‘You mean …’
‘I’ve asked Svetozar Miljanović to make sure he gets the best possible treatment.’
She lit a cigarette, her hand shaking as she held the lighter. ‘I guess this is what I’ve been expecting to hear since you put me on that train in Lugano. I knew he’d … take whatever risks he thought he needed to take to get at Todorović.’
‘You were right.’ Hammond winced as he took the rucksack off and lowered it to the floor. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘No. Of course not. Please. I am forgetting my manners.’ She ushered him into an armchair. ‘Is there anything I can get you? Coffee, maybe?’
‘Just a glass of water to wash down my next paracetamol.’
‘Sure.’ She fetched one from the kitchenette and watched him swallow the pill. ‘You look … as if you’ve been through a lot, Edward.’
‘Well, I suppose I have. Your contact at ICEFA, Zineta. Was his name Radmilo Uželać?’
‘Yes.’ She sat down opposite him. ‘How did you know?’
‘We met him in Belgrade. When I helped Marco break into the Villa Ruža.’
‘You helped him do what?’
‘Hear me out. Marco was looking for something Gazi left in a wall safe at the villa – something he could use against Todorović. Uželać was looking for it as well. But, in his case, he wanted to sell it to Todorović, just like he’d sold the information you supplied that got Felltrini killed. It was actually down to me that he knew about the break-in.’ He sighed. ‘I’d better explain.’
There were no evasions or omissions, no massaging of the facts. He wanted Zineta to understand exactly how and why events had followed the course they had. She pressed him to tell her what Gazi had hidden in the safe as soon as he mentioned it, but only when he had related everything else that had happened was he willing to satisfy her curiosity.
He lifted the shoe box out of the rucksack, stood it on the coffee table between them and removed the lid. Zineta peered in at the contents. ‘What are they?’ she asked.
‘Gazi recorded every important meeting or conversation he had in his study at the villa between December 1995 and March 2000. And here they are, on these tapes: hundreds of hours’ worth of evidence that Marco’s confident will see Todorović join his old boss in Scheveningen Prison.’
‘Does Todorović know you have these?’
‘He must know by now someone has.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘Hand them over to ICTY. They’re evidence against Gazi as well as Todorović. But the point is, Zineta, they may also contain information about—’
‘Monir.’ She spoke her son’s name as if it was some kind of talisman. There was a sudden gleam of hope in her eyes. She reached out and laid her hand on the nearest bundle of tapes. ‘My God,’ she murmured. ‘The answer could be here.’
‘That’s why I brought them to you. I promised Marco I’d deliver them to ICTY. But first …’ Hammond pulled the recorder out of the rucksack and stood it next to the shoe box. ‘You should listen to them. Since everyone on them is speaking Serbian, they mean nothing to me, but there may be something there that will get me out of a lot of trouble.’
Zineta frowned at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I told you I’d agreed to help Ingrid get hold of her father’s money because she’d threatened to harm Alice. That wasn’t exactly true.’
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
Then he told her the truth. He was surprised by how much better it made him feel. It was clear to him now that he should have done it a lot sooner. Just as he should have defied Ingrid to do her worst right from the start. The irony was that if he had, Gazi’s hoard of tapes would have remained walled up in the Villa Ruža.
‘I still have no idea why Gazi ordered Kate’s murder,’ he concluded with a sigh.
‘But these tapes may tell you.’
‘They may tell you.’
‘Oh, I think I know already, Edward. Living with him for as long as I did taught me how his mind works. He hates owing anyone anything. He always has to be the man who stands alone. Owing you his life would dent his … self-sufficiency.’
‘He paid me a handsome fee. That was all he owed me.’
‘Maybe not, as he saw it. Did he know your wife had left you for another man?’
‘Svetozar knew. So did every member of my team. Any one of them might have said something about it in his presence, I suppose. People are never as careful with your confidences as you’d like them to be.’
