Behind the hedges and the bramble bushes, the ground fell away as if it had been swept downhill by a landslide after all the rainfall they’d had lately. Behind it, the meadow began: gentle waves, covered with yellow cowslips and just perfect to race across with outstretched arms, mimicking an aeroplane taking off and soaring in loops over Talinovac. The sunbeams, which only just made it over the hill, divided the town down below into two halves: the sunny and the shadowy sides.
Milena’s ears pricked: she could hear a faint hum and a rattling sound. On the last section of the route, the final few kilometres before Talinovac, they’d encountered no traffic at all – until this solitary cyclist. He suddenly appeared amid the wild peonies, pedalling so furiously he looked like he was on the run.
‘Did you see that guy?’ Enver emerged from behind the bushes, tucking his shirt back neatly into his trousers.
Milena put out her cigarette, the signal that they were off again.
The road was strewn with debris, its verges looked unstable and at certain points it was so heavily shaded by the hillside and the trees that Milena was tempted to switch on her headlights. But after two bends it suddenly straightened out and lay open before them – except for an obstacle in the far distance.
A moped was standing in the middle of the road, with a handful of youths lounging by the kerb. It was hard to make out whether they were just bored or up to no good. Whatever the case, she wouldn’t be able to get past, not even on the left, where several bicycles had been left on the grass verge.
‘I knew it,’ Enver said.
Milena stepped on the clutch and took the car out of gear. ‘You think it might have something to do with our Belgrade number plate?’
‘That cyclist just now made me suspect something straight away.’
‘Do they want money?’
Enver rolled up his sleeves. ‘You stay here,’ he told her, ‘whatever happens.’
‘Don’t play the hero,’ Milena said, trying to make light of the situation. ‘You hear?’ But he had already closed the door.
He sauntered up to the young lads. Calmly and pleasantly, as was his way, he struck up a conversation with them. She was glad that Enver was with her. Not just because he was a native speaker. He was an agreeable travelling companion. Even so, the teenagers up front proved stubborn, and Enver had to talk to them for quite some time before there was any sign of movement.
A lanky youth in a sleeveless T-shirt, with a big tattoo on his skinny upper arm, approached Enver. For a moment, it looked like they were going to shake hands. But that wasn’t the case. Instead, the other four sidled up and surrounded Enver in a semicircle that grew ever tighter. Nervously, Milena drummed on her steering wheel.
Suddenly she lost sight of Enver; he’d vanished. She saw the flash of a knife, swore and opened the door. In that instant, Enver let out a great bellow. Then came a bang: once, twice. Enver slapped the tattooed lad hard across the face.
Milena was paralysed, and the louts seemed to be as well. And Enver? He picked up the knife from the floor and looked like he was giving the youths a serious talking-to. Then – Milena couldn’t believe her eyes – he handed the knife back to the tattooed fellow. He turned around and calmly walked back to the car. The lads didn’t budge an inch. ‘Are you all right?’ Milena had got out of the car and was standing behind the door, now recovered from the shock.
Enver just clenched his fist, then stretched out his fingers and said, ‘Could you give me the photograph of Goran?’
‘Are you really OK?’ Milena folded the seat forward and got her handbag from the back. From her diary she pulled a folded piece of paper, the black-and-white printout of the photograph that Slavujka had sent her.
Enver showed the photo to the youths. Milena needed no translation to realise that the youths must have seen Goran before. They started taking excitedly among themselves; Enver interrupted them and asked some more questions. Milena couldn’t make out a single word. The tattooed guy now took the lead in the conversation, and the others standing around nodded. Finally, Enver turned to Milena.
‘Get this,’ he said. ‘Goran’s in Talinovac right now. He turned up today.’
Milena nodded. She had assumed that much.
‘These lads pointed him in the direction of the Serbs, a couple who were friendly with the Valetićs. They say they can take us there.’
‘Great stuff,’ Milena nodded in the boys’ direction. ‘What are we waiting for?’
The smallest one in the group – Milena reckoned that her gestures and high-pitched voice revealed her to be a girl, despite her crew cut – suddenly raised an objection.
Enver translated, ‘She thinks that Goran’s left the Serbs and gone to the House of the Dead, or at least that he headed in the direction of the forest.’
‘The House of the Dead?’
