become the standard textbook on the region. And the reader she’d edited that had dissected the media responses to the conflict had attracted mainstream attention on radio and TV as well as print. Maggie had written about the consequences of the siege of Dubrovnik. But she’d never written about what it had been like to live through it. She’d never told the story of how she came to be there, nor of the convoluted journey that had led her to Kosovo with its massacres and rape camps.

At first she’d shied away from telling that story because it was too fresh. Maggie wanted more distance from those traumatic events so she could set them in context. Then she’d held back because she couldn’t write a narrative without placing Mitja front and centre, and she was living with him in Oxford by then. She knew he wouldn’t approve of or agree with everything she had to say about those years shuttling back and forth between her life in Oxford and her life in a war zone. And she didn’t want to sow discord between them.

And finally, she’d kept her silence because he was gone and she couldn’t let go the hope that he’d come back. To make public things he’d be unhappy to read felt like too big a risk.

But the years had drifted past and there had been no word from Mitja. Not so much as a birthday greeting or a Christmas card. Nothing to acknowledge what they had been to each other. Just silence. A silence more profound than she’d ever known in the Balkans. ‘There’s nothing silent here,’ he’d once said to her. ‘Everything speaks, if you only know how to listen.’ Well, this silence wasn’t speaking, that was for sure. And there was no valid reason now for Maggie to hold her tongue. Even if she decided not to publish, there would be a satisfaction in setting things down. A chance to revisit her history and perhaps find a different angle, a new truth.

Even if she didn’t know how the story ended.