The Exiled (15 page)

Authors: Kati Hiekkapelto

BOOK: The Exiled

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LAKATOS SÁNDOR’S FRIEND LIVED
in a ramshackle hut outside Szabadka, in a small village consisting of a few similar shacks. A group of scruffy children were playing football in the yard and two small dogs yapped at their heels. The sight was like something from a favela in Rio. The children stopped playing momentarily and stared in awe at the Punto, covered in a coating of grey dust, carefully driving along the uneven path between the shacks. Anna and Réka stepped out of the car and greeted the children, who soon continued their game.

The structure patched together from boards and sheets of corrugated iron was dark and dirty. There was only one room, its floor covered in a collection of mattresses, with a black stove in the corner. Does that small stove keep this place warm through the winter? Anna wondered.

Anna and Réka introduced themselves to a young man with bad teeth sitting on a threadbare sofa. There was a suspicious, almost hostile expression in the man’s eyes, and he wouldn’t tell them his name. A small boy’s head appeared in the shack’s only window. The man jumped to his feet and bellowed a litany of swear words, and the head quickly disappeared.

‘You know Sándor, is that right?’ Anna began cautiously. The man nodded. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Last Friday. Why are you asking? Has something happened?’

‘Where were you on the night between Friday and Saturday?’ asked Anna.

‘None of your fucking business, lady.’

‘It is my business,’ said Anna carefully. ‘Sándor stole my handbag that night. But the next morning he was found dead by the river.’

At that, something else flashed in the man’s eyes, something other than hatred and mistrust. It was fear. Worry.

‘Why should I believe you? What are you, some kind of cops?’

‘I happen to be an officer, yes, but I work in Finland. Here I’m just on holiday, visiting family in Kanizsa. It’s my belief that the local police don’t want to investigate Sándor’s death properly, and that’s why I’ve decided to look into things myself.’

The man listened to her reflectively. He was clearly weighing up whether or not he could trust these two white women.

‘How did he die?’

Anna showed him a photograph she’d taken at the chapel in the cemetery.

‘Fuck it!’ he shouted. ‘The motherfuckers have killed him!’ He fell silent, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I was out drinking in Palics on Friday night. We came back here for a party. Plenty of people can tell you.’

‘Who are these people you’re saying killed him? And why? We want to get to the bottom of this.’

The man scoffed derisively and wiped the snot and tears from his grimy face.

‘You’ll never find out who did it.’

‘Why not?’

The man looked at Anna as though she was a halfwit.
‘A kurva életbe,
because our lives are worth nothing. We get accused and convicted of crimes we haven’t committed, but if someone does something to us, nobody gives a shit. Nobody’s interested.’

‘I’m interested,’ said Anna. ‘I want to know what happened. And I’m sure his little sister wants to know too. Do you know where she is?’

The man glanced almost involuntarily out at the yard, where the distant sound of children playing could still be heard.

‘Is she here?’ asked Anna.

The man said nothing.

‘She’s here, isn’t she?’

Still the man didn’t answer. He scratched his skinny arm, and it looked as though he wanted to make a run for it. Anna pushed the door open and shouted into the yard.

‘Dzsenifer! Dzsenifer! In here, right now!’

The children’s game stopped. The small, dark heads turned and stared at Anna in confusion. One of the children glanced behind the shacks, and Anna glimpsed a head of black hair disappearing round the corner.

Anna ran after the girl, but she was nowhere in sight; it was as though the earth had swallowed her up. Anna made a quick tour of the area surrounding the shacks, checked in the bushes and ditches, but she found nothing but discarded plastic bottles. Further off was a cluster of detached houses. If the girl has run inside one of them, thought Anna, I’ve no chance of finding her.

‘Listen, you,’ said Anna as she returned to the shack. ‘When she comes home, you call me immediately. She might have seen Sándor’s killer.’

The man hesitated, rubbed his scabbed arm. He lit a cigarette.

‘Don’t you get it? Her life might be in danger,’ Anna shouted.

‘Fine, I’ll call you,’ he promised and Anna gave him her phone number.

As Anna and Réka walked back to the car, the children in the yard stared at them, terrified.

‘Wait,’ the man hollered from the door just as Anna turned the key in the ignition. She rolled down the window.

‘You might want to ask round the camp about Sándor,’ he said.

‘What camp?’

‘The refugee camp, where else?’

‘Why should I ask round there?’ Anna asked.

‘Sándor went there a lot.’

‘Why?’

‘How should I know? Probably selling something.’

Anna closed the window and turned the air conditioning on full. The cool flow of air felt wonderfully refreshing.

‘Will you take me back to József ’s?’ asked Réka.

‘Sure. But do you know where the refugee camp is?’

‘Sort of. I’ve never been there, though.’

‘I think I need to pay the place a visit.’

‘I’m not coming with you. God knows what kind of diseases I might pick up,’ said Réka and tapped her stomach.

