The Skeleton Road

by Road, The Skeleton

  ‘It’s sad that hardly any of us have the skills these days to make something this beautiful. I was thinking that only the other day, looking out of the train window. So much of what we’ve built, what we’ve made is unnecessarily ugly. Why is function divorced from aesthetics? Why is it so hard for us to grasp that a warehouse doesn’t have to be bloody ugly?’

  ‘I guess it costs more,’ Tessa said between breaths.

  ‘I don’t think cost always enters into it. It can’t be that simple. I think it’s that we just don’t care enough.’

  ‘There’s always been plenty of ugly, Maggie. But mostly the ugly doesn’t survive. It gets knocked down and replaced by something equally unattractive. Or if we’re lucky, something beautiful. I mean, what was here before the Camera? I bet it wasn’t anything special.’

  They reached the door at the top of the stairs. Maggie unlocked it and stood back to let Tessa go on ahead of her. ‘Houses. That’s what was here. Undistinguished housing belonging to different colleges. Probably similar to the style of buildings on Longwall. So you’re right. The ugly was always there, it just doesn’t survive.’ She locked the door behind them. ‘Better make sure some adventurous undergraduate doesn’t come sneaking out while we’re not looking. Cheryl would have my guts for garters.’

  Tessa was already drinking in the panorama, hands leaning on the stone balustrade. ‘Wow. This is some view, Maggie. Thanks for bringing me up here.’

  ‘Did you and your buildering cronies never come up the outside?’ Maggie asked, casual as she could manage.

  ‘Not my scene, buildering,’ Tessa said, equally casually. ‘You’d never get up here, though, it’s far too public. And spotlit at night.’

  ‘Dorothy L. Sayers has a very vivid description of the view from up here. I should have brought it with me. Something about the twin towers of All Souls being like a house of cards surrounding the grass oval in the quad like an emerald in a ring. New College with dark wings wheeling around the bell tower. Magdalen like a lily, tall and slender.’ Maggie waved an arm at the scene, walking round the parapet to take in the rest of the sights. ‘Schools, Univ, Merton, St Mary the Virgin, Christ Church Cathedral and Tom Tower, Carfax. It’s all there, all Oxford.’

  ‘Do you suppose this is how Jesus felt when the Devil took him up to a high place and offered him all the temptations of the world?’ Tessa laughed. ‘Listen to me. The curse of a Catholic schooling. The nuns have me branded for life.’

  With the battlements of the Bodleian Library behind her, Maggie turned to face Tessa. ‘Is that where you came by your sense of justice? The nuns?’

  Tessa looked at her askance, as if she’d caught some nuance in Maggie’s voice that didn’t quite fit their light-hearted excursion. ‘I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all a bit Old Testament, though, isn’t it? More retribution than rehabilitation.’

  ‘My idea of justice? I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. I think people shouldn’t dodge the consequences of their actions, that’s all.’ She forced a light laugh. ‘This is a bit serious, Mags. I thought we were having a nice wee outing to cheer us up after the crap we’ve had to face this past week.’

  Maggie was glad Tessa had been first to raise the subject. ‘I think it’ll take more than a pretty view to wipe out what I’ve discovered. You haven’t asked me about Croatia.’

  Tessa shrugged and leaned against the balustrade, her back to the view. ‘I reckoned you’d tell me in your own time. I didn’t want to push. I know this is hard for you.’

  ‘I see. I wondered whether it was because you already knew what I might uncover.’ Maggie’s chin tilted up, her expression as challenging as her words.

  Tessa frowned. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘Really? So why did you kill him, if it wasn’t because of the wedding massacre?’

  Tessa’s bewilderment was so convincing that Maggie momentarily doubted herself. But then she remembered the list Karen Pirie had shown her. Ellen Ripley. The teasing nickname Mitja had given Tessa. The fact that Tessa had been out of town when Mitja had gone missing. Tessa’s insistence that Mitja was the serial assassin of Balkan war criminals, that improbable accusation from anyone who understood his fundamental humanity, that very humanity he’d betrayed by his single act of vengeance.

