Chapter 28

The weekend hangs heavy. Mutti and I circle each other like cats staking out territory. By Sunday morning, I’ve read too many newspapers and drunk too much coffee. I get into the car and drive up to Stamford Hill.

The Victorian terraces of St Kilda’s Road look empty minus the police tape and paparazzi, let alone all their peripheral vehicles, silver boxes and step ladders. I want to see what it looked like here on the day Bruchi was murdered. Not exactly quiet, from what I can see. Cars whizz up and down the cross streets. Out of open windows, boys’ voices float down to the street, chanting prayers in unison. There’s something sterile about it. A young orthodox woman pushes a buggy past me in a tearing hurry. I track her as she heads towards me on the pavement, to see if she’ll make eye contact. No. What about this older man with a bushy grey beard that matches the cardigan under his long black coat? I try a tentative smile. Nope, I may as well not exist. I’m a ghost. If Bruchi’s killer was walking along instead of me, no one would want to notice.

I scan around 360 degrees, suddenly spooked by the thought that I’m being watched. I am. In an upstairs window a girl in a navy and white-striped jumper is peeking out from behind greying nets, but the moment she sees me looking she pulls the curtains back together and shrinks away. It’s like a throwback to the fifties when respectable people minded their own business. That’s why somebody could whisk a child away without being challenged.

I feel as though I ought to be looking for clues as to what happened. But of course, there’s nothing to see now. Just small signs that this is not like every other street in North London. The huge number of rubbish bins, all overflowing with bulging black bags and surrounded by piles of other detritus – cardboard cartons, old toys – the amount of waste tells a story about the sheer number of people there must be crammed into each house. There’s something about the concreted over front gardens that give it an air of concealment.

The warm breeze blows around some empty crisp packets, and with a lull in the level of activity, it reminds me of one of those desolate towns in cowboy movies. In that silent moment before the guy in the black hat rides into town.

Who knows what’s lurking inside. I scan from house to house, but those nylon nets keep a thousand secrets. If anybody’s spying on me now, as I clumsily survey what was the crime scene, they are well hidden. This is it, number eighty-eight, with its estate agent’s board listing in the light breeze. I go quickly up the path and ring the doorbell.

“Any interest yet?” I ask Mrs Friedmann, pointing at the For Sale sign. She nods me in. We go into the kitchen, where there’s a big bag of carrots, half of them peeled. She picks up a vegetable knife.

“Yes. A couple came yesterday to see.” She peels as though it’s a life sentence.

“I’ve got something to ask you, Mrs Friedmann. It might sound odd, but have you got anybody working for you?”

“I’m not that, well… you know. I receive money.” I know that she’s bringing up the children on benefits, which doesn’t worry me but she seems to embarrassed to spell it out. “I get a little money from my ex-husband. But I can’t afford…”

“Do you have any help at all around the house? A childminder, a cleaner?”

“A cleaner, she comes once a week,” she concedes. I wish I could afford more often.” She sighs, throwing a carrot into a glass bowl full of murky water, where it sinks onto a pile of others.

“How long have you had the same woman?”

“About a year.” The cleaner is a woman called Danuta who seems to have escaped Mrs Friedmann’s blanket condemnation of all Poles. The only other person is a window cleaner. Mrs Friedmann doesn’t know his name, only that he comes on the first Tuesday in the month and charges nine pounds for front or fifteen for front and back. I wonder if he drives a white van.

It’s Monday, a week later, when I wake to the sound of the coffee grinder. It’s still dark in the flat, but out of the French windows, I can see the sun rising over a misty Holloway. A few straggling rays, pulling their way up the sky. We sit on the balcony at the back of the flat, so that Mutti can smoke. And for once, I don’t complain about the wind blowing it all my way.

“You don’t have to come, you know,” I say. “You might find it – upsetting. May not be the moment of triumph you are expecting. It’ll be an anti-climax, after all the build-up.”

“I come. I want to see the look on his face.”

