Opening the door to the hotel room, he put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door handle. With luck, housekeeping wouldn’t find Branko until late morning at best and even then, the cause of death probably wouldn’t be ascertained until after a post-mortem.

Without a glance at the corpse, he opened the sliding balcony door and exited the room onto a small, tiled space occupied by two plastic chairs and a broken table. The car park behind the hotel was almost empty apart from half-a-dozen cars. There was no sign of life anywhere, so Tom quickly climbed over the balcony wall and lowered himself over the edge. Using the balcony below, he silently dropped to the ground and walked away calmly.

He quickly stripped off the forensic suit, mask, gloves and overshoes and stuffed them in the bag, together with the items taken from Branko. He then picked up a rucksack he’d left on the balcony when making his entrance into the hotel room, put all the items inside and hefted the bag onto his back.

He walked a block away, to where his rented Hyundai was parked in a side street. He unlocked it and got into the car, stowing the rucksack in the passenger footwell. He would dispose of the forensic protective gear and items taken from Branko en route back to the airport, where he had a plane to London leaving in just over five hours.

The US passport and credit card he carried in the name of Thomas Chandler had been secured by an associate of Lucky D in London in exchange for five hundred pounds. Fortunately for Tom, Branko had not been careful in Belgrade, leaving electronic traces of his presence that were easy to find.

Tom searched for any adverse feelings he was experiencing, either negative or positive, and was once again a little disturbed to find no trace of what may be referred to as normal emotion after the events he’d just experienced.

There would be no trace of Tom having left the UK, let alone entering Serbia or travelling to a seedy hotel in backstreet Belgrade and killing Branko. Not a computer trace, not a CCTV image, not a forensic fibre or fingerprint.

Tom smiled as he began the short journey to the airport. He was hungry and fancied a bite to eat and a cold beer, and hoped somewhere would be open after he’d checked-in.

38

Michael Adebayo had enjoyed a fine evening at a fundraiser for a children’s charity at the mosque affiliated to the housing development his new home occupied. He was a fairly observant Muslim, as many converts were, but he had to admit that his reasons for worshipping at present were more about finding useful contacts and associates than being close to Allah.