First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Adam LeBor, 2019
The moral right of Adam LeBor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781786692733
ISBN (XTPB): 9781786693280
ISBN (E): 9781786692726
Typeset by Divaddict Publishing Solutions Ltd.
Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray
Cover images: frankie’s / Shutterstock.com / Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Head of Zeus Ltd
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Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Adam Lebor
An Invitation from the Publisher
For Kati, Daniel and Hannah
There are such things as false truths and honest lies
—Gypsy proverb
She stood at the side entrance to the villa, watching her father’s car head down the hill towards the Margaret Bridge, grey smoke trailing from the exhaust of the rusty blue BMW saloon. There were no other vehicles on the road. The house was painted a dark yellow and the walls glowed golden in the soft light of dusk. The party sounded inside: muffled voices, distant laughter, snatches of music. The air was fresh and cool, notably fresher than at home, even in the local park. She was sixteen years old and for the first time in her life, or at least as long as she could remember, she was alone. She looked around. A dog barked in the far distance but the pavements were empty. Where was everybody? Did people actually live in these houses? Her home in Jozsef Street, in District VIII, was barely twenty minutes’ drive away, but she felt like she was in another world. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant. No little or big brothers or sisters jumping on her, demanding that she read to them or play games. No parents giving her chores. No meals to cook or clear, no plates to wash, no ashtrays to empty, no little ones to be washed and put to bed. No shouting, crying, laughing. No favourite cousin, either – well, favourite distant cousin, distant enough for everything to be proper – giving her secret smiles or those smouldering looks.
The BMW vanished from sight and she patted her long black hair again, needlessly. Freshly washed, it felt soft and silky under her fingers. A hair wash was a rare treat. There was no running hot water at home. Instead Anyu, Mother, and Marta neni, Auntie Marta, had filled the biggest pan in the kitchen and boiled the water on the cooker, washing her long tresses as she had stood over the sink, the suds running down her back. She turned to face the door. It was dark brown, thick and glossy with varnish. There was a heavy brass door knocker, polished and gleaming. She had never seen a house like this from the outside, let alone stepped inside one. There were two gardens and she could see them both: one in the front where a narrow path led between two manicured lawns. French windows opened on to a much bigger garden in the back, which had more lawns and flowerbeds. There was even a swimming pool. She couldn’t swim; even shallow water made her nervous.
She was nervous now, of course she was. When she left, Anyu had walked downstairs with her, down all five floors – their building had no lift. That was something because Anyu was quite overweight, had to go back upstairs on foot, and didn’t like to leave their flat. Anyu had cried a bit when she got into the car with her father, and she asked why but Anyu said it was only because she was so proud of her daughter and she was going to have a big adventure. The two of them had been to Buda before, window shopping at the new shopping centre where the security guards had followed them at every step, but they were used to that, of course. She had sung at a couple of bars around Moszkva Square with Roma Drom, her uncle Melchior’s band, but she had never been this far up the hills. This was her first solo performance. No wonder her mother was proud. It was unusual, to be sure, for her to be allowed out on her own, to sing for strangers without Melchior, or any other male relative there to chaperone her. But her parents had arranged it, so she was sure it would be all right. And she would not be completely alone: apu, Father, had promised her that a couple of Melchior’s musicians would be there to accompany her.
She looked herself up and down, pleased at what she saw. She was wearing her best outfit: a long black-and-silver skirt with a flower pattern, a plain black blouse, and a black–and-silver shawl over her shoulders, silver earrings with black gemstones. She glanced at her skirt, patted it smooth. The photographer that morning had said she looked beautiful. She had never been in a photographer’s studio before and could not wait to see the pictures. If any man bothered her, she would swing her skirt over him, make him mahrime, unclean. That was one of the greatest shames in Gypsy culture. She frowned for a moment. Did mahrime work with gadjes, non-Gypsies? She was not sure, but even if it didn’t, her brothers and cousins would deal with anyone who caused trouble. And she had big plans for the future, beyond singing. Hungary was a free country now. The old ways were changing, and not just for the gadjes. So far, only two people knew of her dream to be a teacher: her mother and her favourite cousin. The problem would be her father, she knew. But even he, she was sure, could be persuaded.
She savoured the moment, the air and the quiet and quickly looked herself up and down before she went inside. A touch of mascara highlighted her eyes, the colour of emeralds, he had once told her. She blushed at the memory, pulled the shawl tighter, for comfort, wishing he was there. But he had promised to take her for ice cream again, to celebrate once she was back. There would be so much to talk about. A bird trilled somewhere nearby, as if to approve.
She shivered for a moment, from excitement perhaps and also because the breeze was picking up and the air was starting to cool. The party, she could see through the windows, was in full swing. It looked very fancy: there were waiters and waitresses moving back and forth in black trousers and grey blouses, holding trays of drinks and snacks, and all the guests looked so elegant. One of the windows opened and a young couple stepped out. The sound of jazz drifted out into the summer evening. He was handsome, in his early twenties, looked almost familiar. She had seen him on television a couple of times, she remembered, talking about something or other. Her father had switched the TV off when he’d found her watching it, muttering about ‘lying gadje politicians’. The woman, his girlfriend she guessed, as they were holding hands, was younger, a very pretty blonde wearing a black dress that would get the wrong kind of attention on Jozsef Street. The music ended and there was scattered applause, which meant it must be a live band. For a moment she frowned. Melchior’s musicians did not play jazz.
