Zagreb Cowboy

by Alen Mattich

“I’d love to, but I’m an atheist. Good Communist upbringing.”

  Della Torre pulled the door shut and had turned the ignition key when a thought occurred to him. He slid the window forward.

  “You don’t happen to know anything about some Bosnians in a big Mercedes saloon with Greek plates?”

  “Might do. What colour is it?”

  “Blue. Cream interior. Smells straight out of the showroom. Driver’s called Besim.”

  “Sure,” Fresl said cagily. For once his smile had left his face. “Why, what do you want to know about it?”

  “Your car?”

  “Maybe I’ve got a share in it.”

  “Going to Munich?”

  “Vienna.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t. It decided to become a bit of landscaping near Samobor. Maybe God’s an atheist too.”

  Della Torre put the car in gear and pulled away from the garage, sounding as if he was in a sewing machine on wheels.

  IT HAD BEEN a long morning, and his brain was starting to dull. He was snapped back into alertness by the two marked police cars on either side of the one-way Avenue of the Yugoslavian National Army, about a hundred metres from his apartment.

  Someone was pulling out from the cobbled pavement between two plane trees by his front entrance. It appeared the driver had tried to pull into a parking spot but was now being made to reverse by an officious-looking pedestrian. Della Torre would have bet every last dinar in his pocket he was a plainclothes cop. The woman trying to park was having none of it. Even in those days of gloom and uncertainty, good parking spots in central Zagreb came at a premium. So there was an impasse and the usual chorus of car horns and waved fists as a jam built up on the street.

  The woman got half out of her car to remonstrate with the man on the pavement, who was holding his hands in front of him, palms towards her, miming a pushing motion. A truck driver tried to pull around her but misjudged the passing space he needed, effectively boxing the woman in. She’d have to pull forward to let the truck pass, but the cop on the pavement wasn’t letting her. Della Torre couldn’t help but feel this stupid farce was a metaphor for Yugoslavia, but he couldn’t quite decide who each of the three actors was playing.

  As he sat back, waiting for the situation to resolve itself, he started counting the blue Zastavas clustered in front of his building and on the pavement opposite. About six years back, the Zagreb police had bought a whole assembly line of blue Zastavas to use as unmarked cars. Now the first thing anyone thought on seeing a blue Zastava was “unmarked cop car.”

  Once traffic started moving, della Torre let it carry him along. He wasn’t chancing going back to his flat.

  He drove on at a leisurely speed, turned the corner, and passed a pair of marked cars, one on either side of the road. No one paid him any attention. He carried on, as calmly as he could.

  Of course, it could have been just a coincidence. Maybe someone had forgotten to pay a speeding ticket. After all, could Strumbić really have got out of the cellar and set the Zagreb police on him in a grand total of what, fourteen, fifteen hours? Then again, Strumbić was full of surprises.

  There was a time when della Torre would have been best off going straight to his office, where he’d have the protection of the secret police apparatus. In the old days, the UDBA would jealously guard its rights and those of its employees. Normal police couldn’t touch them. They wouldn’t have tried.

  Della Torre remembered a middle-ranking UDBA officer who’d got a tiny bit drunk one afternoon at a countryside inn not far out of town. He’d been drowning his sorrows over some domestic disaster and became obstreperous, eventually chasing out the rest of the clientele and smashing a couple of chairs. When the proprietor finally had had enough, he called the local police.

  It was bad luck for the cops that they were young and dumb farmers’ boys. They dealt with him as they always dealt with difficult drunks, and then, when he’d beaten his head against their knuckles long enough, they arrested him for assaulting an officer.

  It would have been an understatement to say they panicked when, on reaching into his wallet for the money to cover a fine and an additional gratuity for the call-out, they found the UDBA man’s official ID. One fled to a wine hut in the woods. The other two drove him to the nearest hospital and then knelt by his bedside, weeping and praying, until the man’s UDBA colleagues arrived.

  Those colleagues took the rural cops off for questioning, where the farm boys learned the answer to a question they’d never realized existed. Namely, the difference between amateur and professional assault.

  They served eight months in an UDBA prison, after which it was hard for them to find anything other than menial work, on account of the political black mark against their names. And much of the menial work they did find, they couldn’t do, because not all their bones had healed straight. It took the UDBA a fortnight to track down the cop who’d scarpered into the woods, whereupon he suffered an unfortunate but unspecified fatal accident.

  The irony was that the UDBA officer who’d started the whole fiasco was arrested even before he’d got out of his hospital bed. He’d long been under investigation for his part in an export fraud. He’d needed the money to keep his wife off his back. It was her nagging that had driven him to drink and to overstep even the UDBA’s relaxed approach to corruption.

  But times had changed. These days della Torre wasn’t so sure how much obeisance the police would give to the UDBA. He suspected not much. The regular police had become the Croatian government’s militia, while the UDBA were agents of the enemy federal state.

