Diary of a War Crime

by Simon McCleave

  Lucy signed the paperwork, marched Petrovic down to her car, and drove out of Peckham nick without a hitch. Thankfully, there had been no one around to ask her what she was doing.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Petrovic growled from the back.

  ‘Magical mystery tour,’ she answered sarcastically.

  Watching him squirm made her feel happy. She wanted him to suffer and to feel scared. She hated the very sight of him, and today was the day she would be able to get some sense of closure over what had happened to her father. A beautiful man who had joined the army through a sense of duty and to serve his country. A man who had gone to Bosnia to help innocent civilians escape a brutal, hideous war - but had never returned.

  ‘You’ll lose your job if any harm comes to me,’ Petrovic warned her.

  ‘I assure you there is no ‘if’ about it,’ she snapped at him.

  She watched Petrovic frown as he processed what she had said.

  ‘If you turn around now, you can hand me over to the appropriate people in your government and no one will be the wiser,’ he said. He was starting to sound scared.

  ‘I need to take you somewhere.’

  ‘Where? Where are you taking me?’ he thundered.

  I’m really getting under his skin, Lucy thought with delight.

  ‘We’re going to a little place in Brookwood. I want you to meet someone.’

  CHAPTER 34

  With a growing sense of unease, Ruth had trawled Peckham nick in her search for Lucy, but she was nowhere to be found. The word Brookwood scribbled on Lucy’s pad, the information about her father, and the photograph, indicated that she might be planning a trip to visit her father’s grave. There was nothing particularly unusual in that. However, Ruth’s instinct told her that there was more to it. All through the case, Lucy had been driven in her quest to find and capture Petrovic. Why? Was it just a sense that she was also getting justice for her father?

  As Ruth turned into the corridor to head back to the CID office, she saw Brooks coming the other way.

  ‘What are you doing in Ruth?’ he asked in a paternal way.

  ‘Have you seen Lucy, guv?’ she asked, unable to mask her anxiety.

  ‘An hour ago, maybe. Have you lost her?’ Brooks joked.

  ‘Where did you see her, guv?’

  Brooks frowned and then gestured. ‘Heading towards the back staircase. I assumed she was going to the canteen.’

  ‘Or the custody suite?’ Ruth said thinking out loud.

  ‘Possibly. Everything all right?’ Brooks asked looking puzzled.

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine, guv,’ Ruth said, registering that she didn’t want to say anything else until she knew what was going on.

  ‘Let me know when you find her,’ Brooks said.

  As soon as Brooks had disappeared out of sight, Ruth broke into a run and headed down the corridor that led to the back staircase of the station.

  She pounded down the stairs at speed, then made her way into the custody suite. It was quiet and empty, apart from Smithy who was leaning on the reception desk, sipping tea as he did some paperwork.

  ‘That was quick. I thought the traffic would have been murder,’ he said.

  What the bloody hell is he talking about?

  ‘What traffic?’ Ruth said, trying to keep her breath steady.

  ‘Here to Wandsworth and back. It’s always bad,’ Smithy said with a smile as he glanced down at his watch. ‘Actually, how the bloody hell did you travel - by helicopter?’

  ‘Smithy, what are you talking about?’ Ruth asked, her stomach starting to clench with nerves.

  ‘Lucy came down here about an hour ago. She signed out your prisoner, the Serbian chap. She said you and her were taking him over to Wandsworth Prison,’ he said, and then pointed to the transfer sheets. ‘She signed the paperwork.’

  Oh shit! This is not good.

  ‘Oh right. I didn’t go. She took another officer,’ Ruth said calmy, trying to cover her total panic. ‘Sorry about the confusion.’

  ‘Yeah, I was gonna say,’ he laughed. ‘You looking for someone down here?’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Just having one of those days,’ she answered with a forced smile.

  ‘Rumour has it you and Luce have had one of those weeks,’ Smithy said with a knowing raise of his eyebrow.

  ‘You could say that,’ Ruth said, but her mind was already on what the hell Lucy was doing with Petrovic. She’d had a sinking feeling since starting to put together everything she had found out about Lucy’s father.

