The bone road, p.17
The Bone Road, page 17
Drakulić comes up at the same time. He smiles. I want to punch him. I smile.
‘Did you go to the window?’ he asks.
‘No.’
He looks at us for a moment. My heart doesn’t beat.
‘Okay then.’
He turns and starts to go down the stairs, and then something makes him stop and turn again. He glances back, and from this angle I realize with horror that the circle where I’d rubbed away the filth is clearly visible on the glass, a tell-tale smeary circle in the center of the pane. He reaches out and grabs my arm, looks at my sleeve. It’s black with dirt.
He snatches Alek’s camera, breaking the strap, and opens the back and exposes the film. I think with both outrage and relief that’s the end of it, but that’s because, unlike Alek, despite my months and years here, I still don’t know these people like I should.
Without a word, Drakulić pulls out his pistol and shoots Alek in the head. One minute Alek is standing beside me, and the next he’s in a pool of blood at my feet. I sink to my knees and I hear screaming, and it takes a moment for me to realize that it’s my own voice. The guard grabs me under my arms, and I think I’m about to be shot too. I’m aware of something wet against my leg and I realize I’ve pissed myself, and I think of Marina and Alek’s wife and his gorgeous kids and that I’ll never have kids of my own to think of as I die, but he hasn’t pulled the trigger yet, and I’m being dragged down the corridor, my feet trailing in Alek’s blood, and then I’m being shoved in a room.
‘Drakulić don’t like it when men scream. Only women,’ the guard says, and slams the door.
I’m not dead. My sneakers are covered in Alek’s blood; I try to take them off, I don’t want them anywhere near me, but I only succeed in smearing his blood all over my hands. I am covered in his blood. I almost wish they would hurry up and kill me. I did this to him. I know even now that it is all my fault. And yet, despite my guilt, my vile self-loathing, my desire for life is animal and strong. I want to die, I deserve to die, and I am terrified that they will kill me and it will hurt, and I am desperate to live even though I don’t deserve to.
Hours pass. I sit on the floor. I don’t move for several hours. The urine on my trousers dries. I go into shock. I cry a little. I shiver. My muscles start to cramp. I stretch my legs. Alek’s blood has dried on my hands. I can feel it cracking on my cheek where I touched my face. It is dark in the room. Night has fallen. I’m in one of the hotel bedrooms. There is a bed. The sheets are dirty. They smell rankly of shit and blood. I don’t look too closely. The journalist in me knows I ought to, but the man can’t bear any more. There is a bathroom. I pad into it and there is a bath with a shower curtain half ripped off and a cracked sink, a broken mirror. I’m glad the mirror is broken as I don’t want to see my face. I wash the blood off my hands and face. I drink water from the tap; I’m greedy with thirst, my lips are parched and cracked.
I go back into the bedroom and I stop dead. My heart lurches. Drakulić is sitting on the bed, knocking back a bottle of whisky.
‘Everyone told you not to come here, that it was too dangerous?’ he says, softly.
‘Yes.’
‘And everyone told me it was a stupid idea to let you come. Neither of us listened, and now we are in a big mess.’
He hands me the bottle of whisky and stands, goes to the French windows and heaves them open, waving me out onto the balcony.
‘Come,’ he says.
It’s December and light snow is starting to fall. I’m not wearing any shoes, but I have the sense not to argue. I walk barefoot out into the snow, realizing that I’ve not washed Alek’s blood off my feet and that I’m leaving bloody footprints. He glances down.
‘You’ve cut yourself.’
I shake my head. I try and say, ‘It’s Alek’s blood,’ but my voice catches in my throat and sobs overtake me. I know Drakulić doesn’t like it when men scream, but he doesn’t seem to mind when men cry. To my horror, he enfolds me in an embrace and pats my shoulder. I can’t bear it and shove him off. He lets me. I’m so angry I stop crying.
‘He had seen things he shouldn’t and taken pictures. There was nothing I could do.’
