Zagreb Cowboy (18 page)

Della Torre had counted up his resources. They’d taken everything out of his wallet and the envelope full of Deutschmarks, but they hadn’t touched the passport wallet in his overnight bag. He’d always kept some emergency cash in various currencies in it, though, feeling flush with Strumbić’s cash, he’d given most of his reserves to Irena. All told, in Deutschmarks, dollars, and lira, he had around four hundred pounds sterling left. It might be enough to get him a one-way ticket to the U.S., but then what?

If he husbanded the money carefully, it would last him about three weeks in London and then might even leave him with enough to catch a coach back to Zagreb. He was pretty sure he’d be fed on Goli Otok, or whatever the equivalent was now that they’d shut the penal island for good. At least until whoever’d hired the Bosnians got to him. He lit a cigarette.

“Would you like me to drive you somewhere? Anywhere within reason. I mean, anywhere in central London or to Heathrow?” asked PC Nicholas.

Della Torre fiddled with the keys in his pocket. He took out all three sets. His apartment keys. And those for the Renault. The
UDBA
was sure to impound it. And then there was Strumbić’s set, the ones that had been on the ring with the key for the
BMW
. And a thought dawned on him.

“Do you know where Hampstead is?”

“Sure, north London, big park. Very nice. Very posh.”

“Can you drive me there?”

ANZULOVIĆ WAS SLUMPED
against the back of his chair. His long face had the look of an antlerless moose. He’d always had the habit of getting in early. He laughed it off whenever a colleague mentioned it, saying his wife and daughters drove him out of the house. There might have been a little truth to that. But the reality was that, outside of the cinema, he’d never liked to be surprised. He liked to know what was going on, to be able to plan and organize, to stay on top of things, so that when the inevitable shovelful of rusted nuts and bolts was thrown into the machine, he knew how to sort things out.

Not that there had been much to do during recent months. They’d stopped receiving orders from Belgrade, and much of the
UDBA
’s normal operations in Zagreb had shut down as the many Serbs on its staff left the increasingly hostile atmosphere. He felt sorry for those in mixed marriages, especially where it was a Croat married to a Serb, or either married to a Bosnian Muslim. Those families were going to suffer trying times. They were suffering already.

Della Torre came into Anzulović’s mind just as there was a knock on the door.

“Come.”

It was Messar. He shut the door behind him but remained standing.

“What’s the news?”

Messar looked at him for a while.

“My men were stopped by the Italian police. It wasn’t random. Somebody had put them up to it.”

“Do you think Gringo planned ahead to make sure he didn’t have a welcoming party?” Anzulović asked neutrally.

“Maybe. But I think he had help from this side.”

“Oh?”

Messar just shrugged.

“So what now?” Anzulović asked.

“There’s the Bosnians. From what I’ve been able to find out, they’re back in Bosnia.”

“Can’t you get someone to track them down and pick them up?”

“No, they’re from near the border, by the Krajina,” Messar said, referring to the swathe of Serb-occupied lands in Croatia next to Serb-dominated parts of Bosnia. There was no chance a request from Zagreb would hold any water there.

“So what do I tell Kakav?”

“I don’t think you need to tell him anything. We’ll monitor both della Torre apartments and his father’s house. We’ll track him down when he gets in touch.”

“And what do we do when we’ve tracked him down? Leave Zagreb to sort out an extradition? Good luck to them,” Anzulović said. Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, and as such any extraditions would have to be organized through Belgrade.

“Or we get the
UDBA
to do it the old-fashioned way,” Messar said.

“Ah yes, make him an offer he can’t refuse,” Anzulović said. Messar stared at him. “That’s from
The Godfather
, by the way.” Messar still didn’t react. Why did none of his staff ever watch any decent movies? They lapped up Laurel and Hardy, and local crap, which usually involved some superhero partisan and a dose of soft-core or alternatively was an ersatz western. But that was it.

“Until then we’ll keep a lookout for the Bosnians. And a close eye on Strumbić. There’s more to this story than he’s telling us. My best guess is that he and della Torre were involved in some dirty deal and then fell out.”

“Anything else going on?”

“With this case?”

“With the world,” Anzulović said and then quickly added, “Never mind. Keep me posted.”

Messar left without saying anything.

