Zagreb Cowboy (16 page)

“Thanks.”

“
Stay alive long enough to pay me a commission on Strumbić’s car. He’s angling to get it back. He probably will, knowing him
.”

Della Torre noticed two men in leather jackets taking an interest in his Renault on the other side of the square. Had it been a Ferrari or on fire, it might not have been surprising. But they weren’t handing out tickets or admiring the bodywork. He was taken aback. It couldn’t be Messar already. But there was no other explanation. It was time to go.

“Gotta run.”

“Good luck.”

He hung up and walked as casually as he could towards the dockside.

DELLA TORRE DIDN’T
look back at the men. There were people about, but out of tourist season he would be found before long. Piran wasn’t a big place, and worse still, it was on a narrow promontory. It would be easy to get bottled up there.

He stuck to the shadows of the town’s Renaissance stone buildings. Early spring flowers were erupting over the tops of walled gardens. There was a little graffiti about, but mostly Piran was clean and well maintained. He hardly noticed, instead keeping his senses alert to anyone following. At the long quayside, he ducked into a kiosk. A doughy, youngish woman sat on a stool behind the counter, reading a garish gossip magazine.

“When do the ferries run to Venice or Trieste?” he asked in Italian. She looked up, barely able to lift the weight of indifference from her expression.

“It’s on the board,” she said, pointing offhandedly at the schedule printed up on the side of the kiosk. “Regular ferry to Venice left at nine. Another one tomorrow. They don’t go to Trieste any more. Take a bus.”

“Shit,” said della Torre.

“Winter schedule.”

“Any boats going anywhere this afternoon?” he asked.

“There’s a boat at three-thirty going to Zadar, Šibenik, and Split.”

A coastal boat. He’d be picked up somewhere along the way.

“Anything else?”

“No.” She glared at him. “Except for the weekly catamaran. That’s at midday.”

“Catamaran? Where does that go?”

“Where it always goes. Venice, of course.”

Had della Torre lived in any other country, he’d have been astonished at her rank, almost evil unhelpfulness. But she’d behaved no differently from any other Yugoslav. That was the thing about Communism. In the eyes of its public servants, everyone was equally contemptible.

He paid for a ticket.

“Do I need to be early for passport control?”

She stared at him for a long moment.

“No,” she finally said.

Della Torre gave her a forced smile and wandered off. He had around two hours to kill while staying as unobtrusive as possible. He found a café in a jazzed-up old wine cellar, and was sitting in the gloom at the back when the two men who’d taken an interest in his Renault walked past. One looked in. He was in his early thirties, either very fair or prematurely grey; it was hard to tell from his military buzz cut. He had a peasant’s flat and heavy face. He didn’t see della Torre, who’d pressed himself into the shadows behind a pillar.

If they were
UDBA
, della Torre knew they’d probably do a quick circuit of the town and then a slower one, going into shops and bars. There was sure to be another team, which would stick closer to the car. This other team would circle the edge of the old town across the neck of the promontory to ensure he didn’t escape landward.

The guys he was seeing now would try to winkle him out.
They’d ask around about him. Knowing Messar, they would have a faxed photograph. It still astonished him that Messar was focusing any effort on this little town. Then again, he was thorough. He probably had people in Poreč and Rovinj too, though he’d be focusing his efforts on the Italian-Slovene border.

Even before they’d voted for independence, Slovenes had been prickly in their dealings with other Yugoslav nationalities. They’d always considered themselves Mitteleuropeans rather than Balkans, with a German work ethic and German aspirations. Now they were cutting themselves off wherever and however they could. Messar couldn’t take for granted that the local police would co-operate with the
UDBA
. Much as the Zagreb police were proving less than helpful to
UDBA
headquarters in Belgrade, Slovenes had become even less compliant with any of the federal government’s agencies. And for that matter, with the Croat police.

That was a major reason della Torre had decided to go this route. The Slovenes would be as helpful to Messar’s investigation as sand in a gearbox.

