The Eyewitness (34 page)

“Goncharov's a gangster. He tried to kill me,” said Solomon.

“Besides, even if we weren't here, it'd still happen.” He looked at Sasha.

“Right?”

“Right,” agreed Sasha.

“That's all right, then,” Dragan said easily.

“Sorry about the interruption.”

Tomislav and Otto took the Range Rover, and Dragan sat in the back of the Toyota with Mirko and Tafik in the front. It was just after six o'clock in the evening and the sky was darkening. They drove back on to the main road and headed north for a couple of minutes, then turned left. They slowed to a little over walking pace as the road was heavily pot-holed. They passed a metal-fenced enclave of building equipment and a yard filled with fibre glass septic tanks. Soon they reached a three-storey house with a blue-tiled roof. In front a large car park held a dozen or so vehicles. It was surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence, and a small concrete guardhouse stood at the entrance. Two security guards waited by it, in dark blue bomber jackets and peaked caps.

Mirko brought the Toyota to a halt and twisted in his seat.

“That's the place,” he said, in Serbo-Croatian.

“Have you been before?” asked Dragan.

Mirko shook his head.

“Seen one, seen them all,” he said. They watched as Tomislav spoke to the security guards, then drove into the car park. He and Otto climbed out of the Range Rover, knocked on the front door of the building and went in.

“You can walk in now,” said Mirko.

“We'll be in after about fifteen minutes. Don't look at us, don't talk to us. There are two sorts of girls in there. There's the dancers, they take customers up to the second floor. Half an hour or an hour. Then there are girls on the top floor. They don't come down.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dragan.

“They're just hookers. They don't dance, they don't drink with customers, they just screw. You tell one of the waiters what you want, pay and go up. If the girl isn't dancing, she could be upstairs.”

“Are they cheaper?”

“Depends,” said Mirko.

“On what?”

“On what you want to do with them. Look, find out for yourself, I don't have time to hold your hand.”

Dragan climbed out and headed towards the building. The windows on the ground floor were of darkened glass so he couldn't see in. On the first floor there were blinds, and on the second curtains were drawn. He nodded at the two security guards but they barely acknowledged his presence. Most of the vehicles had been parked near the entrance, including the Range Rover. There were two top-of-the-range Mercedes and several new four-wheel-drives but most were commercial vehicles, trucks and vans. Dragan rapped on the door, which opened almost immediately. A well-muscled man in a grey T-shirt and tight black trousers stepped aside to let him in. He had a thick gold chain around his neck and another round his right wrist.

Music was playing, a rock song Dragan recognised only vaguely. There were three podiums, each with four girls dancing around silver poles. They were all young, barely out of their teens. More girls were sitting on sofas scattered around the smoky room, and others on a line of wooden booths by the windows. In all there must have been thirty girls in the room. Those who weren't dancing were smoking, as were most of the customers.

Dragan walked slowly to an empty sofa and sat down. A teenage waiter in a black polo-neck sweater and black jeans walked over to him and he ordered a beer. He lit a cigarette and glanced around the room. Tomislav and Otto were in one of the booths with two dyed-blonde girls.

Three men in oil-stained overalls were sitting on stools by a bar, laughing and knocking back tumblers of slivovitz. Another half-dozen rough-looking men in baggy pullovers were sitting at one of the podiums, gazing at the dancing girls.

There was a door to the left of the bar and as his beer arrived a dancer and her customer came through it. The girl went to sit in one of the booths and cadged a cigarette from one of her friends while the man walked outside, adjusting the crotch of his stained work jeans.

“Do you want a girl?” asked the waiter.

“That's why I'm here,” said Dragan.

The waiter went over to a group of dancers. Seconds later four were lined up opposite him, pouting sexily and thrusting out their breasts. They all wore sheer robes in pastel colours over bikinis. Nicole wasn't among them. Nor was she dancing.

Dragan pointed lazily at two.

“Bring them drinks,” he told the waiter. The girls he'd selected giggled and slid on to the sofa at either side of him.

