Invisible Murder (Nina Borg #2) (17 page)

They went inside the after-school club, where Anton crossed himself off the list as usual, and Nina quickly raked the contents of his locker into his backpack.

Her mobile phone rang.

Nina looked at the display and recognized the number just as she pressed the green button. Oh, hell. Peter from the Network.

It had been a while since she had last heard from him, and for once that had suited her just fine. There had been plenty of crises at the Coal-House Camp in the past few months, and after that whole business with the boy in the suitcase last year, Morten had been adamant about putting the brakes on her Network involvement. They had had the Big Important Talk—she had permission to continue her work with the Network, but on the condition that she stayed home when Morten was away on the rigs. Anything else would be “treating her own family like shit,” as Morten had so poetically expressed it, and even though their marriage was going through an unusually good patch, Nina still had the sneaking suspicion she was being forced to resit an exam in Virtues of Danish Family Life 101. She didn’t want to find out what would happen if she flunked.

“We need you in Valby. If you make it before 4 P.M. I can meet you there.”

Peter spoke with authority in his voice, as if he were Barack Obama personally shutting down Guantanamo. He hardly even waited for her to say hello.

“No go, Peter,” Nina said, noting the time automatically: 3:44 P.M. exactly. “I can’t today. Morten is away in the North Sea, and I’m literally up to my ears in my son’s leftover lunch. You have to find someone else.”

Peter was quiet for a moment on the other end of the line.

“Can’t you leave him on his own for a while? It won’t take more than an hour.”

Nina tried to quell her rising irritation. Although she had never actually said so, Peter should know by now that saying no was not an easy thing for her. She felt an unreasonable burst of resentment that he wouldn’t just accept it when she actually did decline a request.

“No, I can’t just leave him,” she hissed. “He is eight years old, for God’s sake. What’s the problem, anyway?”

“This guy from Hungary,” Peter said neutrally. “Not that old, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He just arrived and is staying with about fifty other people in this derelict garage in Valby, and he’s sick as a dog. Vomiting and diarrhea. I think it must be some kind of food poisoning, and I could really use a little help.”

Nina breathed a little easier. Peter painted the picture with irritating clarity, and of course someone should probably to try to figure out if it was food poisoning or just an ordinary case of the trots. But all things considered, it didn’t sound like anything she needed to be involved in.

“Hungary is part of the EU,” she said. “No one is going to deport him. Send him to the doctor with a stool sample, and buy some rehydration powder, cola, and lots of mineral water. He’ll be back on his feet in a couple of days,” she said quickly.

“You know damn well he won’t see a doctor,” Peter said, raising his voice a bit. “He would have to pay for it himself, and these boys aren’t exactly loaded. They’re Roma, most of them. They don’t understand a word of English, German, or French, and they’re totally paranoid about any kind of authority figure. They made me hide in the goddamn inspection pit just because someone knocked on the door. I couldn’t get through to them at all.” Peter didn’t usually swear, and it sounded almost comical when he did. Nina guessed his visit to the inspection pit had put a couple dents in his dignity. “You simply have to help,” he continued. “I have no idea what to do with them.”

“I’m sorry, Peter.” She gave Anton a quick smile, realizing that last part had eased her guilty conscience further. Even she, Save-The-World Woman, as Morten sarcastically referred to her, sometimes found the Roma hard to love. She had once stood in the middle of a crowd of Roma trying to examine a boy with a fever and a tooth abscess the size of a ping
pong ball. Aman—presumably the boy’s father—had alternately begged and threatened her, and ultimately the whole crowd had stormed off in a huff, spluttering and gesticulating, dragging the sick boy with them. She had been more nervous than she usually was when she was called out at night, and the thought of fifty Roma packed into a repair shop in Valby gave her an unexpectedly uneasy feeling. They had presumably traveled up to Denmark by bus, hoping to scrape together some money over the summer through begging or trickery. It didn’t make their physical ailments any less uncomfortable, but damn it.…

“I’ll call you later,” Peter said, his voice icy. “And in the future it would be helpful if you could send me Morten’s schedule so I’ll know when we can count on you.”

