The Eyewitness Read Online Free

helped him climb up and handed him a chunky army torch. Solomon held out a hand to haul the policeman up. Kimete pulled herself up with feline grace before the lieutenant could offer to help her.
    Solomon turned on the torch and played the beam around the inside of the truck. The first thing he saw was an old man and an old woman, lying on the floor, embracing like young lovers. Their eyes were wide and staring, their mouths open.
    “My God,” whispered Solomon.
    “It's hard to believe this happened three years ago,” said Kimete.
    The policeman switched on his torch and shone it at a middle-aged man by the door. He was lying face down, and Solomon saw that his hands were black with dried blood, the nails ripped off. The policeman spoke to Kimete.
    “This is the man he got the identification from,” explained Kimete.
    “Agim Shala.”
    Solomon knelt down and examined the man's injured hands. There were two bloody fingernails on the metal floor of the truck. Solomon pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and picked one up.
    The policeman spoke again in rapid Bosnian.
    “He was trying to claw his way out,” Kimete explained.
    “Several of the men have similar injuries.”
    Solomon straightened up and walked further into the truck, passing his torch over the bodies, counting. There were several men in their twenties and thirties close to the door; the women were at the back with the children. He saw two young girls, barely into their teens, hugging each other. A small boy of seven or eight was curled into a foetal ball, his eyes closed as if he'd just fallen asleep.
    At the end of the truck, pressed against the metal wall, lay a young couple, their arms around a little girl. Her eyes were closed and she was holding a small teddy bear. She couldn't have been more than eighteen months and looked as if she were fast asleep. The teddy bear had been worn smooth by years of cuddling, probably handed down from generation to generation. One glass eye was missing and a replacement had been darned in with brown thread. Solomon felt a hand touch his shoulder and he looked up at Kimete.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    Solomon felt tears prick his eyes and he turned away. In the four years that he'd been working for the International War-dead Commission, he had been present at several dozen exhumations and had been involved in the identification of hundreds of men, women and children, but the remains had been generally little more than skeletons, barely human. This little girl was real, a child who had laughed and played, and now she was dead. The mother and father had obviously been trying to comfort her. It would have been dark. And cold. The truck would have rocked and bucked as it went down the bank, and then the splash as it went into the water. What had it been like inside the truck when they'd realised that they were in the water and nobody was coming to help them? There'd have been shouts and screams. Maybe someone had tried to take charge, had told them to relax, not to use up the air so quickly, that they'd live longer if they all stayed quiet. And the men had clawed at the back until their fingers were shredded and bloody.
    There'd have been panic and fear and anger, with the women huddling together for comfort, probably praying. The old couple must have just sat down and held each other, waiting to die. The young couple had probably tried to comfort the little girl, soothing her with quiet words, trying to get her to sleep, whispering to her that everything was going to be all right, even though they knew that they were all dying.
    The policeman came up behind Solomon and said something in Bosnian.
    “He says it might have been an accident,” Kimete told him.
    Solomon stood up.
    “Bullshit. The door was padlocked.”
    Kimete translated. The policeman shrugged and spoke again, gesturing at the bodies with the torch.
    “He says maybe they were refugees, being smuggled across country. The truck ran off the road, went into