by Anna Smith
TJ took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He handed her a cigarette and flicked the lighter under it, keeping his eyes on her.
‘To look for the Serbian?’
‘Yeah, I’m told he’s there. Adrian called me.’
TJ sighed, blowing out smoke. ‘So you’re going to hunt down a Serbian with a reputation for brutality and murder, who was over here hacking up refugees in Glasgow and selling their skin and tissue all over the world.’ He paused, raising his eyebrows for effect. ‘What part of the phrase “death wish” is it that you don’t seem to understand, Rosie?’
‘Oh, come on, TJ.’ Rosie gave him a perplexed look. ‘It’s my job. You know that.’ She pushed her hair back. ‘What do you expect me to do? The key person in the story may be in a place that I have the chance to track him down and unmask him for what he’s done; maybe even get him arrested. It’s what I do. It will make it all worthwhile.’
‘No, Rosie. It’s not what you do. Hunting this guy down is for the authorities and the war crimes people. It’s their job, not yours. You’ve got plenty on this story. More than enough to fill several days’ newspapers.’ He shook his head. ‘Why do you always want to push it further and further? Why, Rosie?’
Rosie looked at him. She knew his reaction was motivated by worry about her safety. He was the one person in the whole world she totally trusted and believed in, yet even after everything he knew about her, he still couldn’t see all of her. Deep down she knew he was right. She didn’t need to go to Sarajevo to chase Raznatovic. What she’d already achieved in the story was more than enough. But it wasn’t enough for her. She reached over and touched his hand.
‘I know what you’re saying, TJ, but you know me well enough now to know that I can’t back off.’ She looked beyond him and thought of Emir’s last words. ‘I have to go.’
‘No, you don’t, Rosie.’
‘I do.’ She sighed. ‘Christ, TJ, why can’t you just understand that this is part of me, part of what makes me who I am.’
‘I try, Rosie, believe me. I love who you are and what makes you who you are. But sometimes …’ He paused. ‘Sometimes it feels there’s just no room for anyone else. I’ll never be the main priority for you.’
Rosie’s heart sank.
‘Please don’t say that, TJ.’ She touched his hair. The thought of losing him brought an ache to her chest. She looked into the softness of his grey eyes. ‘Please don’t say that.’
TJ was silent. He looked down at the table.
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. From London. Matt’s going with me.’
‘Tomorrow? Christ, Rosie, thanks for the notice.’
‘It was just last minute. You know how these things are. What difference does it make when I go?’
Silence. TJ finished his wine.
‘Because I’m going away too, Rosie. To New York.’
Rosie’s stomach dropped. She glanced at him then into her glass, trying to compose herself. Insecurity made her mind a blur of depressing possibilities. Christ, why had she never even considered he might leave her again? How stupid was that?
‘Not for long,’ TJ said, touching her hand.
‘How long? Why?’ She looked up at him, studying his face for any signs that he was about to finish everything.
‘You know that place I told you about, the jazz place where I played with Kat and Gerry? Well, the resident band is going on a tour for about three to six months to Europe and they’ve offered us the gig – well for the first three months anyway. But it might be six.’
Rosie’s gut burned with jealousy. She hoped it wasn’t written all over her face.
‘So you’re going with Kat and Gerry?’ she said. ‘Nice and cosy.’ She regretted it as soon as she said it.
TJ let go of her hand and gave her a petulant look.
‘Don’t be stupid, Rosie.’
She didn’t answer, and they sat in long, heavy silence.
‘When you going?’
‘Just over a week.’
‘Christ, TJ! When were you going to tell me? The day before you left?’
TJ put his hands up. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you, Rosie. I was planning to tell you last week when you came to my house for the curry, but with you getting beaten up and stuff I didn’t want to do it then. And then when Emir got killed … I just felt there was too much shit going on with you.’
Rosie said nothing. She let him hold her hand, but she didn’t respond. She wanted to rise above all her anxieties and jealousy, but she couldn’t. She stared into her wine glass, knocked back the remainder of it, then spoke.
‘TJ. Did you have an affair with Kat? I mean when you were in New York?’
