The shooting was a huge story, all over the television news and the internet.
The police had put out a statement that the attack had been gangland-related, insinuating that Mishi had failed to pay protection money. It was a warning, the police spokeswoman had said, as evinced by the fact that nobody had been hurt. Enquiries were underway and the police were confident that the motorcyclist and the gunman would soon be apprehended.
It was possible that the shooting was mafia-related, Zsuzsa supposed, but she doubted it. There were plenty of organised crime gangs in Budapest, but it was almost unheard of for rivals to engage in gun battles across residential streets. Back in the 1990s there had been a burst of bombings and shootings but nowadays the mafia wars were fought behind the scenes, not in public places. This was about politics, not crime, Zsuzsa was almost certain. The planned release of the video, Reka’s pre-emptive media strike, the disappearance of Elad Harrari, this attack – all in the last couple of days – were were too big and too loud to be a coincidence or a mafia bust-up. Especially as she was pretty sure that this was the building where Elad lived.
Zsuzsa looked at the entrance to number 46/b, taking in the detail of the building, trying not to feel conspicuous. It was a typical 1930s Budapest art deco apartment house, flat-fronted, six storeys high, its glass-and-steel entrance door almost hidden between Javitas on one side and an organic greengrocer’s on the other. Both were now shut.
The apartment house was in very good condition, painted a dark yellow. The middle of the facade extended further out, to make space for a balcony on either side. On each floor, between the double windows, was a finely sculpted relief showing stylised workers wielding tools or women holding babies. A faded wreath was attached to the wall by the door, underneath a small memorial plaque. The words were too far away for her to read but she already knew who it commemorated – the composer Rezso Seress. This was the right place, she was sure.
A few weeks earlier, before winter had really started biting, Zsuzsa had been here on her walking tour of Budapest’s Jewish history. The guide, a bright teenager called Sara, had taken them inside the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street, to tiny houses of worship tucked away in courtyards, to the city’s last kosher butcher and cake shop. They had stood by the Great Synagogue where the gate to the wartime ghetto had been smashed aside by Russian soldiers in January 1945, seen the houses on Raoul Wallenberg Street in District XIII, whose wartime inhabitants had been placed under Swedish diplomatic protection.
They had gathered on Klauzal Square, a few yards away, to hear from an elderly Jewish man who had lived through the freezing, murderous winter of 1944 and 1945 when the square had served as an open mass grave. The tour had been a revelation to Zsuzsa, as the city’s familiar streets suddenly revealed multiple layers of a dark, hidden history. The makeshift memorial on Liberty Square had told the stories of some of the Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust in far-off camps or shot into the Danube. Sara had shown Zsuzsa and her companions where and how those Jews had once lived and died in the same buildings that still stood today, on the pavements where Zsuzsa now walked. That walk had changed forever the way she saw the city.
The guide had also stopped outside number 46/b Dob Street, explaining how this was the former home of Rezso Seress, a Jewish Hungarian musician and lyricist. His best-known song, ‘Gloomy Sunday’, had been immortalised for an international audience by Billie Holiday. It inspired so many suicides – jumping off the Chain Bridge over the Danube was a favourite – that it was eventually banned by the Hungarian authorities. During the war Seress, like many Jewish men, was drafted into a forced labour battalion. He survived the Holocaust but his mother did not. Perhaps inevitably, Seress himself eventually jumped out of his apartment window. He lived but finally managed to kill himself in hospital.
The guide had wanted to take Zsuzsa’s group inside the building, but there wasn’t enough time. Zsuzsa remembered Elad telling her that there was a memorial to a ‘famous singer’ on the wall of the foyer in the apartment house where he lived. He also said that he had a nice view of Klauzal Square from his window. That wasn’t exactly right – the memorial on the wall in the foyer also commemorated Rezso Seress – but this had to be the place.
The question was, where would Zsuzsa take her story about Elad, once she had it? 555.hu, obviously, was out of the question. Her escape plan yesterday had worked nicely. The alarm had gone off as she forced the fire door open. That had caused enough confusion in the newsroom to buy her a few seconds – and had also distracted the security guards as the central building hub had immediately started issuing instructions to the guards over their radios. By the time they had reached the fire exit by the newsroom, Zsuzsa was downstairs on the ground floor. There were two more fire doors in the back, by the commercial entrance. She had pushed one open and swiftly fled into the flow of afternoon commuters heading home. Roland and Kriszta had called her multiple times, but she did not answer.
Now the priority was to find out more about Elad Harrari. And her immediate task was to get into the building and find a neighbour to talk to.
