by Lena Bourne
“That could very well be Simon already warning us off,” I say jokingly as I reach into my pocket to get the phone. “Things sure are moving fast enough for that.”
But it’s not Simon, it’s Mira, and I don’t know what to make of that. She rarely calls me.
“Mark, hello,” she says in that brusque yet friendly way of speaking she has. “I’ve been helping Rok with the names you left for him to check out, and I think I found you a match.”
It takes a few moments for her words to sink in and make sense. Apart from handling the day-to-day, administrative affairs for the task force she hasn’t played any significant part in any of our investigations yet.
“Go on,” I say and clear my throat.
“There’s a name on the list, a Liliana Markov,” she says. “I recognized the last name, since it’s also my friend’s name. And she has a daughter called Liliana. It could be the same person, right?”
“Right,” I say clearing my throat.
“So I called her and they’re both willing to speak to you now,” Mira goes on. “They have a manicure/pedicure salon and they’re there now.”
“Did you tell her why we want to speak to her?” I ask.
She scoffs. “Of course not. Well, not exactly. I just said you had some questions about Leskovar and a girl she might have known in the past.”
“Alright, good work,” I say. “What’s the address?”
She gives it to me and I hang up. Brina is giving me a puzzled look.
“Change of plans,” I say and start the engine. “Mira might have found us one of the girls in Leskovar’s little black book.”
“Shouldn’t we speak to these people first?” Brina asks.
I pull away from the curb. “I think it’s better if we have more before confronting them again. Though I’ll have Walter and Dino come watch this place, see where they go next.”
“Good idea,” she says and I make the call.
Walter picks up with his mouth full, and I have to listen to a couple of minutes of his coughing before he explains he’s waiting for Dino outside some café and that they’ll come as soon as they’re finished there. Apparently Dino’s meeting with that contact of his.
“I doubt they’ll do anything right away,” I say to Brina after I hang up. “They’ve been flying under the radar for decades with whatever they have going on in that apartment building, so I doubt they’ll want to draw attention to it now that we’ve started looking for it.”
“I hope so,” she says. “Because if they start clearing up their tracks now, we’ll lose the little advantage we’ve been able to get in this case.”
She doesn’t exactly sound like she’s criticizing my handling of the situation, but it’s close. I ignore it and focus on the road. If I’m right, then this next visit will give us what we need to strike hard and fast. But I don’t want to give her too much hope just yet, in case I’m wrong.
About twenty minutes later, after getting lost twice, we finally reach the small strip mall-type building, behind one of the smaller marketplaces in Ljubljana. The manicure/pedicure salon we’re looking for is at the corner of the building, its red metal-rimmed windows covered by thick white curtains.
A bell chimes as I open the door, and the smell of citrus and mint hangs thick in the air. An older woman with shoulder-length, bleached blonde hair and about an inch of dark roots appears from a door less opening about halfway down the narrow hallway.
“May I help you?” she says in good Slovene but with a lulling accent.
I introduce myself and Brina, show the badge and tell her Mira sent us. By then, another woman, a near copy of the older one in height and looks, only younger appears beside her.
“Yes, this is Liliana,” the older one says, and pushes her daughter forward. “She can answer your questions.”
The daughter gives her mother a scathing look but then smiles at me. “Come on in.”
They both disappear back to where they came, and we follow them through the doorway into a cramped little reception area.
“Sit,” Liliana says indicating the narrow red leather sofa lining one wall. The scent of mint and lemon is stronger here.
We do, and while Liliana resumes standing in front of us and her mother hovers by the door of another small room, just big enough for a computer desk and chair. They’re both wearing light blue jeans, black t-shirts, and hotel-style white cotton slippers on their feet.
“What is this about?” Liliana asks. “My mother’s friend wasn’t very specific.”
She only has a Ljubljana accent when she speaks, so I’m sure she was either born in this country or was very young when she came here. If I had to guess, I’d say they were from Ukraine or some other northern Slavic country originally.
“We’re looking into the shooting that took place in Vrhnika recently,” I say, deciding on a whim to start from the Leskovar angle.
She nods and starts breathing faster. “I heard of it. The Mayor who was shot by his wife, right?”
She’s trying to sound like that’s all she knows, but her breathlessness and the way her chest is heaving is telling me something different. Up close and under the harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs here, she looks older than I first thought she was. I’d say early thirties.
“We found your name in a little black book the mayor kept,” I say. “Can you tell me why he had it?”
She gasps and her mother inhales sharply behind her.
“I have no idea,” Liliana says, stuttering slightly.
“It would be very helpful to our investigation if you could tell us how you know Leskovar,” Brina says in that soothing, friendly tone she used with the two girls on the street yesterday.
Liliana crosses her arms tightly across her chest and has trouble meeting our eyes.
“Tell them,” her mother says eventually, earning a very dark look from her daughter.
“They’re the police and he’s dead,” the mother insists. “You have nothing to fear anymore. It’s the right thing, Liliana.”
