ANNA HAD REGAINED control of herself by the time Willem van Brug returned to his office. She could not say which of the competing emotions had overwhelmed her as she read the letter: anger, frustration, grief, longing, fear. All of them had combined in greater or lesser parts to undo her and she found herself weeping uncontrollably at the loss she had suffered all those years ago and the incomprehensible futility of it. She knew that the passage of time would have made this so much easier to cope with were it not for Rachel. She had stopped and stared at the line about his family: all dead, in my case. Marin Katich had his long-held secrets and so did she. Now, after more than three decades, he wanted to unburden himself. But Anna remained determined to keep her biggest secret.
If van Brug noticed that his wastepaper bin was now stuffed with damp tissues he gave no sign of it; he simply sat down at his desk and asked, ‘Well, Anna, are you prepared to tell me what’s in the letter?’
‘I can tell you,’ she said calmly, ‘that he claims to be innocent of the charges that have been laid against him.’
She looked to van Brug for his reaction, but his expression was unreadable.
‘What is it they say in the movies?’ he said after a moment. ‘Stop the presses.’
‘He says he knows that’s what everyone says.’
‘Ja, that’s true, they are all innocent men, even when the trail of blood leads to their doorstep. Did he name any witnesses or other evidence that we might use to prove that he is innocent?’
‘Not in the letter.’
Van Brug shrugged, as if this came as no surprise. ‘Still, this is the first word I have heard from him about how he intends to plead. It’s a first step. What else did he say?’
Anna had already considered what she should pass on to the lawyer at this point. ‘Much of the letter is personal and nothing to do with the allegations against him,’ she responded cautiously. ‘He did mention a Rule 64 and he said he had spoken to you about it.’
Van Brug did not answer, Instead, he reached again into a drawer in his desk and produced a printed document, which he handed to her.
‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘These are the regulations governing prison visits by media representatives. It is generally forbidden for journalists to enter the prison, but you will see that I have highlighted Rule 64, which Mr Maric pointed out to me. It says that you can seek special permission from the Registrar. Now, you are lucky in a way because it happens that he is an Australian, born in Sri Lanka. His name is Prometheus Singarasa.’
‘I’ve heard the name,’ Anna said, flicking through to the highlighted page. ‘I didn’t realise he was Australian.’
Van Brug nodded. ‘That may or may not help. They are very strict about their rules. Now I have given this much thought because Prometheus knows very well that I have been unable to get Tomislav Maric to cooperate with me to prepare his defence. Now here comes this woman, Anna Rosen, and things start to change. You are the new factor in this equation and you may be the one to change the attitude of Mr Maric. So, I have a radical proposal for you.’
When the lawyer paused, it seemed like a courtroom trick to allow suspense to gather around a proposition. Anna waited for him to make his point, tapping one finger on his desk in the rhythm of her pulse.
‘Go on, I’m listening,’ she said, louder than intended.
‘Well, all right, here it is …’ He paused. ‘I think you should join the defence team for this case.’
Anna was genuinely shocked. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes, I am. The idea is not so crazy. Many lawyers have experts and researchers working for them. The prosecution has whole teams of such people. I think you will still need to convince Prometheus Singarasa to allow you to do this. As the Registrar, he has the discretion to do so. I think this is a much stronger argument than simply asking him to bend the rules to allow in a journalist who is writing a book. It will be much harder for him to stand in the way of Maric getting a proper defence. If you agree, I will write to him immediately.’
Anna thought about it for a moment. ‘But they already know that I’m proposing to write a book. I’ve sent them emails about it.’
‘Well, if that does come up, you can argue that there are no rules to stop lawyers or even judges writing books about the cases they’ve worked on once they are over. I am sure that more than one of the lawyers on both sides of the Milosevic case will be writing books. I know for a fact that documentary film crews have been running around behind the scenes, filming during the trial. The producers are not permitted to talk to Milosevic, of course, but some of these lawyers have themselves become celebrities. I am sure publishers are working on those book deals now, ready for the trial to end.’
Anna had begun to grasp the significance of the opportunity van Brug was offering her. It was not something she would ever have considered herself. Her journalist’s mindset kept her on the riverbank watching the floodwaters go past. Now she was being offered the chance to leap in. If she said yes to van Brug, she would no longer be a mere observer. She would be part of a team trying to defend Marin Katich against allegations that he had committed crimes so heinous they sickened her. But what if he really were innocent of them? She came to a quick decision.
