Free The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather Page B

six and a half feet tall with a barrel chest that strained to burst out of his cheap dark blue suit, and weight-lifter's thighs that threatened to do similar damage to his trousers. His hair was close-cropped and greying at the temples, although he was only in his early thirties.
    Solomon pulled a face.
    “Like you say, I shuffle papers. I cross reference DNA samples, and then I break bad news, like I was the fifth horseman.”
    Dragan's huge craggy face creased into pained frown.
    “Horseman?”
    “Death, war, pestilence and famine. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I feel like I'm riding behind them on some clapped-out old nag, the fifth the bringer of bad news.”
    The frown slackened, but Solomon could see his friend was still confused.
    “Forget it, Dragan, I'm having a bad day, that's all.”
    “Can't be any worse than mine, old friend,” he said, wiping the top of his bottle with the flat of his hand.
    “Butcher killed his wife and .. .”
    “Butchered her?”
    Dragan flashed a lop-sided grin, showing a row of greying slab-like teeth.
    “Sausages.”
    “For God's sake.”
    Jovanovic raised his eyebrows.
    “She was half gone by the time one of the customers complained.”
    “The taste?”
    “Found a fingernail.”
    Solomon groaned.
    “Oh, God, Dragan, that's fucking disgusting.” He took a long swig of beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    “What about the skull? The hips? The big stuff?”
    “All went through the grinder.” Dragan drained his bottle and slammed it down on the bar. The barman looked over at him, and he motioned for two more beers.
    “Both Sarajevsko this time,” Dragan said.
    “No more of that foreign muck for my friend. He drinks with Bosnians, he drinks Bosnian beer. Okay, Jack?”
    “You buy it, I'll drink it,” said Solomon.
    Dragan nodded, satisfied.
    “So, other than papers and bad news, what's bothering you?”
    “A case. Down in Pristina. A family were taken from their farm and put in the back of a truck. That was three years ago. The truck's just turned up in a lake in Serbia. Twenty-six dead.”
    The two beers arrived, the men clinked bottles again and drank.
    Solomon continued, “I think there's an eyewitness. A girl. She was sixteen when it happened, nineteen now. Her name's Nicole Shala. Her parents were both in the truck. Agim Shala and Drita Shala.”
    “She saw who did it?”
    “I'm guessing so, and that's why she's running.”
    Jovanovic nodded slowly.
    “Victims were Albanians?”
    “You ought to be a detective.” Solomon smiled. It was no great leap of intuition for the policeman. The surname alone was enough to identify the family background.
    “Pristina three years ago? A lot of Serb special forces were killing back then. If she saw anything, it was probably just uniforms and camouflage makeup.”
    “Do you start all your investigations with this negative attitude?”
    “Just the difficult ones. Is the Tribunal on the case?”
    “Miller says I'm to pass on the file, and I'm doing that. But you know as well as I do how stretched they are. They'll take one look at it and say exactly what you said.”
    Dragan drank some beer.
    “The victims, they were shot?”
    “Three were, to get them into the truck. But they all died of suffocation when the truck went into the lake.”
    Dragan exhaled through pursed lips.
    “So she didn't see them killed?”
    “Probably not. Why?”
    “Because if no one saw the truck go into the river, who's to say it wasn't an accident?”
    “Come on, Dragan, you know it was murder. Had to be.”
    “I'm just playing devil's avocado.”
    “Advocate. Devil's advocate.”
    “What's avocado?” asked Dragan, frowning.
    “That green fruit thing. Soft inside, with a stone.” Solomon slid an envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the bar in front of the policeman.
    “She came to Sarajevo about three years ago. I want to find her. That's her details, and her family's. And most of the Commission