‘I’ll come,’ Hammond told her. ‘I’ll do whatever I can.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. And he realized with a shock that those were the first real thanks he had received from anyone for a very long time.
Some degree of grudging official gratitude for his candour did exist, according to Ashton, and was bound to tell in his favour eventually. A crucial step forward came when his account of what had happened after he and Vidor left Luxembourg was corroborated in an unexpected fashion. A man suspected by the German police of involvement in organized crime around the world was found dead at his apartment in Frankfurt. Bernhard Mittag had been tortured, possibly for the purposes of interrogation, then garrotted. Among his possessions were discovered several false passports, one of them in the name of Hans Furgler. Who had killed Mittag and what information they had extracted from him before he died were matters the German police could shed little light on. But the Hotel Principessa in Lugano held a photocopy of the Furgler passport and there was no doubt Mittag was the same man, raising hopes at ICTY that among his known associates might be found other members of the gang behind Gazi’s escape. ‘Don’t hold your breath, old man,’ was Ashton’s advice to Hammond. ‘But this could be just what’s needed to convince the OTP you’re actually one of the good guys.’
Ashton was certainly right about the pace of OTP decision-making. Spring gave way to summer and the only hard evidence of the passage of time was the blossoming of the trees flanking Pompstationsweg, the road that ran past the front of the prison. Not that any of Hammond’s fellow inmates seemed seriously to doubt that he would, sooner or later, be on his way.
‘You do not belong here, Edward,’ said Milorad Ivković after one of their regular chess games, in which Hammond had recorded a rare victory. ‘The Prosecutor will admit that in the end.’ Ivković had been with Gazi in the armoured van on the day of the escape and had stayed on the run longer than any of the others, although that had still amounted to little more than twenty-four hours. He stood accused of being responsible for multiple murders, rapes, deportations, acts of inhumanity and the wanton destruction and plunder of property. But of that they never spoke. He was a mild-mannered man, with the philosophical air of a retired professor. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘what will you do when you rejoin the outside world?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hammond replied evasively, having in reality given a lot of thought to the matter.
‘Well, something will turn up for you, I am sure. At least you will not be a fugitive. I think sometimes I do not envy Dragan. He is free. But he must always fear recapture. Every day. Every hour. And what is freedom worth if you must be looking always over your shoulder?’
What Ivković was fundamentally saying, Hammond decided later, was that he could enjoy the peace of mind that came from knowing when and how he was to answer for what he had done, whereas Gazi, wherever he was hiding, lived with insecurity and anxiety as his constant companions. It was a comforting thought, though not comforting enough to reconcile Hammond to Gazi’s evasion of justice. However circumscribed his liberty was, it was liberty. And he had no right to it.
Hammond’s own liberty was finally restored to him by a low-key exchange of e-mails between Ashton and the OTP. ‘It has been concluded that Dr Edward Hammond has made full disclosure of his dealings with Dragan Gazi and that there is no basis for any charges of collusion with Dragan Gazi to be brought against him.’ His days at Scheveningen were over.
He made his farewells and walked out into his future.
THIRTY-FOUR
The last e-mail Hammond sent on his detention-unit computer before leaving Scheveningen was to the chief executive of St George’s, resigning from his consultancy. He suspected his resignation would be welcomed by the hospital hierarchy after his lengthy suspension. For him, it was the burning of a last bridge connecting him to his old life, which he could not return to for the simple reason that he was no longer the man who had led that life.
He was not returning to England either. Not yet, at any rate. It was mid-July. Alice and Jake were in Turkey. There was no one waiting for him at home. He had accepted Miljanović’s invitation to work at the Voćnjak Clinic on a six-month contract, to begin whenever he was free to start. It was the only job he had been offered, but that was not why he had accepted. There was work to be done in Serbia – genuinely valuable work that he was genuinely qualified for. It would be something to throw himself into. And it would be partial repayment of a debt he felt he owed the many Serbs who had suffered because he had prevented Dragan Gazi dying in 1996.
He had made it clear to Miljanović, however, that he could not start straight away. ‘Of course not,’ Miljanović had responded. ‘You will need a holiday first. On a beach, maybe.’ But Hammond was not going on holiday. He was heading for Luxembourg.
*
He stayed for only a few days, spending one of them with Mary and Patrick Bartol. The family had moved into a rented townhouse in Luxembourg City, while they tried to find a buyer for the Forêt Pré house. The memories of bloodshed and death were too raw for them to have remained there and Patrick had had fewer nightmares since their departure. But he was beset nonetheless by the fear, which he was disarmingly willing to articulate, that he might have inherited his biological father’s tendency ‘to kill people’, as he put it with childish bluntness. The fact that Hammond was a doctor meant his assurances to the contrary made a greater impression than anything the Bartols had said. A shadow seemed to lift from the boy’s face.
They discussed Zineta that day too. Hammond found himself talking about her as if he had known her for years. ‘She was a fine person, Patrick,’ he said. ‘You should be proud of her.’
Patrick nodded. ‘I am.’ And Hammond believed him. It was a pride that would grow as the boy grew into a man. A mother he had never known, who had laid down her life to save his, would never be forgotten.