Anzulović looked around the office. It was, he supposed, grand. The proportions were, anyway. Tall windows looked out across a park. But like most of Zagreb’s late-nineteenth-century buildings, it had been badly adapted to the modern world. The ceramic stove in the corner of the room had been converted from wood to gas, but the process of keeping it lit and running smoothly was beyond him. Rather than freeze, he kept the room too hot but left a window slightly ajar. Which meant there was always a cold draft.

Yugoslavs had mostly lived well during the past couple of decades. Before that, the poverty had been palpable. And so had been the oppression of living under a Communist ideology in a police state. But the 1970s and ’80s had been better. Not like in the West. Still, people had cars and televisions, and most ate meat more or less whenever they wanted it. Those who did well, the professionals, could save enough to buy Volkswagens and German washing machines. They could even travel abroad, though it was expensive.

The past year and a half, though, had brought back memories of those difficult times. He could feel them coming back, the deep, brutal poverty of his childhood, when children from the villages in the hills didn’t have shoes, when food was little more than cabbage or beans with the occasional scraping of pork fat to flavour it. Mean times.

And mean times made people angry. There was solidarity with those they considered their own, but strangers would suffer.

Anzulović looked up at the peeling and chipped whitewashed walls, dingy with dust towards where they reached the ceiling in a gentle curve instead of a cornice. Maybe the answer was for the people to save themselves. It was too late for him. His daughters? No, they’d never go anywhere else, fearing the world beyond their narrow borders.

But it wouldn’t be too late for Gringo. Or for Irena.

“SORRY, THIS IS
a non-smoking car,” said PC Nicholas when della Torre popped open another pack of Luckys.

“Clever car. It’ll live longer that way,” he said, reaching for his matches.

“Sorry. You don’t understand. People aren’t allowed to smoke in this car,” said PC Nicholas.

“You’re not Bosnian by any chance, are you?”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll chew my fingernails instead.”

“Did a mugging here last week,” PC Nicholas said, pointing to a nondescript street corner.

“Is that really something you should be admitting to? You being a policeman and all?”

“What? Oh. No, it was a case I took on. I didn’t mug anyone. Someone else did,” he said, slightly flustered. “There’s been a wave of bag-snatchings along here. A couple of kids on bikes. My case.”

“Any luck so far?”

“Not really,” he admitted, but then quickly added, “It’s just a matter of time.”

“Wait long enough and you might get a deathbed confession.”

A minute later PC Nicholas let out a honking laugh. “I get it. I didn’t know Italians were so funny. Though you sound pretty American. I’ll have to use that one.”

“Have it on me,” della Torre said. The police radio cut in and out in the background, parcels of static.

Despite the misery of his circumstances, he had warmed to this young cop. There was no affectation. No fake toughness. Just a keen earnestness and concern.

Had the train robbery happened in Zagreb, the police would have shrugged their shoulders and said he ought to have paid more attention before getting into a carriage full of teenagers. But only after leaving him to rot in the station waiting room for the best part of a day. On the other hand, he didn’t know of a cop car in Zagreb that was without a full ashtray.

It was a slow drive through London’s nondescript and rubbish-strewn southern suburbs; rush-hour congestion kept them crawling for long stretches.

“Wouldn’t it be quicker with the lights flashing and the siren on?” della Torre asked.

PC Nicholas looked scandalized. “Not unless it’s an emergency. And I’m afraid you don’t count.”

Della Torre wondered whether the young cop would feel the same in ten years’ time, when he had to get his kids to school and everyone was running late — PC Nicholas had proudly told him his wife was pregnant. But della Torre kept his mouth shut. At least the cops here started off honest.

They crossed the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge. Della Torre admired the way the river seemed to bend around them. For a moment, London offered up the stately beauty the tourist brochures always promised. He caught a glimpse of Westminster to his left, and on the other side St. Paul’s and Tower Bridge. It brought on a prickling of unwanted memory.

Then they were back in the endless monotony of the city’s dirt-grey Georgian and Victorian architecture, punctuated by socialist-inspired bits of concrete functionalism.

But it was different when they got to Hampstead. They eased into an elegant world of white stucco villas and cottages that might have been transported out of country villages onto this expensive film set.

“Welcome to Hampstead. Do you know where you’re going?”

“It’s a building set into the park, up on the hill. Do you mind driving round?”

