The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Chapter LXXXIII

Zivco Ilić parked the car in front of the house and walked to the door, the key in his right hand. Low walls separated the building from the properties on either side, both of which were Airbnb rentals, although only one had been in use since the Vuksans had taken up occupancy of the middle property. He entered the house, closed the door behind him, and took the stairs to the top floor. The door was slightly ajar, but he knocked before entering, as he always did.

‘Come in.’

It was Radovan’s voice. Ilić stepped into the room and saw Spiridon’s body on the floor. Radovan was sitting in the chair by his desk, a gun in his right hand. The gun was not pointing at Ilić, but that, he knew, could quickly change.

‘What happened?’ said Ilić.

‘A disagreement,’ said Radovan, ‘a conflict of interests. You have our documents?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your own?’

‘Yes. They gave me the name Rusin, Thomas Rusin.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’

Zivco Ilić had enjoyed only the most rudimentary and fleeting of experiences with the educational system. He read poorly and held the barest grasp of history, geography, and the sciences, but he possessed a certain mathematical acumen. He was currently calculating the odds against his survival, and decided that the right answer to the last question might aid him in improving them considerably.

‘I think I would like the opportunity to explore this new identity,’ he said.

Ilić heard Radovan Vuksan sigh deeply, and thought he might have chosen the incorrect response. His own gun felt both very near and very far from his hand, until Radovan tossed an envelope at his feet and said:

‘It’s just two thousand dollars, but it’ll have to do for now. There are other assets, which I need to find a safe way to liquidate. When I do, you’ll be looked after. Check the email address regularly. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Where will you go, Radovan?’

‘I don’t know. Not to the Caribbean. Maybe the Far East. And you?’

‘Somewhere in Europe. They say Portugal is cheap, but I don’t speak the language, and I will never learn now.’ Ilić picked up the envelope of cash. ‘Zorya told me I would die soon, so it is not important anyway.’

‘Pay no attention to her,’ said Radovan. ‘She may look like a child, but she is a woman to the bone. They manipulate us, all of them.’

Ilić smiled sadly. ‘She did not tell me anything that I did not already know.’

He took the passports from his pocket, selected his own, and handed the others to Radovan.

‘I saw your new name briefly,’ said Ilić, ‘but I have forgotten it already.’

They shook hands, and Radovan walked to the door.

‘What will I do with Spiridon?’ asked Ilić.

‘Spiridon is gone,’ said Radovan. ‘That’s just meat.’

Ilić shifted uneasily. He had few redeeming qualities, but he still retained his faith.

‘I will wrap him in a sheet, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘It would make me feel better about leaving him here.’

Radovan nodded. ‘We never liked each other, did we, Zivco?’

‘No, we did not.’

‘For what it’s worth, I like you better now.’

Ilić did not reply in kind. He was beyond lying now.

‘Goodbye, Radovan,’ he said, and went to deal with the body.

Ilić took a clean white bedsheet from the bedroom closet, laid it on the floor, and rolled Spiridon’s corpse across it once, twice, until the sheet wrapped him like a shroud. By then the material was no longer white but red. Ilić could see the contours of Spiridon’s face against it. His mouth was open, and Ilić would not have been surprised had an inhalation sucked the sheet against the maw as Spiridon, or some revenant version of him, returned to this world. Ilić came from Majdanpek, and had spent his childhood living in fear of wraiths. To him, they were as real as his own mother and father.

He hated Radovan for what he had done to Spiridon, just as he hated himself for not avenging the murder, although he knew that Radovan would have shot him before he laid a hand on his gun. Who could have known that Radovan had it in him to take the life of his own brother? Perhaps Zivco Ilić had been frightened of the wrong Vuksan for all these years.

Ilić went to Radovan’s bedroom and searched it before moving on to the private bathroom. He inspected the sink and discovered three nail clippings. He retrieved the fragments from around the drain and carried them back to the corpse. Ilić had a vague knowledge of the processes of autopsy from watching TV shows. He knew that Spiridon’s body would be thoroughly cleaned and examined, and the contents of its stomach emptied. Using the blade of his pocketknife, he cut the clippings into nine smaller pieces. Some he lodged in Spiridon’s throat, others deep in his ears and nose, aided by a cotton swab. The final one he pushed deep beneath Spiridon’s foreskin. Then he prayed that at least one would remain unfound and go to the grave with his master. In that way, Radovan would soon also join the dead.

Ilić became aware of a presence behind him, and thought for a moment that Radovan had returned. He reacted a fraction too late, because when he turned, the muzzle was already in his face.

‘I know who you are,’ said Ilić.

‘And I know who you are,’ said Louis, removing Ilić’s gun from its holster. ‘Who’s under the sheet?’

‘Spiridon.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘His brother did.’

‘Can’t trust anybody these days,’ said Louis. ‘Who else is here?’

‘No one, only me.’

Another man entered the room, this one smaller and older. He looked to Ilić like a mongrel, with no purity to his bloodline. This, Ilić guessed, was Angel, the hunter’s partner. Ilić was disgusted by his enforced proximity to these peškiri.

‘Check the other rooms,’ said Louis, and Angel moved past him. He returned shortly after to announce that they were clear.

‘Where is Radovan?’ said Louis.

‘Gone,’ said Ilić. He did not know how Radovan had avoided these men. As the old saying went: don’t measure the wolf’s tail until he is dead.

‘Gone where?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ said Ilić, because one devil did not scratch out another devil’s eyes. He might have wanted to punish Radovan for what he had done to Spiridon, but he would not give this man the satisfaction of taking Radovan’s life.

‘And the girl?’

Ilić was not surprised that they knew of Zorya. Images of her, all partial or blurred, had made their way into media reports on the deaths of the Turk, Hasanović, and the Dutchman, Hendricksen.

‘Also gone.’ Ilić heard the sadness in his own voice. He didn’t blame Zorya for leaving, but still he felt abandoned by her.

‘I don’t suppose you know where she is either?’ said Louis.

‘No.’

‘Then what good are you to me?’

‘No good at all,’ said Ilić, ‘unless you want to hear how your Dutch friends died.’

‘Not really,’ said Louis, and he pulled the trigger.

Angel and Louis left the house not long after, having first searched it for any further information about Radovan Vuksan or the girl. All they found was Ilić’s new passport, but at least they now knew the nationality under which Radovan was probably traveling, unless the dead woman, Kauffmann, had sourced passports from more than one country, which seemed unlikely.

Before they departed, they poured the contents of the liquor cabinet over the two bodies. The bottles contained mostly cheap whisky with a high alcohol content, and the liquid ignited easily. They were gone from the area before the first trails of smoke began to slip through the gaps in the windows, and were already at the airport as the fire seized the house.

By the time the blaze was under control, they had left Austria forever.