by Lena Bourne
Leather creaks louder this time. “Is it dangerous?”
“I doubt it,” I say. “It’s just an old moldy house.”
“I trust your judgment,” he says. “If you think you’ll find something in there, then do it. But call me in half an hour anyway, OK?”
That sounds like the worried-about-me-all-the-time Mark I’ve been arguing with for the better part of us being together. But only slightly, only vaguely.
“I came here thinking Anita’s death and her sister’s disappearance were closely linked,” I say. “But I don’t know anymore. Esma might very well be living somewhere far from here, and Anita could very well just be the victim of the lifestyle she got involved in after she left home.”
“And I might very well be jumping to conclusions about Leskovar,” he says. “But we’re in too deep to turn back now. That’s how it works with investigations. Most of the time you’re just spinning your wheels and doubting everything.”
We share a silence during which I wholeheartedly and kind of painfully wish we were speaking face to face about this. He sounds like he’s struggling more than I am, and yet he’s the one with all the answers. Like always.
“I’ll go check out the house now,” I say. “And I’ll call you right after I’m done. Hopefully, I’ll find something in there.”
“Like Leskovar’s signed confession. Maybe a couple of pictures of him doing the killing. Wouldn’t that be something?” he says and chuckles again.
As long as he’s able to laugh and make jokes about the case, we’re still on a good path. The real problems start when he’s in so deep, he can’t see the real world outside the case anymore. But I won’t dwell on that now. A lot has changed in the last five years. We’ve both changed. For the better.
But after we hang up and I’m walking along a street lit mostly by moonlight towards Anita’s house, and even though Mark’s reaction to this plan of mine was exactly the one I’ve wanted from him—no suffocating worry, no dire fear for me—a part of me still wishes he tried to stop me. I’m still some distance from the house, but I can feel the cold emanating from it, smell the rot and mold, and deathly sadness. Bad things happened in that house. It’s not the type of place you want to visit alone at night.
But here too, the neighboring houses are lit up and TVs are on high volume. I hear laughter and conversation, children and adults both. I’m letting fear get the better of me. It’s not exactly the middle of the night. And it is just an empty house.
But after I leave the last of the well-lit houses behind and only have about fifty meters to go before I reach Anita’s house, my legs turn to lead and all the reasons why I shouldn’t be here are running fast and loud through my head.
I won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find. Someone will see me and then I’ll have to explain why I’m breaking and entering into this house.
Only I’m not actually breaking and entering. Someone broke the lock on the front door a long time ago, judging by the rotted state of the splintered wood around it, both on the door frame and around the doorknob itself. I enter, realizing that the smell of rot and dust is even worse at night for some reason. The creaking of the floorboards sounds like the whole house is minutes away from collapsing, and my heart is beating so fast I’m afraid I am too. The creaking seems to get even louder as I walk towards the narrow, dirty door below the stair which I’m sure leads into the basement.
My hand is shaking as I reach for the door handle. It’s icy cool in my hand, but the door is firmly locked. It doesn’t even rattle much as I give it a couple of pushes. I take out my phone and turn on the flashlight, deciding it’s probably safe to do so here, since there are no windows. The lock is the kind you’d expect on an outside door, but the handle is a regular indoor type. It’s dusty and dirty, and my palm is black as I let go of the handle. No one’s been down there for a while and that’s a relief in a way.
I turn off the flashlight and continue walking. There are no windows in the long hallway that connects all the downstairs rooms, but enough of the bright moonlight is filtering through the windows of those rooms, so I don’t even have to turn on the flashlight on my phone.
The sadness of the house, which I felt acutely the first time I saw it is everywhere now. The scent of jasmine, optimistic, happy, and pure does what it can, but it’s not enough to chase away the dark thoughts building in my mind, since I decided to come here.
I push those thoughts away, reminding myself that this isn’t a scene of some horrible crime. It’s just an old house that might hold some clues. And it’s time I find some clues or go home.
I walk right past the living room and kitchen and even Esma’s room and enter Anita’s. Less of the moonlight reaches into this room, but the little of it that does attaches itself to the white wood furniture, making it glow. I walk over to the wardrobe and pull it open, gasping and nearly screeching in fear as a large black mass falls against me.
Not heavy enough to topple me, but I do take a few steps back, breathing hard, my heart thumping alarmingly in my chest, my legs unsteady, as I look at the black garbage bag at my feet. I’m telling myself it’s not a threat, not a killer, not a body, not any of those scary things that my mind jumped to as soon as I felt it, but it’s not working very well with this full-blown panic attack it caused. But with a couple of deep breaths, I calm down enough to realize I’m in no immediate danger.
My hands are shaking as I turn on the flashlight on my phone and shine it at the bag. It’s covered in dust and cobwebs, the top tied so tight, I have trouble untying it with my shaking fingers.
Inside there are just clothes—jeans, sweaters, cardigans, t-shirts, sweat pants, and even underwear. Women’s clothes all, fashionable and trendy, if not of the best quality. The smell of jasmine is stronger in the bag, joined by something oriental, the scents not quite blending like in a perfume that’s past its due date.