  I’ve got a horrible feeling about this.

  For a moment, she wondered where Lucy might be heading with Petrovic. Then it came to her. It made perfect sense.

  Brookwood.

  HAVING STOPPED AT A shop to pick up a bottle of Navy rum, which had been her father’s favourite drink, Lucy slowed the car. Then she saw a sign at the side of the road – Brookwood Military Cemetery and Memorial.

  ‘What is this place?’ Petrovic asked as they drove slowly into the entrance.

  ‘Shut up!’ Lucy yelled as she took a swig of the rum. If she was going to do this, then she needed some Dutch courage.

  Spotting the car park, she drove to the furthest end where there were virtually no cars parked. She turned off the ignition and sat pensively for a moment. The alcohol had made her head fuzzy, but it had also taken the edge off her nerves.

  Glancing in the rear-view mirror again at Petrovic, her anger and fury grew.

  Fuck you and the misery you inflicted on all those innocent people. You robbed me of my dad. You deserve to die. And this is the perfect place, she thought to herself.

  ‘This is a military cemetery,’ Petrovic said with a puzzled look on his face.

  ‘I told you to shut up!’ Lucy bellowed as she took another mouthful of the rum.

  ‘You do know that you don’t have what it takes to kill me,’ Petrovic sneered at her from the back seat.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Lucy snarled, aware that her words were now a little slurred.

  Better stop drinking or I’m going to mess this up, she thought to herself. It was a question of balance. Drink enough to have the balls to kill Petrovic but not so much that you’re incapacitated.

  Lucy reached across to the glove compartment, and took out the six-inch kitchen knife she had brought from home. The metal handle was cold against her palm. She then grabbed the bottle of rum and started to get out of the car.

  ‘You’re a little, drunken whore. And you don’t have the guts to use that,’ Petrovic scoffed.

  Lucy turned and glared at him for a moment. She felt no fear as she met his eyes. ‘If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to cut out your fucking tongue.’

  She saw Petrovic react.

  He’s not sure if I’ve completely lost the plot or not. He looks scared.

  Opening the back door, Lucy glanced around the car park. The place was deserted now.

  Good. Let’s get this done.

  ‘Get out!’ Lucy barked.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Petrovic said giving her a scornful look.

  Lucy gestured with the knife. ‘I said get out!’

  Petrovic smirked at her. ‘I don’t think so.’

  With a quick movement, Lucy jabbed the knife into the flesh of his left thigh. She felt the blade penetrate about two inches before she pulled it out.

  Petrovic yelled with pain. ‘My God!’

  ‘Get out of the car,’ Lucy said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Very. So, for the last time – get ... out ... of ... the ... car.’

  Petrovic gasped with the pain and then looked at her.

  Lucy raised her arm as if to stab him again.

  ‘All right! All right!’ he groaned as he manoeuvred out of the car and stood up.

  Lucy went behind him and pushed him in the back. ‘Come on.’

  Petrovic stumbled and then began to limp forward towards the path that led to the graveyard.


  As they turned the corner, Lucy saw the huge stone plinth with the words Their Name Liveth Forevermore carved into it. It had been over two years since she had been to her father’s grave. She found it too painful.

  Beyond that were perfectly symmetrical rows of white gravestones of soldiers that had died in both World Wars, Korea, Ireland, The Gulf and of course, Bosnia.

  Lucy remembered the emotion she had felt at her father’s military funeral when she had first seen the endless lines of graves.

  ‘You realise that I am no different to the men that are buried here?’ Petrovic said.

  Lucy took another swig of the rum. She knew that in the next ten minutes she was going to have to murder Petrovic.

  ‘I was a soldier in a war. No different to these men.’

  How dare he say that!

  ‘You are nothing like these men,’ Lucy snarled as she shoved him forward again.

  ‘You are not naïve enough to think that the British army doesn’t commit atrocities, are you? In Ireland? In Kenya against the Mau Mau?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘The Germans did not invent concentration camps. It was the British army in the Boer War.’

  Lucy wasn’t listening anymore. She was scouring the graves for the place where her father rested.

