Belgrade Noir

I realized that I needed to calm down and that I shouldn’t reveal who I was. I needed money — and to be honest, I stole some. I returned to the rear of the theater, and got a haircut at the barbershop, Sweeney Todd. I couldn’t place the name of the shop, so I asked. “Don’t you know?” replied the young barber. “It’s a famous film. Sweeney Todd shaved his customers and, in the end, slit their throats, turned their chairs upside down, and threw them in a pit. Ha-ha! Maybe we’ll do the same to you.”

They shaved me and didn’t slit my throat. I knew, however, that I could slit throats, poison, and kill whomever I wanted, passing back and forth through an ordinary rusty door. On the future side, the first murder I committed occurred during the twenty-sixth run of Chekhov’s drama Ivanov. I returned to 1942 and killed Jovanka Dvorniković, then again escaped to 2019. At that moment, I felt powerful, unbelievably grand. I, Dr. Erich Hetzel, assassinate people with impunity, sowing fear at the National Theater. I am not sure if I still do it because of my wife Barbara, or whether my power has become like a scar which suits my face nicely…

Whom to kill next? wondered Dr. Erich Hetzel in 1942. Should he assault the lives of the most famous actors: Olga Spiridonović, Pavle Bogatinčević, Ljubinka Bobić, Žanka Stokić, Nevenka Urbanova, Milivoje Živanović?

Or should he first check what they had achieved and what legacy they had left behind in the future? Once again, he passed through the time door, now without running away from the sound of the steps of justice at his heels. He realized that Spiridonović, Bogatinčević, Bobić, Stokić, Urbanova, and Živanović had laid the foundations for our theatrical life after the German defeat and the creation of a new Yugoslavia. What did the scar on his face tell him? To begin eliminating the most famous and, by doing so, not only avenge the National Theater but also its entire history.

Luckily for the history of theater, he stopped, mulled it over, and decided to kill those who, owing to their talents, had not deserved any recognition, including those in the audience. In 2019, he was the perpetrator of one more spectacular murder onstage; in 1942, two more, by which point the final tally of this serial killer reached six.

Confident after his sixth victim, puffed up like a bird, Dr. Hetzel believed he was God. He had no guilt; he eliminated bad actors one after the other and spared the future greats. In both time frames, he practically expected doormen to kiss his hand when he walked into the building; however, in such a state of mind, he underestimated the skill of those two detectives: Slobodan Jovićević from 2019 and Mika Golubjev from 1942.

Just like Mika the Toothpick, Jovićević also bumped into the boiler room door, only to realize that the suspect was nowhere to be found in the room where there was no way of escaping.

Jovićević thought to himself.

Mika the Toothpick thought to himself.

Unexpectedly, Mika Golubjev arrived at a genius idea.

He was unsure how it occurred to him that there had to be a time portal through which the killer escaped by the skin of his teeth. He continued this train of thought: In that future time, the killer certainly could not be content with a quiet life, as he had shown himself a person who persists to the end without fear or hesitation. That meant he killed both here and there. The detective of the future could not be aware of him, but Mika Golubjev, from the past, would somehow figure out how to warn his colleague of the future so that each of them could trap the killer on either side.

It immediately occurred to him how to do this. Today’s newspapers turn yellow after seventy-seven years, but with a little luck, they are still available. Hence, our detective of the First Belgrade Precinct placed an ad in Opštinske Novine. It read: