Screams in the Dark (33 page)

‘I didn’t know either, Mick. Listen, just calm down till I tell you. It’s awful. Poor guy got murdered. They suffocated him with a poly bag, for Christ’s sake. He’d come over to Belgrade to work on the story himself, and this is what happened to him. He was trying to help me, Mick. And now the poor guy’s dead. I feel terrible.’

There was a silence. Rosie knew that in another time, another mood, Mick would be making jokes about dead bodies popping up every time Rosie left the office. But he refrained.

‘Fuck me!’

‘Yeah. It all went a bit mental, Mick. I got to the hotel this night, and there was a message from Hoffman. Actually, I’d met him earlier in the day and he said he was getting a picture for me from a contact, and I was to meet him at my hotel later. Next thing, I go to the hotel because we’re preparing to leave Belgrade fast, and when I got there Hoffman had left a message – an envelope with a picture. And, wait for it, Mick. This will blow your socks off.’

‘A picture? A picture of what?’

‘It’s a photo of Tim Hayman, and the Serb guy Boskovac I told you about. They’re only at some bloody shooting party in the Highlands, brandishing rifles with their arms around each other like two best mates. And the thing is Mick, this was taken five years ago – while he was still Environment Secretary and while the Serb was with the company Hoffman exposed as exporting body parts and tissue.’

‘You serious, Rosie?’

‘You’re damn right I am. And that’s what happened to poor Hoffman after he came to help me. I went to my bedroom to get my bag, and there he was right in front of me, Mick. Tied up and suffocated. I just about had a heart attack. Then some bastards kidnapped me at gunpoint. Took me to Raznatovic.’

‘Kidnapped you? Fuck! You met Raznatovic?’

‘Yeah, but I got away. Sure, I’m here now, talking to you, Mick. It’s a long story. Save it till I get back.’

‘I want you home, Rosie. Tonight.’

‘Mick, I’m safe now. I’m in Bosnia.’

‘No. I want you back here, Rosie. Don’t make me say fuck again.’

Rosie puffed, frustrated. She knew they had done just about everything they came to do. As soon as she’d got into Adrian’s car last night, she phoned Mickey Kavanagh, knowing he would tip off Interpol where they could find the Serbian. The war crimes people and the police would already be hammering down Raznatovic’s door, and even if he’d gone, there was a better than ever chance they’d track him down. Her work was finished here, and she’d managed to escape Serbia without the cops dragging her in about Hoffman’s body in her hotel room. All she had to do now was go to Macedonia to keep her promise to Emir.

She told McGuire all of this, and waited while his brain ticked over.

‘Christ almighty, Rosie. Raznatovic is after you. The cops are after you. If you get arrested anywhere over there
by any Serbian authorities you could be there for years. It’s safer to come straight home. And I want to see this story as soon as possible.’

‘I know, Mick. Just give me two more days, that’s all. Let me go to Macedonia. I owe it to Emir. Then I’m home. I’ll get the story done tonight around the picture we have, and as much background as I’ve got on the Serb. You can get Vincent in Westminster to front Hayman up over the picture. It’s a belter of a line and we’re miles ahead of everyone. We’re nearly there, Mick. Nearly there.’

There was a pause while Mick digested all this, then, ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Okay, Rosie. Two more days. Now make sure Matt and that big Adrian bloke are looking after you. Two more days, then you’re out.’

‘Okay, Mick.’

‘And get to a hotel tonight and get that story over to me.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Sure, Mick.’ The line went dead.

CHAPTER 34

The next morning they were geared up and ready to go by eight. Rosie was a little groggy as she loaded her bag into the boot of Adrian’s car. A mixture of exhaustion and relief had contributed to all of them drinking more than they should have over dinner in the restaurant in Olovo last night. Now she had that jet-lag feeling that always crept up on her when she was working out of town. Risto had been kept in hospital, and she and Matt had said their farewells at his bedside, hugging like old comrades, promising to meet again, even though they knew they probably wouldn’t.

‘It will take almost a day and a half to get to Kosovo and then to Macedonia,’ Adrian said, as Rosie got into the front seat beside him. He turned his body so he was facing her. ‘But there is something I want to show you before we go.’

Rosie looked at him curiously. He hadn’t mentioned anything last night.

