Page 29 of The Nameless Ones

‘Even in Serbia.’

‘You have a job,’ said Louis. ‘You work as an investigator for Dutch lawyers. You can’t just drop everything to help us.’

‘I operate on a contract basis, so I work as I choose. At the moment, I have no obligations so urgent that they cannot be set aside.’

‘What we’re here to do could take a while,’ said Louis.

‘I repeat, I have no obligations.’

Louis poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Back in the United States, he stuck to coffee, and couldn’t understand why anyone drank tea, even in those fancy Manhattan tearooms. But he’d developed a taste for tea in England. Europeans did this kind of stuff well, he thought.

‘If you work with us, we pay you,’ said Louis.

‘I don’t want payment.’

‘I don’t care what you want. This isn’t about acts of kindness, or making up for past failings. I don’t know you well enough to work on trust alone, and that kind of help is too subject to second thoughts. It’s not our money, it’s De Jaager’s. Accept it, or walk away.’

‘Then I accept,’ said Hendricksen. ‘But I’ll take payment when we’re done. You can decide then how much my assistance was worth.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Now that’s settled,’ said Hendricksen, ‘I have good news for you, and bad.’

‘I’m a bad-news-first kind of guy,’ said Louis.

‘I guessed. I made some more calls while you were checking in. The Vuksans have vanished. That van was found burned out on waste ground about an hour after the picture was taken. I’ve commenced trawling for witnesses, but so far no one saw anything.’

‘Do you believe them?’ said Louis.

‘I don’t think these people have any reason to lie. For them, it was just a van fire.’

‘What about your other contacts, the ones who might have a reason to lie?’ said Angel.

‘I’m working on them, but I’ve come up with nothing yet. I can go back with an offer of money, but I suspect the answer will remain the same in most cases. De Jaager was well-liked, and even those with reason to feel aggrieved at him still retained a degree of tolerance for his activities. If they knew anything, they would have shared it, for the sake of the murdered women as much as De Jaager. But I haven’t exhausted every avenue, so who knows what may emerge?’

‘And the good news?’ said Angel, who was, by contrast, a good-news kind of guy, having heard enough bad news to last a lifetime.

Hendricksen smiled.

‘The Vuksans can’t go back to Serbia,’ he said, ‘not yet.’

‘Why?’ said Louis.

‘Because someone has started blowing up their relatives.’

Chapter XXVII

By common consent, the area around the Stalingrad Métro stop, at the border between the 10th and 19th arrondissements in northeastern Paris, was regarded as being among the less salubrious spots in the city in which to linger – and that was even before the building of a migrant camp near the avenue de Flandre. The camp had since been forcibly dismantled by French police, leading to running battles with residents, but its removal had not done much to raise the tone of the locale. By day it was mostly fine, but night brought out the predators.

Aleksej Markovic was not unduly worried by the possibility of predation, mostly because he was more dangerous than any other predator on the streets. Markovic had murdered his way across whole swathes of Bosnia in the company of Ratko Mladic, Spiridon Vuksan, and the VRS, the Bosnian Serb Army, during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. If there was a man in the vicinity of Stalingrad who had killed more men or raped more women than he, Markovic might have enjoyed shaking his hand, although only after making sure that he was dead, because Aleksej Markovic had grown circumspect in middle age.

He had never expected to survive his twenties, but as the years went by, and his collection of scars increased without putting an end to him, Markovic had decided that the concept of living to old age was not without its appeal. He had watched other men fall by the wayside, rendered harmless by bullets, disease, prison, poverty, and even domesticity, while he flourished. Much of his felicity he ascribed to the proximity of the Vuksans. If ever Markovic needed confirmation that God had been on their side in the war against the Turks, the Ustashe, and their Western allies, it lay in the potency of Spiridon and Radovan Vuksan. God would not have blessed them with wealth and long life otherwise. Their success was a tribute to the righteousness of the Serbian cause, and Aleksej Markovic had benefited as a consequence, so he did not question their orders or doubt the wisdom of their decisions. This included the recent action against De Jaager and the others who had found themselves in the Amsterdam safe house – or, more accurately, the unsafe house – at the wrong time.

Markovic recognized that some conflict had arisen between the brothers on the subject, with Radovan urging caution, or a less public display of vengeance: a quiet abduction for De Jaager, followed by the disposal of his remains in an anonymous grave. But Spiridon had wanted to make a statement, to offer a final farewell to the Dutch. In addition, Spiridon required De Jaager to understand that his very existence had poisoned the lives of all those around him, and their suffering was a consequence of his behavior. Although he was not asked for his opinion, Markovic had sided with Spiridon, because he always did.

Also, truth be told, Markovic liked killing, and had not lost his taste for rape.

All had not gone according to plan, but Markovic had no regrets. Spiridon could not have anticipated a move against Nikola Musulin, a violent usurpation of the established order. Perhaps it was better that Musulin’s death should have occurred now, while they were out of the blast range, rather than later, when they were already back in Serbia. Musulin’s killers had made an error. Had they waited, they might have succeeded also in taking out the Vuksans. Now the Vuksans’ enemies were obliged either to come after them, which would be difficult and dangerous, or negotiate an agreed return – or so Spiridon had informed Markovic and the others when the news of Musulin’s death came through, although Markovic noticed that Radovan remained silent throughout and did not voice his support for Spiridon’s opinion of their circumstances.

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