‘I’ll do it on one condition.’
‘What is that?’
‘If I find evidence that he’s guilty, I won’t keep it from the prosecution. And if he confesses to me, I’ll offer myself up as a witness against him. I won’t be bound by the constraints of legal privilege. You must accept that.’
‘I do. I had already considered that possibility. I will explain to Mr Maric that those are your conditions. The same would have applied, I am sure, if you spoke to him as a journalist.’
Anna jumped to her feet, full of pent-up energy. ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘It seems we are destined to see a lot of each other, Willem.’
The lawyer stood up too, towering over her and bending again to offer his hand. She shook it vigorously.
‘Ja, Anna, that is good,’ he said. ‘You will find that I am, by nature, a cautious man. Most people who know me will find this a very—how should I say it?—a very uncharacteristic decision. Even now, I am a little nervous at being so bold.’
‘Well, I don’t want to exacerbate your nervousness,’ she said. ‘But there is one more thing you need to know before we go any further.’
‘What is it?’
‘His name is not Tomislav Maric.’
•
On the way back to the hotel, Anna bought a pack of cigarettes at a kiosk. In her room, she cracked open the window to the freezing mist rising off the North Sea. She sat smoking at the open window, looking around at the velvet-covered chairs, the antique chest of drawers, the unopened minibar and the oil paintings. Her long black coat, hanging over one of the chairs, was the only item she owned that did not seem out of place. The few clothes she hadn’t already worn were still bundled inside the Briggs & Riley suitcase, and they didn’t amount to much. She had packed too lightly and wondered if, with judicious dry-cleaning, she could make it through to the January sales. She picked up the Blackberry and tapped out a message to Pierre.
Hi mate, looks like I’ll be here for longer than expected. If your spare room is still on offer I’ll take it. Anna x
Pierre replied almost immediately.
Stay as long as you want! Koppelstokstraat 174, Geuzenkwartier. It’s not far. Leave the money trap NOW. I’m here. I’ll make supper. You bring wine.
Anna confirmed the plan and rang reception. She checked the time. It was the middle of the night in Sydney. Later she would have to ring Rachel to explain why she would not be home for Christmas. She shivered, threw the cigarette out the window and pushed it closed.
The melancholic mist pressed against the glass. Anna stared into it and saw sections of the pier emerging and disappearing in the diaphanous swirl. Then she caught her own reflection in the glass—a wan face, drawn and anxious. She drew a curtain on this unwanted apparition and busied herself with packing.
Near the end of the short day, the taxi dropped her at what the driver said was the nearest off-licence to Pierre’s apartment. It was over the road from the Scheveningen boat harbour, which was still shrouded in sea mist and growing darker by the minute. The street was empty, the mist foreboding, and she quickly entered the warm, well-lit store for refuge. The Pakistani proprietor regarded her sourly, but his expression seemed to brighten when she chose two pricey bottles of chablis. He even came out into the cold to direct her to Koppelstokstraat, which was indeed only a short trundle away.
Koppelstokstraat was part of a multi-street complex of modern, red-brick terraces designed to mimic the charm of the city’s older neighbourhoods but failing, Anna thought, the character test. The street was packed with colourful, miniature cars squashed into every available parking space. She tried to imagine the inhabitants, famously the tallest people in Europe, folding themselves into these tiny vehicles. Many of the identical houses had one or more bicycles leaning unchained near their front doors, a sign that there was little to disturb the comfortable lives of the people inside. It was safe, clean and middle-class, and so very unlike a place that the Pierre Villiers she once knew would have chosen to live.
She found 174 easily enough and Pierre answered her buzz.
‘Come on up,’ he called, and the door opened to reveal a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Anna banged her suitcase awkwardly upwards, silently cursing her old friend for his lack of manners—that, at least, was consistent with the man she knew. She emerged at the top into a spacious, warm and, she had to admit, tasteful apartment full of Danish furniture, bookcases and modern art. Pierre was in the kitchen at the other side of the room, stirring something in a steaming frying pan under a roaring range hood.
‘My word,’ said Anna.
‘Oh, fuck it,’ said Pierre, downing tools and rushing belatedly over to her. ‘I should have come down and helped.’
