Zagreb Cowboy (6 page)

“Sounds nice. I guess London’s a good enough place if you can afford it.”

“Great town. Clubs, restaurants, girls. What girls! Every colour you can think of. Green, probably, if you looked hard enough. They got a real spark. Not like the ones in Zagreb, who look like they’ve come out of a morgue, except if you wanted to you could always get a corpse to smile.”

“So what does Mrs. Strumbić think about retiring to London?”

“Mrs. Strumbić doesn’t know Mr. Strumbić is going to spend his golden years where he won’t have to worry about bumping into Mrs. Strumbić again.”

“So that’s how it is. Well, lucky you. Though I’d have preferred somewhere like Rome or Barcelona.” Della Torre popped another fat black cherry into his mouth.

“I’d just sweat like a pig and develop another ulcer over how corrupt it is.”

Della Torre choked. For a moment he felt the cherry stone rising through his nose.

“London works properly, like a proper city,” Strumbić said.

“If you say so,” della Torre said, spitting out the stone.

Della Torre had sensed that after the initial smugness and braggadocio, Strumbić rather wished he hadn’t mentioned London. So that summer afternoon della Torre had dropped the subject.

But not now. Now he wanted to remind Strumbić he had something on him.

“So you’ll be heading to London, then, will you?”

“Listen, you make your plans and I’ll make mine.”

“You owe me some money, Strumbić. Remember?”

“Do I?”

“Our phone call earlier this evening.”

“Oh yeah. There’s an envelope in a soup pot under the kitchen sink. Take out four thousand Deutschmarks. No, take out five thousand and buy yourself a new suit. Least I can do after your inconvenience.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Just don’t rip me off.”

“Rip you off?” Strumbić’s brass neck forever amazed him. “Listen, Julius, I’m inclined to believe what you told me. But I don’t trust you not to stitch me up again. So I’m afraid I am going to lock you in the cellar. I’ll leave you a key for the cuffs, though.”

“Always a considerate friend.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“When you go upstairs, come back down and bring some cigarettes. Alright? And when you’ve disappeared, to Italy or America or wherever you’re going, don’t bother to send me a postcard. I won’t be around to read it.”

Della Torre stood up. He ached and was tired and was only just starting to think about how he’d get home. He rubbed his fingers on the silk tie. Distractedly, he started to pull it out of his pocket. That was a mistake.

The gunshot was deafening in the cellar’s hard-walled space. The noise rang like the inside of a church bell. Della Torre must have flipped the safety off somehow without noticing it. And obviously the Bosnian had kept it primed with a round in the barrel. The tie had snagged the trigger.

Any other time that bullet would have planted itself harmlessly into the dirt floor, or maybe flattened itself against a wall. But that night chance played funny games with della Torre. The bullet hit something it shouldn’t have. Like Strumbić.

DELLA TORRE WAS
momentarily deafened. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his head. The surprise, the noise of the explosion, and the shock of the car wreck earlier in the evening caused his vision to narrow into two small tunnels of light. He thought he was passing out.

A shriek snapped him back into alertness. At first he couldn’t make any of it out, but then Strumbić’s bellowing formed itself back into language of sorts.

“You fucking fuck, you fucking shot me, you fuck, I’m fucking going to fucking kill you! Gringo, you are dead. Dead. I can’t believe you fucking shot me. Fuck it hurts. Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .”

Strumbić’s chair tilted back at an alarming angle, balancing on a single leg so that della Torre thought it was going to drop him on his back. With his arms cuffed behind him, the fall would probably dislocate Strumbić’s shoulders. Maybe break a wrist as well.

But Strumbić’s right leg had gone rigid straight in front of him, and that little bit of offsetting weight ensured that the chair righted itself rather than making the shot cop’s night that little bit worse. It settled heavily, threatening for a moment to overbalance.

“Calm down. Where’d it hit you? You’ll be fine. Just calm down.”

“In my leg, in my goddam leg. My shin.”

“Oh, is that all? The way you’re going on about it I thought I’d shot your balls off.”

Della Torre looked at the rigid leg; it was shaking uncontrollably. There was a hole in the new jeans about a hand’s span below the knee, directly in the front.

“Here, I’m going to have to cut your jeans off around the bullet hole to have a look.”

“Like buggery you are. Do you know how much these things cost? God, my leg hurts. Get these cuffs off me so I can blow your brains out, you moron.”

“They’ve already got a hole in them. Making it slightly bigger isn’t going to make much difference.”

Della Torre found a hooked knife, used for trimming vines, hanging off a nail in the wall and sliced a patch off the front of Strumbić’s trouser leg. The first thing he noticed was that there was hardly any blood, just a red, roundish hole with a black rim right on the shin. In fact, he thought he could see the bullet mashed up against the bone just under the skin.

“Christ, this is a crappy gun with crappy ammo. The bullet barely broke the skin. Might have cracked the bone, though.”

