The bone road, p.6
The Bone Road, page 6
When she’d first met Ryan, four years ago, Heather was a star, surrounded by attentive acolytes. Somehow he was never just another of those, but he still understood he had to pay homage, even with one eyebrow raised. And then everything shifted. The world spun and spun, until Heather realised it wasn’t the world spinning but her, and she was terrified that she would never ever stop. Ryan never left. Loved her even though she was a discarded, broken thing. Ruined and despoiled.
She remembered the first time she’d seen him. It was at the end of one of those press junket days. She’d spent the whole day in a five-star Manchester hotel with the rest of the British Cycling team, being interviewed in the run-up to the Olympics. She was the only one the journalists really wanted to talk to. She was the supernova. Ryan was the last journo of the day, and her smile was worn out and crumpled. She was bored of rehearsing her training schedule: ‘It’s tough, but it’s what needs to be done.’ . . . Her views on her teammates: ‘They’re great girls, all working their hardest.’ . . . What she was most looking forward to eating when the Olympics were over: ‘A roast dinner at my mum’s.’ Total bollocks. Deirdre couldn’t cook anything unless Waitrose cooked it first, and all she had to do was pop it in a microwave, but Heather knew what people wanted to hear. So when Ryan burst into the suite, unshaven, with his crumpled shirt and lopsided grin, declaring in his Californian tones, ‘You look bored rigid, let’s go to the pub!’ she’d followed him with enthusiasm and relief.
Neither of them had actually drunk any alcohol: Ryan because he announced with cheerful frankness that he was an alcoholic, and Heather because she was training. She’d felt buzzed just the same. There was something about Ryan. The smile that crinkled his eyes, and the way he concentrated on you with absolute intensity, so that the rest of the world disappeared. He had never been one of those people half looking over your shoulder to see if someone else – more attractive, funnier, more likely to sleep with him – might appear. When Ryan spoke to a person – an interviewee, a friend, a date – they had all of him. It always made Heather want to confide in him all her secrets – he’d have been an excellent cop. That day, surrounded by gleaming mahogany and tucked up on a Chesterfield as he smiled (again) and offered her a salt ’n’ vinegar crisp, she’d felt a static tingle along her skin, and on a whim started giving him real answers to the rote questions. Jessie Taylor was talented but a stone-cold bitch who thought it was unfair that Heather, after winning silver in London, was being given the chance to go for gold in Rio at the geriatric age of twenty-nine. It ought to be her turn. Heather had joked with Ryan – if you hear I’ve been poisoned or fallen down a well, tell the police it was Jessie. Ryan had laughed. The rest of the team were average. And too nice to win. The real answer to what she was looking forward to most after the Olympics was a Bloody Mary. Or a Dirty Martini. The dirtier the better. She didn’t care, she wanted to get filthy, forget-her-name drunk. Shit. She’d apologised – this was a really inappropriate conversation to have with an alcoholic. Ryan had laughed again and waved away her apology. He had a great laugh. Threw his head back and guffawed like he really meant it. Heather was good at lots of things, but she’d never made people laugh, yet Ryan found her funny and charming. When she’d read his article later, she saw that he’d corrected all her answers to ordinary, anodyne ones, presumably filching them off another journalist without needing to call and ask her. As soon as she woke up the next morning, she knew she’d done something really stupid – if he had printed what she’d actually said, it would have caused almighty ructions within the team. Yet, somehow, even then, on the basis of just half an hour, she’d known she could trust him.
After drinks, he’d walked her back to the flat she shared with the rest of the girls and, on the doorstep, he’d leaned in, pinning her slightly while her heart fluttered.
‘This is very inappropriate,’ he’d said.
And then he’d kissed her. She kissed him back and when finally he pulled away, she was glad that the other too nice, average girls were upstairs, as otherwise she’d have been tempted to invite him up, and that would be a very bad idea. She recalled the hard pang of regret and thwarted desire, fierce and insistent, as he walked away. And she’d noticed that he had a great arse – taut, like a cyclist’s.