Della Torre didn’t so much kill time as strangle it slowly. With most of the town shut until the start of the tourist season, there just weren’t enough places to hide. He almost bumped into the
UDBA
team, but he spotted them in the reflection of a shop window, only just getting out of their way in time.

The pursuit traced ever-tightening circles towards the crest of the town, where Piran’s modest cathedral stood at the edge of a bastion rising forty metres from the sea, a white stone insect pinned to the earth by the needle of its tall bell tower. The
UDBA
men weren’t letting up. They hadn’t seen him yet, but they kept on his trail, tracking him as if by smell.

He ducked into the church’s gloaming. It was empty. A row of three wooden confessionals was tucked in along one wall. He doubted any priests would be expecting to hear confessions on a mid-week morning, though Easter was coming. Palm leaves bent into crosses still decorated the church and whole palm fronds circled the altar. He stepped into one of the boxes and pulled the door behind him, a dim light coming on in the coffin-like box. Its dark wood had recently been polished with beeswax; he could smell it, feel its smoothness on the small bench.

For a time there was silence. And then he could hear footsteps on the stone floor. One pair. A second. Men’s hard, heavy steps. They circled the church. Della Torre quietly unzipped his shoulder bag and took out the Beretta, checking by feel that it was loaded with a magazine. And then there was the softer brushing sound of a third set of shoes, or, more likely, slippers.

Della Torre froze. The door to the other half of his confessional box opened. He chambered a bullet, but the metallic click was covered by the door banging shut again. He raised the gun to the wooden screen.

“Have you come to make a confession?” asked a voice from the other side of the wooden grille. It was a young man’s voice, speaking in Slovene.

“Yes, Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,” della Torre whispered in Italian, lowering the gun, rocking forward with relief so that he could taste the beeswax on the latticework against his lips.

“Ah, Italian. Good. We shall speak in Italian,” said the young priest. His accent wasn’t fluent but clearly he understood the language well enough. “May the Lord be in your heart to help you make a good confession. How long since you have last confessed your sins?”

Della Torre thought hard. Was it when he was twelve, or thirteen? It was sometime not long after his mother had died. This much he knew.

“Six months, Father.”

“That’s a long time between confessions, my son. And what are your sins?”

“Many, Father. I’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain many times. And I’ve done too much coveting. I stole a hoe from my neighbour and then lied when he asked whether I had it. But something else is weighing on my soul.”

He paused for a long time, as if he were bringing himself to admit something. He wasn’t. He just couldn’t think of anything that would keep him in the confessional until the footsteps went away. He didn’t particularly feel like mentioning he’d caused the death of one man or shot another and stolen his car. “It’s to do with my wife. I’m not really sure I know how to explain it.”

“Have you been adulterous or had impure thoughts about other women?” Della Torre listened. Footsteps had drawn close to the confessional boxes and then paused.

“Oh no, Father. It’s not that. No, I’m not even sure it’s a sin against God what I did.”

“What is it that’s a sin against your wife but not a sin against God?”

“Well, you see, it’s embarrassing.” Whoever it was pacing the church wandered away.

“Confession should not be embarrassing. It should be an unburdening, an opening of yourself to God.”

“This might be a new one on God. I don’t really know how to say it.”

“Say it as simply as you can.”

“Well, Father, my wife caught me this morning trying on her clothes.”

“You were trying on her dresses?”

“Not her dresses, Father, not exactly. Her underwear.”

“Her underwear?”

“Yes, her bra and underwear and stockings and suspenders.”

“You wore her undergarments?”

“Yes, Father. Surely that’s not a sin.”

“Were you putting them on for unnatural purposes?”

“Sort of, you might say.”

“For sensual gratification?”

“Oh no, Father, they were very uncomfortable. Pinched everywhere.”

“Had you done this before?”

“Never, Father.”

“So why did you put them on?”

