Die Alone Page 26

  But it wouldn’t be a coincidence. These things never are.

  I looked at her photo. Another life destroyed by a man who clearly thought he was invincible. But therein lay his Achilles’ heel. If he was indulging in his savagery while in Bosnia then he would have to be doing it away from any police escort.

  And that made him vulnerable.

  My hotel (and I use the term loosely) didn’t serve breakfast, but even if it had, I’d have declined. Instead, I took a walk in the direction of Notre-Dame, basking in the beautiful morning sunlight. I stopped en route at a pavement café and ate a huge breakfast of omelette, ham, cheese, French toast, and even half a dozen oysters. I followed that with muesli with yoghurt and fresh fruit, and washed it all down with plenty of coffee.

  I was free, and it might have been temporary but by God it felt good.

  However, there were still things that had to be done, and fast. One: I needed transport. Two: I needed to talk to Archie Barker.

  I decided on sorting the transport first. It wasn’t that hard. My French might have been basic but with the help of Google Translate I sat at my table shopping around online until I found a sales advert for a Citroën van for €4,000. The seller was based in the Montrouge district, a couple of miles south of where I was now. I still had close to €9,000 in cash so I could afford to make the purchase and, after a short, slightly awkward conversation (his English was about as good as my French), I agreed to go there at two o’clock that afternoon to take a look at it.

  Now it was time to talk to Archie. I was taking a big risk, I knew that, which was why I’d been putting it off, but I wasn’t going to get very far without him. Besides, the official reward on my head was fifty grand, and I didn’t think he’d go to the authorities for that amount. As for the Kalaman money, I was just going to have to take the chance that he either hadn’t heard about it, or if he had, wouldn’t be tempted by that either. He was, after all, forever in my debt.

  I called his old mobile phone number as I was walking along the banks of the Seine in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. This was my favourite part of Paris, with magnificent old buildings rising up on both sides, but without the noise and bustle of the thousands of tourists already thronging the streets on the other side of the high walls that lined the river.

  The phone rang for a long time and I was thinking of giving up when a voice finally answered, ‘Who’s this?’

  It was Archie. I recognized the accent immediately, even though it had lost a little of its cut-glass inflection.

  The moment of truth. ‘It’s Ray Mason.’

  Archie made a thin whistling sound. ‘Now you are a man I definitely wasn’t expecting to hear from. How did you get this number?’

  ‘You gave it to me, remember? A long time ago. I memorized it.’

  ‘I’m impressed. No one memorizes anything any more.’

  ‘I don’t want to go all Godfather on you, Archie, but you told me once that you were forever in my debt, and now the time’s come to collect. I need your help.’

  A pause. ‘How exactly?’

  I still had a choice here. I could simply ask Archie to put me in touch with a high-quality forger who could put together the documents I needed to open a bank account, and forget all about Alastair Sheridan. If I did that, I reckoned I had a 60 per cent chance of being able to start a new life somewhere else, maybe even more, because that would give me the access to the one thing all people on the run needed. Money.

  It was the sensible choice. The rational one.

  But the cowardly one too.

  ‘I need you to put me in touch with someone who can supply me with a gun,’ I said.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I’m retired, Ray,’ Archie said eventually. ‘You know that. You encouraged me to make the move, and I’ll always be thankful to you for that.’

  ‘Just like you’ll always be thankful I saved your life. I know you still know people. Help me.’

  He made some noises of exasperation down the other end of the line, the kind a mechanic makes just before he tells you that the repair on your car’s going to be a very big job.

  ‘None of it will come back to you,’ I told him. ‘It’s just a favour, then we’re quits. Please.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  I thought about telling him I was in Paris but I didn’t want to carry the gun across borders unless it was a last resort. ‘I’m on the move. I’m going to be in Sarajevo in the next couple of days. You know anyone there?’

  ‘Possibly. I’ll make some phone calls and come back to you.’

  ‘And if you know any good forgers down there, that would be a big help too.’

  ‘I’ll call you back. Are you going to be on this number?’

  ‘Yeah, I will be. But don’t be long.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, not sounding remotely enthusiastic, and ended the call.

  While I waited for him to call back, I meandered northwards, seeing the Eiffel Tower rise up to the left of me. Paris is a grand city. One that’s proud of itself. You could see it in the majestic architecture; the palaces; the ornate bridges crossing the Seine, opening up to iconic landmarks and stunning wide boulevards, lined with trees in full leaf. Even the path by the river’s edge was a boulevard in itself where cyclists, walkers, horse riders and numerous electric scooter riders mixed freely and easily, no one getting in each other’s way, and I enjoyed the relative peace it gave me. It struck me then that I could walk like this every day, free as a bird, if I just let go of my pursuit of Alastair Sheridan.

  I passed under a bridge where a homeless man sat, still wrapped in his sleeping bag, talking quietly to himself. He had a bowl in front of him but made no effort to ask me for any money. He didn’t even look up, and I wondered what his story was and how he’d got to this point in his life. Someone once said that we’re all the products of our own choices, but this, I thought, was only half true. A lot of choices are made for us, way back when we’re young, and those are the ones that often set us on our paths, good or bad. Mine was made for me when I was seven years old and my father tried to kill me. That had lent a dark cloak to everything that followed. You can work to limit the damage. But you never repair it entirely.

