‘Accounts,’ said Jelic. ‘It’s an accounts book. A ledger.’
Reinhardt flipped it around and handed it back to Jelic. ‘The dates, please.’
Jelic lit another cigarette as he leaned over the book. ‘Russia, shy;Russia…’ he muttered as he turned pages. ‘Here. We arrived 4th August, 1942. Left…’ He turned a page, then another. ‘Left on 6th November.’
Reinhardt jotted it down. ‘You have locations in there?’
Jelic puffed his cheeks and breathed out heavily, and coughed. ‘Some. Hotels usually. Let’s see. We flew in to Kharkov from Stokerau, stayed there a few days. Hotel Chichikov. Christ, what a dump that place was. Then out to the front, to join up with the 369th Division around… Selivanova. Back to Kharkov… then Glazkov with the division. The boys were refitting. Ah, yeah,’ he said, looking up. ‘Pavelic made a trip out to visit the troops.’ He grinned. ‘Yeah, that was a good evening. Medal parade in the afternoon, then dinner with the officers. That German general, what’s his name? The one in Stalingrad… Paulus?’ Reinhardt nodded, transfixed. ‘Paulus. He joined us. First good food we’d had in a while, but Christ, you should have seen the way they were all over Marija. She had ’em wrapped around her finger. Pavelic, he was…’ He looked up, as a man might look up expecting clear skies and instead the horizon was draped in thunderclouds. Jelic took a look at Padelin’s face and went back to the book.
‘That was the 24th September, and the end of the good times. The 369th went into Stalingrad a few days later. We hung around. Marija wanted to get into the city to do some filming, but the closest we got was the airfield at Pitomnik, and that was close enough.’ He looked up at Reinhardt. ‘We could hear the guns during the day, and during the night it burned. You could see it from miles away. You’ve got to feel sorry for the poor bastards who were in there. You know they say all the Croat boys are dead.’
Padelin snarled something at Jelic in Serbo-Croat, and Jelic snapped back, the detective’s earlier violence towards him forgotten. Whatever it was he said, Padelin folded his hands on the table and just stared at him with those heavy eyes. ‘I know what I saw,’ Jelic said, quietly, staring back, and switching back to German. ‘And I know what I’ve heard. None of them are coming back,’ he finished, looking back down at the book. Reinhardt looked at him and swallowed in a dry throat, thinking of Jelic’s description of the city where his son had vanished.
‘Listen,’ said Jelic, turning pages and then looking up. ‘Do you need anything else from me?’
Reinhardt nodded. ‘Do you know when Vukic met up with this officer in Russia?’
‘Yeah, sometime in late August, early September. We left the 369th in Glazkov, and joined up with some Germans as they advanced towards Stalingrad. We were in Voroshilovgrad on 28th August. The Hotel Donbass. I’m pretty sure that she had met up with him by then, but I can’t be sure. Rostov in early September. Then back to Glazkov, like I said.’
‘When did they break up, Vukic and this officer, you remember that?’
Jelic shook his head. ‘I really don’t.’ He stared at the pages. ‘It was after we spent the first couple of weeks with the 369th. After Rostov, but before Pitomnik. So, sometime in September. Mid-September. She actually took off with him and his men for a few days while Branko and I stayed in the hotel. But the actual dates… I’m sorry, I really can’t remember. Branko will probably remember better than me. He’s usually good at dates. I’m hopeless.’
‘Very well,’ said Reinhardt, tapping his notebook with his pencil. ‘Padelin? You have anything else?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Jelic, you can come down to headquarters. We have some suspects in custody you can look at. Let us know if you ever saw them together with Miss Vukic.’ Jelic nodded again, although it looked like the last thing he wanted to do. ‘And I want an address for Branko… ?’
‘Branko Tomic,’ finished Jelic. He scribbled a name and a Zagreb address on a piece of paper. ‘I’ve no idea if he knows what’s happened. Poor guy. He’s been with her for years.’
‘You’ve been most helpful, Mr Jelic,’ said Padelin, with ponderous finality. ‘I will be in touch to arrange a time to come to headquarters. No, don’t get up.’ He raised a hand. ‘We’ll see ourselves out. And put some ice on that jaw, or it will swell up.’
They left him in his studio, hunched over, watching them with feverish little eyes through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Downstairs, Padelin turned to Reinhardt. ‘Did you get anything useful out of that?’ His tone made it clear he had not.
Reinhardt drummed his fingers on the kubelwagen’s windshield and nodded. ‘I did,’ he said, distantly. ‘Look, something he said is gnawing at me. Going around and around in my head,’ he explained, seeing Padelin’s look of incomprehension. ‘Something about mirrors.’
‘Mirrors?’ grunted Padelin. He looked at Reinhardt, then away.
‘I want to go back to the house in Ilidza for another look. Do you want to come?’
‘You don’t know what you’re looking for?’ demanded Padelin.
‘Maybe nothing. Maybe something. But I need to see.’
‘Very well,’ he replied. ‘I will come. It will be better if I do, in any case. We’re supposed to be working together, yes?’
The road out to Ilidza was relatively empty of military traffic, and Reinhardt was able to drive fast all the way. Padelin sat quietly next to him, flexing his wrists and fists over and over again. They pulled up outside Vukic’s and surprised the police guard who was dozing along the shady side of the house, next to the motorcycle and sidecar. The man blanched at the look on Padelin’s face and fumbled the keys to the door, eventually getting it open and almost dropping his rifle as he stood aside and saluted them in. Reinhardt took the stairs quickly up to the second floor, through the living room and into the bedroom.
The curtains had been drawn open, the two lights at the foot of the bed were turned off, and the bed had been stripped. Otherwise nothing had changed. The head of the bed was still covered in blood, and it had soaked into the mattress. Reinhardt walked to the bedside table and looked back. He could see himself standing in the other mirror. A glance up, and he saw that the roof of the four-poster was also a mirror. Padelin watched him from the doorway.
Mirrors. She liked to watch, he thought. She liked to watch others. She liked to watch herself. He looked back and forth between the two mirrors, the one by the door and the one at the headboard. The blood on the light switch at the entrance caught his eye again. The mirrors. It was all a setup, he thought. Set up so that she could see. So that whoever was with her could see.
But it wasn’t enough just to watch. This was elaborate. Why waste it? He turned in the room, looking for he knew not what, and came back to the two mirrors, and the blood on the light switch, and the two lights. This was like a set. A film set. She was a filmmaker. He walked slowly back towards the door and stopped, looking at the light switch. He pushed the top button, and the lights at the foot of the bed came on. He pushed the second, and lights in the roof came on. He frowned, not knowing what he had expected, but not that. Nothing that simple. He stood in front of the mirror, looking past his reflection, trying to look inside it. He took the mirror’s frame in his two hands and pulled it. Nothing. He pushed, each side, shook it. Nothing.
He tried harder. The mirror did not move, seemingly bolted to the wall. He stepped back, and knocked the wall, stopped. Stared. He hit the wall again, harder, as he looked at Padelin. The wall boomed hollowly under his hand.
‘There’s a room behind here,’ Reinhardt said. His eyes ran over the wall, stepped back. There was no entrance he could see, nowhere he could work out where one might be. Back and forth went his eyes, and then he looked down, imagining the space beneath him, and took off back downstairs.