Then he was gone.

Nina let her phone slip back into her jacket pocket and hoisted up Anton’s bag. Did he really need to be so bossy? But she knew Peter had trouble finding both people and funds at the moment. The Network had a limited circle of supporters, and the financial crisis hadn’t exactly helped their bottom line. Also, the new nurse Peter had found in the autumn had recently moved away from Copenhagen to settle on the West Coast with her husband and kids and a German shepherd puppy. Peter would calm down eventually. He had no other choice.

ÁNDOR WAS STARING
at the piece of paper Bolgár had put down on the table in front of him. It didn’t exactly look official, and he doubted the document would ever be presented to the tax authorities or any other official for that matter, but the mere fact that it had been written down gave it a certain, unarguable weight.

It was an IOU. And the amount was a staggering two million forints. Tamás! he protested silently to himself. How in the hot, stinking bowels of hell could you sign this? But that was just what he had done—
Tamás Rézmüves
, with big adolescent swoops to the T and the R.

“Tamás isn’t eighteen yet,” Sándor said in a sort of legal reflex. But he also knew that didn’t matter here. The IOU in front of him had nothing to do with Hungarian law.

Bolgár leaned back until his wicker chair creaked under the pressure. They were sitting on the patio at Bolgár’s house, in a village that wasn’t so terribly different from Galbeno apart from the fact that the cars were bigger and newer. Only Bolgár’s own house stood out, and then some—it must be five or six thousand square feet, Sándor thought, with a two-story central core and two lower side wings surrounding the patio. Facing the street there was a tall wrought iron fence with so many curlicues and flourishes that it made his eyes swim when he tried to look through it.

“Sándor, my friend,” Bolgár said slowly. “Your brother is a man, and this here is his signature. Do we agree on that much?”

Sándor thought about Valeria and the girls and about the money for the new roof. He nodded.

“Yes.”

Bolgár smiled.

“Good. Then we can work out the rest.” He gave a curt, brisk wave
with one hand, and a teenage girl came out of the house with a tray of bottles and glasses. “It’s hot,” Bolgár said. “I’m sure you would like a beer.”

The girl set the tray down on the little wrought iron table between them with a bang. Her sullen face radiated antipathy; she obviously wasn’t thrilled to be waiting on the men.

“My daughter,” Bolgár said proudly, completely disregarding her rebellious glare. “Give your daddy a kiss, girl.”

The girl leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek without the slightest change in her facial expression. Then she disappeared back into the house. Bolgár raised his glass, and Sándor’s reflexive politeness forced him to do the same even though he actually had no desire to drink with this man. The beer was so icy-cold that he felt it all the way down his esophagus; it was almost painful.

“Why did Tamás borrow so much money?” Sándor asked.

“Business,” Bolgár said. “Your brother had an item to sell, but he had to borrow money for the trip, transportation, room and board. It all adds up, you know.”

“But … two million?” You could buy ten airplane tickets for that kind of money, Sándor thought.

“Shall we say there was … a certain element of risk. Your brother couldn’t just take the bus.”

Sándor felt a shiver in his gut that had nothing to do with the chilled beer.

“What kind of item?” Sándor asked. “And where did he get it?”

Bolgár shook his head.

“Your brother was extremely tight-lipped about the details. Still, I trusted him, which is why I invested such a large sum and put him in touch with some men in Denmark who could help him. But now I’m starting to have doubts. I haven’t heard anything, you see. From him or the Danes. And so now I’m asking myself: Who is going to pay me back my two million forints?”

Bolgár’s eyes came to rest on Sándor with a weight that made it clear it wasn’t actually a question.

“F
ELISZIA. CAN I
ask you something?”

His little sister was standing in front of the house with her forearms
immersed in an orange plastic basin, washing clothes. The front of her pink T-shirt was covered with wet splotches.

