Backstory

by Hurley, Graham

  I read deeper into this catastrophe, knowing that somehow it had to provide the tinder for the next book. To date, ever mindful of Malcolm Edward’s insistence that D/I Faraday should serve a life sentence in Pompey, I’d concentrated on trying to tease the essence out of this inimitable city. But my research had taught me that – in real life – the Major Crime Team’s patch extended far beyond Portsmouth and on my excursions along the seafront I began to eye the Isle of Wight.

  I’d already based an entire book there – a stand-alone called Permissible Limits – and I knew that the island had become a magnet for asylum seekers and other immigrants. There was plenty of seasonal work during the summer in the island’s hotels and holiday camps, plus lots more jobs on offer from gang-masters recruiting labour for work in the fields. Add the care industry – literally hundreds of nursing homes – and you began to understand why the island had become the destination of choice for so many refugees, illegal or otherwise.

  The possibility that I could credibly draw some kind of fictional bead on the Bosnian nightmare shaped our plans for the summer. In late June, we took a series of trains south through Europe and then began to backpack down the Adriatic. The final ferry-hop took us to Dubrovnik where we settled down in a local café and watched England surrender a goal lead and finally lose to France in the opening stages of that year’s Euro-Championships. The following day, we found a bus that would take us back up the coast and then inland to Sarajevo.

  It was a memorable journey. Leaving the coast behind us, we sped through neat fields of vines and a straggle of half-completed housing estates, a landscape untouched by war. Frequent tunnels offered a brief taste of Bosnian darkness. Then, an hour inland from the coast, we were looking at billows of white cloud streaming off the great grey wall of the Balkans: ageless, craggy, indomitable. Mostar guarded the road to Sarajevo, and the bus eased through the Croatian half of the town, still disfigured by the war. The intervening years had done little to repair the damage to burned-out office and apartment blocks, and it was rare to see a building unpocked by small-arms fire. These were footnotes to a winter’s reading, an urban wasteland made familiar by the countless stories that had bled out of that conflict, and as we hit the road to Sarajevo again, plunging deep into the mountains, I began to picture my fictional lead on exactly this journey. He’d have driven up from UK HQ north of Split. He’d be heading inland. And, like me, he’d be carefully filing away his first impressions.

  He had a name by now, Rob Pelly. He was going to be an ex-sapper, serving with the Royal Engineers. What he saw during those bitter winter months that followed his arrival in Bosnia would fuel a deep anger that would stay with him through the years to come. This was a man who’d finally shed his uniform and turned his back on the British Army, one of a wave of redundancies announced at the height of the fighting. For a while he’d do what he could, buying an old lorry and driving supplies half away across Europe to the beleaguered settlements around Vitez and Banja Luka. In time, these journeys would come to an end, but not before he’d plucked a woman called Lajla from the chaos of Bosnia, and brought her home to the Isle of Wight.

  Sarajevo turned out to exceed my expectations. It was a bigger city than I’d ever imagined, a sprawl of factories, high-rise apartments, and gloomy industrial estates. The sky was grey, the encircling mountains disappearing into the murk. Some of the Serb heavy guns had been dug into Mount Igman, famous from the 1984 Winter Olympics. The bulk of the mountain was much further away than I’d thought, a tribute to the sheer reach of modern artillery. At this point the traffic was backed up behind some obstacle or other and when the coach began to move again we found ourselves behind a donkey and cart. The guy lashing the donkey could have stepped out of the seventeenth century – hollow-faced, unshaven, huge hands, threadbare jacket - though his cart was laden high with treadless rubber tyres.

  When we finally got off the bus we looked for an agency to find a room for the night. My Serbo-Croat is crap and we ended up with a ground floor unit in an abandoned shopping precinct. There were two camp beds, no curtains, and bare wires hanging from the walls. A pair of neon tubes shed a hard white light on the cracked tiles underfoot and there was a major problem with the plumbing from the neighbouring loo. We turned the lights off early and spent an uneasy night listening to whispered drug deals in the scary half-darkness beyond the plate glass window. By the time we got up next morning the floor was under an inch of water. So much for the blessings of peace.