‘Fine.’ She assumed he’d be taking them to another landmark illustrating the area’s tragic history.

She fiddled with her mobile as they drove out towards the edge of the town. She looked at last night’s text message from TJ. He was leaving for New York in two days. He’d joked about her getting a move on if she was going to see him. She knew it wasn’t going to happen, and pushed it to the back of her mind. She didn’t have time to think about that now.

Rosie looked out of the windscreen as Adrian took the car off the main road and up a twisting road away from the town. As they neared the brow of the hillside, she could see what looked like a graveyard. She glanced at Adrian from the corner of her eye, but he stared straight ahead in silence.

They drove up the narrow path towards the gated cemetery and Adrian stopped the car. He turned to Rosie.

‘I show you something.’ He switched off the ignition and opened the door.

Rosie looked at Matt and shrugged. They both got out of the car. An old woman wearing a headscarf and a coat that was too heavy for the sunny day came out of the graveyard, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. She stopped for a second, shook her head as her pitiful expression acknowledged them, and walked on.

‘Come,’ Adrian took a deep breath and walked through the wooden gates, Rosie and Matt following behind him. They walked past some ancient gravestones, weathered and overgrown with weeds, some toppled on their side. Others were so old they didn’t even have markings. When they climbed to the top of the rise, they suddenly stopped in their tracks. Ahead of them were endless rows of small
white marble pillars, close together like a column of sentries frozen to the spot.

‘Jesus, Matt. Look at this.’ Rosie gazed at the gravestones as Adrian walked ahead. ‘There’s so many. War graves.’

‘Kind of brings it home to you, doesn’t it, when you see it like this.’

They stepped closer to the first row and looked at the inscriptions. Some had flowers, trinkets, children’s toys. All they could understand were names and what must have been ages. Eight, ten months, twenty-five. The lifeblood of future generations buried side by side.

‘Come on.’ Rosie said, and they went to catch up with Adrian.

Adrian kept going until he was close to the last row, then he stopped at a gravestone near the end. It was ringed by a little wooden fence. Fresh flowers bloomed in a metal vase. He stood looking at it, his big square shoulders suddenly sloping.

Rosie and Matt came slowly closer but stood behind him, saying nothing. He turned around.

‘Come closer.’

They shuffled beside him. Rosie read what she could understand from the inscription. Marija, February, 1994. Then the name Adrijan. There were more names and words she didn’t understand, until she saw the name Adrijan again. She turned to Adrian.

‘My fiancée, Marija. Our unborn son, Adrijan.’ He swallowed. ‘She wanted to name him after me.’

‘I’m so sorry, Adrian.’ She didn’t need to ask what happened.

‘The Serbs. They came to the village and took everyone out of it. Marija was in the field helping her mother. They killed them both. Butchered them. The baby, who was torn from her stomach, lay by her side when they found her.’ He shook his head. ‘I was in the next village doing some work, and when I came back I was met at the edge of town by my friend Risto who was waiting for me. He told me.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Rosie said, again, not knowing what else to say.

Adrian nodded. ‘I wanted you to see. I never told you anything about my life before, because it is just for me.’ He touched his heart with his hand. ‘I keep it here. I want to keep it inside me and never let it go. But I know one day I must.’ He looked at her, then back at the grave. ‘I just wanted you to know. You are my friend, Rosie.’

They were silent for a moment, then Rosie asked, ‘Did you leave here after everything that happened?’

‘For a while I stay and fight. Then my mother said one day they would come and round us up on the buses and take us away, maybe to Paklenik gorge like the others. She told me I must go.’ He gazed around at the landscape. ‘But I have never really left.’

They stood in the stillness, Rosie trying to imagine the slaughter and the wailing as each family buried their hearts.

Eventually, Adrian spoke. ‘We must go now, Rosie. We have a long drive to Macedonia.’