Never mind, she told herself. They were probably having a drink and a cigarette somewhere, waiting for her. She would make it work, whoever she was singing with. Her real worry was how would she fit in at such a posh place, with such a posh crowd? Would they look down on her, the Gypsy girl from Jozseftown? Perhaps they would point and mutter, even snigger. She didn’t care. She was used to that, and worse. And none of them, she knew, could sing like she could, with a voice that could soar like an eagle, whisper like a lover and stop dead every conversation in the room.
She touched her hair once more for luck, lifted the heavy door knocker and rapped it twice.
The dead man was on his knees in the centre of the bed, naked and still bent at the waist. His backside pointed high in the air and his spine sloped down to a jowly face resting on one side. He had brown skin the colour of mahogany, and thinning black hair that seemed too dark to be natural spread across a shiny scalp. A dark urine stain had spread out underneath him onto silk sheets the colour of blood.
Balthazar Kovacs pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves, touched the side of the man’s neck under his jawbone, waited for half a minute. Nothing moved. Even through the glove the man’s skin was cold. He took out a ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket, slid it under the man’s right arm where the palm joined the wrist, and lifted his hand. The palm drooped down, manicured fingernails dangling in the air. Balthazar lowered the pen, let the man’s hand back down onto the bed and stripped the latex glove off his right hand, before holding his fingers in front of the dead man’s mouth and nose. The air stayed still.
Balthazar put the glove back on, turned to the young woman standing nearby watching him. ‘He’s definitely dead.’
‘Are you sure?’
He nodded. ‘Very.’
‘He’s not just unconscious or something like that? Maybe he is in a coma,’ she said hopefully.
‘No. He’s dead.’
Kinga Torok’s grey eyes widened. ‘Am I in trouble?’
‘Not if you tell me everything that happened. Did anyone give you something to give him?’
He watched her carefully as she answered. She wore a blue silk robe over black lingerie. Her fine blonde hair was mussed and her mascara was smudged. But she held his gaze, eyes open and as innocent as they could be. ‘No. Nothing. Really.’
‘Drugs, powder, something to drink? It’s much better if you tell me now, Kinga.’
‘You mean, to kill him? Of course not. Why would I do that? I earn good money here. I send half of it back home. I don’t want to mess that up.’ Her voice was confident, almost disdainful.
Balthazar stepped away from the bed, looked at the dead man again. Was she telling the truth? The part about not wanting to mess things up, almost certainly. The dead man’s arms were splayed, as though he had been trying to wave or call for help. A killer in the room would not have left Kinga alive. Death was probably caused by a heart attack or some kind of seizure. He glanced again at Kinga. She returned his gaze, unsettled certainly – who wouldn’t be? – but not fearful or anxious. At first Balthazar thought the dead man might be a Gypsy. He was dark enough. Balthazar knew all the city’s Roma power brokers and pimps, businessmen and wheeler-dealers who could afford a night with Kinga in the VIP salon. This was not one of them, but he could be from out of town. Either that, or he was a foreigner. There were, he supposed, worse ways to go.
Balthazar asked, ‘Do you know who he is?’
Kinga shrugged. ‘No. An Arab, maybe. He told me to call him Abdi.’
Balthazar yawned, ran his fingers through his thick black hair, felt the weight inside him grow steadily heavier. Abdi, or whoever he was, was the reason why Eszter, the brothel’s manager, had called him an hour ago, begging for his help. Balthazar knew that the brothel had dealt with a couple of dead punters before, overweight middle-aged men who had died of heart attacks. Only last summer a visiting German pastor had expired in the arms and legs of a pair of nineteen-year-old twins. Dead punters were always bad for business, but could be managed. Enough 20,000-forint notes would grease the wheels of officialdom to move the body out of the brothel, alter the reports to save reputations and relatives’ memories. But a dead foreigner was much more complicated.
Balthazar asked, ‘Abdi what?’
Kinga shrugged. ‘Who knows? We didn’t talk much.’
Balthazar glanced at the body on the bed. Abdi. Probably short for Abdullah. That could mean nothing. Rich Arab tourists were pouring into Budapest nowadays. The city’s high-end brothels were doing more business than ever, few more than his brother Gaspar’s place. But not all the Arab visitors were moneyed, able to afford a night in the VIP salon. Some were camped out at Keleti Station, travelling on fake papers as they steadily made their way to the west. Hungary’s borders had collapsed, the prime minister had resigned in a corruption scandal connected to Gulf investors and the Ministry of Justice was entangled in a people-trafficking ring channelling Islamic radicals to the west. Perhaps Abdi, or his death, was telling him something.
Balthazar brought himself back to the room, turned to Kinga. ‘So what did you do?’
She laughed. ‘How much detail do you want?’
His question, Balthazar realised, could have been better phrased. ‘I mean, was there anything strange, out of the ordinary?’
‘No. At first, just the usual. He booked me for the whole night. Although he wanted… you know…’ She paused, blushed, suddenly bashful, looked away for a couple of seconds. ‘He offered me double, but I said I wouldn’t do that. It hurts.’
