The Eyewitness (9 page)

Solomon cursed under his breath. The last thing he wanted was for his boss to see the list of nightclubs that his SFOR contact was sending over.

“No, it's for me,” he said.

“I'll give you a shout if yours arrives.”

Miller headed back to his office as the first sheet of paper was ejected into the wire tray at the bottom of the machine. Solomon pulled it out. Across the top, JC had scrawled, “You didn't get this from me.” Beneath was a typewritten list of two dozen bars and clubs and their addresses. A second sheet dropped into the basket and the fax machine clicked off. At the top of the second sheet JC had written in capital letters, “AND YOU DEFINITELY DIDN'T GET THIS FROM ME!” On the sheet were four handwritten names and addresses.

JC was an American sergeant who worked at the airport as an air-traffic controller, responsible for all US flights into and out of Sarajevo. Solomon had met him in an Irish bar in the city centre shortly after he'd arrived in Bosnia and they'd spent a highly enjoyable evening contrasting the merits of Irish whiskey and Scotch. They both enjoyed soccer: JC supported Manchester United and had been amazed to discover that the city had a second football team, and even more amazed that Solomon supported it. Like many natives of Manchester, Solomon regarded Manchester City as the true local team and Manchester United as a group of highly paid poster boys more interested in sponsorship and advertising than in the Beautiful Game. They'd become good friends and whenever there was a big match on they met in the Irish bar to get drunk and watch the game on the bar's big-screen TV.

Solomon had phoned JC and had asked him if it was true that the Americans in SFOR had been given a list of approved nightclubs. JC had laughed and said that it depended on Solomon's definition of' approved'. There was a list in circulation but it didn't mean that the SFOR top brass condoned their staff visiting them.

Solomon had asked him to send over the approved list, and also the names of any other bars he knew where girls were available.

Solomon took the fax back to his office. The Purple Pussycat was on the approved list, as were the two other bars that Dragan had taken him to the previous night. All three had been pretty much the same in layout and function, but the second two had offered a mixture of girls, from the Ukraine, Latvia, Slovakia, Moldavia, Romania and Lithuania, as well as a few locals. Solomon had shown them the photograph of Nicole, but no one recalled seeing her.

“A needle in a haystack,” Jovanovic kept repeating.

“You busy?” asked Miller.

Solomon hadn't heard the American walk down the corridor. He opened his top drawer and put away the two pieces of paper.

“No more than usual,” he said.

“They could do with you in Tuzla,” said Miller.

“We've just got a dozen matches come through. Are you up for it?”

A dozen matches. That meant a dozen remains identified. Twelve sets of grieving relatives. It was time for the fifth horseman to saddle up again. Solomon nodded.

“I'll drive up this afternoon.”

“Good man, they're expecting you. Did you pass the truck case on to the War Crimes Tribunal?”

“Absolutely,” said Solomon.

Miller flashed him a smile and went back to his office.

Solomon spent the night in Tuzla, staying with one of the Commission's forensic anthropologists, and got back to Sarajevo late the following evening. As always, his throat was sore from the city's polluted air and he showered for twenty minutes to get the dirt out of his skin and hair.

He towelled himself dry and changed into a clean pair of jeans and a denim shirt, then telephoned Dragan. The policeman's mobile was switched off and Solomon didn't leave a message. He made a cup of coffee, then took out the two sheets that JC had faxed, sat down on one of his sofas and read through the typed list.

All but one, the Moulin Rouge, had an English name, perhaps because the clientele was mainly international, Solomon thought. Concessions were rarely made to English speakers in Bosnia: signs in English were few and far between and the city's news-vendors almost never stocked English or American papers.

Solomon turned to the handwritten list. The four bars weren't approved by SFOR but JC had said they were regularly visited by friends of his who claimed that the music was better and the girls were prettier. The only downside was the risk of a raid, but JC said that happened only rarely and that as SFOR troops often conducted them, unofficial advance warning was usually given.

Dragan had said that drug-use was one reason that a bar might not be on the approved list, but in the approved bars to which the policeman had taken him Solomon had seen evidence of drug-taking among girls dilated pupils, hyperactivity, sniffing, nose-rubbing.