Do you really believe all that propaganda too? Anna thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Still, she understood the pregnancy had made Réka wary.

‘Do you want to have dinner at our place?’ asked Réka.

‘Thanks, but I really don’t have time. Say hi to József for me.’

They promised to call one another if something new came to light. Then Anna drove off back to Kanizsa, wondering what strange kind of web she was getting herself mixed up in.

RONALDO IS SILLY,
thought Dzsenifer. He always passes the ball to the other boys and never to me. She sat down behind the shack in a huff, picked up a ladybird waddling in the soil and watched as it scuttled along her arm and up towards her armpit before spreading its wings and clumsily flying off. The others carried on playing in the yard as though Dzsenifer didn’t exist at all. Stupid boys. Idiots. She heard their cries, their laughter, and thought that if her brother was here, he’d give them what for.
Let Dzsenifer play too
, he’d say.

But her brother hadn’t come back. Even though Dzsenifer had clasped her hands together every night and prayed to God and Baby Jesus to bring him back. Rambo let her sleep in the shack and sometimes even brought her a bite to eat. But it wasn’t the same. Her brother had taken proper care of her.

She wondered what it would be like to be the blonde-haired girl who lived in the big house near the shacks. They’d been in the same class at school in first year. The girl had a mother and a father and a happy, little black dog that Dzsenifer had once been allowed to stroke. The girl had told her the dog’s name; she’d seemed nice, smiled and even walked a short distance with Dzsenifer. But at school the next day she pretended not to notice Dzsenifer at all, and never spoke to her again. Dzsenifer might as well have been invisible to all the girls who lived in big houses and had their own rooms and who progressed through school as they were expected to.

Dzsenifer heard a car pull up in the yard. The boys’ hullabaloo stopped for a second but continued almost instantly. The sound of two car doors slamming shut, two women’s voices, then Rambo’s voice. Dzsenifer stood up and warily peered through the soot-covered window and into the shack. Dzsenifer froze to the spot. The woman from the passport was standing there. Panic gripped Dzsenifer’s stomach so hard that she thought she might be sick. That woman was looking for her. She’d stolen the woman’s passport,
and now she’d been caught. Would she be sent to prison? Or killed? Would that woman attack her, just as her brother had been attacked? Dzsenifer felt her throat tightening. She heard the shack door creaking open. Then someone called out her name.

Dzsenifer darted away, running as fast as her little legs could carry her, slipped into a side street full of potholes, with a line of run-down houses leaning next to one another, as if holding each other upright. She took a shortcut across an empty plot of land towards an overgrown path and headed towards the neighbourhood with the bigger, better houses. She knew that near where the blonde-haired girl lived there was a huge house that had stood unfinished for years. Dzsenifer often played there, in and around the bare concrete blocks. She dashed into the building, ran up to the third floor and curled up in a corner among the cobwebs. She didn’t dare lift her head from her knees until it started to get dark.

When dusk had fallen, she creeped into a nearby yard and stole a sheet hanging out to dry.

She wrapped herself in the sheet like a caterpillar in a cocoon and lay down to sleep in her very own hideout, high up in the windowless building.

THE BED WAS LARGE AND SOFT.
The sheets had clearly just been changed. They smelled fresh, as though they’d been dried outdoors, and felt crisp against the skin. Two candles burned in the room, and the quiet baroque music playing in the background had stopped.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Péter asked Anna, holding her tightly in his arms.

Anna lay there, relaxed. It felt good that he hadn’t started talking immediately, got out of bed or turned his back to her, but lay next to Anna for a long time, gently stroking her back.

‘Not this late at night. But a cup of tea would be nice. And a cigarette.’

Péter slowly slipped his arms from around her, climbed out of bed and pulled on a dark-grey dressing down. Anna heard him go into the bathroom, listened to the sound of the tap running. Then she made out the sound of bare feet walking across the wooden floor towards the kitchen. Anna noticed a soft, green toy frog on the rug next to the bed, then heard the sounds of cups knocking against one another, the tap again.

Péter returned to the bedroom door, a lit cigarette in his mouth, an ashtray in his hand.

‘Here,’ he said and handed Anna the cigarette.

‘Thanks.’ And then, as if in passing, ‘You haven’t seen the bag thief ’s body, have you?’

Péter hesitated for a second. He looked at her curiously, then pulled a cigarette for himself from his dressing-gown pocket and lit it.

‘The official verdict was accidental death. Drowning. The case has been closed.’

‘I know that. But did you see the body?’

‘Yes. I was at the scene.’

‘What were your impressions? Did it look as though there had been a struggle?’

Péter drew sharply on his cigarette. He was clearly in two minds as to whether or not to talk to Anna about the case. Anna waited patiently. Something told her it was best not to pressurise him.

‘Tea’s ready. Take a dressing gown from the wardrobe so you don’t get cold,’ said Péter and went into the kitchen.