Dragan chatted to his girls. They were Latvian and had been in Bosnia for three months a month in Sarajevo and two months in Arizona. They spoke reasonable English and said they wanted to work in London. Or Rome. Or Zurich. His eyes scanned the room as he talked. Three men were sitting at a table near the bar drinking Cokes and looked as if they might be security. They had expensive leather jackets and whenever they leaned forward he could see the telltale bulge of a concealed weapon.

The girls said they were drinking vodka and ice but the speed at which they knocked them back suggested it was only water. He lit a cigarette and offered the packet to them. They were amazed at his ability to light a match with his thumbnail, and asked him to repeat the trick several times. They tried themselves but failed and accused him of trickery. He held out his hands and let them inspect his fingernails. It was all technique, he said, and years of practice.

Like pole-dancing, one of the girls put it, and they all laughed.

Dragan finished his beer and ordered another. Two men walked in from the hallway, one telling a dirty joke in guttural Serbo-Croatian: Mirko and Tafik. They went over to sit by one of the podiums.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” asked one of Dragan's girls. She'd said her name was Angelica and that she used to work in a shoe factory. He sipped his beer. During the fifteen minutes he'd been sitting in the bar, half a dozen dancers had come through the door with customers and four had gone upstairs. There was still no sign of Nicole. She must be upstairs on the second floor, but if he asked for her, he'd draw attention to himself. Angelica was rubbing his thigh and nibbling his ear, and Dragan knew that the only way through the door by the bar was with a girl. But if he went upstairs with one girl, he'd have to do something with her.

Otto and Tomislav walked by his sofa. Tomislav had his hand on one girl's backside while Otto's arm was round another's shoulder. They stopped at the bar, handed money to the barman, went through the door and up the stairs.

“I can do everything,” whispered Angelica.

“Anything you want.”

Jovanovic patted her knee.

“Okay, let's go,” he said.

“One hour?” she said hopefully.

“Half,” said Dragan.

“What about me?” asked the other girl. He couldn't even remember her name.

“One is enough for me,” he said. She flounced away to sit down at a booth with two of her colleagues.

Dragan and Angelica went over to the bar, where he gave the barman fifty konvertible marks. The barman gave Angelica a key attached to a block of wood on which was written a number. She took Dragan by the hand and led him through the door and upstairs.

The landing was covered with a threadbare carpet that had worn through in places. Bundles of dried flowers and grass had been tied to hooks on the wall, and cobwebbed glass lampshades hung from the ceiling.

Angelica unlocked a door and ushered Dragan into a small room with a single bed. She switched on the light, a bare, low-wattage bulb. The sheet on the bed had once been white but was now grey and stained. There was a small washbasin in a corner with a single dripping tap, and a carrier-bag hanging on the bed head Each wall had a travel poster tacked to it: Turkey, Greece, Holland, Switzerland.

Angelica slipped off her robe. She reached for Dragan's jacket, but he stopped her and told her to take off her bikini. She did as he asked.

Then he told her to sit on the bed and stood in front of her.

“Aren't you going to take off your clothes?” she asked.

He shook his head. She smiled up at him and unzipped his trousers.

“Condom?” asked Dragan.

“You want one? For a blow-job?”

“Sure.” He knew that even oral sex carried with it the risk of disease, especially from a girl who worked in a place like Arizona. God alone knew how many men she serviced in a day and what she did for them.

She reached over to the carrier-bag, pulled out a condom and ripped open the packet with her teeth. She slipped the condom on to him and went to work with her mouth.

Dragan stared at the poster of Switzerland. Snow-covered mountains. A skiing chalet. A happy couple in brightly coloured jackets toasting each other with huge glasses of wine. He wondered if Angelica would ever get there, or if she'd spent the rest of her working life servicing men in an Arizonan brothel until she had nothing left to offer and was sent back to the shoe factory in Latvia.

Her head bobbed back and forth, her eyes closed. She stroked his thighs with her hands. He closed his eyes and concentrated. It was over in seconds. He grunted and pulled back.

Angelica took off the condom. He zipped up his pants and headed for the door.

“Do you want to make love?” asked the girl.

“I have to go,” Dragan replied, slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind him. He moved to the stairs, checked that no one was around and hurried to the second floor. He stopped on the landing and looked around. He was still alone.