The words hung there for what seemed like an age. TJ kept looking at her and she held his stare for as long she could, seeing the hurt and anger in his eyes until she had to look away from him. She waited for his answer. Eventually he spoke.
‘Rosie. Listen to me. Kat was and is a friend, and we were close. I won’t answer that question. It’s irrelevant. I love you, and I want to be with you. Look at me.’ He touched her face and gently turned it so she was forced to look at him. ‘I don’t want to be with anyone else. I never stopped thinking about you. Even all the time I was in New York.’
There was another silence, then TJ got up and took some notes out of his pocket to pay the bill. Rosie got up and put her jacket on and they went out the door, the old restaurant owner giving them a discreet berth as though he sensed it was best to keep his distance.
Outside it was hot and sticky, and they stood looking at each other. Then TJ stepped close and took her face in his hands.
‘Don’t let’s waste this, Rosie.’ He kissed her on the lips, softly at first, then hard, pulling her into his arms and holding her tight as the sky opened up, first with heavy raindrops then suddenly in torrents.
They stood with the the warm rain streaming down their faces.
‘Come on. Let’s get a cab. I haven’t seen your new place yet,’ TJ said, and hailed a black hack as it came towards them.
CHAPTER 28
It was a short drive from the airport in Sarajevo to the mountain village of Olovo, where Adrian lived on the outskirts with his mother and sister. But the weighty silences in the car were making it seem longer. Rosie was glad Matt wasn’t full of his usual banter from the back seat. On the flight over, she’d warned him that most of the area they were about to enter around Sarajevo was bound to be a place of deep sadness for Adrian, and they should both have respect for that.
From the front passenger seat, Rosie stole little glances at her Bosnian friend as he drove through places which still bore the scars of the Serb shelling and bombing that had all but decimated them during the Bosnian war – a war which had lasted over three years from 1992. It was always hard to tell anything from Adrian’s poker-faced expression, but Rosie guessed that every time he did this journey, he could still see the lost souls murdered and butchered by the mindless thugs who rampaged through his homeland. The ghosts were everywhere, and even in the sunshine, blazing from a cloudless sky, there was an eerie backdrop aura about the landscape.
‘Adrian,’ Rosie said, leaning forward a little so she could catch his sideward glance. ‘Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the area we’re driving through here. We saw a lot of it on television at the time, and I saw a little when I went on the charity trip, but you were here. Do you mind talking about it?’
Adrian gave the kind of weary sigh that went with his hooded eyelids and tired pallor, but nodded and said he didn’t mind talking.
He glanced out of the side window, taking one hand off the steering wheel to make a sweeping gesture. ‘Here. Everywhere you see around here, is the story of killings and murder and rapes. I remember it always.’ He turned to Rosie. ‘Like you, maybe. The way you told me you remember many bad things you see in places.’
‘No, Adrian, not like me. I wasn’t part of it, like you were.’
He nodded and said
nothing for a while as they continued along the isolated roads, driving between deep, rolling valleys and high mountains, lush and green valleys.
‘Here, all around, is very beautiful,’ Adrian said. ‘For me is beautiful to grow up in this place. But is lot of bad memories now. I will take you to some places tomorrow when we are going to Belgrade.’
‘Good.’
‘But first, we will stop soon and drink coffee and we can talk about our work and the plans to find this Raznatovic. I have information for you.’ He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window to blow the smoke out. After a few miles, he pulled into what looked like a panoramic picnic spot, and Rosie felt glad to be out of the car and breathing in the clean, crisp mountain air. Adrian told them to sit outside, and he headed towards the dilapitated timber cafe a few yards away, where the owner stood outside in his apron, smoking a cigarette. He greeted Adrian with a broad smile and a hug.
Rosie gazed across the sweeping countryside, struck by the absolute silence. She found herself remembering TV footage of these skies engulfed in smoke and gunfire, and of the endless streams of desperate Bosnians; she recalled the wailing at the mass graves, and the thousands of displaced people, their faces grey with shock and disbelief.
