Zoran was on the ground and his breath came hard. Petar’s boy – who had been slow to learn arithmetic, quick to read and a star at football – towered over him. ‘You fucking obstinate old fool. You’ve killed us.’

It would have been the shards from the fourth mortar bomb that cut him down. Zoran was trying to assemble an answer that had dignity and logic when the metal shards hit him.

The flare had died but it was getting light. Rain dribbled on his face, on the blood from his chest, stomach and hip. The pain, in spasms, was coming. He wished then that he was dead. That night he had carried neither a grenade nor a loaded pistol and could not end his life. He saw movements in the corn and, between his gasps, heard stems bent and broken.

Four men. They were not regular soldiers but Arkan’s people, whom the Serbs called the Tigers and the Croats called the scum. The blades of their knives caught the light. It was bright enough for them to see that he was alive, so he would be kept until last. He heard chuckles from the four, their knives cutting into flesh and ripping of clothing. The Tigers always mutilated the dead… and the living. He heard them cut out the eyeballs, then tear trousers to expose the genitalia of the two sons and the cousin. Then came the castration, the forcing open of mouths and the placing of bloodied gristle down the throats. He remembered what the young man he had met in Zagreb had said: ‘You have nothing to worry about, and that’s a promise.’ A young face and a fresh smile had won his confidence.

The hands had found him, and his ears were filled with the Tigers’ oaths. Without the weapons he had believed he had bought, the village would not survive. When its defences fell, the Cornfield Road would be cut and all links to the town in the west broken.