He moved along a corridor, the floor bare concrete. There were doors on either side. Heavy wooden doors with rugged metal bolts, top and bottom. The bolts on the first door to the left were undone and when he pressed his ear against it he heard grunts and cursing from inside. The opposite door was bolted, which he assumed meant that the girl wasn't working. He shot the two bolts and pushed open the door.

The room was dark, the only illumination coming from a small night light He stepped into the room and shut the door. The room stank of bleach and stale perspiration.

A girl was sitting on the bed, her head down, her hands in her lap. She had short, frizzy black hair and she was dumpy, almost fat. Definitely not Nicole. Without looking at him she swung her legs on to the bed and lay back. She was wearing a short, grubby nightdress and she pulled it up over her thighs. She opened her legs and draped an arm over her eyes.

Dragan looked around the room. A door on the right led to a cramped shower room. On the floor there was a battered metal plate with some sort of stew on it and a hunk of bread. A cockroach scuttled off it and ran under the bed. Planks were nailed across the window, and behind them were curtains.

Dragan went out. The next door wasn't bolted, and grunts floated out from inside. The door opposite was bolted. Dragan slid back the bolts and opened it. A girl was curled up on her bed, crying softly and whispering, “Mama, Mama.” She was wearing a red T-shirt with a Nike tick across the back. Dragan couldn't see her face, but she was a big girl with a mane of red hair. Not Nicole. He closed the door.

The next two doors on either side were unbolted, the girls occupied with customers. Inside one room the girl was being slapped, hard, but she made no sound. Part of Dragan wanted to kick open the door and beat the hell out of the bully, but he knew it was impossible. He could do nothing but move silently along the landing to the next door, trying to blot out the sounds of the slapping.

The next two doors he came to were bolted. He slid back the bolts of the door to his left and peered into the room. A girl was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, her arms folded across her abdomen. She was breathing heavily as if she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open. There was a lamp on the floor by the bed with a single red bulb, and a chain ran from her left hand to the headboard. He pushed the door and the girl turned to look at him. Her face was blank, her eyes without expression, but Dragan knew she was Nicole.

“What are you doing?” asked a harsh Bosnian voice.

He pulled the door closed and turned to face a tall man with scarred cheeks and neck. His right eye was a milky white and half of his right ear was missing. He was wearing a leather jacket, and Dragan recognised him as one of the three who had been sitting by the bar.

Dragan didn't smile, but he didn't show any hostility either. He stared at the man impassively.

“Checking the merchandise,” he said.

“You do that downstairs,” said the man.

“I was told that the girls up here were a bit special,” he said.

The man's eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?”

“That it was okay to be rough with them. That they wouldn't complain.”

“Is that what you want? To be rough?” The man grinned cruelly.

“That one will let you do anything to her, she's doped up to the eyeballs.”

“What's her name?”

The man snorted contemptuously, “They don't have names up here,” he said.

“Just the numbers on the door.”

Dragan looked at the door he was still holding open. Thirty-eight.

“If you want to play with the merchandise, you have to pay downstairs.”

Dragan shut the door.

“I can do anything with her?”

“They complain for the first day or two, then they realise it's better not to say anything. Don't worry, you'll enjoy yourself. And the amount of ecstasy we give her, she'll probably enjoy it, too.”

Dragan walked away. When he got back to the bar, Angelica was talking to one of the barmen.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“I needed the bathroom.”

“How was she?” the barman asked in Bosnian, nodding at Angelica.

“Excellent,” replied Dragan, with a wink.

“Best blow-job I've had in years.”

As he turned, he almost bumped into a man with a huge beer gut. He grunted an apology, but the man pushed him aside and walked past him. He had a small, flattened nose with large nostrils and bloodless lips. Goncharov. Walking close behind him were two other men, as big as Goncharov but well muscled rather than fat. One glared at Dragan who raised his hands and smiled amiably. All three went through the door and upstairs.

Mirko and Tafik were still sitting at the podium, eyeing up two blonde girls who were dancing topless. Mirko was drinking beer from a bottle. He wiped his mouth as Dragan sat down next to him.

“Did you see him?” whispered Dragan, out of the side of his mouth.

Mirko nodded and turned his back to talk to Tafik. Dragan ordered a beer and swivelled on his bar stool.