‘In Gazi’s world, an unfaithful wife deserves to die. You see? He was doing you a favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘He was paying his debt to you in kind. A life for a life.’
It sounded crazy. But it also sounded horribly plausible. ‘Oh God. It really was my fault she died, wasn’t it?’
‘No. It was Gazi’s doing. You’re not responsible.’
‘I wonder if Kate’s brother will see it that way.’
‘Will you tell him?’
‘Yes. Later today, as a matter of fact. I’ve asked him to meet me here in The Hague.’
‘Shouldn’t you wait until we know whether there’s anything on the tapes to prove you didn’t ask Gazi to have Kate killed?’
‘No. Either there is or there isn’t. And either Bill believes me or he doesn’t. It’s the truth for me now – wherever it leads.’
‘That’s a brave decision. If Todorović knows the tapes exist, he’ll already be looking for you.’
‘But he doesn’t know who I am. Uželać is dead. And he can’t get anything out of Marco while he’s sedated. So, we have some time on our side.’
‘Not much. He’s bound to guess you’ll deliver them to ICTY.’
‘I agree. So, first thing tomorrow, we do just that.’
‘I can’t listen to all these tapes in one day, Edward. Like you said, it must be hundreds of hours.’
‘But Gazi didn’t set up Monir’s removal until he’d decided to go into hiding himself. That limits your search to the last set of tapes: January to March 2000. And Kate was murdered on the third of April, 1996. That also limits the search.’
‘Yes.’ Zineta nodded as she contemplated the task ahead of her. ‘I see.’
‘It’s worth trying, don’t you reckon?’
She spread her arms and smiled at him. ‘Of course. I never expected …’ Then, abruptly, she began to cry. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. It’s just …’
He stretched across the table and clasped her hand. ‘You never expected you might actually get a chance to learn where Gazi sent him?’
‘No. I …’ She swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t.’
‘If there’s something on these tapes that helps you, Zineta, it will have been worth it – whatever else they prove or don’t prove.’
‘Thank you for saying that, Edward.’ She stood up and moved to the window, where she dried her tears with the back of her hand and lit another cigarette and gazed out at the city that stretched away from her towards the sea. ‘Will Marco pull through, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I hope so.’
‘So do I. I’d like to … thank him as well.’
‘You may find no mention of Monir at all. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes. There are no guarantees. But the only way I’ll know for certain …’ she turned to look at him and summoned a smile, ‘is to listen to the tapes.’
‘And there may also be a lot of stuff you’d prefer not to have to listen to.’
‘Don’t worry, Edward. I know what kind of a man Dragan Gazi is. I know what I’m in for.’
‘Then …’
‘I’d better make a start, hadn’t I?’
Zineta phoned the agency and cancelled her shift for that evening. They agreed Hammond would return to collect the tapes at nine o’clock, giving her close to twelve hours to glean what she could. When he left, she was already listening to the
first of them through the recorder’s earphones, hunched over the coffee table, frowning in concentration. They exchanged a farewell wave, then he stepped out through the door and headed down the stairs.
*
It was a cold, grey day in The Hague, though nowhere near as cold as it had been in Belgrade. Hammond walked slowly through the city, savouring the lightness of his thoughts. Everything was simple now: deliver the tapes; refute Gazi’s accusation, if he ever made it; trust the people closest to him to believe him when he spoke the truth.
He stopped for a coffee in the Passage Arcade. Checking his phone, he found a text message had arrived within the last hour from Miljanović. ‘Your friend stable & unconscious. No change expected soon. Prognosis uncertain.’ He uttered a silent prayer that Piravani would recover. He more than anyone deserved to see Todorović stand trial at ICTY.
Hammond texted back his thanks, finished his coffee and headed on, steering a steady course towards Scheveningen. He passed the Gothic pile of the Vredespaleis, home of the International Court of Justice, then came, on the other side of the park beyond it, to its annexe dedicated to the affairs of the former Yugoslavia.