  Back home, a month or so later, I pondered what to do next. Our trip to Bosnia had fleshed out my idea of Rob Pelly. Nine years after the war’s end, he’d be running a nursing home on the Isle of Wight. I knew what he looked like. I could picture the way he handled himself. But for the first time in my authorial career I decided that I had to listen to his voice before I began writing in earnest. This is what he told me.

  Until you’ve been somewhere like Bosnia you just don’t get it about civil war. I’ve fought in the Falklands and I know what a horrible place the battlefield can be but at least it was black and white there. You had an enemy. He wore a uniform. You were there to slot him. Bosnia? Protecting aid convoys? A sitting target for any passing scumbag? Total nightmare.

  Worst of all were the refugees. There were thousands of them. The Ruperts called them “Displaced People”, or “DPs”, and they were everywhere. Drive back to the coast, back to Split, and they’d be on the road with their horse and carts and bundles of stuff just shuffling on. When it rained, which seemed pretty much all the time, they’d stop the donkey and sit underneath the cart, whole families of them. Then up in the mountains, depths of fucking winter, every ski lodge you passed was stuffed full of more of them. You could tell because of the washing on the balconies. And another thing – they were mostly women and kids, no men. Why? Because the men had been mullered by the Serbs.

  The Serbs could be evil. They were paranoid bastards, too, but the longer you stayed and the harder you looked the more you realised that all of them – Serbs, Croats, Muslims – were off their heads. Some of the stuff you saw was unbelievable. There was this village down the valley from Vitez. It was called Ahmici. This particular week it had all kicked off between the Croats and the Muslims because the ragheads had kidnapped a local Croat commander and so the Croat boys put their heads together and took out the entire village to make a point or two. I kid you not. They shot the place up, mortared the escape routes, put snipers at either end, and then sent the death squads in. Males first. Then male nippers. Then the rest. Fuck, they even shot the heads off a cage full of budgies.

  I was in that village a couple of days later, checking for booby traps before the UN suits arrived. There were still bodies everywhere, whole families barbecued because the Croats had torched the houses, and there I was taking a look around the back of this place when I heard a noise, a scrunching noise. You know what it was? Only the family fucking puppy, scrawny little thing. And you know what he was eating? Some poor bastard’s arm.

  No matter how much weed you lay your hands on, you don’t forget stuff like that. That’s partly why I decided to bin the Army. The voluntary redundancy thing came along, perfect timing, and I said thank you very much. My CSM thought I’d just had enough, thought it was all down to raghead fatigue, thought I was back off home to put my feet up. Was I fuck. There was still a job to be done in that khazi of a place and me, cocky bastard, just knew I could do it better out of uniform.

  The redundancy paid for the truck and people I knew on the Isle of Wight took one look at the little video I’d made and organised all kinds of stuff to take back out. It was summer by then but six months in Vitez had told me that this thing would be kicking off forever. No way would these maniacs ever stop killing each other. And that meant loads of poor bastards – people like my mum and yours – with nowhere to live and nowhere to call home. And so back I went.

  Lajla? The girl in the Travnik camp? Of course I remembere
d her. I didn’t know the full story then, hadn’t a clue what had really happened to her back in her village, but there was something in her face that told you not to get too close. She was bright, and a bit of a looker too, but none of the normal buttons seemed to work. She didn’t laugh much, except with the baby, and looking back I don’t blame her. If you were a man, any man, you had a lot to answer for.

  To be honest, I was surprised she agreed to come back to the UK. At the time it just seemed to be a neat way of using all that empty space in the truck but over the course of the journey I began to get to know her a bit. She was a lovely girl, still is. To lose your mother and your brother and your whole fucking life to a bunch of thugs? To be pushed into no man’s land with nowhere to go? To end up with some dope-crazed ex-sapper, hiding under a pile of cardboard boxes as he guns it through the Green Channel at Pompey Ferry port? Jesus, what a woman.

  She and my mum hit it off from the start. Some of the residents, too, especially the loonier ones. The good thing about our place is the space we’ve got. It was big enough out the back to give her and Fida a little flat of their own, a bit of privacy. After the camp in Travik, Lajla couldn’t believe it. There’s a nice view out the back – fields and then the arse end of Boniface Down – and she changed the bed around so it pointed at the window. Some afternoons I used to go in there with cakes mum had made and find the pair of them propped up against the pillows while she told the baby some story or other, lots of pointing and laughing and whispering in Fida’s ear. They lived in a bubble for years, those two, still do in many ways, and it’s my job to make sure no twat comes along and pricks that bubble. That’s why dickhead Steve Morgan deserved what he got. Lajla’s a daughter as far as I’m concerned, and whatever else happens you never fuck with her. Yeah?

  The other stuff I get up to – bringing people onto the island and sorting them out – is another hangover from the war. Of course there’s money in it, bloke’s got to make a living, but I’m choosy about the clientele. It’s still the Balkans: Bosnia and Kosovo mainly. I’ve got some awesome contacts out there, ten years in the making, and these people trust me. They save up to send their kids to the UK – mainly young blokes – and they hand them over because they know I’m gonna look after them.

  And you know something else? The way this country is going, we’re fucking lucky to have them. These are people who are really up for it. They speak a language or two. They understand how shitty life can get. And they’re prepared to graft their way out of it. Stuff we take for granted – stuff like law and order and Prem football four times a week – is the dog’s bollocks to them. And believe me, they’re not just grateful but eager. These kids want to make the best of themselves. Like I say, lucky us.

  Of course I find these guys work. If you’re in my position, that’s what you do. They have to make a living, just like the rest of us, but if you’ve got me down as some half-arsed gang master you’d be wrong. I run an employment agency. I supply labour. It’s all totally legit. Check me out. I even pay tax and VAT. Plus I give these guys somewhere decent to live. You can check that out, too. I’ll give you some addresses. Sandown. Shanklin. Ventnor. Puts some of those dossy DSS places to shame, full of skag heads and lowlife. Sure it comes out of my guys’ wages but you tell me where else on this island you can get a bed for thirty five quid a week. In any case, what’s the alternative? You want them going off to the council and declaring themselves homeless? What would that do to the housing list?

  So the way I see it I’m providing a service from both ends. For the farmers on the island who can’t get extra labour for love nor money, especially when the supermarkets start screaming for extra fucking lettuce. And for the blokes I bring in as well. Their papers? I sort all that out. Who checks them? I do. How come? Because I’m their employer. So maybe, on second thoughts, you might have a bit of respect and call me a businessman. Because that’s what I am. It’s supply and demand. You want cheap food, I’m the bloke in the middle who makes all that happen. Means and ends, mate. Without people like me, you’d be paying way over the odds.

  Lately, though, this whole thing’s becoming a pain in the arse. The way I see it, the country’s going down the khazi. Try Pompey on a Friday night, or Ryde or Shanklin or Newport or any fucking place. The Brits are drinking themselves silly, especially the kids. They think life owes them a living and they’re in for one big fucking shock.

  So the time might be right for a move. I’ve talked it over with Lajla and she sees no great problem. Be ironic, wouldn’t it? Sell up, cash in, then buy a nice little B&B, some place in the Jablanica Valley maybe, up from Mostar, little smallholding, couple of acres, a well in the garden, chickens, sheep, the odd goat, plus decent people who don’t throw up all over the fucking pavement then batter each other senseless every night. I could handle that, no kidding I could. These places are cheap as chips, going for a song if you’ve got the right contacts, and you know what? Johnny Croat can’t get enough of all that foreign investment.

