The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  Pernille was a fellow journalist and friend. She was probably finishing off an article before they went out to eat.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Lise. I’ve been busy. It’s very complicated,’ he said, sounding more annoyed than he really meant to.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you have. When are you coming home?’

  ‘In a day or so.’

  ‘That sounds very precise.’

  ‘Look, I can’t discuss this on an open line.’

  ‘No, of course you can’t.’

  ‘You’re upset, Lise.’

  ‘I’m tired and I’m big as a house and my back aches; I’m sweating like a pig, I’m sick of being pregnant and I’m sick of my husband just running off and not even bothering to call home to ask if his pregant wife is okay. And whether she’s maybe gone into labour early.’

  His heart began to pound. As if he had run a long way very fast.

  ‘Have you? What are you trying to say. Is there something wrong?’

  She laughed and her laughter warmed his heart. Now he recognised her again.

  ‘Ooh, the daring detective was worried there for a moment, eh?’

  ‘Is something the matter, Lise?’

  ‘No, Per, you stupid old fool. I’m fine. I went for a check-up yesterday. Everything is just as it should be. If we didn’t know it was a girl I would swear we were having a boy. She’s got a kick like David Beckham. She can’t come out quick enough as far as I’m concerned. And I would really like to hear from my husband, even if he is racing all over the world, playing at being James Bond.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You and your “okay”. You’re not on your own now, you know. What if I had gone into labour? You wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t.’

  ‘Ah, but what if,’ she said again, but he could tell that she was no longer mad at him.

  ‘Then I would have flown home in my private, supersonic James Bond jet. You know – the one with the caviar and champagne and the three big blondes.’

  ‘Just you try …’

  ‘I love you, Lise,’ he said, the words coming as a surprise even to him, uttered as they were without any ulterior motive.

  ‘I love you, too. Even if you have been very naughty. Just call me now and again, will you? Or at least keep your mobile switched on. Babies have been known to come early, you know. Alright?’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Alright, honey. Take care.’

  ‘See you in a day or two,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you from the hotel this evening.’

  ‘And where might that be?’

  He paused. He could hear the hiss of the link from mast, to satellite, to mast and from there to the Politiken offices. There were so many ways of picking up words as they travelled through the ether, but that was neither here nor there. The fact was that it went against the grain for him to say any more than was absolutely necessary. There was no reason to disclose unnecessary information. Again it was a matter of training. If you stuck to the basic principle of saying as little as possible rather than as much as possible, then you were less liable to slip up when it came to the crunch.

  ‘Bratislava,’ he said nonetheless.

  ‘Ooh, that hurt, huh, Per!’

  She laughed and he could not help laughing with her. They chatted briefly about the garden which was soon going to be laid out as agreed with the contractors, and about the baby she was carrying. Afterwards he sat at the airport, clutching his mobile and experiencing the same surge of happiness which welled up inside him every morning when he woke up beside Lise. It was odd, because it made him feel happy in a strangely unfamiliar way, but at the same time it scared the shit out of him.

  12

  PER STAYED AT THE SAME HOTEL as Teddy had done some days earlier, the Hotel Forum on the fringes of the Old Town. By now though he was finding it hard to tell one Central European city from the next. There were differences, of course, but in each one you found the same beggars, the same trilling mobile phones, the same cigarette ads, McDonald’s outlets and faux Irish pubs. The wretchedly drab and dreary communist system might be dead and buried, but the blatant capitalism which had taken its place seemed to him more vulgar than free. The whole place had a sort of bargain-basement air about it, from the food and the beggars to the country’s politicians. He could not have explained what made him think this, but that was how it struck him. Maybe he was simply missing Lise. Maybe he was just tired of all these meetings. Maybe he was just angry and annoyed that there had been no one to meet him at the airport.

  He took a taxi to the hotel. It surprised him with its Western-style efficiency and international standard. It was like a business executive’s oasis in the poverty-stricken Central European desert. The roads to the hotel had been ridged and rutted. He called the number he had been given in Denmark and asked for Eduard Finca. There was a lot of crackling and hissing on the line. He had the feeling that his call was transferred several times. He heard distinct clicks and at one point a woman’s voice said something incomprehensible, in Slovakian he supposed. At long last a young man came on the crackly line and said in heavily accented English:

  ‘Chief Inspector Toftlund. I’m so sorry. Mr Finca is away on business.’

