Lie in the Dark vp-1

by Dan Fesperman

  Vlado turned back one more time to the list of the custody detail. There again was the name: Kemal Stanic, typed across dried white correction fluid. Was there a typographical error below, or someone else’s name? Vlado scratched away at the correction with a fingernail, working slowly, carefully, like an art restorer seeking the original. The name below was longer. The first name began with a B, although Vlado couldn’t be sure of the rest. The last name, however, with much of it stretching beyond Stanic’s, seemed to be Milutinovic. Vlado asked for one more file.

  By now, the U.N. man had gone. So had everyone else except Krulic, who was hunched in a corner, snorting smoke like an enraged but underpowered dragon.

  “It’s all right,” Vlado said. “This one will probably do it for the day, and I’ll pass along the best of marks on your behavior next time I see Kasic. I need the personnel folder for B. Milutinovic.”

  “Boromir or Bosko?” Krulic asked a moment later, a folder in each hand.

  “Both.”

  Both were reputable officers. Neither contained any mention of a special posting to the custody detail. Vlado wasn’t sure that would have been included anyway, unless they were cited later for exceptional work. But an item in Boromir’s file caught his eye. A full-year veteran of the Ministry’s special police, he’d been cited several times for good work until it had all come crashing down on the last day of September, two days before the raid. If Vitas had put him on the custody team, he’d then lost his services at an inopportune moment.

  The reason for his dismissal: Illegal conduct. See attached. This time there was indeed an attachment.

  It was a single-spaced investigation report based on the accounts of two undercover operatives, and when Vlado saw their names he felt the skin prickling on the back of his neck. One was a supervisor at the cigarette plant named Kupric. The other was a butcher named Hrnic. Each told a tale of unsavory connections, with the unfortunate Mr. Militunovic linked to the illicit trafficking of meat and cigarettes.

  The whole affair had taken a mere two days to initiate and conclude, amazing alacrity under any circumstances, much less amidst the hurlyburly that must have prevailed in the days just before the raid.

  Yet, for all the disgrace Milutinovic had suddenly brought down on himself, not only was he not prosecuted, but he’d been given a generous-incredibly generous, under the circumstances-severance payment of five hundred D-marks. No wonder he hadn’t made a stink. It was more than he would have made in a year’s work. Not that his squawking would have been given much heed in that chaotic time, anyway. In the rush of last-minute details Vitas probably hadn’t even known Milutinovic had been bumped off the custody squad, much less replaced by an unstable grocer with a murderous ax to grind. It was tantamount to a death sentence for Zarko. If someone had wanted him out of the way in order to claim a bigger share from the smuggled art, this had done the trick.

  Vlado flipped to the disposition report from Milutinovic’s disciplinary hearing, and there again was the block red stamp of the word APPROVED. It was dated September 30th.

  Below it was the full, bold signature of the man who had orchestrated this entire manuever, Assistant Chief Juso Kasic.

  CHAPTER 17

  Vlado glanced over his shoulder every few feet on his way home, half expecting to see Kasic, or perhaps the man in the beret who’d greeted him at the ministry, or even the four men in dark overcoats who’d taken Glavas away. Thinking of them he decided on a detour, and he turned toward the small hill on the east side of town that had come to represent so much about the way this war was fought.

  Sprawled atop the hill were the buildings of the Kosevo Hospital complex, home to the city’s dead, dying, and wounded. This status made the hospital a prominent site on the targeting map of every siege gunner. Although who needed maps when from most vantage points Kosevo was as easy to spot as the highest office tower. For anyone gazing down the long barrel of a howitzer it loomed on its hump of land like a broken medieval fortress, its crowded wards ripe with the promise of being able to finish the work that yesterday’s shells had only begun.

  The hospital’s doctors and administrators-or at least, the ones who hadn’t either left or been killed-had duly and painstakingly mapped each of the hundreds of shell impacts. They distributed the maps liberally to journalists, human rights organizations, and visitors of all stripes, another small cry of outrage with its inevitable perverse edge of pride: Look at what we have endured.