  As if on cue, clouds moved away from the sun, and bright shafts of light descended on the tended lawns of the cemetery.

  And then she saw it.

  A white grave in the sunlight, no different to the 8,000 others in lines across the cemetery.

  Sergeant Mark Henry, 4th Regiment Royal Artillery

  1st October 1950 – 19th February 1993

  Her father’s neat, well-tended grave glowed in the sunshine. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission made sure all British soldiers’ graves were well maintained.

  ‘Sit down,’ Lucy snapped as she kicked Petrovic in the leg.

  ‘This is your father?’ he asked as he tried his best to sit on the grass a few feet from the grave.

  ‘Yes. This is who I brought you to meet today.’ Lucy took another swig of the rum and felt it burn the back of her throat.

  ‘He died in Bosnia?’

  ‘You killed him,’ Lucy said, her words slurring.

  ‘No. I never killed anyone from the British army. Or from the UN Peacekeeping force,’ Petrovic said shaking his head. ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘Look at the date,’ Lucy snarled at him.

  ‘Okay. I don’t know what that date means. Except it was the day your father was killed.’

  Tears started to roll down Lucy’s face. ‘On that day, you watched as a British Army troop carrier swerved to avoid a shell on the road to Kula. Then it got stuck on the road. You grabbed a high-powered rifle and fired bullet after bullet. Bullet after bullet ... One of them hit my father and killed him.’

  ‘No ...’ Petrovic said, lost in thought.

  ‘You murdered him,’ Lucy sobbed.

  ‘That was him?’ Petrovic whispered.

  Lucy looked at him. He hadn’t even denied it.

  ‘I want you to apologise to him. Here and now,’ Lucy said moving towards Petrovic with the knife. ‘And then I’m going to kill you.’

  HAMMERING DOWN THE A3 out of London, Ruth knew she needed to get to Lucy before she did something that would ruin her life forever. In the few years that they had worked together, Ruth had always seen Lucy as a little hot-headed at times – but nothing more than that. And nothing that would suggest she had the capacity for what Ruth feared she was about to do.

  Trying to piece everything together, Ruth watched as the traffic parted for ‘the blues and twos’ that she had activated about ten minutes earlier. Time was of the essence.

  However, the question did strike Ruth as she weaved in and out of the traffic. Why was Lucy’s fury vented so personally on Simo Petrovic? Was it that he symbolised everything that was brutal and malevolent about the Bosnian War? There was no doubt that Petrovic was an evil monster capable of inflicting terrible cruelty on the Muslim population of Serbia. If Ruth ever felt that the death penalty was justified in the modern justice system, which she didn’t, it would be for a man like Petrovic.

  She looked back on Lucy’s behaviour while they had been investigating Hamzar Mujic’s murder and trying to track down Petrovic. It had seemed personal to Lucy all the way along. And taking Petrovic out of police custody and going to the military cemetery where her father was buried seemed incredibly personal.

  Then, in that moment, the penny dropped.

  Ruth remembered the passage from Hamzar Mujic’s diary.

  Petrovic hated the British and would take delight in ordering the road to Kula to be shelled. Once I saw one of the British vehicles swerve a shell and get stuck in the mud. Petrovic grabbed a high-powered rifle and began to shoot at the stationary British vehicle. He must have fired around twenty rounds. Later, it was reported on the radio that a British soldier had been killed in that vehicle. Petrovic spent the next week bragging about what a great marksman he was and how he had murdered a British dog.

  Was that it? Was Lucy’s father the British soldier that Petrovic had shot that day and bragged about? It had to be. It explained everything. Lucy’s unwillingness to pass the investigation over to anyone else. Her overwhelming need to find Petrovic at all costs. Then taking him out of custody, risking her own career, to take the man she knew murdered her father to his grave. It also didn’t take much for Ruth to realise what Lucy intended to do with Petrovic at the cemetery.

  No one knew that Ruth was heading for Brookwood. No one could know. Lucy would lose her job just for taking Petrovic on their little detour. However, if she could get to Lucy in time to stop her, then maybe they could cover her tracks.

