Mortal Sins
Page 34
“Don’t know. But they are anxious to have her out of the country. As is Mr. Krestin, the guy whose house she broke into, and he has some influence with the government. The government runs the police, in case you’ve forgotten.” He rubbed his palms together, looked at them, wiped them on his knees. “Your job is to not lose sight of her again.”
Attila sighed.
“Is that simple enough?” Tóth asked.
“Krestin?” Attila refused to be baited.
“János Krestin.”
“Guy who used to own a studio making utterly dreadful movies?”
“Him.”
“And he owned the Lipótváros football team?”
“His house is not in Lipótváros, and it’s his house that she couldn’t have been in because she was asleep in her bed.”
“If he owned Lipótváros, he has some valuables. Did you say nothing was missing?” Attila didn’t know a whole lot about János Krestin, but he did know that the man had accumulated a fortune, and some of it might have come from the bribes he collected before 1989. Rumour had it that if you were accused of petty crimes against the state, Krestin could get the state to forget about them. Or he could ensure fewer years in jail.
Most former functionaries had fitted seamlessly into the new system. Many of them had the advantages of knowing other languages, and most had done well since 1989. Back then, ordinary people were still too busy trying to repair their lives to pay much attention to the successes of others. That didn’t last.
“I said nothing was stolen except the cigar case.”
“So, what was she doing there?”
Tóth shrugged.
“Perhaps she was looking for something but didn’t find it?”
Tóth shrugged again.
“And she cut the security system. So, she is a professional?”
“Not exactly,” Tóth said, chewing on his thumbnail.
“Do you have some information about her that you are not sharing?” Attila asked. “Something that explains her connection to Krestin? You told me this Helena Marsh hasn’t been here for seven years, and, even then, no one knew what she was looking for until after she left. You remember the Bauers and their Rembrandts?”
“Vaguely. Two pictures their neighbours had appropriated during the war. She had nothing to do with that.”
“In the end, the Bauers got their Rembrandts back, and the Szilágyis decided not to prefer charges, although they told me at first that their paintings had been stolen.”
Tóth shook his head. “Irrelevant.”
“It’s not irrelevant if that’s what she does. She spent time in Germany and Holland, tracking art stolen from Jews during the war. She is some kind of expert. Is that why she is here?”
“This is not about stolen art,” Tóth said. “And Krestin was never a Nazi. He was a card-carrying party member. At least for a while.”
“A while?”
“There were no card-carrying Communists after ’90.”
Some guys, Attila thought, could easily have been both Nazi and Communist, or Nazi and then Communist. A willingness to dole out physical violence would have been an advantage after the war. A man could go a long way with those credentials. Not that Krestin had ever been accused of that publicly, but one could never be sure with men of a certain age.
“But she is, as you put it, some kind of expert on art. And if you could encourage her to leave the country, I would be very grateful,” Tóth said.
“As would the Ukrainians?”
Tóth didn’t answer.
They sat in silence for a while, Attila trying to estimate just how grateful everybody — especially the Ukrainians — would be and how much extra he could charge if he persuaded the woman to go home. Then he got to his feet, buttoned his jacket, and left. Simple enough.
He was halfway across the Szabadság Bridge when he saw her. She was wearing the same dress as yesterday but she had added a summery cotton hat and a tight-waisted white cardigan. The blue scarf was tied into a knot at her neck. She was heading to the Pest side. Striding fast, her skirt fanning out in the wind off the river, she looked like a tourism commercial: cheerful, carefree, her blond hair swept back. She glanced at him without much interest when they came face to face, but he caught the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Close up, she seemed older than yesterday and older than the photo in his breast pocket. But the blond hair, the slim hips, the confident way she carried herself all added up to fortyish and foreign. Women in Hungary hadn’t walked like that for years, not since the economy tanked.
He waited for her to reach the baroque church in Ferenciek Square before he began to follow her. It was ridiculous to imagine she would not notice or that she wouldn’t remember swinging past him on the bridge, but he had agreed not to lose sight of her, and he was not about to let her disappear again.
She turned onto Dob Street and stopped outside a dull little café. Attila knew it; sometimes he dropped in for a cream scone. The black-clad Garda louts who had been strolling this neighbourhood for the past few months were across the street, smoking and glaring. Atilla had seen them patrolling this street and had heard that they occasionally tripped some elderly Jew on his way to the grocery shop or, better still, on his way back. Then he would be likely to drop his eggs and milk on the sidewalk. The louts would chortle and would declare that had people been more vigilant in ’44, there wouldn’t be a “Jew problem” now.
The trouble with allowing free speech, Attila thought, was that this sort of thing could go on unchecked. But then, according to the government, there was no problem. And, according to the government, the Garda had been banned. But here they were, as usual, although only half a dozen of them, unlike the past Sunday when they held a rally on Hösök Square. In the past, when Attila had arrested members of the Garda, they would be out in an hour or less. Hardly worth the effort. Tóth said the Jews and the gypsies could take care of themselves. It wasn’t entirely true, but it did save a lot of time and trouble with lawyers and foreign reporters who wanted to know why the Garda was still marching. (Local journalists knew better than to cover Garda events; the government’s media council could yank their licences.) The Garda had changed their uniforms, but they were still black, their flags were even more in-your-face patriotic, and they carried on.
Helena stayed at the café take-out window for a moment, examining the aging pastries in the glass case and checking her phone. She ordered an espresso in a Styrofoam cup, looked up and down the street (no doubt spotting him on the other side, talking to himself on his cell phone), and strolled on to number twenty-two. The lads made piggy noises but didn’t bother to cross the street.
She pressed the bell to one of the apartments. The door was opened immediately by an elderly man with thin, bent shoulders. He must have been waiting for her. It was murky inside, the only light a flash of sunshine far beyond the door. Attila took a photo with his phone but expected that it would show only the shadows.
The man let her inside and shut the door.
Don’t miss Mortal Sins, the next Judith Hayes mystery by Anna Porter, also available from Felony & Mayhem Press. For more Felony & Mayhem titles, including mysteries by Canadian authors such as L.R. Wright and John Norman Harris, please visit our website:
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All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
MORTAL SINS
A Felony & Mayhem “Traditional” mystery
PUBLISHING HISTORY
First Canadian print edition (Irwin): 1987
First U.S. print edition (Dutton): 1988
Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2018
Copyright © 1987 by Anna Porter
All rights reserved
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-118-4
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