Dead Men Don't Call

"Get out of my car before I call the police." The fisherman leaned closer to the open window. "You call police? For what?" "For you." He laughed—the kind of laugh that made me want to throw something. "You young people," he said. "Always police. Always calling somebody." "I'm twenty-five." "Exactly." I stared at him. He stared back. Behind him, the harbour was already boiling. Not literally, although by nine-thirty in the morning, with the September sun bouncing off the pale stone and the sea throwing light straight into my eyes, it felt close enough. Somebody had left a diesel engine running near the quay, a gull was screaming from the roof of the fish market, and somewhere behind me a radio was playing an old Oliver Dragojević song badly through a speaker that sounded as if it had swallowed sand. The fisherman smelled of cigarettes, salt and yesterday's squid. His name was Marin. Or Mario. I was almost certain it was Marin, but I had called him Mario twice already and he hadn't corrected me. That should have worried me. Nothing about that morning felt quite right. "Three crates," he said. "What?" "Three crates of wine." "I heard you." "Then why you say you don't know?" "Because I don't know." "You were there." "I was at the restaurant." "Exactly." "I ate grilled squid." "You saw the crates." "I saw crates." "Three." "Maybe four." He slapped his palm against the roof of my little white Fiat Panda. "Three." "Fine. Three. Congratulations." He bent down again. "You think this is funny?" "No. I think you're holding me responsible for wine I didn't steal." "Who says steal?" "You've been standing here for twenty minutes telling me the crates are missing." "Missing is not stolen." "Where did they go?" He looked towards the harbour, and I followed his eyes. Fishing boats knocked gently against the stone quay. Blue plastic tubs sat upside down beside coils of green rope. Two tourists in matching linen shirts were taking photographs of a cat that was sitting on a scooter as if it owned the scooter, the street and possibly half the island. Nothing moved quickly. Except me. I had slept for four hours. My hair was sticking to the back of my neck. One of my sandals had already given up somewhere near the fish market, and I was driving barefoot, which I considered a perfectly reasonable response to a shoe that had broken because some genius had glued a decorative buckle onto it instead of attaching it properly. But apparently Marin had other concerns. "Why were you asking about the old wine?" "I wasn't." "You asked Ivana." "I asked her if the restaurant had a table." "You asked about the cellar." "I was looking for the toilet." He narrowed his eyes. "The toilet is upstairs." "I didn't know that." "You were looking at cellar door." "Because it had a sign." "There is no sign." "There was a sign." "There wasn't." "Then I imagined it." He looked at me for a long moment. "Maybe." "Maybe." He straightened. For one second, I thought he was finally going to leave. Instead he said, "You have your father's eyes." My stomach tightened. I hated when strangers did that. I didn't answer, and he seemed to realize he'd stepped somewhere he shouldn't have. "Anyway," he said. "The wine is old. Very old. Somebody wants it." "Then maybe somebody took it." "Who?" "How should I know?" "You know more than you say." I laughed. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me this week." He didn't laugh. And that was when the phone came through the window. It hit my shoulder. I shouted. The phone landed on my lap, bounced against the steering wheel and dropped between my knees. For half a second, neither of us moved. Then Marin swore—not loudly, almost thoughtfully. I picked up the phone. Black screen. Cracked corner. Blood on the back. A man's blood, I assumed, because it was too dark and sticky to be anything else. "What the hell?" Marin stepped away from the car. "Don't touch it." "You've already seen it?" "No." "Then how do you know?" He looked past me, at the harbour, at the street behind the harbour. Something had changed. I felt it before I understood it. The tourists had stopped taking photographs. The cat had disappeared from the scooter. Even the gull seemed quieter. Then somebody shouted. I turned. A man in a dark shirt was running between two parked vans. