Page 52 of The Nameless Ones

At thirty-one, Luca Bilbija was the youngest of the men who had assisted the Vuksans on the night De Jaager and the others were murdered. He had known only that a final job was to be done, one that would necessitate violence, after which he would receive a bonus and be free to seek employment elsewhere, if he chose; alternatively, he could return with the Vuksans to Serbia, where Radovan had promised him a position as his personal driver and bodyguard.

In common with Radovan, Bilbija was an avid reader, and they shared an affection for early twentieth-century Serbian poetry. Bilbija had a degree in Serbian Literature and Language from the University of Belgrade, and had intended continuing his studies at the postgraduate level until the family’s money ran out, forcing him to consider working for a living instead. Unfortunately, jobs were not in plentiful supply in Belgrade, and even less so in his home village in the east, close to the Danubian border with Romania. The village boasted three hundred houses but only two hundred inhabitants. Those with ambition, or of sufficient desperation, had departed to work in other countries – Austria, in the main – leaving the rest to survive as best they could. It was, like so many other Serbian communities, fit only for old men and women, and then barely. Bilbija had not wanted to go back there, but neither was he convinced that he wished to wait tables in Viennese restaurants or deliver parcels from a van in Berlin.

And then, through Zivco Ilic, who was a friend of Bilbija’s uncle, he was offered a door position at one of the Vuksans’ clubs in Amsterdam. After a couple of weeks of bouncing drunks, he was assigned the task of driving prostitutes to their clients; Bilbija might have possessed the heart of a poet, but it was housed in the body of a wrestler. He liked his new role, and took a proprietorial interest in the young women under his care, although this did not stop him from inflicting pain on them when they tried to hold money back,

Six months into his time in Amsterdam, he helped Zivco Ilic dispose of a body. The victim was a dealer who had begun to dip into his own supply and ended up owing the Vuksans more money than he could ever hope to pay. He was given one chance to make up for his lack of self-control by transporting a consignment of heroin from Amsterdam to Brussels. Unfortunately, his drug-induced paranoia led him to believe that he was being followed by the police – or possibly demons dressed as police, the precise details were unclear – which caused him to dump all five kilos in a pond near Brecht.

Ilic and Bilbija tracked him to an unfurnished room in Matonge, which Ilic proceeded to redecorate with the dealer’s blood while Bilbija waited outside in the car. When Ilic had finished, he summoned Bilbija to help cut up the victim and place the remains in black bags, which would then be dumped at various locations around Brussels. Unfortunately, just as they began cutting off his arms, it became apparent that the dealer was not as dead as Ilic had believed, but Bilbija finished him off before he could make too much of a racket. Bilbija had never killed anyone before. He found the experience messy but interesting, and later wrote a poem about it in the modernist style of Vasko Popa.

After that incident, Bilbija became an integral part of the Vuksan hierarchy, especially once the Vuksans assumed complete control of operations in Amsterdam. He took his orders from both brothers, but always ran Spiridon’s commands past Radovan before proceeding. In this way, a certain amount of unnecessary violence was avoided, if at the cost of complete trust between Spiridon and Bilbija. This trust had been further eroded by Bilbija’s refusal actively to engage in rape and femicide at the house in Amsterdam. He might have been prepared to hurt females, but he drew the line at killing them himself, and he was not a rapist. Among his tribe, Luca Bilbija was what passed for a man of principle.

Bilbija did not like what he had witnessed at De Jaager’s safe house. It had caused him to reconsider his future relationship with Radovan Vuksan. He was aware that the Dutch police would soon connect the Vuksans to the killings, and it was entirely possible that he would be connected to them in turn. This seemed terribly unfair. He had not harmed anyone at the safe house. He had tied the women to the beds, and later helped nail De Jaager to a wall, but by then the old man was already dead. Bilbija’s role in what had occurred was, therefore, largely limited to driving and cleaning up after, and in his view hardly merited a custodial sentence.

When the Vuksans’ situation grew more complicated following the death of Nikola Musulin, Bilbija decided that his period of employment with them had come to its natural end. He had privately informed Radovan Vuksan of his decision to leave the fold while they were hiding out at the farmhouse of Gavrilo Dražeta. Radovan had placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered:

‘Say nothing of this to Spiridon or the others. For now, you remain one of us.’

‘Why?’ said Bilbija.

‘Because circumstances have changed,’ said Radovan. ‘We are wanted men, and any desire to depart will be viewed by Spiridon as a prelude to treachery. He will have you killed the moment you turn your back on him. Zivco will do it in a heartbeat.’

‘But Zivco is my friend.’ Bilbija was surprised to hear his voice catch with emotion.

‘You have no friends, not even me.’

‘Then why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I’ve read your poetry,’ said Radovan. ‘You are a terrible poet, but better to be a terrible poet than no poet at all.’

So Bilbija had kept his mouth shut, and within hours events had swung in his favor. Radovan had prevailed upon Spiridon to split his forces to avoid attracting attention. Aleksej Markovic was on his way to Paris anyway, and Bilbija was told to lie low but remain in contact. Radovan had given him the number of the lawyer Frend in Vienna, and an email address that would be checked four times daily. On Radovan’s instructions, Bilbija had headed east, to Prague, which was no great imposition. Bilbija had always loved the city, and thought that if he had to hide out somewhere, at least it might as well be in a place for which he had some affection.