She’d wondered if he’d call, hoping equally that he would and that he wouldn’t. She really didn’t want the distraction. He didn’t. She was relieved and annoyed. He didn’t fancy her as much as she’d thought. Or he was an excellent cycling journalist and knew she wouldn’t want a diversion. She tried to forget about him. Mostly she managed. And after the accident, when it all went to hell, Ryan was the first one to call. He never left.
Heather lay back on the bed in the stuffy motel room. The people in this shit-heap of a town didn’t know anything. Ryan would not do this. He wouldn’t do this to her. They’d been together for more than four years. She knew him. She thought of the photo she’d found of him here with the U.N. in the nineties – a bunch of guys jogging in the snow. Most in their U.N. peacekeeper blue berets and others in fleeces. He’d shown her a couple other pictures, but he hadn’t wanted to talk about any of it. She kicked off her shoes. Little uncertainties and doubts buzzed around her like tiresome mosquitoes, nipping at her no matter how much she swatted them away. She’d heard him speak Serbian when they’d ordered dinner, but she didn’t realise he could speak it fluently. And who the hell was Dušica?
5
Simo sat at his desk an hour before his shift was due to start, studying the file on Petar Petrović. Josif had promised him whatever resources he needed, which was unusual and at this point unnecessary. ‘Whatever the great Subotić needs,’ Josif had declared, slapping him soundly on the shoulders. When it was convenient, Simo became the renowned police detective, rather than the notorious and insolent one whom they cursed and threatened and shoved aside to a border town. Simo knew that his name had long been a warning to recruits – a parable of what might happen to even the most promising career if one didn’t toe the official line. In this region, politics was power and Simo was a terrible politician. It was how he’d ended up single and using garden furniture in the dining room of his one-bedroom apartment that rattled every time a train passed. His ex-wife had the house with the river view. Yet Simo didn’t want it. He’d been away working, and it was she who had made it beautiful. Her house, not his.
He looked back to the file. Many of the criminals now working in drug gangs had been in Serbian paramilitary units during the war. They’d swapped one form of violence for another and now used the same torture techniques on each other as they’d once used when brutalising civilians in the camps. Simo thought grimly that they called this ‘transferable skills’ in the job market. Had Petar Petrović been mixed up in the drugs trade? Was his death somehow linked to the cocaine bust at the cycling race? The timing was right. Petar had died shortly before the police raid. Had he been suspected of disloyalty? The drug gangs were brutal enough to torture rivals or those they suspected of betrayal. Simo was bothered by the careful and brutal effort to disguise the identity of the victim – a small-time drug runner wouldn’t be worth it. Although, it was possible that it was a calling-card of one of the gangs – a warning to others who crossed them. Simo wasn’t familiar with this particular signature, but someone in the narcotics unit in Banja Luka might know. He made a note to call them.
So far, Josif had mostly succeeded in keeping the case out of the news. None of the papers had picked it up – there was only a story on one website. The fishermen hadn’t talked, and the brief piece was a vague and dull story about a probable suicide. Damage to the corpse post-mortem.
Simo read the autopsy report again. After a few minutes he became aware of raised voices and furious shouts exploding through the station. He went to the door, expecting to find Josif on the warpath, but as he listened, he realised that for once Josif’s outrage had nothing to do with him.
‘He’s been out for less than three months! Glup ku kurac! And he has to do it here. In my district. I’m going to kill him.’
Simo came out of his office, realising after a moment that the shouts had nothing to do with his case, but the cocaine smuggling and women’s cycling race instead. ‘You’ve got new evidence Drakulić is involved?’ he asked his boss.
Josif turned on him in fury. ‘Of course my idiot father is involved, and, no, we don’t have evidence. If we did, I’d arrest the piece of shit myself.’