Gazing at ICTY’s unpretentious premises from the street, he imagined proceedings had already begun for the day in the trial of Dragan Gazi. He could go in, if he wanted, and sit at the front of the public gallery, and wait for his former patient to notice him. He wondered if Ingrid had told her father yet that the money was not coming after all; that Dr Hammond had refused to play ball. Probably not. But sooner or later she would have to. Because Dr Hammond was not going to change his mind.
It was mid-afternoon when Bill arrived. Hammond returned to the Kurhaus from a late lunch at a nearby restaurant to be told his brother-in-law was waiting for him in the bar.
Bill had never quite mastered the art of casual dressing since leaving the Army. There remained a military sharpness about the cut of his trousers and the creasing of his shirt fronts. And the beard he had grown was as well-trimmed as any of the lawns he was responsible for. A few seconds passed before he noticed Hammond walk into the bar and during those seconds Hammond reflected on the tenuous nature of their relationship. Their tastes, opinions and personalities were scarcely harmonious. Though they did not dislike each other, there had always been a slight mutual mistrust, detectable more in what was not said than what was. But reticence would not help them in the present case. The time had come for candour.
‘Bill. Good to see you.’
Bill put down his beer and clambered off his bar stool. They shook hands, Bill’s grip as crushing as ever. There was a wariness in his eyes, Hammond noticed. This might have been the expression he wore in his active service days when entering sniper country. ‘Good to see you too, Edward. There have been times this past week when I thought I never would again.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve been elusive.’
‘Not to mention evasive.’
‘Room OK?’
‘The room’s top-notch. But I wasn’t actually looking for a winter break on the North Sea coast, so I’d raise no objections if you got on with explaining why you’ve summoned me here.’
‘It was hardly a summons.’
Bill looked askance at him. ‘If you’ve found out something about my sister’s death, I’d like to hear it.’
‘My sister.’ It sounded like an assertion of the primacy of the sibling bond as opposed to the merely marital. Hammond acknowledged he was in no position to dispute it. ‘Shall we go outside? We’ll have all the privacy we need on the promenade in this weather.’
‘All right.’ Bill squinted out at the cloud-filled sky. ‘I’ll fetch my coat.’
‘OK. I’ll see you out there.’
Hammond had five minutes or so to himself, leaning against the railings and looking down at the wind-scoured beach, while he waited for Bill to join him. The next set of railings along from where he stood was missing for some reason. Two strips of red-and-white tape had been fixed diagonally across the gap, to warn of the danger. But Hammond had no need of warnings. He knew exactly what he was doing.
‘Here I am,’ Bill announced, looming up behind him in a duffel coat.
‘Good.’ Hammond turned and smiled. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’
TWENTY-TWO
‘This is one hell of a lot to take in,’ said Bill Dowler, shaking his head thoughtfully as he looked across at Hammond.
They were sitting at a table on the canopied and heated terrace of one of the seafront cafés along Strandweg, a dearth of other customers ensuring they could speak as freely as they wished. Hammond was drinking coffee, but Bill had opted for whisky, and not just because he needed to warm himself up. He was clearly shocked by what he had been told – shocked and confused. Whatever he had feared or expected to learn, Hammond’s explanation of how Kate had come to be killed was certainly not it.
‘You’re really saying Gazi arranged her murder as some twisted way of rewarding you for saving his life?’
‘Looks like it. I can’t be certain of his reasons. But I can be certain he arranged it.’
‘Kate died … because you got mixed up with a Serbian warlord?’
‘I didn’t know I was getting “mixed up” with him. It was just another case to me, Bill. More lucrative than most, I grant you, but at the time I thought I’d probably need the money.’
‘Because of the divorce?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I never even knew you’d been to Serbia.’