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking behind him. Then he disappeared around the corner. "Who was that?" I asked. Marin didn't answer. "Marin?" Nothing. I looked at him. He was gone. "Seriously?" I opened the car door. The phone vibrated. I froze. Once. Twice. The screen lit up. Unknown number. I almost didn't answer. Almost. Then I did. "Hello?" For several seconds there was only breathing. Slow. Uneven. Male. "Who is this?" The breathing stopped. Then a voice said my name. "Ina." I couldn't move. The harbour suddenly seemed much too bright. I knew that voice. No. That wasn't possible. I knew the voice. I had heard it in a hospital corridor eighteen months earlier while somebody was crying behind a closed door. I had heard it on a recording that had been played twice because the first time nobody believed what they were hearing. I had heard it once, very softly, just before a body was zipped into a black bag. I had watched that body disappear. And now the man was saying my name. "Ina." I swallowed. "Who is this?" A pause. Then: "You shouldn't have come back." My fingers tightened around the phone. "You're dead." Silence. "Who is this?" "You know." "No." "You do." I looked at Marin. He was standing twenty metres away. He had turned his back to me. That was strange. Everything was strange. "Marko?" The man breathed out. "Don't say my name." I couldn't speak. Marko Vuković had been dead for eighteen months. I had watched him fall. Not from far away. Not in a photograph. I had been there. I remembered the sound. That stupid detail had stayed with me when everything else became blurred. The sound of his watch hitting the concrete after his body fell. Tick. Tick. Tick. Then nothing. "I saw you die," I whispered. "I know." "Where are you?" "Listen to me." "No." "Ina." "Where are you?" "Don't trust the police." My mouth went dry. "What?" "Don't leave the island." "You're telling me not to leave an island while you're apparently dead?" "You need to stay here." "Why?" "And don't open the second photograph." I looked down. The screen showed two photographs. One was already open. The second was marked with a small red dot. I hadn't noticed it before. "What second photograph?" He swore quietly. "Damn it." "You know what's on it?" "Don't open it." "Marko." "Promise me." "No." "Ina, listen to me." "No." "You have always been incapable of listening." That sounded like him. Exactly like him. I stared at the first photograph. A man standing beside a white wall. Dark hair. Thin face. A scar near his eyebrow. Older, perhaps. But him. Marko. Alive. I zoomed in. My hand shook. "You're alive." "No." "What?" "I'm not." I laughed once. It came out wrong. "You're calling me from a phone covered in blood." "Yes." "That's comforting." "You need to—" I opened the second photograph. "Ina!" The image loaded. My heart stopped. It was me. Standing beside the harbour. This morning. My long dark blonde hair was loose over one shoulder. I was wearing the white linen shirt I'd bought in Split because I had convinced myself linen made me look less exhausted. My sunglasses were on top of my head. I was smiling. I wasn't smiling now. The photograph had been taken from across the harbour. Behind me stood Marin. And beside Marin stood a man I didn't recognize. Tall. Dark hair. White shirt. Looking directly at the camera. No. Not the camera. At me. I zoomed in. His face blurred slightly. But his hand was visible. He was holding something. A knife. "Who is that?" I whispered. The line went dead. "Marko?" Nothing. "Marko!" A c***k split the morning. The rear window exploded. I ducked. Glass flew over my hair and shoulders. Someone screamed. A second c***k. The windshield shattered. I threw myself onto the passenger seat. Another shot. The dashboard jumped. "Move!" A hand grabbed my arm. I screamed and swung blindly. "It's me!" The man pulled me out of the car. I kicked him. He swore. "You've got to be kidding." "Who are you?" "Run." "I don't know you." "You'll have time to hate me later." Another shot struck the car. He dragged me behind a stone wall. I crouched there barefoot, breathing so hard my chest hurt. The man looked at me. I recognized him from the photograph. Not the one on the phone. The reflection. The man standing beside me. The man with the knife. Except now he wasn't holding