The Bone Road by N.E. Solomons

Author:N.E. Solomons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

14

Simo stood at the window of his apartment and looked at the rain clouds hurrying across the morning sky, chased by a murmuration of starlings on black wings. Trouble, he feared, was coming. A protest was planned in Višegrad at the end of the week, prompted by the discovery of the war graves at the Ristić farm. At best that meant chaos, at worst a riot. Many Bosniaks were outraged at what they viewed as a conspiracy of silence. Dozens or more dead lying buried on farmland, ignored and disregarded until the land herself belched out her secrets. Those bodies were people who had been loved and lost. They deserved better. Simo thought of Abdul. It so easily could have been him in one of those graves, lost, until his bones were dusted down by Jenny, identified by his teeth. God knew, Simo had other friends still missing.

Yet, many Serbs were furious about the intervention of the International Criminal Court, stirring up old wounds and talking of new prosecutions for war crimes. All Simo knew was that the dead must be properly laid to rest, and the living allowed a grave to visit. He rubbed his eyes. There was a restlessness in the city that he hadn’t sensed for some time and it worried him.

He made himself a strong espresso and sat down to read Ryan’s preliminary autopsy findings. The report had arrived in the early hours of the morning. He longed for a quiet summer season with nothing more eventful than a few pickpockets and some disgruntled tourists. Ryan Mackinnon’s death had put paid to that. The American had died due to massive organ failure as a result of gunshot wounds, fired at a range of approximately two metres. Ten bullets had been recovered from his chest cavity and five more from his legs and lower torso. Simo checked his email and saw the ballistics report in his inbox. He opened it and scanned the document. The lab tech wasn’t absolutely definitive – these were early findings as a favour to Simo – but it certainly looked likely that the bullets found on Ryan Mackinnon were in all likelihood from a Russian-made Saiga semi-automatic shotgun. He read the rest of the autopsy report. Ryan had been held captive for two days before he’d been killed. There was damage to his nail beds and to his teeth. It was grim, but also informative. Whoever had killed Ryan had wanted something from him. That, or they were punishing him. This murder was malevolent, brutal and angry.

Simo checked his watch. It wasn’t yet nine. There was another missing connection to Ryan – the woman he had been seen speaking with the night before he disappeared. Who was she, this Dušica, and what did she know? He still hadn’t managed to track her down. Simo stood up and paced with frustration. Obituaries and reports would start appearing in the press, and he suspected that he would start getting calls from papers in London. A journalist murdered on holiday, even one who wrote about cycling, was still news.

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