by D K Bohlman
It was late, there were only twenty minutes left before breakfast closed in Calum’s hotel, so she turned and launched herself into a sitting position on the edge of her bed. That just made it worse and a sudden urge to vomit sent her careering into the bathroom.
Just bile. She needed some food probably. She threw some water over her face, did the minimum to make herself presentable and staggered into the lift, ready for a bracing walk.
Calum was waiting in the breakfast room of his hotel, with a cup of coffee and his plate showing the evidence of a devoured hot grill platter.
‘Late night or lazy morning?’
She sat down and glared wearily at him.
‘Sorry. I feel really bad this morning, didn’t have a lot to drink but … God I feel crap. Maybe the food, I don't know.’
‘Well, your “not a lot” might be another person’s “loads”?’
‘Get lost,’ she snapped back.
She thought better of that straight away. ‘Sorry, Calum, sorry, I really do feel rubbish. I need some food.’
‘Leave it to me,’ he said, heading over to the buffet and returning a minute later with sausage and eggs. He poured her a coffee and sat back.
‘Come on, enjoy, get some calories into to you.’
The smells of the hot food didn't turn her off like food poisoning would normally do. She ate it slowly, but with increasing relish.
‘So, while you're eating. I cased a neo-Arrow Cross meet last night. North of here. The thing is … I saw Aliz Gal leave the place. So that’s concerning … especially as she lied about the taxi from the hotel. I’d say that implicates her 70-80% in some way that we don't understand yet.’
Jenna nodded. She was chewing a bite of sausage and looking at the various bits of paper Calum had by his place setting: he'd evidently been scribbling notes whilst waiting for her to appear. One scrap of paper had caught her eye.
‘Where’d you say the meeting was?’
‘At a house, up near the end of the tram line. Not far from Ujpest’s stadium as it happens.’
‘Ujpest?’
‘Sorry. The football club. Keep forgetting you're not a believer.’ He winked.
‘Never mind that … is this it?’
She’d grabbed the scrap of paper from his pile of papers.
‘What? The meeting house? Yes.’
Jenna grimaced.
‘This is Beata Sandor’s address.’
Calum swallowed his mouthful of coffee with a little gasp.
‘Wow. Well, that bumps the percentages up, eh? Now you mention that, there was a woman saying goodbye to Aliz after the meeting, but I didn’t get to see her face. I guess that was her.
So … they are both probably sympathetic to Arrow Cross. Aliz lied about the taxi. Beata tried to “help” Sarah’s research … but what were her real motives? And then Sarah disappears, with her last known sighting at the hotel room of an ex-Arrow Cross party member. An ex-member who is now dead.’
Jenna was silently agreeing, but struggling to overcome her body state. Analytical thinking wasn’t top of her skills list right now.
‘Next move?’
‘Your move, Calum. I’m too tired to think.’
‘OK. We have a choice now. This is something we could go to the police with. Not hard evidence … but enough to make them think and look into it, I reckon.’
‘Or?’
‘Or … follow it up ourselves. Or both. But what our next steps might be, I’m not sure. Beata is sure to be on high alert due to the book theft. Aliz knows I'm suspicious of her story. They know each other so may have swapped these pieces of information. They’ll certainly have their radar out on me, for sure.’
‘Jenna to the rescue again, then?’ Her thought processes weren’t that slow. ‘But … which option?’
Calum settled back in his chair, looked like he was deliberating.
‘Get over your headache this morning. I’ll talk to the Budapest police. If I can. Maybe decide what we do depending on my reception there.’
Mars bars
____________________________
Burton’s next message was what he wanted to hear. It was a difficult delivery. After the last drone was spotted by the warders, he’d gone to considerable lengths to ensure that the risk of them being in the delivery area was minimal. He’d ensured some distractions and that any unintended line of sight would be poor anyway. It worked. He got the drop at the expected time. There was a pre-planned, seemingly random, pattern of delivery that he knew, but that would be extremely hard for the prison staff to guess, except from observation over a very long period.
He unrolled the paper note.
We’ve made good progress. The mother took our bribe. Turned out she was pretty skint, husband cleaned her out a few years ago, so not a hard sell. N took the case and the girl’s joined him in Budapest. We’ve some unusual bait for her there … we think we found a little weak spot to try. It’s getting her attention, which makes the job easier. So much neater outside the U.K., much harder to link us to it.
Either way, I’ll update when all done. You want N too? It will be easy to add him now he’s there. For a price of course. Discount for the second one. Not quite BOGOF, but another 50? Let me know if you do. Just text ‘50’, as they say. Hehe. :)
Burton looked at the note with a wry smile. Better news. It was costing him, costing him more than he’d planned, but it would be worth it to see Neuman’s grief. It was that particular thought that made him decide not to text his man for the optional extra. He would enjoy Neuman’s agony, just like he’d suffered himself with Glenda’s death. It was all Neuman and Strick’s fault.
The bonus items in the delivery bag this week were a new SIM card and two king-size Mars bars. He could call his contact now to understand the attempt timing, then tip off D.I. Gregg a little too late. He grinned, wider than he had for some time.
