The Skeleton Road

by Val McDermid

  Maggie moved further into the room, not taking her eyes off Tessa. A casual observer would have thought she was drifting through the party, scattering smiles and greetings as she passed. Maggie knew better. Tessa would be by her side in a matter of moments, her lips brushing the soft place beneath Maggie’s right ear, her breath warm, her cheek resting fractionally too long against Maggie’s.

  And she was right. Before she could count to fifty, Tessa was there, soft words in her ear. ‘You look lovely.’ Made all the more charming by the remains of a Dublin accent that had been buffed to softness by time and distance.

  ‘You knew about this.’ There was no quarter in Maggie’s voice.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea. And I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t come and then everybody would feel like idiots. And then you wouldn’t forgive yourself,’ Tessa said, linking one arm in Maggie’s and reaching for a glass of Prosecco with her free hand.

  Maggie felt the bones in Tessa’s arm press against her own plump flesh. Christ, any thinner and a hug would break her. ‘I wouldn’t count on that. And you didn’t have the nerve to be here from the get-go.’

  ‘Ach, I was stuck in a meeting at the Foreign Office. International criminal tribunal stuff. How many times have our plans crashed and burned because of long-winded lawyers?’

  ‘You’re a lawyer, remember?’

  ‘But not one of the long-winded ones.’ Tessa had a point. One of the reasons Maggie enjoyed her company so much was her uncomplicated nature, surprising in a lawyer who dealt in the thorny moral dilemmas of human rights. Now Tessa waved her glass expansively at the room full of people. ‘Anyhow, I’m here now and that’s what matters. I know you could make a patchwork quilt of your history from all the different recollections in this room right now, but I’m the only one who could make a coverlet out of the whole cloth.’

  ‘There’s one missing, Tessa.’ And the person who wasn’t there was the only one that mattered. His image had been clouding her mind’s eye since the moment Jonah had derailed her. Nobody had been insensitive enough to mention his name, but Maggie had felt it hanging unsaid more than once. Obviously, he hadn’t been invited. Because he hadn’t left a forwarding address. Not when he’d walked out without a final farewell eight years before, nor any time since. Dimitar Petrovic had left without a backward glance. Maggie had told herself a million times that he’d been trying to protect her. But she’d always wondered whether it was more about protecting himself from the complications of an emotional life.

  Tessa’s mouth twisted into something between a smile and a sneer. ‘He could have sent flowers.’

  ‘Mitja never bought me flowers.’ Maggie tilted her chin up and faced her party, lying smile firmly in place. ‘He never had a talent for cliché, Tessa. You know that.’

  ‘He does, however, have a tendency to repeat himself,’ Tessa said briskly.

  Maggie half-turned and gave her friend a sharp look. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘He’s up to his old tricks.’ Tessa disengaged her arm. ‘One of the prosecution team told me about it last night. Miroslav Simunovic this time. You remember him?’

  ‘One of Radovan Karadzic’s henchmen. Up to his armpits in the dead of Srebenica? That Simunovic?’

  ‘That’s the one. He’d escaped the tribunal, you know. They’re not taking any more new cases. Simunovic must have thought he was free and clear. He had reinvented himself as a retired history teacher. Living on Crete, in a flat with a nice view of the harbour in Chania. His neighbour across the landing found him three days ago. Lying in the doorway with his throat cut ear to ear.’

  Maggie closed her eyes tightly. When she opened them, her dark blue eyes were like flints. ‘You don’t know that it’s anything to do with Mitja,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  Tessa shifted one shoulder in a faint shrug. ‘Same MO as all the others. Look at the timeline, Maggie. Milosevic dies before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia can find him guilty. Mitja gets drunk for three days and rages against the likes of me for failing his people. The first killing happens six weeks after he walks out on you, all fired up with his mission to put right what we couldn’t manage in The Hague. If it’s not Mitja, it’s somebody else with the same list of names to blame.’

  ‘That doesn’t narrow it down. It’s not like those names are a secret, Tessa.’

