Killing Pilgrim (43 page)

Brg was fading. Questions kept crowding his mind. Irritating, tiny details overwhelmed his brain. It was as if Strumbić wasn’t there and he was asking himself.

“Says here you own that villa in Šipan. Where two of the Americans were killed. We had a look and it’s not in any official records. All we could find was that it was registered to an Italian company. Your company, Mr. Strumbić?”

Strumbić was surprised at the turn of questioning, but played along.

“Thought Italians could only own up to forty-nine percent of a property in this country,” Strumbić said.

“Oh, well, that’s the clever thing. One Italian company owns forty-nine percent of the property and a Yugoslav firm owns the rest. Except forty-nine percent of that Yugoslav company is owned by an Italian company. Coincidentally, the same Italian company. The rest is owned by another Yugoslav company. You guessed it, forty-nine percent of that is owned by the very same Italian company. In the end, the only domestic ownership we could find was some lawyer in Varaždin who owns less than one percent. You won’t be surprised to hear that he is only holding on behalf of a company based near Venice. Illegal, but what can you do? Lawyers. Anything to do with you, Mr. Strumbić?”

Strumbić shrugged sympathetically. “What our country’s coming to.” He shook his head sadly. “All the ills of capitalism have already filled in the cracks left by the noble but failed Communist experiment.”

Brg felt his head nod forward. He needed sleep. He knew that dwelling on stupid details was just a sign of how tired he was. The villa’s ownership? Who cared about the complicated scheme designed to hide the owner. Strumbić owned it. And Strumbić was there, sitting in front of him.

Brg needed to be sharp to deal with Zagreb. And he needed to be even more on the ball to handle as wily a character as Strumbić.

Four hours of solid shut-eye. If he left for home now, he’d get that much rest and be awake again by lunch, have a bite to eat, and then come back to the station, refreshed. Call Zagreb, tell them he’d wrapped up the whole of the mystery, found the missing woman, had the lead suspect in a jail cell. Formally charge Strumbić with everything from smuggling to murder to fraudulent property ownership.

Hell, how could it hurt to delay calling them by a couple of hours? The woman wasn’t going to get any more dead, and Strumbić, well, he’d already been sitting around in prison for more than two weeks. Another quiet morning wouldn’t do any harm. Just in case, Brg would have a cop stand sentry outside Strumbić’s cell. Keep an eye on him the whole time.

Four hours.
Brg thought.
What could possibly go wrong in four hours?

Olof
Palme’s assassination on that cold February night in 1986 remains one of Europe’s great unsolved crimes of the postwar era. For anyone who wants to know more,
Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme
by Jan Bondeson is a well-written and detailed account of the murder and the Swedish authorities’ botched investigation.

There are numerous theories about who might have been behind the killing and why. One is that the Yugoslav government was somehow involved. This isn’t particularly far-fetched. The
UDBA
may not be in the popular imagination like the
KGB
or the Stasi, but of all the organs of state security operating from Europe’s Communist bloc, the Yugoslav secret police was perhaps the most murderous beyond its borders — even if its known targets were Yugoslav dissidents or somehow related or associated with them.

Della Torre’s Department VI, however, is a work of fiction, as are all the characters in the book, apart from Palme. Some of the events I write about leading up to the Yugoslav wars of independence in the early 1990s, such as the police assault on Borovo Selo, actually happened. But any similarities between the people in my book and anyone who ever lived and breathed is coincidental.

That’s not quite true. Steve Higgins, an American journalist and a friend, was real flesh and blood. He had nothing to do with former Yugoslavia, and he was a far more charming, clever, and gently ironic man than the one who appears in my book. And he’d have been a fine novelist had he only been given the time.

I owe thanks to numerous people for help and support in writing this book. I’ve dedicated
Killing Pilgrim
to my children, but my wife, Lucy, deserves top billing for her understanding and patience with a husband who spends far too much time at the computer and far too little doing the stuff he ought to be doing.

Janie Yoon is what every novelist dreams of but few are blessed with: an editor who has both the skill and determination to make the very best book possible.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my agent, Hilary McMahon, a realist in a world of fantasy. And to friends, readers, and family who made deep if not always obvious contributions, especially Andrew Steinmetz, Fred Biggar, Luke Vinten, Robert Kirkby, Nives Mattich, Bill and Elaine Vinten, and my parents.

Alen
Mattich is the author of
Zagreb Cowboy
, the first novel in the Marko della Torre series. He
was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and grew up in Libya, Italy, Canada, and the United States. He went to McGill University for his undergraduate degree and then did postgraduate work at the London School of Economics. A financial journalist and columnist, he’s now based in London and writes for Dow Jones and the
Wall Street Journal
. The third Marko della Torre novel,
The Heart of Hell
, will be published in February 2015.

House
of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”