  And the men in front of his building clearly weren’t the UDBA. They were ordinary Zagreb cops.

  Della Torre drove to Irena’s. There too he saw a blue Zastava, parked on the corner of the narrow road that wound its way up the hill past her building. As he passed, he spotted a marked car further up the hill. Bottling operations in front of his place and his wife’s. Nice.

  Della Torre drove around for a while, gathering his thoughts. But it was like scooping sand with a rake. He stopped at a phone box and rang the hospital. It was a long shot, but sometimes Irena was at the desk writing up notes; if she wasn’t, there might be somebody to take a message.

  The phone rang for a long while. He hung up and tried again. It was the fourth go when somebody finally picked it up.

  “Yes,” said the exasperated female voice.

  “Could I speak to Irena della Torre?”

  “No.”

  “Can you get a message to her?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I can’t because I don’t know where is she. She not back from lunch yet.”

  “What do you mean she isn’t back from lunch yet? It’s halfway through the afternoon.”

  “You’re telling me. Maybe she gedding her hair done,” the woman said sardonically.

  Every morning, Irena did a fine caricature of an Albanian nurse in her department. “Doctor,” the nurse would say with an utterly deadpan expression, looking up from one of the fashion magazines she always had on hand, “you are young woman. Your hair looks awwwfoool. Ged it cut.”

  Maybe this was her.

  “Okay, well, thanks anyway,” della Torre said, hanging up.

  Irena was not in the habit of being late for work.

  He called her apartment. This time, the phone only rang twice.

  “Yes?” Irena sounded strained. There was a warning in her voice.

  “Mrs. della Torre?”

  “Doctor,” she said, not letting on she recognized his voice.

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken. I’m not a doctor,” he said, playing the game.

  “But I am.”

  “My apologies, Dr. della Torre, this is the pest exterminators. I understand you have problem w
ith vermin,” he said, putting on a rural accent.

  “You can say that again. This isn’t a good time to arrange an appointment, though.”

  “When would be good time to call back?” There was a long pause during which he could hear a muffled conversation in the background.

  “I’m a bit engaged for now. How about in forty-five minutes, but be prompt because I need to be at work by four o’clock. Otherwise you’ll have to call at lunch tomorrow.”

  “We’ll try to call back by four o’clock then, We’re the firm that work for the cathedral, by the way.”

  She hung up.

  Della Torre cooled his heels for a while, picking up a pastry from a café to occupy himself. He left half of it; the synthetic flavour reminded him that cakes had tasted better under Communism.

  Around twenty minutes before the agreed time, he ducked into a phone box not far from the cathedral, noted its number in his little notebook, and then went to another one on slightly higher ground, from which he could see the first phone box without much difficulty. They’d made this arrangement years before, in case of emergency. Working for the UDBA made della Torre always think in terms of contingencies.

  When he spotted her, he popped a coin into the slot and rang the number.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me. What’s going on?”

  She gave him the rundown with the same precision as when she wrote patient notes. Pithy and relevant.

  She’d come back from the hospital for lunch. It was late and a bit of a walk, but she liked to do it; it helped clear her head. And the food at the hospital canteen might be cheap, but it was also inedible.

  She knew there was something odd when she saw the man leaning against the wall opposite her building. On that side, the road was narrow, and there was no pavement, so it wasn’t the sort of place where anyone loitered.

  But she shrugged it off and went in. The door to the flat was shut but unlocked, which made her think della Torre was in. Instead she was confronted by three strange men, two looking so much like cops it was as if they were from central casting; the third looked like some German fantasy of an Übermensch.

  The Übermensch spoke, without bothering to introduce himself. “Where’s della Torre?”

  “You’re speaking to her,” she said.

  “Your husband.”

  “My ex-husband.”

  “I didn’t know you were divorced. It’s not in the files.”

  “We’re not.”

  “So he’s your husband,” said the Übermensch, who seemed to be running things.

  “Don’t tell me: you’re a marriage counsellor.”

  He ignored the comment. “Where’s della Torre?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has he been here?”

  “When? I’ve been at the hospital.”

  “Last night.”

  “He was here.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Sleeping, mostly.”

  “Why? I thought you said he was your ex-husband. Doesn’t he live in the apartment on the Avenue of the Yugoslavian National Army?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what was he doing here?”

  “Is there a law against a husband spending a night with his wife?”

  He regarded her as he might have done an unusually big moth in a museum exhibit. “Your neighbours reported noises coming from the balcony late last night.” He pointed to the building next door.

  “Oh, I see, so you’re here investigating whether there’s been a burglary. Well, if you let me have a look around, I can tell you if anything’s missing.”

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “I don’t know. I was late back from the hospital. He was here, smoking. On the balcony. Maybe the neighbours heard him exhaling.”

  “What were you doing at della Torre’s flat this morning?”

  “Who told you I was at my ex-husband’s flat this morning?”

