The Woman from Bratislava (20 page)

‘That’s not such a bad haul, Inspector. Not in our part of the world, where the standard pension is less than a hundred
Deutschmarks
a week. But we do not believe the killing of this Danish man was premeditated. Whoever did it panicked and fled. Maybe Mr Lassen refused to hand over his valuables? Maybe he screamed.’

‘And no one heard anything?’

‘The room on one side was empty. The German gentleman on the other side had a young lady in his room. He did not hear
anything
. He had other things to think about, you might say. Or as he put it, not without a hint of pride: “My own companion was screaming like a stuck pig”.’

Toftlund could not help smiling. And Krozsel smiled back. One cop to another. Sorry pal, you know how it is, that smile seemed to say to Toftlund. And with that the Hungarian detective gathered up his papers, rose, shook Per’s hand and left. Clearly the next part of the proceedings was closed to a common DI. Now it was the colonel’s turn.

Karancsi leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands under his chin. A ludicrous pose, clearly meant to convey an air of importance, Toftlund thought. He had the
suspicion
, albeit unfounded, that the colonel was a political appointee and not a professional intelligence officer. Like Gelbert in Poland, but with one crucial difference: sincerity. On the one hand the
opportunist who stuck his finger in the air to check which way the wind was blowing, on the other the idealist who believed that he could make a difference.

Slowly and solemnly Colonel Karancsi said:

‘It is a complex situation, Chief Inspector. Extremely complex. I have been given the honourable task of endeavouring to protect our country’s security interests. In that capacity I am, of course, prepared to cooperate at all levels with an allied service, but very recently I was also assigned another role, one which is not
necessarily
so
transnational
in nature, if you get my drift?’

‘No, I don’t, not at all.’

‘No. Well, as I say, it’s complex. Have a look at this picture.’

He handed Toftlund a colour photograph which he had
produced
, almost conjuror-like, from the slim folder. A picture of a woman. It was obviously Maria Bujic, but she looked totally
different
. Her hair was blonde, falling in curls over her collar and she was wearing a pair of ordinary spectacles. She was pictured
standing
next to a car, regarding the photographer through narrowed eyes, as if she sensed that she was being watched. She was dressed in blue jeans and what looked like an expensive leather jacket.

‘That’s her, the woman we know as Maria,’ Toftlund said.

‘Yes and no.’

‘Now you really have lost me.’

Karancsi cleared his throat and again pressed his fingertips together affectedly before going on in his halting German:

‘We know her as Svetlana Kreisler, Russian citizen, but of German origin. Dating back to Catherine the Great, you know? A Volga German. And as such automatically a German citizen. She also travels on a German passport. She has been coming here for the past four or five years, as far as we know. We believe her to have links not with any national intelligence agency, but with the Russian and Hungarian mafia. This is where I come in, in my other capacity.’

Again he paused for effect. Toflund waited. Sometimes, during
an interrogation or similar situation, it was better to keep one’s mouth shut. To let the silence drag on for so long that one’s interlocutor felt compelled to speak. Toftlund glanced out of the window. The river flowed broad and slow outside. Barges passed endlessly up and down, along with the occasional sightseeing boat. Karancsi cleared his throat again:

‘I have been made head of a new department here. One which corresponds, more or less, to the Americans’ Department of
Internal
Affairs. It has been set up on the instructions of the government and parliament to investigate possible instances of corruption within the national police force. I will therefore have to ask you to regard what I am about to tell you as absolutely confidential. As a private briefing of a representative of a friendly nation. Agreed?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Svetlana appears to have been the go-between in what we refer to as the oil fraud. Possibly even the brains behind it. A con so simple it was almost banal. We have high import taxes on diesel oil in this country and low taxes on heating oil. That’s pretty common in the free world, I believe. These people bought diesel oil abroad, coloured it red so it could be sent through customs as heating oil and then sold it here in Hungary as diesel. Saving
millions
of dollars in tax and making millions of dollars in profit. It was every con man’s dream. Five years later we still have no clear idea of how much money the Treasury was cheated out of.’

‘But what does all this have to do with your Internal Affairs department?’

‘Well, let me put it another way: all that money led to a – how do you say – an upgrading of organised crime in this country. It enabled our really rather primitive gangs to organise themselves and expand. Into the classic areas with which you are familiar: prostitution, drugs, stolen cars and money laundering. But they also infiltrated the legitimate business world. We guess – although we’ve no way of knowing for sure – that this fraud has cost the Hungarian state something like four hundred million dollars.
That’s four hundred million straight into the pockets of what one could call the mafia.’

‘And such a fraud was only possible if the police and customs people were looking the other way?’ Toftlund said.

