The Confession

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 Antonin Kullmann’s apartment, two were identified as you two, Ferenc and Stefan. I checked the remaining three: One is Antonin 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 you’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 Antonin 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 Cafe-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.