A Hidden Girl

by D K Bohlman

  There was a signboard nearby, so he went over to read it.

  TO THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS

  SHOT INTO THE DANUBE

  BY ARROW CROSS MILITIAMEN

  IN 1944-45.

  Arrow Cross. Wasn’t that what Sarah McTeer was researching? It made him imagine what study into that kind of thing could lead to. Especially if she was digging where secrets were buried.

  It led him to wonder … to wonder about Aliz Gal and Beata Sandor. Too young for the war, of course … but the daughters of members? Hiding something close to their families or hearts in some way? There was a line of investigation there. But he wasn't sure, even if he found some link, that it would help him right now. Still, best not pre-judge the outcome. His thoughts turned to getting Jenna involved in that when his mobile rang.

  Cassie. His heart sank when he remembered he hadn’t answered her last text. It had been a few days now.

  He grabbed his first instinct, which was to run away, wrestled it to submission and pressed the answer button.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey back.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry I didn’t text you back, Cass. Been busy, I’m in Budapest right now, missing person.’ He cursed himself straight away for being defensive. But he hadn’t got back to her, had he?

  ‘Ah OK. Well, was just catching up, wondering how you were. Like I said, it was so good to have you with me at the wake, sad as it was … is … and, well, you know. That you stayed.’

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Yeah, it was. And it is. God, Cassie, I’ve been thinking about her so much this week since I’ve been away. I just realised that. Is that good or not?’

  ‘I don't know. It’s all I can think of. And you. Sorry, I mean that just came out, I don’t know what I meant by that. But I miss her so much, Calum.’

  He could hear the tears starting down the phone line and it made him well up too.

  But this wasn’t what he wanted right now. He wanted to pull away from all that sadness, those thoughts of his daughter’s death. Cassie too if he was honest. But he had to ease her away softly and that was feeling tricky.

  ‘So, how’ve you been this week? Did you go back to work yet?’

  ‘Not yet, no. Don't feel up to it, I think I’ll take the rest of this week then I‘ll see.’

  ‘Might be better to get back there next week, yeah. Give you something else to think about, eh?’

  ‘Huh. Don’t think work will stop me thinking about our daughter’s death, will it? Maybe you can block it out but I can't, Calum. I just can't.’

  Wrong words from him. More tears. Now he was stuck in a verbal corner and didn’t know how to move. He took the easy option as usual.

  ‘Ah, got a call on another line, Cass, sorry, I’ll need to take this one. Budapest police. I’ll call you end of the week, see how you are?’

  A disbelieving pause and frustrated exhalation of breath.

  ‘OK.’

  He clicked the call off sharply and sat down on the concrete bench near the iron shoes. Stared at the river, then turned his head upstream towards the cathedral-like parliament buildings. He looked at them but wasn't seeing.

  He rubbed his chin. Hadn’t shaved this morning. He felt tired now, conversations like that drained him instantly. Made him feel nervous inside. He turned his mind away from it, to seek an escape. Was that so bad? He knew he could be insular, push his emotions into the background without too much thought. Maybe too easily. But he wasn’t a bad person for that, was he? He just dealt with it in his own way.

  He stood up wearily to go back to the hotel and freshen up, get a coffee, lie down and think about how to identify any Arrow Cross ties for the two women who clearly weren’t telling him everything.

  He had the feeling that it might be risky. Anyone with links to that kind of hated organisation would be protective … of themselves and each other. So, talking to one may well be just the same as talking to all of them: because they’d all hear about it. He’d talk it over with Jenna when she came back.

  Then his phone rang and sent his thoughts in another direction.

  *

  Jenna cursed as she realised there wasn’t a big crowd of people to get lost amongst in the metro foyer. She risked not stamping her ticket and ran onto the platform. There was a toilet just farther up, so she bolted to the ladies’ and ran into a cubicle without stopping, bolting its door shut with a bang which shook the cubicle sides. There was a grunt from the next stall and what sounded like an angry expletive.

  ‘Sorry.’

  More expletives. Probably blaming her for being a tourist.

  She listened for the boy. Nothing. He was probably wondering whether to come in. He might do that if he saw someone leave and no one else come in. Or he might call the police. She'd run away, hadn’t she? He wouldn’t have any doubt that she was doing something wrong … so why wouldn't he call the cops?

  She looked behind her. Her heart soared, then fell a little. There was a window, partly open. It was small but doable. It looked like there was some daylight behind it, probably up a chute: though the Metro wasn’t at all deep, just one flight of stairs, they were still underground.

  She stood on the toilet and pushed her rucksack through the opening ahead of her, then eased her body up towards it. That was when she heard the woman next door leave. She held her breath. The door to the toilets opened and a man’s voice rang out, loudly, in Hungarian.

  She pressed forwards in panic. Her hips stuck a little but she managed to wriggle through the frame. There was a short flat stretch of about four feet then the shaft she was in turned upwards to daylight. It was a struggle to get up round the bend but she was soon pushing her head through a flimsy wire grill which flopped out onto a bank of grass outside the station. She clawed at the grass as she struggled to her feet and sped away, thinking she’d work out where she was after she’d run at least a couple of blocks and having turned a good few corners.

