by Tim Adler
"I said, what's your problem?" he repeated. The owner placed both hands on the table and brought his face close to Hashim's. He noticed grease spots on the chef's whites.
"Zogaj say you owe money. You pay Zogaj what you owe."
The Vietnamese man looked surprised. "You know Zogaj? Zogaj send you here?"
"He want his money by tomorrow. I come and collect. He say that unless you pay him what you owe him, there'll be trouble."
"No fucky Muslamic tell me what to do. You tell Zogaj I pay when I'm good and ready."
"Listen, I wanna tell you a story. Back home, these guys make bad talk about Zogaj. 'We take business from Zogaj, Zogaj old man.' So he say, I hear you don't like what I'm doing, you come and we talk. Plenty food, plenty girls. Everybody happy, right? Zogaj meet these guys and the next minute, they all dead for disrespecting him." He gripped the cook's wrist and held it to the table. "If he do that to people who show him no respect, what do you think he do to people who owe him money?"
Sensing a disturbance, some of the diners turned around. The restaurant owner gave a queasy we're-all-friends-together smile.
"Okay, boss, you tell Zogaj I get money. I just need time."
Hashim extinguished the tip of his cigarette on the back of the manager's hand, who yelped like a little girl. Hashim hissed, "You get money you owe tomorrow. I come back same time."
"Please. I don't want no trouble." Fear showed in his eyes.
The Vietnamese cook's hand was still pinned to the table, and his little finger was just too tempting. Hashim started pulling it back despite the owner's whimpering until there was an unforgiving click.
When he stood up, he sensed the fear in the room; none of the other diners would meet his eye. Looking back, he saw the restaurant owner hopping about with his left hand under his armpit. Fuck it, he should be grateful. At least Hashim had broken the finger he used the least. Zogaj always wins, he repeated, Zogaj never loses.
Stepping out into the street, Hashim felt his phone vibrate with an incoming text message. He could see it was from Zogaj, who had sent him a photograph: so this was what she looked like. It was funny, but he had expected somebody different. She had a long horse face and glasses, and her hair was centre-parted like that Greek singer they used to watch on TV when he was a kid. Nana somebody. She wasn't like his usual girls. The message in Albanian read, "Gjej të saj dhe për të sjellë atë për mua." Find her and bring her to me.
Sunday
Chapter Nine
Nobody tells you how much paperwork is involved when somebody dies. Kate hugged a manila envelope to her chest as she trudged from one department to another. There were empty waiting rooms with railway station clocks, cramped offices with brown linoleum floors, and always the sound of typing. She was questioned, cross-questioned, photographed; she dictated statements, gave her signature and initialled documents. Men gathered in doorways and would glance at her sympathetically, yet they didn't want to get too close in case her bad luck was contagious. She felt far away from herself, as if all this was happening to somebody else. She wanted to tell the officials that it had been a dreadful mistake, and that her husband would be coming to collect her at any moment. The words they used – "victim", "tragic accident" and "assailant" – meant nothing to her. They could have been talking about somebody else. Mostly, though, she just felt numb. Her emotions were simply unavailable to her as she sat there waiting, always waiting, in a corridor, her ankles tucked beneath her, hugging that manila envelope.
The British Embassy staff could not have been more sympathetic to her, a young widow whose husband had fallen to his death from a hotel balcony. You have our every sympathy, said the ambassador. "You look as if you're coping very well," he continued, handing Kate a cup of tea. "I don't think it's really sunk in yet," she admitted.
The police said they needed to keep Paul's body until the results of the post-mortem were known. After that it would be up to her whether she wanted Paul's coffin flown back to England or whether, because he was an Albanian national, he would be buried in Tirana. That would be up for discussion with his family. Christ, he would probably be buried in the same cemetery where we buried his uncle, she thought, what, the day before yesterday?
One moment he was there. The next he was gone.
Kate called Paul's mother, saying she needed to see her. She swallowed her pride before making the call. Grief does strange things to your mind, she thought. It's like going to a foreign country. That's why Marina had said such unforgivable things: she was unhinged by the enormity of what had happened. They both were. Kate told her mother-in-law that they needed to discuss funeral arrangements, and that she didn't want them to part on bad terms. Marina suggested meeting in the park that afternoon before sunset. Kate could hear the flatness in her mother-in-law's voice. That was why suicides were so selfish, she reflected, because it was the rest of us who had to carry on living.
The park was only a ten-minute walk away, and it would be good for Kate to leave her hotel room. The four walls were closing in on her; she needed to get out and clear her head. On their way to the funeral, she remembered Paul pointing out the national art gallery. It was only five minutes from the hotel and, as this was Sunday in a Muslim country, it would be open that afternoon. Yes, that's what she would do: she would go to the art gallery.