“I've found the girl,” he murmured to Mirko's back, and smiled as the Croat stiffened.

The sky had darkened and Bruno had brought two oil lamps into the back room along with a plate of thickly cut cheese sandwiches and half a dozen large bottles of Heineken. While Rikki, Solomon and Sasha helped themselves to food and beer, he nailed a white board to one of the walls. There was a tray at the bottom of the board with three marker-pens, blue, black and red.

Solomon was on his second sandwich when he heard a car pull up outside. Rikki and Sasha pulled out handguns and hurried to the door, but returned a few seconds later followed by Dragan, Mirko and Tafik.

“They're in there now,” said Mirko, reaching for a bottle of Heineken.

“Goncharov and two heavies.”

“They look like the guys you described,” said Dragan to Solomon.

“Hard bastards.”

Sasha and Rikki put their guns down on the table. Tafik helped himself to a beer and a sandwich and sat down heavily.

“The girl's there, too,” said Dragan.

“You're sure?” asked Solomon.

Dragan flashed him a withering look.

“Second floor, chained to abed.”

“Chained?”

“They do that, sometimes,” said Sasha, 'if the girl's being difficult."

“She's drugged, too.”

Sasha sat down and took out a packet of cigars. As he bit off the end and spat it away, Dragan leaned over and struck a match with his thumbnail. Sasha took a light and nodded his thanks.

“Where are Otto and Tomislav?” Sasha asked.

“They went upstairs with girls,” said Dragan.

“I think they're getting their money's worth.”

“They won't be long,” said Tafik.

“Let's get started,” said Sasha. He stood up, picked up the black marker-pen and handed it to Mirko.

Mirko sketched a ground-plan of the brothel on the left-hand side of the white board marking in all the doors, windows and internal walls. He drew in the podiums, the booths and the sofas. It was a professional job, drawn to scale from memory. Next to it he sketched out the first floor, showing the location of the stairs and the doors to the bedrooms.

Then Sasha motioned at Dragan, who went to the white board took a pen and drew a plan of the second floor. He put in the doors leading to the bedroom, and wrote '38' next to one.

“This is where the girl is,” he said.

“The windows to all these bedrooms have been boarded up, and I only saw one staircase.”

He put down the pen and sat down.

They all heard the Toyota drive up. Sasha nodded at Rikki, who picked up his gun and went out. He returned with Otto and Tomislav.

Otto went straight to the white board and studied it intently.

“That's good enough,” he said.

“What's the plan?”

Sasha picked up the red marker-pen and went to the white board Solomon looked anxiously at Dragan, who winked at him.

He wished he felt half as confident as his friend seemed. The hardest part was yet to come.

Solomon gunned the engine and Sasha grinned across at him.

“See? You can handle it just fine,” he said, and lit a small cigar. He gestured with it.

“Do you want one?”

“I'll stick with Marlboro,” Solomon replied. He gunned the engine again. When Sasha had suggested he drive one of the cars, Solomon had pointed out that his cast ruled out any Formula One antics. But Sasha had said that the Range Rover was an automatic and that there was plenty of room in the foot well for the cast. He'd been right: with the front seat right back Solomon had no trouble handling the vehicle.

Sasha had wanted Dragan to drive the Toyota, which had led to a short but fiery argument: Dragan had said he wanted to go inside with the Croats but Sasha had insisted that he was an unknown quantity and that he'd be a liability. He had eventually been forced to accept Sasha's argument and was sitting at the wheel of the Toyota, still fuming. Rikki was sitting in the front passenger seat with Otto and Tomislav in the back. Mirko and Tafik were sitting behind Sasha and Solomon in the Range Rover, giving their handguns a last check.

“Right, let's go,” said Sasha. He waved at Dragan, who switched on the Toyota's headlights and drove towards the main road.

Solomon waited a full minute, then drove after him. Rikki said something in Albanian to Sasha, who laughed.

“What?” asked Solomon, sensing that it was about him.

“He says you drive like a woman,” said Sasha.

“An old woman.”

“You said they had to get there first,” said Solomon.

“I'm giving them plenty of room. And Rikki drives like a grandmother.”