  ‘Three or four of them come into the realm of specialist knowledge. If he’s not out there showrunning his own theatre of vengeance, what exactly is he doing that’s kept him out of your bed for the past eight years, Maggie?’ The words were harsh, but Tessa’s eyes were full of pity.

  The music segued into David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’. A middle-aged man who should have known better than the drainpipe jeans he’d squeezed into bussed Maggie on the cheek, oblivious to the tension between the two women. ‘Come on, Maggie,’ he urged. ‘Like the man says, let’s dance.’

  ‘Later, Lucas,’ she said, managing a distracted smile in his direction. Pouting, he shimmied back into the crowd on the dance floor, waggling his fingers at them as he went. Maggie took a deep breath and ran a hand through the shock of thick brown hair that she refused to allow to reveal the hints of grey that lurked in secret. ‘You make me sound irresistible. And we both know that’s not true.’

  Tessa laid a hand on the other woman’s shoulder and leaned into her. ‘I wouldn’t mind giving it another try.’

  Maggie snorted with bitter laughter. ‘Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.’ She patted Tessa’s hand. ‘We’re better off as friends. We only fell into bed together because we were both missing Mitja so much. I lost the man I loved and you lost your best friend.’

  ‘What have I told you about talking yourself down? You were never second-best to Mitja. You and me, we were friends while he was elbowing his way into your life, and you’re still my best friend.’ Tessa gave a dry little bark of sardonic laughter. ‘I sometimes think you’re my only friend. The point is, really, that Mitja loved you. Nothing short of a one-man crusade against war criminals could have kept him from you.’

  Maggie shook her head, still smiling politely at the room. ‘You know what I think.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘And you’re stubborn. Look, Tess, Mitja wasn’t a boy when we met. He was a very grown-up thirty-two when we ran into each other in Dubrovnik in ’91. I’m not stupid. I knew he must have had a past. A history. A life. But we both agreed that we weren’t going to be defined by what went before.’

  Tessa made a derisive noise. ‘Convenient for him.’

  ‘Convenient for both of us. I wasn’t exactly lacking a past myself. But it’s not me we’re talking about here, it’s Mitja. I always assumed there was a woman tucked away in some Croatian backwater. Maybe even kids. I just didn’t want to know what he’d left behind to be with me.’

  Tessa knocked back the remains of her drink. ‘So why would he go back to that? When he had you? He’d already left her for you. He wouldn’t have left you for her, he’d only ever have left you because he had a mission that was irresistible. Overwhelming.’

  Maggie took a step away from Tessa, letting her friend’s hand fall from her shoulder. ‘I love that you think so much of me you have to come up with some noble theory to explain why my lover walked out on me.’ She looked around the room, taking in the dancers, the talkers, the drinkers. The vista of the people who loved and respected had no hope of chasing the sorrow away. ‘Whatever I was to him, Tessa, it wasn’t home. That’s why he left. Mitja just went home.’

  4

  Alan Macanespie had once confided to a friend that he was not a man given to introspection. His pal had guffawed, almost choking on his beer. When his coughing fit subsided, he said, ‘Christ, if I looked like you, I’d take introspection over the view in the mirror every time.’ It was a point of view that had been reinforced when Macanespie had split up with his long-term girlfriend a couple of years later.

  ‘Next time I want to live with a ginger pig
, I’ll buy a Tamworth,’ had been her parting shot. Increasingly, when he looked in his shaving mirror, he found it hard to disagree. His ginger hair had grown paler and more sparse, his stubble coarser. His eyes seemed smaller because his face had become fatter. He didn’t want to think about what his body looked like; these days, there were no full-length mirrors anywhere in his flat. When she left, she told him he’d given up on himself. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d been right about that too.

  Macanespie didn’t like the way that made him feel. He realised that his career had stalled, but that didn’t mean he’d shirked his job at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. OK, investigating war criminals and helping to track them down wasn’t where he’d imagined his law degree would take him, but it was preferable to writing wills and conveyancing in some scummy wee town in the central belt of his native Scotland. He’d carved out a nice little niche in one of the grey areas between the Foreign Office and the Department of Justice and it suited him just fine. The worst thing about it was having to share an office with that miserable Welsh git Proctor.

