by D K Bohlman
She slotted the key into the bookcase lock and turned it. It worked. She pulled the doors open and scanned the spines. Not so many. Pretty much all in Hungarian, so that wasn’t much help. She did have the words for “Arrow Cross” in Hungarian in her head though. After a few minutes rummaging around, she found one tome with those words in the title. She stuffed that into her rucksack. The few titles in English were about American baseball. She made a mental note of that and left them in place.
She looked around the room again. There were two large wardrobes on the far side near the windows. She opened the first. Some coats and shoes. She poked between them and found nothing else.
The second wardrobe was partly shelved, stacked with underwear, socks and men’s toiletries. And some cardboard boxes. The boxes held nothing of interest. However, behind them, there was a rucksack, pushed hard against the back of the shelf and hidden by the boxes and some more socks until she pulled them out.
She reached in and grabbed it. It was grey. The top zipper was open. Inside was a blue notebook and an iPad.
Hadn’t Eszter told her Sarah had a grey rucksack? That together with a blue notebook and an iPad, it was missing from Sarah’s hotel room? She would check her notes … but she was sure. Like when you wonder if you’ve locked the back door when you’re sitting in the airport-bound taxi. You know you have … but your mind wants to needle you with doubt.
For now, though, she was trusting her recall. Which meant that either Aliz was lying or very dozy about her recollection of Sarah leaving in a taxi. Aliz Gal didn't strike Jenna as a dozy woman from what Calum had said about her. But Calum could make his own mind up about that, now she had some semblance of proof. Proof of what exactly, she wasn't sure. But a very old man doesn’t keep these kinds of things belonging to a missing young girl in his room for no reason. And she could think of no reason why Sarah would have left them here.
She rifled through the rest of the wardrobe but found nothing more. She looked around the room again. A small wooden door set into an inside wall, which looked like it rolled up rather than opened outward. She walked over and pulled the door up. Just an empty space with a wooden box that seemed separate from the cupboard frame and was supported by a thick rope attached to a large metal loop on its top. It looked like one of those serving hatches they used in some restaurants.
Then she noticed the pair of pushbuttons set in a dull steel panel next to the hatch.
She mused on whether he had all of his food delivered this way. It was unusual to find one of these in a normal guest room. Wasn’t it? Maybe things were different in Hungary, in an old hotel. Whatever the reason, it looked well used and reeked of spilt food.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste and turned to face back into the room.
Just the bathroom left. Pretty empty on the face of it. She opened the bathroom cabinet. Cleaned out.
She turned around and as she did her foot touched the side of the bath. A small panel moved slightly. There was a gap and she prised the panel away to discover a small cupboard. She opened it and found a safe inside.
The safe was locked. She pondered on that. Marton Kovacs had been dead a good few days. So … so nothing. Too many possible options around why it was locked. She made another mental note. Back in the sitting room, she couldn’t think of anything else to look at.
She glanced down at the floor. A large rug covered most of the floor space in the open area of the room. She checked her phone. She had a couple of minutes left still. With an expectation of finding nothing, she rolled the rug back slowly. It was thick and heavy. It smelt of coffee and old smoke.
She only had to roll it about eighteen inches before she found a circular metal ring set in one of the floorboards. It had a glass disk recessed inside. She stooped down further and peered into the glass. A spyhole.
The field of vision was fairly large. There was a room below, lit by electric light, which struck her as odd in the middle of the day. Everything was static. A carpeted floor, the edge of a bed, some tables … then her eyes snapped back to the bed.
There was a leg poking into view at one end. A leg encased in denim. Bare feet. The leg looked slender, a woman’s probably. It was circling, idly. Was it Sarah’s? She looked for a few moments. Nothing changed. She couldn’t hear anything either.
She looked again at her phone. Time’s up. She reluctantly rolled the carpet back into place and grabbed the grey rucksack with its contents. Pushing it into her own backpack, she left the room as quietly as possible.
The cleaner had gone. Must have got impatient or had something to do. She walked to the end of the corridor and paused for thought. Why would Kovacs have been spying on the room below? Just a voyeur? Or something else? She could ask at reception who was in that room … but she didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so maybe there was a different way to find out?
As she wondered how best to do that, a movement down the corridor caught her eye. A man had appeared from the lift lobby and was walking down the corridor towards her. She looked down at her phone, pretending to be typing a message.
The man turned and stopped at Room 41 and used a key to open it and move inside. Jenna breathed relief at the close call. She noticed he had a long scar on his left cheek. It made him look sinister. And she wondered what this man was going to do in an empty room.
In Marton's room
____________________________
Peter returned to the Hotel Cristal in the early evening. He looked behind reception for Aliz. Not there. So using the manager’s pass he’d agreed with Aliz he might need, he retrieved a key for Room 41 and took the lift upstairs.
There was a girl at the end of the corridor, not far from Marton’s room. For some reason it made him feel guilty. He straightened his back and told himself he had no need to be. It was his father’s room, after all. What’s more, it would be his hotel too, once the estate was sorted out.