Mutti looks like an ancient film star on her way out to meet her fans on a tribute night, in her best grey suit, high heels and a fur wrap. I dress as I would to doorstep any other crook – jeans and boots, and lightweight black hiking jacket. DI Jenkins arrives in a marked police car. He introduces us to an academic-looking woman police officer from the specialist art squad. In her hand is a large manila envelope containing large-scale blow-ups of the photographs from Mutti’s album.

As we’re driving up Holloway Road, crackly radio traffic comes in from an unmarked car parked outside Kovács’ place. At eight-thirty this morning, an elderly man in sports jacket and cravat has left the premises, returning just before nine with a newspaper and a loaf of bread. He has entered the house in Lancaster Road, and unless there’s a rear exit, he’s still there. Mutti holds my hand and squeezes it tight. The journey continues in silence, interrupted only by the occasional radio update from the other team, and the sound of Jenkins’ fingers drumming on the arm rest.

Another message crackles through. A man aged about thirty with dark, curly hair and casually dressed has left the house. The elderly man is now alone.

“Let’s get there before he decides to go walkabout, Ben,” says DI Jenkins to his driver. The junior officer bangs on the siren, and the car lurches forward at speed. I’m sucked into the car seat as we accelerate up Tufnell Park Road, and have to steady myself on the handle above the door. It’s thrilling the way other traffic stops to let us through. We pause for the briefest moment at traffic lights. The seat belt cuts into my shoulder, and coffee swills around in my empty stomach.

Messages come through on the radio as we draw closer to the house. The postman has delivered. Someone has arrived. A woman in leather jacket. We pull up. It’s bumper to bumper along the pavement. But DI Jenkins and Ben jump out of the car and swing up the steps to the front door. Another officer appears from nowhere to slide into the driver’s seat. He sits, foot poised over the gas pedal. The front door of number twenty-seven opens. A young woman. Jenkins is speaking to her, showing her the search warrant. They talk for what seems ages. But then, Jenkins turns and beckons.

The driver helps Mutti out of the car. She’s wearing her dowager duchess’s disdainful expression. She doesn’t look at me, or the officer, but mounts the stairs. Inside the house, Jenkins holds up a hand to tell us to be quiet – shouting can be heard from upstairs, then a pause. It’s one half of a phone conversation in Hungarian.

“Can you make out what he’s saying?” He asks Mutti. She listens for a moment then shakes her head. There are footsteps on the stairs, and Kovács appears, patting down his oiled, iron-grey hair. A hint of irritation ruffles his previous crisp demeanour.

“Gentlemen, I have no idea what you can be looking for, but please go ahead. I apologise for any delay.” The woman from the art squad takes out the photos. She goes around the room, bit by bit with Jenkins, comparing the blow-ups from Mutti’s photgraph album with all the paintings on the walls. Jenkins turns towards us.

“Could you point out where you thought you’d seen the suspect pictures, please Miss Mueller.” I look at the wall opposite the sofa. The striking yellow abstract with russet swirls that I noticed last time we were here is there in the middle. I look either side of it. There are several portraits and some landscapes, most of them contemporary. But the picture of a woman sitting at a table with a bowl of fruit is not here. Neither is a modernist, attenuated portrait of a girl I remember very clearly. The whole arrangement looks different. I think. I check the photograph of my grandparents’ apartment in Budapest, and then the wall in front of me again. I look carefully for any lighter or darker patches on the paintwork, or marks from picture hooks that have been moved.

“I think it was here,” I say. “Something’s changed.”

“You have a fevered imagination,” spits Kovács.

“Liar,” shouts Mutti from behind me. She’s stayed near the door. I don’t think Kovács has noticed her until now. But suddenly she launches into an avalanche of Hungarian, bearing down on him from across the room. Jenkins and his mate look uncertain.

“Now, Mrs Mueller,” protests the DI. I grab onto her arm to stop her getting too near Kovács. He’s a slight man and with her arm-wrestling shoulders she could easily throw him to the ground.