Liliana turns back to us, still breathing hard.
“Alright, fine,” she says, interlacing her fingers together tightly in front of her, as though she’s about to start praying, then inhales and exhales loudly a few times.
“A few years ago, well almost ten now, I got in some trouble,” she finally says. “I was addicted to cocaine and working at a strip club. I was there voluntarily though, not like some of the other girls. Leskovar was a regular and whenever he came in, he would always try to get me to leave with him, telling me how he’d help me get my life in order, find me a better job, stuff like that. He offered this to most of the girls working there.”
She pauses to take a shuddering breath.
“At first, I just blew him off, since like I said, I was there voluntarily and it was good money. But eventually, he started offering me even more money, and work abroad where I could make yet more money. He even told me he’d help with my cocaine problem. So I went with him, and ended up in some apartment in Vrhnika.”
“What did he want you to do in return for his help?” Brina asks.
She shrugs. “Nothing really. He kept telling me I was safe now. Other girls were living in the apartment building too, and he was promising all of us new jobs and a fresh start. The thing is, I didn’t even want a fresh start. I just wanted to get away from that strip club, because the owner was starting to hint I should be doing more than just taking my clothes off. As in sleeping with the customers, you know how it is? I didn’t want to go down that road, but I was afraid they’d force me into it eventually.”
“And Leskovar didn’t want anything of the sort from you?” I ask.
She scoffs. “He was promising me and the other girls honest work in Austria and beyond, but I didn’t believe a word of that. The way he kept us in that dingy apartment building after taking our papers, I’m sure that’s not what he would actually have delivered. He fed us, and we had clean clothes there. A lot of the girls believed
his lies. Me, I got out of there the first chance I got. Came back home and begged my mom to let me stay. I changed my last name just in case, but he never came after me.”
It’s very rare for witnesses to speak this freely right off the bat, but I sure am glad she’s doing it.
“And did you ever hear of a woman named Anita Rajić?” I ask.
She shakes her head. Brina takes Anita’s photo from her notebook and shows it to her.
“Never seen her before,” Liliana says after looking at it for a few moments. “Why?”
“She was one of the girls Leskovar rescued too,” Brina says. “But she ended up dead soon after.”
Under the artificial lights, Liliana’s pale face takes on a greenish tint.
“You think that could’ve happened to me too?” she asks in a squeaky voice.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I say. “Can you tell us anything more about what went on in that apartment building?”
She glances at her mother, fear making her eyes wide. Her mother nods encouragingly.
“You’re safe now, he’s dead,” her mother says.
Liliana turns back to us. “It wasn’t just Leskovar there. Two other guys, they looked like brothers, kept coming and going. I later learned they were the Derganec brothers, you know, the politicians?”
Brina and I both nod in answer to her question.
“His wife was there a lot too,” she goes on. “She was the worst. Like a wicked step-mother sort of thing, if you know what I mean. Everything she said sounded good, but you just got this feeling that she was evil underneath her sweet words.”
I sort of see what she’s talking about. Though the ex-wife wasn’t exactly trying to hide her mean side when we spoke to her.
“And no one tried to stop you from leaving?” I ask.
“We were allowed to go outside, as long as we were back by seven PM,” she says. “Every time I went out into that small town I felt like I was being watched though. So finally, after about three days of being there, I just walked over to the highway ramp and hitchhiked back here. I had a home to come back to, and a mom who hadn’t already given up on me, but I don’t think any of the other girls there did. At least the three that were living in my apartment didn’t. They were all from Albania, trafficked and treated very badly by their previous owners, or whatever.”
“And you didn’t report this?” I ask.
The mother and daughter exchange a look. “I did, my mom insisted that I do. But it was an anonymous report. Between hiding from Leskovar and the Albanian strip club owners I escaped from, and trying to get off drugs, I had too many other things to worry about.”
“When did you make this report?” Brina asks sharply.
Liliana looks up as though trying to remember. “It was right after I got out. So July, seven years ago. No, wait, eight years.”
Brina looks at me. “I never saw that report, and I scoured everything in my investigation into Anita’s murder.”
I nod. It sounds like it was removed, but we shouldn’t talk about that in front of these witnesses.
“Thank you for speaking to us,” I tell her. “It helps a lot. We’ll be back if we have any more questions.”
I stand up, but Brina remains sitting. “Would you be willing to testify to this? Or at least give an official statement at the police station?”
Liliana shares another very uncomfortable look with her mom. “I don’t know. It was so long ago. And I just want peace, you know?”
“It would really help,” Brina insists.
“Take some time to think about it,” I say. “We don’t need an answer right now. But it would help us enormously.”
Brina gives me a sharp look, but I ignore it. Pushing this woman too hard now could mean we lose her testimony for good. I’ve seen it before. She has to decide to do the right thing for herself and I think her mother will be our ally in this. I think we should let them talk about it in private. And that’s another thing I can’t explain to Brina just now.