  And sometimes it can consume you.

  Half an hour later, as I was passing under the Pont d’Iéna, my new phone rang.

  ‘I’ve got a contact in Sarajevo who can help,’ said Archie. ‘As soon as you’re in the city, let me know and I’ll organize the intros. Then we’re quits, Ray. All right?’

  55

  Buying a car is remarkably easy when it’s second-hand, a private sale, and the man selling it just wants to see the money. My guy did, and his English improved remarkably as he gave me a rundown of everything to do with the car. I gave it a quick test-drive round the block with him in it, showed him my fake driving licence, which he wasn’t very interested in, and gave him the cash, which he was very interested in.

  Then I was off. I didn’t bother spending a second night in my hotel but instead drove straight across eastern France, again avoiding the toll roads, and slept in the back of the van near the German border.

  The following morning, having endured a pretty crap night’s sleep, I started early, crossed the border without any checks at all (ah, the joy of the Schengen Agreement), and drove south-east across Germany, crossing the Austrian border near the beautiful medieval city of Salzburg where I managed to find a guesthouse with views down the hill to the cathedral and the river, whose owners not only gave me an excellent dinner, but also washed my clothes. I was finding that the further I got from the UK, the more relaxed I became. The owners of the guesthouse, a gay couple in their sixties, were interested in talking. Usually this would have made me wary, but I could see their interest was genuine, so I gave them a story of how I’d got divorced a few months earlier and had decided to take off on a trip round Europe. I’d shaved off my beard in Paris and my hair was slowly beginning to grow back, so I f
elt more confident that I wasn’t likely to be recognized.

  Setting off refreshed the following morning, I drove through Austria, Slovenia and Croatia in pretty much one go, and only had my passport checked for the first time when I arrived at Gradiška on the Bosnian border. It passed muster easily enough and I kept on going, finally pulling into Sarajevo at dawn on Friday morning, the day Alastair Sheridan was also due to arrive.

  Let me tell you a few things about Sarajevo. One: considering it’s fairly well known for a city on the far reaches of southern Europe, it’s small, with a population of under four hundred thousand. Two: strategically speaking, it’s probably the most badly placed city going, sitting in a valley surrounded by hills on three sides, making it very easy to besiege – a fact the Serbs took full advantage of during the war of 1992 to 1995. Three: considering it was under siege for pretty much the whole war, with daily artillery bombardment, it’s in remarkably good shape, especially the old city which, bar the odd spray of shrapnel pockmarks on some of the buildings, looks completely intact.

  According to Google, the main tourist area was round the old Turkish Baščaršija Square and bazaar, on the north bank of the river, so I found a small, basic hotel on a hill running down to it, where they had parking on a side road, and where they were happy to be paid in cash. I gave them enough for three nights, figuring I wasn’t going to need to be in the city any longer given that that was how long Sheridan was supposedly staying in the area, and as soon as I was in my room (very small, but clean, with no cockroaches) I hit the sack and was asleep almost before I shut my eyes.

  I didn’t wake until early afternoon and, after a long shower, I called Archie Barker and told him I was in Sarajevo.

  ‘I’ll get my contact to call you. His name’s Marco.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,’ said Archie. ‘I met up with him several times in the early 2000s as the representative of some business people in London who wanted to open a reliable land-smuggling route into the EU for certain products.’

  ‘What kind of products?’

  ‘It’s vulgar to ask those kinds of questions, Ray. Suffice it to say, Marco is well connected in Sarajevo and beyond. He can organize what you need, and he can be trusted. They’re business people first and foremost in that area of the Balkans. As long as you’ve got the money. And you do have the money, don’t you, Ray?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got the money.’

  ‘Then there’ll be no problem. Good luck with everything. I won’t ask what you’re going to do with the gun.’

  ‘That would be vulgar too,’ I told him. ‘I’ll give you a warning though, Archie. Between friends. If anything goes wrong, I’ll hold you responsible. And I know where to find you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, dear boy,’ he replied, sounding grievously wounded, but in my experience it’s always best with criminals to appeal to their self-interest rather than their good nature, since without exception they tend to act with the former in mind.

  ‘Good,’ I said, and ended the call, wondering exactly what kind of products it was that Marco had been smuggling for Archie’s so-called business people. Drugs? Women? Guns? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be harmless. And that was the thing with even the most genial of criminals (and Archie was by some distance the most genial I’d met): they were still always prepared to do the wrong thing for material gain, and not give much, if any, thought to the human cost involved.

  That meant I couldn’t entirely trust him, so I was feeling a little nervous as I waited for Marco’s call. I was also hungry, so I headed out of the hotel and through Baščaršija Square, which was heaving with an unusual mix of Western, Chinese and Gulf Arab tourists, and with far more burkhas on display than I’d been expecting. The smell of spices and Middle Eastern cooking was in the air, and the tall, thin minarets of the mosques rose into the sky, giving the place a strongly Islamic feel.