  ‘But we had an appointment.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was quite unavoidable. The war, you know.’

  ‘Is there someone else I could speak to?’

  ‘It is difficult. Maybe tomorrow. You call back tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘When will your boss be back?’

  ‘Very hard to say. The war, you know.’

  ‘But you’re not even members of NATO.’

  ‘Slovakia lies where Slovakia lies.’

  ‘That’s very true.’

  ‘Goodbye, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Up yours,’ Toftlund muttered. And hung up.

  He sat for a moment, then called Vuldom. Again he used the hotel phone. Not because he felt it was any more secure, but rather a landline than a mobile, which the really big ears with their expensive, sophisticated equipment could listen in to if so inclined.

  ‘Vuldom,’ she said in her dry, pleasant voice. She seemed to drag out that first vowel slightly, giving it a musical lilt.

  ‘Toftlund,’ he responded and proceeded to brief her. He kept it short and to the point, naming no names. He knew Vuldom was not one for small talk, certainly not on the phone. He gave her the gist of his various meetings without going into particulars and wound up by saying:

  ‘Our friend is a strange, multi-faceted character. I don’t quite know what to make of her, but I’ve a feeling she has some bearing on the case. I’ll pop over to Prague on the way home. Looks like we might have a pretty good contact there. I’m not so sure about here in Slovakia.’

  The line was excellent. Vuldom’s voice came over loud and clear:

  ‘Fair enough, but get back as soon as you can. Our Polish friend called. He guessed you would check in. He says hello. You made a good impression on him. He said you’d be as well to move on. The people there won’t talk to you anyway. And if I put any pressure on them they’ll just spin you some line.’

  ‘Okay,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘Our Polish chum does think, however, that you should get in touch with our mutual friend. Watch your back, though. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘And Per? Come home soon. Things are hotting up.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Eastern Europe just joined the modern world. Tune into CNN and take care.’

  ‘See you,’ he said, but she had already hung up.

  He found the remote control and switched on the large Japanese-made television. Changed days indeed. He could zap through a whole bunch of channels, including CNN of course. He switched on in the middle of the story, but even without having caught the beginning he had no trouble following what was going on. Breaking News the banner running across the screen proclaimed proudly. CNN was broadcasting live, its corres
pondents reporting in from Brussels to Washington and the Italian air base from which NATO dispatched its fighter bombers to Kosovo and Yugoslavia. Toftlund could not believe his eyes. A Yugoslavian air-defence unit had managed to shoot down a Stealth bomber. That simply should not be possible. The aircraft’s contruction was supposed to make it undetectable to radar. The Americans had used Stealths with great success in the Gulf War, where even Saddam Hussein’s highly developed missile-defence system had not downed any of them. How the hell had the Yugoslavs managed to hit this one? Listening to the experts on CNN left him none the wiser. It was always the same, whenever there was a crisis of one sort or another. Whether on Danish, German or American TV. A whole load of talking heads, waffling on and speculating like mad. Television was such an accommodating medium. You could say anything on it. And people might take it seriously, or it might be forgotten the next day. And then you could speculate all over again. He did not know how they could bring themselves to do it. They spouted the same extravagant verbiage every time. Everything was a crisis, a catastrophe, a confrontation, a dead end. The most common question posed by reporters the world over was: ‘What if …?’ Thus leaving one free to speculate to one’s heart’s content.

  There were shots of the wreckage of the black plane. The pilot had apparently been lifted to safety by a rescue helicopter. CNN made it sound like a great victory. Toftlund shook his head. NATO was conducting air strikes in which it was imperative that it did not suffer any losses. Meanwhile, the Serbs pursued their appalling campaign of ethnic cleansing, the refugees poured into Albania and Macedonia, and now a Stealth bomber had bitten the dust. You could be sure the Russians were already on the spot, eager to get their mitts on the aircraft’s advanced electronic equipment and pieces of the fuselage, in order to analyse and replicate the radar-deflecting coating. How in hell’s name had it been shot down?

