But often Nikola Musulin will be driven to Tri Lovca early in the morning solely to read a selection of the day’s newspapers – the tabloid Informer, the leftist Blic, the more right-wing Politika, as well as the Sportski Žurnal for its football coverage – over burek and coffee. Radio Nostalgija will be played at a low volume, and the chefs will mind their language because Musulin is a devout member of the Serbian Orthodox Church and disapproves of swearing. He is also, except in very rare circumstances, disinclined to resort to killing in the resolution of difficulties: violence, yes, even mutilation, but he generally eschews murder. It causes problems, draws unwelcome attention, and is frequently counter-productive. As the Serbian proverb has it, ‘A dead man pays no debts.’

Nikola Musulin is tall and handsome, but walks slowly due to severe, and worsening, rheumatoid arthritis. The condition curses him with near constant pain and causes him to suffer from constipation. He has also recently noticed a decline in his respiratory capacity, and now avoids stairs whenever possible. His sexual appetite has decreased, a fact on which both his wife and mistress have commented. As a consequence, he has fallen back on Cialis to treat his impotence.

Nikola Musulin is only forty-four, and regards his health problems as deeply unfair, but also perhaps as a punishment from God for his criminal vocation. What man, Musulin reasons, can engage in narcotics, prostitution, people smuggling, larceny, and – if infrequently – murder, and not expect some form of retribution from the Divine?

Nikola Musulin, forty-four, will not live to see forty-five.

The present tense is about to become the past.

The door of Tri Lovca opens before Musulin rings the bell because old Ivan Jelić has been keeping watch for him. Sometimes Musulin arrives unexpectedly, but usually the restaurant receives a call in advance, just so that the burek and coffee can be waiting for him, freshly made, when he takes his seat in his booth. The newspapers he will already have, as they are delivered to the gates of his home each morning. A bodyguard in a hut accepts the package, checks it – one can’t be too careful – and either sends the papers up to the house or, on those mornings when Tri Lovca is to be the destination, places them on the back seat of a silver Mercedes-AMG G63. Originally designed for military use, Musulin’s G63 is, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly vehicle, but it can go from zero to sixty in under seven seconds. The standard model can do it in fewer than five, but Musulin’s vehicle is armored, and therefore heavier.