Two forty in the morning, a local road between the Karposh neighbourhood in Kumanovo and the village of Nikuljane. A moped in motion, two men on it, several rounds fired at an Audi with Kumanovo plates. The driver, a 34-year-old man from Kumanovo, was not hurt. The shooters are unknown.

Police logged the call at 02:45, five minutes after the shooting. A team from the Kumanovo police department carried out an inspection at the scene and, as the bulletin puts it, "measures are being taken to find the perpetrators and clear up the case".

That sentence is familiar. We read it after every incident like this, in the same wording, as if it were a template waiting only for the names and the time to be filled in. The question that never makes it into the bulletin is a different one: who in the Balkans fires from a moving moped at three in the morning without knowing exactly who they are shooting at?

Nobody was hurt, and precisely because of that the story will get lost among the day's news. But rounds fired at a moving vehicle on a public road are not an argument between two men - they are a message. And until it is known who sent it and why, all that remains in Kumanovo is one more open case.