  Could Lajla hack it? Of course she could. Her quarrel was with the Serbs, and I think we’ve sorted that.

  Having Rob Pelly introduce himself like this did my authorial confidence no end of good. In the preparations for any book there comes a moment when you have to background all the research – in this case mainly reading – and somehow create a character solid, credible and interesting enough to carry the reader in the direction you want him to go. As it happens, Pelly strode onto the page practically uninvited. I’d met people like this before. There were several with his tone of voice in Pompey. But Lajla was going to be equally important and she represented a very different challenge. How many Bosnian women did I know who could tell a story like hers? None. And so I had to shut my eyes, think very hard, and try and fathom the way she’d explain herself. Lajla, if it helps, is slightly built, with a narrow face, a sallow complexion, wonderful bone structure, and vivid green eyes. To no one’s surprise, least of all Pelly’s, she’s extremely wary.

  The day the soldiers came to our village it was June. The Serbs were everywhere. They took my father and my two brothers – Zihad and Muharem. My father tried to stop them so the soldiers beat him right there in front of the house, in front of my mother, in front of me. Then they put them all in the trucks with the other men from the village, other Muslims. They took them to the local town, to the police station. There they made all the men run between lines of soldiers who beat them with sticks and pieces of garden hose. Inside the police station they set dogs on the men. One of the men was my uncle. He was trying to help my father. They beat my uncle more than anyone else. When they finally got to the camp my brothers had to feed my uncle with a spoon because his face was so broken.

  The camp was at Omaska. They had a special room at the camp where they beat the men to death, Muslim men. They split their heads open like melons then dumped them in a bath. Every day all the men had to stand outside in the heat. It was very hot that summer, often very near 100 degrees, and they had to stand ten, maybe twelve hours a day. Food was thrown into the room where they all slept. Everyone fought for the food and the Serbs laughed at them. Then the Serbs would throw water in. Muharem says you had to lap water up from the bare floorboards like a dog. When the men got weaker the Serbs would sometimes set fire to tyres, three on a pile, and then make the men jump over them. If you couldn’t do it, you burned to death.

  The special room was called The White Room. In fact it was three rooms with a fire burning outside. If you went to the White Room you knew you would be tortured. They tortured men all night. Those who died were burned on the fire. They tortured my brother Zihad in front of my father. They whipped him with electrical flex, beat him with rifle butts, and then they put a plastic bag over his head. One of the men kicked my brother in the stomach really hard so that Zihad was sick. He was trying to breath and sucked in the sick. The sick choked him and he died. My father saw all this and afterwards the Serbs made him take my brother�
��s body outside and burn it on the fire. The Serbs laughed. They said my father was good at tidying up and so they gave him the job full-time, every night, burning more bodies. Always, the Serbs were drunk.

  My father and my younger brother, Muharem, survived the camp. After the war they went to Germany. They both live with a Turkish family in Hamburg. Muharem works in a garage. He was always mad about cars. My father does nothing. Muharem says that he doesn’t talk much, doesn’t go out. Most days he just sits in the room he shares with Muharem and stares at the wall. He says he feels nothing. He says he feels dead. He’s maybe a bit crazy, my father.

  Muharem is in touch with someone from our village. His name is Dragan. He’s a Serb we all went to school with. He was nice. We all liked him. Now he’s become a priest and I think he must feel guilty about what happened to Zihad, what happened to all of us. He says that many of the Serb soldiers who fought in the war are still in the village. He says that one of them, a builder, has made lots of money buy fixing up our houses and selling them to other Serbs. They burned all our houses during the war so we could never come back. This man, the builder, has become rich by stealing our land.

  What happened to me? When the soldiers came they took me and my mother also. They took the younger woman to the school and then the truck drove on. I never saw my mother again and I don’t know what happened to her. At the school we were put in a classroom at the back where the little ones were taught. I knew that classroom well. There were childrens’ drawings all over the wall. Through the window you could see across the river to the mountains on the other side. That classroom is where I learned to read.