His voice is sticky with regret, as though he actually believes it was not his fault. He has utterly disassociated from his crime. I feel more guilt than him. I hate him like I have never hated anyone. He studies me with interest.
‘Why haven’t you killed me too?’ I ask.
He sighs and takes a long sip of whisky. ‘You are like Schrödinger’s cat,’ he says. ‘You know Schrödinger’s cat? It’s locked in an airtight box? Until the box is open, the possibility exists that the cat is both dead and alive. Right now, in this room, as far as the world is concerned you are both dead and alive.’
He is slurring as he talks, and I realize that Commander Drakulić, warlord and philosopher, is drunk.
‘I’m going to get my sweater,’ I say. ‘Even though I’m already dead.’
‘And alive,’ he adds, with a grin.
I step out onto the balcony with my sweater on and put my sneakers back on. Drakulić passes me the bottle. I sip a very little, pretending to drink much more than I do. There is a noise on the ground and I look down and see that the swimming pool is now empty. It’s being hosed down; what must be blood is being washed away. It looks black and tar-like in the darkness. Drakulić looks at the direction of my gaze, and for a moment the mask falls, and he falters.
‘You have heard the story of my family and the Ustasha in World War Two?’
‘I have.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘They arrived at your house and asked you who to kill first, your brothers or your sisters, and you chose the girls.’
‘They were all already dead. I’d gone for a shit in the woods. But the legend was useful. Fear is better than love for men like me.’
I don’t want to discuss Machiavelli.
‘How many have you killed?’
He shrugged. ‘Me? Myself? That is not my job. I tell the others to do it. One hundred. Maybe more. We have to dig the pits further and further out into the woods. God alone knows. Sometimes the women do it to themselves. They jump from the balconies and they hang themselves in the shower. That is not our fault.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘You come from a different place, Ryan. You are not part of this madness. I used to teach philosophy. Now, I do not sleep as well as I used to. My dreams are full of fire.’
‘Like the fires in Višegrad? Where you ordered Muslim families to be burnt to death? Mothers, old people, little children?’
He is silent, sipping from the bottle of Scotch, and he seems to have forgotten that I am here. There is the rustle of the pine trees and swoosh of water as the last of the blood is washed from the swimming pool.
‘This is a necessary war. But the fires. Those were a pity.’
He gives a sound that is a bit like a snort, and he finishes the bottle. His eyes are unfocused. He is very drunk.
‘It is the man who is to be hanged who confesses on the eve before, not the executioner,’ he says.
He’s telling me that he’s going to kill me, that I’m Schrödinger’s dead cat, but I suppose that I’m alive now, for what it’s worth, so I keep going.
‘You’re a Christian. It’s only natural to want to confess your sins.’
Drakulić gives a humourless laugh. ‘I am not a Catholic. I confess only to God, not to a Jew.’
‘You’re human. We all want absolution.’
He meets my eye with an odd look.
‘Will you give it?’
I know what I’m going to say next means he will probably kill me, but I think of Alek and his wife and daughters, and of the people in the pool, who are even now being hosed away, and the women jumping from the balconies rather than face life after what he and his men have done to them and the nameless others buried in the woods; and even though I know the words he wants me to say and that they might just save me, I can’t bring myself to utter them.
‘No, Dragan Drakulić. I will not give you absolution. You will never be forgiven.’
He stands up and silently quits the room. I spend the rest of the night writing up my notes. When dawn comes, I expect to die.
Editorial note:
Ryan Markovitz was released five days later. Alekesander Stanišić’s body has not been found. He is missing presumed murdered. See obituary on p. 45, News Section. Dragan Drakulić denies all allegations made in this piece.