  As the car came screaming off the A3, Ruth picked up signs to Brookwood. If Lucy was convicted of manslaughter, her career would be over and she would spend a decade in prison. How could she think that was worth it to avenge her own father?

  A sign at the side of the road – Brookwood Military Cemetery and Memorial.

  The car tyres squealing on the road’s surface. Ruth took the bend and thundered into the cemetery car park. Glancing left, she saw Lucy’s car parked up.

  They’re here!

  Ruth threw open the door. Running across the gravel, she glanced around. Nothing.

  A sign pointed to the memorial and graveyard. Sprinting left, she came out by a large plinth. Beyond that, endless lines of white graves that gleamed in the spring sunshine - the final resting place of fallen British soldiers.

  Then she saw them in the distance.

  The figure of a man sitting on the ground beside a grave. A woman standing nearby. It was Lucy.

  Oh God what is she doing? At least it looks like he’s still alive, she thought.

  She ran towards them, and saw Lucy look over at her and squint.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lucy mumbled. Her voice was slurred.

  God, she is seriously drunk.

  Petrovic looked up from where he was sitting. ‘Can you please talk some sense into her?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Lucy said as she stumbled towards him, grabbed him by the hair, and placed the knife across his throat. ‘Me and my dad have had a little drink to celebrate this little meeting.’

  Ruth stepped forward. She could see that the knife was beginning to cut Petrovic’s skin.

  ‘I know why you’re doing this,’ Ruth said gently.

  ‘No. No, you don’t,’ Lucy said, shaking her head emotionally.

  ‘I remembered the entry in Mujic’s diary. The British vehicle on the road to Kula ... the soldier that was killed inside ...’ Ruth said as she looked at the name on the grave, ‘... I know it was your father.’

  Lucy pushed the knife harder against Petrovic’s neck. The skin began to split, and blood tricked down his neck. ‘He murdered him. And then he laughed and bragged about it.’

  ‘If you kill him, you’ll lose everything,’ Ruth said looking directly
into Lucy’s glassy eyes.

  She’s drunk too much to be logical. This is not good.

  Lucy sobbed quietly as she pulled Petrovic’s head back to fully expose his neck. ‘If I kill him I’ll be able to sleep in peace, and so will my dad.’

  Oh my God. She’s going to kill him!

  ‘Lucy, please,’ Ruth begged. ‘I didn’t know your dad, but I can’t believe that he would have wanted you to spend your life in prison for doing this.’

  Ruth knew she needed to find a different tack.

  ‘Lucy!’ Ruth shouted angrily. ‘I don’t want to have to visit you in prison. Neither does your mum or your sister. It will destroy them both. Do you want to do that to them? It’s bloody selfish!’

  Ruth’s anger and change of tack seemed to work.

  Lucy slowly relaxed the pressure on the knife.

  ‘Why don’t you give that to me, eh?’ Ruth said quietly as she walked towards her.

  ‘No. I need to kill him.’

  ‘No, you don’t. He needs to stand trial and spend the rest of his life in a horrible prison cell. Don’t you get it? Every day, for years, in a single cell. That’s worse than this.’ Ruth said, pleading to her logic.

  ‘Is it?’ Lucy asked, her voice breaking with emotion.

  ‘Yes, Lucy. It is worse. Much worse. I promise you. Please ...’

  Taking the knife away from Petrovic’s neck, Lucy’s whole body began to shake as she sobbed uncontrollably. She took two steps towards Ruth, gave her the knife, and wrapped her arms around her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Lucy whispered through her tears.

  Ruth held her tightly for a few seconds, watching as Petrovic sat forward with a groan, his eyes closed.

  ‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ Ruth said. ‘But I need you to be my partner, not stuck in Holloway into the next millennium.’

  Lucy moved back and looked at her through glazed eyes. ‘Thank you. What do we do now?’

  Ruth gestured to Petrovic. ‘We need to get him to Wandsworth Prison.’

  Lucy nodded and then looked down at her father’s grave.

  ‘Why don’t I give you a minute here with your dad,’ Ruth said quietly. ‘We’ll be over there.’