The gallery was next to a building that looked like a crash-landed Millennium Falcon. Teenagers sat like starlings on the roof, while others slid down one of its sides. "The dictator's museum," Paul had told her. He had warned her that most of the paintings inside were ghastly super-heroic Social Realism works from the Communist era ("Friends of the Mechanics Factory"). Kate wandered round the mostly empty gallery gazing at the vaguely Tom of Finland-like paintings of aviators standing around in leather chaps. For a moment it was a relief not to think about Paul's death. Then she heard his voice in her head, clear as a bell, as if he was standing right next to her. She was looking at a naive painting of children playing with wooden guns. It must have been one of their earliest conversations when they were going out, after that moment on the Embankment; she even remembered what she'd had to eat.
"We used to have those guns. I remember playing with them at nursery school. It was what we had instead of toys. The whole country was primed for invasion at any time. That was when the country was atheist, of course."
"What happened after Hoxha died?"
"Christian missionaries came into the country in droves. Albania had always been Muslim before, so a lot of people went back to that. My mother got religion in a big way. You'll see when you meet her."
"So you're not a believer?"
Paul had finished eating and pushed his plate away. "Nah. Hoxha was right. It's all superstition, all that fasting and prayer. There's nobody out there. When I die I don't even want to be buried, just cremated. I don't believe. I'm not a real Muslim."
Kate's mum was disappointed when Paul insisted on a register-office wedding. What mother hasn't wanted to see her little girl married in church? And Kate, too, was quietly upset not to have a full church wedding, but Paul had been resolute, insistent: "Listen, you have to be a believer to be married in church, and I don't believe. Besides, you wouldn't want me to go down there." He pointed downward with his index finger and laughed.
The other thing Paul had insisted on was that his family shouldn't be present. Just his mother. It was the first time they had really had an argument, but Paul had been immovable, cruelly deriding his family back in Albania as peasants who had only recently stopped hanging from the trees by their tails. Kate hadn't heard that tone in his voice before. Perhaps he thought his family would embarrass him, or that they didn't fit in with his new life and her boringly middle-class family. "Goddammit, which part of that didn't you understand?" he had said, bringing his hand down on the table. The sudden violence had been unnerving.
Kate thought of what Paul had said about wanting to be cremated, and that made up her mind. When and where had he been happ
iest? That would be the spot where she'd pour his ashes. She thought about the party they'd had after their civil ceremony in Bishop's Palace, posing for photographs and laughing at Colin's best-man speech. Emerging through a blizzard of confetti. They had posed against one tree in particular. Yes, that was where she would scatter them. According to her watch, she had a quarter of an hour before she was due to meet Paul's mother. She took one last look at the painting of children playing, then turned on her heel and left.
Chunky Albanians in tracksuits huffed and puffed their way around the jogging track. The sun was setting over Tirana Park, the pleasure garden in the city centre with its vast lake. Marina had told Kate to meet her in the open-air cinema.
Paul's mother was sitting alone in the crumbling amphitheatre. The cement stone circles of the outdoor cinema were graffitied and decaying. A teenage skateboarder was doing tricks in the semicircle where the screen would have been. There was a heaviness about Marina, as if she, too, had had the life sucked out of her. For the first time, Kate glimpsed what her mother-in-law would look like as an old woman.
"We used to bring Paul here every Sunday to watch movie. You bring cushions and picnic to watch film," Marina said.
"Was this before you had television?"
"We had television. One channel. No, this was government-approved movies. Every week we used to come when Paul was little boy."
"What sort of movies? Soviet war films?" Kate pictured the jut-jawed hero staring resolutely ahead while his wife/girlfriend clung to his side, begging him to stay.
"Norman Wisdom."
"What, the British comedian?" Kate dimly remembered a clown in a flat cap swaggering and taking a pratfall.
"The Party said he was example of little man not being crushed by counter-revolutionary capitalist system. Chaplin, too." Marina turned to her daughter-in-law. "I am sorry about what I said yesterday. I was angry. Disappointed. I wanted to hurt you. Now I am sad for you both."
"You were wrong about the photo."
"What do you mean?"
"The photograph I took of Paul. There was a man on the balcony. The police believe me. It was a dishwasher who works in the hotel. They think he was burgling our room when we got back unexpectedly. The police found stolen property where he lives. He's under arrest."
"My God. Do you think he killed Paul?"
"He denies it. He says he was watching the fireworks along with everybody else on Friday night."
"What do you think?"
"I really don't know. I don't know about anything anymore."
Marina shook her head. "Murder–"
"Marina – what you were saying yesterday about Paul being so unhappy. Did he ever mention to you that he was seeing somebody else?"
"You think Paul had mistress?"
"I didn't want to tell you this, but before he jumped, somebody sent him a photo."
"What photo?"
"A photograph of him and another woman. I know you were close. I thought he might have told you something."
"Oh, Kate, I am so sorry."
"So he never said anything to you?"
Her great shoulders slumped. "What son tell his mother such a thing?"
"I thought I could find this woman."
"What would be point? What's done is done. Nothing will bring my son back."
"I suppose you're right." Even as she said this, Kate knew she had to find the woman in the photograph, she needed to confront her.
"Have you thought about what happens next? With Paul's body, I mean. He could be buried in family graveyard next to his father and uncle–"
"Marina, I wanted to talk to you about that. Paul didn't believe. In fact, he was an atheist. He told me that when he died he wanted to be cremated. I want to take his ashes back with me to London. I want to scatter them where he was happiest."