“You think I’m going to do something to him? Huh? An old woman like me. But I wasn’t always old.”

“Mutti, this isn’t going to get the pictures back.”

“You think I really care?

“You know what he did to me, him and his Russian cronies? You ask him. They were brutes. Nobody cared then, and nobody cares now.” She turns to Kovács. “You tell them, you tell them. You think money is the only thing he took from me. Mother couldn’t even look at me for a week.” She breaks back into Hungarian, a torrent of words rising on to a hysterical pitch. And tears are streaming down her face. Now she is inches away from Kovács, and the words are still flying out of her. He stands his ground, his chin jutting out. He’s turned grey and I am now the only thing standing between him and Actual Bodily Harm.

DI Jenkins is by Mutti’s side now. “Come on, Mrs Mueller, this isn’t helping.” He’s about to steer her away, when she breaks free and raises her arm. It’s as if we are all holding our breath, waiting for her to hit him. But she goes limp, and she just jabs him in the chest and spits. A great gob of saliva hits him just above the eye. He doesn’t try to wipe it away.

“I was sixteen. You animal,” she says, then screams, “Animal.” He stands there, unflinching, just shutting his eyes as the saliva drips down his face. Mutti clicks open her black patent handbag, the one that matches her shoes. She takes out a lace handkerchief, sniffs, and wipes her eyes. Now she pulls herself to her full five-foot-ten, and swishing the fox fur around her shoulders, leaves the house.

As soon as she’s out of the door, Jenkins turns to Kovács. “We are now going to search the rest of the property for stolen goods depicted in these photographs,” he says.

“Very well,” replies Kovács. But his tone has changed. “You will excuse me if I don’t assist you.”

“And if we subsequently discover items that are relevant to our enquiry, Mr Kovács, we will add obstructing justice to the list already on the sheet.”

“I can assure you, that I have been threatened with far worse than that in my life. Ah.” He turns to the open front door, where a younger version of himself has appeared, wearing jeans and a cashmere sweater. And a well-cut head of thick, dark brown hair threatening to curl at the ends. “My son, Andris,” he says by way of explanation more than introduction. And before Jenkins can ask the younger man to leave, he adds, “As Andy is also my legal advisor, I presume you will permit him to stay.”

Andy hands out smart, designer business cards, showing that he is a partner in some kind of upmarket City legal firm. And while he is examining the warrant, the search continues upstairs. Jenkins, Ben and the art lady are joined by two more officers. At first, I follow them round, watching. But as their punctilious search drags on, I go back down.

“So,” says Andy, as I reach the bottom stair, “You are the daughter of the legendary Aranca. I heard about your last visit.” It’s a struggle to maintain my hostility towards someone so absurdly good-looking.

“I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I mutter.

“Look,” he says. “It’s not surprising that my father should find this all a bit intrusive. However, I want you to know that I have advised that the best policy is complete openness.”

“That’s very big of you, Mr Kovács,” I say, turning my back on him and walking out of the house, feeling petty. The officer in the car directs me to a café on West End Lane. Mutti is sitting on the terrace with both an espresso and a glass of wine, even though it’s still only nine-thirty in the morning. I fan away the cloud of cigarette smoke that is billowing around her, and order a cappuccino.

“That stuff with Kovács. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” She shrugs, and takes a deep gulp of the wine.

“How much earlier? When you were a child?”

“Of course not.”

“I was waiting for the day you would be old enough to understand.”

“And?”

“It never came.” Right in the guts. I’ve been legally entitled to vote for a decade and a half, and she’s still the one person in the world who knows just how to make me feel like a crummy little girl.

“And now?” I ask. “Am I old enough now?”

She purses her lips and looks away. “The night the Russians came to us, there were three men. He showed them into the apartment, then he disappeared. That would have been enough. One grabbed my mother and another pushed me into the bedroom and forced me onto the bed.” She’s breathing heavily, as though pulling this all out is an immense physical effort. “He hit me in the face. I think it was just a bit of fun for him. He was shouting at me in Russian, and while my head was reeling he did his business as though I was just a sack of potatoes. If I said no he would shoot me. Nobody would care. Maybe the Germans had gone, but I was still just a Jew. In fact, worse than that. A Jew bitch.”

