Killing Pilgrim (9 page)

“Oh, I’m still here,” she said. “I’m just waiting to hear what favour it is that you want of me. I was under the impression you’d used them all up.”

“Just a little teeny-weeny one. Could I borrow your car?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Just for a couple of days. I’m being sent to Vukovar and my Yugo died in Istria. Dad said he’d give it last rites.”

“Vukovar?”

“Yes. Arse end of everywhere, and I’d like to get there in a bit of comfort.”

Irena owned a new Volkswagen Golf, like the one Rebecca had driven. It was one of the few advantages of being a senior consultant at the hospital. The occasional private patient and a donation from a grateful family had earned her enough to buy the car. It was smooth to drive and, most importantly, had air conditioning. He decided cool air was worth the cost of petrol. Especially since he was planning on using the
UDBA
fuel card. He hoped it still worked.

“Two days,” she said after a long pause.

“Two days. Promise. I’ll bring it back on Wednesday.”

“If there’s the smallest scratch, you pay in flesh and blood.”

“You’re sounding —”

“Like Shylock?” It was something she only ever joked about with him. A residual, bitter joke. Jews were widely despised by Croats, even though there were so few of them left. They had been all but wiped out during the Second World War, murdered in their thousands together with Serbs and gypsies by Croatia’s fascists. But the Serbs didn’t like Jews or gypsies much either. Both of Irena’s parents were Jewish. Her mother’s parents had survived, thanks largely to her grandfather’s ability to apply his skills as a professor of medicine to the needs of peasants and their livestock in a cluster of small forest villages. Her father’s parents, lower-middle-class semi-skilled workers, and his four siblings had perished, together with all his cousins and aunts and uncles. He never spoke about how he’d survived.

“Well, now that you mention it, can I choose which pound and how I give it to you?”

She ignored him. “When do you want it?”

“I always want it.”

“The car, stupid.”

“Now. Ish,” he said. “The sooner I go, the sooner I get back.”

“I’ve got to go down to my office at the university in half an hour. I’ll meet you at Alegoria with the keys.” Alegoria was the café around the corner from his flat. “But you have to go to mine to pick up the car.”

“Deal.”

• • •

When della Torre arrived at the café, Irena was already sitting in the shade on the patio. She wore a thin-strapped summer dress that showed off her shape beneath. Her hair was shiny and black and hung down below her shoulders, though there was grey in it too. Wrinkles fanned from the corners of her eyes, giving them a look of gentle amusement. She was what they called petite, girl-like, and people who knew her only by reputation were surprised when they met her. Though she was four years younger than della Torre, by dint of hard work and intelligence she had achieved considerable stature in the university’s medical faculty.

They kissed on both cheeks, close but without romance.

“You order?” he asked.

“No. Their fridge broke down and I didn’t feel like a coffee.”

“I think I might have a cold beer at home if you’re happy to share it. There must be some ice in the freezer too. If there isn’t, we can just chip off the frost. There’s plenty of that.”

“Okay. I suppose I’ll feel like moving in a minute,” she said, looking firmly planted in her seat, fanning herself with a menu.

“Fine by me. Have you got the keys?”

She handed them over.

“I’ll be going away for a month or two,” she said. “Just so you know.”

“Back to London,” he said.

“No, I won’t be leaving the country. Anyway, I need the car back before the end of the week.”

“Two days, no more. I promise.”

“And don’t smoke in it.”

It wasn’t a rule he much liked. Smoking made the journey go quicker.

“So you’re not going back to David?” David was the English doctor she’d grown close to in London. The one who’d pulled the bullet out of della Torre’s elbow.

“He might come to visit.”

“Oh. So that night didn’t mean anything,” he said.

It wasn’t long after they’d got back from London. She’d run away there too, separately from him, but they’d returned together. His elbow had been hurting and he’d run out of painkillers, so he’d gone up to her apartment to raid her extensive medical cabinet. She’d only just got home after a thirty-six-hour shift. She fed him pills and an omelette, and they got through a pitcher of wine. They woke up the next morning in the same bed, both naked — it had been a hot, sultry night. Not that they were particularly embarrassed. They’d been together long enough for there to be no surprises. But neither remembered much of what might have happened in the time between the booze and the hangover. Della Torre preferred to think it had been a meaningful night.

She hadn’t wanted to talk about it then, and she ignored him now.

