Belgrade Noir Page 6

  * * *

  The way Olga had met her maker was as dark and violent as the weather that autumn. Two elderly women had found her spread-eagled on the terrazzo floor of her vast hallway just an hour before I returned to the apartment. She was still lying there when I stepped in, looking small and deflated in her quilted dressing gown, like a chalk outline on the site of her own murder. Her head was turned to one side, a semblance of a wry smile on her lips and a meat cleaver in the back of her skull, the same cleaver I had often used to dismember those chicken skeletons at dawn.

  The two elderly women had known that I was away and they hoped to entice Olga to attend the evening prayer at the old cathedral down the road. She had failed to open the door on either Saturday night or Sunday morning, and she wasn’t answering her phone. They became convinced that she had suffered a fatal stroke and were about to call the police to force open the door when they tried it again and found it unlocked, and Olga just a few feet beyond it.

  “Like that,” one of them said, nodding toward the corpse as though Olga had rammed the cleaver into the back of her own head and arranged the dressing gown to reveal her skeletal knees when she fell.

  “And she had not seen a priest in years,” the other added, sobbing. “Her mother would have been appalled.”

  They had called the police, and they knew enough from watching endless whodunnits on television not to touch anything at the crime scene. For there was no doubt that it was indeed a crime. One of Olga’s checked house slippers sat accusingly next to her hip, like a failed weapon of defense. I was holding a plastic bag containing three smelly heads of cabbage in my left hand, and the pull-out handle of my suitcase in my right, not quite knowing what to say or do. The poor thing looked awful with that cleaver in her head. I did want her dead, I admit, but this was a touch too dramatic.

  The policeman seemed nonplussed. He had unbuttoned his thick blue winter coat and just stood there, speaking into a walkie-talkie and waiting for reinforcements. It was an emergency, obviously, but not that much of an emergency any longer.

  “Bloody Montenegrins,” he said. “I bet you it’s them.”

  One of the old crones crossed herself. She looked as though she might faint. The scene before us represented every Belgrade old lady’s nightmare. Cases like it were reported in the popular press all the time, or so it seemed. Serbian hacks loved milking the drama. The country may be going to the dogs, but that story is not nearly as vivid as a nonagenarian meeting a violent end, however timely that end might be.

  There was always a brutal man, or a whole gang of them, keeping an eye on your movements, and then, the moment they knew you to be alone . . . whack. It was a meat cleaver in this case but it could equally well have been a Black & Decker drill. They threatened and prodded you until you told them where the money was. Most of their victims talked sooner rather than later, but Olga was a general’s daughter, made of sterner stuff. Dear old Oggy, in cold blood, lying on the cold floor, murdered, robbed, and God knows what else.

  Finally, as if coming out of a delayed shock, I let out a little shriek and dropped the bag. The policeman turned toward me as though he hadn’t noticed me before. The cabbages fell out and bobbed along the floor wetly until one of them rested between Olga’s dead feet, as though she had just given birth to it. Like something in one of her dreams, I thought.

  * * *

  You may complain about the Serbian police as much as you like, but they can be scarily, even brutally efficient when they want to be. And a little bit of criminal thoughtlessness goes a long way in these parts. They caught up with Jovo barely a week after they found Olga’s body, on the Serbian–Montenegrin border. He was on his way to Podgorica with that sword and with two buckets of top-grade Colombian powder in the trunk of his Benz. He was either unbelievably blatant or unbelievably stupid, the hacks reported, leaving no one in any doubt that the latter was more likely.

  There is nothing as cute as a handsome, well-spoken Montenegrin man in a finely tailored suit, with an expensive watch on his wrist. Jovo was not one of those. I can’t say that I felt guilty about the fool.

  Živorad will have to find a new assistant, but I won’t be going to Mirijevo again. I have other plans, businesswise. A woman knows when to stop tempting fate.

  Anyway, here we are. The paperwork is a nightmare, as it always is with property in central Belgrade. The lease changes hands with every war and revolution, and there is no shortage of either, so you never know what lurks in the land register. I’m not worried. I’ve been here before and I have a lawyer much better than Stanojlo. I stand in my kitchen and I watch the lights at the Serbian Academy go out.

