The bone road, p.18
The Bone Road, page 18
‘Okay,’ said Heather.
‘Marina works at a law firm specialising in human rights. She practises alongside her husband; they do work prosecuting war criminals and get compensation for victims. Mostly Bosnian victims, but they have also a few Serbian clients too.’
Heather gripped her glass of wine tightly. Ryan may well have been sleeping with Marina. She recoiled at the thought, but then a stronger compulsion overwhelmed her. She needed to know. ‘I want to talk to her.’
‘Yes. I think this Marina may well be able to tell us why Ryan would not testify in the trial against Drakulić. And,’ Simo paused, ‘I believe she also knows why he changed his mind.’
Heather was puzzled. ‘Why tell me about Marina? I mean, I appreciate the heads up, but why not go straight to her?’
‘This is the thing,’ said Simo. ‘Marina Tomić works for an organisation called The Silent Women. I admire them. They are highly aggravating and cause me many problems, but they try hard to get justice for women who have suffered terrible things in the Balkans. They, however, are not very keen on the police.’
Heather stared at Simo, realising with some considerable satisfaction that he needed her. ‘And you don’t think she’ll talk to you.’
‘Unfortunately not. Or, not without you. You, Heather Bishop, the girlfriend of her murdered old friend. You, I think she will speak to.’
Heather studied him narrowly. ‘Is there anything to stop me from going to talk to Marina by myself?’
Simo shook his head, a little weary. ‘Only that I would ask you not to. I have an obligation to the dead. I want to find out what happened to Ryan. But I also have a duty to protect the living. Please, I beg you, do not pursue this without me. For better or worse, I am a police officer. This place is dangerous.’
Heather looked at the tired face of the man across the booth. His expression was frank, his brown eyes lined and a little bloodshot, his hair mostly silver but streaked here and there with black, like a badger’s. She wanted to believe him. Reaching a decision, she stood up. ‘I’m going to Marina’s office tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. You’re driving.’
17
They lingered in the street opposite the office building where Marina Tomić worked. A cloud of dizziness and nausea enveloped Heather. Withdrawal from the medication she’d tossed away, she assumed. Spending most of the night reading articles by Ryan Markovitz hadn’t helped either.
‘You look terrible.’ Petra made circles around her own eyes. ‘Purple like you been punched.’
When she’d learned of the proposed trip to Višegrad, Petra had announced that she was accompanying Heather and Uncle Simo. Heather was grateful for her continued support, but sure that Simo would object. To her surprise, he had decreed that it was a good idea – the more women the better, apparently.
As she waited, Heather noticed a line of posters plastered to the wall. Half of them had been defaced, but one was still legible. It showed an image of a red lily and a few lines in a language she couldn’t read.
‘It’s for the protest tomorrow,’ explained Petra.
‘The Silent Women?’
Petra nodded. ‘The red lily is their symbol.’
Heather gestured questioningly to the torn posters.
‘Not everyone is a fan.’ Petra shrugged.
Simo returned from the café next door holding a tray of coffees. He handed the women one each. Heather sipped hers gratefully, feeling the hot drink reviving her.
‘This morning,’ Simo said to her, ‘you must try and think a little bit like a police detective. Okay?’
‘But not like Srpska police detective,’ Petra teased. ‘All useless fuckers.’
Simo shot her a look. He turned again to Heather. ‘You must ask the questions we talked about.’
They’d rehearsed what she should say. Simo was very clear about how to conduct the interview. He’d remarked that they’d be lucky if Marina allowed him, a cop, into the office, and even if she did, Heather should be the one to ask the questions. But if Heather pushed too hard, too soon, Marina would shut down and ask them to leave. No pressure.
‘You must build up a picture of her relationship with Ryan, gain her trust,’ he said, ‘before asking the more difficult questions.’
Heather tossed the empty cup into a wastebin and crossed the road to Marina’s building, the other two following close behind. She searched the list of names on the door and hit the buzzer.
‘Zdravo?’
‘I’d like to talk to Marina Tomić.’