Kinga Torok was twenty-two, a slender, pretty blonde, recently arrived from a tiny village near the Serbian border. Her father was unemployed and her mother worked as a cleaner. Smart and very ambitious, Kinga spent her daylight hours studying law at Budapest’s ELTE university. At night she earned more in a few hours than her mother took home in a month, especially when she was the queen of the VIP salon. The room was the most expensive in the house. It had wall-to-wall dark-purple carpeting, near full-length mirrors on both sides of the bed and a further mirror on the ceiling. The bed was a rococo extravaganza with a carved, oversized gilt footboard and headboard, both upholstered with crimson padding that matched the sheets. A small matching cabinet stood next to it, its surface piled high with freshly laundered thick, white hand towels. An antique Biedermeier wardrobe stood in one corner, where the client and his company could leave their clothes. Facing it stood a black-lacquered Japanese cabinet with a built-in fridge, with the remains of the night on top: two bottles of Moët et Chandon champagne, one empty, one unopened, two flute glasses cut from Bohemian crystal, one almost full, one empty, and a packet of blue, triangular pills.
The room might be luxurious, but it stank: of sweat and semen, spilled alcohol and urine and the slow ripening of a dead body. Balthazar stepped aside and opened the window. He breathed deeply as the cool, fresh air of a Buda morning seeped inside, then walked over to the cabinet, glancing up at the ceiling as he went: the minimalist overhead lamp, with six sprouting metal arms, each with a steel bulb on the end, was oddly modern and did not fit with the rest of the baroque decor. Balthazar picked up the strip of pills: two empty blisters. Enough for a night, he supposed, assuming that they were indeed Viagra.
Balthazar turned the pills over in his hand, still wearing the blue latex glove.
‘How many of these did he take?’
Kinga shrugged. ‘Dunno. Just the two, I think.’
‘Food? Did you or he eat anything?’
‘Nothing. He drank most of the champagne. But I saw him open it.’
‘Did you have any?’
‘Just a few sips. We are not supposed to drink.’
‘Which is yours?’
Kinga pointed at the glass that was three-quarters full.
‘Sure?’ asked Balthazar.
‘Positive. It’s too dry for me.’
Balthazar thought for a moment. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to adulterate the champagne. But then Kinga would have been affected as well. ‘How do you feel? Dizzy, weak or anything?’
‘I’m fine. Really.’
‘Did he take anything else?’
He watched her as she spoke. ‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing,’ but this time she looked to the left and her pink tongue flicked over her upper lip for a second. Balthazar walked over to the cabinet. Amid the party debris there were several patches of fine white dust. ‘Come here, Kinga,’ he said. She walked over. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Talcum powder?’
Balthazar turned to her. She still carried the smell of sex, a musty tang overlaid with sweat. He could see her body move under the flimsy gown, the top of a lacy black bra. He tapped his forehead. ‘Do you see anything here?’
She looked puzzled. ‘No.’
‘Does it say “stupid” or “dumb cop”?’
‘No. Of course not.’ Kinga looked down for a moment then met his gaze. ‘It was only a couple of lines. He took it.’
‘Yours or his?’
‘His. I don’t have any. I don’t like it. It makes me jittery. And Eszter told me no drugs, especially tonight.’
Balthazar took out an evidence bag, held it open over the edge of the cabinet and swept the white powder inside. He sealed the bag, then placed it in his back pocket. ‘And the rest?’
Kinga shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe he used it all.’ Her voice brightened. ‘Perhaps that’s what he died of.’
‘Nice try. Where’s the bag, or box, or whatever it was in?’
‘I told you. I don’t know.’
‘Try again.’
She pulled her robe tighter. ‘What’s this about? I thought you were here to sort things out. Not accuse me of taking drugs. I already told you, I don’t like it,’ she said, her voice rising in indignation. ‘Look, I know what you think of me. I’m only doing this for a couple of years, to help my family and get some money together. Then I’m moving to London. Lots of my friends are there already. I’ll get a proper job, with a law firm.’
Balthazar stepped nearer. Kinga was a bad liar. ‘I’m sure you will. But meanwhile, I know someone who got six months for having a single joint in their sock. Coke is at least double that, probably triple. And if there’s enough to deal, then it’s years.’ He paused, looked her in the eye. ‘And you can forget any ideas about a legal career.’
She glared at him, walked over to the top drawer of the cabinet, reached inside to a corner at the back, took out a small transparent bag, silently handed it over. He weighed it in his hand. At least ten or twelve grams, about €1,000 worth of cocaine. The cost of a night in the VIP salon, half of which went to Kinga. He placed the bag on top of the cabinet next to the Viagra pills. ‘Anything else you want to tell me?’
Kinga shook her head, trying hard to meet and hold Balthazar’s gaze. Far too hard. He looked at the dead man again. Something about him… he stepped nearer the bed and looked again at the man’s right hand. He took out his pen again, lifted the wrist and looked closer. He was right. The flesh on the middle finger was indented at the bottom, a pale strip a quarter of an inch wide.
Balthazar lowered the dead man’s wrist and turned around. Kinga was watching him. He asked, ‘Really? From a dead man?’
