The man was older now, his face softer, his body thicker, but the more Nahid stared, the more certain he became. Here before him was one of those who had walked with General Ratko Mladić through the streets of Srebrenica after the surrender, preening for the cameras as they sat down over coffee to negotiate the terms of departure for the Dutch battalion, even as they were setting in motion the mechanics of the genocide to come. Fucking Mladić: a butcher who did not even have the guts to stay and supervise the slaughter he had ordered, but instead traveled back to Belgrade so he would have an alibi should the war turn against the Serbs.

In Mladić’s absence – physical only – the abandoned UN base at Potočari was used as a staging point for the thousands of Muslim men and boys bound for execution, and later still Potočari became a cemetery for those same dead as their remains were exhumed from forests and glades to be taken there for reburial, as though to haunt the Dutch forever. Now, in Vienna, the past had assumed human form in order to torment Nahid Hasanović too. This man, on camera, had forced Nahid’s male relatives from a truck in woodland and lined them up before a pit. He had watched as fathers were made at gunpoint to sodomize their sons, and old men were bludgeoned to death, before organizing the militias into firing squads. It was all that Nahid could do not to throw himself on this animal and sink his teeth into his flesh, to punch and kick him as he and his soldiers had punched and kicked defenseless civilians. But the other, younger man had already tensed, torn between wanting to silence Nahid but also to protect his charge, and Nahid knew that the moment he took a step forward, they would hurt him, and hurt him badly. Yet if Nahid could find a policeman, perhaps he could explain. Here was a war criminal. There was evidence on film. The United Nations was still looking for these people. They’d found Mladić and put him in the dock, and his puppetmaster Karadžić, too. One could still hope for justice.

Swiftly, Nahid began to walk away. He heard the younger man calling after him, and speeded up his footsteps until he was running, his right hand holding tightly to the phone in his pocket. He risked a glance over his shoulder, expecting to see at least one of the men pursuing him, but they were now continuing their journey through the gardens, although with perhaps a little more haste than before.