The Skeleton Road

by Val McDermid

  Karen thought about the field of crosses and said nothing. ‘I don’t want to give up just yet. In a place like this, not everybody toes the party line all the time. Sometimes you just have to open a wee window of opportunity.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Karen pointed to the church. ‘I think we should take the opportunity to have a quiet moment in the church.’

  Maggie gave her a derisive glance. ‘Tell me you don’t believe in all that.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. But there’s no pub to go to. Plus it might get us some brownie points. Come on, time for a wee bit of prayer and meditation.’

  The door of the church was unlocked. Inside it smelled of a mixture of damp and incense. The walls were stained where rainwater had leaked in. The coloured glass windows were cracked and buckled and a spray of what looked like bullet holes arced across the wall in the chancel. But the altar was clean and polished to a high sheen and the chairs were arranged in neat rows. An ornate crucifix hung above the altar, the water stoup by the door was half-full and a box of battery-powered nightlights sat on a table nearby, a couple in holders giving off a flickering light. ‘Are they Catholic here, then?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Mostly. You get some Orthodox and Muslim, but that’s mostly in Zagreb or Dubrovnik. Outside the cities, it’s Roman Catholic. All the faiths clung on to the old religion during the Communist years and they sprang straight back to life afterwards. It might have been better all round if that had never happened,’ she added with a note of bitterness.

  Karen walked forward and sat down a few rows from the front. Maggie joined her. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘We sit and wait and hope something happens.’

  ‘Do you do that a lot? Wait and hope something happens?’

  Karen’s smile was tired. ‘More often than we like to admit. The kind of cases I do, people have been sitting on their secrets for a long time. Sometimes they’re ready to let them go. You just need to be patient and let them feel like you’re what they’ve been waiting for.’

  ‘Does it often work?’

  ‘Sometimes. Now shut up and act like you’re being devout.’ Karen leaned on the back of the chair in front of her and stared at the altar.

  Maggie closed her eyes and tilted her head back, trying to empty her mind. Ever since she’d stepped off the plane her brain had been like a hamster on a wheel, rerunning all her history with the place. People, places, moments of sweetness and sadness, episodes of fear and delight; it had all been rolling out like a perpetual movie in her head. She had no idea how much time had passed before her thoughts were interrupted by the creak of an opening door. She started to full awareness and swung round in her seat to see an elderly priest making his way towards them, the beat of his stick on the stone flags like the drum announcing the prisoner’s walk to the gallows.

  ‘Looks like I was right,’ Karen murmured.

  32

  Maggie said something that sounded to Karen like, ‘Pozdrav, svechenitch,’ and the priest inclined his head. He had a thick mop of silver hair framing a square face with strong features and incongruously dark eyebrows. Karen put him around seventy. Old enough to know what they’d come to learn.

  ‘They say you are English,’ he said. His accent was quite pronounced but Karen could make out what he was saying.

  Maggie smiled. ‘Scottish, actually. You speak English?’ She sounded surprised.

  ‘Where do you think Mitja learned his English?’

  Maggie’s eyes widened. ‘He spent time in England, training at a military college.’

  ‘That made it better, but he learned it first from me.’

  ‘And where did you learn it?’ Karen knew that any time spent building a relationship with this man would help them. Showing an interest in him rather than simply pumping him for information was the first step.

  He gave her an approving nod, as if he understood what she was doing. ‘During the Communist years, there wasn’t so much work for a priest. So I became a teacher at the university in Belgrade. A Croat among the Serbs, when we were all supposed to be one Yugoslav people. I taught English literature. It wasn’t usual in a Communist state. But here in Yugoslavia, we pretended we were different. We were the good Communists. The ones the West could love. And so I taught Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Robert Burns to bored students who were forced to take my course.’

  ‘That’s amazing. You speak really well,’ Karen said.

  ‘I have listened to the BBC for years. But you flatter me. I know I don’t speak as well as I understand.’