She blushed. ‘But I didn’t…’
He held his hand out, said nothing. She reached inside her gown pocket, handed him a large gold ring, with an onyx stone mounted in the centre. ‘Who would know? Maybe it fell off. We could sell it, split whatever we get.’
Balthazar stayed silent, tilted his head to one side, his hand still outstretched. ‘Trying to bribe a policeman? That wasn’t your smartest move, Kinga, especially for a law student. That ring is evidence. Your prints are on it now.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Can’t you wipe it down?’
‘Maybe. Tell me again what happened,’ said Balthazar. ‘And no more BS.’
Kinga shrugged. ‘OK. It was just the usual stuff. He took the pills, snorted the coke. We did it for a while, nothing special. Then he slept for a couple of hours. So did I. He woke me up and we started again.’ She gestured at the bed. ‘Like that. He just went on and on. I was getting sore. So I did the ripple. That usually does the trick. He was shouting, so I did it tighter. Then he started groaning and shaking. I thought that was it. I was relieved. My back was hurting.’
‘And after that?’ asked Balthazar.
‘At first I thought he had, you know… finished. He stopped moving. But completely. He felt really heavy. When I turned around, his head was resting on my shoulders. He wasn’t saying anything and he had gone all floppy. I slid out from underneath. He fell forward and he stayed like that.’
She smiled and looked him in the eye, let the wrap slide open an inch or two. ‘I saw you on the Internet. Arresting that Arab terrorist on Rakoczi Way. That was amazing.’
‘No it wasn’t. That’s my job. Let’s focus on the here and now, Kinga. A man died underneath you. Was he nervous? Agitated?’
Kinga saw that her flirting was not working. She pulled her robe closed. For a moment Balthazar saw her for what she was: a village girl alone in the big city, where her sexual appeal had drawn her into deep and potentially dangerous waters. ‘Did I kill him?’ she asked nervously. ‘Am I in trouble now? I’ve never killed a punter before. What do you think?’
‘I think you should stop talking. Go and clean yourself up and put some clothes on.’
He watched Kinga walk out, glanced again at the dead man and the damp patch on the bedsheets, lost in thought. After three years in the Budapest police murder squad he had seen his share of corpses: shot, bludgeoned, poisoned, half-crushed. He had once found a torso with all four limbs sheared off. The indignity of death, the sudden hollowing-out of a body, the rushing greyness, the void where there was once life but now only stillness, still unsettled him. He looked at the dead man again, had a powerful urge to ease him down onto the bed and straighten his body out. The dead man’s skin was already turning purple, his lips and fingernails going pale as the blood drained away. Balthazar glanced at his watch. It was 6.10 in the morning. Eszter, the brothel’s manager, had called him an hour ago. That meant Abdi had been dead at least that long. In three hours or so rigor mortis would set in. Abdi had to be moved out before then, before his body locked and the smell, bearable now, became overpowering. But where?
For now, though, he needed to find out who Abdi was. The brothel, obviously, did not take its punters’ names and most paid by cash. But most people carried some kind of ID. Balthazar opened the wardrobe door. A blue single-breasted suit was hanging on a clothes hanger, a shirt on another. He ran his fingers through the trouser pockets. There was no sign of a wallet. The fabric had an expensive sheen but Balthazar did not know much about business attire. He had one suit, purchased from Zara for his university graduation, worn at his police coming-out ceremony, his wedding, then more or less untouched. But it was clear from the smooth feel of the dark-blue cloth, the way it rippled through his fingers, that this was an expensive piece of tailoring.
He opened the jacket to see a discreet silk panel on the inside advertising a Savile Row tailor, smiled to himself. Definitely not a Gypsy then: his people preferred well-known labels to advertise their wealth, would wear them like badges or shoulder patches if they could. But there was something stiff inside the jacket’s breast pocket. He took it out and stepped away from the wardrobe. The booklet was a passport, maroon in colour, embossed with Arabic script. He looked at the dead man then back at the photograph page. Abdullah al-Nuri. Born in Saudi Arabia, citizen of Qatar. He looked again at the dead man. It was him, there was no doubt. Balthazar exhaled hard. Mr al-Nuri was bad news. He meant consulates, diplomats, foreign governments who were not bribable. And what if there had been foul play? That meant sealing the room, a proper autopsy and crime scene investigation, sending the evidence for testing. That could not be done on the sly. And that, in turn, meant drawing the attention of the Hungarian authorities.
The door opened a few minutes later and Kinga walked back in. She wore a pink T-shirt and loose blue cotton trousers, her hair loose around her shoulders, her face wiped clean of make-up. The courtesan was gone, replaced by a pretty girl from the countryside. She looked young and innocent, which was, he guessed, part of her appeal.
He asked, ‘Have you been with him before?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen him before?’
Kinga twisted her wet hair, stepped nearer. She smelled of soap and shampoo. ‘Not here.’
‘Where?’
‘You won’t tell them, will you? That I also work here?’
Balthazar said, ‘Not if you stop talking in riddles.’
Kinga’s face creased in concern. ‘Cause I really don’t want to lose that job. It’s very well paid. And there I don’t have to do anything except smile and serve drinks.’