  But all that might pale into insignificance if today went tits up. His previous boss, Selina Bryson, had what a more charitable man than Macanespie might have called a laissez-faire attitude to her ICTFY operators. Macanespie described it more pithily: ‘She couldn’t give a flying fuck what we do as long as we deliver results she can take credit for and we don’t fart at the ambassador’s cocktail receptions.’ But Selina was history and today the new boy was coming to wave a big stick at him and Proctor. Making them come into the office on a Saturday, just because he could.

  He might be lazy but Macanespie wasn’t stupid and he knew forewarned was forearmed. So he’d called one of his London drinking buddies and sought the low-down on the new boss. Jerry had been happy to oblige on the promise of a bottle of Dutch genever the next time Macanespie left The Hague for London.

  ‘Wilson Cagney,’ Macanespie said. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘What have you heard so far?’

  Macanespie made a sardonic face. ‘Too young, too well dressed, too black.’

  Jerry laughed. ‘He’s older than he looks. He’s nearer forty than thirty. He’s got enough miles on the clock to dish out plenty of bother. He dresses Savile Row but the word is that he lives in a one-bedroomed shed in Acton and doesn’t drive. Spends all his readies on good suits and all his spare time in the office gym. Sad careerist bastard, basically.’

  ‘How did he climb the greasy pole? Merit? Backstabbing? Or trading on being black?’

  Jerry breathed in sharply. ‘I hope this is a secure line, mate, saying things like that. HR are bloody everywhere these days. He’s got the qualifications – law degree at Manchester, then a Masters in security and international law, according to our star-struck IT assistant. But he’s the only black face at his grade, so make of that what you will. Put it this way, Alan. He’s not one of us. You’ll never find him down the Bay Horse on a Friday night.’

  ‘So he’s not coming over to give us a pat on the back and say, “As you were, chaps.”’

  ‘Word is he’s looking for so-called austerity cuts. Which is spelled c-u-l-l. Watch your back, Alan.’

  And so Macanespie, card marked, had determined that he wasn’t going to be the lamb to the slaughter. Welsh lamb, that was a much better option. He’d be the ginger pig, tusks flashing danger signs at anyone who thought he was a pushover. He’d arrived in good time and to Theo Proctor’s astonishment, he set about clearing his desk and tidying his end of the office.

  ‘You trying to be teacher’s pet, then?’ Proctor demanded.

  ‘I just looked at this place through somebody else’s eyes and decided it didn’t need to be a pigsty,’ he said, grabbing three dirty mugs and popping them into his bottom drawer. Proctor, clearly uneasy, began straightening files and papers on his desk.

  Before he’d made much impression, one of the canteen staff came in with a Thermos jug and a single cup. She consulted a piece of paper. ‘Which one of you is Wilson Cagney?’

  ‘He’s not here yet, love. And you need two more cups.’ Proctor always managed to sound an officious prick, Macanespie thought.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She waved the paper at him. ‘Look: “Order for Wilson Cagney. Black coffee for one.” Can one of you sign for it?’

  ‘I don’t see why I should sign for it if I’m not getting to drink it,’ Proctor grumbled.

  ‘Give it here,’ Macanespie said, scribbling his signature on the bottom of the sheet. ‘We’ll not drink it, I promise.’ When she left, he unscrewed the top and inhaled. ‘Aye, that’s the good stuff,’ he said.

  ‘For crying out loud, Alan, close it up. He’ll smell it.’ Proctor looked panicked, but Macanespie just curled his lip in a sneer as he closed the jug.

  Five minutes later, a tall black man in an immaculate charcoal pinstripe suit walked in without knocking. His hair was cut close, emphasising his narrow head and surprisingly delicate features. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said, then poured himself a coffee from the Thermos jug. He glanced briefly at them both then gestured with his cup at Proctor. ‘You must be Proctor.’ Theo nodded. Cagney looked pleased with himself. ‘Which makes you Macanespie.’ This time there was a faint note of distaste in his voice.

