Bad Roads (E&M Investigations, Book 2)

by Lena Bourne

  “OK, let’s go on,” she says eventually and starts walking again. “You have more questions about Esma, don’t you?”

  “I’m trying to find out what happened to her, yes,” I say. “I was wondering if you could clarify a few more things for me.”

  She stops again, this time next to an ancient-looking canon, that’s so rusted I have no idea how it hasn't turned to dust yet. She’s trying not to pant, but not quite succeeding.

  “This is an original light artillery canon used in World War One,” she says, pointing at it. I don’t know for whose benefit she’s putting on this show now, since, as far as I can tell, we’re the only people anywhere near here. Birds are singing, the wind is rustling the pines growing around the castle wall just up ahead and there’s a large sign for a restaurant over one of the doors leading into the castle. I could do with a glass of cold, mineral water or two since my throat is parched.

  “Nice,” I say and look at her pointedly. “We’re not really here for a history lesson though, are we?”

  She narrows her eyes at me, but then sighs. “Well, you’ll find out eventually, so I’ll just tell you. Esma was a very good friend of mine, as were Milo and Rado, and Anita too. I even dated Esma’s brother for a while.”

  “The one who lives in Austria?” I ask.

  She shakes her head something watery and sad entering her eyes. “No, the one who died in Ljubljana.”

  She sighs again sadly, but covers it up with a few deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, since it seems appropriate.

  She waves her hand dismissively. “It was all so long ago.”

  “But you were close to Esma and Anita?” I ask.

  She nods. “Yes, I was close to all of them. For a time. But I married young and we grew apart. And I had just given birth to my twins when Esma disappeared and had my hands full, as you can imagine. By then I didn’t speak to any of them much.”

  I can’t entirely, since I’ve never even been close to having a child, but I nod anyway. She sounds like she’s mad that she wasn’t a part of it. And they must’ve been closer than she’s letting on, if Milo told her about Rado and Esma.

  “So—”

  “Let’s keep walking,” she says and doesn’t wait for my reply before she starts walking again.

  When we finally reach the firmly shut restaurant door she keeps walking right past it. Sounds of construction work are coming from the inside, muffled and distant.

  She looks at me over her shoulder. “I’d take you inside, but it’s currently being renovated. We’re turning it into a hotel, one of the few of its kind in the world. The castle is also in amazing shape.”

  “Sounds great,” I say. “I’d love to come and stay when it’s finished.”

  “You can, in about a year,” she says and keeps walking.

  She doesn’t stop again until we reach what I can only describe as a forest of pines that seems to encircle the entire back part of the castle. She veers off into the trees and doesn’t stop until we’re pretty much concealed from all sides by the trees. The scent of mowed grass is overpowered here by the slightly tangy one of fresh growing pines.

  I give her a puzzled look and she smiles faintly. “I don’t want anyone to overhear us, and I’d much prefer it if no one saw us talking, but that ship has sailed.”

  “Why all the secrecy?” I ask.

  “Because I’d rather not be associated with this at all,” she says, apologetically but firmly. “As you probably already know, neither the Rajić sisters nor my two cousins enjoyed a good reputation in this town. Since I work at the town hall I want to remove myself from all that. But I also think I should share with you what I do know.”

  “It would help me find Anita’s killer,” I say. “And maybe even learn what happened to Esma.”

  “Right,” she says and clears her throat, then leans in even closer.

  “I never told this to anyone, but I’m sure Rado, Milo, and Anita knew more about Esma’s disappearance than they let on. ”

  “What makes you think so?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Rado just leaving was the big thing. But Milo and Anita stopped spending time together too. And neither of them could look me in the eyes whenever I asked if there were any new developments. They seemed content to accept that she just left town.”

  “What? Even Milo? I thought he was the one who went to the police and demanded they try and find her.”

  She shakes her head. “Not at first. At first, he thought she left him. He even spoke about another guy, some foreigner that she apparently liked the look of. He cried about it a lot, cursed his fate, spent a couple of days dead drunk, that kind of thing. Talked about going after her to win her back. But then, a few months after she disappeared, he started pressing on her father to demand an investigation from the police.”

  “So what changed? Do you think he had some sort of proof that the other two did something to her?” I’m just reaching here.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “All I know is that they started acting weird right after she disappeared. Then Rado left, and Milo went away for a while too, telling everyone he was going to look for Esma. Anita devoted herself to taking care of her father and hardly even spoke to Milo. People started accepting that she had left her wild youth behind her.”

  The air is decidedly cooler in the shade of all these trees around us, but that’s not why I’m suddenly very cold. It’s this story I’m hearing, and how it actually went from bad to worse for Anita.

  “How did she end up stealing from all her neighbors and fleeing the country to end up dead in Ljubljana?” I ask.

  “That part’s also freaky,” she says. “Rado came back to town one day, after being gone for almost a year. The next day, Milo is crying in my kitchen, telling me Esma and Rado had a fling, which sounded so weird to me. And that evening, he hung himself in Esma’s back yard.”

  She’s breathing hard again, and has to take a few breaths to steady herself.

