‘Won’t the social housing people come to fix it?’
‘They say they will, but they make me wait. If you were here you could do it for me.’
‘I could, but then so can Luka.’
Silence. Then, ‘I don’t like to ask. He’s busy.’
I said, ‘Let me talk to him for you.’
‘Thank you,’ said my mother, not really satisfied. She’d never stopped asking when I was coming. To stop her doing so again I asked to speak to Danica. Danica came to the phone. I heard her telling my mother she’d take it in the bedroom.
‘She’s watching her television programmes. Those Brazilian soaps.’
‘How is she?’
‘Getting older, she misses you.’
I didn’t reply and when Danica didn’t say anything either, I said, ‘She says there’s damp in the bedroom of her new flat.’
‘I know she does, but the flat is fine. I think she’s lonely there on her own.’ She paused. ‘I was going to call you. There’s something I need to talk to you about.’
‘Well here I am.’
‘Luka and me, we’ve been accepted to go to New Zealand.’
The news winded me. Danica told me the application process had taken a year, but they had almost reached the end now. All they were waiting for was the official letter.
‘When will you go?’
‘Before Christmas.’
‘And Mother?’
‘She wants to come with us. She’s a dependant, so she’s allowed so long as we take care of her. A lot of families have moved to Auckland. She’ll probably even know some people.’
I was silent. Down the line I could hear Danica breathing and, faintly, the sound of the television in the other room. Then she sighed. ‘Life goes on, Duro.’
After the phone call I ate the food I’d cooked and tidied up the house. I found the strip of braided thread Grace had given me the day I killed Kos. I put it in a drawer where I saw the green and blue tiles I’d brought from the blue house. I thought about the attack on the mosaic. For all that I disliked Krešimir it would be too easy to blame him. Krešimir’s methods are far more underhand. He likes anonymous letters and poisonous words. Though I was not at all tired, for some reason I remained ravenously hungry even after I’d eaten. I fried more sausages and drank several glasses of wine. I tried to read the newspaper, but I wasn’t really in the mood, I was restless. I turned on the television and let the pictures and canned laughter blot out my thoughts. I ate the sausages with my fingers straight from the pan, sitting in front of the television. I flicked channels. A re-run of ’Allo ’Allo, which had been one of the most popular television programmes in the country twenty years ago. I watched it for a while and even laughed, helped by the wine. Also now for the first time I could understand the joke of Officer Crabtree’s accent. ‘Good moaning,’ he says to René. ‘Good moaning.’ I laughed, but the joke quickly wore off. I switched channels, pressing the remote control over and over, until the television stopped responding. I still didn’t feel the least bit tired but I could think of nothing I wanted to do, so I prepared to go upstairs to bed and a night of sleeplessness.
Before I went I opened the door and stepped outside. The night was warm, the air that slipped past me into the room brought with it the scent of the night, clean and fragrant. A light wind was blowing, dry from the desert. Down on the coast it carried a red dust that coated your skin, and sucked the moisture from everything, even the fruit on the trees. The last strip of light lay across the horizon. Whirr, whirr. Pat, pat, pat. Whirr. The nightjar. I closed the door and slid the bolts.
I climbed the stairs, washed and got into bed, between clean sheets that smelt of nothing. I lay for a while staring at the ceiling and then, though I hadn’t thought I would, I went to sleep after all, a half-sleep, patterned with dreams. I dreamt I was eating a fine meal, soup and meat, surrounded by people who knew me. Even though it was a dream I could taste the food, even the texture of the meat. The dream switched. I was in the woods following a great boar. The boar was unafraid of me, as I was of it. He walked ahead and I walked behind at exactly the same pace. I wasn’t carrying a gun, just walking through the plantation in the same direction. Zeka started to bark and I shushed him, but he disobeyed me and went on and on. And then I heard the sound of a girl calling me.
I surfaced like a man who has nearly drowned. Outside Zeka was barking. My chest heaved and my heart was beating hard, my neck was damp with sweat. I lay still and listened. A banging on the door. A voice calling my name. Grace. I pulled on a pair of jeans, ran down the stairs and opened the door. Grace’s face was round and pale in the darkness, her eyes wide with fright. She was wearing nothing but a nightdress. She said, ‘Oh Duro, you have to come. There’s a man in the house.’
‘A man? Who is he?’
‘I don’t know who. He said he wanted to talk to Mum, and I was frightened so I called her. Now he’s got her and won’t go. I think he’s drunk and he seems very angry about something, but she doesn’t know what he’s on about.’
‘How did he get in?’
‘The door wasn’t locked.’
I went to the back door and picked up a shotgun. ‘Stay here,’ I ordered Grace. I was without shirt or shoes, the gravel sharp beneath my bare soles. In less than a minute I reached the blue house. I ignored the front door and skirted round to the back; barefoot and on the grass now I made no sound. Inside, a single light from a table lamp and Laura, sitting on the sofa. She was wearing a robe; the family had evidently been in bed when the intruder arrived. She was sitting up very straight on the sofa, as if to attention, expressionless, her hand at her throat like she would strangle herself. I couldn’t see any sign of a man, but Laura’s posture was enough to tell me of the threat in the room. Whoever was with her was hidden by the angle of the wall. I listened: the rumble of a male voice. Krešimir?
A movement. A man’s hand stroked Laura’s hair. Laura flinched and leaned away, she put her own hand up over her hair to cover it, but the man’s hand pushed Laura’s out of the way and carried on stroking, picking up strands of her hair and letting them fall. Laura skewed her neck away, I saw her mouth open in protest, but if she said anything I couldn’t hear her.
I pushed down on the handle of the back door and stepped inside. Laura turned to me, clearly with no idea what to expect; when she saw me she closed her eyes, breathed out and let her shoulders drop. I walked into the room.
Fabjan.
Sitting next to Laura on the sofa. At the sight of me his hand froze. He lowered it, though only as far as Laura’s shoulder where he let it rest, like a man with his hand on a dog’s head. He sat with his legs apart, looking like he did every day, wearing his butter-coloured suede jacket, a pair of jeans (the belt cutting into his gut, faded patch around his balls), loafers without socks. His eyes were narrow and puffy, his lips moist and red, a day’s growth of stubble shaded the lower part of his face. He’d been drinking, though he was far from drunk, just drunk enough to be dangerous. He smiled and said in English, ‘Ah, Duro. The hero. Welcome. Come in.’ I took a few steps forward. His eyes darted to the gun. ‘So you’ve come armed. What are you going to do, shoot me?’
‘If I have to,’ I said in Cro. ‘Take your hand off her.’
Fabjan lowered his hand with a slow insolence.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, again in Cro.
‘Well — and not that it’s got anything to do with you — I’m paying a visit to this lady, who’s a friend of mine. Right?’ He looked at Laura, who didn’t answer. Her hand was back at her throat and her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor.
‘Speak Cro,’ I said.
‘Fuck off.’
I jerked the shotgun upwards. Fabjan’s eyes followed it, so did Laura’s. ‘What do you want?’