He unwrapped one of the Mars bars and took a large bite, letting the melting chocolate fill his mouth.
The police palace
____________________________
Calum wasn’t expecting the meeting with the Budapest police to go particularly smoothly and was spot on with that instinct. He’d made an appointment to see an officer from the Redorseg at the police headquarters in Budapest … known locally as the “police palace”. Booking the appointment had been a labour and he got the distinct impression that private investigator wasn’t a favoured profession in this country.
He jumped off the tram across the street from the headquarters, looked up at the massive steel-blue tinted-glass edifice and decided its local title had been badly assigned. Not the elegant old building he’d been expecting. He entered the lobby and asked for detective Nagy.
The meeting was even more disappointing.
He was met by the detective at the lobby security gate and escorted to a small office on the ground floor. His host was a small, weedy and very pale man, who looked like he needed to get out from behind his desk more often.
‘So, you want to tell me something?’ No welcome, no handshake, no offer of a drink. Just a transaction. Carried out with an impassive stare from a man who looked distinctly uninterested.
‘Well, yes I do. I know you’ve investigated the case of Sarah McTeer, and I’ve some more information. I’m helping her mother look for her. So, if it helps you, then great … and if you want me to work alongside you so we don’t trip each other up, that will be fine too.’
Nagy nodded, indicating he should carry on.
Calum went through the Beata Sandor-Aliz Gal-Arrow Cross-Marton Kovacs links as he saw them. He described Beata and Aliz’s lack of honesty. He expected at least some raised eyebrows. But he got no visible reaction at all. Not a scrap. Nagy appeared to be making some notes, but he was either very good at shorthand or he was just box-ticking.
He was made to feel like a foreigner. He was, of course, but it was the feeling that because of that, his information was somehow less pertinent, that really hac
ked him off. The interchange was stilted due to the Hungarian officer’s poor command of English and getting through the detail that Calum wanted to share took a painfully long time.
‘OK. Thank you, Mr … err, Neuman. Thank you for telling the police this. I will consider this information. Now I must go, thank you.’
Yeah, thanks for nothing, you won’t be doing anything with that, will you?
They exchanged contact details … and that was pretty much that. He left, expecting no further interaction, whether or not the police followed up the lead. A request for him to be kept informed by the investigating team in case of any progress was met with a very grudging assent. Maybe they had other priorities: that was the best spin he could put on the whole process.
The one positive thing that came out of it, was that it clarified his own position. He needed to get to the bottom of the whole affair himself. He couldn’t rely on any help from the police. At all.
In the event, help eventually came from an unexpected source.
*
Back at his hotel, Calum rang Jenna’s room at the Cristal.
‘How’s the head?’
‘It’s better laid flat. But go on, what did the police say?’
‘Not a lot. Think we’re on our own, I’d say, so it’s time for us to really get our thinking caps on. If you can put yours on lying down?’
Jenna groaned at his joke. ‘I’ll be down in Cafe Zanta, it’s a couple of hundred yards from your hotel, in fifteen minutes, OK?’
‘Hang on, whereabouts is it?’
‘I think the phrase is “Google it”.’
‘Humph. OK.’
*
‘So look, Jen, the way I see it is this. No way are Gal or Sandor going to tell us any more than they have if they’re covering something up. I think they are, but how do we uncover it? If we confront them, they’ll lie again. Even if we get them rattled, there’s little we can do unless they come completely clean: I suspect that isn't going to happen, it feels there are deeper interests at work here. This Arrow Cross thing must drive strong feelings either way. So …’
‘Uhuh?’
‘What we really need are witnesses. Witnesses to what happened to Sarah after she went into Marton’s room, what happened when she came out of it. Assuming she did.’
‘Well, she's not there now, I can vouch for that, I searched the room so she did come out one way or the other.’
‘True. So who could have seen her leave?’
‘The staff, of course. Well, at least they’re the prime candidates.’
‘Exactly, Jen. We need to talk to them. The ones that were there that day. And maybe the days after.’
‘Well, Aliz Gal wasn’t too friendly last time out, was she? How are we going to get the staffing list?’
‘Needs to be me, Jen. I’ll at least try to persuade her. I don’t want to break your cover at the moment. You can be more useful observing unnoticed. I’ll get to her first thing in the morning.’
‘Yep, sounds right to start with. Want me to do anything?’
‘No just go back to your room, but keep browsing the hotel, see what might take your interest. Keep sniffing around room 33 as well. You may see me in an hour or two. I might try and look around and talk to staff myself if Ms Gal isn’t around in the evening. She can't be there all the time, can she?’
‘I guess not. She was there later last night though, it was around eight I saw her with Peter Kovacs,’ she reminded him.
‘True. I’ll be careful. Anyway, right now, I’m hungry. And I’ve run out of the pork pies I brought from home. So some late lunch here: want to stay for some?’
‘Ha. If it's not work, it's eating, with you. Don’t you ever think of anything else?’
‘That would be too much information for you, Jen.’
Jenna blushed and buried her face in a handily placed menu.