  “Never mind. Why were you there?”

  “I went to pick up some of his things.”

  “Did he ask you to?”

  “No. He was asleep.”

  “What did you collect?”

  “Some clothes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the ones he was wearing smelled and he didn’t have any spares here.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He got up, and then I assume he went to work.”

  “Why do you assume? Aren’t you sure?”

  “I assume because I also assume that if he were at work, you wouldn’t be asking me where he was.”

  “What did you do when he left? Did you go to the hospital?”

  “No, I went to my office at the university.”

  “We’ll be able to verify that with the reception there, will we?”

  “No, because I used the back entrance. I usually use the back entrance when I come from this direction. Saves me having to walk all the way around.”

  “So there’s a key for the back door that you’ve got?”

  “No. The back door’s broken. It’s been broken since I was a student. You go down the basement around the plant works, and there it is. Would you like me to show you?”

  “And there’s nobody who can vouch for the fact that you went to your office?”

  “No,” she said.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “That’s where I keep most of my medical books. Look, you’re taking a very close interest in my morning. A closer interest than I took in it. You wouldn’t mind telling me why or what you want with my ex-husband?”

  The Übermensch signalled to one of the cops.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “It looks like a leather coat. It’s a very nice leather coat. Would you like fashion advice about what goes well with it?”

  “Is it your husband’s?”

  “I doubt it’s my ex-husband’s.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing, he can’t afford it. And it’s pretty clearly the wrong size, he’d look about as elegant in that as you would in a bustier.”

  “A what?”

  “Something uncomfortable that ladies wear to look shapely for their men.”

  “Oh.”

  “That was a joke, by the way.”

  “Why is the coat in the apartment?” he pressed.

  “I don’t know. Did you ask it?”

  “When do you expect to see della Torre next?”

  “Probably Friday. He usually comes over for supper on Friday evening. It’s sort of a tradition in my family. He likes it because it means he gets fed at least once a week.”

  “I thought you said he was your ex-husband.”

  “Even ex-husbands get hungry.”

  “So you don’t know who this coat belongs to?”

  “No. Listen, do you mind if I get something to eat? Then I need to go back to the hospital.”

  “You can fix yourself something to eat, but I think we’d like you here for a little longer.”

  She’d lost her appetite but forced down a boiled egg and a bit of bread. While she was eating, two of the men went to talk to the old widow downstairs, who hadn’t seen or heard anything since at least the mid-1970s.

  The men came back and started on Irena again.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Pick it up,” said the Übermensch.

  They listened intently to her part of the conversation. When she hung up, she asked how much longer they would be keeping her.

  “Only about another half-hour. But I’ll post one of our men here.”

  “He can stay in the stairwell. I’d rather nobody
made themselves at home,” she said.

  It wasn’t something she left room for debate on.

  “You told them I was there last night?” said della Torre, shocked.

  “Sure. But I also said it was nothing out of the ordinary. As far as they know, I don’t know anything. And it’s true; I don’t really know that much. It’s serious, isn’t it.”

  “There’s a decent chance they didn’t believe the pest control routine. Your line will be tapped anyway. Can you do me a little favour though?”

  “What?” Irena sounded worried. And that worried della Torre. She was the coolest person he knew.

  “Pack an overnight bag for the hospital tonight. Put the things in your locker. Pack it again with some more stuff tomorrow, but don’t overfill it. Don’t let anyone notice. Do it for a couple of days, until you’ve got enough of what you might need to take to London. Then, on Thursday or Friday, work the night shift. Go into the hospital, be there for about an hour, and then go. Don’t use the Slovene borders; there’s too much military and police activity since they had that independence vote. Go north up to Austria. It’s the long way around, but the Austrians will be friendlier than the Slovenes, and the guards on this side of the border will be less picky.”

  “I can’t just leave my patients.”

  “Darling, one way or another you will have to leave your patients. And let me tell you, you’ll be less useful to your colleagues sitting in a Zagreb police station than you will in a London hospital. At least that way you can find all of them jobs when they follow you out of the country. You’ve got some money. Have you got a visa for Britain?”

  “Yes, that’s been done for a couple of weeks now.”

  “Great. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Just do it. Send them all a postcard once you get there. And let my father know where you are so I can get in touch with you.”

  “Okay.” Irena often relied on the fact that, as a secret policeman, della Torre knew what he was talking about.

  He did, but not as well as she might have thought. He wasn’t one of the hard men like Messar. And from Irena’s description, it sounded like Messar was on his case.

  No one looked as much like a German hero of the Reich as Messar. Unlike Germans, though, Messar didn’t have a sentimental streak. Or their sense of humour. That they’d set Messar on him was a worry. As far as della Torre knew, Messar was incorruptible. He could afford to be; he had family money from just after the Second World War. A proud, upstanding Communist family. With property abroad. Even worse was that he seemed to be working closely with the Zagreb cops. Times really were changing.