Another pull on the cigarette, flick of ash.

“I could hear my mother screaming from the other bedroom, and the soldier shouting at her. I tried to get to her, but the soldier grabbed me. He was heavy and rough, laughing with his filthy breath all over me. He didn’t even let me take my dress off, just ripped it and forced his way into me. I thought I was breaking in half, my skin is tearing, bleeding. And then…” She looks down, stirs the sugar in its blue bowl, watching the spiral patterns in the white. “I lost control. I wet myself. That made him angry, so he hit me again. And he was laughing and hitting me, and pushing into me again and again. Seemed to go on for hours. I was lying in my own piss and blood, hurting everywhere and I couldn’t stop crying. Then I saw Kovács had come back to the apartment. I thought thank God, he will tell them to stop now, to leave us.

“He brought me a glass of water and some schnapps. He was my saviour. He helped me clean myself up and put a clean blanket on the bed. But then he shut the door. He came to where I was lying. And he said ‘Now let’s make you better.’ I – I realised what he wanted and I said, ‘No, I can’t. Please leave me.’ And he just changed suddenly, ‘There’s another guy out there – you want him or me?” It was that power, you see. He was enjoying it. Turning tables on the boss’s daughter.

“Then he changed again and came over friendly. It was all about how he could make life so much easier for us with his connections and his black market goods. I should just lie down and enjoy it. Sixteen I was.

“And I was still bleeding, bruises all over my face. He was saying so many disgusting things about how he’d been watching me grow up, seeing me become a young woman. Each time he’d taken me to the tennis club, and to parties. All the time he’d been leering at me. I felt sick that he’d been there looking at me like that all the time. He was a disgusting viper, my UncleKovács.”

She empties her glass of wine.

“Enough now,” she says. “I suppose he’s hidden the paintings?” I shrug. “They’ll never find anything.”

The squad car is going to drop Mutti and me back home. If I leave straight away I’ll get to the office in time for the coffee round and nobody will be any the wiser. But I need to get out of my practical gear, and make sure Mutti’s comfortable first. As we approach the flat I stop. There’s something wrong. The glass in my French windows at the front of the building is broken.

The squad car is speeding off towards Holloway by now so I race ahead of Mutti and up the steps, open the door, and scan the front room. The stereo’s still there, and the TV. Did we scare them off?

I stumble over to have a look at the damage. A more-or-less even, round hole has been made in one of the panes of glass. There’s a bit of cracking round the edge, but that’s all. It’s an odd place to go for a break-in. You’d have to be an amazing athlete to leap from the forecourt to the balcony. Any sensible burglar would try the back first, surely?

Inside, I check the carpet to see where the glass fragments have gone. There are bits on the floor next to the window and scattered across the dining room table.

“Be careful,” says Mutti. “Don’t cut yourself.”

“It’s OK, I’m not going to touch anything.”

“What’s that?” She’s pointing at the floor on the other side of the table. Amid the splinters there’s a half brick.

“Why would anybody want to break my windows?” I ask. She shrugs. I go to phone a glazier. While I’m speaking, Mutti puts something in my hand. A dirty, crumpled bit of paper with what looks like Hebrew writing on it. We try to decipher what it says, but it’s smudged, and Mutti’s hazy recollection of the contents of Hungarian prayer books certainly isn’t going to help us with it. So, is this some kind of warning? I arrange for the window to be replaced later this afternoon.

I don’t want to scare Mutti, but I suggest that instead of staying here alone she might finally like to avail herself of the glories of the British Museum. The stones there pose no threat. She agrees surprisingly meekly, and we leave the flat together. She’ll come back at five to meet the glazier.