Anna put down her bags and hugged him with genuine affection before she detached herself to make a theatrical gesture at the room.
‘Who’d have guessed,’ she said. ‘You live in a grown-up’s house.’
‘What did you expect—a squat?’
She laughed. ‘No, but it’s so … perfect. It’s like you went and got your teeth fixed without telling anyone.’
‘I don’t know whether to be pleased or aggrieved.’
‘Definitely pleased,’ she said gently. ‘It’s lovely. Thank you so much for getting me out of that stuffy hotel.’
‘I’ll show you to your room in two secs,’ he said, rushing back to the kitchen. ‘Just need to turn this down.’
Anna followed him across the room and placed the wine bottles on the bench.
‘Oh, nice,’ said Pierre, squinting at the labels. ‘Premier Cru!’
He opened the oven. ‘Roast tomatoes,’ he said, then closed it and stirred the pan. ‘And fried eggplant. I’m making pasta.’
‘I’m officially impressed.’
Pierre threw a handful of salt into the pot of water and clamped the lid back down. ‘All under control,’ he said. ‘Let’s take your gear up.’
There were two bedrooms upstairs and Pierre ushered her into the front one. It had a dormer window to the street and an antique desk beneath it.
‘You can work here,’ he said. ‘It’s nice and quiet. There’s wi-fi, I’ll give you the password, and through there an ensuite bathroom. Clean towels and everything.’
Anna looked around like a prospective tenant. ‘It really is perfect, Pierre. Thanks again.’
‘Comfy bed,’ he said, pointing at it awkwardly. ‘Firm mattress. Look, you make yourself at home. I’ll finish cooking. You can give me your news over supper. I hope you don’t mind eating early.’
‘No, I’m starving. I’ll come down soon.’
Pierre lingered for a moment at the doorway. ‘Like old times, eh?’ he said. Then he turned and rushed back down the stairs.
•
As Anna unpacked, setting out her toiletries in the bathroom, hanging her clothes and making the room hers, a familiar, trippy song came floating up from the living room. ‘Solid Air’. She knew it straight away. John Martyn. She had first heard it when she was working in the Canberra press gallery. That was way back in February 1973. Soon after that, she joined the manhunt for Marin Katich, and then he came to her at night in her hotel room …
Only a few nights ago at the Kurhaus bar, when she had confessed to Pierre the secret of Rachel’s conception, she had omitted from her account that it happened on the night before Marin’s planned assassination of the prime minister of Yugoslavia. Now Pierre had chosen to play a song from those days about a friend who knows you and loves you, who would follow you anywhere—even through solid air. Was it deliberate or serendipitous? The thought put her on edge as she went back downstairs.
She found him flipping through his record collection. ‘Have you got something else?’ she asked. ‘I’m not into seventies nostalgia.’
Pierre looked hurt. ‘I love John Martyn,’ he said. ‘But sure, any preferences?’
‘Classical?’
Anna relaxed when he chose a collection of Chopin preludes. Pierre threw her a box of matches.
‘You light the candles,’ he said. ‘Supper’s ready.’
•
Anna watched as Pierre effortlessly put the meal together. He tipped the cooked pasta into a large bowl; threw in handfuls of parmesan; splashed oil; mixed in the spicy roast-tomato-and-eggplant sauce, and added salt, pepper and some of the reserved pasta water to keep it moist. She knew where he had learned these sublime skills. Pierre’s first wife, Chiara, was Italian, a volatile woman who was never far, in Anna’s estimation, from an emotional crisis. Given her husband’s peripatetic former life as a correspondent, it was remarkable the marriage had lasted as long as it did.
Pierre had been living in Chiara’s apartment in Rome when Anna first met her. It didn’t go at all well. Anna’s easy bond of friendship with Pierre was immediately threatening to a younger woman already anxious about where she stood. Anna was philosophical about it—after all, what wife would welcome the company of a woman who could finish her husband’s sentences in his native language, who was aware of his every foible, who understood, better than she did, the experiences and the culture that had made him?
‘Pasta waits for no woman!’ said Pierre, placing a bowl in front of her and refilling her wineglass with a flourish.
Anna took a mouthful of his creation. ‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘Incredibly delicious. What did I do to deserve this?’
Pierre started to eat, followed it with a gulp of wine and putting down his fork.