  Vlado’s destination was a low-slung plastered building halfway up the face of the hill. You didn’t need directions to it anymore because of the smell that announced from a hundred yards away that this must be the city morgue.

  Early in the war the place had been quite literally swamped by death, the chambers of its cellar knee-deep in stacked bodies, maggots, and floodwater from pipes that had burst in the shelling. The director had fled, along with half his staff. It had taken weeks to get another team up and running, and by then the overload was nearly unbearable. The water and most of the maggots had since been mopped away, but the smell from those weeks had never quite disappeared, and some believed it never would.

  The smell was even stronger indoors, as Vlado found the moment he opened the door, a stench of rot and putrefaction that nearly doubled him over. He reached for a handkerchief, then stopped, working hard to breathe through his mouth, feeling the rasp of the foul air on his throat. Two men sat behind a dull gray counter at empty desks, smoking cigarettes and reading outdated magazines as if manning the office of an auto garage. Both wore thick, black rubber boots. Stained cotton smocks hung beside heavy rubber gloves behind them on the wall.

  “Police Inspector Petric,” Vlado announced, still struggling not to inhale through his nose. Somehow the stench was registering anyway, more as taste than smell.

  “I’d like a look at your new arrivals. Particularly anything that might have come in from Dobrinja. Or anyone in the past twenty-four hours who has showed up with a Dobrinja address, no matter where they were found.”

  “Got a name?” said one of the men, putting down his magazine.

  “Glavas, Milan. Older man. Late sixties, early seventies.”

  The man checked a clipboard, flipping back a page, then shook his head as he exhaled smoke.

  “No one by that name. But we do have three without I.D.s.”

  He opened a rear door and leaned down a stairwell. The reeking smell doubled in intensity. Vlado shifted uncomfortably.

  “Mustafa!” the man shouted down the stairs. “The three no-names, were any from Dobrinja?”

  Mustafa came strolling up the stairs in reply, wiping his hands on a filthy rag. His smock, too, was stained brown, only his glistened with fresh additions.

  “Yes,” he answered finally. “Two of them, I think. A man and a woman. Both older. She’s still here, funeral tomorrow.”

  “And the man?” Vlado asked.

  “Buried this morning.”

  The clerk turned toward Vlado. “Sorry, Inspector. Looks like you’re too late.”

  “I want him dug up.” Vlado said. “Now.”

  “You’ll need the family’s approval.” Clearly the clerk was ready to go home for the day, and Vlado could hardly blame him.

  “Family approval, when you don’t even have his name?”

  Vlado had him on that one, but the clerk wasn’t yet ready to give in. “Look, we’re happy to dig him up for you. We won’t even make you get a judge’s order, although technically we could. But it’s a bad time of day now. Too much light. It’ll be dusk in less than an hour, so why don’t you just have a seat and a smoke and wait until dark. You could wait until morning, but the ground will be frozen harder then, so you’d best get out there while the digging’s easier.”

  Good enough. But he was damned if he’d wait here. “In an hour, then, but I’ll meet your man on the field.”

  “Look for him at the fresh mounds. They’re the only ones not covered with snow. You know the place?”


  “Know it well,” Vlado said.

  “Mustafa will be there as well.” Mustafa looked less than happy to hear it. “In case you make an identification.”

  Vlado spent the next hour trying to walk off the smell that clung to his jacket, his pants, his face. He coughed and spat as if it were a bone lodged in his throat, but after a while he couldn’t decide whether the smell or merely the thought of it was stronger.

  When the appointed time arrived he moved down the hill and across the snowy field, soaking his shoes and socks as he strolled by the rows of rough wooden markers-the narrow slabs for the Muslims mixed with the crosses for the Catholics and the Orthodox Christians. In the gathering darkness he could see that the gravedigger was already at work. The earth was still soft from the morning’s labors, so the going was easy, and it was only a few minutes before the shovel struck wood.