  “Meanwhile, while the whole village is in shock Anita is busy stealing valuables from people’s houses, and by the next morning she was gone from the village,” she says.

  “And she never spoke to you?”

  “I saw her waiting for the early morning bus,” she says. “Went over to talk, but she didn’t have much to say. She just talked about all the fun times we used to have together then hugged me real tight before boarding the bus. She wouldn’t even tell me where she was going. Just that she had to get away. At the time I thought it was the shock of Milo’s suicide. I didn’t know about her thieving yet, you see.”

  “And Rado?” I ask.

  “He stayed in town, buried his brother, took care of Anita’s father until he also died a couple of months later, and has been taking care of the house ever since,” she says. “He never speaks about any of it.”

  “So, basically, Rado is the only one who’d know what actually happened to Esma,” I say. “Can you tell me where he lives so I can go see him?”

  Her brilliant green eyes turn a shade of dark green in the shade, and they’re full of fear as she looks at me. “You don’t want to ask him about it. I tried once and he went crazy. Deranged. If my husband wasn’t with me, I’m sure he would’ve hit me for asking him questions about Esma and Milo.”

  “But he’s the only one who knows the full story,” I say. “I have to speak to him.”

  She sighs. “I wouldn’t if I were you. But if you must, don’t tell him I sent you. Please.”

  I nod. “I can leave you out of it.”

  I almost add, “For now”, but stop myself just in time. It’s not something she needs to hear right now.

  “Rado lives about two kilometers out of town on his parents’ old farm. Just ask any taxi driver to take you to the Kopanja farm, they’ll know where it is. But I don’t recommend you go there, at least not alone.”

  “Thank you for telling me all this,” I say, dodging her warning.

  She nods. “I thought I bette
r. It’s been eating away at me for a while.”

  Not enough to say something sooner, but both Rado and Milo are her close relatives and she probably just wanted to protect them.

  She checks her watch. “I should be heading back. Will you walk back to town with me?”

  I shake my head. “I think I’ll stay for a bit. It really is lovely up here.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” she says, sounding very relieved. “If you keep walking straight you’ll come to a nice park with footpaths and benches. It’s a beautiful spot that overlooks the whole town.”

  I tell her I’ll go there and she leaves. I watch her walk away until she disappears behind the curve in the castle wall, then head for the clearing.

  Hopefully, it’ll be as empty as the rest of this castle hill seems to be, because I’d rather not have anyone see me reading the police files, which I want to do as soon as possible. Safest would be taking them back to Fata’s house. But I don’t have the patience for that. Besides, I’ll have to call Mark right after and tell him all this, and I’ll need privacy for that too.

  20

  Mark

  The cases I investigated as a Special Investigator for the US Military took me all over the world, but in the last years, before I retired, I worked mostly in Europe. Part of that had to do with the fact that I speak three major languages—English, Italian, and German fluently, and several others enough to get by. I grew up speaking Slovenian, English, and Italian at home, which is probably why learning new languages comes so naturally to me. The other reason is that I always felt more at home in Europe than in the US. In the course of investigating all those cases, I amassed a large network of contacts all over Europe, since I worked closely with local authorities on a lot of them.

  I spent all morning and most of the afternoon, calling all of those contacts, trying to find out more about Esma Rajić’s possible whereabouts. I have virtually nothing to show for it, apart from a list of forty Jane Does found dead over the last decade that fit her general description. Trying to ID Esma as one of those would be a monumental task, and one we’ll take on eventually. But I’m hoping Eva will find her first.

  I also did some digging around for Anita’s older brother, Tarik. He’s a pretty successful businessman on the surface, though his construction company seems to flourish solely on the backs of underpaid and just overall exploited workers from Bosnia and other Balkan countries. The phone number Brina had for him had been disconnected, and the address my contact had for him was so old that they’ve since demolished that whole apartment building, but I was finally able to reach his secretary who informed me he was indisposed at the moment and would get back to me. I made sure she understood it was urgent and that I am investigating what happened to his sisters and his younger brother. She didn’t sound very fazed by any of that, from which I concluded she doesn’t know much about his family history. She did promise to relay my entire message to him though.

  So much for finding Esma easily. Not that I really expected to.

  The other team members are still busy with the tasks I set them, and I’m hoping one of them returns soon with a new lead or at least something like a promising new direction for me to move in.

  Brina grumbled a lot, but finally relented to first going to check if the IDs are real and then trying and track down the women from the list provided by Lina, Walter is still at the doctor’s office with the two women from the halfway house, Dino is busy prowling all the construction sites in the city looking for the man who potentially has some information about Anita’s younger brother, and Slava has gone to see Ida at the National Forensics Lab.

  So far, only Brina called in briefly to inform me that the papers are, in fact, one hundred percent real.

  My phone rings just as I’m about to go grab something to eat that isn’t a pastry, and stretch my legs. It’s Eva, the only person I really wanted to hear from if I’m one hundred percent honest.

  “Can you talk?” she asks in that serious tone that she only uses when we need to discuss something important. More often than not, those conversations don’t end well for me, but that’s the past.