  UNDERMARKET

  by Mirjana Đurđević

  Vračar

  Translated by Genta Nishku

  Hari drags herself through the market like a beaten cat. From each stall, the lively colors of the Indian summer scream at her—hills of red peppers, small cucumbers, purple eggplants, all sorts of greens, big and small, with names she doesn’t even know, fifty shades of screaming green and orange pumpkins. All that’s missing is something blue.

  It should be a magical sight. But it all just makes her want to vomit. She trips on a box and stumbles. Grapes. Aha, here’s that blue, or, rather, more of a plum. She clutches the edge of the stall with both hands, catching her breath, pretending she’s just looking.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Hari mutters, turning her head. Standing next to her in the stall is a gray, withered old woman, her gaze worried and hard. With a straw hat on her head, a too-wide summer dress—ha, wait, bablje leto, what in America they call Indian summer, we call “old woman’s summer” in Serbia. God, the things that come to my mind. Or maybe she is not an old woman at all?

  “Want some water?” comes a faint voice from across the stall. A young peasant, dressed in the latest fashions from the Chinese markets, extends a half-filled plastic bottle with a calloused hand.

  “Go ahead, I’m not sick.”

  Hari barely shakes her head no and stares at the peasant, who appears to be in her early thirties. Missing a front tooth, she gives her a half smile. Cynically, or is she tripping?! And—wait—she’s wearing a wig—a cheap synthetic nest, the color of hazelnut—in this heat?! The wig has shifted to one side. A woman with no hair, not even one visible strand.

  “Wait, I have a full one,” the straw hat digs through her canvas bag, her harsh voice matching her gaze.

  The straw hat underneath which there is no hair, nor a wig? Am I hallucinating or has the illness spread to my head? Hari now shakes her head no to both women, as well as to herself, but does not let go of the stall edge.

  “We know each other,” the straw hat says, like she’s making a statement, not asking a question.

  Hari throws her another look. A real ghost.

  “I don’t think so. I remember faces. Excuse me, I need to go. And thanks.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll walk you out,” declares the straw hat. Turning to the peasant she adds, “Mara, I’ll see you tonight.”

  That authoritative tone! There’ll be no escorting, sister, fuck off. Hari gathers enough strength to turn and walk faster, at least up to the market gate.

  But at the gate of the hundred-year-old house on Petrogradska Street, a new wave of weakness comes over her. She is unable to insert the key into the lock. And there is no one to call. The owner of the house, Laki, her best friend and partner in their failed business, has taken his wife to the mountains for two months. They’re saving their marriage. They left Hari to take care of the house. For Hari it is conveninent. With her chemo treatment coming up, she can easily walk from Laki’s house to the hospital in ten minutes, instead of having to drive from New Belgrade across crowded bridges. She’ll also avoid the stress of having to find parking around the medical complex. Frazzled after her surgery, she did not object too much when Laki pointed all of this out.

  She finally manages to get the key to work, loc
king the gate behind her. Once in the garden, she tears off the colorful bandanna from her head, wiping away the sweat from her bare scalp, convinced she’d imagined what just happened.

  Harijeta, Hari to her friends, fifty-plus, former chief inspector with the Serbian police in the homicide and sexual crimes division, former chief of security in a large department store in Chicago, former returnee to Belgrade. Soon she will be the former co-owner of the private detective agency Lucky Charm, which she started with her friend Laki, this she has firmly decided. Soon she will also be a former oncology patient, at least so she hopes. She needs to make it through her last round of chemotherapy, which is hitting her especially hard. Damn chemo brain . . . Everything is in a fog. But this, too, will pass. Provided that she does not die in someone else’s home, in this elite part of town.

  * * *

  Weekend. Two days without a needle. Harijeta keeps her eyes closed, reclining on the antediluvian lounge chair, in the shade of the old cherry tree, and pretends to relax. That is what they told her—she needs to rest. They also told her, though, that she must eat. Did someone say food?