Simo studied him closely. Josif was sweaty with rage. Having a war criminal – or war hero, depending on one’s politics – as a father was more of an asset than a liability in a mayoral election. Josif’s inability to keep Drakulić from openly running drugs in the district, however, was in danger of making him look weak, and that wouldn’t help. Simo was extremely glad he’d not been assigned the case. It was about politics, not crime, and those cases never ended well for him. In the old days Drakulić’s men had smuggled cocaine in cases of bananas, or other fruit, from Colombia. The operation went on for years. Probably still did. They were impossible to catch. Like ghosts. They moved all across the Balkans, and whenever one police force closed in, they switched to a different country, taking full advantage of the fact that none of the forces liked to cooperate.
Dragan Drakulić was ruthless enough to cut off the head of any man who betrayed him. Simo thought back to the war. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Dragan had disposed of corpses in the Drina. Josif might have ordered Simo to follow the evidence and quickly clear the case, but Simo wondered whether that still held if the perpetrator turned out to be Josif’s own father. The chief’s yells echoed through the corridor, but Simo was unsure whether the outrage was genuine or for show. If David’s information was correct and Josif was running for mayor, Simo was confident who would be Josif’s largest campaign donor. And Simo was equally certain that, for all his bluster, Josif Borisov would not want his father arrested either on drugs charges or for murder. Josif might have changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name in a deliberate placing of political distance between himself and his father, but to have his father newly arrested would besmirch that meticulous cleansing of history. The present narrative was supposed to be that Dragan Drakulić, war criminal, was out of prison and going straight, his relationship with his moral, law-abiding, law-enforcing son strained and distant. Simo viewed the entire story with cautious scepticism. He hoped rather than believed it was true. Blood was thicker even than the foaming green waters of the Drina.
He decided this was a good moment to slip out of the station and go speak with an old friend who happened to be in town. As he walked through reception, he could still hear Josif berating everyone within earshot and cursing the recklessness of his father, whether for the crime of using the women’s race to run drugs or for the idiocy of getting caught, Simo couldn’t tell. He climbed into his car and drove off with relief.
Jenny Fraser was a forensic anthropologist with whom Simo had worked in the years after the war, trying to piece together the narratives of the war crimes for prosecution at the International Court at The Hague. She had stayed with Simo and his family for weeks during the hot and insufferable summers of ninety-five and ninety-six, attempting to identify victims of the massacres in the regions around Višegrad. She was both stoic and meticulous in the face of absolute horror. The work had won her plaudits across Europe, an MBE and a Chair in the Sciences at the University of Glasgow, and it had gained Simo the first of many demotions and pay cuts. He tried to persuade himself that he had gained as many friends as he had lost; the gratitude of the victims’ families was worth more than any job title. His then wife remained supportive, if unconvinced, especially when he was no longer able to pay their mortgage on his meagre salary, and she’d pleaded with him for once just to keep quiet and do his day job. Did he have to work for The Hague, too? But Simo was never one for staying quiet. Weren’t women meant to love you for your unflinching moral resolve? When he was demoted to the sheriff of the Eastern District, she’d reluctantly accepted his one-man crusade for post-war justice. Until she didn’t. Simo sighed.
It was still early and Simo drove straight to Jenny’s hotel in Višegrad. She was having breakfast in the gloomy dining room and looked up from her scrambled eggs and scattered papers, delighted to see him. They embraced, old friends, and Jenny fussed, pouring him coffee, offering him toast. They were good enough pals that Simo didn’t bother with the pleasantries that interested neither of them. He didn’t ask about her journey or whether she had slept well.
She was staring at him, trying not to smile.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘I brought you a present.’
He eyed her quizzically, oddly touched. ‘No one’s given me a present for a long time.’
‘That’s really sad, Simo.’
‘Fuck off, Jenny. And give me my present.’ He paused. ‘Unless it’s a tie. I’ve got one of those. A black one for court and funerals.’