Gingerly, della Torre pulled the automatic out of his jacket pocket, which had a hole matching the one he’d just cut out of Strumbić’s jeans. He flipped the safety on and had a closer look at the gun.

“Well, that figures. It’s some Bulgarian knock-off. Either it goes off on its own or doesn’t do anything at all. Whatever’s most inconvenient. The ammo’s probably Bulgarian too. Bet they were filling only half the casing with powder and then making up the rest with sawdust or something. No wonder your assassins took two goes and fifty rounds to kill that crook down in Karlovac. That mistress of his must have had some bad luck to have died as well.”

“Heart attack. Superficial bullet wound but died of a heart attack,” Strumbić said through shallow panted breaths.

“What were they going to do, club me with this thing until I passed out and then run me over? Somebody should have given them on-the-job advice.”

“Just shut up and get me a doctor.”

“Listen, Strumbić. If I take you to a doctor now, your cops will be all over Zagreb looking for me ten minutes later. Because you’ll tell them who shot you, forgetting to mention both that it was an accident and that it was the least you deserved. And when they find me, they’ll park me in a holding cell where half of Zagreb’s squaddies will stand in line patiently waiting to knock out whatever teeth I have left. And the other half won’t be so patient and’ll just kick me into the next world. You are not going to die. In fact I hurt myself more shaving this morning. So quit squealing or I’ll tell everyone you wear your girlfriend’s suspenders and bra. Whether it’s true or not.”

“Bastard.”

“Where’s the slivovitz?”

“There’s a jerry can beside the barrel.”

Della Torre poured the rest of his wine onto the dirt floor and filled the tin cup with the potent alcohol. And then he took a long swig.

“Hey, I thought you were getting it for me. What about me?” whined Strumbić.

“Oh, sorry, you’re right,” della Torre said, and splashed the rest of the cup on Strumbić’s open wound. He was pretty sure they’d have been able to hear Strumbić on the other side of the valley. Some farmer on a trip to the privy was probably wondering why anybody would be slaughtering a pig at this time of night and this time of year.

“What the fuck did you do that for? That hurt even more than getting shot!”

“Don’t want you to get an infection, seeing as you’re not going to be able to make it to the doctor tonight.”

“Jesus. You do know I’m going to kill you when I see you next, Gringo. For free. I’m going to get one of those Bulgarian guns and I’m going to put fifty holes in you and then make you eat the goddamn thing with the safety off. And then kick you in the stomach. Give me some of that stuff to drink rather than just baptising me.”

“Sorry, can’t. You’re in shock. Never give someone in shock alcohol. Shouldn’t really smoke either.”

“Bastard.”

Della Torre stepped out of the cellar, pulled down the iron shutter on the cellar’s only window, padlocked it from the outside, and then came back into the room.

“Now, I’m going to put the key to the cuffs on the table here, just here on the edge. It might take you a little while to get here, what with the state your leg’s in, but you’ve got all night. I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock up the cellar and you’re just going to have to lump it until somebody rescues you. But the longest you’ll have to wait is until Tuesday, because even if your wife or your girlfriend doesn’t come looking for you, or your guy doesn’t come to do the vines, I’ll make sure somebody else does. On the other hand, look on the bright side. It’ll be a great time to stop smoking,” della Torre said, pocketing the packet of Lucky Strikes. He almost left without picking up Strumbić’s gun, but then he spotted it and heaved it into the darkness of the vineyard below the cottage.

He locked the heavy wooden door behind him with an oversized key that he found hanging off the knob and then hung the key on a nail half-driven into the front of the door frame. He didn’t want to make it too difficult for Strumbić’s eventual rescuers. He then put the big iron bar across the door and padlocked that too.

“Della Torre, you’re dead. You hear that, Gringo? Next time you see me will be the last time you see anything at all. Dead, Gringo.”

Della Torre went up into the main house.

The door was open and the lights were on. In daylight the kitchen had a beautiful view of the deep, wooded valley, which curved away from Strumbić’s hillside towards a peak that loomed like a forested incisor. But he wasn’t there for the sights. He opened up the cupboard under the sink and found the envelope in the soup pot. It was full of Strumbić’s little storm troopers. Della Torre ran his thumb along them. The whole fifteen thousand, it seemed. He took a deep breath. At first, his intention had been to take the four thousand promised him. Plus the extra thousand. But, thinking about it, Strumbić had never intended to pay him anything at all. Why should he play square with a man who’d helped in a conspiracy to kill him? So he pocketed the lot.

On the way out, he passed a nice leather coat. His own suit jacket was distinctly the worse for wear, not least from the bullet hole in the pocket. Strumbić’s coat was shorter in the arms and looser around the body than della Torre expected, and it wasn’t really the sort of thing he’d ever wear. It looked too
—
well, too secret police. Or it would have done had it fit properly. As it was he looked like a country bumpkin. But the leather was top quality. Italian probably. So he decided to take it anyway, especially because he knew it’d piss Strumbić off.

