The Corpse with the Ruby Lips

by Cathy Ace

  With the loud music providing “cover” Alexa sat close beside me and began in hushed tones, “We do not know who is listening to us, but we know someone is. At first we believed Valentin was imagining he was being followed when he left this house, but, even before he was diagnosed, we discovered this was the truth. I, too, have been followed. Please do not laugh when I tell you that to see a man in a dark overcoat standing outside your home, in the heat of summer, can give a person a terrible sense of foreboding.”

  “It wasn’t just a fan of Valentin’s work?” It seemed like an obvious question to me.

  “No, it was not. Valentin’s identity as VS Örsi is not known. Not even his publisher has met him face to face. They communicate only through emails.”

  I wondered if that was a normal way for a publisher and a bestselling author to communicate, but realized it was a relationship beyond my experience, so accepted Alexa’s version of events as truthful.

  “I have been most careful to not tell anyone, at all, about him,” added Zsófia. “And I trust you to keep our secret.”

  I signaled my promise of discretion with a smile, and used its cover to try to find out something more. “You said earlier your family has been affected by the activities of informers in the past. How?”

  Alexa took a deep swig from her glass and spoke quickly. “My uncle Tamás—that is, my mother’s brother—was an informer for the AVO during the years when the Communists held sway over Hungary. His cover was intact right up until 1992. But when his role was discovered? Let’s just say he is dead to many people. My late father didn’t know what his brother-in-law had done until they met again here, in Budapest. It was a terrible shock to him. To us all. Tamás acted in an unforgiveable way, informing on his friends and neighbors. We have cut ourselves off from him and his wife since my father discovered the truth. No one in our family will ever speak to them again.”

  Keenly aware that either Alexa was lying about that last fact or she didn’t know Zsófia had spent enough time with the renegade Klara to have learned a host of traditional songs, I felt I was being pulled into a nightmarish world awash with the ramifications of Cold War politics both inside, and beyond, the Takács family. And I still couldn’t make the connection between what Alexa was telling me and the initial reason Zsófia had brought me to the house—the death of her grandmother. If, indeed, there was any.

  “What’s that noise? You know I hate Bartok!”

  We all turned to see a man standing just inside the room dressed in an original Vancouver Canucks stick-in-rink jersey and pajama bottoms. He was bald, with a long, straggly gray goatee, and was waving a hockey stick. He ran, barefoot, across the room, and switched off the music system. “It’s just noise,” he bellowed. “You know I can’t stand it. What are you doing?”

  “Valentin, it’s all right, please calm down. We were just entertaining our guest,” said Alexa, looking anything but calm herself. “She’s the one I told you about when I came upstairs earlier.”

  Valentin Seszták held the hockey stick above his head and shouted, “I know. From Vancouver. You told me. I remember. It was, like, five minutes ago! See? See? I kept my old jersey.” I smiled as I acknowledged what was clearly an old favorite. “Had it since their first NHL season, 1970. Still fits, eh?”

  Valentin’s appearance, while odd, was a thoughtful recognition of our shared background. I’d envisaged a man of Bud’s age, but what I saw was a more wizened person than I’d expected. His Canadian accent was something I almost didn’t notice—it was exactly what surrounded me every day back home, so was only remarkable in that I was hearing it here, in the heart of Hungary. I suspected the fact that he didn’t mix with many people meant Valentin’s Canadian twang had remained unaffected by his time in Budapest, unlike his sister, who presumably spoke Hungarian when going about her daily life outside the home.

  As Valentin twirled, so I could better admire his shirt, a flushed-faced man I assumed to be Valentin’s nurse joined us.

  “There you are,” he said with a relieved sigh. “I lost you for a moment, Valentin.”

  “Here I am, Martin,” giggled Valentin. “Safe and sound. All that time you spend at the gym, but you’re still not as quick on your feet as me, eh?” He winked at me, and an impish grin creased his face. “She loves it, I can tell,” he added, pulling at the jersey. “Kurtenbach was the Vancouver Canucks’ first captain,” he told Zsófia, proudly displaying the shirt’s “C.” “Know anything about the guy?” he asked me brightly.

