Gaspar nodded. ‘Yup. Take a look.’
Karoly opened the envelope and leafed through the photographs. The smirk vanished. He turned red with fury, ripped the photographs to shreds and scattered them on the floor.
Gaspar shrugged. ‘They are just prints. We have the originals, high-resolution, nicely digitised. There is much more, all ready to go. Some really nice video clips as well. And don’t bother saying the pictures are fake. All the girls are ready to talk – at length and in detail about your favourite activities. You deny it all you like but everything will be all over the internet. That’s a lot of coke, as well. Your communications people won’t know what’s hit them. Mud sticks. Your board will ask you to resign by the end of the day.’
Karoly said, ‘What the fuck do you want? What is this about?’
Gaspar stepped forward, jabbed him in the chest several times with his finger. ‘Bring my brother out. Now.’
FORTY-ONE
Dob Street, Saturday, 1.10 a.m.
Balthazar sat on his bed, his back against the wall, as the doctor held up various combinations of fingers, each time asking him to count.
‘How many now?’ she asked, showing her left index finger and three fingers on her right hand.
‘Four,’ said Balthazar. Exhaustion was hitting him in waves, but he knew he had to stay awake for as long as she was here. The doctor wore a white coat and stethoscope around her neck. She looked, even sounded, familiar. Where had he seen her before?
‘Correct,’ said the doctor. ‘And now?’ she asked, holding all ten fingers up.
Balthazar gave the right answer. She nodded, leaned forward and peered closely at Balthazar’s eyes, before taking his blood pressure. She had already checked his breathing with the stethoscope and dressed the cut on his forehead.
‘Hmmm,’ she said, when she saw the blood pressure results. ‘One fifty-nine over ninety. That’s high, but should go down over the next hour or so.’
The doctor’s name was Dora Szegedi. She was a stern, plump lady in her mid-forties with dyed red hair, blue eyes and a gold Star of David around her neck. Dr Szegedi, who usually worked as a paediatrician, had recently joined the roster of doctors kept on twenty-four-hour call by the state security service.
Once Balthazar was out of Bardossy’s villa and inside Gaspar’s Maserati, Anastasia had placed a blue light on the roof. Fat Vik drove at speed and they had raced through Obuda, back across Margaret Bridge, down the Grand Boulevard and to his flat on Dob Street. Fat Vik and Gaspar had helped Balthazar up the stairs into his flat. Anastasia called Dr Szegedi from the car on the way back to Dob Street. She lived nearby and had arrived a couple of minutes after the four of them. The doctor had listened to the events of the evening and immediately taken some blood samples, which were sent to a laboratory for rapid analysis. Fat Vik had gone home, but Anastasia had insisted on staying.
Dr Szegedi turned to Anastasia. ‘He doesn’t seem to be suffering from a concussion, and there are no signs of skull fracture or bleeding on the brain.’
‘That’s a relief. Thank you, Doctor,’ said Anastasia.
Dr Szegedi turned back to look at Balthazar, her head to one side. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’
Balthazar thought for a moment before he replied. She was right, but when? Then it came to him. It was last September. He had been investigating the death of a Syrian refugee at Keleti Station at the height of the refugee crisis when he had been surrounded by a group of men and beaten unconscious. Dr Szegedi had been working with MigSzol, the volunteers helping the migrants who were sleeping out at the station.
‘Yes, at Keleti Station last autumn. You were helping out with the refugees. Then you helped me when I got knocked out.’
She fixed with him with a sharp, assessing glance. ‘I did. And here we are again, patching you up. Now take your T-shirt off and lie down, please.’
Balthazar looked at Anastasia as if to say, Is this really necessary?
Anastasia said, ‘You heard the doctor.’
His bedroom was sparsely furnished – a blue Ikea wardrobe and chest of drawers, a salvaged bedside table from a throwing-out day, with a cheap bedside lamp. The walls were a faded shade of white and there was a damp patch in the shape of Austria on the ceiling. A large double window looked out onto Klauzal Square, half covered by an ancient roller shutter.