CHAPTER 35

They had stopped in a little Kosovan town in the early evening so that Rosie could find a place to put her story together. They also needed to rest for the night, having driven all the way from Olovo south to Kosovo – or what was left of Kosovo, Matt had remarked. Every bombed-out town and village they drove into was still raw with the same depressing story of communities and lives ripped apart by war. Houses and mosques had been razed to the ground by rampaging Serbian soldiers who left behind a trail of destruction. Most of the streets were deserted and only the drone of the patrolling NATO vehicles broke the silence. Soldiers from KFOR, the United Nations force, were posted around, armed with rifles to keep the peace since the ceasefire a few months earlier. But in most of the areas south of Pristina there was nobody left to fight, and anyone who hadn’t fled from the bloodbath had little fight left.

‘If we stay here for the night,’ Adrian said, as he pulled
up to what might once have been a smartish small hotel, ‘we can head straight for Kacanik tomorrow early, then it’s only a few miles to Macedonia. It should only take a morning to get to where we’re going.’

Kacanik. The name flashed up a blur of faces and horror stories as Rosie recalled the refugees spilling across the border post of Blace into Macedonia a few months earlier. Many of them had walked from Kacanik with nothing but the clothes they stood up in. Nobody had been prepared for the mass exodus of desperate refugees fleeing from the Serbs into their nearest southern neighbours. In the beginning it had been a trickle of fifty or a hundred a day coming across – old men and women with bruised faces telling waiting reporters how they were dragged from their homes and beaten with rifles. Frightened families had recounted seeing neighbours and friends with their throats cut lying at the roadside as Serbian paramilitary gangs showed no mercy.

‘Come on boss, you’ve got a splash and spread to write.’

‘I’m here, I’m here,’ Rosie shook herself back from the dark reverie as Matt rapped on the window.

She pushed the door open and got out, gazing around at the quiet streets, the narrow roads, still strewn with rubble from bomb-blasted buildings. A military truck flying the Dutch flag came trundling up the road, and the soldiers seated in the back with the canvas pulled across like curtains on a stage, waved cheerily. One of them whistled, and Rosie smiled at them.

‘Come on. Let’s go.’ She slung her rucksack on her back
and dragged her hold-all out of the boot, then followed Adrian up to the hotel entrance.

*

The call from McGuire to tell her they’d arrested Raznatovic in Belgrade had come as no surprise. Mickey Kavanagh had tipped Rosie off about half an hour earlier, and it was then she’d made the decision they’d stop at the first place that looked reasonable so she could fire up her laptop and get started. She was glad of Mickey’s tip-off, because she was one step ahead by the time McGuire phoned, reeling off suggestions to her. This was boots and saddles time – McGuire had used his favourite phrase when he was rolling out a big story. He wanted every cough and spit.

In her earlier stories, they’d held off on any mention of Raznatovic and his background, because McGuire agreed with Rosie that they had that all to themselves. They’d do it when the time was right, when they could blast the whole story on the front page. Having the picture from Hoffman of Goran Boskovac and Tim Hayman was the icing on the cake. Nobody else would even have a sniff at that.

‘We’ll keep the story of your kidnapping till you get back, Rosie, and then we can milk it for all it’s worth. But right now, I want you to write chapter and verse of what we know about Raznatovic – everything about his early years, his part in the Bosnian massacre, and how he managed to dupe the authorities here and come in as a Bosnian refugee. Everything about the slaughterhouse and his life in Glasgow with the hoodlums. Right
up to his arrest in Belgrade … And how it was us who tracked him down,’ McGuire had said. ‘And the stuff about him working as a GP in London is brilliant. The Home Office will shit themselves over that!’

Now, in her hotel bedroom, Rosie read her copy for the final time, making sure there were no loose ends as she would be on the move by the morning, until they got to the Macedonian town to try to find Emir’s grandmother.

Rosie rubbed her face vigorously with both hands. She could do with a drink and a cigarette. She’d been smoking more in the last couple of weeks than she’d done in months, and vowed to cut it down to the occasional one with a drink when she got back home. She looked over the second story for the spread, which she’d written around the photograph of Boskovac and the minister.

McGuire had told her the story of Hoffman’s murder was on the wires and the foreign pages of the broadsheets, but it hadn’t made the main TV news in the UK. A German being bumped off in a hotel bedroom in Belgrade could be anything. But he couldn’t conceal his delight that the
Post
would be the only paper that could reveal the truth behind his murder. He said he’d get a decent tie looked out for the TV cameras when they came to interview him about the
Post’s
groundbreaking exclusive. This is what he lived for.