  The bell at the gate is ringing. Harijeta looks at the time on her phone. Quarter to ten, Saturday. She’ll play dead.

  Like hell she will!

  “Juhuuuuu! It’s me! Open up!” Nađa. Laki’s wife Lila’s friend since childhood. Who will not be satisfied with the pretense that Hari is dead, but will march into the yard even if she has to jump over the fence. Every Saturday, at exactly quarter to ten, the voice is heard: “Juhuuuuu! It’s me!” and there is Nađa with her cart, crammed with the entire damn market, and with small Tupperware containers of cooked food in her bag.

  Reluctantly, Harijeta gets out of the lounge chair and opens the gate.

  “Why do you even lock it? My whole life, this yard has been open,” babbles Nađa when she passes Harijeta as if she doesn’t exist, walking right into the house, then into the kitchen, where she opens the fridge and unpacks the containers.

  “You will eat all of this later, do you understand? You have to eat! And now, go put something on your head. I’m taking you to the Story Café. Well, you don’t have to wear anything, you’re great just like this too. When someone has a nice skull—”

  “They can even go through chemotherapy without fear of ruining their beauty,” Harijeta interrupts. “I am not going anywhere.”

  “You’re going. I need you. For tonight’s theme.”

  The café is some twenty meters from the house, on the corner of Petrogradska and Topolska streets. It’s a prewar, one-story, witchy-looking house, surrounded and covered by vines, with a wonderful garden.

  Every Saturday at ten in the morning, Lila meets her two friends from elementary school at the Story Café. When they’re all together, they are a real trio. They cling to the idea that they are all committed intellectuals—Lila is a lawyer, one friend is a doctor, the other a journalist. Naturally, Nađa is the journalist. And every Saturday when they meet, they tackle a different sociopolitical topic. And some commitment it is! A meeting of the minds, at least according to Nađa and Lila.

  Laki had told her all of this. He also has a best friend, Hari. But the two of them guzzle beer and don’t give a fuck about politics. At least that’s what they did when Hari was healthy. How happy she would be to have a beer now, but she fears the nausea that she feels with every bite or sip of anything other than water. Hari is afraid! Fearless Hari has been terrified for months.

  Shit! Squeezing behind Nađa, the first thing Hari notices near the table under the purple wisteria flowers is a straw hat balancing on a bare neck and thin shoulders. That straw hat. She cannot turn around and leave now.

  “Let me introduce you. This is Vera, our doctor.”

  Two bald women look at each other and shake hands somewhat reluctantly.

  “We know each other,” announces the straw hat.

  “From the day before yesterday,” Hari retorts as she sits down.

  Vera’s face is expressionless.

  Nađa is impatient. “Harijeta is a guest. It would be great if she could join us on future Saturdays, of course, but today she is here on a mission.”

  Harijeta gives her a confused look.

  “I told you I had a topic for our Saturday discussions.” Nađa looks at them intensely. “You read about the events at the oncology clinic?”

  If she expects some type of reaction from the two bald women, she is wrong.

  Harijeta and Vera are silent. Disappointed, Nađa stares at both of them.

  “I don’t read the news. I’ve had other concerns lately, in case you haven’t noticed.” The last thing Harijeta wants to chat with these women about is the oncology clinic.

  “You don’t read the news either?” Nađa is persistent, calling on Vera now. She pulls out the cover of the Vračarski Glasnik from her bag. “‘Corruption Club Unraveling!’ ‘Bribery Scheme Uncovered.’”

  “I read that, but if you’re looking for an insider, I can tell you that nothing much happens in the chemotherapy department.”

  “You didn’t hear what the nurses were talking about when—”

  Vera shook her head.

  “But here we have an ideal situation. I looked into it—all the corruption cases the newspapers mention happened at the exact same time the murders were recorded.” Nađa takes out another cover. “‘Fourth Doctor from Oncology Murdered. Police Closing in on Murderers.’”

