The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather

she said.
    “She's a miser with salt and pepper, always has been. Treats it like gold dust.” She held the bowl to her lips, then grimaced as she swallowed. She wiped her chin with her clawed right hand.
    “Still, beggars can't be choosers,” she said, and laughed harshly.
    Solomon put down his bowl on a three-legged wooden stool and took out his notebook and the wedding photograph. The old woman's face fell.
    “It was them, wasn't it?” she said.
    Solomon nodded.
    She closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath. Solomon looked down at his notebook and riffled through the pages. When he looked up again, her eyes were still closed, her back ramrod straight.
    “I'm sorry, Nana,” he said.
    “It's not a surprise,” she said quietly.
    “I knew they were dead. Of course they were dead, they had to be. But knowing and believing aren't the same thing.”
    Solomon knew what she meant. Time and time again he'd broken bad news to people who already knew that the worst had happened, but until they heard it from him, the official harbinger of death, there was always some slim hope to cling to. It was his job to take it away.
    The old woman opened her eyes and forced a thin smile.
    “I don't know how you can do the job you do, Jack Solomon,” she said, as if she'd been reading his mind.
    “Someone has to do it, Nana,” he said, but even as the words left his lips he realised how banal they sounded. And how much he was beginning to hate his work.
    He placed the photograph on the table in front of her.
    “All of the dead in the truck were family members,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless as it always was when he had to rehearse the details of death. It was easier to deliver bad news if he made it sound neutral. As if he was reading a weather forecast.
    “Twenty-six in all. Would you like me to go through their names?”
    He waited while Kimete translated.
    “Nemapotrebe,” Mrs. Berisha said quietly.
    “There's no need.”
    “The twenty-six includes the little girl. Your great granddaughter.”
    “Shpresa.”
    Solomon spoke slowly, giving Kimete time to translate.
    “That's right. Shpresa. Twenty-six including her. Now, in the wedding photograph, there are twenty-seven relatives, and that doesn't include Shpresa.”
    “Because she hadn't been born then.”
    “That's right.” Solomon tapped the man who'd been blown up by a land mine shortly after the wedding.
    “And this man died, you said.”
    She nodded.
    Then Solomon pointed to the teenage girl.
    “Which leaves this girl,” he said.
    “She is definitely not among the dead in the truck.”
    “Nicoletta.”
    “Yes, Nicoletta. Nicoletta Shala, you said.” He pointed at the man and woman who stood at either side of her.
    “Agim Shala and Drita Shala. Her father and mother?”
    “Yes. He is my brother's son. My nephew.”
    The cottage door creaked open. Solomon jumped, then relaxed when he saw that the visitor was a gangly boy barely into his teens, his skin peppered with acne and his dark hair lank and greasy. The old woman waved him in impatiently.
    “Close the door. The heat's getting out and firewood doesn't grow on trees.”
    The boy did as he was told.
    “You always say that, Nana,” he said.
    “It might have been funny fifty years ago, but it's an old joke now.”
    The old woman picked up her walking-stick and waggled it at the boy.
    “I've already told Mr. Solomon that you're a good boy who respects his elders, so don't go proving me wrong,” she said.
    The boy was holding a large brown-paper bag, which he carried into the kitchen. Then he returned and sat down on a stool.
    “This is Mr. Solomon,” said Mrs. Berisha.
    “I told you about him, remember? And this is his friend, Kimete.”
    The boy kept his head down, his fringe hanging like a curtain over his eyes.
    “The policeman from Sarajevo,” he muttered. He spoke in English, heavily accented.
    “I'm not a policeman,” said Solomon.
    “I work with the police, but