Invisible Murder Read online

  Pitkin lived in “the old village,” as people in Galbeno called it, even though only three buildings there were still even marginally habitable. It was a collection of wattle and daub huts a little farther up in the hills, closer to the source of the spring, but otherwise just a little farther away from everything. No road, just a winding path. No electricity. Roofs that were patchworks of rusty metal plates, plastic, and straw. Galbeno wasn’t actually the end of the road, Sándor reflected. There was a back of beyond beyond the back of beyond.

  A man came out of the house. His back was so stooped that his head with its plaid cap jutted out between his shoulders like a turtle’s. His trousers were being held up by a pair of black suspenders, and his torso was clad solely in a yellowing vest.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Sándor. My mother’s Valeria Rézmüves.”

  “Valeria’s boy? How tall you’ve grown!”

  Sándor shrugged. “Is Pitkin home?” he asked.

  The old man nodded. “Come in,” he said. “Shut up, Brutus.”

  The German shepherd mix stopped barking immediately. It wagged and danced over to the old man, who patted its head with a calloused, gnarled hand. Sándor ventured inside, closing the gate behind him by the simple expedient of looping a bit of dark-green binder twine over the top of the post.

  Inside the hut itself it was so dark that at first Sándor could barely make out the details. The floor plan was the same as in Valeria’s green house. One room, a shelf for sleeping and seating along three of the walls, a wood stove, and a door. No TV here, of course, since there wasn’t any electricity. Also lacking was the cleanliness and order Valeria insisted on.

  A moped was parked in the middle of the room. A blue, three-speed Kreidler Florett, Sándor noted, recollecting specifications picked up in his teenage years that he hadn’t realized he still remembered. The smell of gasoline mixed with the pungency of dirt and human body odor. The moped was definitely the cleanest thing in the room. New wasn’t quite the right word, but maybe newly purchased? There was something about the way it was polished, and probably also the fact that it was parked in the middle of the house, that suggested that the joy of ownership hadn’t lost its luster.

  “Pitkin, this is Sándor,” the old man announced. “Valeria’s boy.”

  A pile of blankets in the corner moved, and a large, droopy form sat up.

  “Tamás?” Pitkin said. “Is Tamás home?”

  “No,” Sándor said. “Not yet.”

  “He’s been a little under the weather lately,” grunted the man who must be Pitkin’s grandfather. “He must have eaten something that doesn’t agree with him. But if you’ll sit with him for a bit, then I can go down to the council office.”

  “Are you going, Grandpa?”

  “Yes, Pitkin, but Sándor’s here now. So it’s okay if I nip out for a bit.”

  You would have thought Pitkin was eight rather than eighteen, Sándor thought. How sick was he really? But then it dawned on him that it wasn’t just this momentary discomfort making Pitkin seem like a child. Feliszia had mentioned it, too; she had described him as “a little immature,” and that was no exaggeration.

  “You will stay, won’t you?” the old man said, and even though his voice sounded casual, there was an intensity in his eyes that made it clear that it was a plea. “I also have to pick up a couple of things at the store.”

  Dear God, Sándor thought, how long has Pitkin been sick?

  “Of course I will,” Sándor promised, sitting down on the bench to demonstrate that he wasn’t about to run off. “Take your time.”

  Pitkin followed his grandfather with his eyes as the old man put a jacket on over his yellowing vest—despite the heat—and straightened his cap.

  “I’ll be home again soon, boy,” he said, and Sándor was a little unsure whether the boy being referred to was him or Pitkin.

  “When’s Tamás coming back?” Pitkin asked once his grandfather had gone. “He said it wouldn’t take that long.”

  “I don’t know, Pitkin. What was he was going to do?”

  But Pitkin wasn’t that gullible. His face suddenly went blank, and he blinked a couple times.

  “He was just going to earn a little money,” Pitkin said. “With his violin.”

  Sándor stifled a sigh. Pitkin was clearly smart enough to lie, he thought, just not smart enough that the lie wasn’t obvious.

  “That’s a nice moped,” Sándor said. “Have you just bought it?”

  Pitkin’s face lit up like a sunrise.

  “It’s a three-speed,” he said. “It can go seventy on a flat road.”

  “That’s great. What did you have to pay for it?”

  “Tamás bought it for me. He said.…” Pitkin stopped.

  “What did he say, Pitkin?”

  But Pitkin just shook his head.

  “I wish he’d come home again,” he said. “It’s so boring here without him.”

  “You’re good friends, you and him?”

  Pitkin nodded so his dark hair danced.

  “He’s my best friend.”

  “So you would want to help him, if he needed it?”

  “Of course!” Pitkin’s serious face practically radiated indignation. “He’s my friend.”

  “Yes, and he’s my brother. And I really want to help him.”

  “Help him with what?”

  Sándor hesitated. He suddenly found it hard to lie to this big, vulnerable child-man. So he chose some words that were actually true. “Help him come home,” Sándor said. “He’s been gone too long.” Pitkin nodded. “That’s right.”

  The dog came into the house. What was its name again? Brutus? Very apt. It gave Sándor a suspicious look just to let him know that it was keeping its eye on him. Then it lumbered over to Pitkin and nudged its head under Pitkin’s hand to entice him to stroke it. Pitkin scratched the dog behind the ear so it closed its eyes and moaned in pleasure.

  “Do you know where exactly he was going?”

  “Denmark. He said Denmark.”

  Sándor knew that much already.

  “What was he going to sell?”

  “Just something we found,” Pitkin said.

  “Where?”

  “The hospital in Szikla.” Pitkin bit his lip. “He told me not to tell anyone that.”

  “It’s okay, Pitkin. It’s just me.”

  Suddenly the look on Pitkin’s face changed. He stood up abruptly, fumbling his way past the moped to the door. He barely made it out before the first wave of vomit splashed onto the ground.

  Sándor got up instinctively without knowing what to do. Hold Pitkin’s forehead? Clean up the mess? The dog whined and bumped Pitkin with its nose, and when Sándor took a step closer, it turned its head and growled. Sándor sat down again.

  Pitkin wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “It won’t stop,” Pitkin said, his voice making it clear he found this unfair. “I haven’t eaten anything at all today and still it just keeps coming.”

  He sank back onto the bunk, on a pile of quilts and pillows. The dog was sniffing at the pool of vomit outside, but when Pitkin snapped his fingers, it obediently came back in and sat down next to him.

  “Do you want a glass of water or anything?”

  Sándor asked awkwardly.

  Pitkin shook his head. “I’m tired,” he said. “I think I’m going to take a nap.”

  “What was it you found?” Sándor tried one more time.

  “I can’t talk now,” Pitkin grunted and lay down.

  “Not even to help Tamás?”

  But that appeal no longer had any effect.

  “He said I couldn’t tell anyone,” Pitkin said, closing his eyes.

  Sándor sat up straighter. The dog followed his every move.

  “Pitkin.…”

  A fake snore was all that came from Pitkin.

  “You’re not really asleep.…” Sándor tried. But all he heard was more snoring, and he began to realize that
he wasn’t going to get anything else out of this conversation. He got up slowly so as not to alarm the dog. Pitkin opened his eyes.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Well, you’re just going to go to sleep, right?”

  “But you promised my grandpa.”

  The fear shone out of Pitkin’s eyes. Sándor didn’t know if he was always afraid of being alone or if it was just because he was sick. Either way, he couldn’t resist the boy’s obvious terror.

  “Okay, I’ll stay for a bit,” he said.

  Pitkin grunted in satisfaction and made himself more comfortable. Sándor sat quietly next to him until the old man came back.

  THE NEXT MORNING Bolgár’s BMW was parked outside Valeria’s house when Sándor went out to pee. Stefan was leaning against the front door with his arms crossed. When he spotted Sándor, he straightened up and started moving.

  “Mr. Bolgár wants to talk to you,” he said.

  Sándor had pretty much guessed that.