  ‘We should introduce ourselves,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m Professor Maggie Blake from Oxford University.’

  Spoken like a woman who knew exactly how powerful a line it was when it came to opening doors, Karen thought. ‘And I’m Karen Pirie. From Edinburgh.’ Simpler not to go into too much detail yet.

  The priest pulled a chair into the aisle and sank into it with the grateful sigh of the elderly. He placed his hands on the head of his stick and studied them carefully. ‘I am Father Uros Begovic. This has been my parish since 1971. Even when it wasn’t supposed to be a parish. I have been minister to the people of this village for more than forty years. I used to come home at weekends and holidays and turn from lecturer to priest.’ He ran one hand over his black cassock. ‘Easier on the outside than on the inside.’

  ‘And that’s how you knew Mitja,’ Maggie said.

  He tipped his head towards her, peering over the rimless glasses perched on the end of his nose. ‘I prepared him for his First Communion. But you – why are you interested in him? Why have you come here in search of his past?’

  Karen could see the wrestling match going on inside Maggie. She reckoned the priest could too. It was time for the truth. Or at least part of it. She waited, hoping Maggie understood that.

  The professor raised her head and stared at the crucifix above the altar. ‘I loved him. We were married. I never knew his history.’

  ‘You didn’t want to know,’ the priest said gently. ‘And that’s not something you should be ashamed of.’

  ‘But now he’s dead. Now I need to fill in the blanks.’

  He nodded. ‘And you?’ He turned to Karen. ‘What is your interest?’

  ‘Why can I not just be her friend, along for the ride? Along to support her?’

  He smiled. ‘You could be her friend, it’s true. But I think you are a police officer.’

  Karen was taken aback. She was accustomed to the cloak of invisibility granted to wee plump women with uninteresting wardrobes. People who weren’t expecting a cop seldom picked up on her profession. ‘What makes you say that?’

  He pulled a rueful face. ‘In this job, in this part of the world, you develop an instinct. You didn’t tell me enough when you introduced yourself. And there’s something in your eyes. A distance, maybe. And of course Novak told me Professor Blake said Mitja was murdered.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Besides, you didn’t comfort her with a hug.’

  Another bloody Sherlock Holmes. Just what the world needed. ‘Well, since you’ve worked it out, you’ll know that I need to know about the general because it’s my job.’

  Begovic laughed, a peal of genuine mirth. ‘You came here looking for justice? Here? You think a single death matters to these people? After what happened here?’

  Stung, Karen went straight for the jugular. ‘Isn’t that what your whole faith is based on? One single death among many? You of all people should know it matters. To someone who loved him, nothing matters more.’

  The smile disappeared from his face as swiftly as if he’d been slapped. He looked over his shoulder at the crucifix then lowered his eyes. ‘You’re right.’ He took a deep breath and lifted his head to meet Maggie’s face, still frozen in shock at the exchange between priest and polis. ‘I will tell you what I know. But I warn you, it’s a bad, bad story.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m past all that. I’ve been so wrong already about who he was. All I
want now is to know the truth.’

  He settled himself in the chair, a solid black block, built to inspire confidence. Karen was still reserving judgement. In her head, all organised religions were elaborate con tricks. Unlike Maggie, she wasn’t convinced she could rely on a priest for truth.

  ‘I offered English lessons in the village. Mitja was clever and full of big ideas. So was his friend Rado. A couple of the others started out with them, but they didn’t stay long. But those two? Always a competition, to see who was best. But Rado moved away with his family when they were teenagers and Mitja was left without a rival.’

  He smiled fondly at the memory. ‘It was maybe just as well. Because a new competition had started up between them. The type that spoils friendship. It was a girl, of course. Jablanka Pusic. She was a pretty girl. Very demure and, I think, kind. Not as smart as the boys, but she was the only girl of the same age in the village and they were both in love with her. So when Rado left, Jablanka and Mitja became a couple.’

