The Skeleton Road

by Val McDermid

  Maggie frowned. ‘He never used a hairbrush. He just ran his fingers through his hair.’ A hint of a smile as a memory ghosted across her mind. ‘I threw away his head from the electric toothbrush after a couple of years – it was dusty and disgusting. I thought when he came back, I’d just give him another one.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Karen said. ‘Anything else of his that you’ve still got? Any clothes he’d actually worn, that sort of thing?’

  She thought for a long moment then got unsteadily to her feet. ‘His electric razor. It’s in the bathroom drawer, right where he left it. I’ve never cleaned it or anything.’ She started for the door.

  ‘Jason,’ Karen said. ‘Bag and tag, please.’

  He got to his feet and set off in Maggie’s wake, patting his pockets for an evidence bag. Tessa looked Karen straight in the eye and said, ‘You’re pretty sure it’s him, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been in this job a long time and, in my experience, the simplest explanation almost always turns out to be the right one. DC Murray, he still gets carried away with romantic notions about people who run away from their lives so they don’t get the blame for something they didn’t do. People do run, it’s true. But we’re social creatures. For most of us, it’s unsustainable to butt out of the lives of our nearest and dearest and never go back. We see it all the time in witness protection. They just have to see their old gran on her eightieth birthday. Or their beloved football team in the cup final. Or their granddaughter’s first communion. Bear in mind, these are people that can pretty much guarantee that resurfacing anywhere near their old life is going to have serious consequences. But still they do it. Now, from what you’ve both told us about their relationship, I can’t see Dimitar Petrovic abandoning the woman he loves without so much as a Christmas card to say he’s all right.’

  Tessa shrugged one shoulder. ‘He walked away from his life in Croatia – whatever that was before he met Maggie. I was around a lot of the time when the fighting was still going on. I met plenty of his fellow soldiers, guys he was friendly with. But I never met anybody from his life before Dubrovnik. It was as if he’d cut himself loose from his past so he could be with Maggie. If he could do that once, he could do it again, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never met the man. But there’s no point in speculation. If we can get a sample of his DNA, we’ll have the answer in a day or so.’ Karen gave her an assessing look. ‘What were you going to say when Maggie cut you off?’

  Tessa blinked slowly. ‘How strange is that? I really can’t recall. You know how it is, the shock provokes strange outbursts. And then you forget as quickly as you started to speak what it was you were going to say.’ She gave a lazy smile. ‘All I was thinking about was how I have to be there for Maggie.’

  Aye, right. She was a good liar, Karen thought. But a liar nonetheless. Whatever she was hiding might have nothing to do with Dimitar Petrovic’s death. And it might have everything to do with it. Sooner or later, she’d find a way to dig it out. ‘We’re going to have to go back through his movements around the time he disappeared,’ she said.

  ‘Good luck with that one, officer. Can you remember what you were doing on a particular night eight years ago?’ Tessa sounded remarkably amused for a woman who’d just learned one of her best friends was dead. Maybe she hadn’t been as fond of General Petrovic as she made out. Or maybe she’d been too fond. The kind of fond where you have to cover up.

  ‘I’ve been in cold cases quite a while now. We’ve developed techniques for helping people to remember,’ Karen said. ‘Jogging their memories with what was in the headlines back then. What was in the charts. What was on the telly. You’d be amazed what surfaces. We’ll obviously be asking you, since you knew him.’

  Before Tessa could reply, Jason and Maggie returned. He held up a sealed plastic bag with details of the shaver inside scribbled on it. ‘Got it, boss.’

  ‘Thanks. There’s one more thing, Professor. We don’t actually know what General Petrovic looked like. I wonder, could you let us have a photograph of him? It might be helpful when we’re interviewing potential witnesses.’

  Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth. Before she could respond, Tessa said, ‘Why don’t I email you a selection of photographs? I can do that when I get home.’

