by Anna Porter
“My minister has been called back to Warsaw,” Zbignew said. “He will not be at the Assembly today.”
Vaszary was, for a moment, lost for words. It was only the briefest pause, but it offered an opportunity for the door to the inner office to open and another man — grey-haired, square-set, jowly — to enter the conversation. “We have counted on Poland’s support,” he said. “We are joined in our fight against the vermin now directly invading our countries, directed by Brussels, ready to destroy our Christian identity.”
“It was unavoidable,” Zbignew said.
“No,” thundered Árpád Magyar, the jowly man whose many portfolios had included minister of justice, but who was now most likely still the deputy prime minister. He was in the habit of making portentous announcements. “It is not yet unavoidable. Please tell him I had planned to talk about our battles against the Turkish hordes and Bem, your great Polish general—”
“He is back in Warsaw,” Zbignew said more forcefully. “He has been recalled. We are reassessing our approach to the European Union. Our party leader must consider all the implications. I am sorry. Personally, I am sorry . . .”
There was a moment of silence, then Magyar returned to Vaszary’s office, banging the door shut behind him. Vaszary, with one sidelong glance at Attila, followed, leaving Zbignew, Attila, and Mrs. Gilbert to look a little embarrassed and, at least in Zbignew’s case, to beat a hasty retreat. Attila stood up and raised an eyebrow at Mrs. Gilbert. She shook her head. He sat down again.
Ten minutes later, Vaszary returned. He glared at Attila. “You were late again,” he said.
“Flights from Budapest . . .” Attila said, lifting his shoulders in a universal sign of helplessness.
“You will go to the police station and see captain Hébert and find out what the fene he wants with me. I have no time for him today. You will explain to him that this is the most important day for our country. He will understand. You will return here at one.” Much less effusive in Hungarian, Attila thought as he gratefully bounced down the steps and out the glass (bullet-proof, for sure) doors.
* * *
Helena wore the blue dress she had purchased in Rome. It was modest but slinky, swishing about her knees as she walked. She had combed her Marianne Lewis hair forward into bangs to cover the lines on her forehead, made up her eyes to seem larger and her lips to seem fuller. She used the light blue contact lenses and shaded her eyelids just enough to indicate that she had taken trouble over her appearance. Maybe she wasn’t young enough to be of serious interest to the acned guard, but she could pass for a youngish, adventurous Australian, out for a good time in Budapest.
He was talking on his cellphone when her taxi drew up to the house. She waved at him even before she paid her fare. He stuck his phone into a pocket and made a great show of sauntering toward her. He must have watched a few too many westerns. Belt low on his narrow hips, the small handgun dangling in its leather holster, his ears even more prominent than last night (did he get a haircut?), but his grin was welcoming. “You are back,” he shouted eagerly. “I thought you wouldn’t after what happened here last night.”
“What happened?” Helena asked.
“The shooting. Not far from here. A man was shot in his . . .” he stopped and blushed. “He is in hospital. You didn’t hear anything?”
“No. Maybe it was after I went back to the hotel. These hills . . .”
“Come,” he said. “We see the house now.”
It was even more beautiful than she had imagined it would be. Painted yellow in front, with red outlines around the windows and above the doors, the lines running along the sides of the house and coming down to the edge of the garden. Brick on the side. Part Bauhaus, part art nouveau, it appeared to have been lifted out of a rich Viennese neighbourhood and dropped here. There were two small towers, one above the front door, a second above the garden entrance, and an elegant nude statue by the pool.
“Imre,” the guard said, and offered his hand.
“Marianne,” Helena said. “It’s magnificent.”
He unlocked the pale wooden front door and ushered her inside to a spacious, rusty pink living area with a winding yellow staircase leading up to the second floor, evergreens in maroon planters, a Persian rug under the grand piano, uncomfortable art nouveau chairs, and two tall paintings that looked like Rothko. Her father used to commission Rothkos like this and had gained the support of a dozen so-called experts who had been willing to swear to their authenticity. The buyers had not bothered with their own forensic analysis. She was not an expert on Rothko, but these two paintings, while beautiful, did not look right. Close up, she could see that the signature was all wrong. It seemed to have been traced, but she couldn’t risk looking too closely. “These are lovely,” she said. “The colours are fabulous. Must be very expensive.”
“Mr. Magyar bought them to fit with the colours of the walls. Please don’t touch them!” he yelled as she approached one of them.
“Wow!” Deep ochre, orange, and yellow, blending into one another at their soft edges, a white centre that seemed bruised or weeping.
“He bought them last year,” Imre said.
“Here?” With no effort at all, Helena managed to sound awed.
“Yes. I helped him bring them home.”
“Amazing,” she said.
“Yes. We packed them into bubble plastic, and I wound more paper around them. They were very heavy to get downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“From an apartment on Fő Street with an elevator that was too small. ”
“No one else helped? Doesn’t this man have a bunch of people working for him?”
“Yes, but they are all official. At the ministry. And the woman who cooks and the other who cleans.”