Marina's eyes widened at Kate's words. She gripped her daughter-in-law's wrist almost painfully. "You cannot do that. Cremation does not exist here, this is Muslim country." She shook her head. "In any case, Paul is Albanian. He must be buried next to his father and uncle. All his family are buried there, going back generations. Please, I am begging you."
"I'm sorry, Marina, but my mind's made up. As Paul's wife and next of kin, it's up to me to decide."
Marina was about to say something when, mercifully, Kate's iPhone started ringing. Fishing her mobile out of her bag, she could see it was a foreign number. Her heart contracted with foreboding.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Mrs Julia? Inspector Poda from Albania State Police. The man from the hotel we arrested, he was not on your balcony."
"How do you know that?" She apologised to Marina with her eyes and got up from the concrete seats.
"He was with two friends watching the parade. And a barman remembers seeing him. He even remembers the time. The dishwasher was drunk and got into an argument in the bar. There was no way he could have been in your hotel."
"Is he still under arrest?"
"Sure. For stealing from hotel guests. But not for the other thing, no."
"Wait a minute, so you're telling me the dishwasher is not the man we're looking for?"
"I'm sorry. The man from the hotel, he didn't kill your husband."
Chapter Ten
Kate looked down at the orderly collectivised fields from the window as the aircraft gained altitude, but she wasn't really taking anything in. The detective inspector had rung her in her hotel room that morning while she was rescheduling her flight back home. The coroner had completed his post-mortem, he said. Poda had asked for it to be summarised in English so that Kate could read it. "That was quick," she said. Because Albania is a Muslim country, everybody works on Sundays, he replied.
Moments later Kate's iPhone pinged with a message. An email with two attachments had landed in her in-box. She double-clicked on the English version and started speed reading: "Because of the fall, the ribs punctured the lung. Most of the injuries were on the right side of the body. The pattern of injuries was indicative of falling from the seventh floor. The ribs were fractured both on the chest and side. Thoracic and lumbar spine fractured with thoracolumbar junction badly damaged. Os calcis and ankle joint fractured. Distal radius shattered." Then, further on – "Rigor mortis was present of a 3 to 4+ throughout his entire body. No other trauma found, and fatal injuries are consistent with suicide jump. Foul play is not suspected at this time."
So that was it, then.
The autopsy stated that Paul had died from blunt head trauma when his skull struck the pavement. Kate remembered the sound, like an axe splitting a wet log, and shuddered.
"Are you still there?"
"Yes, I'm still here. It's just a lot to take in, that's all."
"Our investigation is over. We have no other suspects, Mrs Julia. Your husband did kill himself." She heard Poda breathe on the other end. "Do you want the name of an undertaker? I know one in Tirana. This is not the first time a foreigner has died here."
"My husband wanted to be cremated. I want to bring his ashes home with me."
"Cremation?" the detective said doubtfully. "This is a Muslim country. We don't have cremation–" The line went muffled, and she heard him speak in Albanian. After a moment he said, "Yes, the hospital can create your husband."
"What do you want me to do?"
"You must come to the hospital to sign some papers." More Albanian to the person he was talking to. "The hospital will do the cremation. After that, you can take your husband home."
She knew that she was acting partly out of spite, as a way of punishing her mother-in-law.
"How long will it take? I was planning to go back to England tonight."
"I don't know. We've never done this before."
"What will happen to the man you arrested? The dishwasher?"
"He lost his job. The hotel fired him. He will be fined, maybe go to prison. Mrs Julia, I am sorry for your loss. I wish we had met under different circumstances."
"No, Inspector, thank you. For
everything you have done."
What was she doing sounding like Lady Bountiful? As if she were opening a garden fete or something. Poda rang off, leaving Kate listening to the dial tone. It really was all over.
The detective inspector instructed her to collect Paul's ashes that afternoon, and she picked them up on her way to the airport. As she walked towards the reception desk, everything felt so unreal. Slow motion. The ground beneath her feet felt gluey and unstable, as if there was nothing to hang on to anymore.
What was left of her husband had been boxed up, like a package ready for delivery.
The woman at the airport check-in had looked at Kate strangely when she presented her husband's ashes to take on board as carry-on luggage. Kate wasn't in her right mind, she could feel it. The desk clerk was flustered as she smoothed a hold baggage sticker on the cardboard box. The check-in assistant read the paperwork, including Paul's death certificate, and handed it back with a fixed, synthetic smile.
Paul's suitcase was in the hold along with her own. Packing up his things that afternoon had been the moment his death really hit home. Opening their hotel room wardrobe, she took hold of his jacket sleeve and breathed in, wanting the smell of him. Perhaps if she kept his clothes just as they were, he might come back. "Hello, kitty-kat," he would say as he walked in. Another wave of grief was building and she stared at the plane safety procedure card, determined not to cry. Grief kept coming, though: her throat felt tight, and she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. She told herself to just keep breathing, but she still felt as if she were being punished for a crime she had not committed.