‘I was just thinking of Chiara,’ Anna said. ‘She taught you so well.’
‘Some things, that’s true.’
Pierre resumed eating and drinking, and Anna let him go until it was clear he wasn’t going to add to the comment.
‘Do you miss her?’
Pierre put down his fork again and took up his wine.
‘Things went wrong from the moment I moved us to Zagreb,’ he said. ‘She hated it there. I mean, really hated it. She thought the people were charmless, crude and rough. And the politics! Well, as the city went onto a war footing—you know what it was like—that was the last straw. She said she knew now what it must have been like living in Italy when Mussolini came to power. One day she packed up and ran back to Rome. We tried to keep it together for a while.’ Pierre shrugged. ‘The end was inevitable.’
His glasses had steamed up and Anna watched him take them off to rub them clear with his napkin.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ll always have pasta.’ Then she held her tongue, brought up short by her own insensitivity.
‘And you,’ said Pierre, his eyes swimming imperceptibly behind the thick lenses. ‘You’ll always have Rachel.’
‘I deserved that.’
‘When are you going to tell her who she really is?’
‘I better tell you what happened today,’ said Anna. ‘And then you can give me your advice. I met up with Marin Katich’s lawyer after I left you this morning—Willem van Brug, you may know him?—and he may have found a way for me to get into the prison to meet him.’
‘He doesn’t even know who he’s representing.’
‘He does now.’
Anna explained van Brug’s plan for her to join Marin Katich’s legal team and her own conditions if she discovered proof of his guilt. She said she hoped Pierre might help her to set up a meeting as soon as possible with the Registrar, Prometheus Singarasa, and that she felt she should be the one to break the news to him that there was no such person as Tomislav Maric.
‘I’ll get you in to see Prometheus, that’s no problem,’ said Pierre. ‘It would be pointless me going to him at this stage. They’d just think I sat on this information in breach of my duty. But you know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?’ he went on sharply. ‘Every man and his dog will descend on Scheveningen. Every Australian tabloid, every news and current affairs show. And they’re bound to find you, the world’s leading expert on the Katich family, for fuck’s sake. You won’t be able to move an inch without a camera on you. And, back home, Rachel will be watching her mother, refusing to comment, working on the legal team of an Australian fucking … Nazi fucking … war criminal. How on earth are you going to explain that to her?’
‘I’m going to call her tonight.’
‘And tell her what, exactly?’
‘I’m not going to lie to her, Pierre,’ said Anna. ‘I’m going to tell her that I’m writing a book about this man, the son of the Australian Nazi I already wrote a book about. She’ll get that!’
Pierre stared at her, his face a study in incredulity. ‘You’re not going to lie to her?’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you serious? Not telling her the truth is a fucking lie!’
‘Marin wrote me a letter,’ she said quietly. ‘Van Brug passed it on to me.’
‘Show it to me, then.’
‘I won’t,’ she said emphatically. ‘There’s too much in it that’s personal. I won’t show it to anyone. But in the final line he says that he is not guilty of the war crimes they have charged him with. He says he didn’t do it.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ said Pierre, angrily. ‘You’re obsessed with this man! Do you still love him?’
She saw the naked emotions roiling in Pierre and wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake coming to stay with him. But of all the people she knew, he was the best equipped to help her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him for more than thirty years. I’m still a journalist. I’m on the inside of this story. No one else will have a clue. And what if he’s telling the truth, Pierre? What if he’s innocent? This is Rachel’s father we’re talking about. Do you seriously expect me to tell her he’s a war criminal if that might not be true? I owe it to her to find out the truth about him.’
Pierre poured himself another glass of wine and drained it with sudden violence.
‘Oh, right, I get it now,’ he said, regaining his composure. ‘You’re going to reinvestigate his case, aren’t you. You’re going to listen to his bullshit and go running back to Bosnia.’
‘That’s where we’ll find the truth,’ she said simply.
Pierre stared at her, lost for words. His glasses fogged again.
‘Don’t expect me to come with you,’ he said finally. ‘You’re on your own this time.’
‘Don’t you want to know what really happened?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you curious? We were there.’
‘That was thirteen years ago.’
‘We saw his funeral.’
‘I was pleased he was dead.’
‘But he wasn’t, Pierre. We know that now.’