‘A better way? No. This is what Gazi deserves. No prison cell. No grave. No memorial. Just … extinction. Go to the authorities if you want and tell them everything you know. I don’t mind. I’m a fugitive for good now. It doesn’t really matter how many people come after me. But speak to Ingrid first. Make her understand. There’ll be no contented old age for Dragan Gazi. She’s lost him. For ever.’
Silence fell. Hammond could not find it in him to prolong his appeal to Vidor’s nobler instincts. He had little doubt that Gazi would suffer cruelly before he died. It was an affront to his soft-bred Western European liberal principles. But those principles had done less than nothing for all the many thousands of Gazi’s victims spread over two continents and three decades. Perhaps the time had truly come for him to reap as he had sown.
‘Ingrid’s apartment is at Avenida Cornualles two six one,’ said Vidor softly. ‘It’s not far from here. Contact her as soon as you like.’
Still Hammond did not speak. But his silence conveyed its own meaning. It acknowledged that he would see Ingrid and deliver Vidor’s message. It acknowledged that he could not refuse to.
A few minutes later, he watched the truck drive up the ramp leading to the higher level of the garage, then heard it power up the next ramp beyond that to the street. Vidor was gone. And Gazi with him. They had not ceased to exist. Yet Hammond felt certain he would never see either of them again.
*
Avenida Cornualles 261 was a handsome Beaux-Arts apartment block no more than a ten-minute walk from Recoleta Cemetery, where Nikola Gazi was buried, but his father never would be. The smartly uniformed porter on duty in the gilt-and-marble foyer advised Hammond that ‘la Señora Hurtado-Gazi’ was in residence, but currently out. Hammond declined to leave a message.
He walked a little way down the road to one of three benches set round a small lawn in the shade of a gum tree. There he sat for the better part of an hour, monitoring arrivals and departures at the apartment block, while birds whose songs and plumage he did not recognize hopped and fluttered in the trees and the low hedge behind the bench.
He knew he would have to report what had happened in the garage of the Hotel Goleta. He could not condone the actions Vidor had chosen to take. Yet he could not condemn them either. Gazi’s ruthlessness had finally met its match.
As for Ingrid, her response to the news Hammond had for her was hard to predict. He was taking a risk in contacting her. Yet, strangely, he had no misgivings. It was not that he wanted to pay her back for blackmailing and double-crossing him. It was simply that his agreement to treat Gazi thirteen years before had left him with a debt he could never hope to clear. It was in his power to reduce it, though, by instalments and degrees, by undertakings given and carried through. The dead could not be brought back to life. The living could not all receive their dues. The world, he knew, more certainly than he ever had before, was an imperfect place. But there were no other worlds to choose from. This was the only one.
He saw Ingrid pass by him in a taxi, oblivious to his presence, and was able to catch up with her before she entered the apartment block. The porter was hurrying out to assist her with an armful of designer-label carrier bags when he reached her. She was wearing white rather than her trademark black. Perhaps, he thought, white was her trademark in Buenos Aires. The excess of jewellery was the same, though, and the gardenia perfume, of course. He would remember her by that if nothing else.
‘Ingrid,’ he said.
She turned, frowning in irritation, her eyes concealed behind dark glasses, her scarlet-lipped mouth compressed. Then she realized who he was. And her irritation changed, first to bafflement, then to anger. ‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped.
‘I need to talk to you. About your father.’
‘There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.’
Hammond nodded. ‘You’re right. You don’t want to hear it. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am very grateful to Professor Roger Williams for giving me many valuable insights into the career of a liver surgeon and for making our discussions on the subject so enjoyable.
I am also grateful to the authors of the following works, which helped me understand the nature and consequences of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s: They Would Never Hurt a Fly by Slavenka Drakulić; Madness Visible by Janine di Giovanni; With Their Backs to the World by Åsne Seierstad; Like Eating a Stone by Wojciech Tochman; The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić.
About the Author
Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and read history at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw.
Also by Robert Goddard
Past Caring
In Pale Battalions
Painting the Darkness
Into the Blue
Take No Farewell
Hand in Glove
Closed Circle
Borrowed Time
Out of the Sun
Beyond Recall
Caught in the Light
Set in Stone
Sea Change
Dying to Tell
Days without Number
Play to the End
Sight Unseen
Never Go Back
Name to a Face
Found Wanting
Long Time Coming
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First published in Great Britain
in 2011 by Bantam Press
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Copyright © Robert and Vaunda Goddard 2011
Robert Goddard has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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