Anna followed him. ‘What will your wife think about me using her dressing gown?’ she asked, and took a sip of tea, which tasted of stale, artificial fruit flavouring.

‘Nothing much.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘At her parent’s. We’ve just started a trial separation. She moved out last week.’

Péter sighed. Anna saw a flash of sadness in his eyes.

‘I see you have children too. I saw the soft toys in the bedroom.’

‘Just one. Sámuel is five.’

Anna didn’t enquire further, as she could tell Péter didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine by Anna too. To her mind there was nothing more unattractive than a recently separated man continually talking about how ruthless his ex had been, how unfair their divorce was, while all he wanted was to get into another woman’s panties.

‘Listen, Anna. I think you should forget about the bag thief.’

‘How many times have I heard that these last few days?’

‘You should try and accept that it was a simple accident.’

‘I could do that if I didn’t know for a fact that he’d been strangled.’

Péter’s eyes narrowed. For a fleeting moment Anna wondered whether he was angry. Or startled. This game might be more dangerous than I could ever imagine, she thought, and felt a knot of fear at the bottom of her stomach.

‘How on earth have you got that into your head?’

‘I’ve got photographs.’

‘What photographs?’

‘Photographs of the body. I know he didn’t drown.’

Péter looked at her for a long, silent moment.

‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘It did look as though there was a
struggle by the riverbank. But I’m not a crime-scene investigator and I don’t know what was found there, because the investigation was wrapped up before it had even properly started. I’ll admit I thought it was a bit strange, but when I heard the victim had drowned, I didn’t think any more of it. And if you ask me, you shouldn’t think about it either.’

‘Is that how you work?’ asked Anna. ‘You just obey orders even when you know they’re wrong? You let a manslaughter – which might be a murder – go uninvestigated for the sake of an easy life?’

Péter lit another cigarette. Anna saw that he could barely contain his agitation. Had she gone too far? Péter was a nice man – funny and gentle – but Anna knew only too well that first impressions weren’t always what they seemed.

‘Would you like a glass of
fröccs
?’ Péter asked and took out a bottle of white wine and some sparkling water.

‘Yes, I would.
A fene egye meg
, right now there’s nothing I want more than wine and beer and Koskenkorva and
pálinka
. Anything at all, as long as it’s got alcohol in it, even aftershave will do. Christ, who have I been kidding, trying to have some kind of dry spell?’

‘What’s that?’ asked Péter, genuinely bemused.

‘Oh, it’s a Finnish thing. Lots of people go without alcohol for the whole of January to curb their alcohol intake for a while. I’ve been trying to have a dryish summer because I wanted to work out more than usual. Back home it would have been easy, but here I’ve been a bit lax.’

Anna didn’t mention that in recent months she’d begun to think about her alcohol consumption more seriously. She’d noticed she often drank more than one glass of wine of an evening, at home by herself, and that she’d even started to enjoy the feeling of fuzziness that helped lull her to sleep after a few beers.

‘Sounds boring. And harsh. Come on, you’re on holiday.’

Anna thought about the man’s words. In those two adjectives he’d summed up the essence of her life: boring and harsh. Anna felt something growing in her mind, a tiny seed with a sprout pushing
through its casing. I don’t want to be boring and harsh to myself. I’m tired of that. I’ve had enough of the Anna that clings to the remnants of her past with the last of her strength, the Anna that doesn’t belong anywhere or to anyone, the Anna that barely belongs to herself.

‘Why are you so quiet suddenly?’ asked Péter, gently taking Anna’s chin and turning her head towards him.

Anna looked at his face. She noticed a small scar on his cheek and touched it lightly.

‘There’s a wine tasting at Sagmeister’s on Saturday. I was thinking of drinking a barrel or two.’

‘You realise you’re a budding comedienne, don’t you?’ Péter teased her.

‘Oh yes, people find me as entertaining as a slice of stale bread.’

‘I think you’re funny. If only you’d chill out and just be yourself.’

Whoever that is, thought Anna.

‘Don’t worry, I’m a laugh a minute,’ she said. ‘I do more work than is legally possible and the rest of the time I spend running my knees and ankles to bits. That’s the kind of comedienne I am.’

‘Maybe it only comes out here, where you can speak your own language,’ said Péter. He wasn’t to know that his words were like a punch in the gut. A short, sharp slap that left Anna almost having to catch her breath.

‘Pour me a glass,’ said Anna.

‘I go running too, you know. Would you like to go for a run together some day?’

Anna was thrilled, more thrilled than she wanted to admit to herself.

‘If you help me look into a few matters, I might consider it.’

‘What do I have to do?’

‘If at all possible, could you look into your files and records and see if there’s any mention of a Lakatos Sándor.’

‘Is that the name of the bag thief?’

‘Yes.’

‘How on earth have you found that out?’

‘Let’s just say, it wasn’t exactly difficult.’

‘What about the photographs?’

‘It’s a secret.’