We take our leave and even though Brina is completely silent, I can hear her frustrated tension loud and clear.
“What now?” she snaps as soon as she slams the passenger door shut.
“Now you go to your boss at the sex crimes unit and you get them to reopen Leskovar’s case and connect it to Anita’s,” I say. “And you don’t take no for an answer.”
Brina hasn’t officially left her job there when she joined the task force, and right now that’s a very good thing.
The look of surprise on her face is priceless.
“We’re going to need the local authorities’ support in this,” I elaborate. “We don’t have enough clearance to go after these people by ourselves, or the manpower to do it the way it needs to be done.”
She looks like her birthday came early this year as we drive away. And I’m happy for her, since I know exactly how it feels to finally be given free rein in a case you’ve needed to solve but couldn’t for years.
14
Eva
I wake up in stages, first realizing I’m too hot, next that the sun is shining directly onto my head, and last that my neck and back ache awfully and my left arm is numb. As soon as I regain enough of my senses to realize all that, along with the fact that it must be late in the day, the numbness in my arm turns to pins and needles.
“Good, you’re up,” Renata says from the open doorway to the living room. Her hair is like copper, glowing in the sun. And her face is very bright too.
I smile at her as I shake my arm, trying to get the blood flowing through it again. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon,” she says with a grin as she walks into the living room.
Her hair is wet and she smells of peaches and a sweet scent I can’t name, but is usually a part of shampoos and soaps. She’s wearing a pair of sweatpants and a black zip-up hoodie and must’ve just come out of the shower. From the kitchen, I can hear dishes clanking and Fata shuffling around.
“I didn’t mean to sleep so late,” I say apologetically.
“You must’ve been tired,” she says. “But now you should get up. We’ll have lunch and then Rado has agreed to let us into Anita’s house. It took some convincing—”
She stops talking abruptly, placing her hand over her mouth for good measure. Her cheeks are almost the same shade of red as her hair.
“You two are dating, aren’t you?” I ask with a smile, but she places a finger over her lips and glances over her shoulder at the kitchen.
“Fata doesn’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know if she’d approve or not, so we’re waiting for the right time to tell her.”
“Why wouldn’t she approve?” I ask but she shakes her head.
“We can talk about it later,” she says. “Get dressed now.”
I make the mistake of stopping by the kitchen before heading for the bathroom, and Fata is ready for me with coffee and biscuits and leftover burek, of course, so it’s almost two hours of chatting before I’m finally dressed and following Renata out of the house.
Today she strikes a different path to Anita’s home, along the gravel path, across barren, untended fields and muddy side roads. It takes us about ten minutes to make the trip that took almost twenty yesterday and we’re both winded as we finally reach our destination.
A skinny man, with jet black hair, high cheek bones, and a long, gaunt face is waiting for us there. He could be handsome, or more like, he looks like he was handsome once upon a time before a hard life took his looks away. It’s definitely the same man I saw pick Renata up last night. He’s wearing a pair of baggy, medium grey work pants, which are stained with all manner of things—several colors of paint, grease, mortar, and even concrete I think. His dark blue wool sweater isn’t in much better shape.
“I’m Rado. Nice to meet you,” he says and offers me his hand. I’d expected him to have a firm handshake, based on his looks and the things I heard about him, but it’s so light I barely feel it.
“I hear you’re a writer,” he says after I introduce myself too. “And that you’re writing a book on Esma and Anita. Is this true?”
He glances at Renata as he says it, the look in his eyes sharp as though he’s double-checking the information she’s given him and wants her to know he doesn’t quite believe her. How I get all that just from a look, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen that same look in Fata’s a few times today. Doubt mixed with judgment and an undercurrent of believing everyone is lying to you. That’s the best I can describe it.
“Yes, that’s right,” I say, wondering how long I’ll be able to keep going with not telling them all the truth about why I’m here. And at what point they’ll just resent me for not saying something sooner. But Rado’s hard yet piercing, black eyes, will make him one of the last to know.
“I’ve been looking into Anita’s unsolved murder case, but am also very interested in her sister’s disappearance. I’m something of an expert on serial killers, not that I think they were killed by a serial killer, of course.”
That’s typical of me when lying. I can’t shut up and I can’t help giving too much away.
Rado chuckles darkly. “My younger brother Milo would’ve loved to talk to you. He never stopped talking about how he was sure Esma was murdered. It’s what killed him in the end.”
I gulp and look down at my boots. They’re no longer black, but light brown from the dust on the path we took to get here.
“I’m so sorry about your brother,” I say. “Renata told me he took his own life.”
“Right over there,” he says harshly, striding off to his left and pointing in the general direction of the backyard. I follow him to see what he’s pointing at, and it’s the gnarled, leafless oak tree. Renata hasn’t moved with us.
“Will you write about that too? In your book?” he asks, and I have no idea if he’s angry or just always sounds like this.