Luca Bilbija’s particular vice was gambling, but he did not enjoy wagering in solitude and took no pleasure from staring at a screen. He relished the ambience of casinos, the excited anticipation of men and women waiting on the spin of a wheel or the turn of a card. He liked gaming tables, and the smell of a new deck. He did not consider gambling to be a character flaw because he was both lucky and careful, and so won more often than he lost. But as any gambler will tell you, luck always runs out eventually, and that is when a man becomes most reckless.

Prague had no shortage of casinos.

And people were watching and listening for Luca Bilbija.

Chapter XLIV

Frend heard the ping of an incoming email as he was showering at home. His trip from Belgrade to Romania, and on to Vienna, had been tense and unpleasant, but he had almost succeeded in washing Serbia from his skin. He remained troubled, though, by how close he had come to becoming a prisoner of Simo Stajic. He’d have told them where the Vuksans were, of course, abandoning dissimulation and confessing all at the first sight of the blowtorch, but he knew that talking wouldn’t have saved him. His long death would have been recorded on a cell phone, but only for private distribution. The killing of an Austrian lawyer on Serbian territory would have caused untold problems for Belgrade; his disappearance, less so. Eventually, to throw the Austrians off the scent, Frend’s papers would have been discovered in a Bosnian or Croatian whorehouse, perhaps with a little of his blood dotted around for appearances’ sake.

Toweling himself dry, Frend checked his in-box. Miloje, his bodyguard in Belgrade, had located the Mercedes that had followed them from the airport, the city’s community of limousine drivers being relatively small. Miloje had convinced the owner of the Mercedes to divulge the identity of the person who had hired him: a Dutchman named Hendricksen, who had spent the night at the Radisson before being driven back to the airport for an early-morning flight to Vienna.

Frend put on a robe and set to work finding out all he could about this Hendricksen. Like any good lawyer, especially one who operated in more legal and moral gray areas than the norm, Frend had contacts in credit card companies, banks, and the government, including the Austrian foreign ministry. Somewhere, there would be a record of Hendricksen’s movements. It took Frend thirty minutes, and the transfer of some of the Vuksans’ remaining funds, to secure a scan of Hendricksen’s passport. Within an hour he had also obtained Hendricksen’s residential address in the Netherlands, bank and credit card records, and home and cell phone numbers, as well as a partial client list, because Frend learned that Hendricksen was a former Dutch soldier now working as a private investigator. The majority of his income in recent years had come from three law firms, one of which specialized in cases relating to the art world. The credit card information, meanwhile, showed that Hendricksen was currently staying at a chain hotel in Vienna’s Innere Stadt, and had been for a number of days, apart from his brief sojourn in Belgrade.

Frend heard his wife moving about downstairs, and music playing on the radio. Mina was probably making herself a gin and tonic, because it was about that time. She called up, asking if he’d like a drink, and he told her he’d be right with her. They needed to talk. Frend might no longer have loved his wife, but he retained some residual affection for her and did not wish any harm to befall her, as much for the sake of their daughter as for her own. Frend might have managed to escape Belgrade unharmed, but that did not mean he was safe. He did not doubt that the reach of Kiš and Stajic extended beyond the Serbian border, and there was no shortage of Serbs in Austria. If Kiš and Stajic decided to move against the Vuksans, their lawyer still remained the most obvious means of applying pressure.

With this in mind, Frend had decided that, until the Vuksans’ difficulties were resolved, it might be best if he took steps to safeguard his family and himself. His daughter, he felt, was reasonably secure in London, where she had been living under her mother’s name since moving to England to study law. Even had he attempted to contact Pia in order to share his concerns, he was certain she would have laughed at him, assuming she agreed to accept his call to begin with. In any case, he doubted she would be willing to alter her routine on her father’s say so, even at risk to herself. He suspected she would prefer to die just to spite him.

His wife was another matter; his mistress, too, come to think of it. He would deal with Radka later, although there wasn’t much he could do other than advise her to be careful. She was as willful as his daughter – which was hardly surprising, given how close in age they were – and would be unlikely to entrust the running of her boutique to an assistant for more than a day or two.

Anyway, Frend thought it more likely that his immediate family would be the preferred targets: mistresses, however lovely, were temporary, but family was for life. Yet in the reptile part of his brain, Frend debated how he might act should Radka or Mina be used against him. Objectively, he would be prepared to renounce either or both of them for his own safety, which was intimately connected to the continued safety of the Vuksans, whom he could not betray. The brothers might have been isolated and grievously weakened, but they were not without friends. Were he to hand them over to their enemies, word would get out, and Frend’s days would be numbered. Only for Pia would Frend be willing to sacrifice himself, and even then with a degree of understandable vacillation …

He went downstairs and accepted the glass from Mina. He then led her to the kitchen, where he spoke with her quietly and seriously for ten minutes. He did not share with her every detail of the problem, but told her enough to make her understand the necessity of absenting herself from their home. He was surprised that she did not complain, or even blame him for this enforced exile. She merely accepted with a shrug, and he saw in her face that their relationship, such as it was, had finally reached its belated end.

‘I always knew you were crooked,’ she said. ‘I knew it from the day we met.’ Curiously, she did not use the word unehrlich, meaning dishonest, instead opting for verkrümmt, as in bent or warped, as though his perfidy was so ingrained as to have manifested itself physically. ‘But,’ she continued, ‘perhaps I, too, was guilty. I enjoyed our lifestyle. I just chose not to ask how we could afford it.’

She looked around the kitchen.

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