‘It’s awesome, isn’t it?’ Matt said, standing beside her. ‘When you think how it was during the war, and how quiet it is now … You could just disappear here, you know. Reinvent yourself, and nobody would ever find you.’
Rosie looked at him. ‘I guess that’s what a few of the Serb soldiers may have done while they were on the run for war crimes,’ she replied, half smiling. ‘Of course, if they were really smart, they pitched up in the UK and managed to pass themselves off as Bosnian Muslim refugees, then ended up in Scotland cutting up the bodies of real refugees for money.’ She shook her head at how unbelievable it sounded when you put it like that.
‘True,’ Matt said, ‘but I could really live here, you know. Just lose myself in this tranquillity.’
‘What? You? In the middle of nowhere, with no nightclubs or pubs? Jesus! It’s a bit early to be going native, Matt. We just got here.’ Rosie grinned at him. ‘You’ve not even had a drink yet.’
Adrian appeared with a tray of coffees and they sat down at the wooden picnic table.
Rosie put her spoon into the dark black coffee and she and Matt exchanged glances. Matt took a sip, then screwed up his face. ‘I don’t know whether to drink it or inject it,’ he said. ‘Christ, Adrian, what the hell is this!’
Adrian smiled, but not broadly. He didn’t do broadly.
‘It is Bosnian coffee,’ he said. ‘Very strong. Very good for you. By the time you leave, you will not be able to live without it.’
‘Exactly,’ Matt said. ‘Maybe I should be injecting it.’
‘So,’ Rosie said. ‘What’s the situation with Raznatovic, Adrian? We didn’t really get much of a chance to talk on the phone.’
‘I know, Rosie, but I can tell you now.’ He lit a cigarette and drew deeply. ‘As I told you, he is here. He came three days ago. Very sudden.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. ‘One minute the slaughterhouse was busy with cars and vans coming and going, and the next minute it was closed. They obviously got word they’d been rumbled.’
Adrian nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose. But he is in Belgrade. He was first in one apartment in Belgrade, but now he has been taken to somewhere else … some other apartment in the city. But my friends are finding out for me, and I will know tonight or tomorrow.’ He looked at Rosie. ‘But tell me, what is your plan when you know where he is, Rosie? What do you want to do with him?’
‘Well,’ Rosie said. ‘He’s clearly not going to give us an interview. What I’d ideally like to do is find out where he is and how he is hiding himself – who is looking after him, protecting him. We’d want to get some kind of opportunity to snatch a picture of him. That would be the greatest thing, you know, a picture of the monster who kept on killing. And as much of the background detail as you’ve been able to get about him and Boskovac. That would put some real colour on it.’ Rosie was imagining how the headline would look on a page. ‘Along with all the rest of the material we’ve got, this would be dynamite. I know it won’t be easy, but that’s what I would like to do.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I’d like to tip off the authorities. You know – Interpol, the war crimes people – tell them exactly where he is and how they could find him, and hope they’ll move quickly and get him. But by that time we’ll be on our way out of here.’ She paused. ‘Oh, by the way, Adrian, I have to go back through Kosovo. Well, Macedonia actually. I made a promise to Emir when he was dying that I would go to speak with his grandmother. They were taken to a town in Macedonia after their Kosovan village was invaded by Serbs. So I have to find her.’
‘I will take you there. No problem.’
They sat in silence for a few moments, Rosie exchanging glances with Matt, sensing his discomfort when people weren’t talking. So much for him wanting to live in tranquility.
‘So it’s going to be pretty dangerous then, Adrian,’ Matt said. ‘I mean, for me to get anywhere near this bastard.’
Adrian looked at Matt for a few seconds, as though studying him for signs that he had enough bottle.
‘Is very dangerous. But once you decide to do it, you can only go forward. No going back. You must do everything I tell you when we are close to it. If you don’t, you may pay with your life.’
Matt swallowed, then his face broke into a smile.
‘Well, thanks for the heads-up on that, Adrian.’
Rosie laughed, and eventually, when Adrian got Matt’s humour, he sat back and almost smiled.
