The Eyewitness (6 page)

“Mr. Solomon won't bite, you can talk to him,” she said.

“You can practise your English.”

The boy looked down again, his cheeks reddening.

“She didn't like to be called Nicoletta,” he said quietly.

“She wanted everyone to call her Nicole. Like Nicole Kidman. The movie star.”

“Pretty lady,” said Solomon.

“Nicole was prettier. She could have been a movie star, too. I kept telling her. If she could just get to Hollywood, she'd be rich and famous.” The boy went quiet.

“Anyway, as I was saying, Nicoletta wasn't in the truck...” The boy glared at him and Solomon smiled an apology.

“Nicole wasn't in the truck, so I wanted to ask you if she had definitely been on the farm at the time of the .. . incident.”

Kimete translated for the old woman.

“I don't think she would have gone anywhere else,” said the old woman.

Solomon picked up the photograph and scanned the faces. Most of them the faces of the dead. An image flashed through his mind, of screams and shouts and fingernails clawing at the locked door, and in a corner of the truck the parents cuddling their little girl, trying to comfort her even though they knew they were all going to die. Solomon shuddered.

“The thing is, Nana, if she was away from the farm on an errand, or if she had hidden when it happened, she'd have sought help afterwards, wouldn't she?”

' Tako pretpostavljam," she said.

“I suppose so.”

“And the farm has been thoroughly searched so we're sure she's not there.” He chose his words carefully: her body wasn't there, was what he meant.

“What happened to her family?” asked the boy quietly, in English. He looked up and brushed his fringe away from his eyes, “They were killed,” said Solomon.

The boy's eyes narrowed.

“How?”

“That doesn't matter,” said Solomon.

“It's more important now that we find out who did it.”

The old woman snorted.

“We know who did it. The bastard Serbs killed them. Who else would do such a thing?”

“Nana, please .. .” Solomon said. It was important to keep emotion out of the investigation. All he wanted were the facts.

“I just need to know how I can find Nicole.”

Kimete translated.

“Why?” the boy asked Solomon.

“Why do you want to find her?”

“She might be a witness,” said Solomon.

“She might have seen what happened to her family.” Solomon looked across at the old woman.

“What do you think, Nana?”

The old woman sighed.

“Can you think of anywhere she might have gone?”

“She was sixteen. A child.”

“She didn't come here?”

“My memory might be failing, young man, but I'm not yet senile. If she had come here, I would have told you so.”

“I know, Nana. I'm sorry. It's just that I can't understand why she didn't go for help,” said Solomon.

“Help from whom?” the old woman sneered.

“The neighbours were all bastard Serbs. Do you think they would have helped? Do you think the Serbian army would have helped? If it was me, I'd have run and kept on running.”

“Do you think that's what she did, Nana?”

“I don't know. I hope so, because if she didn't she's dead.”

“Why can't you leave her alone?” shouted the boy, startling them all.

“Why are you picking at their bones like vultures? They're dead and there's nothing anyone can do!” He jumped to his feet, knocking over his stool, and ran from the cottage.

He left the door open. Solomon got up and closed it.

“He was a good friend of Nicole's?” he asked.

“I think he had a crush on her, like a lovesick puppy,” Mrs. Berisha told him.

Solomon took out his wallet and placed his business card on the table next to her.

“I know it's unlikely, Nana, but if Nicole gets in touch with you, can you phone me? Or get her to call me?”

Kimete translated.

“After three years? You think' after all this time she'll come back?”

“It's possible.”

The old woman made a moue, as if she had a bad taste in her mouth.

“I'll keep your card, but don't hold your breath.”

Solomon was heading out of his office when one of the typists called after him.

“Mr. Solomon! Phone!”

Solomon groaned. He was already late for an appointment with the chief forensics officer and he had to get to the other side of the city.

“Who is it?”

“He wouldn't say,” said the typist, a forty something battle axe of a woman with savagely permed hair.

“A boy, I think.”