a knife. He was holding a gun. "Fantastic," I said. He looked at the gun. Then at me. "It's not mine." "Of course." "It isn't." "You're holding it." "I know." "That's usually how guns work." "Can you be quiet for ten seconds?" "No." He looked over the wall. "Stay here." "Absolutely not." He disappeared. I waited. One second. Two. Three. Then I followed him. Because I have always had excellent instincts. They were usually wrong. The street behind the harbour was narrow enough that my shoulders almost brushed the walls. Stone houses leaned over it from both sides, shutters half closed against the heat. A green Vespa was parked beneath a window with a red geranium in a cracked white pot. The man was already halfway down the street. "Hey!" He looked back. "Stop following me." "You pulled me out of a car that's being shot at." "And now I'm leaving." "Who are you?" "Luka." "That's all?" "For now." "That's not an answer." "It is if you're in a hurry." I ran after him. Barefoot. Over hot stone. "Luka!" He stopped. I nearly crashed into him. "What?" "Where are we going?" "Away." "Very specific." "Good." "Are you always this annoying?" "No." "Lucky me." He smiled. It was brief. Wrong moment for it. Still, I noticed. He had one of those faces women probably made excuses for. Dark eyes. A little scar under his lower lip. Hair that looked as though he'd cut it himself with a knife. He was wearing a faded grey T-shirt and jeans, which seemed absurd in that heat. I hated him immediately. That helped. And then someone shouted from behind us. "Luka!" He turned pale. A man appeared at the end of the street. Luka grabbed my wrist. "Run." We ran. I didn't ask where. The street twisted downhill. A door opened. An old woman stepped out holding a basket of laundry. "Ajme!" "Sorry!" I shouted. Luka knocked into a chair. The old woman yelled something in Croatian that I didn't catch. We turned left. A dog barked. A scooter horn blared. Somebody shouted, "What are you doing?" Nobody knew. Neither did I. We burst onto a wider street overlooking the sea. The water was brutally blue. Beautiful. Completely irrelevant. Luka shoved me behind a parked delivery van. "Stay down." "I'm getting tired of that sentence." "You should get used to it." "I don't like you." "Good." "Why?" "People who like me usually end up in trouble." "That makes no sense." "It does later." He crouched beside me. I could smell cigarette smoke on his shirt. "Who was shooting?" He looked at me. "Who was calling you?" I stared at him. "You know about the phone." "I saw it." "You knew Marko?" His face changed. Just slightly. Enough. "You knew him." "I knew of him." "That's not what I asked." He looked towards the road. "Did he tell you anything?" "He said not to trust the police." Luka's jaw tightened. "And?" "Not to leave the island." "And?" "And not to open the second photograph." Luka closed his eyes. I held up the phone. "I opened it." "I know." "How?" "You're holding the phone." "Oh." He looked at me. "You really don't know what's happening, do you?" "No." "Then stop asking questions." "That's terrible advice." "I know." A police siren sounded in the distance. Luka stood. "We need to go." "Where?" "To the old olive mill." "Why?" "Because if they find us here, you're going to jail." "For what?" He looked at the phone. "For murder." I laughed. Then I realized he wasn't joking. "What murder?" He didn't answer. "Luka." He started walking. "Luka!" He stopped. "Your fisherman." I looked back towards the harbour. Marin was nowhere. I had assumed he was hiding. I had assumed he had run. I had assumed many things that morning. Luka said, "They found him." "Where?" "In your car." My stomach dropped. "That doesn't make sense." "No." "What do you mean, in my car?" "Blood. Knife. Your fingerprints." "I didn't kill him." "I know." "How?" He looked at me for a long moment. "Because he was alive when I last saw him." "When?" "Twenty minutes ago." That was impossible. I looked at the phone. The blood on the back had started drying. "Then who killed him?" Luka didn't answer. A police car turned onto the road. He grabbed my hand. This time I didn't pull away. We ran. We reached the old olive mill just after noon. It sat above the harbour behind a low stone wall, half abandoned and half used for storage. The door was painted blue