Dexter came up with one major Newsweek feature going back to the Bosnian war; it was about all the Serbian so-called warlords but within it Zilic had only a few passing mentions, probably for lack of material.
There was one photograph of a man at a cocktail party of some sort, clearly cropped and blown up, which made it slightly hazy. The other was of a teenager; it came from Belgrade police files, and clearly went back to the days of the street gangs of Zemun. Either man could walk straight past him in the street and he would not recognize the Serbian.
The Englishman, the Tracker, mentioned a private investigation agency in Belgrade. It was now postwar, post-Milosevic. The Yugoslav capital, where Zilic had been born and raised, and from which he had vanished, seemed the place to start. Dexter flew New York to Vienna and on to Belgrade, and checked into the Hyatt. From his tenth-floor window the battered Balkan city stretched out beneath him. Half a mile away he could see the hotel where Raznatovic had been shot to death in the lobby despite his covey of bodyguards.
A taxi brought him to the agency called Chandler, still run by Dragan Stojic, the Philip Marlowe wannabe. Dexter’s cover was a publishing commission from the New Yorker asking for a 10,000-word biography of Raznatovic. Stojic nodded and grunted.
‘Everyone knew him. Married a pop singer, glamorous girl. So what do you want from me?’
‘The fact is, I have just
about all I need for this piece,’ said Dexter, whose American passport revealed him as Alfred Barnes. ‘But there is a sort of afterthought I should give mention to. A one-time contemporary of Arkan in the Belgrade underworld. Name of Zoran Zilic.’
Stojic let out a long puff of air.
‘Now that was a nasty piece of work,’ he said. ‘He never liked being written about, photographed or even talked about. People who upset him in that area were . . . visited. There’s not much on file about him.’
‘I accept that. So what is Belgrade’s premier cuttings agency for written material?’
‘Not a problem, there’s really only one. It’s called VIP, it’s got an office in Vracar and the editor-in-chief is Slavko Markovic.’
Dexter rose.
‘That’s it?’ asked the Balkan Marlowe. ‘Hardly worth an invoice.’
The American took a hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the desk. ‘All information has a price, Mr Stojic. Even a name and address.’
Another cab took him to the VIP cuttings agency. Mr Markovic was at lunch so Dexter found a café and toyed with a light lunch and a glass of local red wine until he came back.
Markovic was as pessimistic as the private eye. But he punched up his in-house database to see what he had.
‘One piece,’ he said, ‘and it happens to be in English.’
It was the Newsweek piece from the Bosnian war.
‘That’s it?’ queried Dexter. ‘This man was powerful, important, prominent. Surely there must be some trace of him?’
‘That’s the point,’ said Markovic, ‘he was all those things. And violent. Under Milosevic there was no argument. He seems to have cleaned out every record of himself before he quit. Police records, court records, state TV, media, the lot. Family, school contemporaries, former colleagues, no one wants to talk about him. Warned off. Mr No-face, that’s him.’
‘Do you recall when the last attempt was made to write anything about him?’
Markovic thought for a while.
‘Now you mention it, I heard a rumour that someone tried. But it came to nothing. After Milosevic fell, and with Zilic vanished, someone tried to do a piece. I think it was cancelled.’
‘Who was it?’
‘My talking canary said it was a magazine here in Belgrade called Ogledalo. That means “The Mirror”.’
The Mirror still existed and its editor was still Vuk Kobac. Even though it was print day, he agreed to give the American a few minutes of his time. He lost his enthusiasm when he heard the enquiry.
‘That bloody man,’ he said. ‘I wish I had never heard of him.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was a young freelance. Nice kid. Keen, eager. Wanted a staff job. I hadn’t got one vacant. But he pleaded for a chance. So I gave him a commission. Name of Petrovic. Srechko Petrovic. Only twenty-two, poor kid.’
‘What happened to him?’