“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I said. I opened the door and we stepped into the narrow no-man’s-land between carriages. The next car was just as uneventful, same grandmas, same backpackers, until we got to the last compartment. We’d been peeking through windows or open doors, but this compartment had the door jammed, the window shade drawn.
I flicked up a brow at Mary Alice. She shrugged. “Could be napping. Or having sex.”
“Or something else,” I said. “I hope you know the Montenegrin for ‘sorry to interrupt’ because I’m going in.”
I grabbed the handle of the sliding door and pulled. Ittook three tries before it gave way, and I realized it wasn’t because the door was jammed. In the track where the slider was supposed to run, something was blocking the way. Well, someone, to be exact. A body had fallen against the door, wedging it shut until I applied enough pressure to pop it free of the slider track. When it came loose, I was able to move the body aside easily enough but that was probably because of all the blood. Before it coagulates and gets sticky, blood is slippery, especially if there’s a lot of it.
Mary Alice and I ducked in and shut the door again, putting our backs to it as we surveyed the scene.
“What thehell?” she breathed. The air was thick with the metallic smell of fresh butchery, and I made a quick, professional assessment. The body was wearing a business suit, stark black and good quality. Not custom, but not off a cheap rack either. His shoes were Italian, and the watch on his wrist was a low-end but perfectly decent Rolex. The nails were buffed. This wasn’t a generic messenger or goon. This had been someone’s number two or maybe three, the kind of guy who functions well as a cog in a criminal machine because he gives the easy impression of respectability. He wouldn’t make the big decisions, but he’d have the ear of the guy who did. His body was slender, not the overblown muscles of the enforcers, and his hands looked pretty youthful—early thirties I guessed.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t just look at his face, it’s because he didn’t have one. The only sign of violence on his body was the lack of a head, and it took me a minute to realize it had rolled under a lower berth.
“I am not picking that up,” Mary Alice said flatly.
“We don’t have to,” I said, patting him down for a wallet. I found it in his hip pocket which meant getting a little friendlier with his corpse than I would have liked. There was no phone which meant the killer had probably taken it.
I flipped the wallet open and checked the contents. Some Montenegrin currency which I left, a few family pictures—cute kids who I hoped wouldn’t miss him too much—and a prayer card with a little charm dedicated to St. Harlampy. He’s a Montenegrin martyr who’s supposed to protect the faithful from unexpected death. “Wouldn’t count this one as a win,” I told the icon before I turned to the driver’s license.
The name was Montenegrin and meant nothing to me, but I’d have bet my last jelly doughnut it would find a match on a list of Jovan Muric’s known associates.
“Looks like Galina has already collected what she came for,” Mary Alice said.
“With Tamara’s help, I’d bet, because I’d be surprised if Galina likes getting her hands dirty,” I replied. The head had been taken off neatly, with a good knife, recently sharpened. There were a few deep, clean cuts on the palms and fingers, defensive wounds. They weren’t significant, probably because he hadn’t expected to be jumped, especially by a woman who wouldn’t pass theYou Must Be This High to Ride This Ridesign at Disneyland.
“Goddammit,” Mary Alice said. “If she’s got it—whatever it is—she might already be off the train.”
“Not a chance,” I said absently. I’d spotted something half-hidden under the seat—not the one with the head. Theother side. In fact, it was the head that made me look there in the first place. The eyes were still open, staring across the floor towards the other side of the compartment. Rising like a little island in the lake of blood was a piece of wood. I plucked it out of the gore. It was narrow, marked with deep pits of old staples. A series of letters and numbers had been inked on it.
It was easy to see what had happened. The courier—the guy currently lying around without a head—must have opened the parcel he was carrying. Then, before he could pack it up again, Galina and her henchwoman had arrived to take it off him. In the struggle, it had been damaged a little—and only a little, I hoped. The fact that the wood had been left behind meant they’d cleared out in a hurry. They should have retrieved it. The whole thing would be more valuable intact.
“What is it?” Mary Alice asked.
“Something I never thought I’d see in this lifetime.”
I took a tissue from my pocket and wrapped up the fragment of wood with the numbers on it. It stuck out from my pocket just a little, but there was no way I was leaving it behind.
Then I went into the corpse’s pockets again and retrieved his keys. I stripped off his jacket and tied it awkwardly over what was left of his neck. It wasn’t tidy, but at least it would sop up some of the blood. Together Mary Alice and I hefted the corpse up into the third berth. I retrieved his head and put it into a pillowcase, tucking the whole thing above the shoulders. The naked pillow went over that, and if you peeked in the compartment quickly, you’d just see a guy sleeping under his pillow. Mary Alice waited with the body while Iretreated to the toilet compartment. I’d seen a bucket in there and I filled it with tepid water and some slimy soap. It took three trips to sluice the blood off the floor and we had to use Mary Alice’s jacket to wipe up the last of it. I bundled the jacket out the window before Mary Alice and I left the compartment. There was no way to lock the door behind us, but at least if anyone peeked in, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that there was a corpse inside. The last thing we needed was an emergency stop with police swarming the train because somebody had stumbled over a headless body.
We hurried back to our compartment, Mary Alice messaging the others as we went. They met us a few minutes later. We closed the door and lowered the shade. The chicken was asleep, swaying gently with the movement of the train as it gathered speed on the climb to the Pannonian Plain.
“What did you find?” Helen asked.
“Headless body,” Mary Alice told her.
“Holy shit,” Nat replied. “Whose?”
“We think it’s one of Muric’s guys,” I said.
“The courier,” Mary Alice clarified.
“Then Galina has whatever she’s after,” Helen said.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Nat added.
Mary Alice sighed. “Natalie, remind me to get you a thesaurus for Hanukkah next year. Just to mix things up.”
“Galina’s still on the train,” I reminded them. “It hasn’t stopped, and unless she has a death wish, she’s not jumping on this trip.” I nodded towards the window where a panorama of mountain scenery was unfolding. On the corridor side of the train, we were up against a wall of rock. On theother side, it was a sheer drop to the valley below, far enough that anybody who took a flyer would be in worse shape than Jovan Muric’s courier. “We’ve got to find her before we cross into Serbia,” I added.