  I decided to try to make a friend. “He was from Saskatchewan and was with the pre-Canucks version of the team in the Western Hockey League. He played 639 NHL games over ten seasons, scoring 119 goals and 213 assists, for a career total of 332 points. Retired from the Canucks with a knee problem in 1974, coached their farm team for a few seasons, then the Canucks themselves. First guy to be inducted into the Canucks’ Ring of Honour, on October 26, 2010. He dropped the puck at the game against the Avalanche that night. I was there.”

  Valentin’s mouth made a little o, then he flung his arms around me and said, “At last, someone who loves hockey as much as me. Come on, come on, let me show you my memorabilia.”

  He released his bear hug, then wrapped his skinny arm around my shoulder, looked down at me from his six feet, and laughed heartily. “Play that Bartok as loud as you want, Alexa. We’ll be back. Eventually.”

  All I could do was turn toward Zsófia and Alexa and throw them a resigned shrug. They wore matching expressions of horror, but remained stock-still. I had no idea where I was being taken, but suspected I’d be required to call upon my eidetic memory, and the fact I’d once decided to read up on all the old Canucks’ statistics to confound a particularly irritating student.

  Words from the Past

  VALENTIN SESZTÁK’S HOCKEY JERSEY SMELLED of feet. I didn’t know why—didn’t want to think why—but it did. I pulled away from his embrace as elegantly as I could, and he seemed happy enough to take the lead as we mounted the staircase for two more floors. We finally entered a door directly above that to the salon we’d just left.

  “We don’t need you in here with us,” called Valentin to the nurse who’d followed us up the stairs, “but feel free to brood and hover, just like you always do.”

  I expected another room of the same proportions as the one below, but what we entered wasn’t so much a room as a world. The space was L-shaped, twice as big as the salon downstairs, and filled with a regimented collection of the deadliest weapons I’d ever seen. Many of them, alarmingly, seemed to be covered with blood. The walls were bedecked with papers upon which were scrawled names, dates, and events with pieces of string pinned between them like a web. It looked for all the world like one of those rooms every obsessed detective is supposed to have behind closed doors, where they plan how to track their nemesis.

  Glancing around, I couldn’t see anything resembling hockey memorabilia, unless you counted a hockey stick with its blade sharpened to a bloodied point, so opened with, “This is an incredible collection of . . . um . . .”

  “Weaponry, woman. It’s weaponry. All personally selected by me as the deadliest, and most effective, form of tool with which to achieve a specific end result.” Valentin gleefully snatched up a mace and chain. “This, you see, has just the correct length of chain and weight of spiked ball to allow a person to wield it above their head and smash it into the shield of an oncoming warrior if the person wielding it is on foot, rather than on horseback.” He began to swing the mace in a circle above his head, and the sight was not only terrifying but also bizarrely heroic—despite the hockey shirt and pajamas. I was relieved when he allowed the ball to stop spinning and placed the vicious-looking thing on the floor.

  “And this is all research for your books?” I couldn’t imagine there’d be any other reason.

  “Sure is. I like to explain how it feels for a character to kill someone in a particular way. This helps.”

  I was apprehensive as I asked, “An
d the blood?”

  Valentin kept a straight face as he replied, “I have to practice on people my sister drags in from the street,” then he bellowed with laughter.

  “I bet your books are fun,” I said.

  “They are,” said the author with a smile. “Some people get the humor, others don’t. Okay, I guess most don’t, but it’s there if you can see it. The only way families get along is by finding the balance between fighting and laughing. That’s what I write about. So, what are you more interested in—hockey or my books?”

  I weighed my response. “I’m more interested in you than either.”

  Valentin pushed a couple of broadswords off a chair and sat down, his pale, skinny legs poking out from the bottom of his pajamas. His feet were filthy and so leathery I judged he didn’t wear shoes as a rule.

