The Skeleton Road Page 14

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

  ‘Ghost punters, Karen. A lot of the spectators hand over hard cash going through the turnstiles on the day. Fifteen quid a time. If you’re adding an extra thousand fake bodies to your tally, you’ve laundered fifteen grand, just like that. You’ve successfully legitimised dirty money. Multiply that by twenty home games and you’re looking at a cool three hundred K over a season.’

  Karen gave a low whistle. ‘That’s fabulous. Bribery and corruption, defrauding the taxman and the VAT… Oh, that’s beautiful, Phil. But how do you stand it up?’

  ‘Tommy managed to get a crew together on Saturday. Woolly suits keen to have a shot at doing something in plain clothes. So every turnstile had one of our boys watching it with a wee clicker in his pocket, head-counting everybody who paid in to see the game. Now, we might be a bit out either way, but Tommy’s lads clocked the crowd at fourteen hundred and sixty-seven. The official gate for the match was three thousand and forty-three.’

  Karen laughed with delight. ‘I can see why you felt like a celebration.’

  ‘Aye. He’s a nasty, violent bully, this bastard. And it’ll give us great pleasure to nick him. But what about you? How’s it going?’

  She brought him up to speed with her investigation. ‘So we’ve got to hang around here all day waiting for Maggie Blake to come back from Glasgow. How frustrating is that?’

  ‘But at least you know a bit more about Petrovic than you did before.’

  ‘That’s true. I googled him last night and his name comes up in passing in a couple of long articles about Bosnia and Kosovo. But it’s not very informative. If it really is him, I’ll need to track down somebody who knows what they’re talking about in terms of the Balkan wars.’

  ‘But in the meantime, you can pursue the angle of who might have been up the John Drummond with him.’

  Karen frowned. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Isn’t climbing supposed to be one of those close-knit communities? Where everybody knows everybody else? If he had climbing buddies in Oxford, chances are they might still be around. Maybe there’s a club or something?’

  ‘Round here? I’ve not seen a gradient since we got here. There’s nothing to climb.’

  ‘Except buildings.’ He looked annoyingly smug.

  ‘They’ll not have a club for that, it’s against the law.’

  ‘Aye, but I bet they’ll have a proper climbing club that goes off on trips and excursions. I bet a few of them are into the extreme building stuff.’

  Karen pouted. ‘I hate it when you’re right. I’ll get on to it as soon as I’ve had a shower.’

  ‘Minger. Fancy Skyping before you’re clean and dressed.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘I’ve got a T-shirt on. And besides, you can barely tell I’m human on Skype, never mind whether I’ve done my hair and cleaned my teeth.’

  ‘Are you coming home tonight?’

  ‘I hope so. It kind of depends on when Maggie Blake gets back.’

  ‘OK. Well, text me when you know what your plans are. I miss you, Karen.’

  ‘Me too. Later, babe.’ They blew kisses at each other and then it was over. As always, Karen felt her spirits lifted by talking to Phil. And now she had something concrete to chase down.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was absorbed in her screen. There was a university climbing club, but she reckoned that would be a waste of time. Anyone who had been a student when Petrovic had been in Oxford would be long gone. There was a climbing wall at Oxford Brookes University where there might be staff who were plugged into a wider climbing network. Karen imagined that training on a climbing wall might be a decent apprenticeship for going up the outside of buildings. Her third option was a local climbing club that claimed to cater for everybody from casual hikers to serious rock geeks. That, she thought, would be her first target.

  By the time she made it to the dining room, Jason was munching his way through a sticky pile of pastries. ‘Morning,’ he mumbled. ‘You have a good lie-in?’

  ‘I’ve been working, Jason,’ Karen said, trying not to let him irritate her so early in a day when they would be spending most of it together. She helped herself to fruit salad, yoghurt and a large latte from a machine. What she really wanted was what was on Jason’s plate, but she was gradually winning her lifelong battle with bad eating habits. If she was going to fall off the wagon of sensible choices, then she was determined it would be for something more luxurious than Coco Pops and a mass-produced Danish. ‘We’re going to talk to someone who knows about climbing,’ she said, enjoying the sense of virtue even more than the fruit.

