‘And then what?’ Tanja didn’t move.
‘We’ll ask him who that guy is who threatened me.’
‘And you think you’ll get an answer?’
‘What do you suggest, then?’
‘Call the police?’
Milena opened her compact mirror. ‘OK, you win. What are we waiting for?’
‘But you have to bear in mind: a scandal like this would destroy the party, and the papers would be full of it tomorrow. Wouldn’t that jeopardise your investigations?’
‘Good question.’ Milena wasn’t so sure anymore.
‘I’ve got another option,’ Tanja continued. ‘I’ll take you home and we’ll consider our next move in peace and quiet. And, if I’m honest, I want Siniša to be there too. What do you think?’
Milena stared over at the desk, and the plan showing the two elevations with their curious areas of cross-hatching, and found herself at a loss what to think. She found it hard manoeuvring herself; she turned into a passive lump, whom Tanja took by the arm and gently steered towards the door.
As they reached the entrance hall, there was a sudden burst of applause. The audience cheered and whistled. Slobodan Božović bowed to Rozana Smija like a subject in front of a queen, and kissed her hands. If Vera ever found out that Milena had been close enough to her favourite singer to touch her, and yet she had returned home without an autograph… she’d never forgive her.
‘Are you leaving already?’ Božena was fanning herself with a little card. ‘The fun’s only just beginning.’
‘I know, I know, we’re two party poopers,’ Tanja said. ‘We’re old ladies who are unfortunately very tired. Shame, as it’s such a splendid party.’
‘And,’ Milena chipped in, ‘we’d naturally like to say goodbye to your husband.’
A flushed Slobodan was standing, with his tie undone and his shirt collar open, next to Rozana, who had just launched into her number-one hit and was encouraging the minister to swing his hips in time with hers – something he was actually managing to do quite well. People were clapping along to the music, which was booming out of the loudspeakers at full volume.
Božena blanked Milena, put her hand on Tanja’s arm and shouted, ‘I have to tell you something!’
Tanja signalled as if to say ‘I’ll catch up with you’, and Milena stepped outside onto the exterior stairs, leant against the balustrade and took a deep breath.
The dark silhouettes in the garden were the men of the security detail chatting up the cloakroom girls. The service team were lugging around baskets full of china. What a complete disaster the whole evening had been.
The bicycle was still leaning against the wall of the house. Milena heard whispers coming from somewhere. She leant over the railing and noticed in that moment how the side seam of her trousers was coming undone, with the split on her hip visibly widening. Just then, someone came up the steps behind her.
‘Good evening,’ said Milena.
‘Hi,’ Marco nodded, and hurried past.
‘I just met this guy,’ Milena called after him, while readjusting her jacket. ‘Mr Natty, that’s what you call him, right?’
Marco put up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have time right now.’
‘Marco, we’ve got to talk.’
He looked over his shoulder as if he were afraid of hidden cameras. ‘Not here,’ he whispered.
‘Of course.’ Milena turned around. ‘No problem. When would suit you? Tomorrow? I’ll take you to lunch.’
‘I’ll call you.’ Marco quickly pushed the door open and disappeared.
‘You’ve still got my card?’ Milena called after him.
The gravel beneath the stairs crunched. The bicycle had disappeared. Its rear light flashed briefly on the path to the garden gate for only two or three seconds before disappearing round the corner.
‘Sorry about that.’ Tanja had suddenly appeared next to her. ‘Sometimes Božena’s like a little child. You’ve always got to act like she’s the most important person on the planet.’
‘The guy who threatened me…’ Milena murmured. ‘I think he just left on his bike.’
‘There you go.’ Tanja dangled a portrait of Rozana in front of her face, a postcard with an extravagant signature and a crudely drawn heart underneath. ‘That’s for you.’
Milena sighed ironically. ‘Oh, thanks a bunch. So the evening was worth it after all.’
On their way back to the car, Tanja took Milena’s arm again and tried to placate her. ‘Hey, look at it this way,’ she said, ‘now at least you know your theory holds water. Kosovan Albanians, pent-up national hatred – nonsense! There’s something else completely behind the old couple’s murder. Otherwise, the guy wouldn’t have reacted that way.’ Milena said nothing in response. Even if that were the case, the real reasons behind it were contained in the material that the old man, Valetić, had put together. His diligence had probably cost him his life. And now his son was walking around with the suitcase. Milena didn’t like to imagine what might happen to him. She steered the car towards the kerb and came to a stop directly opposite the stairs which led to Tanja’s house.
They arranged to speak on the phone the next day. ‘Sleep well,’ said Tanja, giving her a peck on the cheek as she got out. Before she closed the door, Milena leant across the passenger seat and asked, ‘By the way, what did Božena want to tell you so urgently?’
‘Forget it.’ Tanja bent down one more time towards her. ‘Božović is planning to buy a house, somewhere downtown, a pretty little palace. Which only goes to show once again what kind of connections Serbian politicians have. Still, I hope it’ll work out for them, otherwise I’ve got a problem.’
‘How come?’