Simo blinked. Ryan did not die then, not in that room. But twenty-six years later he had been killed and left to moulder in a shallow grave in the woods. There was absolutely a connection between Ryan Mackinnon/Markovitz and Dragan Drakulić. Arkan was Drakulić’s man, or had been once upon a time. The fact remained that now Dragan Drakulić was out of jail, suffering and slaughter had started to spread outward once again across Simo’s district and beyond, like an infection tracking across a wound. He sat back with his head in his hands, thinking through the new information. Jenny had left hours ago to return to her work at the temporary mortuary, but he needed to check in with her. He called her phone and she answered on the first ring.
He had no time for pleasantries. ‘You were a witness at Drakulić’s trial at The Hague.’
‘Why?’
‘Ryan Mackinnon’s murder. Think I might have found the motive. He witnessed Drakulić kill a friend of his. Alekesander Stanišić. Photographer. Mackinnon must have been a key witness at the trial. His name wasn’t Mackinnon back then. He changed it after the war. Used to be Ryan Markovitz.’
There was a breath of recognition mingled with surprise from Jenny’s end of the call.
‘You know him?’
‘Of him. Never met the man in person. You’re right – he was a prosecution witness at the Drakulić trial.’
Simo nodded satisfied. ‘So, I do have a motive for the murder. Drakulić is released from prison, wants revenge.’
‘No, that’s the thing. Ryan Markovitz refused to testify.’
‘What?’
‘Markovitz was unusual – one of the only people ever to witness Drakulić commit a crime. And live. Drakulić was scrupulous at leaving no witnesses. The women he raped, he had killed. And he never kept records. His men were loyal, through fear or fanaticism – who knows. Drakulić was on the run for ten years before he was finally caught, and even then his soldiers were still too loyal – or frightened – to testify.’
‘The prosecution needed Markovitz.’
‘They did. Without him, everything was circumstantial. I never saw Markovitz in court – I was called to the stand a few months before he was scheduled to appear. But everyone was talking about what happened. The prosecution was furious; they subpoenaed him, tried to force him to testify. He got a lawyer and appealed. The lawyer argued that as a reporter he had a right not to testify in court. He won.’
Simo shook his head. ‘But why not testify? Was he threatened?’
‘No idea. Lots of journalists were on his side, insisting that he’d done the right thing. That it was the moral duty of a reporter to stand by his source. Integrity. Objectivity. The sanctity of the source and all that.’
It made no sense to Simo. ‘So, Ryan Markovitz refuses to testify. Drakulić is sent to prison despite him, not because of him. And yet, years later, on Dragan Drakulić’s release from The Hague, Ryan is found dead.’ He mulled it over. With what Ryan had seen he was still a threat to Drakulić, even after twenty-six years. Drakulić hated loose ends. There was another possibility. ‘Perhaps something happened to change Ryan Mackinnon’s mind and he finally decided to do the right thing. If so, then I believe that one woman knows why.’
‘Heather Bishop?’
‘No.’ Simo was already heading for the door. Dušica.
16
Heather gripped the handlebars to stop her hands from trembling. She felt sick to her stomach and a pain throbbed behind her eyes. To her relief it had stopped raining, but the roads were slick and an icy wind shivered the pines, rifling through the needles like the sound of water. The road was black and twisting, a thread unspooling around the steep cliffs. Trees shouldered their way onto the road on either side. The gloom and silence unsettled her. The only sound the whirr and tick of her own tyres and the wind in the leaves. Was this the place from which they had taken Ryan? If someone slid out of the forest and grabbed her, no one would see. She too would simply disappear.
She pedalled faster, heart rattling against her ribs, and leaned into the curve of the next bend. The rushing air was cold against her cheeks and made her eyes water. Then, all at once, there was the neon sign of Café Bulozi, flashing pink and blue, artificially bright. Only a couple of trucks occupied the near-vacant car park. She chained up her bike and hastened inside. To her surprise, Simo was already there, sitting quietly at a booth near the back, nursing a cup of coffee. He looked tired, smudged shadows beneath his eyes. She slipped into the booth opposite him and coughed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
‘I’m fine. Think maybe I’m coming down with something.’ She said nothing about the bottle of pills that she’d flushed down the toilet in the hotel. ‘You’ve found out something about Ryan.’ Heather had no interest in small talk.