  Karen stood up. ‘That would be perfect, thank you. We’ll be back in touch as soon as we have a result one way or another. In the meantime, Professor, it’d be helpful if you could start making some notes about the last week or so before General Petrovic went missing. We’ll be taking a full statement from you in due course, but if you write down what you can remember, it’ll make things easier when we do that.’ She fished a business card out of her jacket pocket. ‘This is me. Call me any time if you come up with anything that might help us figure out what happened on that rooftop. And again, I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’

  Maggie looked ten years older than she had when Karen had pounced on her in the porters’ lodge. She sighed heavily. ‘People say it’s better to know, don’t they? So you can have closure?’

  Karen nodded. ‘I believe so.’

  Maggie’s expression was scornful. ‘That’s bollocks. Knowledge destroys hope. It’s hope that’s been keeping me going for the last eight years. How am I going to get through the days now?’

  At first, it was almost possible to believe we might yet avoid full-scale war. In the snatched hours Mitja squeezed out of his day to spend with me, I learned that the JNA were having their own problems. Apparently, not all their soldiers were keen on a fight with their next-door neighbours. The JNA generals were threatening dire reprisals against deserters and reservists who were ignoring the call-up. And the federal authorities in Belgrade kept insisting there would be no attack against Dubrovnik.

  We’d lie in bed in our hotel room – it had to be hotels because I couldn’t take Mitja to Varya’s and he couldn’t take me to his barracks – and hold each other close while we talked about the probability of war, the possibility of peace. It doesn’t sound very romantic, I know. But ideas were what had drawn us together. Being at the heart of what happens when ideology spills over into real life was both terrifying and fascinating for both of us.

  The hope that we would somehow escape the conflict died a week after the mobilisation. JNA artillery hammered the villages to the south-east of the city. It was clear that they planned to start with the southernmost tip of Croatia and work their way up. Melissa had sent me a series of increasingly insistent emails, telling me to cut and run. I suspect my bland refusals must have driven her mad with frustration.

  That night, Mitja said, ‘It’s not too late to leave, Maggie. I can make sure you get safely away.’ He didn’t look happy at the prospect, but I could see he meant what he said.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve made my choice. I can’t walk away from you.’

  His grip on me tightened. ‘I understand that. But once the fighting starts, there won’t be many opportunities for us to be together. I’m a soldier, Maggie. In a war, I have to go where they send me. Do what they tell me.’

  ‘I know. But you’re in intelligence, right? You’re not going to be in the front line. You’ll be here, doing your thing. And I’ll be here too. Whenever you can manage to get away, I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘That’s not how your life should be.’ For the first time since I’d known him, he sounded angry. ‘What happened to your feminism? Suddenly you’re going to be some submissive little woman waiting for her man to grace her with his presence?’

  I was shocked. ‘No, that’s not what I meant. Whatever happens, I’ll find something useful to do with myself. I’m not going to sit around weaving a bloody tapestry. What I’m saying is that now I’ve found this, now I’ve found you, I’m not walking away. I’m not counting the cost, Mitja. I —’ I stopped abruptly. It had only been nine days, after all. So far, we’d avoided ‘I love you.’ I love your body, I love when you do that, I love being here with you – all that we’
d said, but we’d never quite nailed our colours to the mast.

  ‘I know,’ he said, laying his head on my shoulder. ‘I feel the same.’

  I could feel his heart beat against my hand. Three words, but I’d only ever said them a couple of times in my life. I don’t believe in saying things you don’t mean, even if it makes life less awkward. But it was time. ‘I love you, Mitja.’

  ‘I love you too, Maggie. And that’s why I want you to go. I can’t protect you here. We’ve got less than five hundred troops in Dubrovnik. We can’t defend fifty thousand people, it’s not possible. I need to be able to do my job without worrying about your safety.’