I’m still feeling wobbly by the time I hit the office, though thank Christ it’s not eleven yet. There’s a yellow sticky on my desk in unmistakable pointy italics, “See me.” It’s from someone who knows that a signature is unnecessary. I knock on Sarah’s door.

“Come in and tell me how it’s going with Leicester,” she beckons, with the kind of efficient smile that doesn’t overuse her cheek muscles. I slide into the chair opposite her, flip open my notebook, and give her an update. It’s all beginning to come together surprisingly well, especially as I’ve been in Budapest for at least half the research period. She asks lots of questions, pointed and perceptive ones, making sure I’ve thought about all the angles. OK, it’s true I do have to blag my way through it just a teeny bit, but I also realise that in a strange way I’ve been thinking through a lot of the issues even when so much else has been going on. We talk about shooting styles, and I make some tentative references to movies I like, hoping I don’t sound like that pretentious plonker Andrew.

I’m just about to go when she says, “And I gather you’ve already been on a recce. Fast work.”

“Er, yes. I just had a bit of a look round.”

“You are in Leicester for two days, and yet you didn’t see fit to contact the local police. That seems like a surprising oversight for someone who has been so meticulous in other ways.”

“No, er, well I was just looking at the locations. Trying to get them straight in my head.”

“Yup. And is the University Hospital of Wales by any chance one of those locations?” I have got no idea what she is talking about.

“Let me remind you. On Saturday the fifth of July, you took a cab from the hospital to an address in the Rhiwbina area of Cardiff, using the programme’s account. Does that ring a bell?” Oh shit. Mutti’s bloody taxi. I forgot to sort it out with Millie.

“Yes, that cab. Elizabeth, I need hardly remind you that misuse of company expenses is a sackable offence.”

“It was personal, for my mum – I couldn’t get to her because I was working but I was going to pay the money back, honestly Sarah. I’ve been so busy I forgot.”

“And what else have you forgotten? The fact that you haven’t been anywhere near Leicester, maybe? I bumped into DI Braithewaite at a conference last week. He was surprised to hear you’d been on their patch because he most certainly hadn’t seen you.”

It all tumbles out. She knew about my father’s death, of course, but Mutti’s suicide bid, her claim for reparations and our adventure in Hungary is all news to her. Once I’ve started talking, I can’t stop.

“Look,” I say, getting up. “I’ll clear my desk and give my notes to Andrew. I’m sure he’d appreciate a chance to direct a film. It’s nearly ready to go. The schedule and scripts are so detailed it’ll be like colouring by numbers.”

“Sit down,” she says. “I’m not about to give that idiot the job you’ve earned. And I don’t want to hear any more about you trying to throw it away either. You should be fighting to keep it with every sinew in your body.

“Considering what’s been going on, I’m amazed you’ve done so much. According to Braithewaite you’ve got a fabulous phone manner, and all the paperwork you’ve sent them is top notch. Sounds like you’re in good shape for a shoot next week.”

“But aren’t you going to sack me for fiddling my expenses? Not to mention lying about the recce.”

“Just because it’s a sackable offence, doesn’t mean I have to. In case you haven’t worked it out, Elizabeth, I’m on your side. Pay the money back, and do me a favour – try to get to the end of the month without any secret trips to Budapest, Kiev or Warsaw. The film sounds fine. I look forward to the viewing. Now piss off.”

That evening, we don’t want to hang around in the flat, so Mutti takes me to the Cosmo for a Wiener Schnitzel and a glass of wine (I permit her just one, and myself one too). Now that the house rental is coming in, her bank account is off its death bed. She wears her unseasonal fur stole, and I open the door for her, so that she can sweep in and be grand.

We behave like actors in a black and white film from the 1930s, sitting with straight backs, and making short, witty remarks instead of having a proper conversation. But by the time the apple strudel arrives she’s starting to look tired. I put a hand on hers.

“We’ll get them, in the end,” I say. “Don’t worry.” She gives me a sceptical look.

