Zagreb Cowboy by Alen Mattich Read Free Book Online Page B

season. You end up looking like a priest in a whorehouse.”
    “So, not unusual, in other words.”
    “Hah. You know, you’re almost funny sometimes. But the people in Belgrade know about all those places anyway.”
    “What about your little bolthole in London?” della Torre asked.
    Strumbić grimaced. London was his ultimate sanctuary, the place he had lined up for when he finally disappeared with his money. Ditch the wife. Ditch the jobs, official and otherwise. Ditch the aggro. Live it large in a proper city where he wouldn’t be afraid somebody would snitch on him about the car he drove or how fat his wallet was when he pulled it out to pay the restaurant bill. The action was better. And if he wanted sun, he could get to anywhere from London. Not just to Croatia, but to places that had proper hotels and did food other than just meat on a stick.
    Nobody else knew about the London apartment. Only della Torre.
    He’d been at Strumbić’s weekend place on a sunny afternoon the previous summer, eating cherries right off the tree and drinking wine, shirtless and sweating. Strumbić hadn’t owned the apartment long and was dead pleased about it. Bravado and the long-bottled-up urge to tell somebody made him talk. Ironically, della Torre was probably the safest person to say anything to. He was selling files to Strumbić and had no desire to get on the cop’s bad side. Besides, secret policemen knew how to keep their mouths shut. Better than priests. Better than lawyers, even. So a secret policeman lawyer was the best of all.
    “I’ve done the smartest thing you’ve ever heard,” he’d said, savouring the wine.
    “What’s that? Turned honest?”
    “What sort of cretin do you take me for? I’ve lined up my retirement plan.”
    “I thought you were going to work till you keeled over. Which must be sometime next week, the way you’re going.”
    “Naw. Bought myself a place.”
    “Another one? How many have you got? Two flats in Zagreb I know about, that villa on Šipan, this place, and haven’t you got some farm outside of Varaždin? How much do you need?”
    “They’re all in this country. I’ve bought something abroad, for when the shit really hits the fan.”
    “Oh yeah? Where? Albania?”
    “That’s not even humour. London.”
    “London?”
    “Yeah, a place called Hampstead. Big apartment right in the middle of the park.”
    “The Heath?”
    “That’s right, you were a student there for a while, weren’t you?”
    “I try to forget,” della Torre said. He’d spent the gloomiest eight months of his life in London, doing a course on international law paid for by his then employer, the Zagreb prosecutor’s office. It was where he’d had his first dealings with the UDBA . Dealings that had compromised him, eroded his principles. Back when he still had them.
    But he shifted his thoughts back to Hampstead. He’d had some nice walks in the big park there, wandered around John Keats’s house back when he’d still read poetry. A decent place to escape London’s relentless urbanity if you couldn’t afford the plane fare out.
    “The building’s right in the middle of the Heath. I mean, not in the middle middle. It’s on the edge. But the park surrounds it on three sides. Up near the top of the hill. Big brick building with these white, what are they called? Dormers. White dormers. I’ve got this fourth-floor apartment, just below the penthouse, windows on two sides. Look out my living room and London’s spread out like a whore on her back. A good-looking, expensive one, covered in jewels. I tell you, it’s fantastic. Too bad you’ll never see the place. Two hundred square metres, even bigger than my Zagreb apartment, in one of the classiest parts of town.”
    “Sounds nice. I guess London’s a good enough place if you can afford it.”
    “Great town. Clubs, restaurants, girls. What girls! Every colour you can think of. Green, probably, if you looked hard enough. They got a real spark.