Had they been real, these two paintings would be worth more than the Gentileschi, Helena thought. Simon had sold one of his fake Rothkos to a Dutch museum. It had been a devil of a job, he had complained to Annelise afterwards. Rothko had never discussed his methods or how he mixed his paints, so they were flying blind, trying to capture that elusive Rothko “emotional truth.” The $4 million Simon received had to be split with the artists and some of the rest went for the special paints.
There were several framed photographs on the wall next to the staircase, and they continued up the stairs. All black and white, they were official shots, the participants staring at the viewer with the fixed expressions people wore when they had been asked to pose. Most of them were men in suits; some posed in front of the parliament building. Magyar displayed the same fixed smile he used for his official portraits. In all of them, the central figure was a square-built man with short hair, a little shorter than the rest.
“Our first minister,” Imre said. “Mr. Magyar is a friend of his,” he added with pride. “He comes here sometimes.”
Apart from Magyar, the only person Helena recognized in the photos was Gizella Vaszary, and she stood next to Magyar, close but not too close, and in one photo she was looking up at him with an expression of sheer delight. Everyone else was staring into the camera.
Chapter Seventeen
The young woman at the Strasbourg police headquarters who had smiled at him the last time gave him an even friendlier smile and waved him through the security machinery with barely a glance at his old police-issue handgun. “Hongrois?” she asked.
“Oui.”
Attila was pondering how to ask in very polite French whether she happened to be free for dinner, but Hébert’s arrival spared him the likely rejection. Just as well, Attila thought, he had more than enough trouble already managing his odd relationship with Helena. “Désolé, mon ami, mais il n’y a aucun espoir là,” he said as he took Attila by the arm and steered him toward the far end of the station.
“Pardon?”
“I said there is no hope there for you, my friend,” Hébert said, s
witching to English. “She is happily married.” He led the way through the phalanx of police desks and computer screens, the familiar sounds of camaraderie, the low murmurs of sharing bits of information, the stale smell of sweaty uniforms and day-old coffee. For some reason, this felt more like home than the Police Palace in Budapest.
As if he had sensed what Attila was thinking, Hébert said, “Tóth,” as he opened the door to his office. Not the interview room this time, Attila noted. He may be off the list of suspects. “He is not very charmant, is he?”
“No,” Attila agreed.
Attila’s phone started buzzing. Budapest Police Headquarters. He didn’t answer.
“He called. Actuellement, someone in his office who speaks a bit of French and more English called and talked to me while he shouted next to the phone. Must think we are deaf here in Strasbourg.” Hébert indicated a chair to the side of his own desk — not facing the desk, Attila noted — and said he would bring some coffee. “It’s not great but potable,” he said.
There was a corkboard pinned to the wall on the other side of Hébert’s desk. Crime scene photographs of the bridge over the river marking the place where the shooter had been, the tour boat, marking the victim’s seat and the seat next to his, fuzzy pictures of the shooter running along the bridge, then the quay, the door of the cathedral and a side street near a hat shop, then some CCTV stills of a man with a long overcoat flying around his legs as he ran, and slightly clearer photos of Helena also running. In one photo, the man was seen entering the cathedral with Helena closing in. That was where he had turned, and the camera had picked up the lower part of his face. Helena’s drawing was better. For one thing, in her drawing he was shown to have a low forehead and deep-set eyes.
His phone buzzed again, stopped, then started to buzz some more. Tóth. He had never been very patient. Back when he was Attila’s sergeant, he favoured quick resolutions, even when that meant beating witnesses into saying they had seen stuff he thought they ought to have seen to suit his own theories of who was guilty. He liked shortcuts. He also liked incentives to walk away from cases and, less often, to charge people with offences they had clearly not committed. It would be good to know what Tóth had been offered to send Attila to Strasbourg. And why.
Hébert’s desk was covered with stacks of papers and files, used paper napkins, cardboard cups, a range of pens in different colours, notebooks, a wind-up penguin, and two small grey elephants.
“Tóth was agitated that we had asked to interview your Monsieur Vaszary concerning Magoci’s murder. And Vaszary’s receptionist called yesterday to tell me to expect you at around nine thirty.” Hébert made a production of checking his watch, handed Attila the coffee, and sat down carefully so as not to spill his own.
“When did you talk with Tóth?”
“This morning. He said you were coming back to Strasbourg today. He also reminded me that your Representative at the Council of Europe — and that would be Mr. Vaszary — has diplomatic immunity. As if I needed to be reminded. As if he needed immunity. And that made me think why.”
“Why?”
“Why your police think Vaszary needs some sort of protection.”
“What did you say to Vaszary?” Attila asked.
“Not much. Asked him if he could maybe come in to answer a few questions about Magoci. Since he knew the man.”
“He did?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Well . . . a little . . .” Attila said.
“When I met you at Magoci’s office a couple of days ago, you said you were there for Vaszary, didn’t you say that?”
“Yes,” Attila said cautiously.
“I suspected you were not telling the truth. It turned out you were.”
“I was what?”
“You were telling the truth. Vaszary had hired Magoci. What we want to find out is why.”
“He did?” Attila asked. “Iván Vaszary?”