Balthazar’s voice turned hard. ‘Kinga. Listen to me. There is a dead man in this room. You were the last person to see him, to be with him, while he was alive. If this turns official that will make you a suspect. The prime suspect, actually. So tell me, where did you see him before?’
‘A suspect? But I didn’t do anything.’ Her voice turned tearful. ‘It’s not my fault. They said you would fix everything. And now you want to arrest me.’
Balthazar stepped forward. ‘Please, calm down. Just tell me what happened.’
‘But I did,’ she said, almost pleading. ‘That’s it, everything I know. I promise. Do you know who he is?’
She was, Balthazar thought, telling the truth now. He had seen Kinga lie about the cocaine and she was not very good at it. And she was scared. ‘Yes. His name is Abdullah al-Nuri. So the more you tell me what you know, the faster we can sort this out. Where did you see Mr al-Nuri for the first time?’
‘Last Friday. I was a hostess.’
‘A hostess?’ That word, in Budapest, Balthazar knew, had a multiplicity of meanings.
‘Yes. A proper hostess,’ said Kinga, her voice stronger now. ‘Making conversation. Chatting to people. I can speak English. And French. It was at a reception for Arab investors.’
‘Where?’
‘The Royal Palace, at the Buda Castle.’
Balthazar’s feeling of dread intensified. There was only one person who could use the historic site for entertaining. The call to the ambulance and forensics would definitely have to wait. ‘Who was holding the reception?’
Kinga smiled proudly. ‘The prime minister. The other one. Pal Dezeffy.’
Several hills away from the brothel, in a home gymnasium on the crest of Bimbo Way, Attila Ungar was pounding a heavy black punch bag suspended from the ceiling. The slashing guitars, angry lyrics and pounding drums of Arpad, Hungary’s premier nemzeti (national) rock band, filled the room as the bag swung back and forth. The more the singer shouted about the traitors of Trianon, who had taken more than two-thirds of Hungary’s territory in the 1920 eponymous treaty and the filthy komcsis – slang for Communists – the harder Attila punched the heavy bag.
This morning he was working on multiple distance training: a lightning-fast combination of jabs and crosses with arms fully extended, then moving in for some close-quarter hooks and uppercuts, before spinning left and right to deliver a fusillade of high roundhouse kicks, a single one of which would fell most adults. He finished with a barrage of elbow strikes that left the bag swinging back and forth like a hanged man in a windstorm. Panting, drenched in sweat, he stepped back, wiped himself down with a towel and drank almost a litre of water.
Attila had been divorced for more than five years. He lived alone in a spacious flat on the top floor of a four-storey modern development in one of Buda’s most upmarket quarters. The flat cost far more than he would have been able to afford on a policeman’s salary or even that of a Gendarme commander, but nobody was asking awkward questions. The white-walled gym was in the smallest of the three bedrooms. His was the largest, with a king-sized double bed, one half of which was rarely used, except when he called an expensive escort agency. There were two smaller guest bedrooms, one complete with a large flat-screen television and an Xbox, and several drawers full of designer clothes for a sixteen-year-old boy. But Henrik, Attila’s son, rarely visited and had never stayed overnight. Monika, Henrik’s mother, had sent him to a progressive, German-run school that did not believe in disciplining errant pupils. Attila had bought Henrik an iPhone. But the last time they met, briefly in a park, he was still using an old Nokia. To Attila’s horror, he was wearing a rainbow flag T-shirt. He often did not take his father’s calls, and rarely called him back.
A shelf of free weights stood in the opposite corner of the gym, a treadmill on the other side of the room. A small sink and work surface stood near the punch bag. Attila ran the cold tap, cupped his hands under the water, then splashed his face and neck, before towelling himself down again. He glanced at the blender on the work surface, its glass jug a third full with brown, slithery chunks slopping around in a white liquid with pale, floating shreds. The breakfast smoothie – chicken liver and oatmeal in milk and yogurt – could wait.
Much of one wall was taken up with an oversized reproduction of a poster that had appeared around the city a couple of months earlier when the government announced that the Gendarmerie, the pre-war national police force, was about to be reconstituted. The black-and-white poster showed a group of Gendarmes on horseback, wearing their trademark hats with cockades, rounding up a group of Jews in a village in the spring of 1944. The Gendarmes were laughing, the Jews looked terrified. Overlaid on the photograph, in heavy black ink, were the words: ‘No return to 1944, no to the new Gendarmerie’. But the poster, part of a campaign by activists and opposition politicians of all political stripes, had not worked. The new Gendarmerie had been on the streets for a month or so, and complaints were already pouring in from human rights groups about their heavy-handed tactics. Few expected the complaints to have much traction – the Gendarmerie, with its hazy mandate to ‘protect national order’ and ‘guard the dignity of the government and Hungarian nation’ reported directly to the prime minister. The usual oversight bodies – the ombudsman, Parliament’s human rights committee – had no power over the new force.