That meant crossing the road, looking confident, and quickly finding a buzzer to try. The bored-looking policemen would notice her immediately.
A few seconds later Zsuzsa was standing in front of the entrance. She looked at the rows of names on the entry buzzers, glancing sideways out of the corner of her eye. One said KOVACS, BALTHAZAR. Was that the cop? Eniko’s ex-boyfriend? Eniko had told Zsuzsa that he lived on Dob Street, near Klauzal Square. It must be him. Balthazar was not a common name. That was the last thing she needed, for him to appear now.
Meanwhile, the lanky cop nearby, she saw, was indeed watching her. He muttered something to his colleague and pointed at Zsuzsa.
She quickly scanned the names on the fourth and fifth floor. Choose, she told herself. She wasn’t doing anything illegal, but the police were now on high alert.
She did not want to spend time explaining herself, producing her identity documents, waiting while they checked her out, nor leave a trail with the authorities about her presence here.
She pressed the button for BALOGH, FERENC. A grumpy voice said, ‘Yes, what is it?’
Zsuzsa thought quickly. A man, elderly, cantankerous, probably lived here for decades, now on his own. She introduced herself then used the most formal of Hungarian’s three registers as she continued speaking. ‘Tiszteletem Balogh ur, I am a journalist writing an article about how District VII is being spoiled by all the tourists and bars and noise and filth. It’s not a buli-negyed, for local people, is it? The whole area is being ruined, don’t you think, Balogh ur? I would really like to hear your views.’
She glanced sideways again. The policeman was walking towards her. The building intercom hissed with static. ‘Balogh ur?’ she said.
He really needed to press that button quickly. ‘Balogh ur, I would really like to hear your opinion about all these awful changes,’ she said, trying to keep the tension from her voice.
The policeman was just a few yards away. His radio crackled and he stopped for a moment to reply. The door to the building buzzed.
Zsuzsa exhaled in relief, pushed it open and stepped inside.
SEVENTEEN
Jewish Museum, Dohany Street, 9.30 a.m.
Balthazar stepped out of the lift and into a corridor so dazzlingly white he blinked.
He had last been inside Hungary’s Jewish Museum on a school trip almost twenty years before. He thought it was a sad place, dimly lit and full of ghosts, with its Torah scrolls, Sabbath candlesticks and prayer shawls perched in old-fashioned wood-and-glass display cases with handwritten index cards.
Sad and not much of a memorial to what had once been one of Europe’s largest and most flourishing Jewish communities. Still, he remembered thinking at the time, at least Hungary’s Jews had a museum. There was no museum to commemorate or celebrate the country’s Gypsies who had been killed by the Nazis in the Poraymus.
The director had made up for the gloomy atmosphere: a Holocaust survivor with a gravelly voice, bright blue eyes and a shock of silver hair. Erno Hartmann had brought the exhibition to life by telling the story of his family, who had moved to the capital during the war from Debrecen, a city in the east. After spring 1944 they had been incarcerated in the main ghetto, on Klauzal Square, right by Balthazar’s flat. Erno, his parents and sister had lived in one room, sick and half starved. They had survived. So had six of his thirty-seven relatives who stayed behind in Debrecen and the surrounding villages.
Balthazar watched an elderly figure stride towards him. He looked familiar, if a little more stooped. The silver hair was now white, and thinner, the eyes a little rheumier, but the voice was still resonant. He wore a crisp white shirt and smartly pressed grey trousers.
‘Detective Kovacs, welcome back,’ said Erno Hartmann as he extended his palm. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Balthazar smiled as he took the old man’s hand. His grip was firm, his skin dry. ‘Thank you. You remember me?’ he asked.
Erno nodded. ‘Of course. You asked a lot of questions. You were curious. Unusually so. Balthazar is an unusual name. And you are a Gypsy. I wish more of your people would come to visit us. We have a lot in common.’
Balthazar said, ‘We do. And one day, when we have a museum, I will welcome you.’
Erno smiled. ‘I very much look forward to that, Detective. Let me know if I can ever help.’
‘I will. Thank you,’ said Balthazar. Erno Hartmann was as sincere, and as engaging as he remembered.
Erno said, ‘I was reading about the shooting yesterday. A shooting with a sub-machine gun.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s unbelievable. This is usually a safe city. I read that you were there. You were not hurt?’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘No. I was on the other side of Klauzal Square when it started.’
Erno fixed Balthazar with his gaze. ‘Is it connected? Elad’s disappearance? Gunfire outside his apartment building?’
‘And mine. I live on the same floor as the flat he stayed in.’
‘Ah, then you know his landlady, Eva neni, the palacsinta queen.’
