The Skeleton Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

satisfy people’s demands for justice. Stands to reason. After all this time, you can’t expect to develop the kind of evidence that will always stand up to challenge in court.’
    Cagney set his cup down. ‘I appreciate that. What worries me is the cases that have never made it to court. The ones where a dossier was put together and a raid was planned to arrest the alleged war criminal. Only, the arrests were never carried out because, by pure chance, the target of the operation was assassinated before we swung into action.’
    So that was the way the wind was blowing. Someone was getting cold feet about someone else’s black ops. Macanespie shrugged. ‘Rough justice. You’ll not see many tears shed over the likes of them. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.’
    Cagney smacked a hand down hard on the table, making the crockery rattle and the teaspoons jingle. ‘Don’t give me that. There was nothing serendipitous about these deaths. At least ten of them. The last one, Miroslav Simunovic, just last week.’
    ‘There’s still a lot of murdering bastards in the Balkans,’ Proctor said.
    Cagney glared at him. ‘Remind me not to recommend you for a diplomatic post. The point I’m making is that, while my predecessor may have been willing to turn a blind eye to whatever programme of DIY justice was going on here, I’m not.’
    ‘Like you said, it’s all going to be over and done with by the end of the year,’ Macanespie said, his voice surly.
    ‘So, what? You think I should just let sleeping dogs lie?’ Cagney paused dramatically. The other two exchanged a look. It was apparently enough to create a consensus that the question was rhetorical. They stared at Cagney with expressions of stubborn mulishness. He shook his head, clearly impatient. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? This is the end of the tribunal. This is where we draw the line in the sand. This is where we say to Bosnia and Croatia and Montenegro and Kosovo and the rest of them, “It’s done. Settle down and try to behave like you’re inhabiting the twenty-first century, not the twelfth.” It’s where we tell them that we’ve done our best to mete out justice to the bad men. And now they have to move on. Let the past bury its dead.’
    Proctor made a noise halfway between a cough and a dry, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s obvious you’re new to that part of the world. They’re still fighting those ancient battles. They talk about it like it was yesterday. We might think it’s over and done, but nobody on the ground over there thinks like that.’
    ‘Well, they’re going to have to learn. If they want to be part of modern Europe, they’re going to have to learn to live like modern Europeans, not like the private armies of medieval warlords.’
    Macanespie shifted his bulk in the chair and reached for the coffee jug. ‘It’s not that simple. It’s all bound up in ethnicity and religion and tribal factions. It’s like Northern Ireland multiplied by ten. Rangers and Celtic to the power of mad.’ He took a mug out of his drawer and poured. Cagney looked momentarily furious, then mildly amused. But it wasn’t enough to divert him from his course.
    ‘And how else is it going to change if we don’t impose a higher expectation on them? You think there isn’t a new generation of young people in the Balkans who want things to be different? Who look at the world through the prism of Facebook and Twitter and see another way of living? Who are fed up with the old way of doing geopolitics in their back yard?’
    Another look exchanged. Macanespie’s shoulders slumped, confronted yet again by the ignorance of a suit from London who didn’t have a clue how this world worked. ‘Maybe. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.’
    Cagney compressed his lips into a thin exasperated line. ‘The killing has to stop. These assassinations – because that’s what they are, let’s not glorify them