The Body in the Boot: The first 'Mac' Maguire mystery

by Patrick C Walsh

  ‘She knew her killer then!’ Mac exclaimed.

  ‘It would appear so.’

  A uniform poked his head around the door.

  ‘Sir, the police artist is here.’

  ‘See you later,’ Mary said.

  As she left the room Tommy and Buddy came in. Dan went through everything again for their benefit. While he did so Mac went over to Martin who was quietly tapping away as usual.

  ‘Martin, do you have a minute?’

  ‘Just looking up all the databases I’ll need if the artist comes up with something recognisable. What do you need?’

  ‘The girl who’s helping us also said our man gave her a cigarette pack, it was foreign and all she could remember was that the name was ‘Soapy’ or something similar. Any chance you could have a look?’

  ‘Sure.’ Mac went to walk away. ‘Might as well wait this shouldn’t take long.’

  Martin opened Google and started inserting key words. Mac was amazed not just the speed he input but the logic behind the words he used. In a few seconds images of cigarette packs filled the screen, all called Sopianae.

  ‘They’re Hungarian,’ Martin explained.

  ‘Can you print that page off for me?’ Mac asked.

  ‘Done,’ Martin said as he went back to his databases.

  Mac picked up the print off and took it over to Dan who was just finishing off.

  ‘Martin reckons this could be the brand of cigarette that our man gave Brenda. They’re from Hungary.’

  ‘Hungary? I suppose that would explain the accent and perhaps even the moustache but why an Eastern European involvement?’

  ‘Well Eastern Europeans have been known to be heavily involved in prostitution perhaps he’s trying to muscle in, start a war between the rival factions running the girls?’ Adil suggested.

  ‘Anything’s possible I suppose. If that is the case he’s bound to be on record somewhere. If we can get a good enough likeness with some luck we may just be able to identify him. I’ll take this to Mary, see if Brenda recognises the cigarette pack.’

  Dan looked at his watch, it was just past one o’clock.

  ‘The artist may take a while so I suggest we grab a coffee and a bite to eat. We’ll meet back here in half an hour.’

  Tommy accompanied Mac to the canteen.

  ‘That’s strange that she knew him. You said that he might have been a client, that he might have lived here.’

  Mac shrugged.

  ‘Good guess that’s all.’

  Tommy’s expression showed that he didn’t agree.

  ‘Your source, he must be pretty powerful to scare that pimp so much.’

  ‘Please don’t ask about him. Although I promised I wouldn’t mention his name, if I’m honest, the main reason I’m not going to reveal his identity is for everyone’s protection. Believe me you do not want to be on this person’s radar.’

  Tommy could see from Mac’s face that he was deadly serious. He just nodded and decided that he’d never bring the subject up again.

  ‘Anyway it’s fish and chips today Mac, maybe not as fancy as they did in that pub but perhaps I can treat you this time.’

  ‘You said the magic words, lead on.’

  Perhaps it was because he suddenly felt ravenously hungry again but Mac enjoyed his meal just as much as he had the day before.

  ‘So what do you think our mysterious Hungarian was doing here?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Do you think it’s possible that Adil was right, that he might be from some Hungarian mafia or something?’

  ‘As Dan said anything’s possible but, if I’m honest, no I don’t. I’ve seen takeovers before and usually it involves a show of overwhelming force of some kind not one man skulking around kidnapping girls. Anyway he’s taken girls from at least two separate organisations, probably more logical to pick one off at a time. For me though the clincher is that I know who he’d be up against and, if my source thought there was the slightest chance that someone was trying to muscle in on one of his businesses, there’d be a high body count by now believe me. No there’s something else going on here but I’m damned if I know what.’

  ‘Hungary?’ Tommy stood up as he asked himself a question. ‘What do I know about Hungary? They eat goulash that’s about it.’

  As they walked back down the corridor Mac added, ‘They invented the biro, Liszt was born there, they had a great football team once and they tried to throw the Russians out in the fifties and unfortunately failed. That’s all I know.’