  “What do you have?” I ask and move over to the sofa where most of my notes from today’s conversation are.

  “A few things,” she says and lunges into a long monologue about how a cousin of Rado and Milo told her she thinks the two men and Anita knew more about Esma’s disappearance than they were saying.

  “But she has no actual proof, right?” I ask.

  I understand that a lot of Eva’s work as an investigative journalist and now true-crime writer revolves around getting as many stories from as many people as she can, but actual investigative work only begins after you get all that. I hope I can find the words to explain that one gently.

  “No she doesn’t and at first I was thinking the same thing you’re thinking, that it’s just more gossip and conjecture,” she says hastily, and as though she can actually read my mind. “But she sounded so spooked about it, and she went to great lengths to tell me all this in complete privacy, in the middle of a pine tree grove, that I can’t help but take her seriously.”

  “OK,” I say. “I mean, you have good instincts. Did she tell you anything else?”

  “Yes, kind of. When I suggested I go ask Rado about it, she told me she’s tried that before and he got very angry. Enraged. I think I’m onto something here.”

  “Well, maybe,” I say. “But definitely don’t go speak to that guy alone.”

  Her sharp inhale tells me I said the wrong thing. But I didn’t, so there’s that.

  “There’s more,” she says brusquely. “I got the original file of the investigation into Esma’s disappearance. And the one into Milo’s suicide. This last one was pretty straightforward. They ruled it a suicide, which no one was surprised at, and closed the case quickly. But I found something intriguing in Esma’s. Something that sort of confirms Marina’s fears.”

  I sit up straight, moving my phone from one ear to the other. “What’s that?”

  “The commandant of the police station here, he actually did his job and looked over the case about every two years. I think he mostly did that because Esma’s brother kept calling him over the years, asking if any progress had been made,” she says. “Anyway, during one of those times, he brought in cadaver dogs to search the Kopanja farm and the Rajić house.”

  “And they found something?” I ask.

  “Yes, at the Rajić house,” she says. “A strong suspicion that someone had died there. But it wasn’t enough to dig up part of the basement floor like they’d need to, especially since the brother protested. Both the grandmother and the mother had died in that house, he said. The dogs were just smelling that.”

  “From what I know about cadaver dog evidence, I’d say his explanation was plausible,” I say.

  “But what if the father killed Esma because she was trying to leave?” she says. “Everyone here says the father was very strict and that his punishments of the children could get downright cruel in his punishments. I mean, he used to lock them up in the basement as I told you before. I checked that door when I was in the house and it was locked. Maybe Esma ended up in there. It would explain the smell of decay in the house.”

  I have no idea what to say. On the one hand, it could be something, and it definitely warrants a closer look, but on the other, it’s all just based on rumors and I don’t want Eva taking that look by herself.

  “If the chief of police didn’t press the issue at the time, I’m sure he had his reasons,” I finally say. “I mean, he must have had access to the basement when he came with the dogs, right?”

  “You think it’s not relevant?” she asks sounding kind of disenchanted.

  “I think you should go ask him about his reasons,” I say.

  “That’s a good idea,” she says. “But first, I want to go over the files once more. There’s something else nagging at me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “You sound kin
d of like me now,” I say and chuckle.

  “No, I’m sure you’d take one look at this file and know exactly what happened to Esma,” she says making me feel incredibly guilty for thinking all those unkind things about her investigative skills before.

  Truth is, her methods aren’t conventional, but she’s been instrumental in helping crack both the cases we worked on together. I think I just want to dissuade her from pursuing this one because I want her to come home, and that’s not cool.

  “I wish it were that easy,” I say. “I’ll have Simon find out what it would take for us to officially search a house in Bosnia.”

  “And ask Dino if he’s ever heard of a Rado Kopanja,” she says. “Apparently, well, according to gossip, he worked for the mafia for a while.”

  I promise I’ll do that too.

  “How’s your day been?” she asks. “Any progress?”

  “Not on my end, but I’m hoping the team had more luck,” I say just as I hear the sliding door of the office opening. The team is back and it’s time to work. But I turn my back on the glass wall in my office.

  “I have to go, Eva,” I say, wishing I didn’t have to and at the same time wanting to get back to the case.

  It’s a feeling I remember well from back when we still lived together in Berlin and I had to divide my time between being with her and working on the cases I was assigned. It left me torn. That’s what I remember most of all. And that I wished a day would come when it got easier. That day hasn’t come yet.

  “Talk to the police chief first, and then if you absolutely must go speak to Rado, take him with you,” I tell her.

  “Oh, is that an order?” she asks in mock surprise.

  “Something like that,” I say. “Just be careful, OK? Promise me.”

  “I promise,” she says with more understanding and patience than I expected from her.

  I finish off by telling her I’ll call her later tonight, so we can say a proper goodbye, which makes her giggle.

  I think we both need to find a way to separate the case from our life together, otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll end up on two different shores again, like we were. It’s what ended our relationship the first time more than anything else, I think, and I’m not making the same mistake now. We didn’t do so well up to now on this one, but it’s not too late to start.