Zoran got up, holding on to the table for balance. He took the brandy bottle by the neck and crossed to the wall with his AK, crouching and pushing the barrel through the slit. “Five o’clock on the bridge?”
Vlatko got up as well, swung his rifle over his shoulder. “He’ll have a white rag in his right hand. That’s the sign. When you see a man with a white rag in his hand, don’t kill the librarian!”
He watched Zoran struggle to get comfortable on the floor. The same tattoo on the inside of his arm. And the knuckles of both their right hands displayed the letters SDG, for Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garda.
Zoran pressed the stock into his shoulder to adjust the sight. The AK was not as accurate as the M76, and the range was shorter, but the Vrbanja bridge was scarcely three hundred metres away. Zoran did not need a telescope; he could hit a target on the bridge with closed eyes, thought Vlatko.
“Why is he coming?” asked Zoran. “The librarian?”
Vlatko shrugged. “Word is he has permission to speak to the commanders at Lukavica.”
The road to the Romanija commanders led through the Serbian line south of the river, through the Serbian neighbourhoods. In order to cross the river safely, using any of the bridges, a message had to be relayed to the snipers’ nests that permission had been granted to a civilian – today, a librarian – to run the gauntlet at Vrbanja. On the Serbian side he would be collected and taken to Lukavica to state his case.
“Fucking spy for the Bosniaks, if you ask me,” said Zoran.
“Or a traitor. Maybe he’s bringing news in exchange for his family’s safe departure from the city.” Vlatko watched as Zoran drank from the bottle again.
In the back of the FAP trucks they had also guzzled Slivovitz, travelling in convoy into Bosnia, pulling the howitzers behind them, on their way to clean up the Sana valley. The Arkan Tigers had been drunk when they’d arrived at the Hotel Prijedor.
The strategy for the military onslaught was simple yet effective. First, the civilian enemy – the heathen Bosniak Muslims and the Catholic Croatian Ustaše – were blasted with heavy artillery, their houses, mosques and churches reduced to rubble. After the initial assault, infantry platoons were sent in from the Hotel Prijedor to clean up, quell opposition, smell out and detain resistance fighters.
It had been exciting. By day, the orgies of murder and rape, by night, liquor and song, bottles of Slivovitz, plates of ćevapčići with onions and a thick sauce of sweet chilli, brinjal and garlic, mixed with kajmak cream.
“I won’t kill him, but I can whack him in the thigh,” said Zoran over the sight of his AK. “To welcome him onto the bridge.”
“Or in the side,” said Vlatko, “if your aim is good.”
“Or the arm.”
“A librarian needs his arm.”
“The leg or side, then.”
“Not with the AK. Take my rifle.”
“What’s wrong with the AK?”
“It shoots all over the place, you know that. Especially if the shooter is full of brandy. Take the M76 if you’re aiming for a flesh wound and not to kill.”
“You think I can’t aim for a flesh wound with the AK?”
“I know you can aim,” said Vlatko. “But I think when you pull the trigger, it won’t be a flesh wound. You’re either going to miss completely, or you’re going to kill him. Take the M76 with the scope.”
“Fuck your M76,” said Zoran. “I’ll whack him with the AK. That cat over there. See it? Just let me get my eye in.”
Vlakto saw the cat on the bridge, scavenging for food. If, despite the brandy, Zoran could hit the cat, he’d be satisfied. Then there was hope that the librarian might just suffer a flesh wound, welcoming him and reminding him of the thin line between life and death.
Zoran fired; the cat jumped. Vlatko saw the bullet rip out a chunk of concrete on the bridge. In four, five leaps, the cat disappeared under the bridge.
“Fuck!” Zoran lowered the AK.
“You still have time to practise, to adjust your eye and sights,” said Vlatko, laughing as he left with his rifle over his shoulder.
When they’d dealt with the Sana valley, they’d packed up to move on. Same enemy, new battlefield. Behind them lay the bodies. Among the wild flowers in the fields, in the orchards and vegetable patches, in the cow pastures and pigsties, in the burnt ruins of the little sleepy hamlets of Hambarine, Carakovo and Rizvanovići, Biscani and Zecovi, the bodies of hundreds of men, women and children lay for days. Some in shallow mass graves, where Vlatko and Zoran and their comrades had done their cleansing.
In Banja Luka, Vlatko and Zoran had deserted and joined the 1st Krajina Corps. Ten days later the municipal police had begun to make enquiries into the murder of a man, his wife and their twin daughters. The same night Vlatko and Zoran had hitched a ride in a panel van belonging to the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps on their way to Sarajevo. They’d actually wanted to go to Mostar, but they’d got stuck in Sarajevo. Vlatko was not sorry. He liked Sarajevo and enjoyed the work he and Zoran were doing there.
The bottle was down to the last quarter. At five, when the librarian appeared on the bridge, the chances of a mere flesh wound would be slim.
3. Present: Johannesburg, South Africa
Lt. Fred Lange was a veteran with twenty-six years in the police. When he’d started out, the unit he’d worked for had been called Murder and Robbery. It had become the Unit for Serious and Violent Crime when the new rulers took over; they’d also introduced an experiment with demilitarised ranks, which was quickly aborted. Fred hated that: lieutenant, that was what he was, not inspector. Not a meat inspector, building inspector, livestock inspector or shithouse inspector. Lieutenant. The word commanded respect. And a promotion could be in the cards. He like the sound of Captain Fred Lange. He also liked the sounds coming out of the commissioner’s office: war had been declared against criminals, shoot first, ask questions later. It was a language Fred understood.
At the corner café in Brixton, Fred stopped at the Coca-Cola signboard: Frank’s Deli. He liked that corner café. He liked all cafés not yet supplanted by supermarkets where nobody knew your name. He’d left the exhumation site in Dorado Park late, and he’d promised his wife he’d buy bread and milk on his way home.
All the damn faffing around Ella Neser. What made her so special? If she wanted to be a homicide detective, she’d have to grow some hair on her chest. Not much of a chest though; little oranges, tucked under Col. Sauls’s big armpit.
He wouldn’t be surprised if she was recommended for a promotion, as if she’d solved the Nightstalker case. She hadn’t: the killer was still on the loose. God knew where, but in the meantime she was the new