‘You are a funny guy, Matt. I remember from Morocco. But is not good if you are a funny dead guy.’ He stretched his hand out towards Matt and they shook hands warmly then, coffee finished, Adrian stood up.
‘Come on, not far now. We go to my house. You can see my sister. She is very different from the girl you saw a few months ago, frightened in the car in Spain that night. She is happy now. So is my mother. Then I take you to the small hotel in the town. We will have dinner tonight with my friend, and we can talk more of the plans.’
*
Outside the low timber cottage nestling at the foot of the hills, Adrian’s mother was in the garden setting plates and cutlery on a wooden table. She looked up and waved, with a big, beaming smile, when the car pulled into the yard.
‘My mother,’ Adrian said, his expression softening. ‘She is very excited to meet you. She has been preparing lunch all morning. Always she is fussing,’ he added affectionately.
Rosie and Matt got out of the car, as the woman came walking swiftly towards them.
‘Welcome, welcome, my friends.’ Then she said something in Serbo-Croat, her arms outstretched.
Rosie and Matt looked at each other, then at Adrian.
‘She say she is happy to meet the people who helped to bring her daughter back to her.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Then tell her thank you, Adrian, but that it was her son who did all the work.’
Adrian shrugged and said something back to her.
‘Come,’ he walked towards the table. ‘Sit and we will have a drink before lunch.’
‘Not more coffee, Adrian, thanks all the same,’ Matt said, and this time even Adrian laughed.
‘Okay, we will have tea.’ He looked at Matt. ‘We save the beers for dinner tonight in Olovo.’
‘Sounds like a good plan, big man,’ Matt said.
As they sat at the table, Adrian’s mum disappeared into the house calling ‘Fiorina, Fiorina’ and shouting in Serbo-Croat. A few minutes later, she emerged from the house carrying a large teapot in both hands. Behind her, carrying some mugs and looking a little shy, was Fiorina. Rosie couldn’t believe this tall willowy creature in the tight jeans and T-shirt was the same girl they’d seen, terrified and whimpering, clinging to her brother the night he rescued her from the whorehouse on the Costa del S
ol. Rosie stood up.
‘My sister, Fiorina,’ Adrian said, proudly, as the girl put the cups on the table and wiped her hands on her jeans.
‘Fiorina!’ Rosie stepped forward. ‘So delighted to meet you. You look wonderful. So different.’
‘Thank you,’ Fiorina replied. She pushed her blonde hair back from her face and looked at Rosie and Matt. ‘And thank you so much for helping my brother to save me.’ She threw her arms around Rosie. ‘I will never forget you.’
Rosie found herself choked with emotion as she hugged the teenager. A raft of images from the Spanish investigation that could so easily have cost all of them their lives suddenly flooded her mind.
‘Your brother did it all,’ Rosie said. She turned to Matt. ‘And this is Matt, you remember? The photographer who was working with us.’
Fiorina gave Matt a hug, and as she did, Rosie could see that Matt was bowled over by her beauty.
He made a face at Rosie over her shoulder.
‘See. I told you I could settle down here.’
Rosie laughed and they sat back around the table, while Fiorina and her mother went back into the house and returned with trays of food.
For two hours they sat talking in the sunshine, Rosie and Matt listening while Adrian translated his mother’s stories of her children growing up, of how their father died in an accident when they were young, and how much she had missed Adrian when he left. But she knew he had to go, because so many of the boys had not made it to their twenties once the Serbs came. She spoke of communities who had once stood together becoming torn apart by bullets and bombs.
Much to Matt’s disappointment, Fiorina, they were told, had a boyfriend now and they were both working for the tourism area in Bosnia–Herzegovina; they’d decided that they would stay to help build the new country that was their future. Adrian, Rosie noted, was non-committal.
Rosie was fascinated to see how relaxed and almost normal he looked in the company of his own people. In all the years she’d known him, he’d always looked a little haunted, always on edge like the stranger he was in a land far from home, suspicious, ready to fight his corner at every turn. But here, he seemed more at ease, even though he wasn’t a barrel of laughs. She wondered why he too didn’t just stay here and make a life, like his sister was doing.