There was a pause, chatter in Bosnian, and then another voice over the intercom speaking perfect English with the merest hint of an accent. ‘No walk-ins. Says it on the sign.’
‘I’m Heather Bishop. Ryan Mackinnon’s girlfriend. I think you knew him as Ryan Markovitz.’
There was a long silence. Heather and Simo looked at one another.
‘It’s not going to work,’ she said.
‘It’ll work,’ he said.
A minute passed, then another, and then at last there was a buzz and the door opened. They pushed inside to a narrow hall, with empty mailboxes on one side and a staircase in front of them.
‘I suppose we go up?’ said Petra.
The stairs were dirty and covered with litter and old newspapers. Surprising, Heather thought, for a legal firm. The first floor was registered to a party supplies company. They kept going. As they approached the second storey, Simo fell back, allowing Heather and Petra to go in front. The door to the office was ajar and Marina stood in the doorway, arms folded, surveying them with wary green eyes. She was elfin and slight, with long dark hair spilling out from beneath a cap. Heather reckoned she was about fifty.
‘I’m Heather Bishop. And this is my friend Petra Sokolović—’
‘Who’s the cop?’ said Marina, with a flick of her head. Simo had carefully dressed as casually as he could in jeans and a sweater, but he wore his badge like a facial tattoo.
‘Simo Subotić,’ he said, moving forward and holding out his hand.
‘He’s my uncle,’ Petra added, much to Marina’s bafflement. She ignored the proffered hand. ‘In my experience most cops round here are arseholes.’
Simo smiled amiably.
‘Yes,’ said Heather. Simo’s smile fell. ‘I thought he was an arsehole, at first. But he’s trying to find out what happened to Ryan.’ She paused. ‘You know that he’s dead?’
‘What happened to starting with the easy questions?’ Simo muttered.
But the news didn’t come as a surprise to Marina. ‘I had heard, yes. I am very sorry. More sorry than I can say.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ Heather said, tightly. ‘I want to know who did this to him.’
At this, Marina softened slightly and she seemed to take pity on her. She let them into a small and untidy office crammed with filing cabinets and desks shoved into a corner. Marina gestured to a couple of mismatching and worn sofas jammed in the middle of the office, and the three of them took a seat.
‘You’re a strange trio,’ said Marina, staring between them. She glared at Simo. ‘I don’t like the police.’
Heather ignored her. ‘Are you Dušica?’
‘Excuse me?’ said Marina, puzzled.
‘Ryan called you Dušica.’
It seemed to Heather that she was about to answer, but before she could speak, a man appeared from a small cubby off the main office and glowered at the three interlopers. He was tall and wiry, dressed in jeans and a sweater that was patched at the elbow, his black hair speckled with white.
‘You don’t need to talk to them,’ he said, voice wary.
‘No. But I want to, Nik.’ She gave a shrug of both explanation and introduction to the others. ‘My husband, Nikola Stanković. Also my lawyer.’
He did not say hello, but instead lurked in the corner, a hostile, nervy presence. Heather tried to ignore him, wondering why Marina would need a lawyer for this conversation.
‘Yes,’ Marina said.
It took a moment for Heather to realise she was answering her earlier question.
‘Sometimes he called me Dušica. We are – were – very old friends.’
Simo had briefed her with a set of questions designed to open up the conversation, but sitting here in front of this woman, knowing she was eye-to-eye with Dušica, Heather was consumed with another question. ‘Were you screwing Ryan?’
She was aware of Simo groaning quietly beside her. He’d been so clear about the line of questioning, and she’d blown it straight away. Their one chance to get Marina on side.
But rather than be offended by the question, Marina’s small, rosebud mouth broke wide open into a laugh. Nikola looked entirely unperturbed; he too looked amused.
‘Not for a long time,’ said Marina. ‘Twenty-six years ago. And only once. He wasn’t my type.’
