‘But I do have a duty of care.’
‘Jargon, Sergeant, from a bit after my time.’
‘What I’m saying, Mr Arbuthnot, is that I’m obliged – and wouldn’t have it otherwise – to show as much care, because this is a duty, towards a reptile character as I would towards an upright citizen. We don’t differentiate between saints and sinners.’
‘He’s a sinner, a reptile?’
‘Arms dealer – could be, for all I care, a crystal-meth dealer involved in a territory fight. If the silly bastard had done as he was told and -’
‘And bolted, dug a pit and squatted in it.’
‘- and had listened to advice, taken the help offered him… instead I’m in this godforsaken hole – and I have a duty of care when he walks. Why is he going to do it?’
‘I suppose he has something in his mind about “facing up” or “confronting” his problems. It’ll sit well with duty of care, Sergeant.’
The packet must have been wedged down in Benjie’s chair. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and slightly larger than a paperback book. He gave it to Roscoe, and for the first time the detective felt almost shy. He had his fingers under the Sellotape and was about to rip it open.
‘I wouldn’t. Do it later – tomorrow. Don’t forget it. Bring it. I’ll be leaving at about six forty-five, if you’d like a lift. Courtesy of the Vulture Club, a membership perk.’
Roscoe watched as Arbuthnot stood up and walked straight, might have been on a parade-ground, heading for the stairs. What did he know about the morning? Not enough. What did he know about the man to whom he owed a duty of care? Too little.
He crawled off the bed, silent.
Gillot didn’t use the bathroom but dressed. He wrote a note and propped it on the dressing-table. He opened the door and eased it shut behind him. The dawn came slowly and made a mist over the river. The town was buried in silence.
18
A smear of light, a softer grey in the east, and it came with stealth from the far side of the Danube. The little brightness travelling in the dawn highlighted no cloud. There would be no rain, no storms, lightning flashes or showers. It promised to be a good day, hot and dry.
A few people were on the move when the grey became tinged with pink. A man was at the marina, checking the ropes holding boats at the pontoon quays, and a woman was scrubbing the upper deck of a small launch. Beyond them – unnoticed – an angler crouched to study his rod’s tip. No surprise that an apparent obsessionalist had come in search of carp, catfish or pike at that early hour, that another sidled close to him and squatted beside him. Their conversation was, however, far removed from suitable bait, the breaking strength of lines, and whether it was best to fish close to the bank or out in the main current. A villager – who was on the register of the political and security police as a reliable source and had a handler – whispered in the angler’s ear the preparations for a killing, where it would be done, by whom and what should happen in the aftermath. He was answered, and the angler was left to the peace at the start of the day, but would soon tire of it, come up the bank and use his mobile phone where he could get a better signal. So, at first light, matters were already in hand.
Men and women emerged from two bell tents that had been erected near to the site of the Ovcara mass grave. They stretched, yawned, laughed, and already their chef was lighting charcoal under the barbecue grill and would be starting their breakfast. They were the team of volunteers and university rookies who hoped to win enrolment as fully fledged pathologists, and came from most of the countries of central Europe. Time in the Ovcara location would read well on their CVs. There were still some sixty corpses, all murdered – most by a gunshot to the head – to be found, and they had lain undiscovered for nineteen years. But that day an attraction was denied them: their leader, the charismatic American professor, would be leaving and much of the dynamic would go with him. The crop was round three sides of the tents and hid its secrets.
A handyman raked up the leaves that had been blown in the night breezes on to the grass and the walkways where the dead were now reburied, and at the heart of the garden there was a memorial of blue-tinted stones, between which a perpetual flame burned, bullied that morning by the gusts. He was always at work when it was light enough for him to see the blown debris, or a weed, but fewer came now to see the place where the war dead lay; mostly it was only relatives who visited the garden. For others it had happened too long ago.
The low sun caught on shell holes in the buildings of the town that had not yet been repaired, and the pockmarks made by machine-gun fire or scattered shrapnel. A street sweeper bypassed such buildings but tried to keep clean the pavements and gutters in front of renovated properties, offices and shops. He would have told anyone who asked that the money for further repairs was exhausted, that donors had dried up and the window of opportunity that had been open when Vukovar was on people’s lips was firmly closed. He could have said that the town was forgotten by those outsiders who had once cared, but time marched on, as surely as his brush removed litter from the drains.
That same light eased a path inland from the river, beyond the town, the gravesite and the memorial garden, and slid over the endless rows of ripened corn and soup-plate sunflowers that were ready for harvesting. Songbirds hovered over them and wild creatures scurried at the roots in the dry earth. Another day started.
The sun caught the roofs of the village, and nestled on one church tower that had been almost rebuilt and on another that had been almost destroyed. It threw a long shadow over the entrance to what had been a command bunker and was now a home for rats. It lay across the cafe tables, still loaded with dirty coffee cups, beer bottles and rakija glasses and rested on the ash and butts in the tinfoil trays. The storks clattered off their nests and flew in search of food.
The day began like any other.
She supposed she would have blinked first, then tried to keep her eyes closed, then opened them. The sun was shining through the window, off the river.
She was awake, but Megs Behan had no idea where she was. She was not at home in her bedsit, not in her office and sprawled over her desk, not in a room at her parents’ home, which was still supposed to be hers, teenage wallpaper still in place, or in an airport lounge. She was in a hotel room.
She looked around. There was much to take in, and complications to assimilate.
A crumpled bed, a sheet pulled out of place, two pillows dented. She pushed herself up and rested on her elbows. A decent enough hotel room, and there was a print of a watercolour showing a tugboat pulling a line of barges upriver. Good clue. The Danube, the town of Vukovar, a hotel of which she was a resident. Not her room. The sun would not have hit her windows and there would not have been two messed pillows. Her head hurt.
When she moved again, an empty miniature bottle slid on to the carpet. She sat up, her back against the headboard. The movement dislodged another bottle, also empty. She could smell the cigarette she’d rolled, stubbed out and abandoned on the bedside table. Her head ached, hot pins against the skull. It was a long time since Megs Behan had woken and not known where she was… more important, in whose bed she was.
She was fully dressed. A hand went under her top and another below her skirt, and she came to a definite conclusion: underwear in place. At the party for the Christmas holiday last year, Sophie from mid-Wales, a fervent campaigner on disarmament and a plain Jane, had been ‘detached’ from the main swing of the celebration and woken in some cleaner’s cupboard, with brooms, mops and buckets. She’d found herself short of her knickers. Some bastard had not only lowered them but taken them as a trophy. Hers were in place but needed changing. And she looked further.
Memory returned, raw and uncensored. The vest was on the floor. Where she was and whom she had been with came back to her and she let her shoulders slacken. Two bottles on the floor and a tonic can. There might be others under a fallen sheet, and half of a bulletproof vest. Megs had not seen, close up, a vest such as that before – had seen them on policemen in the street, on soldiers on television and in photographs of VIP celebs who went to ‘guest’ in war zones. Had not seen one dumped on a floor like a pair of dirty socks. She could see the maker’s logo, the two holes and in one, skewed at an angle, the shell – the bullet. She gagged, thought she might throw up.
She looked further. A lightweight jacket was hooked on the back of the chair in front of the desk. Two holes.