  Cagney sat down and hitched his trousers at the knee before he crossed his legs. ‘I imagine you know why I’m here?’

  ‘You’re Selina Bryson’s replacement,’ Macanespie said. ‘Making a tour of the front-line staff.’ He smiled, instantly worrying that he was showing too many teeth in a display of nerves.

  Cagney inclined his head. ‘Right. And also wrong. It’s true that I’ve taken over from Selina. But I’m not here to press the flesh and tell you all what a sterling job you’re doing. Because in the case of you two, you’re not.’

  Proctor flushed, a dark plum stain spreading upwards from his bright white shirt collar. ‘We’re one small part of a big operation here. You can’t blame us for everything that’s gone wrong.’

  Cagney sipped his coffee, clearly savouring it. ‘The UK government is committed to the concept of international law. That’s the main reason we supported the UN in the formation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. It’s why we seconded people like you to work with the tribunal. Everybody knows it’s going to wind up at the end of this year, so we’re all drinking in the last-chance saloon. And some people aren’t happy about that. Would you say that was a fair assessment of the situation?’

  Macanespie hung back, waiting to see which way his colleague would jump. Proctor stuck his chin out, his expression belligerent. ‘A tribunal like this is never going to manage to satisfy people’s demands for justice. Stands to reason. After all this time, you can’t expect to develop the kind of evidence that will always stand up to challenge in court.’

  Cagney set his cup down. ‘I appreciate that. What worries me is the cases that have never made it to court. The ones where a dossier was put together and a raid was planned to arrest the alleged war criminal. Only, the arrests were never carried out because, by pure chance, the target of the operation was assassinated before we swung into action.’

  So that was the way the wind was blowing. Someone was getting cold feet about someone else’s black ops. Macanespie shrugged. ‘Rough justice. You’ll not see many tears shed over the likes of them. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.’

  Cagney smacked a hand down hard on the table, making the crockery rattle and the teaspoons jingle. ‘Don’t give me that. There was nothing serendipitous about these deaths. At least ten of them. The last one, Miroslav Simunovic, just last week.’

  ‘There’s still a lot of murdering bastards in the Balkans,’ Proctor said.

  Cagney glared at him. ‘Remind me not to recommend you for a diplomatic post. The point I’m making is that, while my predecessor may have been willing to turn a blind eye to whatever programme of DIY justice was going on here, I�
��m not.’

  ‘Like you said, it’s all going to be over and done with by the end of the year,’ Macanespie said, his voice surly.

  ‘So, what? You think I should just let sleeping dogs lie?’ Cagney paused dramatically. The other two exchanged a look. It was apparently enough to create a consensus that the question was rhetorical. They stared at Cagney with expressions of stubborn mulishness. He shook his head, clearly impatient. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? This is the end of the tribunal. This is where we draw the line in the sand. This is where we say to Bosnia and Croatia and Montenegro and Kosovo and the rest of them, “It’s done. Settle down and try to behave like you’re inhabiting the twenty-first century, not the twelfth.” It’s where we tell them that we’ve done our best to mete out justice to the bad men. And now they have to move on. Let the past bury its dead.’

  Proctor made a noise halfway between a cough and a dry, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s obvious you’re new to that part of the world. They’re still fighting those ancient battles. They talk about it like it was yesterday. We might think it’s over and done, but nobody on the ground over there thinks like that.’

  ‘Well, they’re going to have to learn. If they want to be part of modern Europe, they’re going to have to learn to live like modern Europeans, not like the private armies of medieval warlords.’

  Macanespie shifted his bulk in the chair and reached for the coffee jug. ‘It’s not that simple. It’s all bound up in ethnicity and religion and tribal factions. It’s like Northern Ireland multiplied by ten. Rangers and Celtic to the power of mad.’ He took a mug out of his drawer and poured. Cagney looked momentarily furious, then mildly amused. But it wasn’t enough to divert him from his course.