“Wiped everything, and I touched him wearing gloves. I think maybe he arrived with the person who killed him. There was no sign of forced entry.”
“You said you were there half an hour after he came home? There may be some prints. Anything else you noticed?”
“Apart from the fact that he didn’t seem to spend much time in his apartment, yes. His killer may have taken my photograph. Unless Berkowitz had pocketed it since the last time I was in his place, which is possible.” Since she had not told him about it in the first place, she didn’t tell Attila that she herself had removed the photo of the Vaszarys.
“I will find out more about him. And please come back to Strasbourg tonight.”
“You think it’s safer?”
“For you it’s safer anywhere — except perhaps in Russia.” Attila was thinking about Alexander’s warning.
He called Tibor to ask about Berkowitz. “Anything at all that you could find out,” he said. “There is nothing about him online except a couple of photographs, and even in those he is not named.”
“What kind of photographs?”
“Government types standing at some sort of ceremony. He is in the background. He was killed last night.”
“Not a great loss to humanity,” Tibor said, “and good news for your friend, I would think. I assume the police will do their usual excellent job tracking down who did it. By the way, talking about public employees, I have a good idea who the geezer was in Biro’s apartment.”
“You do?”
“Szabo, the parliamentary librarian. Don’t know how he got mixed up in this mess, except he needed the money. Wife is ill and his job pays nothing. My sources tell me he took a part-time job with Industry and Commerce. Bit of extra for the private clinic’s bills. Only reason his wife’s still alive . . .”
“Nagy?”
“Yes, the last time I checked, but portfolios don’t mean much these days as long as you toe the chief’s line, and Nagy does it well.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tibor called Attila’s cellphone a little after six the next morning. “You awake?” he asked.
“Jészus Maria . . .” Attila grumbled when he had found his voice.
“Just asking. Because this is not my favourite time to call people. As it happens, it’s not my favourite time to be awake, but since it’s you, my friend . . .” He stressed friend, making it clear that he was delivering one more favour, a gift of friendship that they both knew had often been tested. Without Tibor’s father’s reach into the Communist power elite of the pre-1989 years, Attila would not have been able to qualify for the police academy, and without Tibor’s own spectacular connections to the current power elite, Attila would not have come by intelligence that saved his career as a detective. On the other hand, without Attila’s interventions, Tibor would have been beaten to a pulp by a range of boys who liked to hit smaller boys. And, without Attila’s advice, he might have married the woman next door who turned out to be some sort of American spy.
“There are a few things you need to know about Gyula Berkowitz,” Tibor said, “and, given this man’s predilections and your own strange occupation, I am surprised you haven’t come across each other already. The man is a thug-for-hire. Most of the time he works out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he has done odd jobs for other ministries. He has been employed by, among others, Árpád Magyar, our minister of many portfolios and one of the prime minister’s mouthpieces. Recently, some of the guys on the second floor of the gothic castle were amazed to see him coming and going through the parliamentarians’ exit as if he belonged. Why did you ask?”
“They know him?” Attila asked, not answering Tibor’s question.
“Some do. He has worked for a number of our worthies, including Németh and Nagy and the deputy prime minister, but being a thug-for-hire would not, normally, offer such privileges.”
“Have you any idea where he lives?”
“He has an apartment somewhere in Pest.”
“Not on Rózsadomb?”
“Not as far as my sources tell me. He lives closer to the gothic castle. But given how much he gets paid for his work, he could certainly afford a house on the hill.”
“Did he have any hobbies?”
“Hobbies?” Tibor’s voice rose an octave. “Is this a trick question?”
“I mean hobbies like chess, or jogging, or card games . . .”
“Or archery?” Tibor asked.
“Yes, like archery.”
Tibor laughed. “If you knew that already, why in hell did you waste my time? Archery, as it happens, was his only hobby. Could have let me sleep in this morning and told me all this at the Király on our usual day in the baths.”
“We think he may be the man who shot the Vaszarys’ lawyer in Strasbourg last week.”
“We?”
“The art appraiser and I both think so, and I suspect the Strasbourg police will be able to identify him from photographs.”
“But why would someone like Berkowitz kill that man in Strasbourg?”
“I have no idea, though I am beginning to guess that the minister and his ambassador to the EU may not see eye to eye about something. I think I am about to find out why it was the lawyer who got killed.”
Attila called Helena, but she did not answer her phone and this one took no messages.
Attila felt his way to the kitchen area of his Airbnb. After tapping the walls unsuccessfully for several minutes, he found the light switch and later, his cigarettes. The coffee maker’s ways were still a mystery, but he managed to boil water and pour it into a mug, adding a package of instant coffee. The sun had still not quite risen, but the sky had turned a soft pastel grey, so there was hope that the morning would arrive.
He called Irén next. “I will explain to Gustav,” Irén said, with a giggle. “He has been waiting patiently by my door. We thought you would be here by now.”
Attila apologized. He said something
