The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

gather there's no question that it was ethnic cleansing?”
    “Muslim family, Serbian neighbours.”
    “You'll pass it on to the War Crimes Tribunal, then?”
    “Soon as I've informed the relative.”
    “The old woman who gave the blood sample?”
    “Yeah. I'm going to drive over this afternoon with Kimete.”
    “Rather you than me,” Miller said. He looked at his watch.
    “I've got a conference call with London,” he said.
    “Catch you later.”
    He left and Solomon stood for a while staring at the wedding photograph. Happy faces. The men in jackets and ties, the women in long dresses. The bride and groom.
    Solomon used the marker pen to draw circles around the faces that he'd matched with the dead, then drew lines connecting them with the corresponding photographs on the edge of the white board He took a step back and scrutinised his handiwork. It looked like one of the diagrams that Miller used to flesh out the quarterly reports sent to the various funding groups that supported the Commission. But this was no organisation al flowchart. Every line represented a journey: from joyful wedding guest to victim of ethnic cleansing. A journey that had ended with lungs heaving, throats burning, the taste of blood, eyes bulging. And a little girl, clutching her teddy bear to her chest as she died.
    Solomon turned away from the white board Kimete was waiting for him in the car park. She was wearing a thick wool coat with the collar turned up against the wind and smoking a Croatian cigarette. She stubbed it out as Solomon walked up. The Walter Wolf brand she favoured was about half the price of Marlboro, and twice the strength. She had brought half a dozen black-market cassette tapes, mainly rap music, and they played them at full volume as they drove to Mostar.
    It was just after midday when Solomon parked the four-wheel-drive outside Teuter Berisha's cottage and walked with Kimete to the front door. The ground under their feet was wet from recent rain, but the sky overhead was clear blue and the stone of the cottage was bone dry from the northerly wind that cut across the bleak countryside.
    Solomon knocked on the door with the flat of his gloved hand, then turned the rusting metal handle.
    “Nana?” he called, as he pushed open the heavy wooden door.
    The old woman was sitting by her stove, sipping from a small white bowl. She grinned when she saw him, and put down the bowl on a wooden tray that lay on her lap.
    “Come in, young man,” she said, 'and close the door before I freeze. Have you brought that pretty girl with you?"
    Kimete popped her head around the door. The old woman grinned when she saw her.
    “Slobodno!” she said. Come in. She cupped her hands around her bowl and nodded at a metal pot on the stove.
    “There's soup help yourselves. Bowls are in the kitchen.” Then she spotted the carton of Marlboro under Solomon's arm. She beamed as he put them on the table next to her rocking-chair.
    Solomon took off his shoes, then handed her the carrier-bag he'd brought with him. The old woman opened it and took out a packet of biscuits, two cans of coffee and a kilo bag of sugar lumps he'd purloined it all from the office canteen.
    “Are you married, young man?” she enquired.
    “Because if you've no one to warm your bed at home you're welcome to move in with me.”
    Kimete fetched two bowls from the cramped kitchen, which smelt of damp. A grey cloth hung on a hook at the side of the stove and she used it to hold one of the handles of the pan as she poured out the lumpy green vegetable soup.
    Solomon sat down on a wooden chair and took a mouthful. It was good, sweet onions, cabbage and a strong garlicky aftertaste.
    “You made this, Nana?”
    She wrinkled her nose.
    “My cousin's wife. Not a patch on my cooking but my hands aren't up to much, these days. What do you think?”
    Solomon took another sip.
    “It could do with a little more seasoning,” he said.
    The old woman's eyes brightened.
    “Exactly!”