The Confession

by Steinhauer, Olen

  “Or maybe you know,” said Stefan.

  Mathew Eiers glared at the floor. “I would have liked to do that.”

  “To kill him?”

  He looked as far from tears as we would ever see him. “I didn’t, no, but I could have. She still saw him now and then. Sofia thought I didn’t know, but husbands know these sorts of things, right? They didn’t make love, I’m sure of that, but she wasn’t honest to me about it. I could either do something about it or not.” He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “Why not?” asked Stefan.

  He concentrated on the floor and spoke slowly: “Because I didn’t want to lose her. Sofia had left him for me. She could choose to go back just as easily. I knew this. It didn’t matter how evil he was.”

  “Evil?” I said. “Isn’t that a little strong?”

  “That’s what Sofia told me. She used that very word. She never told me why, but she said that his evil deeds had made him a star in the Capital. His fame was at a terrible price.”

  Stefan didn’t seem to understand. “But if she thought he was evil, why would she still see him? Why would she go back to him?”

  He smiled for the first time. “Come on, Comrade Inspector. Don’t be naïve. You don’t go to bed with someone because you know they’re pure. And sometimes you don’t love purity. Sometimes you do everything precisely because of impurity. Sometimes you can’t help it.”

  We let that sit a moment. The living room was stuffy; he’d sealed it against unhealthy drafts.

  “Let’s try some names on you,” I suggested. “Did Sofia ever mention a Josef Maneck?”

  “Maneck died some time ago, didn’t he? He was a business associate of Antonín’s—you know, the art business—before he fell off the wagon.”

  “Any idea why he did that?” asked Stefan.

  “What?”

  “Fell off the wagon.”

  Mathew shook his head.

  I cleared my throat. “How about a Nestor?”

  “Nestor Velcea?”

  Stefan wrote it down.

  “I never met him, but Sofia called him the greatest artist she’d ever known. She and Antonín lived with him their first year in the Capital, until he was sent away.”

  “To a work camp,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yes. I suppose he got one of those summonses from Yalta Boulevard. You know—document check. She never really told me the details of what happened—it was a sensitive subject. Understandably.”

  “Understandably,” I said. “But he’s supposed to have been released.”

  Mathew frowned. “Really? From the way she praised him, I wouldn’t mind meeting this guy. His paintings are supposed to be better than Antonín’s early work, but I’ve never seen them. He was a little weird, she told me. He refused to show his work in public and didn’t even sign his paintings. A little mixed-up in the head, maybe.”

  Stefan cut in: “I still don’t understand why your wife thought of Antonín as evil. Didn’t she say why?”

  “My wife wasn’t a gossip, Comrade Inspector. She stated her opinion and left it at that. I respected her for it.”

  While Stefan retrieved the bag of oats, I used the bathroom. There was another crucifix beside the mirror, and on the floor was a book by an American weightlifter named Atlas. It was all in English, but there were photos of this massive man throughout, showing how to lift weights, which kinds of food to eat, and how to live in order to grow into a healthy old age.

  I drove Stefan back to the station, then took my writings out of my desk and put them into my satchel, not looking up as Kaminski strolled in. The Russian positioned himself by the door, hands in his pockets, watching us a while before speaking. “There was a little confusion today. We tried to reach all of you by the new radios, but had no luck.” He held up his hands. “It’s a new system, we understand this, and there will be bumps along the way. But, guys, the radios have to be left on in order to function. This only makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “But what about that noise?” asked Stefan. “They hiss like mad all the time.”

  “Then you turn the volume down,” Kaminski explained. “Not all the way, but some. The call-in will be loud enough for you to hear it.” He took a step toward my desk. “Any questions, Ferenc? I can get Brano to show you how to use it again.”

  “No thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble,” said Sev, rising from his own desk.

  “I get it. Really.”

  31

  The next morning, I took the tram into town. The car would be a burden if I wasn’t going to use it. Then we set off for Unity Medical. Emil drove, I sat in the passenger’s seat, and Stefan sank into the back. The radio hissed quietly.

  “Kaminski’s got something planned,” said Emil. “All this with the radio. I don’t know what it is.”

  Stefan grunted. “The Americans said they’re rounding up demonstrators in Budapest. They’re making them identify their friends and sending them all to prison. That’s what he was doing out west in Budapest. He’ll do it here, too.”

  Emil touched the radio and turned the volume up—static filled the car—then down. He drew his hand from the radio. “Do you think they can hear us through this?”

  We all looked at the hissing box, its red light burning, and said nothing else until we were out of the car.

  Markus Feder was in a better state. “Three visitors at once, I should be pleased.”

  The lab was clean and empty. No tables with lumps beneath sheets, no indescribable smells, just the faint lingering odor of ether. He had a clipboard in his hand.

  “First, these fingerprints. I asked the boys to pass them on to me, so I could check them with the corpses. Out of five sets from Antonín Kullmann’s apartment, two were identified as you two, Ferenc and Stefan. I checked the remaining three: One is Antonín Kullmann’s and one is Sofia Eiers’s. Here’s the unknown one,” he said, passing over a card onto which eight prints had been transferred to ten boxes.