  ‘Tough,’ I said. ‘It’s not up to you. I’m staying, Mitja, and that’s that. You need to get used to the idea of having someone who loves you.’ It didn’t occur to me then, the chances were that I wasn’t the only one who loved him. We hadn’t shared much of our emotional histories; we’d been too busy creating our own past. But later, I couldn’t help wondering whether he’d severed himself from a life complete with wife, children and home when he chose me. He never said anything to suggest that was the case. Nevertheless, when he left, I thought perhaps I’d indulged in a wilful blindness. It suited me not to think of him having loved anyone completely before me because that was the position I was in.

  And so we both pledged our allegiance to each other as the bombs started to fall on southern Croatia. Two days later, the Yugoslav navy began its long blockade of the sea roads leading to Dubrovnik. We were well on the way to being an island. Well on the way to being under siege.

  22

  It was gone midnight by the time Jason dropped Karen off at home. In spite of having had to drive her all the way back to Kirkcaldy, he’d been remarkably cheerful, seeing the extra miles from his flat in Edinburgh only as an excuse to spend the night at his parents’ house and have his mother cook him breakfast. ‘That way I can pick you up nice and early in the morning, boss,’ he reminded her as she dragged herself out of the car.

  Phil and River were still up, slumped in front of the TV picking holes in a rerun of Se7en. When she walked in, Phil was holding forth. ‘And that’s the fatal flaw. We’re expected to believe that the killer set all this in motion more than a year ago. But he couldn’t have known then that the detective hunting him down would have the deadly sin of anger, could he? He might have ended up with a laid-back lazy sod who wasn’t that bothered. Or a jobsworth who only cared about his reputation for clearing cases. So the whole thing falls to – Oh, hello, darling. You guys made good time.’ He stretched his arms out to her, looking for a hug, but not quite eager enough to get out of his seat.

  Some women might have been irritated by that. Not Karen. She saw it for what it was. Comfortable, relaxed affection. No need to put on a show for her or for River. Nights like this reminded her how lucky she was to have Phil. When she’d just about given up hope, when she’d resigned herself to a life of self-reliance, Phil had wakened up to a complex of emotions that matched hers. He loved her for who she was; he never tried to change her. He was smart enough to know that she was smarter, and secure enough not to mind. But most of all, he was reliable. The idea of coming home to find him gone for good was unimaginable.

  Karen shrugged off her coat and perched on the arm of his chair, kneading his shoulders with one hand. In a way, that had been the saddest thing about her encounter with Maggie Blake. Not that she was still waiting, eight years on, for the man she loved to come home. No, what bothered Karen was that she seemed to have taken in her stride the fact that he’d gone without a word. Phil often talked about the women he encountered in the Murder Prevention Team as having a perilously low level of self-esteem; they almost believed they deserved to be treated like shit. It seemed to Karen that Maggie Blake had more in common with those women than she’d ever have allowed herself to believe.

  Phil put his arm round her waist. ‘Good day?’

  ‘Interesting. Made some progress, but not as much as I’d have liked.’ She picked up her bag from where she’d let it fall. ‘Before I forget, River, here’s something for you to play with.’ She took out the bagged shaver and passed it across. ‘Sign for it so my chain of custody stays intact. And I’ve got some pix to forward on to you.’

  ‘Excellent. I can do the Buck Ruxton test and superimpose them on an X-ray of the skull. The quick-and-dirty ID from the pre-DNA days.’

  ‘You had a good day?’ Karen asked her.

  River grinned. ‘Always a joy to be in the Dundee lab. I ran more tests that confirm what we already knew about your skeleton. I did some research on the metal plate and the screws in his femur. It’s an alloy that was used for a while in the eighties in Soviet-controlled Central Europe. So, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria. That sort of region. But they made a pretty good job of it, which suggests he was either lucky or important.’

  ‘Or both,’ Phil said.

  ‘My guy had a scar on his left thigh from being knocked off his bike when he was a student. He may or may not have broken his leg – the professor can’t say for sure.’