Heather released a breath she didn’t know that she’d been holding. She believed her. That part of her relationship with Ryan, at least, had held true. With this knowledge she relaxed, and immediately some of the love and grief she’d been holding back out of self-protection seeped through her. She tried to block it out, tried to focus, acutely conscious of Simo’s furious glances.
‘How did you meet Ryan?’ she asked, attempting to guide the conversation back on track.
‘In a hotel bar in Dubrovnik back in, let’s see, I think at the end of nineteen ninety-one. I was a translator. He was covering the siege for the Post. We both got stuck in the middle of it. That brings people together. At that point I was working for Reuters, and we ended up, you know . . .’ She gave an unembarrassed shrug. ‘Partly because we were drunk and a little frightened, but mostly because we were very bored and there was nothing much else to do.’
And you are extremely pretty, thought Heather. And back then, charming, ruthless, life-of-the-party Ryan must have been hard to resist. Although, to be honest, Marina would have been a bit out of his league.
‘We were never really interested in each other in that way,’ continued Marina. ‘And then later, when he was sent to Bosnia and needed a translator – his Serbo-Croat was not nearly so good back then – he called me up. We worked together for the rest of the war. I think probably the fact that we screwed at the beginning and got it out of the way meant we were perfect colleagues.’
Heather smarted at the other woman’s words, realising for the first time that she was envious of Marina. She knew a part of Ryan that she did not, and now would not. ‘What was it like working with him?’
‘He was so talented, and, Jesus, he was ambitious. We all were. It was his first proper war. He’d been in Iraq during the first Gulf War and complained how dull it was, how nothing happened. Well, the war here was not boring. I hooked him up with Alek, a photographer from the north. We’d do anything for each other. Took crazy risks to get a story. Alek’s wife used to plead with me, as the only woman, to try to get the boys to be sensible, but then she discovered that I was as bad as them. In fact, it was Alek who was the most cautious. He was the one with two little girls. He tried to rein in me and Ryan, but we were kids ourselves, and oh my God, the world was on fire and no one gave a shit. Right here in Višegrad they were murdering whole families in their houses, mothers burned to death holding their babies and toddlers. It wasn’t fear that kept me awake at night, it was anger.
‘And, we thought, if we could just tell the right story, take the right picture, then maybe someone would notice. Someone in London or Paris or Washington might care a little bit. But, really, that was all bullshit. It was all about us. Not with Alek. His parents were dead by this point. His sister had been raped. But me and Ryan? We told ourselves it was about getting the story out there – pursuing it at all cost, risking our lives to save lives – but our ambition was hotter than the sun. We were like Icarus, on our ridiculous paper wings.’
She stopped, reached into her jacket for an e-cigarette and sucked it hungrily. The more animated and stressed she became, the stronger her Bosnian accent.
‘We left Sarajevo and got permits to enter the zone around Zikoč where we’d heard rumours of a particularly vicious paramilitary group.’
‘The Wolves?’
Marina nodded and poured herself some water and was quiet for a minute. ‘We spent months writing about them. We’d stay in and around Zikoč, and then when it got too dangerous, we’d flee back to Sarajevo, then try and get back near Višegrad. By that point Ryan’s Serbian was good too. Hardly needed me to translate, but we were a team. And Alek. He was the best.’
‘And then Drakulić killed him.’
‘You saw Ryan’s article?’ asked Marina, her face grave. ‘It must have been hard for you to read.’
‘In the context of this week, not the worst thing.’
Marina gazed at her, dark eyes big with pity, and Heather had to look away. She couldn’t bear kindness, not now. If she allowed herself to think about Ryan, let herself feel the full horror of it all, she would be overwhelmed.
Perhaps sensing Heather falter, Petra took over the questioning. ‘Drakulić killed Alek that night, why not Ryan?’
Marina started to vape again, her hands trembling.
‘It’s one thing to kill a Bosnian photographer like Alek. Of course, the Post was outraged at his death. They ran a charming obit—’
‘Yes, I read it,’ said Heather.
‘But Ryan’s a U.S. citizen, and even Drakulić couldn’t really be bothered with the crazy shit-storm he’d face if he killed him. Instead, he negotiated all sorts of foreign aid in exchange for his release.’
