Zagreb Cowboy

by Alen Mattich

  “Go ahead. You’ll be doing me a favour,” he said, looking towards the kitchen. Maybe he was being harsh. She had shut up for a change. And it smelled like she was making him a strudel.

  Fair or not, it stymied the caller for a moment.

  “You’ll be next,” he finally said.

  “Way I hear it, if you’re the planks I think you are, you’ve got a peashooter. You’d do more damage driving me into a tree. That fucking car was worth twice what you want from me.”

  He shouldn’t have lost control. The UDBA were listening. He knew they were monitoring his phone, his mail, and all his contacts. He couldn’t pick his nose without somebody checking his finger. That Nazi bastard Messar had somehow managed to get the Zagreb cops to fetch his slippers when he whistled.

  Strumbić should have pretended not to know what they were talking about. But he couldn’t help it. These idiot Bosnians had been calling him every day for the past week. How’d they get his number anyway? Didn’t matter.

  Good thing Mrs. Strumbić didn’t pay too much heed to people demanding money. As far as she was concerned, bills were paid only by people without the imagination to avoid them. She’d have shouted them down.

  He should have kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want the UDBA on his case any more than they already were. As it was they were treating him like he was some sort of suspect. Talk about victimizing the victim.

  He couldn’t help it, though. Being at home, being watched from all corners, being nagged constantly about fixing this or not drinking too much or not smoking on the john or how at his age her father had already become a police superintendent rubbed his fuse down to a frayed stub.

  Worst of all, he barely got a chance to sneak out. He had to find some way of seeing Renata. His leg was well enough that he needed a bit of the other kind of relief. He’d sent round one of his squaddies to find out what she was up to, but when he came back he just said, “Washing her hair.” Strumbić had to send the man back twice to get his mail from the flat he was letting her stay at.

  “You also owe us for Besim’s cousin’s funeral. You pay us all that, we might leave you alone. We might even forget you set us up, Mr. Strumbić. Do you want to talk about how you can get the money to us? We’ll meet you somewhere. We take cash, Mr. Strumbić.”

  “Whoever the hell you are, I’m going to arrest you the minute I find you. One, for threatening an officer. Two, for threatening an officer’s wife. Three, for trying to blackmail said officer. Four, for attempted murder. And five, for depriving three Bosnian villages of their idiots.”

  Strumbić slammed the phone down. Jesus, he was starting to get hoarse from shouting so much.

  He sat back down and turned the television back up.

  “No wonder you have to yell if you leave the volume on so high,” his wife said, coming into the room.

  Strumbić didn’t look at her. “Any of that slivovitz left?”

  “After dinner.”

  “Yeah? And what’s for dinner?”

  “Stuffed cabbage leaves and mashed potatoes. If you’re lucky you might get some strudel.”

  Strumbić looked up at his wife. What he couldn’t get over was how such a skinny, desiccated, sour woman could cook such delicious food. Just looking at her made him flinch. She had her father’s face — the old chief of the Zagreb police, a brutal man who’d been one of life’s great haters. Legend had it that when one of the horses he’d been inspecting during a parade tried to bite him, he’d knocked it out with a single punch. It was true. Strumbić had been there. But what people didn’t realize was that the old man had been holding a granite cobble.

  His daughter had been his one weakness. “But if you continue to be a pain in my ass, I will give the whole of the strudel to Mrs. Gospodin downstairs,” Mrs. Strumbić said.

  “That hag. What are you feeding her for?”

  “Because she hasn’t got any family, and if we’re nice to her, we might be able to get her apartment cheap when she has to go into a home.”

  Hard to argue with that, he thought.

  “When are you going back to work? You’re getting underfoot.”

  “Maybe I’ll take myself off to the coast for a little while to recuperate.”

  “This time of year?”

  “Šipan’s pretty mild in the winter.”

  She shuddered. “You know I hate boats.”

  Why do you think I bought a house on an island, you silly cow? He didn’t dare say it.

  Now that the old man was dead, there was nothing to keep him from divorcing Mrs. Strumbić. But he’d never found anyone who could cook like she did. Certainly not Renata. He’d once watched the silly bint try to cook potatoes by slicing them directly onto a dry frying pan. Without a drop of oil or water. Never in his life had he imagined someone could burn raw potatoes.

  He rubbed his shin. The doctors said it was nothing more than a bruised bone. How the hell does a bone get bruised?

  Worst of all, Branko had forwarded a strange letter from his London agents. Something about needing to do emergency works in his apartment, though he couldn’t understand it. It looked like a lot of money to him for emergency works. And there was the bank statement, which he didn’t understand. Where the hell was his money going? As if he didn’t have enough else to worry about.

  Strumbić didn’t like it when he couldn’t stay on top of his affairs. Or on top of Renata. He’d have to slip his leash for a little while. Buy a bottle. Go up to the other apartment, check his mail, and do a little partying.

  As long as Messar didn’t get hold of the Bosnians or della Torre, he’d be able to find a way of making life bearable. He should have been given a medal for taking the bullet, instead of an endless pile of grief. As soon as he could, he’d go on a little convalescence leave abroad. Get away from the crazies shooting at each other. Problem with being a cop was that cops were being sent to get shot at by the Serbs. And Strumbić had had enough of being shot at.