  Completely out of breath, she came to a halt at a tiny square off the side of a main street, with a couple of benches and a solitary tree, shorn of most of its summer leaves. She sat heavily down on the bench and let out a huge burst of air.

  She seemed to have shaken him off. She had a book, which she needed to get checked out. But what was she going to tell Calum?

  *

  Calum wasn’t in a position to be told anything. He’d shaved, then fallen asleep on the hotel bed for half an hour. When he woke up, he felt worse than he had before the nap. He flicked the coffee machine on and made himself a strong brew.

  By the time late afternoon came around, he was feeling more awake but no further with a way to get at Aliz and Beata.

  He texted Jenna looking for an early dinner arrangement and found her back at the hotel. They arranged to sit out under a gas heater at a small restaurant by the river they’d spotted on an earlier sortie.

  They ordered bowls of goulash stew. Something to warm them through … despite the gas heaters, their legs were already feeling the chill of the early evening November air.

  ‘You know, after what I saw on the riverside, those iron shoes of people pushed … murdered, into the Danube … well, I think anything Sarah did in her research that dug into that organisation could have triggered some strong feelings. These types of things have a way of lingering. Sometimes resurfacing. Like the neo-Nazi groups around Europe, you know?’

  Jenna nodded. ‘I do, I agree.’

  ‘So, I guess my point is, we need to be careful, for our own sakes. We need to look for any links at all that Aliz Gal or Beata Sandor may have had with the old organisation or any new form of it. Maybe something you can help with? It might be just as useful as any more time spent on Sarah’s notes. Anyway, how far did you get with those today? Must be pretty much done?’

  ‘I didn’t actually go through them, Cal. I did something else.’

  As soon as she used his name’s diminutive, he knew she was in an apologetic stance. He sat back and waited for
it to pour out.

  ‘There’s good news and bad news.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Well, the good news is … I got hold of a book that Eszter alluded to. What’s more, I took it over to Eszter’s place and we had a very quick scan of it.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ She had his interest now.

  ‘Err, well, the bad news is that it isn’t the right book. It just had a similar title.’

  ‘Great. Bit of a waste of a day then? And where did you get this book?’

  ‘Well, Beata’s house.’ She gulped some air before the next admission. ‘There’s more bad news. I got caught taking it by a neighbour and so Beata may … will get to know about it.’

  ‘Oh Jesus! OK, so what the hell do we do, Jen? He doesn't know who you are. Neither does Beata if he describes you. So odds are you won’t get traced. But she’ll hear about it when she gets home I guess, so then she’ll be on high alert.’

  ‘I don't know. Maybe we lie low for a day or so, carry on with quiet probing, you know …’

  ‘Well, I think you’d better get on with it, then, don't you? Make up for the cock-up.’

  *

  Jenna left the restaurant in appropriately feigned disgrace. But she knew exactly what they should do next. Beata would find out about the house intrusion tonight for sure. That’s if she hadn’t been contacted already. So it was important that she acted straight away. If the book wasn’t in Beata’s house, then her office was the obvious alternative. She needed to get into the library early tonight.

  The night library

  ____________________________

  It wasn’t too hard to pin down the location of Beata’s office after she’d got a tourist pass for the library. Luckily it stayed open very late. She needed to find somewhere to hide for a while. The obvious place was the toilets and then to hope for a poor security sweep. She sat with her feet up on the toilet seat for quite a while after the scheduled closing time, but still, no one came and looked under cubicle doors or checked them. It was an hour before she felt brave enough to approach the office. Her legs were stiff with squatting by then.

  She'd chosen toilets close by, so she had a clear line of sight of the office door from the toilets’ entrance. The light that had filtered from under the office door earlier, was now extinguished. Time to move.

  She expected to need her lock-picking skills for the office door but it was an old, simple lock of the sort you’d normally find on a garden shed … what’s more, it was open. She guessed they didn’t get much call for security internally in a library after hours. But if there was something to find here, then wasn't Beata being slack?

  She shut the door behind her. No light from anywhere, pitch black. She used the torch on her iPhone to scan the room. There were a number of open shelves behind Beata’s desk, probably no more than fifty books amongst files and other office paraphernalia. She glanced at them quickly. No sight of the book she wanted.

  She looked around again. She tried a chest of drawers. They were open, but no books in them. Same for the three small drawers under one side of the desk. On the left side of the office, there was a large cupboard set into the wall. She walked over and opened the wooden doors, to be met by the reflection of her torch.

  Glass doors on an inset cabinet, holding a small number of books. Somehow, this had to be where Beata Sandor might keep something which was not in its normal place. She tried the lock and found it tricky to pick. In the end, she had to force it. Not ideal, but the means justify the ends and all that, and she’d already spotted the title she wanted behind the dazzling reflection of her flashlight.

  She pushed the book inside her jacket and closed everything up. The cabinet door now had a broken lock, but it would only be discovered when someone tried to unlock it. She hoped that might not be for a while.