“Doesn’t matter any more.” She strokes her fur, pensive. “You know, it was for you.”

“What was?”

“All this rubbish – claiming the money.”

“But you need it to live on.”

“I’m OK. Get state pension, small savings. I can sell house, no big deal.”

“So why have we been doing it?”

“Say sorry.”

“You want the Hungarians to apologise. Well, they bloody well should.”

“No. It’s for me. I need to say sorry too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“To you. I wasn’t great mother. I loved you but it wasn’t enough.”

“You did your best.”

“Sometimes that’s not enough. You will do better.” She thinks the poison gets diluted through the generations. I wish it was that simple. But you can’t unstitch the past that easily and put it back together. I’m the product of her damaged childhood, just as much as she is.

“You don’t need to say sorry, and I don’t need your money. We’ll be OK.” She squeezes my hand. “Though to be honest, I will be glad to get my flat back. I hope you don’t mind me admitting that.”

Mutti goes to bed, while I sort through the compensation file late into the night. There must be a loophole, a clue, something. When I stop, it’s nearly midnight and the shared hallway is dark. All my neighbours are safely locked in their flats.

Before turning in, I put my trainers back on and go outside. The front of the property looks secure, bathed in the glow of the street lights. All of the windows are sound. At the side of the building it’s dark and the security light with a movement sensor which should go on automatically, doesn’t. I wish I’d brought a torch. I scan the side and back of the house in the gloom, it all looks OK, but I still can’t shift the horrible feeling that we are being watched. Of course, I should let DI Jenkins know what’s happened, but that’ll wait until tomorrow.

I’m just pulling my pyjamas over my head when I notice there’s something on my pillow. It’s one of those little plastic snowstorm shakers, featuring a tiny model of the admirable Hungarian parliament with its Romanesque, Classical and Gothic architecture. And underneath it, a bundle of letters tied up with a stained silk ribbon. I untie the bow, and release a wad of paper sheets so thin they are almost transparent. Letters with several different dates, the pages criss-crossed by crease marks where they have been folded and folded. Though the ink has faded to brown, and there’s a scattering of blurry splodges from tears or snow, the words are still clearly legible. If only I could read Hungarian.

There’s one other sheet with the bundle. It’s torn from the type of lined, ring-bound reporter’s notebook that Mutti uses for her shopping lists. In pencil, in her favoured capital letters is written:

December 1943

My dearest girls, Be happy for me!

I compare it with the top letter in the bundle which is headed December 1943. Mutti’s note continues:

I have managed to come by a greatcoat from one of our fallen comrades, when so many others are left with nothing but rags. By night we lose several of our number worn down by the cold, the meagre rations and the endless marching. The officer in charge of food supplies is an old friend from university days. He favours me with extra bread. So you see, my situation is improving, and I am strong. You must not worry….

Who is this from? My dearest girls. From my grandfather to whom? Mutti and my grandmother I imagine. In the margin, there’s a pencil scribble. The word Munckaszolat, I’ve seen that before. Of course, the forced labour divisions of the Hungarian army. If my grandfather was conscripted he must have got back to Budapest. He was shot in 1944. That would be ironic. In a bad way, a truly appalling way. He escapes the horror of the front line, only to be shot by fascists when he manages to get home. There’s a line, and Mutti’s written the word MORE, and then,

I miss you both so much, my two lovely girls. At night, I think about what we will do when the war is over. We will travel to Paris and Perugia. We will eat the greatest delicacies, the tenderest meats, the most delicate pastries. All that matters now is that we get through, and find each other once more when this hell is over.

It peters out there. It’s a fragment of a fragment. I shake the snowstorm and look at the letters again, the wobbly attempt at copperplate. While the flakes are settling on the miniature architectural marvel, I finger the worn sheets, where they are coming apart on the creases. These letters have been eroded by handling, the pages ripe with love and grief. I read it and read it again into the early hours, running my eye over the puzzling Hungarian sentences flecked with accents, and try to imagine the grandfather I never met.