  ‘I really have no fucking idea what you’re on about. What wedding massacre? Who am I supposed to have killed? Are you talking about Mitja? Why in the name of God would I kill Mitja?’ She sounded outraged, bemused, insulted.

  ‘I remember nights when the three of us – and sometimes other people too – would sit up late, raging about the impotence of the international criminal justice system. How outrageous it was that Milosevic was being held in comfort in The Hague while the monstrous crimes of his regime still reverberated in ordinary people’s lives on a daily basis. How offensive it was that so many of the war criminals who’d presided over massacres and rape camps and appalling desecrations of people’s lives were walking about free as birds.’

  ‘All of which you agreed with, I seem to remember?’ Tessa had adopted a look of puzzlement, accompanied by the kind of soothing voice people use with drunks who might turn violent at any moment.

  ‘And I particularly remember when you heard what had happened to Dagmar.’

  Now the shutters came down. Dagmar and Tessa had been lovers on and off for about nine months after the Croatian war. Then Dagmar had been caught up in the siege of Sarajevo, trapped like so many others in the kind of nightmare nobody expected to happen at the tail end of the century when Europe was supposed to have learned its lesson when it came to war. They ended up on the wrong side of the lines one night, Dagmar and her current lover. They were identified as lesbians and systematically gang-raped by more soldiers than either of them could count. And then they were thrown into the street in the January snow in the middle of the night. Dagmar died from internal bleeding two days later. Her girlfriend killed herself a week after that. When the news came back via a Red Cross contact, Tessa had been wild with a toxic mix of grief and rage. Maggie had been convinced that if those soldiers had been within reach, Tessa would have torn the flesh from their bones. As it was, they were never identified, never brought anywhere near justice. And Tessa never spoke of it again.

  Tessa looked away. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I have no idea what’s going on here. I don’t know why you’re dragging Dagmar into this conversation. I don’t need to be reminded about what happened to her to understand how much Mitja’s murder is hurting you.’

  ‘That’s not the point I’m making. The point is, we all spoke with one voice. It wasn’t long after you heard what had happened to Dagmar that you started working with the Yugoslavian war crimes investigators, was it?’

  Tessa shook her head. ‘You know that, Maggie. We talked about it at the time. You know I wanted to feel like she hadn’t died for nothing.’

  ‘I know. And I was totally behind you.’

  Tessa put a hand out and touched Maggie’s arm. It was all Maggie could do not to flinch. ‘I know you were. I loved you for the passion of your support.’

  ‘And that took you back to the Balkans to investigate reports of war crimes. And I’m guessing that you hadn’t been there that long when you heard the rumours about the wedding massacre.’

  Tessa spread her hands in a gesture of bafflement. ‘I don’t know anything about a wedding massacre. I told you. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Tessa,’ she said, her voice hard and precise. ‘It wasn’t commonplace to hear about Serbs being butchered by Croats. It’s not something you’d have let slip by you. It would have been interesting if only for its curiosity value. And when you tried to nail it down, all you could get was the name of a Croatian village near the border. It meant nothing to you then. The irony is that it would have meant nothing to me back then either.’

  ‘This is a very weird fantasy.’ Tessa tried to
move away but Maggie gripped her wrist.

  ‘Stick around, Ripley. There’s more to come. So you and your Scandie sidekick turn up in this village where you’ve heard the raiding party came from. Podruvec, in case you’ve forgotten the name. It’s not that kind of place, though. It doesn’t feel like a guerrilla stronghold. But you’re persistent. You’ve always been persistent, Tessa, haven’t you? Thorough, dedicated, tenacious.’ Maggie spat the words like insults.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Maggie. Who’s been feeding you this strange story? Has that cop been winding you up? Trying to provoke you into some sort of reaction? Are you OK?’

  Tessa’s expression of concern simply stoked Maggie’s anger. She wasn’t going to be that easily diverted. ‘So you asked around. At some point, somebody said something they weren’t supposed to and you learned that Podruvec had been the scene of a massacre of its own. And somewhere down the line, you found the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. The man behind the wedding massacre was your best friend. The heroic General Petrovic.’ Maggie’s voice faltered momentarily. ‘I know how shocking that must have been. Because last week, it left me feeling like the foundations of my life had been stripped out from under me.’