Della Torre transferred the gun, the tie, and the little notebook from the one coat to the other. He found the key to the
BMW
on a ring with half a dozen others hanging off a hook. A couple of small ones might have been for simple padlocks or maybe letter boxes. But the rest were unfamiliar. He shrugged and pocketed them all.

He was about to leave when he spotted the three cartons of Lucky Strikes on the sitting room coffee table. Della Torre couldn’t really see any reason not to take them, now that Strumbić was quitting.

As della Torre stumbled up the stony path in darkness, the moon having already passed behind the hillside, all he could hear was the sound of barking dogs in the village far below and the crunch of loose rocks underfoot. He unlocked the car by feel.

It took him a while to figure out all the buttons and levers on the
BMW
, but when he did the engine purred to life and he pulled away. His left knee hurt as he pressed the clutch, making for rough gear changes. But otherwise it was a pleasure to drive the car. He’d always wanted to.

He came off Strumbić’s track onto the Samobor road and was starting to accelerate around the bend when a shape loomed out of the dark at him. Della Torre pounded the brake and clutch at the same time, cursing at the pain that shot up through his leg. The seatbelt tugged in on him with the sudden deceleration, causing him to feel the agony in his ribs as well.

He sat there for a long moment, taking deep breaths, reminding himself not to drink so much when stealing an unfamiliar car, before he finally registered what he was seeing in the stark light of the car’s lamps. It was a man, standing hunched, half swaying, more or less in the middle of the road. Della Torre got out of the car. As he got closer he could see it was the tall Bosnian. At least it wasn’t the drowned one.

Gingerly, della Torre put the man’s arm round his shoulder to give him support and straighten him out. But the Bosnian, the one who’d done all the talking, was bent sideways like a banana. He groaned.

“Bad accident, eh?” della Torre asked in the soothing voice he put on for difficult interrogations.

“Ummm,” the Bosnian replied. Della Torre wasn’t sure if the injured man recognized him.

“Here, I’ll lend you a hand. Can you walk a bit?”

The Bosnian moved his legs like a marionette, but mostly in the same direction, and slowly the two men edged out of the glare of the headlights to the side of the car, where they stopped. Della Torre slipped his hand into the pocket of his new leather coat and took out the Beretta. He replaced the gun in the Bosnian’s shoulder holster and clipped the holster down so the gun wouldn’t fall out. And then, turning him slightly, della Torre ducked out from under the Bosnian’s arm and leaned back against the car. For a long moment the tall Bosnian swayed there unsupported, almost upright, in the dusting of the car’s headlights, wavering like an erratic pendulum. Blackness spread behind him. His eyes blinked hard, as if he were having difficulty focusing, his high, hard cheekbones and sunken cheeks making the effect all the more ghoulish. He growled unintelligible sounds, saliva bubbling in the corner of his mouth until it became a thin line of drool.

Della Torre stepped forward and gently pressed his fingers against the man’s chest, as if to steady him. And then he gave a sharp push. Flesh hit stone as the Bosnian fell back into the ravine, and then there was the sound of sliding scree. Apart from an initial surprised grunt, he remained quiet.

“Must have hurt,” della Torre said, standing at the edge of the road. It was like looking into a bottomless well. “But it’s better than getting run over.”

Della Torre sidled back into the car, trying not to bend his sore knee too much. He didn’t feel the smallest grain of remorse. If the Bosnian had survived the car wreck, clearly he wasn’t made of icing sugar and baked custard. Chances were he’d survive the fall too. If he didn’t, too bad. The man was a cold-hearted killer, and not a very good one at that. Worse still, he’d had his sights on della Torre.

If by some freak of nature Strumbić died from his wound, or more likely from a heart attack as he tried to dig his way out of the cellar, the cops would find the Bosnian in the ravine, match the gun with Strumbić’s bullet wound, and solve a five-star cop-killer crime. Strumbić was a senior detective. The gun was probably one that had made such a mess in Karlovac. So unless the investigating officer was even dimmer than a September firefly, he’d have a brace of solved premier-league crimes under his belt. Who cared that the Mercedes married to the tree was facing the wrong direction from Strumbić’s? The Zagreb cops had never been good on details. And if Strumbić lived? Maybe they’d pin the attempted murder on the Bosnian anyway.

Della Torre was tired. It was nice driving this car, but it didn’t make up for the evening he’d had. His knee and his ribs kept reminding him they weren’t happy. He was tempted to go straight home and into bed. But he knew that whoever had hired the Bosnians would probably be keeping an eye on his place too. Just in case.

He really couldn’t think offhand what he knew that would make somebody want to get rid of him. No, that wasn’t right. He knew lots about a lot of people in high-up places. Ugly things. But most of those people had other, more pressing problems. Having been deeply involved in the grubby parts of the Communist machine, they were exposed to all sorts of flying shrapnel now that the machine was flying apart. What della Torre knew may not have been the least of their worries. But it wasn’t top of the list either.