‘A project like that would keep Božena occupied for a while. Otherwise, come the autumn she’ll check into my clinic again, saying “I’m bored, do something please”. But what else is there left for me to do? Her tits again?’
When Milena parked her car outside her own house ten minutes later and unlocked the front door, she noticed her tension slowly easing, only to be replaced by an unease gripping her stomach. Fiona purred around her feet. Quietly, Milena took off her shoes and walked down the corridor in her socks.
Adam was asleep. She carefully straightened out his duvet, extracted the comic book from under his hand, kissed his forehead and turned off the light.
In the kitchen, she tidied away the television listings magazine on the table and placed the signed photo of Rozana Smija next to the flower vase, where it would be clearly visible. There was something written on the back. A dedication? Milena held the photo up under the lamp.
‘Sorry. One day I promise I’ll explain everything. Marco.’
28
He was an old man, after all, about to reach eighty, and sometimes he asked himself why he was still bothered – for example, with the ritual of shaving first thing every morning. Now Lydia was gone and not rattling the door knob every five minutes, he had all the time in the world, and it was the nicest time of the day. He could tell whether it was going to be a good or a bad day from the way the razor glided over his skin.
Today he had cut himself. No wonder. He didn’t even have enough time to knot his tie properly. Or to sit down for five minutes with his first cup of coffee. And he had totally got out of the habit of reading the newspapers in the morning. Now his life was filled with the sounds of whining and panting, and constant patter of canine feet across the lino. He only had to lift his head and Batica would start wagging her stumpy tail so vigorously that her whole rear end was set in motion.
‘I’m coming,’ he said, getting up and pushing his chair under the table. ‘For God’s sake, I’m coming.’
When they had brought Batica to him he’d said, there and then, ‘No thanks, kids, really not. No need.’
Of course, he knew what they were up to. It was the familiar story: give the old codger a dog, that’ll keep him interested and occupied.
But to be honest, he was
n’t bored, nor was he getting too little exercise or feeling lonely – certainly no lonelier than when he’d been married to Lydia. Rather, the problem was that the children had a chronically bad conscience whenever they thought of their old dad. So there was this bundle of fur on the table all of a sudden, and what’s more, it already had a name. What was he supposed to do? Play the stubborn old git and make a scene?
He laid down some ground rules. He fed the animal and assigned it a place to sleep in the corner. The sofa, the easy chair and the bedroom were off limits. And he wasn’t about to get into the whole business of a collar, a lead and all that stuff, or with issuing commands like ‘Batica: heel’, ‘Batica: sit’! He had never been responsible for bringing up his children, so he wasn’t going to start now with an animal.
It was intriguing: Batica was a proper companion, but with the right instinct – namely, not submissive, quite intelligent in his own way, and keeping to himself but also managing to be a free spirit. When he went to a café, Batica settled down under the seat the same way as he did on the bus, in the kitchen or in the cinema. The dog always seemed to be waiting for his special moment, Batica’s hour, when he could roam free in the open air.
He himself had never been much of one for outdoor pursuits, but he went along with this tacit arrangement. Batica was a dog, and dogs needed exercise. In the interim, then, they’d taken to going to the Belgrade Forest on an almost daily basis, taking the number 72 bus with all the other loons in their walking boots.
Batica roamed through the bracken, fetched sticks and made friends with everybody. He was greeted by pensioners like an old acquaintance (which wasn’t surprising), but now even the joggers would stop, running on the spot and striking up puffed conversations with Batica. His master began to find it increasingly difficult to stop himself from being drawn into saying hello and getting embroiled in conversation. Discussions about the weather or rheumatism were just not his thing, nor did he want to chat about creatures whose only thought was where the next meal was coming from. Before he knew it, he’d find himself looking around. Where the hell had the dog got to?
‘Batica?’
The dog would show up eventually, like he always did: panting, wagging his tail, with burrs sticking to his ears and bad breath. But the times when he’d found himself secretly wishing that Batica would disappear for good had become less frequent. The more he thought about it…
He stopped again.
‘Batica!’ He listened. Silence. Only the wind in the branches. And birdsong.
He called again and again. He even backtracked slightly and searched around, unsure quite what to do next. He could see anthills and molehills and tyre tracks. What were tyre tracks doing here in the woods?
Then he heard him, at quite a distance, more of a pining noise, and so heart-wrenching that it struck fear into his heart. Something had happened to the dog. He started running as fast as his legs would carry him.
The howling noise was high pitched. Branches struck his face, knocked his hat off his head – he ran like he’d never run before in his life, stumbling over roots and barely able to catch his breath. In confusion, he straightened his glasses on the bridge of his nose
His first thought was that somebody must have hung a pair of shoes in the tree. But then he saw that there were also jeans hanging there, torn above the knee. An entire body was swaying gently in the wind before his eyes.
There was a rope wrapped around its neck. Flies were buzzing all around. The man’s head lolled to one side on his chest, and his sightless gaze was fixed on the place where Batica was sitting, howling in distress.