“Anyway,” she said, rising out of the chair, “Let’s get that beer before I melt.”

They left the café terrace and walked the half block to della Torre’s building. Della Torre unlocked the door to his flat. Irena was immediately behind him when they saw her. Neither said anything.

Rebecca was standing in the hall, dressed in one of della Torre’s new shirts. One of the ones he’d bought in London, with French cuffs and mother-of-pearl buttons. Only one of those buttons was done up, somewhere midway between Rebecca’s navel and the hollow at the base of her neck. The rest of the shirt was pulled back, exposing the fallen autumn leaf of hair between her thighs.

She made no effort to cover herself up.

“Ummm. Irena, this is Rebecca. She’s a friend of my father’s, an American student friend,” he said in English.

“Is she this friendly with your father?” Irena asked in Croat before switching to English. “How do you do?”

“And Rebecca, this is Irena, my ex- . . .”

“Wife,” Irena filled in.

“My wife,” della Torre corrected himself.

“I’ve heard all about you. You’re the doctor, aren’t you?” Rebecca said without showing the least bit of embarrassment.

“Yes. Though not a gynecologist.”

“Oh? What do you do, then?”

“Chests,” she said, deadpan. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you, but I must be going. I’m sure you and Marko have plenty to . . . discuss.”

Irena kissed della Torre.

“The car’s up the street a little way, in the shade. And don’t worry about the beer,” Irena said. “I think your need will be greater than mine.”

Della
Torre had never liked going east. The Zagreb–Belgrade highway was mostly straight and went through flat land. For the first hour or so there were some distant hills to the north, but eventually they disappeared too.

The late afternoon heat shimmered in front of him, while in the far distance a layer of brooding cloud stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. If there was a small mercy, it was that at least he was driving with the sun to his back.

The conflict with the Serbs in Croat territory was metastasizing. The cancer had started with the Serb rebellion in Krajina, near the Dalmatian coast, but it had spread fast and wide. A swathe of borderland south of Zagreb, to his right as he drove east, was contested. And the region of Vukovar, where he was headed, had become a series of flashpoints. Within these Serb pockets there were Croatian villages. Undoubtedly Serb families lived in those Croat villages. How far down, he wondered, could Yugoslavia be atomized? Or was it every man for himself?

Della Torre’s
UDBA
ID got him through the police roadblocks, though he knew it wouldn’t work forever. Eventually he’d run into a cop who both hated the
UDBA
and knew it no longer existed.

The closer he got to the border with Serbia, the more signs he saw of chronic nervousness. Traffic thinned. There were more police cars around. When he turned off the main highway, heading north, he could see that many houses were closed up, shutters drawn and locked, gates closed. Barns had been emptied. A few courtyards still had chickens scrabbling, and here and there he saw a chained dog. He didn’t envy the people who called these fertile flatlands home, though they were some of the wealthiest in Yugoslavia.

He was about to turn off the Osijek road to Vukovar, where the Zagreb police’s admin girl had booked him into a hotel, then changed his mind. It was early enough in the evening to catch Anzulović’s friend Rejkart in the office, or at least one of his lieutenants, but also late enough that they’d want to get rid of him quickly. That suited della Torre. He’d repeat his performance at the Poreč police station. Show up. Quick, meaningless chat. And duty done. It was all a matter of form. For Anzulović’s sake, he knew he ought to be as thorough as possible. But he also knew it was largely a pointless exercise. Sort this out, see Horvat the following day, and he’d be back in Zagreb for dinner later that night. Maybe he’d take Rebecca out. If he could think of a decent restaurant.

He remembered from a previous trip the way to the large concrete and glass office block that served as the regional police headquarters in Osijek, and parked on the street. He didn’t want an aggrieved relative of one of the police’s temporary guests to run a house key down the side of Irena’s car.

He passed a man smoking and lounging against a tree in front of the police station, dressed in combat fatigue trousers and a tight black T-shirt showing off a bodybuilder’s chest and arms. His hair was too long for the army, but plenty of young men were dressed as paramilitaries these days. He gave della Torre a dead-eyed look as he passed.

In the building, della Torre pulled out his
UDBA
ID and slid it towards a booking sergeant who was manning the main desk. The sergeant had a big face, thick neck, and oddly shaped head — tight around the forehead, so that it looked like it’d been compressed by an iron band. He picked up della Torre’s ID and held it at arm’s length.