He was silent for a moment, as though trying to work out what he could say. ‘I spoke to some of Ryan’s colleagues in London. Before he was a cycling journalist, he was a reporter with the Washington Post.’
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an article he’d printed and pushed it across the table to Heather. She stared at it and then at Simo.
‘Look at the photo on the byline.’
She glanced down, put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God, it’s Ryan. Younger, but it’s him.’
‘You need to take a look at this article.’
She could feel Simo’s eyes on her as she read. She was used to Ryan’s cycling columns, as well as his podcasts, but this was different. It was fierce and raw, bristling with outrage and self-loathing. She felt as if it were a piece by another Ryan, one she hadn’t known existed, about the bitter heart of the Balkans. A story of war and blood, people who went into the black woods and disappeared.
When she had finished, she took a long breath. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to return to the Balkans for years. She felt light-headed. Ryan had been brave and terrified, and she wished, oh God, she wished he had told her what he had seen, so that she might at least have tried to understand. She would have listened. Perhaps then she could have helped him. She realised now that she never really knew him.
She glanced towards the window and watched as the moon floated upward towards the mountain peak. It looked alien, and she felt very far from home. The unreality of the week’s events smashed into her, and for a moment she felt so terrified she couldn’t breathe. She tucked her knees underneath her chin on the bench and, hugging herself tightly, bit her lip. For days she’d been unable to cry, but now she wept for herself and both Ryans – the man she thought she knew, and the man that, now, she never would.
To her relief Simo did not insult her with trite words of consolation. He simply sat quietly, letting his presence offer her comfort. And when finally he said, ‘I’m sorry,’ she could tell that he meant it.
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
‘Whether you are fighting or observing, war does odd things to a person.’ Simo spoke in the frank tones of a person who knew. He signalled to the barman, who brought over a large glass of wine. Heather drank gratefully.
‘He was trying to buy a gun. He must have been very frightened about something. Do you know what?’
Heather shook her head. ‘Who is Dragan Drakulić? Did he kill Ryan?’
‘It is possible. Or had him killed. Drakulić prefers to have others commit crimes on his behalf.’ He slid his phone across the table and showed her a picture of an elderly man with silvered hair, thin lips and wide, guileless blue eyes.
‘That’s him?’ He looked like no one at all.
Simo nodded.
A cry of pain escaped from Heather’s lips. She wanted Drakulić to pay. She needed justice. ‘But why kill him now?’
Simo told her what Jenny had told him about Ryan refusing to testify at Drakulić’s trial. Heather shook her head, unwilling to believe it. ‘No. That’s not Ryan.’ He was more of an enigma to her than ever. None of it made sense.
‘I believe there is one person who can help us understand. Who might lead us to Drakulić.’
Simo pushed a printout of Ryan’s Washington Post article across the table towards Heather. She noticed that he’d circled a name.
Additional reporting by Alekesander Stanišić and
Marina Tomić.
‘We need to find the translator, Marina Tomić. Her name appears with Alekesander’s until he dies, and then appears alongside Ryan’s until the end of the war.’
‘You think she’s Dušica?’ asked Heather at once.
‘I think it is possible. I also think it’s possible he knew and trusted her well enough to ask her to help him buy a gun.’
‘There was a woman with him when he bought the gun?’
‘Yes. But the source didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell me, her name. Marina Tomić is in Višegrad. This is her site.’ Simo took out his phone and showed Heather a page from a website.
‘It’s in Serbian. I can’t read it.’
‘Actually, the page is in Serbian and Bosnian. It’s in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.’
‘Is that important?’
He nodded. ‘Serbian and Bosnian are basically the same language, like American English and British English. A few words are different. But Serbian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and Bosnian the Latinate. For her website to use both is a statement. She is not taking sides. Or rather, she works for both sides. She believes in peace. In a future working together.’