  FOR LONG STRETCHES they crawled along the motorway.

  Della Torre read the paper. He played with the window, folding it up and down. He shifted in his seat, the springs biting into his backside. It was a ridiculous car, Harry’s 2CV with a red and white–striped canvas roof, even more ridiculous than the Renault 4.

  They drove north and east.

  “This would be a great car for doing detective work. Quick getaways and very discreet. Should blend into any circus you might be staking out,” he said.

  “You’re very welcome to walk. Or I could tie you to the bumper and drag you along.”

  “I’m not sure it’s got the horsepower to do any towing.”

  “Shall we try?”

  “No. I don’t want to break your car.”

  “Considerate of you.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t be rude. Not within its hearing. It might get offended and stop working.”

  “Is that meant to be funny?”

  “This is the sort of car that women give pet names to. What’s it called?”

  “Are you still talking?”

  “Only to myself.”

  “Good. I didn’t think you had anything to say worth listening to.”

  Once on the motorway, they slipped into their own thoughts. The car was too noisy for conversation, its engine needling away as the wind buffeted its canvas roof.

  For a while, the driver of an articulated lorry played silly buggers with Harry. He wouldn’t let her pass but then slowed right down when she was behind him. She swore a running stream of obscenities, mostly under her breath.

  “Wish I had a gun,” she said.

  “Oh?” he asked, glad she’d never found his Beretta.

  “I’d shoot out this bastard’s tires, and then when he stopped, I’d shoot him.” She swore again.

 
“How do you know it’s not a woman?”

  “I don’t. But whoever it is will be when I’m done with him.”

  She calmed down when they got onto smaller roads.

  The afternoon shadows were spreading across the ground. The clouds had broken and the sun was out for stretches at a time. It was a mild day. The time of year when Zagreb is probably starting to get hot, he thought. It was a good time to go to the islands, get some sun, eat fish off the boat cooked in one of those impromptu restaurants that spread from people’s houses to picnic benches on vine-shaded terraces: homemade wine, salad picked out of the garden, and the day’s catch grilled just so.

  He wondered how his father was doing, hoped he wouldn’t be worrying too much about him. He never discussed his job, and for his part the old man pretended he didn’t know that his son worked for the UDBA. It was a forbidden subject. Like his mother’s death.

  It was late May, the first warm weekend of the spring, and Harry had decided to celebrate their healthy and growing bank balance by heading to the seaside, a short break alone with della Torre before she went off on holiday to France with friends.

  Della Torre had looked forward to having Harry to himself and at the same time regretted she’d be abandoning him. As if she owed him her companionship.

  Their relationship had developed in a funny direction. He felt a charge when she was around, and missed her when she wasn’t. The business with Strumbić had brought them close. They were conspirators. Yet somehow it had also made them keep their physical distance. It might have had something to do with a natural reserve they both had.

  He was like most Istrians, who — strangely, for people who lived in a tiny corner between the Balkans and Italy — were noted for their emotional detachment. It used to bother Irena.

  Harry, for her part, was an upper-middle-class Englishwoman. And upper-middle-class Englishwomen were unflappable, made no fuss; they’d been the true backbone of the empire.

  For both of them, it seemed somehow wrong to mix business and pleasure, to become romantically involved with someone with whom they were engaged in a criminal conspiracy, though neither had ever said as much.

  But they’d become close. He’d listened in fascination as she told him about the customs and traditions of her family and friends. And she had enjoyed his, albeit abridged, history.

  When the money started magically to roll in, she’d taken him shopping. It had been less painful than he’d expected. They tramped around Jermyn Street and the Burlington Arcade, New Bond Street, and up to Selfridges. Fine cotton and linen shirts, silver and amber cufflinks, handmade chukka boots, chinos, blazer, an Italian-cut suit from Savile Row because, Harry had said, the English cut was for English men with big bottoms and narrow shoulders. The one choice he’d made on his own: a grey and heather-green Harris tweed jacket. Harry didn’t protest too much.

  She’d insisted he wear what he’d bought out of the shops, so he’d completely shed his tatty, cheap Yugoslav skin, which the sales clerks disposed of.

  It had taken him a while to get her into the spirit of the enterprise, to convince her that it wasn’t immoral to steal from Strumbić, because the money wasn’t rightfully his in the first place. It would mostly be risk-free; they’d get well away before he came looking for them. He’d never use the law to pursue them, and he was unlikely to use other methods. Strumbić wouldn’t want to jeopardize his safety net. He wouldn’t be happy about being robbed, but ultimately he’d recognize he didn’t have much of a choice other than to eat the loss. Strumbić, for all his faults, was clever enough to see his best advantage. The trick was to stop before he’d been bled too much.

  She’d treated it as an intriguing joke for the first week. And then, during the second week, she thought carefully about it. The money would be easy. Almost as easy as writing a cheque. There was the frisson of danger about it too.

  So at the start of the third week, she sent a debit request on agency stationery to Strumbić’s bank and then transferred money from the agency into an account she’d set up for her and della Torre.

