Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

… In the wrecked homes, people existed, as if the houses were caves. There were sagging skewed balconies on which limp plants were stacked and from which washing-lines hung taut under the weight of sheets, shirts, skirts. It was five years since the war – why hadn't it been rebuilt? He didn't know, and didn't want Atkins to tell him. The loss of confidence had been momentary. He was here because it was what he had wanted.

At a junction stood a massive collapsed building. It looked as if it had been dynamited at the base. It was five bloody years. What did these people do? Why didn't they clear it up? But he didn't ask Atkins. They drove into the dense streets of the city. His first impressions, and Mister always thought them the best, were that the place was a grade A dump, a tip. They hit a long, straight road. On the plane, Atkins had told him they would come into the city on Buleva Mese Selimovica, eight lanes, that merged into the Zmaja od Bosne, which had been called Snipers' Alley. At high speed, they passed a building whose roof was festooned with aerials and satellite dishes, and he thought it must house the telephone headquarters.

Behind it he glimpsed a dispersed mess of Portakabin huts with signs leading to them for the International Police Task Force, but he knew nothing of what they did. Then a lorry park was on the left, and another and another. He saw rows of cabs, trailers and containers, more rows, and warehouses, some intact and some destroyed. The Cruncher's last message from Sarajevo had given the address, the number of the warehouse in a lorry park in Halilovici, where the charity lorry should arrive. He wondered if it was there; it should have been there that morning, or the night before, tucked from sight in the warehouse.

They hammered over a bridge. He saw the murky earth-brown water, foaming on the weirs, running fast. He'd always been fond of the Cruncher. He'd never feel for Sol Wilkes what he'd felt for the Cruncher.

'I want to know where it happened, where the Cruncher went into the river. I want to go there, I want to see it.'

Atkins spoke to the driver. There seemed to be surprise on the man's face, but Mister couldn't tell whether it was at what was asked, or that he should be told what to do. The Eagle sat bolt upright and clutched his attache case as if he believed it might be wrenched from his grip… Drab streets, drab people, drab shops. Kids waved to the cars as they went by, and where there was a traffic block they headed into the oncoming lane and sped past. Once, a car had to swerve onto the pavement to let them by. At a junction, a policeman held up the right-of-way vehicles and they overtook jeeps loaded with armed Italian soldiers, whose drivers seemed not to notice them. When they braked hard they were level with a restaurant whose doors and windows were surrounded by silver aluminium. The sign said it was called Platinum City. Opposite was a narrow, ancient footbridge over the river. The cars stopped, the doors were opened. Mister pushed out the Eagle, then followed him.

There was a low wall between the pavement and the riverbank, and a waist-high railing on the bridge.

An old woman in black squatted beside buckets of tired flowers. He saw that men and women in threadbare clothes stepped off the pavement, risking the road traffic to stay clear of the minders. Mister pointed to the flowers. Atkins spoke to the minder from the front of their car. The man went to the old crow, dropped banknotes into her lap and her face lifted in gratitude. He took a single bunch from her buckets, and she offered more for what he had paid, but he shook his head curtly. The blooms were handed to Atkins, a half-dozen drooping smog-encrusted chrysanthemums. Atkins gave them to Mister, who walked to the centre of the bridge.

He was a man to whom sentiment came rarely. He looked down at the rushing water. He was not troubled by history. He did not know that he was close to where Gavrilo Princep had held a hidden pistol and waited for an archduke and archduchess in an open car, and what had been the consequences of the shots that he had fired. Neither did he know that the bridge on which he stood was a monument to the skill of Ottoman architects now dead for centuries.

Nor did he realize that had he stood on that bridge, looking down on the water, seven years earlier, or eight or nine, a sniper's 'scope would have magnified him in the seconds before he was shot. He held the flowers. He sensed the cold and the power of the river's currents. Neither Atkins nor the Eagle had followed him. He was not aware that the space and quiet around him were not accidental and did not see that the minder from the second car had crossed to the far side of the bridge and diverted pedestrians away.

His mood lightened. People died, didn't they? i mm her had died, hadn't he? Could have been a Ira I lie accident, could have been slipping in the shower, could have been a rent-boy's knife, could have been pissed and fallen into a river. Life goes on, isn't that right, my old friend? Life goes on, with new challenges. It was the nearest Mister could grope towards feeling sentiment at the death of a friend. He threw the flowers into the river and watched the muddy waters suck them down. There was a flash of colour, then they were gone. Had he looked around him at that moment, turned sharply, and not stared into the flow of the Miljacka, he would have seen the faces of the drivers and the minders. He would have seen amusement and the curl of contempt at their mouths.

He walked briskly back to the cars.

He was driven the reverse way along Snipers' Alley to a square block of gaudy yellow topped with the logo of the Holiday Inn.

'When do I get to see him?'

Through Atkins he discovered that Serif was busy at the moment, but when he was free he would see his respected guest.

The cars drove away. They picked up their bags and walked into the lobby.

The Eagle said, 'That, Mister, is out of order. It is plainly insulting.'

Atkins said, 'It's his patch, Mister, and he'll think crude pegging you back will make him a bigger man.'

Mister smiled cheerfully. 'He'll do it once, he'll not do it again. That's my promise to him and I'm good on my word… Doesn't seem too bad a place, considering the rest of it.'

Across open ground where the concrete was holed ankle deep by artillery explosions was a line of sparsely filled shops and bars where a few men and youths desultorily made their coffee last. Above the shops and bars were apartments that had been repaired with a patchwork of bricks and cement. In front of the long building a blue van, paint scraped, unremarkable, was parked in a position that gave its driver and passenger good sight of the front door of the Holiday Inn hotel.

'It may be a slow old trade,' Maggie said, 'but at least we're legal.'

'That's right,' Joey answered. 'Ink on paper.'

'I thought you had a chance, b u t… '

'He was good as gold, the judge.'

'I think it's the first time I've ever been legal – is that a cause for celebration or tears? Don't know… Tell you what I also don't know – why. Why did Judge Delic sign? You didn't break his legs, did you? You didn't drop him a couple of thousand dollars, did you?'

'I didn't ask. He signed, I ran with it.'

She eased back in her seat, the camera settled on her lap. Behind her, in the van's interior, the workshop of her trade was neatly laid out, cosseted with foam and bubble-wrap.

'It'll be from something out of the past – don't take too much credit for it.'

He said coldly, 'You'd know about that because you worked in dirty corners that are now history. You won't mind me saying it, but the Cold War was utter shit, irrelevant, perpetuated by spooks to keep themselves on the payroll. This is something that matters.'