  “So early? Can’t it wait until I’ve had a pee?”

  Apparently it couldn’t. There was a certain inevitability to the way Stefan was blocking his way.

  “Now,” he said.

  A few hours later Sándor was once again sitting on a bus. Not the local one this time, but an old, blue Ford Transit minibus. All seventeen seats were occupied, and the aisle between the seats was stuffed full of luggage in suitcases and plastic bags. He was the only one from Galbeno, but most of the others were from similar villages or from Miskolc’s Roma ghetto. Three women had their own section at the very back of the bus where a couple of sheets could be rigged up as a curtain at night. One of them was traveling with her little daughter, a girl of about four. The rest of the passengers were men.

  Sándor was sitting on a worn, gray imitation leather seat that was already sticking to his thighs, with his feet awkwardly wedged on either side of the cardboard box of food and water that Valeria had presented him with, and his feeling of unreality grew until he was seriously considering banging his head against the window a couple of times just to check if it hurt. Outside the window Miskolc’s industrial district slid by, a gray and rusty brown landscape of fences and crumbling concrete, dented steel containers, and high smokestacks from the time when smokestacks were a symbol of progress, growth, and jobs.

  Ten days ago, he thought. Ten days ago I was a law student. I was living in Budapest. I had a future.

  Back then he had enjoyed the illusion that he was the master of his own life, that he could steer it in whichever direction he wanted. With a few limitations, of course, and as long as he was good and careful about not breaking the rules. Since then he had been jerked this way and that, first by Tamás, then by the NBH, the university, his professor, his mother, his family, and now most recently Bolgár.

  “We’ve heard from Denmark,” Bolgár had said when Stefan deposited Sándor on the patio like the previous time. “Your brother needs you.”

  “Tamás? What for?”

  “Who asks why when his brother needs help? He just wants to talk to you, he says. Don’t worry, Sándor; we’ll take care of everything. At no extra charge. You’re leaving this afternoon.”

  Again it wasn’t a question. Not even a demand for his consent. His compliance was taken for granted. But Bolgár might not have trusted completely in his obedience after all; as he was put on the bus, Stefan took his wallet, removed his Visa card, and gave it to the driver before handing Sándor back his money.

  I’m going to Denmark, he told himself. It didn’t really make any sense. If he had been the cowboy in one of the two tattered Morgan Kane novels he had in his bag, he would have a clear mission at this point: someone who needed to be found, rescued, or avenged. Of course there would also be bad guys and trials and tribulations, and a dynamic hero who would see things through to their conclusion and emerge victorious in the end.

  Sándor had a hard time seeing what his mission was. And an even harder time picturing the victorious hero.

  Bolgár wanted him to help his brother. But with what? he wondered. Presumably with selling whatever the heck he and Pitkin had found, on some ultra black market to a buyer who was no doubt a criminal and possibly worse. What an outstanding start to his law career that would be.

  But you don’t have a law career anymore, an icily sarcastic voice jeered in his mind. And if you don’t get Bolgár his damned two million forints, you might not have a family anymore, either. Because that was what this was about. It was never said out loud, but that was the implication. It was the reason he hadn’t refused to go, the reason he hadn’t even protested when Stefan took his credit card. Valeria and the girls. Their lives and ability to survive in the village. He didn’t even dare contemplate what consequences it might have for them if he stood up to a man like Bolgár.

  He rubbed his forehead with his wrist and suddenly felt like talking to Lujza. Not to tell her where he was going or what had happened so far. Just … because. Because she was his real life, the one he had had before he became hopelessly trapped in this web of family and past and veiled threats.

  He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. If he was going to call, it made the most sense to do it while it was still a domestic call. But when he tried to turn the phone on, it shut off right away. The battery needed to be recharged.

  He sat there for a while with the phone in his hand. Then he let it drop back into his pocket.

  Maybe it was better this way. He had no idea what he would have said to her anyway.

  INA DIDN’T WANT to talk to anyone anymore.