‘So, you tried to free Ryan,’ said Simo, finally joining the conversation.
‘And Alek,’ said Marina. ‘I didn’t know he was dead then. They were missing for nearly a week and, when they didn’t come back, I phoned our editor at the Post. He went crazy. But the Post and the U.S. Embassy then put a lot of pressure on the Serbs.’
‘And Drakulić let Ryan go. Despite what he’d seen,’ said Simo.
Marina gave a wry smile. ‘As I said, lots of foreign aid. And none of the bastards were worrying about being prosecuted for war crimes when it was over. They were too busy trying to win. And they were right not to worry.’ Her voice rose in anger. ‘Nothing happened for years. Even now we’re still trying to bring them to justice.’
‘It’s difficult,’ agreed Simo. ‘The criminals are now our neighbours and their children go to school with ours.’
Heather watched Marina and Nikola study Simo with considerable interest. In this part of the world, police oficers didn’t usually profess such opinions.
‘I heard it was you who found Drakulić after the war,’ said Simo, looking at Marina.
‘I was one of many. We spent a decade tracking him down. At first we thought he was in Argentina, but it turned out he had remained in Serbia, hidden in the mountains. Plenty of people viewed him as a national hero – still do – and it was only when the new government was installed in Serbia that suddenly the money used to hide him dried up, and we found him easier to track.’
‘We spent four years preparing the case for trial at The Hague,’ said Nikola. ‘Drakulić was meticulous at keeping a distance between himself and the genocides.’
‘That was why we needed Ryan at the trial,’ added Marina. ‘The rest of the evidence we had was mostly circumstantial.’
‘But he wouldn’t testify,’ said Heather.
‘No. So we did our best with the evidence we had. But in the end, Drakulić, murderer and rapist and perpetrator of genocide, was sentenced to ten years and served just seven in a luxurious prison in The Hague, which I’m told is more like a spa or hotel than a jail,’ said Marina, bitterly.
Heather had heard Simo’s opinion as to why Ryan had refused to testify, but she wanted to hear Marina’s. ‘Why wouldn’t Ryan help you send Drakulić down for what he did to Alek?’ she said, her voice catching.
Marina went over to the window, opening it, as if she was releasing the pressure that had built up in the room from revisiting the horrors of the recent past. She was silent for a long time.
‘Ryan was changed by what happened to Alek. He carried on reporting during the war, but he wasn’t the same man. He blamed himself for going there at all. It was his fault Alek was dead. He drank constantly. So filled with self-loathing he could only face himself after half a dozen shots of vodka or brandy. Or whatever. He wasn’t fussy. After he told me what happened, he refused to speak about it with anyone else. He left me to tell Alek’s widow. God. He was even drunk at Alek’s memorial.
‘Things became very bitter between Ryan and me,’ she continued, moving to one of the desks and switching on an old laptop. The drive whirred and the screen bloomed into life. ‘We did not talk for many years. It took ten years to find Drakulić. Nearly five to bring him to trial. By then, Ryan was struggling, and mostly failing, to stay sober. His life was in tatters. He wasn’t a war reporter anymore. He couldn’t bear it. He’d been fired from several newspapers, and he was trying to forge a new career. He couldn’t sleep without pills. As far as Ryan was concerned, nothing could bring Alek back. He was a wreck and we were asking him to relive the worst moments and the worst decisions of his life, publicly. He couldn’t do it. Here. This is one of the many emails he sent me.’
Marina turned the laptop around to Heather. Ryan’s email was displayed on the screen.
Marina,
I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry. I don’t expect you to ever understand. I just can’t do it. I can’t sit across from him in court. I’ve let Alek down. And you. I’m not even a journalist anymore. The worst bit is the way that others are holding me as some kind of paragon and martyr for the cause, as though my refusal to testify is because I’m a champion for objectivity and the sanctity of the source, when we both know I’m nothing but a coward. Make sure you tell anyone and everyone the truth.