One of the bars on the list, the Butterfly, was in a small village to the south of Sarajevo. Solomon had been there several times to organise the collection of blood samples from Kosovan refugees. He'd been planning on an early night but instead he decided to drive out to the Butterfly. As it wasn't approved he doubted that Dragan would take him.

He put a photograph of Nicole into his jacket pocket and went down to where he'd parked his four-wheel-drive, then had second thoughts. It wouldn't be a good move to leave the vehicle with its diplomatic plates and International War-dead Commission logo parked outside a brothel.

He walked to the main road and flagged down a taxi. He told the driver where he wanted to go and they headed out of the city and up into the mountains.

The Butterfly was at the edge of the village, in a new building, by the look of it, or one that had been substantially rebuilt after the war. There was parking for two dozen vehicles, but only five cars were there, all Volkswagens.

Solomon asked the driver if he'd wait for him, but the man shook his head and held out his hand for the fare. Solomon paid him, got out, and stood looking at the house as the taxi drove away. He was already regretting not using his own car. He'd just have to hope he could phone for a taxi from the bar when he was ready to go home.

He walked up to the front door and raised his hand to knock, but the door opened before he could do so and two men staggered out, smelling of whisky and Turkish cigarettes. They grinned amiably at Solomon and staggered towards one of the Volkswagens. Solomon walked into the bar.

The management hadn't chosen its name at random: it had a butterfly theme with framed photographs of different species on the wall and paper butterflies hanging from the ceiling, their wings wafting in the cigarette smoke. The whole ground floor of the house was open plan, with small wicker sofas facing each other across wicker and glass coffee tables. On each table there were large ashtrays in the shape of butterflies.

A teenage waiter with a pencil-thin moustache and a ponytail came over carrying a metal tray and showed Solomon to an empty sofa. He ordered a Heineken.

“Do you want a girl?” asked the waiter in Bosnian, and jerked his head at half a dozen dancers who were sitting on stools at a bar that ran the length of the room. They were wearing wraparound silk dressing-gowns of various colours with butterfly motifs on the back. They all swivelled to face him, smiling brightly. One allowed her dressing-gown to fall open, revealing a white bikini. Two more girls were dancing around a silver pole on an oval podium in the centre of the bar. They also beamed at Solomon and one jiggled her breasts in his direction.

“Maybe in a while,” he said.

He settled back and looked around the room. The girls at the bar swivelled so that their backs were to him. Four big men, in leather jackets with bottles of Sarajevsko in front of them, were sitting by the door. They had all turned to look at him. He nodded a greeting and one raised his beer bottle, smiling with cold eyes. Security, no doubt.

There were two dozen customers, most of them sitting next to girls, and almost everyone was smoking.

Solomon lit a Marlboro. The waiter returned with his beer and a glass bowl of salted peanuts. Solomon indicated the girls at the bar.

“Do any of them speak Bosnian?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the waiter, scratching at his moustache.

“But you don't have to talk to them to have sex with them. See the one with the long blonde hair?”

“She speaks Bosnian?”

The waiter grinned.

“No, but she does anything you want.” He leaned close to Solomon.

“I mean anything. You can hurt her if she wants. She loves it. Begs for more.”

“I want a girl who speaks Bosnian,” said Solomon, fighting an urge to punch him.

“There aren't any Bosnian girls working here,” he said.

“We have girls from Latvia and the Ukraine.”

“I don't care where she's from,” said Solomon, 'but I want a girl who can speak Bosnian. Or, better still, English."

The waiter pointed at a girl on the right of the group at the bar.

“She is from the Ukraine, but she speaks English. Many of the internationals like her.” The girl was a brunette, her hair cropped short. She was resting her head on the shoulder of the girl next to her.

“Okay,” said Solomon.

“Send her over.”

“You can go upstairs now,” said the waiter.

“There's a room free. Fifty marks for half an hour, everything included. We have condoms in the room.”

“Let me buy her a drink first,” said Solomon.