“Merde! Is there another?”
“Another?”
“Another Vaszary,” Hébert said slowly, carefully pronouncing every syllable. “Is it your hearing? Or you have a problem with my English?”
Attila shook his head. “It’s just that I thought Magoci was working for Mrs. Vaszary.”
“As I remember, you didn’t know he was working for Madame or Monsieur. You said,” he flicked open his notebook, “exactement, ‘Monsieur Vaszary had hoped to hire Monsieur Magoci on a private matter. Not strictly embassy business. He asked me to find out if Mr. Magoci would be interested.’ And at that time, as we now know, Magoci had already been working for your man for six weeks. He met with Mr. Vaszary the day after he arrived in Strasbourg. De plus, he wrote to Magoci two weeks before then and suggested the matter should be discussed here but not in the office. He suggested a time and a place for the meeting.”
“Did they meet?” Attila asked.
“Je ne sais pas. There is nothing else in the file. Mademoiselle Audet has been very helpful in finding this one sheet of paper, but she didn’t know what happened next, only that Magoci was killed. Now,” he leaned forward, his arms on his desk, his face close to Attila’s. He was still smiling but only with his mouth. His eyes were serious, a look Attila knew. In every interrogation there was a moment when the good cop routine switched, and it was usually the time the suspect decided to reveal something he had managed to keep hidden.
“Time for the truth, then,” Attila said. “I lied when I went to Magoci’s office.”
“Evidemment.”
“Truth is, I was there for Mrs. Vaszary. She is the one who had hired this lawyer to handle her divorce from her husband. They are disputing details of the divorce settlement: how much she gets and how much he keeps. I was helping her.”
“Why?”
“Why helping her?”
“Yes. Why?”
“She thought he was going to cheat her out of what she should receive as her share of the assets.”
“Je ne comprends pas de tout.”
“Well,” Attila said, “in a divorce, the man and the woman . . .”
“That I understand. It’s what you were doing in this that I don’t understand.”
“She wanted to know the value of a painting they have acquired a few months ago.”
“A painting?”
“It may be worth quite a bit, or not much at all. She wanted to know which.”
“And Magoci was going to tell her?”
Attila hesitated for a second, but not so long as to make Hébert interested. “I think so,” he said at last.
“Did they meet?”
“Madame and the dead lawyer?”
“They must have. At least once.”
Hébert nodded and studied his fingernails. “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?”
Attila shook his head.
“Any ideas about the woman who chased the killer into the cathedral?”
Attila shook his head again.
“This guy Tóth, why the hell did he hire you if he does not think you are any good?”
“I have no idea,” Attila said, and he meant it.
“That bow and arrow school in Colmar, the one I mentioned to you last time, a woman signed up for classes a few days ago. Tall. Pretty. Cheveux auburn. She paid for three days in advance, then she didn’t show up again. Second person who wants to sign up for a course since the murder. Odd, don’t you think?”
“Very,” Attila said, trying to seem vaguely interested. “Did you get her name?”
“Marianne Lewis. American. You wouldn’t happen to know her?”
“No.”
“When you see Vaszary, please tell him we need to find out why he hired Mr. Magoci. Tell him diplomatic immunity does not mean he can refuse to answer questions. He has only been here a few weeks. Has almost five years to go
, and I am pretty sure I can make his life uncomfortable. You know, parking tickets, speeding, loud noise, a string of complaints to the Council of Europe. Awkward, don’t you think?”
“Very,” Attila said. He, too, wanted to know why Vaszary had hired Magoci and why Gizella had misled him and Helena.
“Lovely jacket,” Attila said as Hébert escorted him to the door. “I think I need to buy something more elegant to last me the next few years.”
“You do?” Hébert asked, looking at Attila’s jacket, the sleeves frayed, the front splattered, the vents creased up. “Yes, perhaps you do. Have a dog?”
“Yes. Why?”
“The sleeves look like something has been chewing them.”
“I will bring him next time,” Attila said. “Dachshund. Someone told me about a tailor called Vargas. Ever heard of him?”
Hébert scratched his chin. “No. But there is Bonhomme et Fils, not far from here; you could tell them I sent you.”
* * *
He called Helena. “You’re still in Budapest?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
“The man I want is here. Don’t call me on this phone again. I will call you.” She disconnected.
Okay, so she was back on her burner phones. She had a way of making everything substantially more complicated than it needed to be. He fumed all the way down to the river. Then he called Tóth.
“Mi a lófaszt csinálsz,” What the fuck are you doing, “that you don’t have time to pick up the phone? I’ve been waiting two hours for you, son of a whore, to call. What the fuck?!”
One advantage of working for Tóth, maybe the only advantage, was that he could go on for a long time, amusing himself with yelling at subordinates who didn’t have to say anything. He didn’t even have to listen: Attila had put the phone in his pocket and was enjoying the afternoon sun glinting off the river as he strolled toward Rue d’Austerlitz. He didn’t pull the phone out of his pocket till he was mounting the steps. Tóth was still shouting, though perhaps less coherently than earlier.
