After a quick hug from Mum and Hannah, we drove back home. According to Suzanne, there was only one police car parked on the road. Thankfully, the drive was clear for our car.
It seemed strange to be ringing the door bell at our own house. D.I. Marsden answered the door. He invited us in and, immediately, apologised for forcing us out of our home.
“Have you managed to identify the body parts?”
“We are pretty certain that the body is that of Ivanko Ademovic, but we are still waiting for full forensic identification. We have also found traces of body fluids in the trap under the waste outlet from the bath. It does appear that the body was dismembered while lying in the bath.”
I realised, with some relief, that, since moving here, I had always used the shower cubicle, preferring it to lying in the bath. I did not feel inclined to ever use the bath at all, after this horrific experience.
“We’ll keep you informed and may need to ask you further questions.”
“No problem. We’ll help as much as we can.” He handed over my key and left us feeling strange at returning to our home. The house had a weird, empty smell, yet there was, also, a hint of the chemicals, presumably from the intensive forensic examination of our house.
Within minutes, Suzanne had gone through every room, opening windows wide, as well as spraying plenty of air freshener. When it came to choosing our dinner, thankfully, there were still several meat options in the freezer and we decided to have grilled fillet steaks with oven chips and frozen vegetables. By the time the steaks were under the hot grill, the atmosphere in the house had returned to one of normality. Suzanne and I were looking forward to being on our own and doing what we wanted, without fear of being overheard.
After dinner, we prepared for another session of automatic writing. Both of us wondered if the spirit of Ivanko would still be in the house, now that his body had been removed. As before, I felt extremely nervous as I held the pen, ready to be guided by the spirits. “Is the spirit of Ivanko present?”
I was beginning to think that this was a waste of time, when the pen, suddenly, started to move.
Although the pen flew swiftly across the paper, Suzanne, sitting on my left, tried to tell me what was being written. “Yes. Thank you for freeing my physical body from the chimney breasts. I feel at peace, now, yet I want Selmira to face justice for my death. As a Muslim, I was always told that, when I died, I would rise into eternal Paradise. I don’t know if this will ever happen, but, so far, I have felt tortured at having my life cut so short. I want justice and ask for your help.”
The pen paused, giving Suzanne chance to read what I had just written.
“How can we help, Ivanko? Do you know where Selmira is?”
“No, but you may be able to help find her and bring her to justice. I will tell you how we met and the story of our lives together.”
Under the influence of Ivanko Ademovic, I wrote his memories for over an hour, that Friday evening. The notes were quite rambling and, in places, difficult to decipher. After quite a bit of tidying, Suzanne managed to understand Ivanko’s story, re-writing it to make it easier for us to follow.
“We had been born neighbours in the area of Srebrenica in Bosnia, me in 1981, while Selmira was born a year later. It was a poor area and both of us, as children had the disadvantage of being born not only poor but also Muslims. The Christian majority made life extremely difficult for those who did not follow their particular faith and there were many hostilities towards those who happened to be in the minority.
I was only eleven years old when the differences between the religious faiths began to erupt into open, violent hostilities. Under the leadership of army commander, Ratko Mladic, “The butcher of Bosnia”, the system degenerated into unbelievable violence and carnage against Bosnian Muslims, culminating with the genocide in July, 1995.
It took over twenty years to capture and imprison him for these horrific crimes. Thankfully, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, even though this would never begin to give any justice to the many thousands who lost their lives in the massacre.
I could never understand how I managed to evade death as my mother, father, brothers, sisters and Grandmother all perished in the bitterly-cruel, relentless attacks on our small poorly-constructed houses. I remember regaining consciousness and finding myself covered in debris. I realised that my life had been saved by a door falling on top of me. This had, miraculously, saved my life by shielding my small body from the thousands of stone fragments which had killed the rest of my family. I had lost consciousness in the explosion and did not know how long I had been in this state, before I came round. My small size assisted me as I, carefully, extricated myself from the shattered shell of my home. I had waited until the darkness of night helped to provide me with cover, before I dared to wander through the desolate streets. As I passed a neighbour’s house, I stopped as I could hear the gentle sobbing of somebody within the wreckage.
I pondered, uncertain whether I should try to escape on my own or help the person trapped in the un-recognisable mess that was once a house. Remembering what the Iman had taught me about Allah, I felt obliged to do something to help a fellow human being. Listening carefully, I traced the source of the crying and managed to move some of the wreckage until I came across the trapped person. It was Selmira, a girl a year younger than me. I was quite a shy boy and, although I had seen Selmira for quite some time, I had never actually spoken to her. She was quite an attractive girl and was the youngest of a family of five children.
Terrified, I told her to stop crying, as this could attract unwanted attention from the enemy forces. With difficulty, she did as I had asked and waited patiently as I slowly and carefully removed chunks of masonry to reach her, without disturbing more rubble or raising the alarm by making too much noise. It was a painfully slow process, but, eventually, I managed to free her from the wreckage. We kept close to each other as we clambered to safety over the shattered ruins of her former home, wondering how we could evade capture.
We crept quietly through the deserted streets, both of us anxious about our uncertain future. We said very little, our eyes watching for any movement ahead of us. As we turned a corner, we were terrified to come face to face with a lone Bosnian soldier. Hoping that we could manage to escape, we began to run back the way we had come. Selmira had injured her foot in the explosion and found difficulty in running. She stumbled and was grabbed, roughly, by the soldier. I had managed to hide amongst some large mounds of rubble and watched, anxiously, as Selmira screamed. The soldier slapped her face sharply and roughly forced her to lie, face upwards, on the ground.
Puzzled, at first, I was Horrified when I realised what the soldier intended to do to my new friend. There had been many stories of Muslim women and girls being raped by soldiers, high on both drugs and ego. She struggled, helplessly as the heavy soldier began to remove her underwear and unzip his trousers.
Horrified, I was, initially, frozen with fear, but felt the anger rising inside me and grabbed hold of a large, broken piece of masonry. Selmira was screaming from the intense pain as the soldier penetrated her. I crept closer to the couple, as the soldier, still distracted by the girl’s screams began to grunt and move inside her.
At last, I stood over the man and, raising the masonry high above my own head, I smashed it down, hard on to the skull of the soldier. There had been a sickening crunch, as the man’s skull shattered, blood and brain matter quickly spilling out in all directions, spattering both of us.
The man was very heavy, but, eventually, I managed to heave the bloody body off Selmira’s skinny frame. Her eyes wide from this brutal attack and my bravery, she scrambled to her feet, desperately pulling her pants up. We took one last look at the still-warm corpse that lay in front of us. “He really did deserve it”, I said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Both of us found the smell from the fluid in the man’s crushed skull was on both our skin, hair and clothes, yet, we had to endure this as there was no running water to clean ourselves.