The waiter shrugged and went over to the bar. He spoke to the brunette, who looked over her shoulder at Solomon, then nodded. Seconds later she had sat down opposite him. Close up, Solomon could see that she was very young. Probably still in her teens.

“The waiter said you want girl who can speak English,” she said. She had a thick accent.

“Yeah. I'm Jack,” he said, and held out his hand.

She smiled, showing teeth that gleamed so brightly he thought they'd been cosmetically whitened. The fingers of her right hand were stained with nicotine.

“Lyudmilla,” she said.

“Pretty name,” said Solomon.

“You're from the Ukraine?”

“How do you know?” she said, nervous.

“You see me before?”

Solomon smiled, trying to put her at ease.

“The waiter said you were Ukrainian,” he said.

“He said you spoke very good English.”

“Not so good,” she said.

“I go school in Ukraine but not much.”

“You're a long way from home,” he said.

“Not really,” she said.

“What about you? You are American?”

“English.”

“But you like American cigarettes?” She reached across and pulled one from his packet, then gently scraped his skin with a bright red fingernail as he lit it for her with his Zippo.

“How did you end up in Sarajevo?” Solomon asked.

“I came to work.”

“The money's better here?” he said.

“Of course,” she said, and snorted contemptuously.

“There is nothing in the Ukraine. Here there are UN workers, charity workers, soldiers. All with money to spend.” She smiled coquettishly “What about you, Jack? Do you have money to spend?”

“How old are you, Lyudmilla?” Solomon asked.

“You think I'm too old?” she asked.

“I think I'm old enough to be your father,” he said.

“I like older men,” she said, reaching under the table and giving his leg a squeeze.

The waiter reappeared and Solomon asked him to bring over whatever Lyudmilla was drinking. She grinned.

“So, you like me?”

“Of course I like you,” he said.

“Do you want to go upstairs with me?”

“Lyudmilla, I just want a drink.”

“You don't want me?”

Solomon looked her up and down. Dark green eyes, soft, full lips, pale white skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun, firm breasts that seemed to be trying to push themselves out of her bikini top, and long silky legs. If she wasn't a prostitute who'd slept with God who knew how many men to get from the Ukraine to Sarajevo, and if she wasn't young enough to be his daughter, yes, he'd have wanted her.

She misunderstood his look and stroked his leg again, closer to the groin this time. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“There's a room upstairs we can use,” she said.

“Only fifty marks for half an hour. The sheets are clean.”

Solomon put his hand on hers and moved it away from his groin.

“I'm married,” he lied.

“Most of the men who go with me are married,” she said. She batted her long eyelashes and Solomon laughed. She pouted and crossed her legs away from him.

“You are making fun of me,” she said crossly.

“I'm not. Really, I'm not.” The waiter brought over a glass of what looked like cola and placed it in front of her. She sipped it, then licked her upper lip. Solomon took out the photograph of Nicole the head and shoulders shot taken from the wedding photograph.

“Who's that? Your wife?” asked Lyudmilla, still pretending to be annoyed.

“Someone I'm looking for,” said Solomon, handing the picture to her.

“Have you seen her?”

She looked at the photograph. He saw the flash of recognition, then her attempt to hide it.

“Why do you want to find her?” she asked.

“Have you seen her?” Solomon repeated.

“I'm not sure,” she said.

“I could ask the other girls.”

“Her name is Nicole. That's an old photograph. Three years ago.”

“No one uses their real name here,” she said.

“First thing you change, your name. Are you police?”

“Of course not,” said Solomon.

“I'm English. I work for an aid agency.” He didn't want to tell her that he worked for the International War-dead Commission'it sounded too close to police work.

“A friend met her in Pristina before he went back to London. She said she was moving to Sarajevo but he lost her address. That's all.”

“You could give me your friend's name and address. If I see her, I'll pass on the message.”

“So, you do know her?”

“A lot of girls pass through here. I'll pin up the photograph in the changing room.”

“She's not in any trouble, Lyudmilla, I promise.” He held out his hand for the photograph.

“She worked here, didn't she?”