‘The house where the Valetićs lived.’ Enver shrugged and gave a slightly lopsided grin.
‘When was that?’
‘A couple of hours ago or so. With a suitcase.’
‘Didn’t they follow him?’
Enver translated the question. Startled, the girl shook her head.
‘How far is it to this – House of the Dead?’ Milena addressed her question to the girl. ‘Could you show us the way?’
Shortly afterwards, Milena and Enver found themselves in the Lada following the tattooed youth on his moped. The girl with the crew cut had squeezed onto the pillion seat.
Talinovac was completely deserted; its sole inhabitants seemed to be dogs and a few chickens. The tattooed guy showed off his riding skills, elegantly slaloming his moped around the potholes, taking the turning at the inn at breakneck speed and splashed through a puddle right next to a woman, who stood in the street like a statue and watched the mini-convoy pass by with a puzzled expression on her face. They raced out of the town at sixty kilometres an hour. On their left a bent postbox appeared, and on the right an old barn. Then their journey came to an abrupt halt.
They got out of the car. A nearby track led straight uphill. Three kilometres from here, they were told, when you get to the forest, bear left, and the house should already be in sight by then. The main problem was the ditch separating the track from the road at this point. It didn’t look particularly deep or large, but it was wide enough to prevent them crossing it in the car. Somebody had put a plank across for pedestrians to use.
Milena looked nervously at her watch. Enver conferred with the tattooed fellow; they were all aware that they were running out of time. Who knew if they’d still catch up with Goran? How long might a person spend in the place where his parents had been murdered?
‘Listen,’ Milena said, pointing at the moped, ‘could we borrow that?’ To her complete surprise, without any objection or hesitation the tattooed guy instantly acted on her suggestion and began pushing the machine across the plank to the other side – Enver hadn’t even translated her question.
‘You’re welcome,’ the guy said, offering them the moped.
Enver smirked. ‘That’s what we were just discussing,’ he told Milena.
The tattooed youth pointed at the little footrests. She’d never sat on one of these things, but what the heck – what could go wrong? She held on tight to Enver.
Having to cope with two fully grown adults weighing it down, plus the rutted track, the moped struggled. Every few metres it threatened to topple over while the engine laboured with a loud whine on the steep slope.
Milena shouted, ‘What else did you talk about with that guy and the girl? Did they know the Valetićs? Did they tell you anything else that might help us?’
‘I mainly told them to stay away.’
‘Stay away?’
‘After all, we don’t know what Goran’s up to.’
‘You mean, whether he’s got a gun?’
‘Or how much he hates the Albanians. I shudder to think what’s going on in his head just now, up there in the house where his parents were murdered.’
Very circumspect, Milena thought. But she got the impression that the youths already gave the so-called House of the Dead a wide berth anyway.
‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘Did you discuss anything else with them?’
Enver bent over the handlebars and didn’t reply. They had hit sand, and Enver was gunning the engine for all it was worth. ‘I only impressed on them – that they should keep an eye out.’
‘What for?’
‘If we’re not back in an hour, they should call the police.’
In the dusk, the trees were like silhouettes against the almost-clear sky – mainly black pines and a few beeches. Milena shivered. The search for Goran had turned into a manhunt. What would she say to him when they found him? She didn’t know what to expect.
She imagined Miloš and Ljubinka walking along this path side by side, possibly every day. Had they spent their time bemoaning their lot, or had they enjoyed a good laugh together? Were they happy to be out of Belgrade and the refugee camp, or disappointed and frightened because this wasn’t the life they’d envisaged? Were they shunned as foreigners by the Albanians or harassed like unwelcome intruders and treated like enemies?
They followed the edge of the forest, through bushes and a little further on, before Enver turned off the engine. Milena got off the pillion seat. Her legs were stiff, and her calves ached. She moved like a stork. Enver leant the moped against a tree that still had police cordon tape wrapped around its trunk. The grass and nettles here were flattened like they had been trampled, probably by the security forces, who had still been investigating here only a week ago. It had been barely two weeks since she’d first read about the murder in the newspaper, and now here she was at the scene of the crime.
The house was a square box that shone pale in the gathering gloom. They didn’t utter a word. If Goran was there, he would have heard them by now. She found that thought reassuring; they certainly didn’t want to take him by surprise. The door had been left ajar, there was no seal or bell. She knocked.