  ‘Round here? There’s nothing to climb. I don’t think we saw a hill since Sheffield,’ he said, unconsciously echoing her.

  ‘There’s buildings, though. And these mad bastards have to learn their techniques somewhere. I’ve already tracked down the secretary of the local climbing club and he’s arranging for a couple of their lads to meet us in East Oxford later this morning.’ She couldn’t help feeling pleased with herself. Between Phil’s brainwave and her people skills, it looked like the day wouldn’t be wasted after all.

  It wasn’t hard to identify the two men Karen had arranged to meet in the vegetarian café in the Cowley Road. One was in Lycra cycling leggings and a clingy neon-green T-shirt that she suspected was made from some fabric that had had more scientific input than the entire contents of her wardrobe. His hair was cropped close to his head and his bony face was scraped clean of any hint of facial hair. The other wore the kind of trousers that unzip at the knees to take advantage of the three days of British summer, topped with a lightweight plaid shirt covered in zips and pockets. His hair was badly shaped and shaggy and he had one of those full-on beards that hasn’t seen razor or trimmer in years. Each had a small day pack at his feet, a water bottle in the side pocket.

  Karen walked up to the table in the window, Jason trailing behind her. ‘John Thwaite and Robbie Smith?’ She gave them her standard warm greeting smile. They looked about the same age as her; old enough to have been around when Dimitar Petrovic had been alive and climbing.

  The cyclist nodded. ‘I’m John, he’s Robbie. And you’re the police, right?’ He had the sort of northern accent that wouldn’t have been out of place in Coronation Street.

  Karen made the introductions, ordered chai for herself and tea for a slightly baffled Jason. ‘Thanks for taking the time to meet me,’ she said.

  ‘Not a problem. We both work the evening shift in the labs at the hospital. I just cut my bike run a bit short. No big deal,’ John said. He was displaying an eagerness that Karen was familiar with. For some people, the chance to be involved in something as edgy as a murder investigation is more thrilling than almost anything else they can imagine. Even when the victim is disturbingly close to home. That always made her feel slightly queasy.

  Robbie looked less keen, studying them from under heavy eyebrows. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he said in an accent that Karen couldn’t narrow down any further than ‘southern’. ‘I’ve got a dental appointment at noon.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. I understand you’ve both been active members of the climbing club for about ten years?’

  ‘I joined eleven years ago,’ John said. ‘And Robbie came along that winter. We’re both serious rock climbers, so we’ve done quite a few expeditions together. The Torridon range, the Cuillins, the Assynt peaks in your country. Do you know them at all?’

  Patronising prick. ‘I’m more of a walker,’ Karen said. ‘The West Highland Way, the John Muir Way, the Cape Wrath Trail.’ It was a lie, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to be condescended to by some geek who probably shaved his legs more often and more thoroughly than she did.

  ‘Some great walking there,’ Robbie said. ‘I did Cape Wrath a few years ago. Spectacular, I thought.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask to meet us so we could swap walking routes,’ John cut in. ‘How can we help you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘We’re trying to
make contact with a man called Dimitar Petrovic. I wondered if you knew him?’ Both men looked doubtful but Karen persisted. ‘He was a general in the Croatian Army who came here at the end of the Balkans War and I’m told he was a keen climber. About six feet tall, black hair. His friends called him Mitja.’

  Robbie’s face cleared. ‘You mean Tito. She means Tito, Johnno.’ He smiled and his face was transformed. He looked ten years younger and 100 per cent happier. ‘We don’t bother with proper names when we’re out on the hill. I only know this one’s name because we work together. I know it sounds a bit mad, but when you’re climbing you want to lose yourself in what you’re doing. So your guy, he was always just Tito to us after he let on that he was from Yugoslavia.’

  ‘So how well did you know him?’

  ‘Tito? I haven’t thought about him in donkey’s. He was a good rock monkey,’ John said, admiration in his voice. ‘He was already climbing with club members when I joined, though I was never clear whether he was actually a member.’