  ‘More than me anyway,’ Tommy said with a smile.

  Mac suddenly stopped walking and stood as still as a statue.

  ‘Mac, are you alright? It’s not the pain is it?’ Tommy asked with some concern.

  After a few seconds Mac came back to life again.

  He shook his head and said, ‘No, it’s not the pain, it was what you said.’

  Tommy looked confused.

  ‘About the goulash, it’s given me an idea.’

  When they returned to the incident room Mac had a word with Martin who, a few seconds later, wrote something on a sheet of paper and gave it to Mac.

  ‘What is it Mac?’ Tommy asked, still in the dark about the significance of his goulash remark.

  ‘It’s the address of a food shop.’

  ‘They have a Hungarian food shop in Luton?’

  ‘Not just Hungarian, they stock food from all over Eastern Europe. Might be worth showing them our man’s picture, if he did live in the area there’s a good chance he might have visited them.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. And you got that from my talking about goulash?’

  ‘Yes and something else, a memory. My mother was from Ireland and, when you mentioned goulash, I thought of a shop she used to take me to when I was young. It was over a mile there and a mile back from where we lived but we happily walked that far because the shop stocked Irish food. Sometimes she only bought a pack of biscuits if that was all she had the money for. Food from home is special, isn’t it? Even now when I manage to get my hands on some proper Irish sausages it instantly brings back memories of when I was five or six, of relatives arriving from the night boat knocking our door early on a Saturday morning. They always brought loads of sausages, white pudding and corned beef. My mother would do us all a big fry up and it was wonderful, like a party. It isn’t just the food, it’s the memories and everything else that comes with it.’

  Tommy was about to say something but he was interrupted by Mary’s arrival.

  ‘We’ve got it as good as we can. The artist is sending it over to Martin. Brenda also identified the cigarette packet.’

  Martin gave the thumbs up.

  ‘How many do you want me to print off?’

  ‘Do me twenty for now,’ Dan replied. ‘Make sure you send copies to Interpol and the Hungarian police.’

  ‘Will do, I’ve also got the databases lined up, I’ll see if I can get a match.’

  Dan went over to the printer and started distributing the picture to the team. Mac examined the portrait. Not a bad one as these things go, he thought. As Brenda said he had a moustache and was slightly chubby faced but it wasn’t a thuggish face as Mac might have expected. It was an ordinary face perhaps but not one lacking in intelligence Mac thought. He went over and had a few words with Dan.

  He was smiling as he returned to Tommy.

  ‘Okay we’re on. I need you to drive me here.’

  He handed Tommy the paper with the address on.

  ‘I know where this is, it’s only around the corner, we could walk there is five minutes…’ he looked at Mac and quickly said, ‘I’ll get the car and meet you in front.’

  Tommy had been right about the nearness of the shop. Two minutes later, in a busy narrow street full of retail businesses, they pulled up outside the ‘Europeast’ food shop. Its sign was emblazoned with various flags and it stated that it stocked ‘Quality Food from Eastern Europe’.

  A bell rang as Tommy open
ed the door. Inside it was dark and there was a strange mixture of aromas – cooked meats, cheese and spices – that Mac found enticing. The shop was mostly shelving up to the ceiling packed with packets and cans of all shapes and sizes and, from a quick glance, he had little or no idea what most of them contained.

  At the back of the shop a man in his early forties stood behind a deli counter.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asked in an Eastern European accent.

  His hands rested on top of a long glass fridge that acted as a counter. Underneath the man’s hands Mac could see in the fridge below trays full of sliced meats and cheeses, sausages, joints of meat and other things that he couldn’t identify. It all looked very inviting.

  Tommy showed his warrant card.

  ‘Are you the owner of this shop?’

  ‘Yes, my name is Meszaros Bela.’

  ‘Well Mr. Bela…’

  ‘Sorry, forgive me I should have said it the other way around, I keep forgetting, I’ve not been here too long. It’s Bela Meszaros.’

  Tommy looked a little flustered.