I stuff it all back into the bag and retie the top, then shine a light into the closet itself. Only one thing is hanging in there. A white dress—a wedding dress, made entirely of lace, it seems. Lace that has yellowed through the years, or more likely decades, since the dress was made. And peeking out from the long skirt is the edge of a black purse.
I reach for it and pull it out. It’s a designer knock-off purse, made of fake black leather with gold thread forming an interlaced diamond pattern all over it. The edge that was peeking out from under the dress is grey with dust, the rest clean and new.
I open it and find a small wallet, also of fake leather, also a knock-off.
My hands are shaking again and I’m breathing so loudly through my mouth, the sound is annoying me. There are about fifty Euros in the wallet, in tens and fives, along with a Bosnian ID card. A very young Anita Rajić, with long, straight light-colored hair is looking at me, serious-faced and wide-eyed, from the photo. She can’t have been more than eighteen years old when this was taken and she wasn’t much older when she died.
The purse also contains a set of keys, an address in Graz, Austria scribbled on a light pink piece of paper, and a passport. This too is Anita’s and in this picture, she looks older. Almost as old—young—as the day she died.
How could she leave the country without all of this? And the even scarier question: who brought it back after she died?
I debate only taking photos of everything and putting it back, but in the end, I stuff the entire purse into my bag, put the garbage bag back into the closet, and hurry back down the hall to the door.
This might be evidence, it might contain the fingerprints or DNA of the last person to see Anita alive—her killer. I realize me taking it could jeopardize using it as evidence in court, but when the alternative is never seeing it again, I’ll take the chance.
I walk out of the house fast, my hands still shaking slightly, my heart still racing, and my nose full of dust and the smell of mold and jasmine. A sickening combination.
A car’s headlights illuminate me straight on as I exit th
e house, making me freeze like a wild animal with one foot poised over the first of the steps leading out of the house. But the car just keeps on driving, doesn’t even slow down. It was a dark-colored four-door limousine-type car. With local plates. I think. I didn’t look and I should have. I also should have checked if anyone was watching before exiting the house. But what’s done is done.
I keep to the shadows as I walk away from the house, going so fast I’m almost running. I don’t remember the last time fear got the better of me like this, and I feel like an idiot for it, for fearing I’m being watched as I walk down the street, for sprinting along the narrow path back to the well-lit street that leads to Fata’s house. It’s not until I reach it, that I slow down and catch my breath. I should be ecstatic that I uncovered a piece of evidence that could potentially solve the case. Instead, I’m just wishing I had stayed behind the sturdy walls of Fata’s house. Or better yet, in Mark’s arms at our cozy little cottage. Some investigator I’m proving to be. Pathetic.
Mark
I decided to interview the two sisters separately, starting with the older and angrier Elira, since the younger, pregnant one was eating one of those huge, marmalade-filled pastries Mira found somewhere for her.
We’ve been in the interview room for about fifteen minutes and there’s no trace of the angry Elira left. She’s smiling at me, batting her eyelashes and practically purring her answers to my questions. At some point, she decided to seduce me instead of biting my head off every time she speaks. Neither works for me. Nor does the fact that she’s not able to give me any more information than I already got from Liliana.
“So, let me be clear,” I say. “Leskovar is the one who got you and your sister away from the strip club you were held in? And he was the one who promised you help and a new start?”
“Yes,” she says. “Him and that scary lawyer’s guy brother, you know the one at the train station today. I liked his brother. He was the only really nice one of them all. He’d come around from time to time, asking how we were all doing.”
“This guy?” I ask, showing her Vasko Derganec’s photo on my phone.
She nods. “Yes. He looks really good for his age, don’t you think? Though I prefer them younger.”
She looks at me and bats her eyelashes. I think she’s trying to suggest she considers me ‘younger’. I completely ignore the gesture.
“Did you ever meet Leskovar’s ex-wife?” I ask, showing her a picture of the woman on my phone. She bats her long lashes at the photo for a couple of seconds then looks up at me through narrowed eyes.
“Yes,” she says. “I didn’t like her. Too much perfume and too much fake smiling. I asked her if my sister could go see a doctor and she gave me a non-answer, saying all will be taken care of. Just like the old mayor man kept saying. But we were in that apartment building for a week and there was no doctor, no papers, and no job interviews like they promised. And only a little money, just enough to get something to eat in town.”
“But they gave you money now?” I ask.
She nods. “Not enough to live on for more than a week. And that scary lawyer guy just told us to get on a train or a bus and preferably go back home. As in leave the country. Well, my sister and I can’t go home. Our father would kill us. Her especially, now that she’s pregnant.”
She already told me their whole sad tale, how she was duped by a handsome, tall man who spoke perfect German and English, that he would find her work as a model in Europe. She described it all vividly, including how she studied both those languages every night and I found picturing it sickeningly sad. That’s part of the reason I find her flirting with me so unsettling. She didn’t start out a whore. The people who bought and sold her like a piece of meat made her one. And now they might get away with it the way things are going. Just like they’ve been getting away with it for decades.