  Closing in, my ass. The old Hari would have jumped on that piece of news. This new one, with chemo brain and a desire to forget, hardly even remembers her doctor Milošević.

  “It’s suspicious that no one connects these two things. And you and Vera had your surgeries just then,” Nađa blabs on.

  We were there? Hari examines Vera’s gray, tortured face. Didn’t she say that we knew each other, the other day at the market? And again now. Vera purses her lips and shoots a glance at Nađa. Those eyes . . . Harijeta’s brain feverishly scans images from her memory, images she is vigorously trying to delete, with varying degrees of success. No, they still don’t know each other.

  “We were there together, so what?” Vera comments dryly.

  “I wouldn’t say so,” Hari counters.

  “Well, it turns out that here we have at our disposal a true detective, and two eyewitnesses, so to speak. So we can solve the murders. Imagine how it would be—”

  “You don’t have anyone at your disposal,” Hari cuts her off, and readies herself to leave the garden.

  “And there were no eyewitnesses,” replies Vera, showing no intention of leaving.

  “Come on! What’s with you today? With all our talents combined, and the help of a professional, we have the opportunity to find the serial killer of these corrupt doctors! And to finally do something that matters, something this rotten state is never able to accomplish.”

  Hari leans over the table. “Nađa, let me explain something to you. As a professional. And then I’m off. Look—never, ever, has one individual solved a crime in real life. Or a group, even if they were idle merry wives of Vračar. That only happens in crime novels. Go and write one, it’s your job to write, whatever it is you write about. And let the police do their job. And let me do my own work, getting cured, if that’s possible. All right now, goodbye, I’ll see you if you ever drop by the New Belgrade blocks with regard to some new topics . . .”

  She gets up, sets a crumpled banknote on the table, and hurries out of the Story Café, and out of their story too.

  * * *

  She succeeds in eating something green and tasteless—let’s say some broccoli puree—and doesn’t throw it up. She succeeds in taking a shower without looking at the open red wound around half of her left breast. She succeeds in getting into bed—who cares if it’s noon? The one thing she doesn’t succeed in is napping. Or she almost does. But a tap on the glass of the open windowpane startles her. And frightens her. From the bed she sees only a bent index finger tapping.

  “What now?!
” says the former Harijeta, who jumps from the couch and marches up to the window, carrying a heavy crystal ashtray in her hands that she grabbed from the bedside. The intruder is wearing a straw hat that reaches the sills of the ground floor’s high windows.

  “Why did Nađa send you?”

  “She didn’t.” Vera raises her head to Harijeta. The hat dangles backward precariously, she holds it so it won’t fall off. “Open up. We can also talk outside, if you don’t want me inside the house.”

  Against her wishes, Hari leaves the old yellow house.

  “Wait a second.” She stiffens and turns around. “How did you get inside the garden at all? I locked the gate. I’m sure of it.”

  “I came in from the back.” Vera motions to the back entrance of the house. Next to it, for as long as Hari has known this yard, some rusty metal sheets have been propped up against the tall wooden fence. Finally, the purpose of that trash becomes clear to her, since there were three boards missing from the fence behind her. Just enough to let a child, or this skeleton of a woman, squeeze through.

  Stunned, she peers into the neighboring yard, right into the foundation pit of the construction site on Topolska Street. Where, until recently, there had been a very beautiful old house, maybe even older than Lila’s, certainly more decrepit. Now, a white four-story monster will rise up, let’s say the nouveau Vračar baroque style, with an underground garage for SUVs . . .

  “Hey, you out of your mind? You could have been crushed there, fallen into the hole, had cement poured on you. They would never find you inside that hole. Why didn’t you ring the bell like a normal human being?” Feeling tired, Hari settles on the lounge chair and points Vera to a wobbly bamboo chair, possibly older than both of them combined. “So, what do you want from me?” she asks, already annoyed, but with no desire to move again.

  “I need your professional help,” Vera declares, then goes quiet, taking off her hat.

  Huh, I suppose I really do have a beautiful skull, thinks Hari. An urge comes over her to get her phone and take a selfie, because Vera­—