The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather

highly enjoyable evening contrasting the merits of Irish whiskey and Scotch. They both enjoyed soccer: JC supported Manchester United and had been amazed to discover that the city had a second football team, and even more amazed that Solomon supported it. Like many natives of Manchester, Solomon regarded Manchester City as the true local team and Manchester United as a group of highly paid poster boys more interested in sponsorship and advertising than in the Beautiful Game. They'd become good friends and whenever there was a big match on they met in the Irish bar to get drunk and watch the game on the bar's big-screen TV.
    Solomon had phoned JC and had asked him if it was true that the Americans in SFOR had been given a list of approved nightclubs. JC had laughed and said that it depended on Solomon's definition of' approved'. There was a list in circulation but it didn't mean that the SFOR top brass condoned their staff visiting them.
    Solomon had asked him to send over the approved list, and also the names of any other bars he knew where girls were available.
    Solomon took the fax back to his office. The Purple Pussycat was on the approved list, as were the two other bars that Dragan had taken him to the previous night. All three had been pretty much the same in layout and function, but the second two had offered a mixture of girls, from the Ukraine, Latvia, Slovakia, Moldavia, Romania and Lithuania, as well as a few locals. Solomon had shown them the photograph of Nicole, but no one recalled seeing her.
    “A needle in a haystack,” Jovanovic kept repeating.
    “You busy?” asked Miller.
    Solomon hadn't heard the American walk down the corridor. He opened his top drawer and put away the two pieces of paper.
    “No more than usual,” he said.
    “They could do with you in Tuzla,” said Miller.
    “We've just got a dozen matches come through. Are you up for it?”
    A dozen matches. That meant a dozen remains identified. Twelve sets of grieving relatives. It was time for the fifth horseman to saddle up again. Solomon nodded.
    “I'll drive up this afternoon.”
    “Good man, they're expecting you. Did you pass the truck case on to the War Crimes Tribunal?”
    “Absolutely,” said Solomon.
    Miller flashed him a smile and went back to his office.
    Solomon spent the night in Tuzla, staying with one of the Commission's forensic anthropologists, and got back to Sarajevo late the following evening. As always, his throat was sore from the city's polluted air and he showered for twenty minutes to get the dirt out of his skin and hair.
    He towelled himself dry and changed into a clean pair of jeans and a denim shirt, then telephoned Dragan. The policeman's mobile was switched off and Solomon didn't leave a message. He made a cup of coffee, then took out the two sheets that JC had faxed, sat down on one of his sofas and read through the typed list.
    All but one, the Moulin Rouge, had an English name, perhaps because the clientele was mainly international, Solomon thought. Concessions were rarely made to English speakers in Bosnia: signs in English were few and far between and the city's news-vendors almost never stocked English or American papers.
    Solomon turned to the handwritten list. The four bars weren't approved by SFOR but JC had said they were regularly visited by friends of his who claimed that the music was better and the girls were prettier. The only downside was the risk of a raid, but JC said that happened only rarely and that as SFOR troops often conducted them, unofficial advance warning was usually given.
    Dragan had said that drug-use was one reason that a bar might not be on the approved list, but in the approved bars to which the policeman had taken him Solomon had seen evidence of drug-taking among girls dilated pupils, hyperactivity, sniffing, nose-rubbing.
    One of the bars on the list, the Butterfly, was in a small village to the south of Sarajevo. Solomon had been there several times to organise the