That thought reminded him how much he needed to fix the issues in Room 31. Without a clean start, it would be nigh on impossible to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance. He could hardly think of selling it with “two captive women included” on the sales brochure.
He shut the room door behind him and leant back against it. The room had a smell of old tobacco and bathroom cleaner. Most of all it looked empty. Not of things, as such, but empty of his father’s presence.
It was still and silent and there was an intangible vacuum that confirmed his father was dead. A vacuum that would linger for a while. Weeks, maybe months. And then one day someone else would be in this room and the vacuum would disappear, moving on somewhere with Marton’s spirit. For all he’d learnt about his father in recent days, he had loved the old bull and still did.
He snapped himself back out of his contemplation and took a look around the rooms. One big lounge, a bedroom and a bathroom. Some wardrobes and cupboards, chests of drawers. But not really much to show for a long life. It crossed his mind that maybe Marton had some things in storage somewhere, maybe in the hotel. He made a note to ask Aliz.
He rummaged through all the drawers and shelves he could see. There was nothing of interest other than his father’s own stuff. He looked down at the floor. Aliz had mentioned there was a spyhole.
He rolled back the loosely-laid carpet and found it, a cylindrical piece set into the floorboards. He moved in close, his eye right up to the metal ring at the end of the lens.
The view startled him. He hadn’t expected to see their faces staring back up at him, side by side, smiling. Laughing now. Laughing at him? Surely they couldn’t see him?
They looked young, especially the dark-haired one. He supposed she was the Scots girl. For a moment his heart softened and he thought maybe he should think of another way. It was a fleeting thought, though, one cut short by the reality of the situation. He tightened his resolve and brought himself back to his plan. It was the only way.
He watched their faces for a few moments. Their smiles turned into laughs and then morphed into str
ains as they seemed to be exerting themselves somehow. He couldn’t see past their waistlines, but they looked like they were enjoying it, whatever it was. It was strangely attractive watching them. Then they pulled their heads up, rolled themselves forward and they were gone.
He dropped the carpet back down. Better he didn’t look again. He couldn’t afford to get interested in them, in any way at all … and a few stirrings of ideas were already circling in his head. He shook himself, wriggling his mind free of them. No, he needed to treat them as two problems … and nothing more.
He stood up. There was nothing more to see here. Nothing to find, it seemed. Being in this room was helping him, though. Helping him think through the way to do it. He found himself sweating and pulled a cotton handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He held it to his forehead, soaking up the droplets, closing his eyes for a moment, beginning to visualise the way it would happen. There were bits he couldn’t quite see yet. But there was an idea forming that he could develop, one that could work. He just needed to lie in his room and think some more.
He locked the door on the way out. Something made him look to the end of the corridor, where the girl had been standing earlier. She was gone and any thoughts he had about her left him.
He strode down the stairs to reception rather than wait for the lift and walked up to the desk. ‘As you know, I’m Peter Kovacs. I’ve been staying in a hotel nearby since I came to Budapest. I’d like to take a room here now, to sort out my father’s affairs. Can you find me one at the end of a corridor, a nice room, please? I’ll probably be here a while.’
The young man on reception was eager to please and shuffled reservations around in double quick time to free up a corner room. He was obviously aware that the man in front of him might be his future employer.
‘Room 21, Mr Kovacs. It’s a large room. Hope you like it, come and tell me if it isn’t suitable?’
Peter nodded and took the key from him. He realised that, by chance, the room he’d been allocated was directly underneath the girls’ room. He would move in tonight.
Brainstorming
____________________________
Calum knocked on Jenna’s room door.
‘Entrez.’
You’re Scottish and you’re in Hungary, think you’re getting the language confused.’
She rolled her eyes and motioned towards the rucksack on her bed.
‘Really, my girl, speaking French to a gentleman, now suggesting bed at 8 p.m., I’ll have to speak to your mother when we’re home.’
They’d lived side-by-side in their small Scottish village, growing up knowing each other very well. It let them say things without any inhibitions, in a way they wouldn’t to others.
‘Calum, just shut up a minute. The rucksack. With a blue notepad and iPad inside it. Sarah’s, from what Eszter told me.’
Calum sat down and pulled his serious face back on. ‘Where from?’
‘Marton Kovacs’ room.’
‘Really? What else?’
‘A spyhole in the floor, under a rug. Looks down into a room below. I saw part of a leg, dangling over the edge of a bed, I think.’
‘Jesus. You think it could have been Sarah?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. The leg looked slim-ish, but I couldn’t see more than the lower part. The description and photo set of Sarah we have says not too tall, medium build. So maybe not. I can’t be sure.’
‘Let’s have a look at the notebook and iPad then. You take the iPad … I’ll stick to the old technology. By the way, I bought us a chimney cake while you were out spying. It’s in the paper bag. Have some … cinnamon sugared, it’s good.’
She got up, broke off a big chunk of the cylindrical bread-cake and stuffed a piece into her mouth. Delicious. He was good at finding tasty food, it was one of his pluses.
