The Eyewitness Read Online Free Page B

back of the truck, leaving the policeman inside it.
    “Is he okay?” asked Solomon.
    “I've smoothed his feathers, he's fine.” She paused.
    “It's different, isn't it, when you can see their faces?”
    Solomon nodded. The remains in the body-bags at Tuzla didn't have faces. They were just bones, like museum exhibits.
    “Are you feeling all right?” Kimete asked.
    “You look pale.”
    Solomon swallowed. There was a bad taste in his mouth, bitter and acrid.
    “I'm okay.”
    “Shall I get you a glass of water from the farmhouse?”
    Solomon swallowed again.
    “Yeah, thanks.” Suddenly he threw up. Richards and Kimete jumped back. After a moment, she put a hand on his back and patted him.
    Solomon heard laughing and he looked across at the policeman, who was standing now with two of his men at the back of the truck. He took a step towards the man but Kimete grasped his wrist.
    “It's not worth it,” she said.
    “He's not worth it.”
    Solomon glared at the three policemen who were still laughing at him. Gradually his anger subsided.
    “Yeah, you're right,” he said.
    He and Kimete went over to the farmhouse. On the way, he collected the file from his car.
    Two US troopers were standing at the farmhouse door and one pushed it open for them. An old couple were sitting by an open-hearth fire, warming themselves. Kimete explained who they were. The old man, his face weathered to the consistency of leather, spoke to her in Serbo-Croatian as the old woman poured them cups of strong coffee.
    “He wants to know if he will be reimbursed for the use of his barn,” said Kimete.
    “Tell him he will be,” said Solomon.
    “Is that true?” she asked.
    “Hell, I don't know and, frankly, I don't care,” said Solomon.
    “By the look of it, the barn wasn't being used before they put the truck in it. Just say the Serbo-Croatian equivalent of ”The cheque's in the post“ and leave it at that.”
    Kimete spoke briefly, the old man beamed and Solomon raised his coffee cup in salute. Twenty-six men, women and children lay dead just a hundred yards away and all the old man was concerned about was money. Solomon wondered how long Matt Richards would retain his born-again faith surrounded by people who happily saw their neighbours shipped out to murder camps and communal graves.
    “And ask him if it's okay if we stay here until we've got the bodies processed,” said Solomon.
    “Should all be done by this evening.”
    He began to read through the slim file as Kimete translated. The reports had been handwritten in Serbo-Croatian but translated and typed in English.
    Of the twenty-one names of those believed to be missing, fifteen were female. Two were infants. A missing-person's report had been compiled for each name; in most cases it consisted of a single sheet on which there was a name and an approximate age. There were no photographs, no medical details, nothing Solomon could use to match the missing with the bodies in the truck.
    The reports had been prepared by the federal police in Pristina, and in the absence of evidence that a crime had been committed they had clearly decided just to go through the motions. The Pristina police probably took the same view as the policeman: that the family might have decided to leave voluntarily in the hope of making a new life for themselves elsewhere.
    There was only one next-of-kin named, a woman who was now living in Bosnia: Teuter Berisha, aged seventy-two. She was the aunt of the owner of the farm outside Pristina, Agim Shala; his wife was Drita. There was nothing in the file to suggest that Teuter Berisha had been contacted about the missing family.
    A horn sounded outside and Solomon put down the file. He and Kimete went to the door of the farmhouse. A grey-haired man with piercing blue eyes was parking a white four-wheel-drive with UN on its side in big black letters. Solomon waved to him. It was Alain Audette, a Canadian doctor who had worked as a UN coroner in Belgrade for the