  ‘One thing I noticed – because it was odd, with him being a foreigner – he never did any of the foreign trips,’ Robbie said. ‘We did expeditions to the Alps, the Dolomites and the Pyrenees the first few years I was in the club, but Tito only ever did the home nations climbs.’

  ‘You know, I’d never thought about that,’ John said. ‘But you’re right.’

  ‘Was there anyone in particular he always climbed with?’ Karen asked.

  They looked at each other, shaking their heads. ‘He’d climb with anyone. It wasn’t something that bothered him. He was more patient than I am with people who are a lot less skilled.’

  So, no particular partner. Damn. ‘When you all went on your trips to Scotland and the like, I presume you stayed in bothies and climbing huts?’

  Robbie nodded. ‘Mostly. But sometimes we’d just sleep out in bivvie bags if the weather was OK.’

  ‘When you were sitting around in the evening, eating and drinking and talking, what did Tito have to say for himself?’

  This time, their shared look was genuinely nonplussed. ‘Nowt, really,’ John said. ‘Not personal stuff. He had a girlfriend that he lived with, but that’s all I know about his life outside the rock.’

  Robbie tugged at his beard. ‘He didn’t join in much. It felt like he was only there for the climbing. The rest of it – the rest of us, really – he could do without. When he stopped coming, I think it was a while before I noticed. He didn’t contribute much to the conversation, only the climbing. And other people were just as good as him at figuring out routes and holds.’

  ‘That’s right. It was a bit of a jolt when it dawned on me we hadn’t seen him for over a year,’ John added.

  ‘Did he ever fall out with anybody, that you know of?’

  They looked at each other, puzzled. ‘Not that I ever heard,’ John said.

  ‘No disagreements on climbs, no arguments?’

  Robbie scratched his armpit while he considered. ‘He wasn’t that kind of bloke. He never got into it with anybody. Some people, it’s like they’re always looking for a chance to get stuck in. But Tito wasn’t like that. He was pretty much live and let live. Maybe he got all his fighting done when he was in the army.’

  Now for the tricky part. ‘I’m going to ask you about something that some people think is illegal. Hand on heart, I’m not interested in minor infringements of the law here. I’m more concerned about making sense of some puzzling information.’

  John began to bounce in his chair. ‘Is this about that body they found on a roof in Scotland?’ He prodded Robbie in the ribs. ‘Remember? I showed you in the canteen yesterday. A skeleton up on a high roof, somewhere that’s been shut up for twenty years.’ He grinned at Karen. ‘You think it’s him? You think it’s Tito?’

  ‘I’ll be honest, guys. Right now, I don’t know. But his name has come up. So what about climbing up buildings then? We know it goes on. We know it’s a bit of a dark secret because people get into all sorts of trouble. But was Tito into it when he was in Oxford? Because, frankly, there’s nothing else to climb around here.’

  Robbie stared at the floor. John looked panicky, then shrugged. ‘Oh, what the hell. Yes, buildering goes on. And yes, Tito was into it. We were talking about it one time on a trip to the Peak District and he said he’d done it a few times.’

  ‘Did he do it by himself? Or with other people from the club?’ Karen tried not to show how eager she was to hear the answer.

  Robbie raised his eyes. ‘He wouldn’t tell us who he went out with. Just that it was somebody he used to know back in Yugoslavia.’

  I refused to allow myself to have any expectations of Mitja. All day after our dinner at Proto I kept teetering on the edge of teenage mooning over the handsome colonel, but I scolded myself back to sense. After all, I was twenty-six years old and far too worldly to fall for the obvious charms of a clever, handsome man who could doubtless take his pick when it came to wanting more from an evening than a discussion of neocolonialism, feminism and deconstructing the Cold War. No, we’d had a fascinating evening and that would be an end to it.

  And so I was genuinely surprised to emerge from a day’s lectures at the Inter-University Centre to find a Mercedes parked on the road beyond the slender palm trees. The rear door swung open and Mitja unfolded himself out of the back seat in full dress uniform. ‘I have an hour to spare,’ he said. ‘I thought we could walk up to the old town and have a drink, if you’re not too busy?’