29
A ladder stood extended in front of the wrecked letter boxes, and a pallet full of plasterboard had been plonked down right in the middle of the porch. Milena studied the markings on the wall. If her interpretation of the lines was correct, the ceiling height would come down to just about one hand’s width above the entrance door.
Mr Šoć, the caretaker, put his hammer drill to one side, tugged a piece of paper out of the pocket of his overalls and announced, ‘It’s all been approved, Ms Lukin.’ He stepped over the toolkit and held the letter under her nose, which bore the logo of the building management company.
‘Well, I hope you’re at least getting adequately remunerated for your work,’ Milena responded; it sounded every bit as snarky as it was meant to.
She couldn’t really blame the caretaker, as he was only doing what he had been told to do by others – in this particular case, the owner of the travel agency, who had given instructions to reduce the space available to the residents in order to create a few square metres’ worth of extra storage space for himself. No use getting upset about it. His actions many years ago regarding the communal storage spaces and drying rooms had been far more high-handed and brazen.
One by one, these windowless rooms had been converted into offices for debt collectors and visa agents without anybody being able to establish who had struck what murky deals with whom. By comparison, the question of whether the roof terrace was communally owned was crystal clear: it had been requisitioned by the people living on the top floor and turned into luxury maisonettes. The fact that the building had, since then, begun to suffer from subsidence as the old foundations gave way under the additional weight evidently bothered no one.
Milena drove down King Lazar Street, heading straight for the monument to Duke Vuk and the Institute for Forensic Science and Criminology. These days, wheelie bins blocked all the parking bays there, now that the refuse rooms that had once housed them had all been turned into beauty salons and mobile phone shops. And when these new shop windows were installed on the ground floor it presented the perfect opportunity to reduce the width of the footpath outside. And every time that happened, some caretaker was always to hand to pull out a piece of paper and announce that all these changes had been properly authorised. Milena parked her car at sharp angle outside the Red Cock pub.
She really ought to try and contact the city planning office. But the chances of anybody there taking any notice of the lowering of a ceiling in some porch were next to zero. You required connections even to denounce somebody.
A short while later, Milena was up in her office, hanging her jacket over the chair; she switched on the kettle and opened the window. That afternoon she had to go and see Uncle Miodrag in hospital, but first she had to finish the organisational chart for the upcoming semester. And she had to call Alexander Kronburg. She shovelled instant coffee into a mug and poured hot water over it.
The job was tempting: to monitor the reform of the Serbian justice system on behalf of the German embassy. But how did the guy imagine she’d set about it? She couldn’t pack up and leave just like that. She had contractual obligations and couldn’t let down her students.
She turned on the computer and adjusted the keyboard. On the other hand, the offices of the German embassy surely had central heating, air conditioning and reserved parking spaces behind the building. She took small sips and pictured a solicitous assistant bringing her coffee to her each morning.
There was a knock on the door. Milena typed in her password (Adam’s birthday), pressed ‘enter’ and looked up.
Boris Grubač, the director of the institute, was standing in the middle of the room. His ample stomach protruded, pushing his striped tie towards her. He extended both hands and proffered a little package – a box of jelly bananas. He carefully placed it on her desk and straightened it up. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Just a little something.’
She glanced at the box. It was a luxury assortment in two layers that could be opened like drawers – definitely too extravagant to be just ‘a little something’. She eyed her boss suspiciously. The corners of his mouth were moist and he positively oozed unctuous bonhomie.
‘Why, thank you.’ Milena put on a smile. ‘By the way, I had a conversation with the German ambassador the other week.’
‘I know,’ Grubač replied.
She recoiled in surprise.
‘How?’
‘His secretary calls this office almost every day. Did nobody tell you?’
‘Does that mean you know what this is all about?’
‘Don’t keep the poor guy hanging on. Put yourself in his shoes: as a foreigner, he has no clue about what’s going on, and for some reason I can’t fathom he’s very keen on you. Why aren’t you using it to your advantage? Tell him what he wants to hear, or what you want him to hear. The key thing is to make sure he coughs up for the privilege at the end of the day. It’s called consulting. Ever heard of it?’
‘It’s a tad more complicated, I’m afraid.’ Milena searched for her telephone, which had started to ring somewhere.
‘And so long as you don’t neglect your work here, this kind of consultancy isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the institute. Quite the contrary. So, Ms Lukin, why don’t you put yourself about a bit?’
Milena looked at her mobile. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘this is important. Could you give me a minute?’ She nodded, and pressed the green button.
The voice at the other end was calm and very matter-offact. The tone was in marked contrast to the information it was conveying – for a moment, Milena thought she hadn’t heard correctly.
She got up and stepped over to the window. Her mind was racing.
‘Where are you?’ she asked mechanically, grasping the window handle. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll come straight away.’ She lowered the phone and stared numbly at the screen.
‘Bad news?’ Grubač asked behind her back.
Milena walked to her desk and grabbed her bag.
‘So how should we leave things?’ he asked. ‘What do we say to the ambassador?’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ he called after her.
Milena hurried down the hall. On the staircase, she dialled Siniša’s number, crossed the foyer and spoke into the phone, ‘Call me back as soon as you get this…’
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