  ‘Okay Mr. Meszaros we’re looking for this man,’ he said as he showed the shop owner the picture.

  He looked at the picture intently and then shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid he doesn’t look familiar.’

  ‘You say you’ve not been here long,’ Mac said. ‘Who owned the shop before you?’

  ‘My uncle, he ran the shop here for over twenty years but he’s gotten a little too old for it and so I took over.’

  ‘I must say your English is very good, where are you from?’

  ‘From Hungary.’

  ‘So you’ll have heard of Sopianae cigarettes?’

  Mr. Meszaros smiled.

  ‘Of course, Sopianae is the old Roman name of the place I was born, Pecs. I’ve heard of the brand but I don’t smoke myself.’

  Mac was curious.

  ‘What did you do before you bought the shop?’

  The man gave Mac a sheepish smile.

  ‘I was a professor at a university in Budapest.’

  It was an answer Mac hadn’t been expecting.

  ‘A professor? What did you teach?’

  ‘Philosophy.’

  ‘And you’re happy to work as a shop keeper?’

  ‘Believe me it pays much better and it’s far less troubling, all that deep thinking can make you a little mad, plus I like living in the UK.’

  ‘Your uncle, has he gone back to Hungary?’

  ‘No he’s...’

  Mr. Meszaros pointed upwards.

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘No, upstairs. He came with the shop, only way I could have afforded it on my salary, but I don’t mind, he’s a good man and here in the UK I can afford to rent a whole house just for me and my wife.’

  ‘Can we have a word with your uncle?’ Mac asked.

  ‘Sure, I’ll go get him.’

  A few minutes later Mr. Meszaros returned with a white haired man in his late sixties.

  He introduced him, ‘This is my uncle, Mr. Jozsef Molnar.’

  ‘Mr. Molnar?’ Mac asked, hoping he’d gotten the name the right way around.

  The nephew smiled and nodded.

  ‘We’re from the police and we’re looking for this man. Can you help us?’

  Mr. Molnar put his glasses on and examined the picture. A finger went up in the air and his face had an excited expression.

  ‘Yes, I remember him. He used to come in here for, now what was it? Yes, he always bought the hot paprika and salami. He’d sometimes get other things but always the paprika and salami. Nice boy, intelligent boy.’

  A look of sudden concern came over the old man’s face.

  ‘He’s not done anything wrong has he?’

  ‘No, it’s just routine. We just need to exclude him from our enquiries,’ Mac lied. ‘When did you last see him?’

  The old man thought for a while.

  ‘Must be more than two years ago. He used to come in here every couple of weeks or so and then he told me he was going home.’

  ‘He went back to Hungary?’

  ‘Yes, back to Budapest. I knew straight away he was from Budapest, he had a tattoo on his arm.’

  He thought again for a moment.

  ‘Yes, the left arm.’

  He smiled a conspiratorial smile at Mac and nodded towards his nephew.

  ‘The young ones, they think I’m losing my marbles but see what a good memory I’ve got.’

  ‘How did you know he was from Budapest just by a tattoo?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘He was an MTK fan see, he had it tattooed on his arm.’

  Mr. Meszaros explained, ‘MTK is a football club based in Budapest.’

  ‘Yes, yes’, the old man said. ‘But me I’m a Pecsi supporter. Anyway even if he was an MTK fan it was nice to talk about football with him.’

  Tommy wrote it all down in his notebook.

  ‘Do you know his name?’ Mac asked.

  ‘Yes of course, I wouldn’t talk football to people whose names I don’t know.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘What was what?’ the old man asked.

  ‘His name?’

  The old man’s face creased with effort.

  Eventually he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve forgotten.’

  He looked sheepishly up at his nephew.

  ‘Anything else you can tell us about him?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘No, we only talked about football.’

  ‘Did he drive to get here or walk?’ Mac asked somewhat desperately.

  ‘Now why would he drive when he only lived down the road?’

  Mac and Tommy looked at each other in excitement.