Nagy deliberates
____________________________
Officer Ervin Nagy flumped down on the sofa in his family’s two-bedroomed apartment and switched on the television. Ferencvarosi were playing tonight and he couldn't get to the game in time, so he thought he might watch some of it on the screen. Assuming they weren’t 0-3 down by then, in which case he might help his son with some maths problems he had. He’d always been good at maths. Maybe that’s why he was good at solving crimes. The analytical side of him seemed to excel. Not so good with people, maybe, but sifting through lots of information and structuring it, together with his thoughts on how to use it, that was his forte.
So, as he watched the first passage of play, his mind rumbled over what the Englishman … no, Scotsman had told him.
It sort of matched with what he already had, but extended it to make a more complete picture. Not a whole one by any means, not one with which he could involve a prosecutor and make an arrest. But … enough to dig deeper.
What’s more, he believed the man. Just something in his eyes and manner: the sort of instant sizing up of a person you did as a police officer. They taught you that stuff in the Budapest police college.
He didn’t want to encourage him, though, to think he could work directly with him. His management would frown on that. Too proud of their own ability to solve everything, without much help from the underworld or anyone else. But he could try to take it a bit further himself and maybe only go back to the Scotsman if he really needed to.
His instinct was to home in on Aliz Gal. She worked at the hotel, had for a long while as he recalled. If she'd lied about a taxi taking Sarah McTeer from the hotel after meeting Kovacs, well, that needed harder questioning. He’d start with her and maybe extend it to interview the rest of the staff that were there that day, to see who or what could corroborate her story. He needed to put her under pressure too, to read her eyes when she was stressed. He’d do it tomorrow.
‘Hey, Dad, they’re losing. Again.’
He turned his head and looked at his son. ‘You’re supposed to be doing homework, Tamas. No sneaking in here to watch the game!’
Tamas pouted at him. ‘I bet your dad let you watch sometimes.’
‘We didn't have a television, Tamas. So no, he didn’t. But you can watch the rest of the first half, then we look at those maths problems together, OK?’
‘Deal, Dad.’
Tamas dropped down on the sofa by his father and slapped him on the leg.
‘We just need to score now!’
His father nodded and smiled. ‘Let’s hope we can Tamas.’
Nagy was wondering what he’d do if the match was tense and he wanted to watch the second-half himself.
*
Officer Nagy had a mildly fuzzy head the next morning as he briefed his junior detective on the plan for the day. Tamas had become too good at manipulating him over the football and three beers and a second-half later he'd had to ditch the idea of maths homework. Next time he’d insist they did that first.
‘Get a car, we’ll go first thing, maybe talk to the staff after interviewing Gal, if we feel the need. Let’s go, Jan.’
The two officers arrived at the Hotel Cristal thirty minutes later, the short journey drawn out by the heavy morning traffic.
Nagy spoke to the single duty receptionist. The response from the girl was rather surprising.
‘What do you mean you don't know where she is?’
‘Sorry, officer, but just that. Someone in the office rang her home phone this morning and she has also had a mobile phone recently but no reply from that either. She hasn’t been seen since yesterday and she hasn’t been in touch with us. She’s normally in work by eight-thirty.’
Nagy checked his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. He thought for a moment.
‘At what time did she leave yesterday?’
‘I’m afraid I can't be sure, I was on duty, but I left at six p.m. and didn’t see Miss Gal when I left. She usually leaves about then too if there’s nothing major happening. Maybe someone else will know.’
‘So you didn’t see her lea
ve before six?’
‘No.’
‘And you were on the desk all the time till six?’
‘Yes, yes I was. I would normally see her go past if she left before me, I mean it's a small lobby and she usually goes out through this reception, from the office behind.’
Nagy nodded.
‘So who is managing the hotel if she isn’t here?’
‘Well, there is normally a duty manager. Miss Gal is the manager, of course, but she isn’t here all the time. But we don’t have one right now, no one has arranged it, I think.’
‘But who would? I mean who’s in charge?’
The girl paused for a moment.
‘I suppose Mr Kovacs was, but now he’s dead. So, his son is, I suppose, though we haven’t seen much of him.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘I think normally in Bucharest, but now he is living here since his father died.’
‘Here, in Budapest?’
‘No … well, yes I mean, in Budapest. But also here, in the hotel.’
Nagy glanced at his junior, Jan.
‘I think we need to see Mr Kovacs. Can you call his room and ask him to come down please?’
*
Peter Kovacs sat opposite the two detectives in the lobby area, in a corner away from the rest of the armchairs that the guests used. He joined his hands and laid his forearms across his knees as he leant forward over the low coffee table that sat between them. It helped stop them trembling.
He’d already been spooked by the phone call to his room, asking him to meet two police officers. Now they were asking him difficult questions.
‘So, in the absence of any first-hand knowledge by yourself of the events around Miss McTeer’s disappearance and the fact this Miss Gal is apparently temporarily missing … then I think we need a list of all staff that were on duty the day Miss McTeer supposedly left here in a taxi, so we can interview them. Can you arrange that for us now please, Mr Kovacs?’