‘It’s not a tie.’
She reached into her pocket and produced a small box, the size of a jewellery box, beautifully tied up with ribbons.
Simo raised an eyebrow. ‘Is this a proposal?’
‘No. I’m very happy with Mr Fraser, thank you.’
He unwrapped it and found to his delight a beautiful feathered fly-fishing lure, with a splayed plume.
‘Pheasant,’ he remarked of the copper-coloured feather.
‘Grouse,’ she corrected.
He shrugged. ‘I love it. Thank you.’
‘Handmade – from a shop in Fife. Been there a hundred years.’
She pulled a catalogue from her bag. ‘You can peruse this too.’
Simo realised that he was more excited than was reasonable at the prospect of browsing the fly-fishing catalogue. Perhaps David was right, and he did need to go on a date with a person rather than a fish.
‘Jenny, did you read through the file I sent?’
She reached into the same bag and brought out the thin file of documents.
‘Anything you can help me with?’
‘The most recent injuries and torture reminded me of those we used to see from the prison camps.’
Simo nodded. The prison camps that his government now said had never existed.
‘See the canine bite-marks,’ Jenny continued, indicating a close-up photograph of a wound. ‘A few of the camps used dogs to terrorise prisoners.’
Simo was only too aware of the recent history. ‘And some of the militia also used them to hunt down Bosniaks hiding out in the woods. It’s possible that whoever tortured him was either a camp guard or served in the militia. They’re using their tried and tested torture techniques. I’m looking at the drug gangs. Perhaps even Drakulić’s. He’s out of prison and apparently running again.’
Jenny sighed. ‘His son won’t be happy.’
‘Why do you think I’m here and not in the station?’ Simo took a sip of coffee. ‘But I can’t do anything until I identify the victim. It’s all theory and guesswork at the moment. So, who is he?’
Jenny frowned. ‘His historic fractures weren’t set in a hospital. See . . . This one in his femur healed badly. And there is still shrapnel in his leg. He might not have had access to a hospital at the time of the injury.’
‘So, you’re thinking he was a fighter during the war? Patched up by a friendly doctor as best he could?’
‘It’s certainly possible.’
She looked again at the photos. ‘His skin is badly damaged by the water. It’s crêping and starting to peel away.’ She paused. ‘But here, on his shoulder, this looks like part of a tattoo. I can’t quite make it out. Can you leave the pictures with me?’
‘These copies are for you.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘You’ll do everything you can, Simo. If it gets too much, go fishing.’
He grunted in reply. ‘I’m happy to see you, Jenny. But how many is it this time?’ he asked softly.
Jenny’s presence in the country must mean another war grave had been found. The International Commission for Missing Persons did not request the presence of Professor Jenny Fraser unless they had found something significant.
‘You heard about the outbreak of stomach upsets near Lake Perućac after the floods?’
‘I remember.’
‘They tested the waters. There’s evidence of contamination in the nearby streams. Toxins from decaying corpses are leaking into the groundwater. They’ve traced the source. Several dead horses buried on farmland—’
‘Didn’t they bury dead animals on top of mass graves?’
Jenny nodded. ‘A rotting animal corpse would put off anyone who came digging around. And that’s why they called me in. Yesterday, after we dug up the horses, we found the first human bodies.’
Simo shook his head. Putrefying corpses leaching into the groundwater and making children sick was a deeply troubling thought. Yet the living needed to know what had happened to their loved ones. There were gaping holes in families all over the country; thousands were still missing. Still missed. To Simo, it was both grotesque and fitting that the dead corrupted the waters, poisoning the living, indiscriminate of creed. The after-effects of past crimes sickened the present. Even Simo found himself troubled while sharing meals with old Bosniak friends. Trying to ignore the gaps around the table where other members of the family were supposed to be was like staring at a beautiful woman’s smile and pretending not to notice that several of her teeth had been punched out.