Goran Perović had suggested during his brief visit to Luxembourg that the Bartols should take Patrick to Serbia some day to meet his grandfather. Émile had resisted the idea at first, Mary revealed, but had softened his stance since. ‘We’ve been seeing a counsellor – the authorities insisted on it as part of the unravelling of Delmotte’s fraud – and she says it’s something we really have to do. In the autumn, probably. During Patrick’s half-term.’
So, this was not to be the last Hammond saw of Zineta’s son. Among all the endings and beginnings, there were also continuities. And this was one he sensed he might come to treasure.
From Luxembourg Hammond flew to London. It was in no sense a homecoming. He stayed in Wimbledon long enough to work his way through a pile of mail and pack a couple of suitcases. Then he set off for Belgrade.
*
He arrived in the crushing heat of early August. The change of season since his last visit made Belgrade look and feel like a different city. Miljanović met him at the airport and drove him to his new apartment: a spacious and comfortably furnished duplex within easy reach of the clinic.
He would also be supplied with a car, Miljanović explained, and a cleaner who was on the clinic’s payroll. ‘Everything will be taken care of, Edward. And if it isn’t … let me know.’
Miljanović took him out to dinner that evening, at Langouste, an elegant and expensive restaurant with a terrace overlooking the confluence of the Sava and the Danube. The sun set slowly over the tower blocks of New Belgrade as they toasted their renewed working relationship with champagne. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miljanović with a grin. ‘The clinic is paying.’
‘That’s what’s worrying me.’
‘Why? We are lucky to get you. Even the director understands that. By the way, I should give you this.’ Miljanović took a letter out of his pocket and passed it across the table.
It was in Cyrillic Serbian and utterly impenetrable to Hammond, who shrugged helplessly.
‘Confirmation from the Ministry of Justice that they have no … problems with you working here,’ Miljanović explained.
‘The director insisted we get it in writing.’
‘Well, it’s good to have, I suppose.’
‘I get the feeling they don’t want to reopen their inquiry into the death of ICEFA agent Uželać. Corruption of state officials is an embarrassing subject.’
‘What about Gazi? Isn’t he an embarrassing subject?’
‘Not much of a subject at all, Edward. The average Serb would like to forget all those bloodthirsty old generals you spent time with in The Hague. The Karadžić trial, when it begins, will mean they can’t. But Gazi? His escape was big news, of course. But that was nearly six months ago. What is the English saying? Out of sight … out of mind.’
‘He’s not out of my mind.’
‘Not yet, perhaps. Give it time. Now you’re here, I plan to keep you busy.’
‘Good. That’s just what I need.’
Miljanović smiled. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place.’
Miljanović did not fail to deliver on his promise where workload was concerned. Hammond was thrown into the midst of numerous complex cases and was astonished by the relief he felt at returning to medicine. It truly was his vocation. Whatever else he did, he should never abandon it. In a hospital, in his reassuring white coat – reassuring to him as well as his patients – he was a force for good, for clarity, for hope, for resolution. It was where he belonged.
He had only been in Belgrade a few weeks when Alice and Jake, who were making their way home from Turkey by train, stopped off to see him. They stayed for four nights. There was ample room for them in the apartment. Hammond spent a Sunday with them on Ada Ciganlija, the cigar-shaped island in the Sava where Belgraders went to swim and sunbathe. They hired bikes and explored the quieter northern shore, where they chanced upon a secluded raft-restaurant and stopped for a lunch that lasted most of the afternoon.
Nothing profound or meaningful was discussed. Gazi was not mentioned. Nor was Kate. The time for that, Hammond sensed, would come later, when he and Jake knew each other better. He was confident such a time would come. There was something open and instantly likeable about the young man and something enduring about the way Alice looked at him. As for the way she looked at Hammond, there was still a measure of caution in it. She loved him because he was her father. In the end, he knew, that would be enough to rebuild their old trust and ease. But they were not quite there yet. It was a work in progress.
*
A month passed. Hammond devoted himself to his caseload at the Voćnjak Clinic. He got to know the staff and they got to know him. He bedded in, to the extent that he began to wonder if he might extend his contract.
Early in October, Mary Bartol e-mailed to say they would definitely be visiting Belgrade during Patrick’s half-term at the end of the month. Could Hammond do her the enormous favour of discussing with Goran Perović how best to handle their encounter with his father? Hammond replied that he would be happy to.
That evening, he pondered, not for the first time, nor, he suspected, the last, the question of where Gazi might be hiding. His escape was, in a sense, the easy part. His continued freedom was the truly devilish trick to pull off. South America was the obvious answer, since Ingrid spent much of her time in Buenos Aires. But any contact with her would be risky in the extreme. The mystery hinged, he concluded, on what Gazi wanted from the life beyond Scheveningen he had bought for himself. But to know that Hammond would need to understand Gazi a great deal better than he did – or had any wish to. Finding him was someone else’s responsibility. And that was a blessing.