  River nodded. ‘A break so bad it needed a plate could well have broken the skin. And if he was a student, chances are he was treated at a training hospital, which would explain the quality of the work. Some consultant showing off to his students. So he was lucky, your dead man.’

  ‘Aye, well, his luck ran out on top of the John Drummond.’ Karen sighed.

  The film credits began to roll and River stretched in her chair, yawning. ‘I’m off to bed. I’ll deal with this first thing, then I’ll probably head back down the road. My department is pining for me.’

  ‘Not to mention Ewan,’ Karen said.

  ‘Oh, he’s too busy coaching the under-twelve rugby team to notice whether I’m there or not,’ she said with a laugh. They all knew she didn’t mean it.

  Left on their own, Karen and Phil snuggled together on the chair for a few minutes longer. Then he gently pushed her away. ‘Time for bed. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. We’re fronting up the money-laundering rapist property developer. I’m looking forward to it.’ His smile was grim, his eyes cold.

  ‘Good for you. Have I told you how much I love that you’re doing this job?’

  He pulled her back into his arms. ‘You have. How about you show me?’

  Walking into her office the next morning, Karen felt distinctly underslept and undercaffeinated. When the receptionist told her she had visitors, it was the last thing she wanted to hear. ‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘Jason, away and get me an Americano with milk, there’s a good lad.’

  The receptionist checked her list. ‘From the Department of Justice.’

  ‘What? You mean London?’

  ‘That’s what their ID said. Alan Macanespie and Theo Proctor.’

  It didn’t sound like the sort of encounter that would start the day with a zing. ‘Never heard of them. Did they say why they were here?’

  ‘Nope. I stuck them in Interview Two down the hall.’

  ‘Nobody ever uses Interview One,’ Karen said. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Putting them in Interview Two gives the impression there’s more going on than there really is,’ the receptionist told her. ‘Apparently we like to look busy.’

  ‘Police Scotland,’ Karen muttered under her breath. ‘OK. I’ll just wait for Jason to bring my coffee back, then we’ll head in and see what joys the DoJ has for us.’

  When Jason returned with the coffees, she steered him down the hall. ‘There’s two punters from the DoJ in London waiting to see us. Now, you know I’m not a betting woman, but five’ll get you ten that this has got something to do with General Petrovic. So what I want you to do, Jason, is to keep your mouth firmly shut. OK? This is about gathering information, not giving it out willy-nilly. We clear on that?’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘Aye, boss. What do you think they’re after?’

  ‘One way to find out.’ They had reached the interview room. Without knocking, Karen
marched in. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ she said briskly, noting that they’d already annexed the chairs that faced the door. Boys’ games. As if she needed that sort of petty jockeying for position. She set her coffee down, took out her notebook then dumped her bag on the floor and sat down. ‘I’m DCI Pirie, head of the Historic Cases Unit. This is DC Murray. ID please, gentlemen.’

  ‘We signed in at the front desk,’ the dark-haired one with the scowl said.

  ‘Yes. You did. And she’s a receptionist, not a detective. For all I know, you could have bluffed your way in with a couple of fake IDs you cobbled together in some back-street copy shop. So I’ll take a look, if you don’t mind?’

  The ginger one gave his colleague a rueful shake of the head and produced a leather wallet which he flicked open to reveal he was Alan Macanespie of the Department of Justice. The other half of the wallet showed a pass for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. ‘You do right, Chief Inspector,’ he said.

  With a face full of resentment, his colleague did the same. Theo Proctor. Karen made a point of writing both names down. ‘Now, why are we all here?’

  Macanespie leaned his elbows on the table, spreading his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘It’s very simple,’ he said. ‘You instigated a CRO search that flagged up an individual of interest to us. All we want to know is the nature of your interest.’

  ‘We instigate a lot of CRO searches in Historic Cases. Who is it that you’re interested in?’