  I waved it. “The guy I chased.”

  “Tell us about Sofia Eiers,” said Stefan.

  Feder raised a hand. “Thanks for giving me an easy one this time. The boys checked the oats first, and they came up clean. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to look at the body yet.” He smiled. “Didn’t you guys notice the marks around her neck?”

  “I did,” I said, but sounded overeager.

  “Well then. It might have suggested something else. The girl was strangled. The killer came up behind her and used his whole arm. Leaves fewer marks, just a welt, but breaks the trachea pretty quickly. As soon as I saw her it was obvious. You said she was found with her face in her breakfast?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what made us think—”

  “Don’t worry about it. The thing is, there was a single thumbprint on the back of her neck. Again, I checked, and it’s from that one you have in your hand. He must have decided she looked better in her porridge.”

  I looked down at the card.

  “Looks like your killer’s starting to get a heart,” he said. “No more barbecues.”

  If the doors were locked, that left two possibilities—either Sofia Eiers knew her murderer and let him in, or the murderer had been waiting inside the house since before breakfast time that morning, hidden. He had broken into the house, perhaps over the weekend, while the Eierses were in the country, and waited. Once Mathew stepped out, he killed Zoia and left, locking the door behind him.

  Mathew Eiers wasn’t at home—his office, it seemed, would only give him that first day off to mourn his wife—so we talked to the neighbors on each side and across the street. One family had been away for the weekend as well; on the other side, a single man who was terrified by the sight of us had been around that weekend, but could not remember seeing anyone out of the ordinary. A teenage boy opened the door to the house across the street and gawked at us. His parents weren’t in. I didn’t bother asking why he wasn’t in school.

  “We wanted to know if yo
u’d noticed anyone going into the house across the street last weekend. Anyone at all.”

  He looked at the three of us gathered around his doorway, then up at the bright, but cold, sky. He was chewing gum. “Anyone?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Anyone.”

  “I didn’t see him go in, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The recruiter.” He chewed with an open, smacking mouth. “I was out getting the mail when I saw him. He said he was going to come back.”

  “When?”

  He shrugged and smacked his lips. “Before he knocked on their door I asked what he was doing. He was recruiting for a trip to the provinces. A Party project. To build a dam, or a dike, something like that. I said I might be interested. He told me that once he finished that side of the street he’d come back. I went in and waited, but I never heard from him.” He seemed a little dejected by that missed trip to the provinces.

  “What did he look like?” asked Stefan.

  “The recruiter?”

  We all nodded.

  The boy gazed into the sun. “Well, I guess he was shorter than me. Not much, not a real shorty, but not big. And he had blond hair, kind of brown, but mostly blond. He didn’t walk so well. Looked like his knees didn’t work right. He wobbled. Oh!” he said. “This is good.” He raised his left hand, wiggling his fingers. “The guy was missing his pinkie. I noticed that. It was just a little stub. I was going to ask about it, but I didn’t want to be a jerk.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” I said.

  “That the guy you’re looking for?”

  “If he comes back, give us a call.” I wrote the station number in my notepad and gave him the page.

  “And when you find him,” said the boy, “tell him I’m still interested in that trip.”

  On the ride back to the station, a crackly voice shot over the radio.

  Comrade Inspectors Kolyeszar, Brod, Weselak. It was Kaminski.

  We looked at each other. “Emil,” I said. “You know how to work it.”

  Comrade Inspectors, please answer.

  Emil lifted the mouthpiece. “This is Inspector Brod.”

  “Press the button!” said Stefan, his face right up with ours.

  He pressed it, the radio silenced, and he repeated himself. He released the button.

  Thank you, Comrade Brod. This was just a check. Out.

  “Good-bye,” said Emil, but because he didn’t press the button, no one back in the station heard him.

  I didn’t feel like crowding in with the proles to get home, so I took one of the station’s Mercedes. After listening a while to the hiss, I turned off the radio and paid attention to the pedestrians streaming from shops and offices, a river of hats. The case was giving me an overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction. I still couldn’t get Antonín Kullmann’s murder out of my head—the stretched sinews, splintering bones, the benzene—but that was only part of the dissatisfaction. Because beyond this case was so much else—I could not grasp it all in my big hands. The roads widened, and the buildings grew, then I was back in the blocks.

  I entered our unit from the south side, and across the field saw Magda stumbling through a group of parked cars. I put the heel of my hand to the horn and almost pressed, but didn’t. It was the dissatisfaction; it was everything. She’d never seen this car before—she wouldn’t notice me hanging behind her.

  She left our unit on Tashkent Boulevard and boarded the Number 15 tram. I couldn’t remember exactly where that went. But as I followed it through its stops, crossing beneath the electric lines strung over the road, the route became clear. It cut around the city, into the Sixth District. As the tram approached Unit 21 my hands went cold on the wheel, and when the tram stopped and moved on without letting her off I actually laughed out loud. This was stupid. I was ready to turn back, when, just before the Third District, she got out. My fingers went cold again.