She pulled the notebook and iPad out of the rucksack and handed the notebook to him. She clicked the iPad on. She was pressing buttons, sighing.
‘What’s up?’
Calum had his eyes down, leafing through the notebook.
‘Password protected. We might not get anything from this.’
‘Let’s hope the boring old technology helps, then. No password on this book, Jen.’
She threw him a withering smile. ‘You’re a Luddite, Neuman. And annoying with it.’
‘Wrong. The Luddites tried to prevent progress. I’m actually making it here. Seems she’d been to visit Marton twice … and was actually invited back the second time.’
He read a bit further, then jumped to the last page of notes.
He read the last few lines out aloud.
Marton Kovacs 12 Nov.
Invited back to complete questions.
Asked about Arrow Cross personal involvement 1944-45. Seemed nervous. Not sure how to progress without provoking resistance.
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it. She didn’t write anything else. Which makes you think … doesn’t it?’
They stared at each other.
‘You know what,’ Calum said, ‘I’m going to go back and talk to the librarian again, Beata Sandor. Eszter mentioned she’d been helping them personally, which I thought a bit unusual. We know Sarah visited Marton in pursuit of some research threads or the like. I just wonder if Beata knows anything about Marton Kovacs?’
‘Why don’t I go? Get a different perspective? She hasn’t met me so a fresh angle might work?’
‘No, I’ll do it, I think continuity is better on this one. I’m sure you can find more notes and research leads from the notebook to pursue tomorrow?’
Jenna grimaced but buttoned her lip and grunted in the affirmative.
‘Let’s crack on then. Catch you in the bar later?’
After he left the room, she growled to herself. It was true there were more papers to sift through and she needed to hack the iPad password somehow. But she wondered if there was a more Jenna-like contribution she could make. It was what made her get excited about this job, after all. She started leafing through some remaining research papers, whilst simultaneously imagining likely passwords Sarah may have used.
Then she remembered she knew someone from university who had used an algorithm thing that came up with lists of possible passwords based on personal information about a person. So she created a list as long as she could, all the basics they captured on a new case plus mother’s and friends’ names, any pets (none that she knew of) boyfriends (none again) and interests. Some of the last category would ironically probably be on the iPad once she was in. She sent the list with a plea for quick help to the guy from Inverness and silently wished him good luck.
In the event, he didn’t need it. He sent her a link back to his algorithm immediately and suggested she could feed the information in herself. She sighed with a kind of resigned understanding and started the process of typing the data in.
*
The evening meeting in the hotel bar had already become a ritual. Calum ordered more of their, now favourite, white wine. It was a new waitress who brought it over to their table. She set two glasses down next to the wine bottle, thanked Calum, then looked across at Jenna and smiled. A second longer than Jenna might have expected.
They both sank a glass quickly then refilled. Thirty minutes later they were staring at an empty bottle. The downside of a slow day at the office. Or bright spot, depending on how you looked at it.
‘I’m trying with the iPad data but it's hard going. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something. I might need to ask her mother a few questions about personal data to help me. How did you get the cleaner to help us, by the way?’
Calum rubbed the thumb and first finger of his right hand together as if rolling a cigarette.
‘Everyone has their price, Jen. And for a cleaner, it isn’t too high.’ He looked a little sad.
Calum waved the waitress over again. A tall girl, slim with long dark hair tied back into a ponytail. Thirty-ish probably. She took the repeat order, smiled at Jenna again, just that b
it longer than most people feel comfortable with. She returned quickly, bringing them peanuts, too.
As she walked away. Calum turned to Jenna.
‘Think she fancies you. Free peanuts for miss.’
Jenna flushed, which encouraged him. ‘Oh, you too eh?’
An elbow in his ribs made him gasp with a squeaky laugh, causing some of the other guests to take a look at them both. They fell silent for a moment, as they felt their age difference come under scrutiny.
They went for the bottle at the same time and giggled again, as Calum finally wrestled the bottle away from Jenna and filled their glasses. By the time they’d drained the last of that bottle, the other guests were a fuzzy haze.
‘OK. Calum, you're a baad fluence. I’m off to bed.’
*
Jenna carefully rose to her feet and half-waved to Calum as she meandered to the lift. The lights inside it were bright and she screwed up her eyes until she got out and walked to her door.
She sat down on her bed and wondered about the waitress. Her name badge had announced her as Izabella. She liked the name … or was that some kind of halo effect? And why was she smiling at her?
Was it because she was so much younger than Calum and Izabella had assumed he was her lover? Or something else? She looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror. Did she look gay? Could you even look lesbian anyway?
Too hard. She pulled her clothes off, hit the light switch and fell asleep with her toothbrush standing unwanted in the bathroom.
Jenna & Izabella
____________________________
Calum and Jenna met back at the hotel later the next day. Izabella was serving them again, this time from behind the bar counter. Smiling as ever. But longer and deeper when she spoke to Jenna. Jenna was sure she wasn't imagining it now.
‘Sooo, Calum-O, I have some more information. I got into the iPad! And I found out some useful stuff, besides a load of personal information.’