“What?” she asked.

Sándor looked around. One of Vanda’s two boys was chasing the other with a little, yellow squirt gun. Both of them were screaming with delight. Vanda was nowhere to be seen, and he couldn’t spot Valeria either. Probably just as well.

“The money Tamás thinks he’s going to earn in Denmark. I know it’s because he has something to sell. But do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. “No. He didn’t say anything about that.”

“Feliszia, it’s important. I think he’s in trouble, but I can’t help him unless I have some idea what it’s about.”

Feliszia regarded him with calm, dark eyes. She had become so beautiful, he thought. So very much alive.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked.

“Well, Bolgár for starters.” He didn’t want to bring up the NBH just now.

“That man,” she said in exactly the same tone Valeria had used. “I didn’t want Bobo to borrow the money from him. But he did it anyway.”

“Tamás borrowed two million forints.”

“Two million?” Feliszia looked startled. “But why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“That idiot,” she whispered. She had tears in her eyes now. “What is it?” He placed a hand on her arm awkwardly. “Feliszia, what’s wrong?”

Suddenly she wrapped her soapy arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It took Sándor so much by surprise that he just stood there like a peg doll with stiff, mechanical joints. Feliszia let him go again and looked at him with the same confusion he had seen before in both her and Vanda’s faces. He was their brother, and yet he wasn’t. The distance between them suddenly hurt; he didn’t want it to be there. He wanted to belong.

“I really want to help,” he heard himself say. “I just don’t know how.” And this time he meant it; he was no longer just trying to persuade her to talk to him.

“He was so angry,” Feliszia said. “About that business with Vanda’s apartment, about what happened in Tatárszentgyörgy.”

Sándor bit his lower lip. He remembered his own feeling of impotent shock when he heard about the tragedy in the little village forty kilometers from Budapest. Someone had set fire to a house where a Roma family was living. When the inhabitants tried to escape from the flames, they were gunned down. A father and his five-year-old son.

“Was it someone you knew?” he asked.

“No,” Feliszia said. “But it doesn’t matter. They were Roma.”

“You’re angry, too.”

“Yes, I am. So you see, I understand Tamás.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said the only thing that could save us was money. Lots of money. So we could get out of here, and no one could hurt us.”

“Feliszia, this isn’t going to save anyone. Tamás is up to his neck in it, and so are we. And everything is just getting worse.”

She shot him a furious, betrayed look, which pierced him to the soul.
A little girl with a filthy pink stuffed rabbit on her lap, confused and afraid and surrounded by strangers.…

“Well, it’s not
my
fault,” Sándor said defensively. “I’m just trying to help.…”

She plunged her arms back into the basin so abruptly that soapy water splashed out in all directions and began to scrub at the wet clothes with quick, fierce jerks.

Then her motions slowed. She pulled up one shoulder and used it to rub a soapy smear off her cheek.

“I don’t know what he wants to sell,” she said. “And I don’t know where he got it from either. But you could try asking Pitkin.”

T
HE DOG WAS
barking, very loudly and insistently with just a split second between each deafening woof. Its lips were pulled so far back that every single tooth was visible and most of its glistening pink-and-black mottled gums, too. Sándor remained motionless, standing in the relative safety on the other side of the ramshackle fence. It was bigger than most of the village dogs, and he rather thought a German shepherd had been added to the mix not too many generations ago.

“Hello?” he called, tentatively. “Is Pitkin home?”

Pitkin lived in “the old village,” as people in Galbeno called it, even though only three buildings there were still even marginally habitable.
It was a collection of wattle and daub huts a little farther up in the hills, closer to the source of the spring, but otherwise just a little farther away from everything. No road, just a winding path. No electricity. Roofs that were patchworks of rusty metal plates, plastic, and straw. Galbeno wasn’t actually the end of the road, Sándor reflected. There was a back of beyond beyond the back of beyond.