“Uh-huh?” he said, handing it back to della Torre.

“I’d like to see your boss, Captain Rejkart.”

“Have you got an appointment?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“On what business?”

“That I’ll discuss with the captain.”

“Uh-unh,” the sergeant said, giving della Torre the faintest nod. “You can wait over there.”

He waved at a public seating area full of old men in black suits, white shirts, and porkpie hats. Farmers with creased, tanned faces, or their wives, in patterned headscarves and dark calico dresses, waiting to find out what was to be done with their sons or brothers or nephews.

“If I remember correctly, you’ve got a slightly more comfortable waiting room over there,” della Torre said, lifting his chin towards a door behind the sergeant’s desk.

The sergeant stared at him for a moment and then gave another little nod, unlocking the wooden barrier to let della Torre through. Della Torre took two steps and then stopped, half turning.

“Oh, and you were going to make that phone call. You know. The one to your boss. To tell him he’s got a visitor,” della Torre said.

The room was stuffy; there were a couple of municipal armchairs and an overflowing ashtray on a table. But della Torre was alone, which suited him. Either they’d see him quickly to get rid of him or keep him waiting to show him how little they thought of him. He sat down and dove into the trashy English paperback he hadn’t had a chance to read in Istria, the one with a man’s hand on a woman’s ass on the cover. He didn’t notice the door open.

“A criminology textbook?” the man said. He was round-headed, solidly built, in suit trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. He wore no tie. His light-coloured and thinning hair was cut like a military man’s. He came at della Torre the same way he might have approached a suspect. There was nothing friendly about him.

Della Torre stood up.

“No. It’s about horses and sex. Maybe sex with horses. I don’t know, I haven’t gotten that far yet.” He held out his hand. “Chief Rejkart?”

“’Fraid not, sir. The boss is tied up this afternoon. You’ll have to do with me, Captain . . . ?”

“Della Torre.”

“Of course. Slipped my mind. I’m Lieutenant Boban, one of the chief’s deputies. And I’m afraid I can’t spare you much time either. We’re a bit busy these days, with everybody wanting to shoot everybody else. Maybe a quick coffee. I’ve got to go down to Vukovar to sign off on some of our guys for the end of the day. Locals keep cutting the phone lines, and you can’t say anything on the radio without having half the world listen in, so one of us has to drive down to check things out once a day. But first I’ve got to find a car, and I’m already running late.”

Boban gave della Torre a curt smile. As friendly as a fish on a marble slab, della Torre thought.

“Coffee it is, then,” he said to the lieutenant.

They went to a corner café. The sun bore down on them from the west, the air creased with heat and suffused with dust and the smell of warm asphalt and hay from the not-too-distant countryside. Towards the east, clouds had piled higher. They passed the bodybuilder in the black T-shirt and fatigues, still leaning against a tree, smoking, watching them.

Boban walked with broad strides, silent the whole way. It was clear to della Torre they didn’t want him underfoot in the police station. Normally, a coffee would have been brewed by a secretary while they chatted in a private office.

“So, what might Zagreb be interested in?” Boban asked once they’d sat at the bar and ordered. He glanced at his watch.

“Oh, just to get a measure of how things are going. Captain Rejkart’s thoughts on the state of the world. That sort of thing.”

Della Torre hated going to these far-flung stations and asking banal questions. At least this time he sort of knew what he was expected to find out. He’d have to sidle into it backwards.

“Well, the local Serbs aren’t very happy and neither are the local Croats,” Boban said, his blue-green eyes sharp and cold. “And on top of that, we’ve got people coming here from god knows where with big sticks that they poke into wasps’ nests.”

“So I hear.”

“Zagreb sends someone who over an afternoon makes the Serbs crazy, and then we spend the next three weeks trying to calm them down. Be nice if they left us alone to keep the peace for a change.” Boban looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes.

Della Torre figured he wasn’t going to get anywhere as a dignitary, so he tried another tack: honesty.

“Lieutenant, I haven’t been sent from Zagreb to give you a hard time. To tell you the truth, this is just a side trip, a favour for a friend of Rejkart’s to see how he’s getting along. This friend’s worried about him. I’m really here to see a guy called Horvat in Vukovar. You’ve probably heard about him.”