It had been more than a week since Solomon had visited Teuter Berisha's cottage, but he knew immediately who was on the line and hurried back to his desk.

“This is Jack Solomon,” he said. There was no reply, just a static buzz on the line.

“Hello?” he said.

“This is Jack Solomon.”

“Nicole isn't dead,” said a small voice.

Solomon racked his brains for the boy's name.

“I hope that's true,” he said. Had the old woman even told him what it was? Perhaps not.

“But she doesn't want anyone looking for her.”

“You've spoken to her?”

“She wants to be left alone,” said the boy, ignoring Solomon's question.

“Can I see you?” asked Solomon.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Because there are things we have to talk about. What happened on the farm, what happened to Nicole's family. We can't let the people who did it get away with it.”

“There's no point,” said the boy flatly.

“No point in what?” pressed Solomon.

“In catching the men or meeting me?”

“Both. Neither. I don't know, you're trying to trick me.”

“I'm not,” said Solomon.

“I just want to talk to you, face to face. Look, I can drive to where you are. I can be there in two hours.”

“No!” said the boy.

“I don't want Nana to know that I've been talking to you.”

“Well, come and see me.”

“I can't go to Sarajevo on my own. And I have to take food to Nana before it gets dark.”

“Tell me a place, then,” said Solomon, reaching for a notepad and pen.

“I only want to talk.”

There was a long pause. All Solomon could hear was the boy's ragged breathing.

“You know the bridge with all the bullet-holes just outside the village?” the boy said eventually.

“Yes.”

“Don't go over the bridge. Turn to the right and drive about a hundred metres. There's an old barn there. It was burnt down but the walls are still standing.”

“I'll find it,” said Solomon.

“I can be there in two hours. I'll see you there, yeah?”

The line went dead. Solomon replaced the receiver.

“You okay, Jack?”

Solomon flinched.

“Hell, Jack, didn't mean to startle you.” It was Chuck Miller.

“You didn't. I just had something on my mind that's all.”

Miller was holding a steaming mug. He gestured at the phone.

“Important?”

“Could be. It's that Pristina case. The truck.”

Miller frowned.

“I thought we were done with that. All identified, right?”

“Yeah, they were all members of the same family.” Solomon jerked a thumb at the telephone.

“That was a boy who's been in touch with one of the survivors.”

“Which involves you how?”

“She might have seen something.”

“So what's that to do with you? The remains are identified, we inform the relatives and the Tribunal, and we move on.” Remains. Miller always said 'remains'. Solomon had never once heard him refer to 'victims', or 'bodies'. And he never used names. Ever. It was either their reference number, or 'remains'. "Remains': that which was left behind after the soul had departed.

“If the survivor is an eyewitness, the Tribunal's investigators will follow it up,” Miller continued.

“We have to stay within our brief. Pass on the name and get on with the next case.” He nodded at the white board and its collection of photographs.

“You can get rid of them, too,” he said.

“I've got visitors coming tomorrow and a wall full of corpses is going to put them off their lunch.” Miller sipped his coffee.

“Aren't you supposed to be with Lisa Tourell over at Forensics?”

“Just on my way,” said Solomon.

Solomon headed downstairs and out to the car park. As he climbed into his four-wheel-drive he saw Miller watching him from the window.

As he drove out of Sarajevo, Solomon called Lisa Tourell on his mobile to reschedule their appointment. She was a forensic anthropologist, one of several working for the Commission in identifying the war dead. DNA testing was an expensive business and the forensic anthropologists were helpful in the early stages, ruling out matches based on age, sex, height and previous injuries. Her voice mail kicked in and Solomon left a message.

It took him an hour and a half to reach the ruined barn. There was no sign of the boy. He sounded the horn and a group of crows rose up from the field to his right, cawing angrily at the disturbance. A murder of crows. Solomon smiled thinly. A murder. The collective noun for a group of crows. He sounded his horn again, three long blasts.