  A year earlier and the body might not even have merited the luxury of a coffin. Death had come in such a rush that the city had run out of caskets, and most wood had been used for firewood. Now, with casualties slacking off, supply was again meeting demand. The few casketmakers still in business were setting away a nest egg for their future, provided they themselves survived.

  Mustafa had also arrived, waiting at the grave with hands on his hips. After a few minutes more the gravedigger cleared the rest of the dirt covering the lid of the coffin. He then dug a small shelf into the mud next to the casket and stepped out, resting on his shovel. Vlado tried to recall the gravedigger’s face from all his mornings by the window, but he seemed like all the rest, chiefly recognizable by the slight stoop to his shoulders, the cap slouched on his head, the thin jacket loose across his back.

  Mustafa stepped down to the small shelf of mud. He pulled a screwdriver from a coat pocket and pried open the lid, then flicked on a small flashlight. The yellow beam swept onto the face of Milan Glavas.

  “Is this your man?” Mustafa asked, looking up at Vlado.

  “Yes,” he said. “Glavas, Milan.”

  They’d at least let him change out of his dirty robe and blanket, although his chest was a matted eruption of torn fabric and dried blood. His mouth was ajar, as if it had drooped open in the middle of a nap. His expression seemed almost one of boredom rather than pain or terror. The overall impression was that of someone who’d gone through life dirty and disheveled, and that made Vlado sad. It was not the way Glavas would have wanted to have been buried, that was certain, and for some reason this realization brought tears to Vlado’s eyes, as he stared into the grave at the drawn, gray face.

  “I remember him from last night,” Mustafa said.

  “You examined him?” Vlado asked.

  “Yes. He came in late. Later than usual. I was halfway out the door.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Shrapnel. Sniper. Who knows? I’m not really trained in those things. Hit by something, though. Whole chest torn open, as you can see for yourself. Death by war. What else is worth saying once you’ve said that?”

  “Who brought him in?”

  “Army. From Dobrinja that’s usually the way it works.”

  “Did they say where he was found?”

  “They never do. It probably wasn’t near his home or they’d have been able to make an I.D. They usually ask some neighbors to have a look when they can. He’s lucky, though. No-names in Dobrinja usually end up buried in a backyard.”

  “Yes. A very lucky man.”

  Vlado walked across the graveyard toward home, tired and hungry, the day’s information bearing down on him. He was still clearing his throat and spitting from his visit to the morgue, though by now he knew virtually all of the smell must be gone.

  Having seen what had become of Glavas, he wondered at his own predicament. Who was he fooling with his persistence, or with his flimsy excuses to Kasic? For that matter, what purpose was he really serving? Even if he cracked the case, who would he report his findings to without feeling he was risking his neck. Kasic was obviously poised to deal with him at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t count on the U.N. for much help either. To survive two years of war only to die investigating a murder would be the height of absurdity. Why bother?

  The last person to walk this path had been Esmir Vitas, and Vlado had seen all too well where that led. If the city’s cultural heritage was vanishing, was that so terrible when stacked up against the city’s other losses?

  Then again, by now the effort to smuggle artwork seemed so much a part of the machinery of the war itself that stopping it would seem to be a calling as high as his work had ever offered.

  But another problem remained: How to put his findings to use. If even U.N. channels posed a risk, were there any channels available that would accept the information without then turning it on him as a weapon. As for Kasic, the case against him seemed damning enough, but there was still the possibility he was only the tool of someone else, perhaps even higher in the government. For all Vlado knew the entire ministry was corrupt, now that Vitas was out of the way. There was so much to think about, and so little time or room for doing so.

  Even if Vlado wanted to back out of the investigation now, how could he? It was time for him to huddle with Damir, to look for some way out of this mess. He supposed they could report findings tame enough to appease whoever might fear the truth. But would that be enough to protect them, considering what they’d learned? For all Vlado knew, Damir had stumbled onto a home where a painting had been removed, and had set off some unseen alarm with his queries.