  They had called from the children’s unit that morning while Nina was leading her class for new mothers, Infant Health. That was one of the more pleasant jobs at the Coal-House Camp. Women who had just given birth had an astounding ability to shut out the rest of the world. The five women sat on the floor of the clinic’s little waiting room with their babies in front of them on soft, brightly colored baby blankets as they followed Nina attentively with their eyes.

  “Put your baby on its tummy as often as possible. After each diaper change, for example.”

  Nina squatted down and carefully rolled a three-month-old boy onto his stomach, and couldn’t help but smile. The boy struggled to hold his big wobbly head, but gave up after a few seconds, resting his forehead on the blanket in front of him and squawking shrilly and angrily. The women laughed. The boy’s mother, a very young woman from Sudan, stroked him soothingly over his dusting of curly hair. Then she turned him around, picked him up in a quick and secure grip, and snuggled his little body to her chest. The boy instantly stopped his screeching, but was still whimpering at the affront when the phone rang. Rikke from the children’s unit made her brief report. Rina wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating, and refused to talk to anyone. Including the kids she actually knew well from the family section at Unit B.

  They didn’t need Nina to come back, because as Rikke said, “the positive effect of Nina’s daily visits was obviously limited.” She was actually just calling because she wanted to talk to Magnus. He was going to have to get the girl some kind of psychiatric evaluation.

  “Damn and blast it,” Nina said, aware of how her loathing of the system came sneaking in. She pictured Rina, sitting in the office in the children’s unit, spinning around hesitantly on a stool in front of the camp’s child psychiatrist. He was actually pretty good, a friendly middle-aged man with a little pot belly and a pair of narrow glasses mounted on his nose. But she wouldn’t be given more than an hour of therapy a month. Which was hardly better than nothing at all.

  “What she needs is her mother,” Nina said, trying to rein in her frustration. After all, it wasn’t Rikke’s fault. But still … Nina wasn’t sure she liked the tone of Rikke’s voice. Wasn’t there a touch of blame in it?

  “I’m not disagreeing, Nina,” Rikke said. “But neither you nor I can give her what she needs most of all now. You’re wasting your time over here. She’s totally out of it. I need to talk to Ma
gnus. Now.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Then ask him to call when he gets in.”

  Nina said an overly hasty goodbye and put the phone back down on the desk with a hard bang. The babies’ mothers were still sitting on the floor in the next room, and she could hear their soft, cooing voices, their laughter, and the babies’ little grunts of satisfaction at the attention.

  She waved a quick farewell to the women and then walked rapidly down the hallway toward the exit. She needed a break. It had started raining outside. Soft, heavy drops were falling from the gray May sky and had already soaked the lawn in front of the main building. Nina stood in the doorway watching the water run in little rivulets over the paved walkway, which was lined with old cigarette butts and gum wrappers. Spring spruced up the Coal-House Camp, no question. But there was no hiding the fact that both the residents and the Danish government were basically indifferent to the place. It was ugly and uncared for. Scratched up, scuffed, worn out. Being here made people gray, no matter how much paint they sloshed on the outside and how much IKEA furniture they stuffed inside.

  She took a deep breath. The scent of wet dirt and grass and asphalt and summer. She made a decision. She would bring Ida, Anton, and Morten to Viborg with her this year, to stay with her mother. The kids really ought to spend a little time with their grandmother. Nina would just have to grit her teeth and smile her way through it.

  Her phone’s protracted trills interrupted her, and she just managed to get it up out of her pocket before the ringing stopped.

  “Nina?”

  It was Peter. She recognized his voice after a brief delay. He didn’t sound the way he usually did. “Nina, I know Morten isn’t home yet, but I was really hoping you could make an exception. I’m.…” Peter was cut short by a protracted coughing fit, followed by long, labored gasps for breath. “I’ve come down with something,” he said. “I’m sure it’s the same thing the young Roma boy has. It’s really nasty. I’m so.…”

  Again a protracted rattling cough that almost made Nina hold the phone away from her until the worst of the fit had passed. She lowered her voice.