I honestly don’t understand which part of this Simon doesn’t understand when he tells me to back off. While he fluttered around me, trying to get me to take this job, he was full of outrage at all the unsolved cases that no one was touching. Especially the human trafficking ones. Now he’s willing to just walk away from a hot lead because some politicians told him he should.
“Where did you go?” she purrs. “You just left the room even though you’re sitting right here.”
I clear my throat, my face growing hot, because she’s seeing me a little too clearly. And her husky, purring voice is kind of getting to me.
“Was letting you go always their plan?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We had all sorts of theories about that. All the other women there, I mean. A lot of them thought we were getting sold on. But I never felt like I couldn’t leave at any time. And then one of them got her papers, legit, real EU papers. Even her real name was on them. And we got that too now.”
Lina is still in the office across from us with the sister. She’s pacing up and down the length of it, looking at her feet, arms wrapped tightly around her chest and stomach. The manila envelopes the women got from the lawyer are on the desk at which Drita is now working on a new pastry.
I tell Elira to hang tight and go get those envelopes. Drita looks panicked as I take them, but I assure her I’ll give them right back.
I take them to my office before checking what’s inside, making sure Elira can’t see me do it. Her sister might not protest, but I wouldn’t put it past her to try and fight me for the contents of these envelopes. There are five hundred Euros in cash in each of them, as well as brand new Slovenian ID cards that still smell of plastic, and EU passports. The address listed in the passports and on the ID cards is the same on both, and it’s the halfway house in Vrhnika.
I leave the money in the envelopes, but pocket the IDs and passports and head to the forensics lab where Slava is sitting at one of the bright white desks surrounded by three battered-looking faded brown evidence boxes.
She looks up as I enter, squinting at me over the top of her black-rimmed glasses.
“Can you check these out? Find out if they’re forged,” I ask, handing her the two women’s papers. She tells me to set them down at the edge of the desk.
“I’ll do it as soon as I can,” she says. “But there’s something else.”
I nod at her to continue.
“They found DNA on Anita,” she says. “And it was never checked against any of the suspects. They never did anything with it, actually, judging by what’s in these boxes.”
“Can you get it?” I ask. “Run some tests of your own here?”
She shrugs and checks a piece of paper, running her finger down it as she searches for something. “It says here the samples are being kept at the National Forensics Lab. If they’re still there, I’ll get them. First thing tomorrow.”
“Good,” I say.
She lays the paper back down on the desk and takes off her glasses, using the hem of her pale green sweater to wipe them clean.
“I’ve seen bad forensic work like this before, Mark,” she says. “It usually means only one thing.”
“That someone high up didn’t want it to be done well,” I say. “But let’s hope they didn’t go so far as to destroy DNA evidence.”
She nods and puts her glasses back on. “I’ll check the rest of these files, see if there’s something else they missed.”
I thank her and leave the lab. It’s been about half an hour since I spoke to Eva and she hasn’t called yet. And as much as I’m trying to hold off panicking, I kind of am. What the hell was I thinking, encouraging her to break into a house alone, at night?
Eva
Dogs are barking in the distance and the streetlight is humming above me as I call Mark. He picks up before the line even starts ringing.
“How did it go?” he asks and this time he’s slightly out of breath. So am I.
“I found something,” I say in a hushed voice, not whispering because I know whispers carry. “Anita’s handbag. With her ID and passport inside it.”
Mark inhales sh
arply. “That’s strange. Unless…was it her old papers?”
I’m not sure what he’s asking so I describe them to him, finishing with, “I took it all. Just in case.”
“Good, I suppose,” he says. “It’s not likely that we’ll get a forensic team into that house anytime soon, and we can figure out the chain of evidence stuff later.”
Fewer houses are lit up than they were when I walked here at dusk, and it feels like it’s much later in the night than it actually is. It’s only just past nine.
“What did you mean by old papers?” I ask.
“It seems Leskovar gave the women new papers,” Mark says. “The two we have here now both have brand new IDs and passports, which at least to me look real. We’re having them verified tomorrow.”
“So you’re thinking Anita had brand new papers like that too?” I ask. “And that the ones I found mean nothing?”
“They mean something,” he says. “Especially because of where you found them. She needed papers to leave Bosnia, so what are they doing back at her home? Unless she crossed via a green border originally. Or was smuggled out.”
“There was some money in the purse too. Euros. I doubt she’d leave without that either,” I add. “I’ll send you photos of it when I get back to the house.”
I’m walking slowly towards it, feeling much braver and more anchored now that I’m talking to him on the phone. Fata’s house is only about six houses up ahead now. One of the windows upstairs is lit up while the downstairs is all dark. I hope they’ll hear me ring the doorbell.
“She left in a hurry from what I’ve been able to find out,” I say. “Right after Rado returned to town and right before Milo killed himself. Something is telling me all that is connected and significant.”
“Might be,” he says. “But all this happened years after Esma disappeared, right?”
“Yes, two years later, I think.”
“So Anita’s death most likely had nothing to do with whatever happened to her sister,” he concludes. But I’m not so sure about that anymore. Or maybe I just don’t want to be.