  However, as soon as you were through the bazaar, everything became Westernized again, with flashy-looking designer shops set between bars, nightclubs and restaurants. I found a place near to the old cathedral that had outside tables and, rather than go native, I ordered a large Sicilian pizza with a beer. I was halfway through the pizza and most of the way through the beer when the phone rang.

  There was no one within immediate earshot so I took the call. ‘Marco?’

  ‘Yes, that is me,’ answered a heavily accented voice. ‘And you are Ray, yes? I understand you want to buy one or two things. It’s best we meet, I think. Whereabouts are you?’

  I wasn’t going to give him the name of my hotel so I suggested we meet at the fountain in Baščaršija Square. ‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘I’m out of the city at the moment,’ Marco told me, ‘but I can get you what you need. Why don’t we meet there at nine p.m. tonight, and I’ll take you to where we can pick up the item?’

  I’d wanted to get the transaction over with well before nightfall but I didn’t see I had much choice. ‘OK. I want something good and reliable.’

  ‘I can get you that. It will cost two thousand euros because of the nature of the transaction, and you will need to bring it with you.’

  ‘I also need some papers in a certain name to help me set up a bank account.’

  ‘I can organize that too,’ he said, ‘but first we’ll deal with the other item. I’ll see you at nine.’

  I went back to my pizza, thinking that Marco had sounded very smooth on the phone. Too smooth.

  Like anyone who’s suffered a huge childhood trauma combined with a catastrophic loss of trust, I have a built-in antenna for danger, and in the back of my mind I could hear an alarm sounding.

  I was going to have to be very careful.

  56

  Six hours later, I was standing at the fountain in the middle of the square. I’d spent the afternoon and evening wandering the city. It was surprisingly beautiful. I visited a mosque, a synagogue and the cathedral, marvelling at the way this city had united after coming close to being torn apart in that horrendous civil war. I’d also visited the genocide museum where I’d discovered that although Muslims made up the majority of the population, there were plenty of Serbs and Croats living there too, and everyone appeared to muddle along pretty well. What was nice was that there was no sign of animosity. The city had a laidback atmosphere.

  The square was very busy, thronging with both tourists and locals. In the background, the call to prayer rang out, and I closed my eyes, taking in all the sounds. When I opened them, a man in a suit with an open-neck shirt and visible gold chain had appeared beside me. At first glance, in the near darkness, he looked pretty ordinary – if you excused the chain, which was as thick as an old-fashioned toilet pull. Short dark hair, early forties, medium height and build … but straight away something felt wrong about him. It was as if he made the space he occupied slightly darker by his presence. His eyes were cold and his smile was both ingratiating and calculating.

  ‘Marco, I’m guessing,’ I said.

  ‘Good to meet you, Ray,’ said Marco, giving me what he thought was a subtle look up and down as we shook hands. ‘Come with me.’

  We started walking through the crowds in the direction of the main bazaar.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘Obviously we cannot make the transaction here,’ he said. ‘The people we are buying from operate out of a building not far away. They have a variety of merchandise. You can pick what you need.’

  I felt uneasy. I didn’t like being unarmed and carrying a large amount of cash in a strange city where I was having to put my trust in the local criminals, but I told myself that Marco and the people he was putting me in touch with were business people, and business people like to do business.

  Marco turned onto a narrow side street that quickly became a steep hill. After about fifty yards, during which we talked little, he stopped by an old Mercedes and got inside.

  �
��We’re going to a lot of trouble just to buy a pistol,’ I said, getting in the passenger seat as he started the engine.

  He lit a cigarette and puffed hard on it, blowing the smoke out of the window as he drove up the hill. ‘Sarajevo isn’t some cowboy town where guns are everywhere. It has a bad reputation but an unfair one, and it’s all because of the war, which wasn’t our fault in the first place.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you know, when I was a boy, this city was a cool place. We hosted the Winter Olympics; everyone lived together happily – Muslim, Serb, Croat. And now you people just think we’re violent hicks.’

  ‘I don’t think that,’ I said. ‘Were you here during the siege?’

  He nodded. ‘It started when I was sixteen so I was old enough to fight. I was a volunteer in the Free Bosnian Army. It was hard to take the fight to the Serbs. They stayed up in the hills like cowards, relying on their heavy weaponry, but when they did try to break into the city, we hit them hard. And we showed no mercy. They didn’t try very often.’

  I had a renewed respect for him then. He’d seen danger and hardship in a way that we in the West have no concept of. I’ve always thought of myself as a tough man but, for all the bad things that have happened to me, I’ve at least grown up in a country of relative stability and peace.

  ‘It must have been hard living like that.’

  ‘It was. Especially seeing the city that was our home destroyed around us. But our enemies never broke our people and now peace reigns, my friend, and guns, I have to tell you, are in short supply.’

  ‘OK, fair enough, you’ve convinced me,’ I said, staring out of the window as we moved from the old city out into the suburbs where the roads were wider and modern residential tower blocks, some still under construction, lined both sides.

  ‘You know the First World War started here back in 1914?’ said Marco, who now seemed to have morphed into the local tour guide.

  ‘I did,’ I told him. ‘I always enjoyed history at school. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, right?’