  Toftlund fetched a bottle of mineral water from the minibar and drank from this as he followed the stream of news updates. Darkness fell outside and he could tell by the sound of the traffic that it had started to rain. He got up and looked out. There was a small palace on the opposite side of the busy square. Outside the hotel a handful of people shuddered and took shelter under the broad concrete roof canopy. Several buses and a few taxis were parked out front. In the rainswept twilight he could see a large statue rearing up into the dark sky. Some piece of social-realist gung-ho crap, he thought to himself. He was in a bad mood and he did not know why.

  Per felt his innate loathing of self-analysis and negative thinking rise to the surface. That got you nowhere, though. When faced with a problem, more often than not he found that physical exercise was the answer. He stripped down to his underpants and did press-ups until he almost blacked-out, his stomach, arm and shoulder muscles were aching and he was gasping for breath. Then he showered and called Lise, but there was no answer. He slammed down the receiver, even more annoyed with himself. Why should he expect her to sit at home and wait for him? She was probably out somewhere with Pernille.

  To keep his growing mental turmoil at bay he sat down and looked at his notes, but they did not make much sense either. He was hungry, and yet not hungry. He decided to call the number which Gelbert had given him in Warsaw. A woman’s voice answered in Slovakian. Toftlund asked in English if he could speak to Pavel Samson. He heard the woman call to someone. He could hear the babble of a television and children’s voices in the background. Nice homey sounds on a cold, rainy evening in Bratislava. He felt very envious and far from home, but shrugged off such childish feelings.

  ‘Samson,’ a faint voice said.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ Toftlund asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘My name is …’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Can we meet?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Go through the gate into the Old Town, keep walking straight ahead. There’s a statue, it looks like a man climbing out of a sewer. Wait next to it. Around ten a.m.’

  ‘I just wanted …’ Toftlund started, but Pavel Samson had hung up.

  Per wrote down Samson’s instructions. Then he went downstairs to the hotel restaurant. He had a pork chop with thick potato cakes and red cabbage; it tasted neither good nor bad, but it was food. He washed it down with the better part of a bottle of heavy red wine then returned to his room and called home again. Still no reply. This time he left a message on the answering machine. Lise’s soft, sexy voice made him feel sick at heart. That was the phrase that came to mind. Sick at heart. Real women’s mag codswallop, that was, but with the rain battering off the windowpanes it described exactly how he felt. He switched on the television and picked a film from the hotel’s selection of in-room movies. Die Hard 2, just what he needed. It finished around midnight. He called home again, and again he got the answering machine. He started to worry. What if she’s been taken into hospital. But then he told himself that she was probably staying with Pernille at her flat in town. He went to bed and, as always, fell asleep straight away.

  Per woke feeling rested. Normally he did not remember his dreams. But just before he surfaced from sleep, before the first flicker of consciousness, he had dreamed briefly that he and Lise were standing on the banks of a smooth, grey lake, watching their child. Already a little girl of three she was wearing a white dress and she was walking across the water towards them with a paper aeroplane in her hand. Even once he was fully awake he could still remember her happy face and her laughter skimming over the mirror-like surface. Outside the sun was shining, and this gave his spirits an added lift. Small, fluffy white clouds drifted across a clear blue sky, as if lightly daubed on by a painter. The hideous war memorial stood out clearly in the morning light.

  He ate a big breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, bread and cheese along with men who could only be international business executives: the itinerants of the global economy, always on the move, more often abroad than at home. They were like modern-day pilgrims, dedicated solely to the gods of cash and contracts. They all had the same blank, jaded eyes and their snowy white shirts and discreet, elegant ties did nothing to disguise how sick they were of travelling and how wearied by the thought of yet another breakfast in an anonymous hotel restaurant.