Attila filled up a water bottle and walked out onto the long wrap-around terrace that encircled most of the flat. He stood there for several moments with his eyes closed, enjoying the cool fresh air, waiting till his heart slowed and his breathing calmed. The modern brutalist blocks of Deli, Budapest’s southern station, sprawled in the centre of the low ground, further downtown, the railway tracks splaying out like the limbs of an octopus. For a moment he was an eight-year-old boy again, taking the train from Deli to Siofok on the south shore of Lake Balaton, excited and overjoyed to be going on his first family holiday with his parents and younger brother. Until the memory slid, as it always did, into a vision of his father, Zeno, drunk at the hotel, screaming abuse at the government, the Communist Party, the whole stinking system, smashing his plate against the floor and the manager threatening to call the police unless they paid and left immediately. They did and returned home to Csepel Island on the outskirts of Budapest. There were no more holidays after that. His father was arrested at dawn the next day. They did not see him for six months, only heard rumours that he had been spotted at one of the villas high in the hills where political troublemakers were taken. Zeno returned home a broken man. Within two years he had drunk himself to death. And if his parents had lived, Attila wondered, had been there for him? If he had grown up in a home, even a meagre panel flat, instead of a state-run orphanage, would there still be such a rage burning inside him? He watched the early morning traffic flow into the city, drinking the rest of the water, when his mobile telephone rang. He quickly walked back and grabbed the handset. The call was short, perhaps thirty seconds long. Attila nodded as he listened, then wrote down an address and walked across to the blender. There he turned the switch to pulse, watching as the brown lumps exploded, sending bursts of blood again and again against the glass, red threads trickling down the sides as the liquid turned into a smooth brown slurry.
Balthazar turned as the door to the VIP salon opened and Eszter walked in. The brothel’s manager was a Roma woman in her fifties whose long black hair was shot through with silver-grey. She wore smart navy trousers and a sky-blue business blouse and carried herself with the brisk assurance of a bank manager about to refuse a loan application. Her deep-brown eyes had seen too much to be shocked any more at the vagaries of human nature. She looked at the dead man on the bed, pursed her lips, then exhaled. ‘He’s still there,’ she said, her voice throaty from years of cigarettes.
Balthazar said, ‘He’s not going anywhere.’
‘No. I didn’t think so.’ She walked around the bed, considering the dead man from several angles. ‘Shouldn’t we straighten him out? It’s not very… dignified.’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘No. Definitely not. Don’t touch him. We don’t know what he died of yet.’
Eszter was a former oromlany, joy girl, herself. Unlike many of her peers, she had not taken drugs or slipped into a life of petty crime. She was used to handling crises. Given the nature of the business, and human nature, they were to be expected. Threats, sneak thievery by the working girls, punters who tried to evade their bills and complained about the service, even occasional outbursts of violence, all these could be managed, hushed up, smoothed away with wads of banknotes, offers of free return visits, violence, or threats of more violence. But a dead man was much trickier, especially if he was a foreigner.
Eszter turned to Balthazar. ‘He’s not one of ours, is he?’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘No. Not a Gypsy or a Hungarian.’
‘So who is he?’
‘His name is Abdullah al-Nuri. A Qatari.’
Eszter grimaced. ‘That’s a problem.’
The door opened again. A large Gypsy man stepped inside, quickly followed by another, who was even more overweight.
‘Jo reggelt kivanok, batyam – good morning, my older brother,’ exclaimed Gaspar Kovacs in a voice like gravel as he embraced Balthazar. Balthazar breathed in Gaspar’s familiar smell: sweat and tobacco smoke, overlaid with the kajszibarack hazipalinka – home-distilled apricot schnapps – that a relative made for them in the countryside, then stepped back and looked him up and down. Gaspar had probably been up all night but looked like the evening was just beginning. His long black hair was slicked back. He wore his trademark black silk shirt, open almost halfway to his midriff, hanging loose over his substantial belly, a thick gold rope chain and black, shiny track pants over red-and-white Kanye West trainers that cost €500 a pair. His brown eyes, set deep in a doughy face, were clear apart from a faint redness around the rims.
The two men kissed four times, twice on each cheek, as the second man watched. Gaspar pointed at the dead man. ‘Not a bad way to go.’
Balthazar said, ‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘If someone helped him along the way. That’s why we asked you to come and have a look.’ The two brothers’ eyes met. ‘Thanks, batyam,’ said Gaspar, his voice serious now. Gaspar turned to Eszter and Kinga and greeted them, this time accompanied by a small bow. Fat Vik, Gaspar’s consigliere, also wished the women good morning and turned to Balthazar. The two men clasped hands and quickly embraced. Fat Vik was dressed in his usual oversized white T-shirt and grey track pants. He was even bigger than Gaspar, with a bald head that shone with a faint sheen of sweat. Both men were breathing heavily. Apart from the occasional brawl, neither had exercised since they left school. The house had no lift and the VIP salon was at the top, on the third floor.
Kinga yawned and turned to Balthazar. ‘Do I need to stay?’
He shook his head. ‘No. You can go home. But don’t go anywhere far and keep your phone on.’ The four of them waited until Kinga had left.
Gaspar looked at Eszter. ‘What’s all the fuss about? We’ve had punters die on the job before. That’s why we pay retainers to the ambulance service and the paramedics.’
‘Because I thought he was a foreigner, and I was right,’ said Eszter. ‘If we lose a foreigner here, you need to know.’