  Of course I wasn’t too busy. Even if I did feel a little uncomfortable to be walking alongside a senior officer in full regalia. We headed up between the two forts towards the Pile gate, picking up our conversation where we’d left it the night before. ‘Is there any news from Vukovar today?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing new,’ he sighed. ‘But I am more concerned with what’s happening in Montenegro.’

  That was the first time Mitja had mentioned Montenegro to me. Only a few miles to the east, events there were likely to have more effect on me here in Dubrovnik than whatever was going on in Vukovar on the eastern borders of the country. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  ‘Any day now, we are going to hear the JNA and the puppets who are running Montenegro saying that Dubrovnik is a threat to their territorial integrity. They want to “neutralise” us to avoid ethnic clashes – that’s their way of saying they want to destroy us. They have this crazy claim that we should be part of their country anyway, that this narrow strip of coast only belongs to Croatia because some stupid Bolshevik cartographers made a mistake drawing up the maps.’ He made an explosive noise with his lips. ‘As if we have anything in common with those bloody butchering Montenegrin Serbs.’

  ‘That sounds ominous,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just propaganda. They’re spreading rumours that we’ve got an army of Kurdish mercenaries ready to attack the Bay of Kotor and invade them.’ He gave a sardonic grin. ‘Even stupid Montenegrin Serbs know better than that. Who would rely on Kurdish mercenaries, for God’s sake? If I was planning to invade Montenegro, I’d have a Croatian army at my back.’

  ‘And are you planning to invade Montenegro?’ I tried to make my voice sound light.

  He laughed, his brown eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘No, Maggie. There are things I would much rather do this evening than invade Montenegro.’

  We were drawing close to the Pile gate, the massive stone bastion that guards Dubrovnik to the west. He pointed up at the eroded statue of St Blaise in its niche above the gate. ‘You see underneath the saint, there is a relief of three heads close together? The man flanked by the two women?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You know the story?’

  I shook my head. I’d barely got to grips with the major landmarks of the Old Town, never mind the details of the statuary. ‘No, who are they?’

  ‘Legend has it that they’re two nuns and a priest who fell in love with each other. Forbidden love in every way. Apparently they were more interested
in having sex together than in their holy offices. So their images were carved into the gate to mortify them.’

  I laughed in delight. ‘An early version of the tabloid press. We name and shame the guilty.’

  ‘Maybe. But I like to think that we’re a people who understand and celebrate love in all its different forms.’

  I felt a little shiver run up the back of my neck. ‘What? Croatia is the embodiment of Foucauldian fluidity?’

  ‘Why not? We don’t have to become bourgeois in every respect just because we’re no longer Communist.’ He reached out and took my hand. I know it’s the worst kind of cliché but truly, it did feel like an electric shock. ‘There are other ways of being, wouldn’t you say? As a feminist?’

  Everyone thinks themselves unique when they fall in love. The truth is, we all lose ourselves in the same way. Whether it takes hours or days or weeks, we all find ourselves in a place of wonder and urgency, where we believe nobody has ever been before to quite the same degree. If everyone felt like this, our script goes, the world would come to a grinding, grinning halt.

  And that’s how it was with Mitja and me. I couldn’t have told you the morning after how we got from the Pile gate to the tangle of sheets in the hotel room in the Old Town; at this distance, it’s even more of a blur. All I remember is the door closing and the terrible hunger for each other’s bodies. The brief grip of panic when I wondered whether seeing me naked would kill his desire, whether we’d fit together or be awkward and uncomfortable, whether this was just a mad response to the threat of war. Then the tumult of desire answering desire.

  One thing I do know for certain. From the very first time, the sex was sensational. I wasn’t short of experience when I met Mitja. I enjoyed sex and I’d been lucky with my lovers. But all that good stuff faded to grey beside the love we made. And the quality of our physical relationship cemented everything else. Maybe it was the meeting of our minds, the sharing of a common sense of humour, the delight we both took in challenging the other’s position that gave the sex an extra helping hand. However the biofeedback went, it worked.