  ‘This a fantasy. I don’t know why you’re turning on me like this, Maggie. We love each other, remember?’

  ‘Remember? How could I forget? How sick is that? You shoot my husband in the head then take me to bed to comfort me?’

  Tessa recoiled as if Maggie had slapped her. ‘You think I killed Mitja? What? Because I was jealous of him? Because I wanted you? That’s fucking sick, Maggie.’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘Not because of me. I don’t think the world revolves round me. No. I think you killed him because somebody had to pay for what happened to Dagmar. You were burning up with revenge and self-righteousness. You were grieving for someone you’d loved and you were enraged that the official route wasn’t giving justice fast enough. And then you found out about Mitja and something inside you snapped. One of your closest friends wasn’t just a hypocrite. He was a war criminal who was escaping justice. You created this warped, twisted version of moral equivalence between the animals who violated Dagmar and a man who overreacted against the people who murdered his children.’

  Tessa’s eyes widened and her lips curled in a snarl. Finally Maggie had pushed the right button. ‘Is that what you think he was? A poor wounded animal who “overreacted”? He killed nearly fifty people, for fuck’s sake. The overwhelming majority of whom had taken absolutely no part in anything remotely approaching a war crime. He was as a much a butcher as the bastards he stirred us up against.’

  For a moment, all there was between them was the sound of the city; the murmur of traffic, the rise and fall of voices, a distant siren. Then Maggie spoke. ‘And that’s why you killed him.’

  Tessa straightened up. ‘He had a lovely life. You gave him a beautiful life. He was loved. He had a roof over his head and food on the table. He held forth to adoring audiences who thought he was a hero. How can you think that was appropriate? You, who saw the damage at first hand. The Balkans wasn’t just a report on the news to you. You saw it. You lost friends, I know you did. In Sarajevo. In the summer offensive in ninety-two. How was it right that he walked among us pretending to be a good man? How was that right, Maggie?’

  ‘And who made you judge and jury and Lord High Executioner? Because it didn’t stop with Mitja, did it? You got on your high horse because he made a terrible, terrible mistake, but you liked the view from up there. You realised you could right all the fucking wrongs. Punish the guilty. And with Mitja on the missing list, you could make him the scapegoat for your vigilante campaign.’

  ‘I’m sorry I laid the credit at his door. But you can sneer all you like, it doesn’t change the fact that justice should be swift if it’s to be truly just. Not bogged down in legal hair-splitting and endless procedural delays. And what I delivered was just.’

  ‘And was it just to let me go on hoping the man I loved with all my heart was still alive? Was it just to make love to me knowing his blood was on your hands? Christ, you’ve turned my life into one of those Jacobean revenge tragedy melodramas, and all without me knowing a bloody thing about it. How could you do that, Tess? How could you live with yourself?’

  For a moment, she caught a glimpse of the Tessa Minogue she’d thought she knew. A flicker of tenderness, of compassion. ‘Who he really was, that was the worst insult to both of us. His whole life was a lie. All I was trying to do was help you heal. Truly, Maggie.’

  ‘Help me heal? You caused the injury in the first place. I was happy in my ignorance. And even now I know, I’d still take him back in my arms. Because that single misguided evil act does not define him. But what you did – a whole series of evil acts – Tess, that was cold-blooded. None of your victims did you any personal harm. You had no stake in their deaths except self-righteousness. You probably tell yourself you did it for Dagmar. But that’s just an insult to her memory. You did it because it made you feel good.’

  Tessa shook her head and spoke slowly, as if to a small child. ‘That’s not true. I did it because nobody else could deliver what felt like justice to those people back in the Balkans. Do you think anyone mourned Miroslav Simunovic or any of the others? They were dancing in the bloody streets. I’m not sorry for what I did, Maggie. I’m sorry for your pain, but that’s all. So now let’s get off this bloody roof and get on with our lives.’

  ‘You think that’s it?’ Maggie couldn’t believe Tessa’s insouciance.

