Secrets of the Dead

to be model European citizens. There had been war crimes in Kosovo, true, but they were someone else’s problem. She worked with the civil courts, trying to unwind the tangled questions of who owned what after the war. The Lost Property Office, Michael called it. She didn’t mind being teased. She could sleep at night.

She folded up her files and locked them away. She cleared her desk for the cleaners to come in over the weekend. Shut down, turn off, leave behind. Just before she killed her computer, she noticed a new e-mail had come in from the Director. She ignored it – another luxury. She could deal with it on Monday. It was 2 p.m. on Friday and her week was over.

Michael’s car was waiting for her outside the office. A red Porsche convertible, vintage 1968, probably the only one in the Balkans. Top off, despite the thunder clouds massing over the city. Michael revved the engine as she stepped out the door, a full-throated roar that would have made her wince with embarrassment if she wasn’t so happy. Typical Michael. She slipped into the passenger seat and kissed him, feeling his salt-and-pepper stubble graze her cheek. A couple of people coming out of the office stopped to stare, and she wondered if they were looking at the car or at her. Michael was twenty years her senior and looked it, though age suited him. There were lines on his face, but they only accentuated what was good about it: the ready smile, the devil-may-care gleam in his eye, the confidence and strength. When his hair started greying he didn’t cut it, just added a gold earring. So as not to look too respectable, he said. Abby teased him that it made him look like a pirate.

He cupped her chin and turned her head so he could see her throat. ‘You’re wearing the necklace.’

He sounded pleased. He’d given it to her a week ago, an intricate golden labyrinth studded with five red glass beads. In the centre was a monogram, a form of the early Christian X-P symbol though she’d never known Michael be religious. The necklace itself felt ancient. The gold was dark and glossy like honey, the red glass misted with time. When she asked Michael where he got it, he just gave a crooked smile and told her a Gypsy gave it to him.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed her black overnight bag lying on the Porsche’s back seat, next to his briefcase.

‘Are we going somewhere?’

‘Kotor Bay. Montenegro.’

She made a face. ‘That’s six hours away.’

‘Not if I can help it.’ He pulled out of the parking lot, past the security guard in his blue blazer and baseball cap. The man gave the car an admiring stare and threw them a salute. Among the drab rows of EU-issue sedans, the Porsche stood out like some kind of endangered species.

Driving one-handed, Michael reached down and pulled a hipflask from beside the handbrake. His hand brushed her thigh where her sundress had ridden up. He took a swig, then handed it to her.

‘I promise it’ll be worth it.’

And maybe he was right. That was the thing with Michael: however wild his idea, you always wanted to believe him. As soon as they’d escaped Pristina’s gridlock, weaving in and out of the traffic in ways even the locals – comfortably the worst drivers in Europe – wouldn’t have dared, he punched the accelerator and gave the car its head. Abby snuggled into her seat and watched the miles fly by. Roof down, they raced ahead of the wind, outrunning the storm that always threatened but never touched them. Across the Kosovo plain and up into the foothills, towards the mountains that squeezed the setting sun against the sky until it bled crimson. At the Montenegrin border a few words from Michael sped them past the customs officials.

Now they were deep in the mountains. Cold air eddied around them; above, even August hadn’t dislodged snow from the peaks. Michael kept the roof down, but turned the heat on full blast. Abby found a blanket in the footwell and pulled it over her.

And suddenly there it was. The road bent around through a rocky defile and emerged high above the bay, sunk in shadows between the mountains. All Abby could see were the lights of pleasure yachts and motorcruisers, clustered around the coves and beaches that fringed it like luminous algae.

Michael slowed, then veered left. Abby gasped: it looked as if he was driving off the edge of the cliff. But there was a track, unpaved, that ended at an iron gate in a stucco wall. Michael rummaged in the glove compartment for a remote control. The gate slid open.

Abby raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you come here often?’

‘First time.’

Through the open gate, Abby could see the flat roof of a house, ghostly white in the gathering darkness. It stood on a promontory halfway down the slope – about the only place you could put a house on this side of the bay. Across the water, Abby could see the bright glow of a town, and its outer suburbs strung all across the opposite hill. On this side, there was nothing.

Michael stopped the car on a strip of gravel outside the house. He pulled an unfamiliar key out of his pocket and unlocked the fat oak door.

‘After you.’

Nothing in the villa’s plain exterior had prepared her for what was inside. Working in Pristina on an expat EU salary, Abby was used to living comfortably, but this was luxury on a whole other level. The floors were marble: green and pink slabs forming intricate geometric patterns. Everything seemed to have been built for a race of giants: chairs and sofas deep enough to lose yourself in, a mahogany dining table that could have seated twenty people, and the biggest television she’d ever seen hanging on the wall. Opposite, almost as big, three Orthodox saints stared out of the gold of a triple-panelled icon.

‘How much did this cost you?’

‘Not a penny. It belongs to an Italian judge, a friend. He’s letting me borrow it for the weekend.’

‘Are we expecting anyone else?’

Michael grinned. ‘Got it all to ourselves.’

She pointed to the briefcase he’d carried in. ‘I hope you weren’t planning on getting any work done.’

‘Wait until you see the pool.’