“Well, you see, Father, I’d been telling my mates at work that my wife has got very fat since we married. So fat that I could fit into her clothes. They laughed it off; they didn’t believe me. I mean, I’m not a tiny fellow. Not overweight or anything. Just not tiny. So, you see, it got me thinking. And since she’d gone off shopping this morning and I didn’t need to go to work, I thought I’d give them a go. Her clothes, I mean. Except she’d forgotten something and she came back. And caught me.”

“You tried on your wife’s clothing to prove that she was fat?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And not for sensual reasons?”

“No, Father.”

“I see.”

“The complication is, Father, that if she thinks I did it because I like to dress in women’s clothes for sensual reasons, as you put it, she’ll be worried sick. Furious, but worried sick. But if I tell her it’s because I wanted to prove how fat she’s got, she’d want a divorce. And that wouldn’t be good for either of our souls.” Della Torre spoke softly, hesitatingly, listening for sounds in the church the whole while he spun his story.

“No, indeed not.”

“But what I really need now, Father, is somewhere to hide so that she can’t find me. I’ll go home once she’s cooled down and try to come up with some reason for her.”

“Maybe you should tell her that it was an experiment but that you disliked it, and anyway you went to confession straight away.”

Della Torre heard the door to the church bang with an echo. The footsteps were gone. “Thank you, Father. I knew you’d understand. But would you mind if I just stayed in here for a little while? Just to stay out of range of her frying pan?”

“By all means, by all means. We normally don’t take confession on weekday mornings, but I was in the sacristy and heard some footsteps so I thought I’d make sure no one had come to steal the candles. They come to steal candles sometimes. The old ladies are the worst. And when I saw the confessional door was shut . . . Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.”

The priest had already started out of his side of the confessional when della Torre stopped him.

“Aren’t you going to give me penance?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’d forgotten,” the priest said, hastily sitting back down. “How about a dozen Hail Marys and as many Our Fathers. That should cover the past six months. And whatever sin you might have inadvertently committed in putting on your wife’s things. And now say the act of contrition.”

“Lord Jesus, son of Mary and God, have mercy on me as a sinner.” Della Torre marvelled at how much of the long-distant ritual he could remember.

“Your sins are forgiven; now go in peace. I mean, stay. As long as you like. And then go in peace. And I wish you well with your wife.”

“Thank you, Father.”

The minutes counted down. He wasn’t tempted to leave the sanctity of the confessional. No one else seemed to come in that morning. No tourists, no penitents, no old ladies looking to steal candles. Half past eleven turned into twenty-five to. Then twenty to. Then a quarter of an hour. Ten minutes. He’d waited as long as he could.

He ran out of the church and through the town in a hobbling sprint, every step a bolt of pain. Out of the corner of his eye he could see somebody else running.

The catamaran loomed over the historic waterfront like a diabolical machine designed to drag the population of these sleepy little towns into worlds in which they did not belong. Passport control was in a building just past the kiosk where he’d bought the ticket. The catamaran’s engines were running and quayside officials were preparing to lift the warps once the gangway was pulled up.

“You’ll be lucky to make it,” said the passport control guard in Slovene.

“Sorry,” della Torre replied, pulling out his Italian passport. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re cutting it very fine,” the officer replied in rough Italian, looking through the passport. “Where’s your entry stamp?”

“My entry stamp? I don’t know. I didn’t notice them put one in.”

“Did you come through here?”

“Oh no, I came with a friend from Trieste. We drove down. My friend’s Slovene. I don’t know why, but they didn’t stamp me at the border.”

“Criminal how negligent they can be. They get so much traffic up there that they just stop bothering sometimes. Wouldn’t catch us doing that.”

He looked back. He could see another man rushing towards the building, the young man with the flat peasant face.

“Next time, make sure the stamp’s in there. You can end up in a lot of bother without one,” the passport control officer said. Della Torre took his stamped passport and made a running leap at the gangway, terrified his left knee would give out on him, as the flat-faced man ran into the building.