Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

He offered this with an arch smile, as if their leader had perhaps furnished a love nest in there. He seemed quite thrilled by his proximity to this small whiff of power. Vlado could have laughed. He had grown used to seeing the newly powerful in action as they tried to run this country by the seat of their pants. They were pressed together in this city along with everyone else, their world growing more compact by the day, and under those circumstances the nearness of power only made him feel claustrophobic, as did this vault, this tomb with its treasures.

Glavas had been right. Murovic was a bit of a Tutankhamen down here. All that was missing was the golden headdress and the small, thrusting goatee. If an explosion were to somehow seal him in, perhaps he, too, wouldn’t be unearthed for another twenty centuries, left to mummify with his treasures and the bed of his president.

He led Vlado back through the first two rooms, noisily shutting the caged doors behind him, then climbed back upstairs. He then gestured toward an office chair by his desk.

Vlado pulled in a deep breath, feeling a need for fresh, clean air, but receiving only the staleness of a quiet office.

“So,” Murovic said. “An investigation. What sort?”

“One that may have to do with your transfer files, which I understand have gone missing.”

“I’d hardly put it like that. They’re not missing, they’re quite gone. Destroyed in a fire.”

“A tank shell, I believe it was?”

“Tank. Grenade. Mortar. What difference does it make. It came in through the window and everything in the room was gone.”

“Through the window?”

“Yes, a freak shot really. I saw the damage for myself the next morning. The guards even showed me some of the shell fragments they’d found. There’d been a big attack the night before. I’d remembered listening to it in bed.”

“And all of the transfer file was gone? Down to the last card? Even in the worst sort of fires you can usually salvage something.”

“Oh, no. All gone. Practically vaporized. I checked personally. There were only three or four drawers to begin with. Nothing but ashes. That was bad enough, but the drawers with the insurance records were destroyed, too. It’s a tragedy really. It’s the only part of the city’s collection that we don’t have a handle on yet, so we feel vulnerable for the moment.”

“And you say there were guards?”

“Yes. An entire detail.”

“Army? Police?” Although Vlado already knew the answer.

“Some of Zarko’s men, actually” He said this with his gaze boring straight into Vlado, as if daring him to raise an eyebrow.

“You’d probably call them thugs,” he continued. “And that’s what they are, I suppose. But I’d call them saviors first. Cigarette? They’re French. None of those rancid Drinas for me.”

“Because they saved your museum, you mean. Thank you.”

“The museum and everything inside it. We’d spent the three days before the fire moving the best items over here. We’d started with the records as well, the inventories and the insurance appraisals. The transfer files were due to come out the next morning. Another twelve hours and they’d be sitting right downstairs, inside the vault.”

“A freak turn of fortune then.”

“Oh, I realize the odds. And I know what you must be thinking, being a policeman. But these men were quite solicitous, quite willing to take orders from a museum director, vigilant as well. Besides, a handful of men can hardly stop a shell.”

“You weren’t at all suspicious? However vigilant, these men were hardly saints.”

“So everyone says, but as far as I’m concerned their behavior was exemplary. If they’d wanted to take advantage of us they could have looted or walked off with any item they chose, on any given night. But they kept themselves clean. Clean as a whistle.”

“But you said yourself that the files alone were valuable, that the transfer items are quite vulnerable as long as the files are missing.”

Murovic practically sneered. “These men, while courageous, were, how shall I put it, elemental? If they’d been inclined to theft, they would have taken the things that caught their fancy. They never struck me as the type who’d work through some complicated scheme, who might realize the files were a key to something valuable, especially when all those treasures were sitting there right in front of them. It’s the mentality of pirates. Why worry about the tricks of bookkeeping when there’s a chest of gold to be taken?”

“I was thinking more of their boss. I’m sure Zarko was aware of the value of the right information as much as anyone in this town.”

“Yes, but he’s dead now, isn’t he.” And for Murovic this obviously closed the possibility of further suspicion.

“Tell me a little bit more about these men, then. What sort of detail did they usually post overnight?

“Five men, and not just the lowest foot soldiers. Zarko assured me we’d have some of his best people as long as we needed them.”

“His best people. Officers, you mean.”

“His top officer, in fact. On duty every night.”

“His name, if you recall?”

“Halilovic. Lieutenant Neven Halilovic. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

He had. In hearing the name, Vlado felt he was crossing that unseen line in the darkness that had worried him earlier. Halilovic had been Zarko’s right-hand man, jailed since the November raid. Or had he, too, been among those killed in the final assault? Or perhaps later, while “trying to escape,” as with Zarko.

“So he was there when this shell hit?”

“Yes.”

“And were there any casualties among the guard detail?”

“Not as such.”

“No, of course not. Another freak twist of fortune then. And did it occur to anyone afterward, yourself included, Mr. Murovic, to perhaps ask an arson investigator to have a brief look around. If only to protect the good name of the vigilant Mr. Halilovic.”

“As I said, Mr….”

“Petric. Inspector Petric.”

“Inspector Petric. For me there were no doubts. We were in safe hands, hands that had saved virtually everything we had. And being all but on the frontline of a war zone, it didn’t seem practical to have an investigator working in and around the building. And quite frankly, it would have been a very tasteless show of bad faith, an embarrassment, considering all that those men had done for us. Perhaps there were no casualties that night, but they’d suffered others before, and quite literally right on our doorstep. I’m aware of their presumed track record, of their smuggling and their black markets. But for us, as I said. Saviors.”

He pulled down his cigarette for a long, dramatic drag. Vlado scribbled in his notebook, then Murovic asked, “By the way, Mr. Petric, who put you on to all this? Or do you come by your interest in art naturally?”

“One of your former colleagues, actually. Milan Glavas.”

“Ah, yes. Milan. I might have known. He always was quite taken with conspiracy theories. Always guessing at people’s motives, trying to take their measure in an instant. Very much the office politician.”

“Not a very good one, apparently”

“He told you I sacked him, I suppose. And unfairly, no doubt. He had wanted this job, you know. Museum director. But of course he was simply a few years beyond the energy requirements. And let’s face it, Mr. Petric, it didn’t help that he was a Serb. A good one, maybe. But in light of everything that’s happened in the past two years there’s not much room for them in high places right now, at least on this side of the city”

“So you sacked him.”

“Yes. Which embittered him against me forever, no doubt. As if he hadn’t already refused to give me credit for knowing much of anything about my business, or about art at all. But if Milan were half as clever as he thinks he would have known that a copy of the entire transfer file exists in Belgrade.”