Boban drew back a little and his eyes narrowed. Not much, but enough to tell della Torre it was probably a mistake to have mentioned Horvat’s name.

“I’m sorry, I can’t really help you, Captain. I’m sure there are formal channels . . .” Boban edged off the bar stool, having emptied the thimble-sized cup of its contents.

“You said you’re looking for a car. Haven’t you got a driver?” della Torre said quickly.

“If there’s a car free, I take the car. If there’s a driver, I let him drive and I get to do a bit of work.”

“What do you guys use here, Zastavas?”

“What else? As far as I know, only the
UDBA
have Mercedes-Benzes or
BMW
s. Provincial police, we’re lucky we have something better than a donkey and cart.”

“Air-conditioned?”

Boban laughed. “Sure. Yugoslav air conditioning. You get a nice breeze every time the donkey farts.”

“Lieutenant, I’ve got a Golf. With air conditioning. And I haven’t got any plans this evening. You have a driver and an air-conditioned car at your disposal. No obligation. I’ll take you out to your men in Vukovar and back.”

The suggestion caught Boban off guard. The penetrating blue-green eyes shifted from della Torre to the mirror behind the café bar. It would be a real temptation. Driving around in a Zastava on a hot August afternoon wasn’t pleasant. On the other hand, he didn’t know or trust this captain who’d been foisted on them by Zagreb. Della Torre could sense the struggle.

Comfort won out.

“I can’t promise you any conversation,” Boban said carefully. “I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll bring a portable radio. Can we plug it into your lighter socket?”

“Yes. One little rule,” della Torre said, stubbing his cigarette out in a glass ashtray. “No smoking in the car.”

“That’s a clincher for me. I don’t smoke and it’s impossible to get our police drivers not to. Impossible. They’d strike.”

“Deal, then,” della Torre said, holding out his hand.

Boban considered it for a moment, as if della Torre was offering him a piece of evidence from a crime scene. A severed limb, perhaps. But he shook it anyway.

• • •

Boban directed the way down from Osijek. They took the highway and then minor roads to avoid impromptu roadblocks by local vigilantes. But other than that he said nothing as he went through papers in the briefcase, occasionally marking them with a cheap red Biro. Della Torre realized he had no right to feel irritated, but Boban treated him exactly as he might have done a police chauffeur. No pleasantries when he said “Next left” or “Ignore the sign.” The radio squawked away in the background.

They skirted Vukovar and carried on parallel to the Danube towards the Croat-Serb border, until Boban told della Torre to turn off onto a gravel track between long, flat fields of stubble. In the distance were a fringe of trees and a pair of half-built houses.

“Slowly,” Boban said.

Della Torre slowed down while Boban stared intently out the window. They were about two hundred metres from the buildings when Boban said, “Stop.”

Della Torre stopped.

Boban sat and stared hard into the field on his side of the car. The short stalks stuck up from the ground. Birds filled the fields, picking up loose wheat seeds, suggesting a recent harvest.

“I’m going to walk from here,” Boban said, getting out of the car and shutting the door behind him. “You just drive on up to the houses. I’ll be there in five minutes,”

Della Torre pulled away faster than he’d intended, spraying gravel behind him. A police car was parked in front of the larger of the two buildings. They were the unfinished skeletons of a pair of two-storey houses, one a bit larger than the other, separated by a cemented yard that could comfortably hold two cars side by side. Like most new buildings in Croatia, they were made of red cinder blocks, though they remained unrendered. They were both roofed but had no doors or windows.

With the police car sitting in front of the larger building and a big pile of builders’ sand spread in front of the other one, della Torre parked between the houses. He had a pretty and uninterrupted view of the Danube, no more than fifty metres down a little slope. The iron-coloured river was calm, broad but not overwhelming. A forest lined the opposite bank, with a row of poplars standing sentry.

Della Torre got out of the car, leaving the door open, breathing in the smell of cut straw in the evening air. Three uniformed policemen looked from him to Boban in the distance. A tall young man with short sandy hair approached della Torre.

“Mr —” he started to say.

“Captain,” della Torre answered sharply.

“Mr. Captain —”

“Captain della Torre,” della Torre interrupted.

“Mr. Captain della Torre, can I maybe give you a bit of advice?” The man was a typical Croat policeman. Someone who otherwise would be tending a small holding in a quiet village.