  Toftlund left the hotel at ten minutes to ten. He had checked the map and could see that it was only a few minutes’ walk from there to what the receptionist called ‘the new sculptures’. He turned a corner and stepped through an old city gate into an area of narrow, cobbled streets. There were not too many people about. The moment he stepped through the gate and into this warren of lanes and alleyways the noise of the traffic disappeared. The hush of the Old Town wrapped itself around him. Any noise he did hear was muffled: brisk footsteps on cobbles, a voice rising an octave, a woman’s bright laugh in the sunshine. Only when a mobile-phone jingle rang out did the sound seem to reverberate off the grimy walls. He glowered so forbiddingly at a bunch of raggedy gypsy kids that they scurried away from him like scared chickens. He walked on past two beggars and an old man in a shabby black coat playing a plaintive, off-key fiddle. At the scruffy musician’s feet lay a greasy cap. Two humble coins gleamed dully in the sunlight. A new day in the new world order for Europe’s youngest nation.

  Seeing it from a distance, Toftlund thought at first that the statue, or sculpture, was a real person. It was so lifelike. Only its silver-grey colour betrayed the fact, when he got a bit closer, that it was a naturalistic work of art depicting a workman in a helmet clambering out of a manhole from a sewer or tunnel. As if he had just been fixing a faulty telephone cable. Toftlund positioned himself next to the sculpture, which sat at a crossroads. There were quite a lot of people on the street now. The young people eating ice cream or talking on their mobiles, or both at the same time. They were all quite stylishly dressed, he thought. Then suddenly another world walked past him: an old granny with a shawl wrapped round her hunched shoulders and a mouth full of gold
teeth. She was wrapped up as if it was mid-winter and not an astonishingly lovely spring day. His eye was caught by two young men in the classic garb of the Eastern European mafia: blue jeans and leather jackets, crew-cut hair and pudgy bull-necks. One of them had the crooked nose of a boxer and a gold ring in his ear. They walked past him, eyeing him as they did so, stopped on the corner and lit up cigarettes from their red Marlboro packs.

  Toftlund waited fifteen minutes. Wandered back and forth a bit. Looked in the window of a shop selling radios, televisions and mobile phones, another selling musical instruments and a bookshop, though he could not even read the titles of the books on display. Each time he would stroll no further than fifty or seventy-five metres before returning to the silent statue. Capitalism had won the day – he could tell just by looking at people. The kids’ taste in clothes was dictated by the big international brands, the young women’s especially. But still there was something distinctly Eastern European about them as they click-clacked along on their spindly legs and vertiginously high platform shoes. There was a time when there would have been signs hailing some longforgotten Five Year Plan. But the old posters urging the people to follow the party on the road to socialism were now supplanted by a sign advertising an international insurance concern. The hammer and sickle by the Sony logo. The proud working girl by an erotic ad for a new mobile phone. Once, the communist slogans had promised eternal happiness if one simply toed the party line. Now Ericsson promised you sex if you bought their tiny new mobile and called the love of your life.

  A gypsy boy approached him. He wore tattered jeans and a crumpled shirt under a grubby windcheater. His bare feet were stuck into a pair of trainers that looked way too big for him. Toftlund prepared to give him his forbidding glare. With those cold, cop eyes, as Lise had once described them, when he had got mad at her and then regretted it five minutes later. But something stopped him from dismissing the boy out of hand. Two of his front teeth were missing. He put out his right hand beseechingly and said something in Slovakian. Like a conjuror he flashed his left hand open and closed, allowing Toftlund a glimpse of a slip of white paper folded between his fingers. Per stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. While he was doing this the boy must have moved the slip from his left hand to his right with a sleight of hand so slick and quick that it defied the naked eye. Because when Toftlund placed the ten-dollar bill in his hand he felt the boy press the tiny, folded piece of paper into his palm without meeting his gaze. Then he turned and left, stepping out with a nimble, almost dancer-like gait. Toftlund shoved the piece of paper into his pocket and kept his hand there. He saw one of the two mafia heavies he had spotted earlier hurry off after the boy. But he was too slow. The boy broke into a smooth, easy lope and headed up one side-street, down another and out of sight before the big bruiser could build up any speed.