The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online

his knees.
    “It was a wedding,” said the old woman.
    “My grandson. Three years ago. I couldn't go because of my legs so my daughter sent me the album. Do you have a cigarette?”
    A look of surprise flashed across Solomon's face.
    “Oh come on, young man,” Mrs. Berisha said tartly.
    “You think that just because I'm an old woman I've said goodbye to all pleasures?”
    Solomon laughed as Kimete translated.
    “I suppose I'm surprised that a smoker has lived so long,” he said.
    “It's not the tobacco, it's the chemicals they mix with it,” said the old woman.
    “Decent tobacco never hurt anyone. My father smoked a pipe every day for seventy years. Now, do you have a cigarette or not?”
    Solomon fished a packet of Marlboro out of his jacket pocket and handed her a cigarette. She had trouble moving the first finger of her right hand, the tip of which was curled into her palm, so she pushed the cigarette between her second and third fingers. He lit it for her with his Zippo. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes as she held the smoke in her lungs'. Then opened them, exhaled and smiled at him.
    “That's better,” she said.
    Solomon gave a cigarette to Kimete, took one himself, lit them, and put the packet on the table.
    “Keep them for later,” he said.
    He opened the album. The pages were separated by sheets of tissue paper and he turned them carefully. The photographs hadn't been taken by a professional. Many were out of focus and framed badly, but there was no mistaking the joy on the faces of the subjects. The groom was a stocky man in his late twenties with wide shoulders and a strong jaw. Farming stock. His wife was maybe five years younger, a frail-looking girl with long black hair and a slightly upturned nose. She had a mischievous smile and in most of the photographs she was gazing up adoringly at her new husband.
    “They're a lovely couple,” said Solomon, and shuddered. They had died in the back of that truck less than a year after the photograph was taken.
    “The little girl wasn't hers?” he asked.
    Kimete translated, and the old woman shook her head.
    “No. Shpresa was born just a few days after the wedding.” She tapped one of the photographs a group of six women, one of whom was heavily pregnant.
    “My nephew's wife.” She used her stick to pull a brass ashtray in the shape of a leaf across the table towards her, then deftly flicked ash into it.
    Solomon flicked through the pages of the album. There were pictures of two parties: the women, dancing and drinking wine, the men, drinking beer and smoking. At Muslim weddings, it was traditional for the two sexes to celebrate separately. The last photograph was of a large group of people, men and women, standing in front of a farmhouse: all the wedding guests gathered together. Solomon showed it to the old woman, “Are they all family?” he asked.
    She peered down at the picture through narrowed eyes, then tutted impatiently. She waved at a bookcase by a narrow wooden staircase.
    “Over there, a magnifying-glass,” she said to Kimete.
    Kimete retrieved it and handed it to her. The old woman grasped it with her left hand, bent over the photograph and examined it.
    “Some are family. Some are friends.”
    “Do you know them all?”
    “I know the family, of course. Some of the others, no. It's been many years since I was there.”
    “Can I borrow this photograph,” asked Solomon, 'to help with identification?"
    Kimete translated and the old woman nodded.
    “You need all of them?”
    Solomon pulled the group photograph away from the page. It had been stuck on with a small loop of sellotape and came away easily.
    “Just this one will be enough.”
    He placed it on the table and made a quick sketch in his notebook before numbering the figures. There were thirty-eight. Solomon asked the old woman to tell him the names of the people she knew. It took her the best part of an hour and five of his cigarettes, squinting through the