  ‘Where?’ they asked in unison.

  ‘In a flat over the kebab house about three or four hundred yards down the road. You can’t miss it, Spiros the idiot and his big red sign.’

  ‘Spiros?’

  ‘Spiros Andreou, he owns the kebab shop and he’s an idiot,’ the old man said a dismissive gesture.

  Mr. Meszaros accompanied them to the door.

  ‘Don’t mind my uncle. He and Spiros are good friends really, they’ve known each other for years. He’s only mad because he got beaten by him at dominoes for the third time in a row last week.’

  ‘If you think of anything else,’ Tommy said as he gave Mr. Meszaros his card, ‘please ring at any time.’

  ‘Looks like your idea might be getting us somewhere,’ Tommy said excitedly as he started the car up.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Mac replied. ‘Just remember that we haven’t even got a name yet.’

  Mac glanced down the road ahead.

  ‘I see what the old man meant, I think I can see a red sign from here.’

  A few seconds later Tommy pulled up outside ‘Spiros Kebabs and Fish and Chips’.

  ‘Yes that sign is very red indeed,’ Tommy agreed.

  A ‘Closed’ sign was hanging on the door but they could see a man inside who was cleaning the work surfaces. Tommy rapped on the door and the man, who Mac thought could have been anything from forty to sixty, dark skinned, with black hair greying at the sides and a neatly trimmed white beard, came towards them expansively waving his hands to indicate that the shop was closed. Tommy pressed his warrant card to the window. The man unlocked the door and just as expansively waved at them to come in.

  ‘Are you Spiros Andreou?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Yes that’s me.’

  ‘The flat above the shop, do you own it?’

  ‘Yes, I hope there’s no trouble with the girls who are renting it. They seem such nice girls.’

  ‘No, we’re interested in this man,’ Tommy said as he showed Spiros the likeness.

  ‘Yes, this is Matyas, he used to rent the flat upstairs but I haven’t seen him for at least a couple of years at least. What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing as far as we know. Have you got a rental agreement or any document with his full name and perhaps his addres
s in Hungary?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I must have but, as I have quite a few properties, I don’t handle the paperwork myself. You’ll need to see my son George, he’s a solicitor and handles all my business paperwork.’

  He wrote down an address and gave it to Tommy.

  ‘What was Matyas like?’ Mac asked.

  ‘He was quiet, always paid his rent and was one of the few who left the flat better than he found it.’

  ‘A good tenant then?’

  ‘One of the best I’ve had.’

  ‘Was he working while he was here?’

  ‘He was an educated man, you could tell that, but his English wasn’t so good when he first came here so he was limited in what he could do. He was working hard, too hard in my opinion, for one of those cleaning companies and they were paying him peanuts. So I got him a job with my son, he owns a taxi business.’

  ‘Is this George again?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘No, no, no, it’s my son Stelios who owns the taxi business.’

  He went behind the counter and came back with a business card for ‘Stelly’s Taxis.’

  ‘How long did he work on the taxis?’

  ‘Around six months, then he got a job in the University, I said he was educated. I suppose his English got good enough so he could get a proper job.’

  Any idea where he worked in the university?’

  Spiros shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘He didn’t talk about his job much but I think it was something to do with biology but I can’t be sure.’

  ‘What did he talk about?’ Mac interjected.

  ‘Football mostly. He knew so much about football that I told him he could have been a one man quiz team. He was from Hungary but we’d talk about the Premier League or Barcelona and Real and we also used to also talk about Greek and Cypriot football, he even knew about my team, AEK Larnica. Then I’d occasionally see him at the football when I took my two younger sons to the game.’

  ‘Luton Town?’

  ‘Yes, not exactly Barcelona maybe, but it’s still football.’

  ‘Do you know why he went back home?’

  ‘He said his contract at the university had finished and that his English was good enough now.’

  ‘Good enough for what?’

  ‘He said that there were lots of American and UK companies moving into Hungary and they’d need translators. I think he was happy to be going home.’