He waited for several minutes, listening to the metallic clicks of the engine as it cooled. Then he climbed out and walked towards the barn. The roof had been destroyed by fire leaving two blackened beams at one end, sticking up like a church spire. Sheets of rusting corrugated iron had been hammered over the space where the main door had been, but one sheet was pulled back and flapped in the wind.

Solomon shivered and raised the collar of his sheepskin jacket.

“Hello?” he called.

“It's Jack Solomon.” His voice echoed around the ruin. He stooped and eased himself through the gap into the barn. The boy was crouching in the far corner, his knees against his chest, his head resting on his arms. Solomon walked towards him, stepping over broken roof tiles and blackened embers.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly. The boy didn't look up. Solomon bent and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

The boy looked up. His eyes were red from crying.

“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.

“How old are you?”

He glared up at Solomon.

“Do you know how many dead people I've seen? Do you know how many times I've had a gun pointed at me? How many times I've been told I'm a filthy piece of Albanian shit and that death is too good for me? Do you think I'm scared of a few cigarettes?”

Solomon took his hand off the boy's shoulder and crouched next to him, his shoulders pressing against the rough stone. He took out his packet of Marlboro, tapped one out and offered it. The boy took it without a word. Solomon lit it with his Zippo, then lit one for himself. They blew smoke up at the sky.

“Look, I'm sorry, but I don't know your name. Nana didn't tell me.”

“Emir,” said the boy.

“Pleased to meet you, Emir.”

“No, you're not,” said the boy bitterly.

“You don't care about me. You're a foreigner, and foreigners don't care what happens here.”

“That's not true,” said Solomon.

“There are people who care. People who are working to make Yugoslavia a better place.”

“Because you're paid,” said Emir.

“You do it for the money, not because you want to help.” He took another long drag on his cigarette.

“No one wants to help, hot really. Other Europeans are scared that the fighting will spill over into their countries so they send their soldiers to keep order. They send charities so that we won't starve, and they put the generals on trial so that it looks like they're doing something but they don't really care. If they could build a wall around us and let us get on with killing ourselves, they'd do it.”

Solomon looked across at the teenager. In any other situation he'd be wondering why someone so young could be so bitter, but not in Yugoslavia. The whole world knew the havoc that the warring factions had wreaked on each other. Genocide. Mutilation. Rape. Emir was right. Solomon had no idea how many dead people he'd seen, but however many it was, the boy had earned the right to be cynical. He flicked ash on the floor.

“When did you see Nicole?”

“What do you mean?”

“On the phone you said you had spoken to her. After her family were killed.”

Emir shook his head.

“I didn't talk to her. She wrote me a letter. I haven't seen her since the football match.”

“Football match?”

“My school was playing against a team that had come over from Ireland. I was in goal. Nicole came to watch.”

“All the way from Pristina? She must like you a lot.”

“Not as much as I like her,” said Emir, flatly.

“I love her.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“How old are you, Emir?”

“What's that got to do with anything?” said the boy, fiercely.

“You're just like her she said I was too young. She was only three years older than me but she made it sound like she was ancient. She's nineteen now. I'm sixteen. Big deal. I told her that when I'm ninety-seven she'll be a hundred. So what?”

His hands began to shake and he put the cigarette to his mouth, his left hand supporting his right wrist as he inhaled.

“She must have thought a lot of you, to send you the letter,” Solomon said quietly.

“She didn't tell Nana where she'd gone. She didn't tell anyone. Only you.”

“She said I had to forget her. She said that the old Nicole was dead and that she was starting again. A new life.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

Emir shook his head.

“Did you keep the letter?”

Emir nodded.

“Can I see it?”

Overhead a helicopter clattered. Solomon looked up but the sky was obscured with a thick layer of grey cloud. When he looked back at Emir, the boy was holding a crumpled envelope. Solomon pulled it slowly from between his fingers. It was a pale blue airmail envelope but the postmark was Sarajevo. Dated just a month after the family had been herded into the truck.

Solomon lifted the flap and slid out the letter. It was handwritten on a sheet of lined white paper that had been torn from an exercise book. The edges were grubby from countless readings, and tear stained.