While the guests relaxed and waited for the strudel to cool, Dražeta’s wife took him to one side. Her name was Wilella, which she had always disliked. Her husband called her Willa, like the American writer Willa Cather. Dražeta’s wife had copies of some of her novels in translation, battered hardbacks of Frau im Zwielicht and Meine Antonia, but they had never been to her taste. It was enough for her to own the work of a famous namesake.

‘What about the other one?’ Willa asked.

‘What other one?’ said Dražeta.

‘I saw someone else in the first car. I think it was a child. Shouldn’t we take her something to eat?’

‘You’re mistaken,’ said Dražeta.

‘I’m not,’ said Willa, her voice growing louder. ‘There’s a child with them.’

Gavrilo Dražeta, a rapist and murderer, had never raised a hand to his wife in all their fifteen years of marriage, and rarely did they exchange harsh words. Even their disappointments, the absence of children being principal among them, had not soured their relationship in any appreciable way. But now, in their kitchen – her kitchen – Dražeta placed his right hand forcefully over his wife’s mouth and pushed her hard against the wall.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You saw nothing. There is no one else out there. Do you understand?’

Willa nodded. She thought her husband looked not only angry but also frightened. She didn’t know every detail of his past, but she was aware that he had fought in the Balkan wars, and all wars were dirty. The strangers in her house belonged to this past, and were therefore also dirty. Whatever trouble they had brought with them might well linger after they left, which could be part of the reason why her husband was so scared. Yet it was, she thought, the mention of the child that had really set him off.

Dražeta took his hand away from his wife’s mouth and kissed her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing,’ she lied, but she was disappointed in him – not because of his fear, but because of how he had dealt with it, and her. The fractures in strong men ran deep.

The strudel was served. When they were done, she removed the plates and went to bed, leaving her husband and his friends to talk alone.

The Vuksans’ associates had moved to the lounge to smoke and watch TV, leaving the brothers alone with their host and a bottle of brandy. They spoke of what had happened in Amsterdam and Belgrade, including the death of Nikola Musulin.

‘If I may speak freely,’ said Dražeta, ‘Nikola was not as forceful as he might have been. They laughed at him behind his back.’