  He sighed. ‘He was very clever, very talented. His parents saw that and looked to me to help him. I told him to enrol in the university in Zagreb, not Belgrade. I thought he would be more at home among Croats. And I hoped that he would find a girl who was a match for him.’ He looked Maggie in the eye again. ‘But if you know him, you know he was someone who struggled to break his word. And he had made promises to Jablanka. They were married the summer after his first year at university and by the time he graduated he was the father of twin sons.’

  Karen was impressed by how well Maggie was reacting. Her arms were wrapped around her body, as if they were literally holding her together. But her face was calm and when she spoke, her voice was under control. ‘What are their names? His sons?’

  The priest appeared momentarily uncomprehending.

  ‘What are his sons called?’ Maggie tried another form of words.

  He drew in a sharp breath, his shoulders rising. ‘I christened them Paskal and Poldo.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Maggie asked.

  The priest looked helplessly at Karen. She knew the answer, but she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. ‘After university, Mitja joined the army,’ he said, veering away from the question. ‘Jablanka stayed here. It was easier for her to raise the children with her family to support her. Besides, Mitja was never based in one place for long. At first, he came back often. As much as he could, I think. But time went by and his job became more important. He was doing the kind of things he couldn’t talk about to anyone, not even me, he came back less often. And then his parents died within a few months of each other, so there was even less reason to be here.’ He stared at his hands, knobbly with arthritis, folded over each other on his stick. ‘Sometimes couples grow in different directions. But Mitja loved his boys. So when he did come back, he spent his time with them. Out in the hills or playing football or watching American movies that somehow he could always get his hands on.’ He blinked hard at the recollection. ‘He loved his boys.’

  Maggie stared straight ahead, eyes holding images only she could see in a thousand-yard stare. ‘He never mentioned them to me. Not once.’

  ‘It was probably the only way he could deal with it,’ Karen said. ‘Compartmentalise.’

  ‘And then the war came. Mitja was trapped in Dubrovnik and he met you.’ He squeezed out a crooked smile. ‘He told me about you. The last time he was here. He said he had finally met the woman I had wanted him to find at the university. The woman who was a match for him.’

  Maggie looked as if she might burst into tears. ‘He said that?’

  The priest nodded, but it was clear to Karen he took no pleasure in the moment. ‘You went back to Oxford after the siege was over and he made his plans. To come back here, to tell Jablanka it was over between them. That he wanted a divorce.’

  ‘What did she say? How did she react?’

  The priest closed his eyes for a moment. It might have been prayer, it might just have been escape. Then he stared dully at the floor. ‘Like I said. The war came. It came right here.’

  33

  Karen could see a slow dawning behind Maggie’s eyes. She was finally joining up the dots and it was a terrible reckoning. ‘What happened?’ Karen was not prepared to give any quarter.

  ‘Mitja was very good at his job,’ the priest said. He seemed to be ageing before their eyes. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. ‘The Serbs believed in punishing the places their most dangerous opponents came from. They wanted to make them mad with grief so they were not as good soldiers.’ He was turning in on himself, looking inwards, not outwards.

  ‘It was a bitterly cold day,’ he said. ‘There was a little snow on the ground, on the trees, on the roofs. The light was starting to fade when they arrived. Three Land Rover patrol vehicles. A detachment of JNA soldiers, their faces covered with balaclavas. They drove into the centre of the village and started rounding everyone up.’ He paused to gather his words.

  ‘There had been a lot of massacres by then. They didn’t all make headlines, but we’d heard about them. Villages, towns, sometimes just a family farm. They thought it would be the men. That they’d be herded into a barn or a field then shot. People were sobbing, the soldiers were dragging everyone out of their houses. Then a truck arrived. The soldiers made everyone climb into the truck then they drove a couple of kilometres down the road. There’s a meadow. They drove to the far side and forced all the children out of the truck. The mothers were screaming, the fathers were screaming, the children too. They left the children there with half a dozen soldiers to keep them penned together. Fourteen of them. The oldest were eleven, the youngest was only eighteen months old.