PC Nicholas didn’t mind. He seemed to enjoy marvelling at the big houses the rich people lived in, guessing at how much they might cost.

They made a circuit of the vast park called Hampstead Heath, looking for a likely building. They briefly got lost on the Highgate side, up a steep, narrow lane bordered by heavy cast-iron railings and overhung by ivy-strangled trees, where they caught glimpses of weathered stone angels in the shadows. It was only when they passed the gates that della Torre remembered. Highgate Cemetery. Eternal home to Karl Marx. They muddled their way to the road at the wooded top of the Heath and then drove down its eastern side.

“There,” della Torre said. “Stop here.” He’d remembered Strumbić’s description. It was five storeys high, red brick, and built around the turn of the century — the southernmost of a pair of buildings that dug into the Heath, surrounded on three sides by the parkland and on the fourth by a narrow road. Crowned with white dormers, which della Torre had kept his eyes on from the top of the hill.

They pulled up directly in front of the building. Della Torre got out and tried the keys on the front door. One of the Yales worked.

PC Nicholas seemed disappointed that they had arrived so soon; he’d have to drive back into the depths of south London now. Della Torre came back to grab his suitcase from the car and shook the officer’s hand with heartfelt thanks.

He carried his near-empty suitcase and his shoulder bag up the stairs, ignoring the lift. He tried to remember — had Strumbić said the third floor or the fourth? Whichever it was, he knew it had a long view over central London, which put it on the south side of the building.

He worked his way methodically along the parquet-floored hallways, knocking on doors and, when there was no answer, trying the keys. Once a maid answered, but she didn’t seem to speak English. Otherwise, no one seemed to be around. When he’d run out of doors on the third floor, he went up the stairs.

The security key fit the corner flat. Although he heard the deadbolt clank and the Yale turned in the door handle, he couldn’t open the door. He tried to force it but the wood protested against his weight. And then he remembered the Chubb lock.

The apartment was spacious and light. A small entrance hall opened into a large sitting room, which bent around in an L shape. The bottom leg of the L was a dining room, and there was a galley kitchen in the angle. The windows, covered by fine muslin curtains, looked to the south and the east over a large expanse of woods, rolling meadows, and ponds glinting in the morning light; beyond, the hill ended and London’s vastness took over. The apartment was furnished along simple lines, the way he’d seen in Swedish houses. Nothing looked cheap, but it was all understated, with spare lines. There were a few older mahogany pieces, but none of the fake, heavy rococo that was all too common in Italian households. He wandered along the hall, looking into one, two, and then a third bedroom, the last with its own bathroom.

The apartment was vast. Had Strumbić said two hundred square metres? Della Torre could easily believe it. There was nowhere like it in Zagreb that he knew of. Come to think of it, he’d only ever seen places like this in magazines, as backdrops to celebrity photo shoots. He’d long known Strumbić was a crook, doing dodgy little sidelines here and there, but he never imagined it could be on such a scale. The apartment was worthy of a Mafia kingpin.

He’d have felt comfortable camping out for a couple of weeks while he decided what to do, but it was obvious someone was living here. The flat was spotless but the refrigerator was full of food. Stockings were hung up to dry in one bathroom, and the other was full of well-ordered toiletries. There were women’s clothes in the closet of the main bedroom. The decor was neutral or slightly feminine.

He went back to the front door and tried all the keys again. There was no mistake — this was Strumbić’s apartment.

Della Torre sat on a cream sofa and was about to light a cigarette when he noticed there was no ashtray. He found a saucer in the kitchen and brought it back to the living room.

He was tired and he smelled. He wished he had a change of clothes, but then he remembered seeing a washing machine and dryer in the bathroom. Maybe Strumbić had a mistress whom he kept in the place. He’d never mentioned one. In fact he’d said it was empty, waiting for him.

The only woman in London Strumbić had mentioned was the agent who handled the apartment for him. Della Torre remembered the conversation. He’d asked how much the apartment had cost.

“You don’t want to know,” Strumbić had said. “On your salary, you’d probably have to work for the next 250 years to buy it — that’s if I gave you a sixty percent discount and you didn’t eat or pay taxes along the way. It’s not cheap to run, either — the building charges, taxes, utilities . . .”

“Who’s handling it for you?”

