‘He got run over, that’s what happened to him. Parked his car opposite the apartment block where he lived with his mum, went to cross the road. A Mercedes came round the corner and ran him over.’
‘Careless driver.’
‘Very careless. Managed to run him over twice. Then drove off.’
‘Discouraging.’
‘And permanent. Even in exile, he can still order and pay for a hit to be done in Belgrade.’
‘Any address for his mum?’
‘Hold on. We sent a wreath. Must have sent it to the flat.’
He found it and bade his visitor goodbye.
‘One last question,’ said Dexter. ‘When was this?’
‘Six months ago. Just after New Year. A word of advice, Mr Barnes. Stick to writing about Arkan. He’s safely dead. Leave Zilic alone. He’ll kill you. Must rush, it’s print day.’
The address said Blok 23, Novi Beograd. He recognized Novi Beograd, or New Belgrade, from the city map he had bought in the hotel bookshop. It was the rather bleak district in which the hotel itself stood, on a peninsula flanked by the rivers Sava and Dunav, the Danube itself, which was emphatically not blue. It stood across both rivers from central Belgrade.
In the communist years the taste had been for huge, high-rise apartment blocks for the workers. They had gone up on vacant lots in Novi Beograd, great poured-concrete beehives, each cavity a tiny flat with its door opening to a long open-sided passage, lashed by the elements.
Some had survived better than others. It depended on the level of prosperity of the inhabitants and thus the level of maintenance. Block 23 was a roach-infested horror. Mrs Petrovic lived on the ninth floor and the elevator was out of order. Dexter could take them at a run but he wondered how senior citizens would cope, the more so as they all seemed to be chain-smokers.
There was not much point in going up to see her alone. There was no chance she would speak English and he had no Serbo-Croat. It was one of the pretty and bright girls behind the reception desk at the Hyatt who accepted his offer to help him out. She was saving to get married and two hundred dollars for an hour’s extra work at the end of her shift was quite acceptable.
They arrived at seven and just in time. Mrs Petrovic was an office cleaner and left each evening at eight to work through the night in the offices across the river.
She was one of those who have quite simply been defeated by life and the lined and exhausted face told its own story. She was probably mid-forties going on seventy, her husband killed in an industrial accident with almost no compensation, her son murdered beneath her own window. As always with the very poor approached by the apparently rich, her first reaction was suspicion.
He had brought a large bunch of flowers. It had been a long, long time since she had had flowers. Anna, the girl from the hotel, arranged them in three displays around the tiny, shabby room.
‘I want to write about what happened to Srechko. I know it cannot bring him back, but I can perhaps expose the man who did this to him. Will you help me?’
She shrugged.
‘I know nothing,’ she said. ‘I never asked about his work.’
‘The night that he died . . . was he carrying anything with him?’
‘I don’t know. The body was searched. They took everything.’
‘They searched the body? Right there on the street?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he have papers? Did he have notes that he left behind? Here in the flat?’
‘Yes, he had bundles of papers. With his typewriter and his pencils. But I never read them.’
‘Could I see them?’
‘They are gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘They took them. Took them all. Even the ribbon from the typewriter.’