  She even looked around. Like someone afraid of being followed. She crossed the street and paused—one more look around—before entering Café-bar 338, the small Turkish haunt where I’d bought Stefan breakfast last week, the one Stefan went to every day without fail.

  Then I did turn back.

  32

  In the morning, I sent Emil out to see if he could find any files on Nestor Velcea, Antonín and Zoia’s old roommate, then looked up as Leonek rushed in, ecstatic, his grin larger than any I’d seen in a long time. “He’s dead! I can’t believe it—what luck!”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The old man! The girl’s grandfather!”

  Tevel Grubin, grandfather of Chasya Grubin, one of Sergei’s dead girls. One of two family members still in the Capital. “I don’t see how that’s great news, Leonek.”

  He tapped his head with an index finger. “Think, man, think! There’s only one family member around to go to the funeral—the one I need to interview. Zindel, Chasya’s brother. He’ll be let out of prison—there’s no reason they would refuse him!”

  “They don’t need a reason, Leon.”

  “They’ve got to let him. I’ll lodge a complaint if they don’t.”

  “That always does the trick.”

  “Don’t be ironic, Ferenc. Can you come with me?”

  “To the funeral?”

  He tilted his head. “I need you there. Just your presence. I’d ask Emil or Stefan, but they couldn’t intimidate a fly.”

  As I agreed to it, my phone rang.

  “It’s been signed out,” said Emil.

  “What do you mean it’s been signed out?”

  “Day before yesterday someone signed out Nestor’s file. Guess who.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Brano Sev.”

  I waited for Emil to return, and in the meantime told Stefan about the file. I went out of my way to be brusque with him, but he didn’t seem to notice. So we watched Brano Sev at his own desk, his back to us as he went through more files. This was how we always saw Brano Sev: a man at a desk with files. The times when he left his desk to do the more heinous acts that state security required, for us he was simply gone. He did not share his cases with us, though we knew that he was aware of everything we worked on.

  Emil arrived flush from the cold. “Did you get it?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “For me? Why?”

  I looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  Like every other time anyone approached his desk, Sev instinctively closed the file in front of him. “Ferenc.”

  I started to lean on his desk, but changed my mind. “I need to look at a file you’ve got. Nestor Velcea.”

  For the first time in my life I saw Brano Sev’s face form an expression of surprise. “Why are you interested in Nestor Velcea?”

  “His name came up in an interview, I just want to see if there’s anything to learn.”

  Sev turned to his wide file drawer, hesitated, then opened it. It was stuffed tight with files and papers, and when he found the Velcea file he had to use both hands to keep from pulling out the ones around it. He kept hold of it as I held the other side. “Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Sure, Brano.”

  He licked his thin lips. “Tell me if there’s anything useful to your case.”

  When I nodded he let it go.

  I opened the file on Stefan’s desk, and he took over, passing us things he thought were of interest. A photograph from before his incarceration—a blond young man with curls around his ears, good-looking. His data sheet said little. He had been born in the Capital in 1919, which made him thirty-seven now—my age. His profession was marked by the word various. Painting was listed under “PASTIMES,” along with reactionary political interests.

  There wasn’t much else. His family had been transferred south after the war, which perhaps explained why Nestor never had regular work. He didn’t have the residence papers to allow him a job assignment in the Capital. But he had stayed nonetheless, to work on his pai
nting and eke out a living.

  His decade in the Vátrina Work Camp, number 480, from 1946 to 1956 was just a line on his résumé—the details would be in a file at the camp itself. Behind the work camp fingerprint card with its ten swirls of black ink, Stefan noticed a sheet, just a brief description added after the Amnesty, in September. A physical description gathered from an informer named “Napoleon”: Limping due to damage to right leg, loping walk. Damage to left hand—small finger missing. I looked at them looking back at me, then grabbed the fingerprint card from my desk, the prints taken from Antonín’s apartment. They matched Nestor’s.

  We had the name of our murderer.

  When I took Nestor’s file back to Sev, he closed another file on his desk. “Tell me,” I said. “Why is state security interested in the file of an artist?”

  Brano Sev slid Nestor’s file between the others in the drawer. “Just a routine check on amnestied prisoners. We do this sometimes.” But he didn’t look at me when he said that. He only looked at me when he said, “And you? Anything of interest in his file?”

  Knowledge was not something Brano Sev deserved from anyone—if he could lie, so could I. “No,” I said. “Nothing.”

  33

  Thursday morning in the empty office, while waiting for the others to arrive, an idea came to me. I had the Militia operator patch me through to Ozaliko Prison, named after a sixteenth-century nationalist whose name was dredged out of history soon after the Versailles borders were drawn. A man sounding sick of his job answered the phone. “This is Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar from the Militia Homicide Department.”

  “Hello, Comrade Inspector.”

  “Do you still have a man named Lev Urlovsky in custody? He was brought in last summer.”

  “Urlovsky?”

  “Exactly.”

  He went through his files. “I see, killed his own son?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “That particular bastard will be here for another week or so, then he’s off to the provinces.”