“All the bills get paid automatically out of an English account I’ve got set up. There’s enough cash in it to cover costs till I’m a great-grandpa. The agent who sold it to me has it all furnished. Real nice. Not cheap. She’s got taste. Which means I’ve got taste. I give her a call a couple of days beforehand and it’s all ready for me when I get there. Clean, tidy; beds made, dusted, sorted, and nice little touches like flowers, fruit, milk in the fridge, and that feminine smell that makes a place feel like home.”

“She sounds a dream.”

“Not bad-looking, either. Bit older than the ones I usually go for.”

“You mean she’s not sixteen.”

“I’d put her at around thirty,” Strumbić had said, ignoring the comment. “Blond — real blond, not the bottled stuff. Not married, though I don’t know why. She’s put together pretty well, though her tits aren’t as big as I like. A bit on the tall side. She’d suit you better than me. Still, I’d nail her.”

“Except what? It’d ruin your professional relationship?”

“My English isn’t good enough to explain just why it would make so much sense for her. My seductive technique relies a lot on getting the right message across. Maybe I’ll bring you along as translator.”

No mention of any mistress.

Della Torre would just have to sit there until the mystery resolved itself.

But he smelled. And having finally found a quiet bit of comfort, he minded. He decided to chance it, throw his clothes into the machine and then try to explain his way out of any awkwardness later. He was too tired to think straight.

Della Torre stripped and shoved everything into the machine apart from his wool cardigan. He decided to burn it once he’d bought himself a jacket. He took a shower in the en suite bathroom, luxuriating in the lavender soap, using a lady’s razor to shave. He dried himself on a big towel folded over the heated towel radiator, a hitherto unknown luxury.

He wandered into the bedroom, where he found a dressing gown made of heavy damasked grey linen. It fit perfectly. Either the woman was a giantess or she liked flowing robes. A thought flitted across his mind. Maybe he should try on her underwear to see how big she really was. He laughed. The poor priest. The secrets of the confessional meant that he wouldn’t be able to share the story with anyone else. Or would he? Maybe priests kept secrets in the way that secret policemen kept secrets. Which was to say usually, but not always.

Her scent was on the robe. Not a perfume, but her — a light, delicious fragrance. It reminded him of his tiredness. He went into one of the spare bedrooms and lay down. “To stretch his legs,” as his father would confusingly say, mangling the English expression.

It was late afternoon when della Torre woke to the sound of birds. He resisted at first, wanting to prolong the feeling, to rest his bones until they’d savoured every last possible grain of sleep. But he knew he had to get up. Nearly four o’clock. He was hungry.

He went to check his clothes and cursed. They were sitting in a machine full of water. He’d neglected to switch on the spin cycle. They’d need drying too.

Nothing to be done. His stomach rumbled, so he went into the kitchen to see what he might be able to rustle up and fixed himself a couple of fried eggs with bread. He opened a beer and was surprised to find it was drinkable. No wonder: it was Czech. He was enjoying a cigarette when he heard a key click in the door. Once again, he thought of his gun too late. It was still in pieces inside his suitcase.

He was standing, facing the door, when the woman stepped in. She stopped, pulled back into the doorway, and stood there, holding the frame as if she was going to push off it when she bolted. She paused before speaking.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here? And why are you wearing my dressing gown?” There was a tremor in her voice.

He held his hands up in a show of peaceful intent.

“I’m a friend of Strumbić’s. He gave me the keys to his place and told me I could stay here while I was in London.”

“Who?”

“Strumbić, he owns this place. I used his keys to get in.”

“I don’t know anybody with that name.”

Della Torre shrugged.

“I think you might have to leave.”

“Let me explain.”

“I think the only thing you have to explain is why you haven’t gone yet.”

“Can I keep your dressing gown, then? My clothes are in the washer. You see, I flew in from Italy last night and I was robbed of my money and my things.”

She watched him, her eyes alert, fearful. And cold.

“I know what it looks like, but I promise you it’s not how it seems,” he said. “Listen. You stand there. I’ll stand here, right up against the wall. I’ll turn around if you like. And maybe we can talk. Put a chair in front of the door if you like. But I promise you, I’m pretty sure I have as much right to be here as you.”

She considered him for a long time, tense, poised to slam the door shut and run. But she stayed.

“I’ll listen,” she said slowly, “as long as you do one thing first.” She’d loosened her grip on the door frame but continued to watch him intently, unblinking.