  She moved to shut the office door behind her and then realised that she hadn't exactly planned her escape with any real thought. She'd probably have to spend the night in the loo and wait for library opening time.

  Before she reached the door handle, though, she stopped dead in her tracks as she heard a noise behind her.

  Her heart raced and she turned as slowly as she could. Nothing as far as she could see. The only area she hadn’t explored were the full-length curtains at the windows. She felt like her heart couldn’t beat any faster but she summoned the nerve to move towards them.

  She got to within a foot and reached a hand towards the edge of one of the curtains, hoping to find nothing.

  She didn’t get the chance to see what was behind.

  The curtain exploded at her, hitting her face and draping itself over her as she fell, barged over by a heavy force. A man, judging by the strength of the shove. She flailed backwards, the curtain falling away from her. She turned her head just in time to see a man’s form disappearing through the office door, faintly illuminated by the iPhone torch which was pointing at the ceiling.

  She flopped back on the floor. Not library security, for sure, they wouldn’t hide behind a curtain, would they? So who? She sat up slowly, rubbing the back of her head. Whatever. She’d better get out of this room fast in case the man triggered some other action. She scrambled to her feet and headed back to the ladies.

  *

  The following morning brought with it a ridiculous game of hide and seek with the early cleaners who, luckily for Jenna, had propped the door open with a bucket while they grabbed some other equipment to wash the floors down.

  She managed to move around the building keeping ahead of them before the doors finally opened at nine. She left it a little longer before she dared to go down the stairs to the exit barriers and head off to Eszter’s place to decipher her stolen tome.

  Calum had left her a couple of texts since late the previous evening. She had made only one reply.

  I’m fine, don't worry, I’ll catch you tomorrow morning probably.

  He’d no doubt wring his hands about that message too … but it seemed the best option in the circumstances.

  *

  ‘So it’s clear Marton Kovacs was implicated in murders? Including children?’

  ‘I’m afraid it seems so. This book is clear about the report at the time. Of course, I can’t verify the truth of it right now. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to anyway. But that’s what it says, yes.’

  Jenna twisted her mouth into a grimace and scrunched her eyes up with the awfulness of what she'd just heard. The implications for Sarah were clear too, if she’d been sniffing anywhere near these events, accidentally or otherwise.

  ‘Well, thanks. Really not what I wanted to hear, but it's useful to have the background … now Marton is dead, it is hard to see how to progress, though.’

  ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘Maybe we need to make the information available to the police.’

  Eszter nodded. ‘Yes, maybe. But whatever you do, please keep me informed, Jenna … I got to really like Sarah while we worked together, she is a nice girl. I’m so worried for her now.’

  Jenna left her with a hug, and headed back to the hotel, wondering how the next conversation with Calum would go.

  *

  Calum was feeling pretty edgy about the conversation too. She could see it in his eyes as he opened the door to his room and let her in.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t answer your call last night. I was busy. But productive though. Very productive in fact.’

  ‘Uhuh.’ He rubbed his chin. She'd noticed he often did that when he was a bit stressed about something.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Well, I found the book. The missing text. What’s more, I got Eszter to look at it and it confirms Marton Kovacs was in the group that killed a family one night in their beds. One of them was a child.’

  She looked for his reaction, before deciding whether to offer anything about where she found the book and the encounter with a stranger.

  ‘OK. I guess that tells us for certain what we suspected: that Sarah was delvin
g into dangerous territory. But not much else, really. We have no clear link between Sarah’s disappearance and this book. We just know Aliz Gal was probably lying about Sarah leaving the hotel after her second visit and that Beata Sandor wasn’t actually as helpful as she seemed in the library. After that, we’re stuck.’

  ‘Yes. You’re right. We need to find a firmer link between some or all of them to move on.’

  ‘If there is one, Jen. This might be a red herring. But I think there’s only one way to get closer to this.’

  She looked at him expectantly. It felt like one of his light-bulb-on moments coming up.

  ‘You should check into the Hotel Cristal. They don't know you there. Snoop around, see what you can find. Maybe get in Kovacs’ room again. We don't know what there is to find until we try, eh?’

  She was excited by his suggestion … it felt like the right step.

  ‘Sure, sure. Today then?’

  ‘No time like the present, as my mum used to say when she was trying to get me out of bed on Saturdays to clean my dad’s car.’

  She smiled and nodded. She remembered Calum’s father. He’d been a bit of a grumpy man, always on the bottle. Luckily Calum hadn’t turned out the same way.

  ‘I’ll go pack my things then and, well, report back in the morning?’

  ‘Yeah. Do it. I’ll see if I can get closer to Beata Sandor, now we know she likely isn’t all that she appears to be. But not so fast, though. Firstly, easy on the room service there, it looks expensive. Secondly … where did you find the book?’

  ‘The library. Beata Sandor’s office.’

  He nodded slowly. Knowingly.

  ‘Of course. The obvious place after her house.’

  His face spread into a wide grin. ‘Meet any scary monsters while you were there?’