  ‘They drove back across the field and parked the truck in sight of the children. All the adults thought they were going to be shot in front of their own children and grandchildren. But it was worse than that. Much worse.

  ‘The man in charge of the soldiers, he shouted at the adults to shut up. And then he said, “This is for Dimitar Petrovic. He is the enemy of my people.” And then he waved to the soldiers on the other side of the meadow. “My men are telling your children to run to Mummy,” he told them. And that’s just what the children began to do. A couple of the older ones picked up the toddlers and ran with them. Stumbling through the snow, desperate to get back to their mothers.’ His voice cracked. The two women sat like stones, scarcely breathing.

  ‘Then the soldiers opened fire. They used the children’s heads for target practice. Scarlet on white. Explosions of blood on the snow.’ Tears were leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘They were good shots. The children’s bodies were mostly untouched. Perfect. Their heads – that was a different story. Pray you never see a child’s head after it’s been hit by a rifle bullet.’

  There was a long silence. Then the priest spoke again. ‘That’s where Paskal and Poldo are. In that meadow, with their twelve friends.’

  Karen wanted to smash something. Or worse. ‘What happened to Jablanka?’

  Begovic ran a hand over his face, as if he was washing it. ‘The soldiers made everyone stay in the truck then drove them back to the village. They stood around laughing at the sight of everyone screaming and running down the road to the meadow.

  ‘I’d left Belgrade by then, but I was visiting a colleague in Lipovac. I got a call late that night and I came straight here. I’ve never seen grief like it. People were falling apart. Most people had lost a relative but what the whole village had lost was its future. Jablanka was taking the weight of it all on her shoulders. She kept saying it was her fault for marrying Mitja, that she should have let him go free when he went to Zagreb, then none of this would have happened. I sat with her for a while. Talking and praying. And she seemed calmer when I left.’

  His shoulders slumped. ‘In the morning, her sister found her dead. She’d hanged herself from the roof with two leather belts belonging to her sons.’

  No wonder he never talked about his past. Karen had heard some harrowing sto
ries in her time, but nothing as bad as this. ‘How come this story never got out? I know you said not all of the massacres made it into the press, but this would have been front-page news. Like Srebrenica.’

  ‘We didn’t talk about it,’ the priest said. ‘Not to outsiders.’

  ‘You didn’t talk about it?’ Karen was incredulous. How could you let an atrocity like that go past unmarked? How could you not shout it from the rooftops? Buttonhole every journalist in the Western world?

  ‘We didn’t have to,’ he said. ‘Not after what Mitja did.’

  And so I was banished. That’s what it felt like, anyway. An overcrowded fishing boat up the coast to Trieste then a long cramped train journey back to the UK. It was only when I set foot on Italian soil that I understood how stressed I’d been for the past three months. Tiredness hit me like a wall and, although I was convinced I was so sad I would never sleep again, I think I was virtually unconscious from Trieste to London.

  I got back to Oxford late on a cold, foggy January afternoon. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but what I got was mostly a blank indifference. A war? How quaint. Now, about your teaching supervisions… Melissa was fascinated, of course, but I realised that was more to do with getting her name on my subsequent publications as a joint author. I understood properly for the first time how very insular academics can become. I made my mind up that I was never going to let that happen to me. It’s the main reason why I make sure I cram as much travel as possible into my working life and why I fight for research projects that give me a proper window into other people’s worlds.

  However, I didn’t have time to brood back then over the lack of interest at Schollie’s High Table in my Dubrovnik adventure, as one of the more senior fellows described it. I had DPhil supervision meetings to conduct and a first-year class to run on Imagining Geopolitics; I had papers to propose and, I thought, a book to write about the relationship between the fall of communism and the expansion of geopolitical thinking; I had to raise awareness and funds to help my friends back in Dubrovnik; and every night, I had to write to Mitja.