But not all blessings endure. Only a few days later, Hammond was enjoying a lunchtime walk in Topčider Park, admiring the autumn colours, when his mobile rang. He generally received few calls, having guarded the number carefully since acquiring the phone, and was concerned it might herald an emergency at the clinic.
He was met instead by a terse text message from a number he did not recognize. ‘Want to know where he is?’
Ten minutes later, Hammond was still staring at the message. He was sitting on a bench beneath a plane tree, cradling the phone in his hand, torn between chasing the promise of a clue to Gazi’s whereabouts – he did not for a moment doubt it was Gazi the texter was referring to – and turning his back on the mystery. But he knew himself well enough to understand the futility of trying to pretend he had never received the message. It was there, on the tiny screen, before him. And even if he erased it, it would still be in his mind. He surrendered.
‘Where who is?’ he texted back, reckoning it was safer to act dumb.
The response was almost instantaneous. He felt as if an unseen creature had suddenly wrapped a tentacle round his leg. ‘You know who.’
Yes. He knew. And the texter knew he knew. ‘OK. Where?’
‘Be at your house in london 1800 tomorrow to find out.’
‘Why not tell me now?’
‘Be at your house in london 1800 tomorrow to find out.’
‘Who r u?’
‘Be at your house in london 1800 tomorrow to find out.’
‘How do I know this isnt a hoax?’
‘Be at your house in london 1800 tomorrow to find out.’
He tried to break free. ‘Cant make it.’
But the texter did not believe him. ‘Be there.’
‘And you will be there, of course,’ said Miljanović, nodding at Hammond across the desk in his consulting room at the Voćnjak Clinic later that afternoon. ‘You know it. I know it. Your anonymous caller knows it too.’
‘I can be back within forty-eight hours, Svetozar,’ said Hammond. ‘If a trip to London is all it takes to get the information ICTY have been looking for without success for eight months …’
‘You really believe you’re likely to get that information?’
‘I don’t know. But I have to try.’
‘No. You don’t. But clearly you’re going to.’
‘You think I’ll be wasting my time?’
‘I hope you will be. I fear something … much worse.’
‘What?’
‘A trap of some kind. Which you’ll be walking straight into.’ Miljanović leant forward and fixed Hammond with his gaze. ‘You should forget Gazi, Edward. Let those who are paid for it carry on the search for him. Put him out of your mind.’
‘I can’t do that.’
Miljanović sighed. ‘I know.’
THIRTY-FIVE
The house in Wimbledon felt less like a home every time Hammond returned to it. He arrived in the middle of a grey and windless afternoon to find the whole street locked in autumnal stillness. Waiting patiently indoors for six o’clock to come was an intolerable prospect. But a walk on the Common and a drink at the Hand in Hand hardly quelled his anxieties. Miljanović’s advice to ignore the summons, which was effectively what the message had amounted to, seemed ever sounder as the minutes ticked by.
On his way back from the pub, he met a neighbour heading towards the Common with her dog. They had a brief, fragile conversation, in which the reasons for Hammond’s absence from the area for so many months were not once specifically referred to but hovered at the reticent edges of their exchanges about Alice and her new boyfriend and the spectacular colouring of the horse chestnuts.
‘By the way, Debbie,’ he asked impulsively as they parted, ‘you haven’t seen anyone hanging around my house recently, have you?’
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘No one.’
The light was failing as six o’clock drew near. Hammond stationed himself in Alice’s room on the top floor, which commanded a good view of the street, watching and waiting. He could not fail to see anyone who approached. If he did not like the look of them, he did not have to open the door. It was as simple as that. He had control of the situation. He was in no danger.
Perhaps the texter meant to contact him again by phone. Hammond’s mobile was on the windowsill, ready for any such call. But six o’clock came and went. And it did not ring. Nor did he see any pedestrians, apart from Debbie, returning from the Com
mon with her dog. Perhaps Miljanović was to be granted his wish: it was just a wild-goose chase. Five minutes slowly passed. Then ten.
And then the phone rang. Not Hammond’s mobile, but the land line. The extension in his bedroom on the floor below was the closest. He raced downstairs towards it.
It had reached the seventh or eighth ring by the time he made it, narrowly beating the answerphone to the jump. ‘Hello?’
‘Good evening, doctor.’
Hammond knew the voice at once. The delay in his response was due to simple incredulity. ‘Vidor?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you guess the messages were from me?’
‘Why would I? You helped Gazi escape.’
‘True. But now I’m willing to help get him caught again.’
‘Why?’
‘What does that matter to you? Maybe I haven’t been treated as well as I was promised. Maybe I just don’t think the old bastard should get away with it. Maybe lots of things. All you need to know is that I’m willing to give him to you.’
‘Didn’t they pay you enough?’ Hammond asked, not troubling to hide the bitterness in his voice.
‘Draw your own conclusions. Do you want to put him back behind bars or not?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good. I need someone to tip off ICTY for me. I can’t think of anyone better qualified than you. But I need your guarantee that you won’t tell them where the information came from. I don’t want Ingrid on my trail.’
‘You’d trust me to keep your name out of it?’
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