  “Did Zsófia tell you I was mad and needed a shrink? That’s what you are, right? I’ve met a few in my time, so I can spot them a mile off.”

  I decided to give as good as I was getting. “No, I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m a psychologist. And I won’t be doing any work with you. Zsófia invited me here because I’m visiting from the University of Vancouver and she thought your sister might enjoy meeting someone who knew the place where she grew up. You too, of course, but she wasn’t sure if—”

  “I know, I know. She didn’t know if I’d be having a good day or a bad day.”

  “Exactly.” I didn’t see any point in disagreeing with the man, who I could only assume was having a good day.

  Valentin picked up one of the swords lying at at his feet, and began to swat it about in front of himself. “I don’t know the difference between the two; they tell me when I’ve had a bad day, but I don’t remember it. So I guess that’s all right. Then there are days like today, when I look out at the sunshine and the world’s a great place to be in, and all I want to do is write and write and write, and get to the end of my story. Sometimes it feels like it’s getting farther away all the time—like one of those dreams where the corridor keeps getting longer no matter how fast you run.” He replaced the sword gently on the floor.

  Looking down at me, he said quietly, “So you’re from UVan, eh? What’s it like there these days? Changed much since my time?”

  Although I reckoned I knew the answer I asked, “When were you there last?”

  “Ninety-two. Kristóf brought me and Alexa here that year. Haven’t been back since.”

  I found it interesting that he used his father’s given name, rather than his parental title.

  “In that case you’d notice the difference. The school does a roaring business in the overseas student market now, so they have the money to rapidly construct many new buildings. I’d say the place has almost doubled in size since you left; largely in the past decade.”

  Valentin looked thoughtful. “Shame. It was just about right. I was a student there; did you know that?”

  “No,” I lied. “What did you study?”

  Valentin’s face creased into a rueful smile. It was odd to see a man with a beard but no mustache, but at least it allowed me to see more of his facial expressions. “Psychology, of course. Kristóf wouldn’t have had it any other way. Kind of the family business. Kristóf, me, and Alexa. All of us. Alexa only at evening classes. She didn’t attend university.”

  “I didn’t know your sister studied psychology too,” I said, hoping to discover something.

  A glint in Valentin’s eye as he said, “So you knew I did,” made me realize I was talking to a perceptive, intelligent man.

  I made a split-second decision. I was in the company of a man who was quick on the uptake, but succumbing to a disease that meant he might lapse at any time; I felt I had to grab my chance to find out whatever I could from him, to be able to help his niece.

  “I’m going to come clean,” I half lied.

  “Good, it’ll save time.”

  I felt a bit exposed, standing in front of him surrounded by lethal weapons, so I pulled a stool from beneath a desk and sat down, just feet away. The broadswords bisected the space between us. It was a dramatic setting for what might be a difficult conversation.

  “As you know, I teach at the university in Canada where your mother was murdered. The case is well-known by everyone at UVan.”

  “I guess an unsolved murder will always be talked about,” replied Valentin, not looking terribly upset by the idea.

  “Quite right. And with me being a professor of criminal psychology, and someone who specializes in victim profiling, it’s the sort of case that interests me. I hope you don’t mind me speaking about your mother’s death that way? I am acutely aware I’m talking about a real person, and to a family member who was deeply impacted by her death.”

  Valentin pushed at the broadswords with his toes. “It all happened a very long time ago. Wounds heal.”

  I wondered if the man who’d had a breakdown following his mother’s murder had truly reconciled himself to the brutality of the crime that had taken place. “The thing is, Valentin, with me being here, and becoming more acutely aware of your mother’s death, I’ve been talking things through with my husband—who’s a retired homicide cop. He’s back in BC right now and he’s been able to get in touch with some of his old contacts to see what he can unearth. So far I’ve been able to gain some insights from a junior officer who worked the case, but I know very little. I understand you found it challenging to cope with your mother’s murder at the time, but I suspect there’s a good deal you could tell me, if you chose to, now. Would you be prepared to do that? It might help the whole family.”