Gaspar shrugged. ‘OK, so he’s a foreigner. That makes it more complicated.’ He turned to Balthazar. ‘How long do you think this will take?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what “this” is. Why, ocsim, my little brother – are you in a hurry?’
Gaspar glanced at his watch, a gold-plated Rolex. ‘Actually, yes.’
‘And why is that?’ asked Balthazar, although he suspected he already knew the answer.
Gaspar shrugged, ‘Busy day, batyam.’
Balthazar asked, ‘How many?’
‘Enough. Enough to make it worthwhile. Don’t worry, Tazi. Everything’s set up. The border’s open now. It’s a clear run all the way to Vienna. Nem lesz semmi baj. There won’t be any problems.’ Gaspar turned to the dead man. ‘Meanwhile, we need to sort this out.’
Balthazar turned to Eszter. ‘You have the CCTV footage?’
She did not reply immediately, shot Gaspar a questioning look. He nodded. Eszter said, ‘Yes. The usual. The front of the house. The entranceway.’
Balthazar asked, ‘With timings? Correct timings?’
Eszter nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘The corridors? The rooms?’
Balthazar watched a faint tinge of pink appear on Eszter’s cheeks. She looked down for a couple of seconds. He looked back at Gaspar, who still said nothing. Balthazar held his younger brother’s gaze. A memory flashed through his mind. They were boys, barely in their teens, mucking around at the playground on Republic Square, not far from where they grew up in the Gypsy ghetto in District VIII. Balthazar turned away for a moment to watch a girl he liked as she walked past with her sister. When he turned back, two neighbourhood toughs had Gaspar face-down in the sandpit. His brother was fighting and struggling, but there were two of them, both bigger and more powerful. Balthazar swung around and kicked one in his ribs, leaned over and punched the other on the side of his head. They slid away from Gaspar, yelping in pain, and ran off. That was more than twenty years ago. His younger brother was now the most powerful pimp in the city, running a string of brothels – some upmarket, like this one, others less so – several lap-dance bars and a network of streetwalkers. But neither he nor Eszter could lie to Balthazar. Partly because the fierce Roma code of family loyalty did not allow it, but also because Balthazar would know immediately.
Gaspar smiled. ‘If we did film there, why would you need it?’
Balthazar gestured at the dead man. He thought it was highly likely that the rooms had concealed CCTV. Several local police officers and a couple of councillors enjoyed occasional free use of the palace. Filming them in action would be the best insurance against any future difficulties. ‘I am a detective in the Budapest murder squad. That’s my job. Don’t you want to know if someone is killing your punters? And why they might be?’
Eszter said, ‘I certainly do, Gaspar.’
Gaspar turned to Balthazar. ‘How much do you need?’
‘The last twelve hours.’ He yawned again, winced as a sharp ache shot across his jaw, and quickly closed his mouth. The pain from the beating at Keleti the previous Friday was easing, but at times like this, when he was tired, it flared up. Technically he had been up an hour, but in reality he had barely slept. The dream was back, had been every night since the events of the previous weekend. As he lay in bed on his back, watching the first smears of dawn lighten the sky, Eszter’s call had almost been a relief.
‘OK.’ Gaspar turned to Eszter. ‘Give it to him.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I need a massage.’
Fat Vik laughed. ‘You are in the right place, brat.’
Gaspar rolled his head in circles, back and forth. ‘Not that kind. A proper massage.’
Eszter said, ‘Actually, we do those as well.’
Gaspar laughed, ‘Thanks. But I’m in a hurry today.’ He looked at Balthazar. ‘That footage. It won’t be going anywhere, will it? Because you are already all over the Internet. I don’t want this place to be.’
Balthazar said, ‘Of course not, ocsim. Where is the camera?’
Gaspar looked up at the lamp.
‘Which one?’
Gaspar pointed at one of the steel arms. Balthazar looked up. There was nothing to distinguish it from the others. ‘Clever.’
‘Now what?’ asked Gaspar.
‘I’m thinking.’ Balthazar walked over to the window, closed his eyes, took great lungfuls of the clean autumn air, breathing through his nose. The breeze was scented with the smell of burning leaves and cut grass, the last days of summer. A buzzing noise sounded in the distance, rising and falling over the hum of distant traffic, but then faded away. He rubbed his eyes and opened them. Buda stretched out before him, rolling green hills dotted with red-roofed villas, once stately mansions now chopped into flats, sleek new apartment buildings with solar panels on the roofs. The city was split in two by the river. Flat, urban Pest on one side and leafy, green Buda on the other. He was born and lived all his life in the same city, but lush Rozsadomb, Rose Hill, was another world to the narrow alleys, dark courtyards and backstreets of Jozsefvaros, where he grew up.
He looked again at the dead man. Abdullah al-Nuri, a dead Qatari. Now, after some time in the room, the scene had settled in his mind. Balthazar’s instinct was telling him clearly that none of this was a coincidence – and nor was it good news. If someone had wanted al-Nuri dead, they had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he died in Gaspar’s brothel.
Balthazar turned around. His brother and Fat Vik were standing looking at him, as though he held the key to making complications and difficulties vanish. Sometimes he did. But he also knew the limits of his networks, his ability to game the system, make inconvenient things disappear or re-appear somewhere more suitable. There was one person, he knew, who would definitely want to know about this, and might be able to help.
