A 21-year-old Swedish national came to Ohrid on holiday. The night between 8 and 9 August ended in a nightclub. On 10 August at 2:35pm she walked into the Bitola regional police department and reported that she had been raped. Four hours later, at 6:30pm, officers from the Ohrid regional department arrested K.S. from Veles.

He is in custody. After the case is fully documented, the Interior Ministry says the appropriate charges will be filed against him.

Those are the facts, and they are deliberately laid out this way - without adjectives. The procedure is ongoing, no indictment has been raised yet, and a person has the right to the presumption of innocence. But there is a part of this story we are already allowed to talk about.

Four hours from report to arrest

She reported it in Bitola, the arrest was made by Ohrid, and about four hours passed between the two. For a police response in a case where the suspect wasn't caught in the act, and the victim is a foreigner who doesn't speak the language, that is fast. It deserves saying, because when the police are slow we write that every time.

The question that comes next is harder: what happens to the case once it leaves the headlines. That is the weak point of every case like this in Macedonia - not the arrest, but what follows in the coming months, when nobody is asking any more where it has got to.

The Ohrid summer and what doesn't make the promo videos

Ohrid is being sold this season as a European destination - concerts, clubs, foreign guests, full hotels. That is true and it is good for the town. But a tourist destination with a nightlife carries an obligation that rarely appears in the promotion budget: the capacity to protect a guest at four in the morning exactly as well as it welcomes her at noon.

A guest reporting a crime in a foreign country faces one extra obstacle a local doesn't - the language, an unfamiliar system, a flight home waiting for her. How many such reports ever reach the counter at all?

In this case it did. The suspect is in custody, the case is being documented and will proceed through the regular procedure. What will show the institutions' real attitude isn't yesterday's press release, but whether in six months anyone will be able to say what stage the case is at - without a journalist having to ask.