  And at the start of the new month, the following week, she did the same again.

  Now that they were flush, her mind had turned to holidays: the long-standing invitation to an extended house party in France. But first a short, quick jaunt to the coast. With della Torre.

  Somewhere beyond Ipswich, they turned onto a straight road that went through gentle countryside bordered by copses of trees or by fields, mostly wheat or sugar beet, and then wilder gorse. In the distance he saw something shimmer, which Harry said was the river.

  They passed through a small, neat suburb and then reached a square-towered medieval church made from knapped flint that looked like old tweed. The road dropped from there to show a vista of the North Sea over red-tiled rooftops.

  She had the keys to a tall, narrow cottage on the front. A family place, she’d said, though he wasn’t clear on the exact provenance. He put his bag in a guest bedroom overlooking a courtyard at the back. She took the main bedroom, with the big bay window offering an impressive view of the beach.

  “We can go for a walk and then get some fish and chips for supper.”

  They strolled north on a tarmacked promenade among the other late-afternoon strollers, avoiding being knocked down by small children pedalling madly on their wobbly bicycles. The path ran along a low concrete seawall painted in a rainbow of muted primary colours, which separated the houses and cottages from a broad shingle beach that undulated down to the sea.

  On the beach itself were little clusters of clapboard fishermen’s huts blackened with creosote, and fishing boats winched up well above the high-tide line. The green-grey North Sea paralleled the flat landscape. The clouds had broken, and a light breeze blew in from the sea. They passed an isolated building on the front, surrounded by neat lawns and a boating pond to one side; behind it and up the hill was the church.

  “Looks like toy-town Tudor,” della Torre said, amused at how the architect had managed to impose every period cliché onto the building, from the jutting half-timbered first floor to the steep roof and tall, narrow chimney.

  “It’s real. Elizabethan. It’s called the Moot Hall — it’s where the town council meets. It used to be in the middle of the town; there were about three streets in front of it. This was an important port in the Middle Ages, but the sea ate it up. Without the seawall, the rest might disappear too.”

  “Atlantis.”

  “If you’re looking for Atlantis, there’s a town further up the coast called Dunwich. It was an even more important port, a proper city for those times. It had eight churches and half a dozen friaries. It’s completely gone now. In my grandparents’ time the sea had reached the last churchyard. As the sea eroded the sandy cliffs there, it exposed the graves. My grandmother said ancient bones used to fall onto the beach and then disappear at the next tide. There are a couple of houses left; one’s a pub, but that’s it. It’s now all heathland and forest. They say on still nights you can hear the Dunwich church bells ringing out at sea. It’s a spooky place.”

  They couldn’t have walked more than a kilometre from the cottage before they reached the town’s northern limits and the start of a flat, open marsh, green with its tall grasses and reeds. But that wasn’t what caught della Torre’s eye.

  In the distance, hanging above woodland, was the massive grey-black block of a concrete building. Beach houses a couple of kilometres from where Harry and della Torre stood were dwarfed by the structure. Next to this massive bunker of a building and situated even higher up the cliff was an improbably bright white dome, almost translucent in its whiteness, that seemed to reflect the evening’s light.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That’s the nuclear power station, Sizewell. The dome is new — that’s Sizewell B — but the block has been around my whole life. You stop notici
ng it; it’s part of the landscape. Sort of familiar. I guess we’ll get used to the dome eventually too.”

  “It’s either huge or close.”

  “It’s huge. It’s about seven, eight kilometres up the coast.”

  They stared at it for a little while and then turned around. Della Torre was familiar with man-made blights in otherwise striking natural settings. Much of the Istrian coastline was punctuated by massive Communist hotels that looked like beached storm-worn ocean liners. But this spare and impossibly huge cube and half-sphere were geometric impositions on nature that even the Yugoslavs couldn’t rival.

  “The weather’s supposed to be nice tomorrow. We could do some sailing if you like,” she said.

  He looked out over the sea. There were some big container ships on the horizon, and closer to the beach there was a small fishing boat trudging its way north along the coast, but not a sail to be seen.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s much sailing to be done,” he said.

  She followed the path of his gaze and smiled.

  “No, not on the sea. Just beyond the other end of town there’s the river. We sail on that. Little boats; dinghies, mostly. Have you ever dinghy sailed?”

  “No. I’ve been on ferries and motorboats and rowboats, but I don’t ever remember setting foot in any kind of sailboat.”

  “You spent your life near the Adriatic and you’ve never sailed?”

  “Sailing was for the bourgeoisie. We were good Communists. We rowed. Or just sat on the beach and drank.”

  “We can borrow a boat and a life jacket down at the yacht club, and I’ll take you on the river.”

  They walked back through the middle of town, down its wide high street — more like a public square, though it was taken over by cars and parking spots — and stood in line outside a shop selling fish and chips. The best in England, Harry said. Della Torre didn’t disagree. But it could just as well have been the worst; it was always a travesty what the English did to fish, he thought.

  They ate on the beach, the way they were meant to, judging by how many of the chippy’s other customers were doing the same, out of paper wrappers, the breeze carrying away the fried-fat smell. Harry gave him a brief geography lesson.