  Tessa gave her a pitying smile. ‘Well, what else? There’s no evidence. A name on a hotel register? Anyone who knew my nickname could have done that. A bullet from a gun that’s rusted away to nothing on the bottom of some river somewhere? Take it from me, Maggie. I’ve been careful. And you can’t say I haven’t left the world a better place than I found it.’ She took a step sideways, intending to pass Maggie and make for the door.

  But she wasn’t quite fast enough.

  44

  As soon as she understood the import of Dorothea’s words, Karen was on her feet and running for the door. ‘Jason,’ she shouted over her shoulder as she went. The Mint stumbled to his feet and ran after his boss, catching her as she reached the car. ‘Drive,’ she yelled at him.

  He did as he was told. As they hurtled through the college gates, Karen clamped the Noddy light on the car roof and wrestled her phone out of her pocket. At the third attempt she managed to type ‘Radcliffe Camera’ into her GPS. ‘Left,’ she shouted as they approached the end of the street. ‘And keep going straight till I tell you.’

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Trying to stop something very bad happening. The Radcliffe Camera’s a big high building, Jason. And I reckon Maggie Blake recognised the same name Dorothea Simpson did off that hotel residents’ list, since the person she’s up there with is Tessa Minogue. Left up ahead. Kind of half-left, not hard left.’

  Jason hammered onwards, blasting the horn at any car foolish enough not to move. They arrived at a set of traffic lights where they were forbidden to drive straight on towards the New Bodleian and the Sheldonian Theatre. ‘Just go,’ Karen shouted at him. ‘We’re the fucking police, we can go wherever we need to, Jason.’

  ‘Is she going to push her off?’

  ‘What do you think?’ As soon as they passed through the next traffic lights, leaving chaos in their wake, Karen turned off the light and said, ‘Pull over, now.’

  The car had barely stopped when she was out and running down the pale yellow stone corridor of Catte Street, the Bodleian to one side and Hertford College to the other. She burst into Radcliffe Square, almost turning her ankle on the rounded cobbles, craning her head back to look at the balustraded parapet beneath the lead-covered dome.

  What she hoped to see was two figures leaning on the parapet taking in the view. What she saw the moment she raised her eyes was the figure of a woman tumbling head first past the
three windowed stages of the building, ripping the air with a screech that set the hairs on Karen’s neck on end. Then the dull crump as she hit the ground. Karen skidded to a halt, horrified.

  But Jason carried on running, straight for the body that was now a misshapen black heap. Karen pulled out her phone and called the emergency number as she regained the power of movement. But she didn’t head for where Jason was hunkered down by the body, trying to keep the growing knot of onlookers at a distance.

  Karen had long since steeled herself to be the one who would run towards the sound of the guns. So she strode purposefully towards the shallow flight of stairs that was the only entrance and exit for the library. Whoever came down from that roof, she’d be meeting them halfway.

  45

  Alan Macanespie’s enthusiasm was starting to wear a little thin. It was hard to maintain momentum when there was so little progress to latch on to. After the excitement of spotting something that appeared to be significant, he and Proctor were in limbo, waiting for the geeks to work their magic on the material he’d sent them.

  All that remained for them was to plough through reports and statements from the investigating officers on the murders they’d tentatively identified as part of their series. Much of the information was in languages other than English; they’d had to fall back on running all the digital versions through online translation programs and marking up anything that seemed of interest so it could be reappraised by officers with the appropriate language skills. It was mind-numbing work and left Macanespie with a low undercurrent of anxiety that there was definitely material that was getting lost in translation. But until Wilson Cagney put his head above the parapet and gave them the high-profile resources they deserved, they’d just have to make the best of it.

  And to be honest, over the past few days he’d developed a degree of sympathy for his clothes-horse boss. It was all well and good to throw conspicuous volumes of assets at a problem you had a high probability of solving in a satisfactory manner. When it came to a challenge where success looked uncomfortably like failure – a mole in the system, an assassin fuelled by info from their office – there were definitely strong arguments for keeping things low-key. And it didn’t come much lower profile than Macanespie and Proctor, the dead-end kids.