‘Mr Valetić?’ she called out. ‘Goran?’
The house was shrouded in darkness, and that could only mean that Goran was already gone. She wasn’t surprised, only disappointed.
‘Looks like we’ve missed him,’ Enver said.
On the windowsill lay candles and matches. Thanks to the draught, it took Milena a few attempts to light one.
‘Are we allowed to do this?’ Enver asked. ‘Go straight in like this?’
‘I just want to get an impression of the place for myself,’ said Milena.
She thought there ought to be a kitchen to her right, but there was no sink or oven, only an upturned crate with a spirit stove on it. In the corner lay a bit of wood, and a pile of dirty straw on the floor looked like somebody had slept on it.
‘The door won’t shut,’ Enver called from the next room.
‘Pardon?’
‘What a tip!’
A jacket hung on the door handle. ‘Enver,’ she called out, ‘look!’
The garment was a blazer, quite formal, and couldn’t have been hanging there long. She felt the pockets. Something inside rustled. It looked like a ticket – a parking ticket. Milena put it in her pocket and hung the jacket back where she had found it.
‘Enver?’ She shielded the candle’s flame with her hand as she made her way into the other room. ‘Where are you?’
The candle threw flickering shadows against the wall – a rough stone surface with no plaster, which had been hacked along its entire length, as if somebody had torn out the pipework. This must have been done by professionals, probably builders. They had plundered everything that wasn’t nailed down. In the bathroom she found the same scene: the sink, the toilet – everything gone. Next door, where there must once have been a big picture window, there was now just a gaping black hole through which branches grew into the room. This destruction had not been caused in the past few days. Enver was right: Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić had moved into a hovel.
‘Are you there?’ she asked. She could barely make out a thing. The candlelight blinded her, making it impossible to see anything in the dimly lit room beyond. ‘Say something.’
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed something glinting. She lifted the candle, turned her head slightly and saw a pair of tiny football boots. A dark figure stood there as if bricked into the niche. She only had a second in which to recognise the small mouth, the broad, fleshy nose – a face in which nothing really fitted together. Then she was barged aside.
Milena staggered and clung on to the hard object that had hit her, a small suitcase, but she was unable to keep hold of it. She was shoved aside a second time, even harder. ‘Goran!’ she yelled, letting go. ‘Wait!’
She fell to the floor, swearing as she saw him run out the door.
‘Hello?’ Enver’s voice shouted. ‘Did you call me? Are you OK?’
‘Quick!’ She tried to extricate herself from the pile of jute sacks where she’d fallen. ‘Try and stop him.’
In three bounds he was by her side. ‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked, frightened. Without answering, she got to her feet.
Enver relit the candle and went outside, but in the darkness they would have needed searchlights. Goran was gone. When he exited, he’d even had enough time to snatch his jacket from the door handle.
Milena swore again. ‘We walked straight past him,’ she said, and gestured to Goran’s hiding place. ‘He was standing right there.’ Her shoulder hurt. She moved her arm and asked, ‘Where were you, by the way?’ Without waiting for Enver’s reply, she took the candle from his hand. ‘Look at that,’ she said quietly.
In the far corner of the room, a small oil painting was propped up against the wall. Taking the candle, Milena cast light on the patch of floor in front of it. There were a number of dark stains there, where blood had seeped into the concrete. This must have been the exact spot where Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić were murdered. Milena felt sick.
Deeply moved, she knelt down. Had Goran placed the icon here? She looked at the angel’s pale countenance lost in reverie. There was a deep sadness in its eyes, but the smile was mild, as if the angel were seeking something totally at variance with the dreadful crime that had been committed here: forgiveness.
‘We should go,’ Enver urged. ‘We’ve got to get back. You know, the children down there, the youths – they’ll do what I told them to do, they’ll call the police.’
The longer she studied the face of the icon, the stronger the connection she felt to it. What was it?
‘Are you coming?’
Milena put the candle in front of the little painting, finding a place for it that was clear of the bloodstains on the concrete. The flame flickered before eventually settling down and illuminating the pale face. The icon expressed Milena’s own feelings: horror at what had happened, and a deep sense of helplessness.