The Pale House (34 page)

The door thudded shut behind
and, alone in the room, Reinhardt waited a moment, listening for voices, the sounds of footsteps, then let himself go. One explosive breath out, a blind rake of his eyes across the ceiling. His heart slowed as he listened to the house, and he heard voices, a snatch of laughter. From outside, it seemed. He walked back to the window, looking down, seeing
standing with hands on hips next to another man. Crows lumbered across the corpses, and more lined the roof of the courtyard like black hooks against the now-pallid gray of the sky.

“All done, then?”

Reinhardt's heart froze solid a moment with fear. He had not even heard Bunda come back into the room, and he could not move, and then realized he had best make the most of it.

“What's that down there?”

The giant grinned. “Housekeeping.”

Reinhardt swallowed, then let the curtain fall back. “You're wasted up here, Bunda. Man like you could shift two of those bodies at one go.”

Bunda's face curled and shifted. “I don't do that no more.”

“Right.”

“What's that mean, Reinhardt?”

“Nothing, Bunda.”

“Don't say ‘nothing,' Reinhardt.”

“You make the rules, now, right? You're an officer, now.”

“What d'you mean, Reinhardt?”

Reinhardt stared back at the giant and, even though he stood in the heart of Bunda's power, he felt his fear of him slide away.

“That an ape is still an ape, though you dress it in velvet.”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“Thank God for the UstaÅ¡e, right, Bunda? Else you'd have been milking cows all your life . . .”

“Fuck you, Reinhardt.”

“. . . living in the country, where men are men and the sheep run scared.”

“
Fuck
you, Reinhardt. I don't get off on no animals.”

“What do you get off on, Bunda?”

“I can get
anyone
I want.
Anything.
'Cause it's there to be taken.”

“Because the city's yours, right, Bunda? Country boy made good. Taking out your frustrations on the city folk.”

“Careful, Reinhardt. You're all alone here. And the general's leaving. The city's ours, now.”

“
said you were to see me out, Bunda.”

The Ustaša blinked at the change in conversation, his mind still lumbering down the track Reinhardt had laid before him.

“Going too fast for you, Bunda?”

“What d'you say?”

“I told you,
orders are for you to see me out.”

“That's Colonel
to you, Reinhardt.”

Reinhardt said nothing, walking around Bunda's bulk back into the corridor, past the man chained to his radiator. He heard Bunda's heavy footsteps pause, then a thud, an agonized gush of breath. He glanced back as Bunda lashed his foot again into the belly of the chained man.

“Bunda!” The giant's eyes glittered far back under his brows. “
said it was important, Bunda. But you have your fun, don't let me stop you. Up to you.”

In that gloomy corridor, poised over the prisoner, Bunda was a form carved from primeval memory, the hulking apparition at the entrance to a cave. Reinhardt carried on down the stairs, his back crawling to have the giant behind him, hearing Bunda's footsteps thumping down after him. Reinhardt pushed himself outside, sucking down the night air, great gulps of it. He could not stay here anymore. The place was driving into him from all angles, and it was then he remembered the crowd, the people he had passed on the way in.

“Please. Did you see him?” An old lady held out a portrait, a sepia-toned window to another, happier, time. “Did you see my Selmir?”

“Bosko
? My husband. Did you see him?”

“Mirsad
. The photographer. An elderly man?”

“Mohamed
. From Logavina.
Mohamed
?
”

“Hey, you. German.” An UstaÅ¡a beckoned Reinhardt over, pointing out his car idling just the other side of the wire. The crowd followed him, and then they were all around him, holding up pictures, photographs, documents, sacks and parcels. Names came at him, of the men and boys of this town, the women their only guardians, now. The cries came at him thick and fast, urging, pleading, strident, and he felt himself slipping sideways in his own mind, overlays of the horror inside the Pale House jagging across the faces of the women in front of him, images of bodies stacked one atop the other and now only bait for crows. Dimly he heard the guards shouting, beating the women back, and then suddenly
was there.