A successful interrogation was based on surprise, and for a man who was locked up drunk, late at night, wearing a fancy tuxedo, it was quite a surprise to be awoken by Ewert Grens’s unnecessarily loud and irritating Gooood morning being shouted through a small hatch in the door. And it wasn’t much more fun when the keys to the jail cell rattled and shook into his head and the sound of the metallic whine of the bolt became a sword piercing his every attempt to think. Or when the cell door was opened and the detective superintendent stormed in, followed by the female police officer who’d brought him in on this groundless arrest. Which was why Dusko Zaravic turned over on his cell bunk and met every question Grens asked with the silence of his back.

“You and I last saw each other seventeen years ago. I questioned you about the murder of a family—I know you remember it, you bastard. And I interrogated your friends Dejan and Branko and Ermir—I bet you remember that too. Then I questioned your employer, but I was forced to let him go after seventy-two hours and watch him flee the country—I’m sure you remember that particularly well. And, Zaravic, since you do remember all of that, you might also recall that I promised I’d never allow a killer to go free again after I found him? So if you . . .”

“Are you done?”

Zaravic still had his back to his visitors. Ewert Grens leaned closer, hissing.

“I’m done when you and I look at each other and I can ask my questions.”

Then they waited in his narrow prison cell—a sink and a floor-mounted stool were the only furniture besides the bunk.

Silent minutes.

Until Zaravic made a point of turning over slowly.

“Say whatever the hell you came to say. And then leave.”

“Yes, I could do that, if I wanted to. Leave, that is. Unlike you. But first, an observation: you don’t seem particularly upset that your colleagues are being executed, one by one.”

“Upset? Why would I be?”

“Because they seem to be dying off rather quickly. Two one morning, a third the next.”

“From bullets—not age. So why should I worry? You, on the other hand, Superintendent or whatever the hell you are, how old are you?”

“Three dead. Within twenty-four hours. And the fourth shows up at a wedding without a care in the world wearing that—a white tuxedo, not very careful behavior for a man whose friends just left him.”

“I don’t walk around on the streets being scared.”

“Or maybe you know you don’t have to be—because you shot them?”

He laughed. Dusko Zaravic really laughed. Not as a challenge, or with scorn. More heartily. If gangsters were capable of that these days.