Balthazar did as she asked, then lay back while she poked and prodded his upper body, wincing as her fingers probed his stomach and right side where he had been punched. He turned over as she checked his back and shoulders.
Dr Szegedi stepped back. ‘You can sit up again. You are a lucky man, Detective Kovacs, if lucky is the word. You have substantial bruising to come, a wrenched muscle in your back but no broken ribs. There is no blood in your urine and you do not seem to have any internal injuries. I would prefer if you would check into a hospital for observation.’ She paused. ‘I assume you don’t want to do that.’
He sat up and put his T-shirt back on. ‘Thank you, Doctor. But I would really rather stay at home and rest if possible.’
A knock sounded on the bedroom door and Balthazar said, ‘Come in.’
Gaspar opened the door and stepped inside with an envelope in his hand. ‘This just arrived from the hospital,’ he said as he handed it to Dr Szegedi.
She thanked him and opened the envelope, extracted a sheet of paper, quickly read its contents and turned back to Balthazar. ‘More good news. Your blood tests show some irregular results from the spray but nothing to worry about. They will stabilise naturally as you excrete the toxins. Sleep, Detective, that’s what you need. And some proper home-cooked food. May I give you some further advice?’
Balthazar nodded, half smiling. He could guess what was coming. ‘We have met twice now, Detective Kovacs. Once when you were knocked unconscious and again when you have again subjected your body to notable trauma. You are now at least sitting upright and talking. But you are in your mid-thirties. You are slower and need more time to heal than you think. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.’
Balthazar glanced around the room. Anastasia was watching them both, affection and concern written on her face. Gaspar was nodding at the doctor’s words, his jowls wobbling.
Balthazar asked, ‘And the advice, Doctor?’
She gathered her equipment and began to pack away. ‘Get a desk job, Detective.’
The doctor turned to Gaspar and Anastasia. ‘If he won’t go to hospital, then someone needs to stay with him tonight. If he vomits, or his condition worsens, or if he passes blood, you must call an ambulance.’
Gaspar and Anastasia looked at each other and nodded. They thanked the doctor and Gaspar walked her out to the front door of the flat.
He spent a couple of minutes in the kitchen, smiling as he looked at the photographs on Balthazar’s pinboard of the two brothers as children, then walked out into the lounge. There he picked up the large framed photograph of Virag and stared at it for some time, his stubby fingers resting on her face. The doctor was right about the desk job. He had already lost a sister – and he could not lose his brother.
Gaspar put the photograph down, walked across to one of the armchairs, picked it up and carried it through to Balthazar’s bedroom. His brother was fast asleep on his side. Anastasia sat on the end of the bed, watching him. Gaspar put the armchair down by the side of the bed and moved to sit in it.
Anastasia said, ‘It’s fine, Gaspar. I can stay with him.’
Loud voices echoed from the street for a few seconds, shouting in English, then faded as the partygoers moved past. Balthazar murmured for a moment, then fell silent.
Gaspar asked, ‘Are you sure? There’s nowhere to sleep properly. That chair is thirty years old. It’s not very comfortable.’
‘Really, I will be fine. Don’t worry.’
Gaspar thought for a moment. The doctor had said someone needed to stay with him. And he was responsible for his brother. He looked at Anastasia again, understanding slowly dawning.
She smiled. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens. I promise.’
Gaspar nodded. Being a good brother also meant knowing when to get out of the way. He stepped forward, kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Colonel. And for everything tonight.’
He walked over to Balthazar, bent over him to stroke his hair, whispered, ‘Bro, try not to mess this one up.’
He switched the main light off, turning to look before he left. Anastasia was sitting in the chair by Balthazar’s bed, watching him as his chest slowly rose and fell. The sound of his breathing echoed in the small space, softly lit by the pale glow of the streetlights on Klauzal Square.
FORTY-TWO
Obuda, Sunday, 9 a.m.
Reka and Karoly Bardossy stood facing each other on either side of a barbecue pit in the Obuda park. Charred pieces of wood and a half-burned log lay on the ground between them. In spring and summer teenagers gathered here for makeshift barbecues but now the fragments were covered in a thin layer of ice.