  Valentin stared into my eyes as though he was trying to see my soul. I returned his gaze. I knew in that moment I needed to read the books he’d written.

  After a few moments of silence, he closed his eyes. Tears rolled down his prematurely lined cheeks. He whispered, “Kristóf made me go see her. She was on a metal gurney. They’d cleaned her up, but she was still a mess. A weird consistency to her flesh; almost translucent. Waxy. I’d never seen a corpse before, and I thought she’d be pale, but she wasn’t. Her face was all red, mottled. She looked flushed. The side of her head had been shaved. There was a big star-shaped crack in it. Kristóf made me look at that, too. Alexa was with me. She held onto me, tight, then he ripped our hands apart and made us both feel the wound on the skull. He said it would be good for us. He was wrong.” His clenched fists relaxed, and he opened his eyes. “It was a cruel thing to do, but he was a cruel man. He made my mother suffer terribly. Me too.”

  I felt my heart thump in my chest, the recollection of my dead ex-boyfriend Angus’s angry fists making me feel immediately sick. “Do you mean he was physically violent?” I managed to say.

  Valentin sat back in his chair and waved skinny arms inside his oversized hockey shirt. “No. That would have been beneath him. He did it all with his words.” He spat out the final syllable like a rifle shot. “The man who led more than a hundred souls away from the tyrannical boot of the Communists, and harried governments into granting them safe passage to Canada, was also well-versed in psychological torture. The iron will he needed to do good, he turned upon us, his family, in spite. I hated him. My mom was the only light in my life, and she was snuffed out. She loved to laugh, and Kristóf didn’t like the sound of laughter, not unless it was because he’d said something he thought was amusing. Then? You’d better laugh, and loudly, if you knew what was good for you.”

  I waited a beat. “Do you think your father might have killed your mother?”

  Valentin leapt from his seat, grabbing up a broadsword as he did so. Holding it in two hands above his head, ready to strike down, he bellowed, “Did my father kill my mother?” He howled like a wild animal and swirled the sword. “Who are you, whore? From whence have you appeared? I know thee not!”

  The person I’d been connecting with had disappeared, and I was immediately on my guard. When people talk about “fight or flight” they’re referring to a physical response to a frightening s
timulus, which means the body produces adrenaline that will allow a person to either flee the danger more quickly than they normally could or to fight with more power than they’d usually possess. At that moment I knew flight was the better response to my situation, so I didn’t stop to think. I jumped from my stool and ran toward the door through which I’d entered. As I pulled it open, Martin, the nurse, bumped into me.

  “What is it? I heard him howling again. That is never good,” he said, an urgency in his voice.

  I got out and pulled the door closed behind me, panting. “He’s got a broadsword in his hands, and seems to think I mean him harm. He’s having a violent episode. Is that normal for him?”

  Martin sagged, then pressed a button on the end of a pendant he was wearing around his neck. “I will handle this. I’ve called my colleague,” he said with resignation. “It takes two of us when he is this way.” A tall man in his thirties who was more than passingly familiar with a gym came rushing up the stairs, two at a time.

  “You go now, please,” Martin said to me. “We will take care of this.”

  The worried faces of Zsófia and Alexa looked up at me as I descended the stairs. “Are you okay?” asked my student.

  “I’m fine. It seems I can move across a room quite quickly when I need to.”

  As I reached the two women they each put a hand on one of my shoulders. “It’s a skill we all have developed,” said Zsófia. “Uncle shouldn’t have all those weapons up there.”

  “I think that’s a valid observation,” I said, my heart still thumping. “They’re pretty dangerous. Won’t he give them up?”

  “They are almost all gone. What you see there now is just a fraction of what he used to have,” said the sick man’s sister, “besides, they’re just props really. They wouldn’t do anyone much harm. Made of polystyrene, rubber, and plastic, for the most part.”

  I pictured the weapons in my mind’s eye. They’d looked real enough to me, and I said so.