Gaspar asked, ‘Now what?’
Balthazar said, ‘I make a call.’
The police officer slid his passport into a machine reader and stared at the monitor for several seconds. Marton Ronay looked around as he waited. Until today, the furthest east he had been was Berlin. That city was much nearer Poland than he had thought, but was still part of Germany, the civilised, western half of the continent. Now he was in the east, in a land that bordered Ukraine and Romania, almost in the Balkans. He thought for a moment of his great-aunt in New Jersey, the stories she told of the ‘old country’: the wartime siege and hunger, the feral youths roaming the city, nights ripped apart by gunfire, the brother who went out for bread in the winter of 1944 as the Russians advanced and never came home.
But that was more than seventy years ago. Communism had collapsed in 1990. Hungary was a democracy now, a member of NATO and the European Union, but still, this pristine modernity was not quite what he had expected. The arrivals hall had a polished cream marble floor, white walls and a row of glass booths where the police officers sat. One illuminated billboard showed a sequence of photographs of Hungary – he recognised the chain bridge and Lake Balaton. Another showed attractive young people chatting on their iPhone Xs or joyfully moving money around on Internet bank accounts. Even the toilets, which he had just used, were spotless. The immigration queue moved swiftly, at least in comparison to every American airport he had ever passed through. And then there was the man flicking through his passport. The policeman was probably in his late twenties. He wore a light-blue uniform shirt, nicely filled by broad shoulders. Floppy brown hair fell over cool, assessing hazel eyes. Marton looked at the name on his shirt: Szilagyi Ferenc, written in the Hungarian fashion with the family name first. Welcome to Hungary, indeed.
Ferenc almost made up for the delay. He was certainly better-looking than the fat Mexican or whatever guy who had pulled him out of the line at JFK, taken him into a filthy side room, made him turn out his pockets and daypack and asked him what felt like a hundred questions about why he was going to Hungary.
Marton felt the policeman’s glance on him, stifled a yawn. He was exhausted. He had transferred at Frankfurt, expecting a short, hassle-free flight of an hour. The flight had left and arrived on time, but once they’d landed at Budapest all the passengers had been held up for more than half an hour on the tarmac. Some problem with getting a staircase, the captain had said. Marton had watched from his window seat as the luggage was unloaded from the hold and placed onto trolleys before being driven away, although he could not spot his case among them. He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. The pressure was building now behind his eyes, the band of tension spreading. It was definitely the start of a headache, hopefully not a full-blown shooting-stars-and-explosions migraine.
The policeman removed his passport from the reader, still holding it. ‘What is the purpose of your visit, Mr Marton?’ he asked, clear eyes holding his. ‘Business or pleasure?’
Marton tried to read his look. Brisk, polite, professional. Was there a flicker of something else underneath? Did they have gaydar in Hungary? Surely. It was a universal mechanism. ‘Both. I have some meetings. But I will also be doing some tourism,’ he replied in fluent Hungarian. He paused, smiled hopefully. ‘Maybe you can recommend a guide?’
The policeman continued staring at Marton’s passport, his handsome face impassive. Marton smiled, gathered his courage. Even if he got it wrong, what was there to lose? He leaned forward. ‘Or perhaps you have some free time. It’s always so much better when a local shows you their favourite places.’
The policeman did not smile back. ‘There is a tourist information booth in the arrivals area. They can help you.’
Marton nodded. A strikeout. But he had only been in the country for less than an hour. There would be plenty of other opportunities, he was sure. Ferenc continued speaking. ‘You speak very good Hungarian. Your family name is Hungarian. You have relatives here?’
Marton paused for a second. Yes, he did, although none that he wanted to admit to and he was certainly not about to tell Ferenc that, no matter how good-looking he was. ‘My parents left in ’56. We spoke Hungarian at home. I still have some distant cousins here,’ he said. ‘You know us Magyars. We are everywhere. Conquering the world.’
That at least brought a glimmer of a human response. Ferenc seemed about to smile but then thought better of it. He moved back from the glass, turned away for a second as he scribbled something on a notepad. He turned back to Marton, stamped his passport and slid it under the glass. ‘Welcome in Hungary, Mr Marton.’
For a moment Marton thought of correcting his grammar, then thought better of it. In any case, the next passenger was already moving forward behind him. He took his passport and walked through to the baggage arrivals hall. A cascade of luggage – overstuffed rucksacks, suitcases wrapped in clear plastic to deter light-fingered baggage handlers, black executive trolleys, cardboard boxes wrapped in duct tape – was tumbling onto the second carousel. The hall was crowded with families, businesspeople tapping on smartphones, lone travellers, a group of Korean tourists being marshalled by their guide who held a small Korean flag. A baby started howling. After a minute or so, Marton saw his bag, an expensive black-and-brown TUMI trolley, slide down the belt onto the carousel. Marton slid past several Koreans, took his luggage, extended the handle, and walked through the green customs channel, behind a bald, lanky businessman in a black suit. There were large two-way mirrors attached to each side of the wall. A poster warned against bringing in undocumented pets, plants or meat products. He kept his pace steady, tried to ignore his racing heartbeat.