‘Well, I didn’t shout about it from the rooftops. I wasn’t breaking any sanctions, but I knew it could be a sensitive subject in some quarters. What I didn’t know, obviously, was that …’
‘It would get Kate killed.’
‘Look, Bill, I—’
‘And how did Gazi come to know she’d left you anyway?’
‘Someone in my team must have let it slip. Or Miljanović, his specialist in Belgrade.’
‘You broadcast your marital problems to all and sundry, did you?’
‘Of course not. But there were times I was performing … below par … because of the strain. I had to put people in the picture. And word gets around. You must know how it is.’
‘No. I don’t think I do. I’d have made a pretty poor soldier, I can tell you, if I’d allowed my personal affairs to interfere with my duty.’
Hammond was tempted to ask exactly what personal affairs he was referring to. Bill’s life seemed to have been singularly free of anything that could be described as such. It gave him a capacity for censoriousness about the frailties of others that Hammond had quite forgotten. ‘I’ve spent just about every hour of the past week regretting agreeing to treat Gazi. If I could go back and change my decision, I would. But I can’t. And there was no way I could foresee the consequences of treating him, anyway. Most of my transplant patients are simply grateful to be given a new lease of life.’
‘Well, it seems he was grateful too, Edward. He just had his own way of showing it.’
‘Yes. But how was I to know that?’
‘You could have read the newspapers. I was out of the front line by the time the Army deployed in Bosnia, but the stories I heard from the blokes who went made it bloody obvious the Serb commanders were a bunch of psychopaths. It wasn’t exactly a secret.’
‘Well, I’m afraid it wasn’t so clear to me, Bill.’
‘Because you didn’t want it to be. How much did he pay you?’
‘A lot.’
‘How much?’
Hammond sighed. The truth was a harder road to tread than he might have imagined. ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’
‘A quarter of a million?’
‘Yes. A quarter of a million.’
Bill snorted his disapproval. ‘Nice work if you can get it.’
‘That’s what I thought – at the time.’
‘When Kendall accused you of hiring someone to kill Kate, I reckoned he was mad. But what you’re telling me is that he wasn’t actually that w
ide of the mark.’
‘I didn’t ask Gazi to have her killed, Bill. You have my solemn word. I’m a doctor. I try to save lives, not take them. I was angry and distressed when she left me. But I never hated her. If I’d wanted to kill anyone, it would have been Kendall, not Kate.’
Bill sat back and frowned at Hammond, searching his face for some sign that he was lying, which only Hammond could be absolutely sure he was not. ‘All right, Edward. I believe you. But Kendall won’t. You can be sure of that.’
‘I’ll deal with him when the time comes – if it comes.’
‘What do you mean, if?’
‘It’s an open question whether Gazi will carry out his threat, that’s all.’
‘And if he doesn’t, you’ll just … let sleeping dogs lie?’
‘I don’t know. It depends whether there’s anything about Kate on the tapes.’
‘If Gazi ordered my sister’s murder, I want him to stand trial for it.’
‘So do I. But if there’s no evidence …’ Hammond shrugged. ‘He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison whatever happens.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘It may have to be.’
Bill shifted uneasily in his chair. The possibility that he might know who had murdered Kate without being able to prove it offended his sense of the natural order of things. ‘I’m sorry, Edward, but I’m not prepared to let Gazi decide whether this comes into the open or not.’
‘You must do what you think best. But I’d be grateful if you left it to me to tell Alice.’
‘When will you do that?’
‘As soon as I get home.’
‘And when will that be?’
‘Within a few days. After I’ve delivered the tapes to ICTY.’
‘All right. I’ll take no immediate action. But about these tapes. Would Gazi really have been so stupid as to record material that incriminates him?’
‘Piravani reckons he planned to use them to blackmail his way out of trouble after the fall of Milošević, but had to get out in a hurry and banked on them never being found.’
Bill nodded sombrely, as if satisfied on the point. ‘You have told me everything, haven’t you?’
‘Everything.’
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