Sasha laughed again and told Solomon he was over-sensitive. Maybe he was right, thought Solomon, but he reckoned that sitting in a car with an Albanian pimp, his bodyguard and two heavily armed Croatian thugs on the way to a shoot-out in a Bosnian brothel would make anyone nervous.

The Croats had field-stripped four machine pistols and loaded a dozen magazines as Solomon and Dragan had watched. Three of the guns were now in a black holdall at Sasha's feet. Rikki had taken the fourth with him in the Range Rover.

The Croats were wearing nylon shoulder holsters under their jackets, as was Sasha, and all were carrying large handguns. The Croats had automatics while Sasha had a revolver. Dragan had asked why he wasn't given a weapon: Sasha had told him that they were for professionals and that he was just along for the ride.

Solomon turned down the track that led to the brothel, the beams of the Range Rover carving two tunnels of light in the night sky. Most of the shacks had closed for the day although a few had stayed open, illuminated with oil lamps. As he drove by he saw shopkeepers sitting inside them, wrapped up in thick jackets and wool hats, talking animatedly and drinking whisky from the bottle.

Ahead, he spotted the Toyota parking outside the brothel. There were more than two dozen cars in the car park now, a mix of battered commercial vehicles and expensive luxury cars. Otto and Tomislav climbed out and headed for the main entrance while Rikki and Dragan remained in the vehicle, smoking cigarettes.

Solomon stopped at the guardhouse. The evening guards were young and fit, but they were more interested in watching a football match on a small portable television than in checking the occupants of the Range Rover. Solomon decided they were there primarily to watch over the vehicles in the car park rather than to inspect visitors.

One raised the red and white painted pole that acted as a barrier, and waved the Range Rover through. As he drove in, Solomon noticed two shotguns leaning against the portable television.

“It's going to be okay, Jack,” said Sasha.

“I'm fine,” said Solomon.

“You're breathing like a train.”

“Didn't you see the shotguns?”

Sasha smiled.

“They won't hear a thing out here,” he said. He patted the holdall at his feet.

“And even if they did, one look at these and they'll head for the hills. Shotguns are for show, beyond fifty feet or so they're useless.”

Solomon parked well away from the Toyota, on the other side of the entrance to the building. He wasn't sure whether Sasha was being honest about the shotguns. He'd seen clay-pigeon shooting on television, and the participants hadn't had any problem blowing small discs out of the sky at distances of well over fifty feet.

Mirko and Tafik got out of the Range Rover, adjusted their jackets, and walked to the front door. Mirko knocked and a few seconds later they disappeared inside.

Sasha put his mobile phone on the dashboard, took a long drag on his cigar and settled back in his seat. He looked so calm, thought Solomon. Serene, almost.

Otto reached for his beer, and drank half. Tomislav was looking up at a big-breasted Belarussian who was licking her upper lip suggestively and making wide eyes at him. Otto slapped him on the back and slid off his stool.

“See you later,” he said.

Tomislav nodded.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said. He took out his mobile phone and put it next to his beer.

Otto went over to the bar and gestured at one of the barmen, a man in his forties with grey hair and a jet black moustache, who leaned over to hear him above the music blaring from the speakers.

“Friend of mine says there's a girl upstairs that I can, you know, be a bit rough with,” said Otto.

Goncharov was sitting at a table, talking to a thin man with a bad eye and a mutilated ear. The Russian's two bodyguards were sitting at another table drinking Black Label whisky with two of the brothel's security men. Otto turned his back on them.

The barman leered suggestively at him.

“Pay enough, you can get as rough as you want with any of them,” he said.

“Just don't kill them.” He grinned.

“You kill her, you pay more, right?”

“He said she was in thirty-eight. Is she still here?”

“She ain't going anywhere,” said the grey-haired barman.

“She's popular. Just turned nineteen. You can give it to her any way you want.”

“My friend said a hundred for the hour.” Otto handed the barman the money.

The barman nodded at the door.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said.

“Try not to mark her. And the boss doesn't like blood. She bleeds, you pay more.”

Otto went through the door, the barman's guffaws echoing behind him. He went up the stairs quickly and found room thirty-eight. He unbolted the door and went inside. The girl was lying on her side, her hair across her face. Otto went to the bed and brushed away her hair so that he could get a good look at her features. It was Nicole.