Peter Robinson: Many Rivers to Cross

Two beautiful women sat talking and sipping chilled white wine in a garden high on a hillside overlooking the Adriatic. Behind them stretched the jagged monochrome mountains of the Dinarides, the peaks so pale as to appear snow-capped. Below, the sea stretched out before them, greenish water in the shallows close to shore, darkening to deep blue further out. The water was dotted with yachts and small islands, and the southern tip of the Istrian Peninsula was visible to the north. At the bottom of the hill lay the village, with its narrow higgledy-piggledy streets and red pantile roofs. A small beach hugged the curve of the bay where the waves broke in white foam against the yellow sand. Instead of a town square, there was a marina surrounded by cafes, where the locals and people who came shopping from the outlying islands moored their small boats.

The youngest of the two women, barely turned thirty-one, went by the name of Zelda, though on her passport she was called Nelia Melnic. Her friend, aged sixty-three, was Jasna Slavić on all her documents, but everyone called her Mati, for mother.

Zelda’s lustrous dark hair cascaded over her shoulders and a jagged fringe fell over her forehead, framing her oval face. She had high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes with a slight Eurasian tilt, black as Whitby jet, full lips and a small nose, slightly crooked where it had clearly been broken. Below her graceful neck was a lissom body, slender arms with a violinist’s hands, and the shapely long legs of a catwalk model.

The older woman, Mati, had a different kind of beauty, perhaps better described as elegance, with her short silver hair, pale blue eyes, an expressive, lined face and a strong, wiry body, with the hands of someone who had done far too much manual labour. She had a powerful presence and radiated authority, compassion and intelligence.

Though it was only early May, the weather was already almost too hot for comfort. Fortunately, a light ocean breeze helped to mitigate the heat and humidity. Zelda had a sketch book on the table before her, and as they talked she drew Mati.

Mati poured more wine. ‘So, what did you tell your policeman friend about your boss meeting this man he is looking for?’ she asked.

Zelda stared out at the water, which rippled like a sheet of the purest blue silk. When she spoke, her voice was unexpectedly deep. ‘Nothing,’ she answered.

‘Why not?’

‘I had second thoughts as soon as I walked into the pub and saw him with his friends and colleagues. They were celebrating catching a murderer. I was going to tell him I’d seen this man he’s looking for, Keane, meeting with Mr Hawkins, my boss, but I changed my mind.’

‘Why?’

‘I realised that if I said anything about what I had found out, they would take over. The police.’

‘But aren’t you police now?’

‘No. I’m a civilian. They make that quite clear. I have no police powers. Not that I want any.’

‘Surely they’re the best people to do the job? Unless you want your own revenge?’

Zelda put down her pencil, offered her pack of Marlboro Gold to Mati, and both women lit cigarettes. Zelda took a drag and watched the swifts swoop and circle over the rooftops below. The tiles reminded her of Whitby, one of her favourite places in England, home of the famous jet that her partner Raymond had compared her eyes to. ‘Yes. Partly,’ she admitted. ‘I do. But it’s not just that. Don’t get me wrong, Mati. I like Alan Banks. I believe that he is a good man and an honest cop. But he’s still a policeman. It’s still the system, isn’t it? An institution with its own rules, procedures and codes of conduct. The force.’ She paused. ‘And I can’t say the police have ever done me any great favours over the years.’

Mati tapped some ash off her cigarette and made a face. ‘True enough. Me, neither.’

‘There was one time, I remember, in Priština, when I managed to break free from my captors for a few moments. I was so naive. I ran up to a uniformed policeman and tried to explain that I’d been abducted and forced into prostitution.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Do? Nothing. He just scowled at me as if I was something he’d got on the bottom of his shoe and told me to fuck off. I believe “Fuck off, you filthy whore” were his actual words, as far as I could understand. I must confess, my Serbian language skills weren’t too good then. The pimps took me back, and I got a beating that put me out of action for two days, which earned me another beating. So, no, I’m not too fond of the police. There’s so much corruption. If I passed the information to Alan — that I had seen the man he is looking for meeting secretly with my boss — he would have no choice but to go to his bosses with the information. More people would become involved. Government agencies, police forces. That’s how they operate. It’s hard to believe my boss isn’t corrupt himself — and if I can’t trust him, how can I trust anyone else in the agency?’ She shook her head as she answered her own question. ‘I don’t think I can. The criminals have infiltrated everywhere. There would be every chance that someone with a strong interest in keeping things the way they are would gain control, or achieve a significant and powerful place in the investigation. Either one of the criminals or an incompetent fool.’

‘Do you think they might want you out of the way?’

Zelda scraped her cigarette against the ashtray. ‘I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to cut me into small pieces and feed me to the fish. The men I escaped from, the men who first took me and broke me in, the kind of clients I had in Paris towards the end. Many of them have come to prominence in politics or business, even the church, and they don’t like loose ends.’ She shrugged. ‘But that was Paris. Men like that are expected to go with high-class call girls. It’s de rigueur, sort of an initiation en route to becoming one of the lads, as the English say. I don’t really suppose they’d wish me harm.’

‘Still...’ Mati persisted. ‘Someone now in a high position, with something he may regret in his past, some indiscretion, maybe... or someone suddenly vulnerable?’

‘It’s possible. But if an American president can get away with all the things he says and does where women are concerned, I doubt if any of my little peccadillos will give anyone much to fear. No, it’s the ones I betrayed who hate me the most. My captors. They lost money because of me.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, I want to investigate this Phil Keane person myself. I want to find him. After all, he was with Petar Tadić in the photograph I saw, and we all know what pigs Tadić and his brother are. Keane also tried to kill Alan a few years ago.’

Petar Tadić was the brother of Goran, and the two of them had abducted Zelda in the street when she left the orphanage at seventeen, shoved her in a car, punched her in the face and spilled all her worldly possessions across a street in Chişinău. And that was only the start of a very long journey. The Tadić brothers had made their way up in the organisation since then, she had heard. No longer mere transporters, they had moved into the realm of overseas exploitation and were now close to the top, giving orders rather than taking them, extending their operations from sex trafficking and drugs to money laundering.

‘What will you do when you find this Keane person?’ Mati asked.

‘Try to get him to lead me to the people he works for, then pass on the information to Alan.’

‘You would trust the police then?’

‘To deal with Keane? Yes. Alan wants him. It’s personal. I’m assuming he has evidence he has no desire to hide.’