  Not for the first time it occurred to Vlado how small his world had become. In the last few days he had traversed virtually all of it on foot, and even his most remote destination, Zuc, had been reached in a few hours. There really was no place to run unless one was willing to cross over to the Serb lines at night, and Vlado was surprised to find himself thinking that such a chancy proposition now seemed within reason, or at least an option he could no longer reject out of hand. Even that held extra complications, though. On the other side there would still be the influence of General Markovic to deal with.

  The moment he walked through the door, something seemed awry in his apartment. The sloppiness was the same as always. But he felt the same unmistakable sense of disturbance that he’d felt at Vitas’s apartment. He walked around slowly, looking for some tangible difference from the way he’d left things. After a few minutes, having found none, he began to calm. It was just his nerves, just an accumulation of the day’s facts upon his mind. He would brew a cup of coffee and have a bit to eat, then he would relax. And once his stomach was no longer empty, he would paint his soldiers to clear his head. Perhaps he’d finally finish the platoon.

  He picked up the hunk of cured meat from the butcher. There was still enough for a few more meals if he paced himself, though he decided that tonight he owed himself a larger-than-usual slice. He lighted the stove to boil water for coffee.

  A few minutes later, the water boiling, he lifted his mug to pour in some Nescafe, and as he did so it left behind a chocolate brown ring on the green fields of Austerlitz, at almost the same place on the page that he’d wiped clean that morning.

  Someone had moved the mug.

  A coldness stole down his throat to his stomach, and he began a cursory inspection of his painted platoon. They, too, seemed in disarray, brushed closer to the edge of the workbench than he’d left them. In fact, the unit was now a man short. Whoever had searched the place must have knocked one into the piles of newspaper below. Doubtless they’d been in a hurry. Vlado had kept such odd hours recently that they probably figured he might walk in at any moment. But there’d certainly been nothing to find. As always, Vlado had kept all his notes and numbers in his satchel, which he took wherever he went.

  Vlado wondered what might have brought this on. Had Kasic’s curiosity simply been too much for him? Perhaps Krulic, the clerk from records, had felt a pang of bureaucratic conscience and phoned Kasic to alert him to Vlado’s unusual requests. Maybe someone in the morg
ue had been tipped to watch for anyone inquiring about an old man from Dobrinja. Or maybe Colonel Chevard had gotten wind of the strange request for information on shipping a parcel out of the city. Glavas might have said God knows what before he died, depending on how forceful they’d been with him before finishing him with a shot to the chest.

  The more Vlado thought about it, the more he realized how almost anyone he’d talked to during the past few days might have wittingly or unwittingly tipped higher-ups to his progress on the case.

  He suddenly felt such an amateur, a complete and utter naif. He was a fisherman set loose upon a reef full of sharks who only now had noticed the rot in the hull of his sinking craft. Far too late he considered the depth of his carelessness as it opened darkly before him.

  He’d let Toby, a reporter, see the transfer file, and God knew who Toby might have asked about it. He’d blabbed about Glavas to the gossipy director of the national art museum, a man who undoubtedly had his own uses for such information. Then there were his blunt questions to Neven himself, a man looking for a way out of a tight spot, a well-connected man who knew as well as anyone how to use the right sort of information for the right sort of leverage.

  Even if Krulic hadn’t already phoned Kasic, by tomorrow morning the entire ministry would be aware of exactly which files Vlado had requested. He couldn’t have drawn attention to his trail any better than if he’d lit a long line of torches in his wake. He’d barged along as if this were any sort of murder in any sort of city.

  So where did that leave him, other than vulnerable? He could tell all to Toby; then Toby would get a nice story. Or perhaps Toby would only ask a lot of embarrassing questions and write no story at all, considering that Vlado still had little actual proof. Either way, Vlado would likely end up with a bullet, and Damir as well. And for a panicky moment he wondered if Damir weren’t already dead, stashed in some alley or thrown into the river, having asked one too many sensitive questions, careless if only because Vlado had given him so little to go on.