once, although most of the paint had peeled away. Inside, the air smelled of dust, old wood, olive oil and something sweet that I couldn't identify. Luka locked the door. I leaned against the wall. My feet were bleeding. "Sit." "No." "You're bleeding." "I noticed." "Sit." I sat. He found a bottle of water. I drank half of it before realizing it was warm. "Delicious." "Sorry." "You keep saying sorry." "Do I?" "Yes." He crouched in front of me. "Give me your foot." "No." "I'm not proposing." "Good." He looked at me. I gave him my foot. He cleaned the cut with a piece of cloth and water. It hurt. I bit my lip. "Don't." "What?" "Pretend it doesn't." "I wasn't." "You were." "Maybe I'm very brave." "You're shaking." "So are you." He looked at his hand. He was. Neither of us said anything. Outside, a police siren passed. Then another. Luka tied the cloth around my foot. "There." "Thanks." "You're welcome." A strange silence settled between us. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't exactly uncomfortable either. Then I remembered the phone. I pulled it from my pocket. "Tell me everything." "No." "Then I'll call the police." He laughed. "You think that's funny?" "Yes." "Why?" "Because the police are looking for you." "For me?" "Your fingerprints were on the knife." "I never touched a knife." "They'll say you did." "Why?" "Because someone wants them to." "Who?" "I don't know." "You're very useful." "I try." I looked at him. "You were with Marko." He didn't answer. "You knew he was alive." "No." "You recognized his voice." "No." "You knew about the photograph." "No." "You're a terrible liar." "And you're very annoying." "People keep telling me that." "Maybe listen." I stood. He moved in front of me. "Where are you going?" "Back to the harbour." "No." "Move." "Ina." "Move." "You can't go back." "Why?" "Because they'll be waiting." "Who?" He hesitated. That hesitation was worse than an answer. "Luka." He looked away. "Who?" "His brother." I stopped. "Marko had a brother?" "Yes." "What's his name?" Luka looked at me. "Petar." I knew that name. Not because I had met him. Because Marko had once told me about him. A brother who had disappeared. A brother who was supposedly dead. I sat down again. The room felt colder. "What did you just say?" Luka rubbed his face. "Petar is alive." I stared at him. "That's impossible." "Apparently we're having that kind of day." The phone vibrated. Both of us looked down. A message. No number. Just four words. YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED. Then another. LOOK UNDER THE SEAT. I looked at Luka. He shook his head. "Don't." I smiled. "I'm beginning to think you don't understand me at all." I walked back towards the door. "Ina." I opened it. The car was still parked down the hill. The driver's door hung open. The windshield was shattered. Glass glittered on the road. I walked to the car. Luka followed. "Don't touch anything." "Fine." I crouched. Under the driver's seat was a small black envelope. I pulled it out. Luka swore. "What?" "That's not yours." "No." I opened it. Inside was a key. Old brass. A photograph. And a handwritten note. My name was written on the front. INA I turned the photograph over. My hands went cold. It showed my father. Standing beside Marko. Both of them alive. Both smiling. And behind them was the same white house from the second photograph. I turned the photograph over. There was a date written in blue ink. I read it twice. Then a third time. My father had died six years before that date. I looked at Luka. "What the hell is this?" He didn't answer. "Luka." Nothing. "Tell me." He was staring past me. At the road. Someone was standing there. An old man. White shirt. Hat. Walking slowly towards us. Luka whispered something in Croatian. I didn't catch it. "What?" He grabbed my arm. "Inside." "Why?" "Now." The old man stopped. He raised one hand. He wasn't holding a weapon. He was holding a photograph. Then he smiled. I knew that smile. I had seen it in my father's house. In an old photograph I hadn't looked at since I was sixteen. The old man lifted the photograph to his chest. And behind him, another figure stepped out from the alley. Luka pushed me backwards. "Don't move." The figure raised a gun. I heard the shot. And at the exact same moment, the phone in my hand began playing a video.