‘Exactly. It is up to me to investigate the extent of the bribery. Even if it means going all the way to the top. It is not only a
question
of whether an officer or an ordinary policeman has accepted bribes. It is also a matter of checking to see whether it can actually be true, as is claimed, that out of the ten honest, hard-working police detectives in this country who have tried, over the years, to get to the bottom of this case, six committed suicide.’ He cleared his throat, coughed discreetly. ‘We suspect that pathology reports were falsified. Our government employees are not the best paid, you know. It doesn’t take much, I’m afraid. It’s all part of life in our post-communist world. And even if Hungary does have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, there do seem to be rather too many coincidences, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, but I still don’t see any connection between this and a Danish citizen by the name of Niels Lassen. Do you?’

‘Not a direct connection, no. But an indirect one. Because, sad to say, Chief Inspector, all of that money which was suddenly put into circulation gave a boost, so to speak, to crime of every shape and form.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m glad. Then I hope you will also understand that we cannot offer you any direct assistance. But if you should succeed in apprehending the woman whom you call Maria Bujic we would be extremely grateful to you and to Denmark if you could let us know. I would like a word or two with her.’

Everybody would like a word or two with that woman, so it seems, Toftlund thought to himself later. He was at the airport, waiting for his plane to Bratislava. He had trout for lunch and drank water with it. The water tasted good. He read through his notes, but could discern no real connection. He still could not
shake off the feeling, though, that she was central to the whole thing. At any rate he could well understand the Hungarian colonel. Toftlund was also keen to have a word with the
mysterious
woman of many faces. He slipped his notebook back into his bag and ordered coffee. Then, for the first time since leaving home he switched on his mobile.

Toftlund did not trust mobile phones. He did not mind using them to make quick calls during operations in Denmark. At such times he preferred to use a mobile phone rather than a
walkie-talkie
, which any reporter or amateur detective could tune in to. But when it came to confidential conversations he did not trust mobiles. Intelligence organisations all over the world scanned the airwaves, monitoring calls made on these things. There were
computers
programmed to react to certain code words. Echelon, some people called this system. Toftlund could not really have cared less what they called it. He simply took it for granted that such a system existed. If he had had the resources, he would have made use of it himself.

His mobile beeped furiously. There were several messages for him. He called the answering service number. There were two messages from Lise. The first was warm and tender: Hope you’re okay. The other was considerably cooler: Could he possibly find a minute to phone home? He sat for a moment, holding the phone. This was an unwonted situation for him. Never before in his career had he had cause to call home from work. At Customs and Immigration there had been no reason to: you could have set your clock by his shifts. And before that, when he was with PET, he had been single. Toftlund was not, by nature, a great one for analysing things. He had the ability to focus completely on a job, but not for looking inside himself. From his time as a Royal Navy frogman he had learned that if you were to survive the tough demands made on you and the impossible tasks with which you were faced, first during training and then on manoeuvres, you simply had to
concentrate
on the job in hand and block out everything else. If you
allowed thoughts on unrelated or personal matters to hinder the completion of your mission then sooner or later you would come to grief. Instinct, reinforced by his military training told him that for the sake of his sanity it was best to compartmentalise things in his mind. And deal with one thing at a time. So he was surprised, sitting there at the airport, to feel a twinge of guilt. More than a twinge, in fact. Maybe he should have called. But what would have been the point? He was getting on with his work. If Lise didn’t hear from him it was because he was busy with the case and because things were going as they should. No news was good news.

He sipped his coffee and considered his little phone. A blessing and a curse. Then he glanced at his watch and keyed in their home number. He waited until he heard the answering machine click in, then he hung up. He sat for a moment. Then he called Lise’s direct number at the newspaper office. This early in the afternoon she would normally be getting on with her work on the arts page of
Politiken
, and even though she was now on maternity leave it would not have surprised him to find that she had popped into the office. He could hear her telling him that he did actually have her mobile number. There it was again. A blessing and a curse. You were never completely out of touch these days. But the mobile phone had one drawback: it could be traced, wherever it happened to be. The closest radio mast would always betray its location and he did not like that idea at all.

He was a little taken aback, nonetheless, to discover that she was at the office.

‘Lise Carlsen,’ she said. The sound of her voice made him feel warm all over, and to his amazement he suddenly realised that he missed her terribly. It came as something of a shock to him that such feelings could strike him when he was at work. It was as though a breach had been made in the dykes between his different compartments.

‘Hi, Lise, sweetheart. It’s me. I miss you. How are you doing?’

‘Per. Where are you?’

‘In Budapest.’

‘Oh,
that’s
nice,’ she said tartly.

‘Well, I haven’t seen anything but airports and offices, so I wouldn’t know.’

‘It’s nice of you to call,’ she said in the same crisp, correct tone. As if he were a contact who had been good enough to call her back.

‘I thought you were on leave. What are you doing at work?’

‘Ganløse got a bit lonely. I wanted to see if my chair still fitted me. And Pernille asked me out for a bite to eat. She felt sorry for me, vegetating out there in the sticks while my husband was
gallivanting
all over Central Europe and seemed to have forgotten all about his wife.’

Pernille was a fellow journalist and friend. She was probably finishing off an article before they went out to eat.

‘For Christ’s sake, Lise. I’ve been busy. It’s very complicated,’ he said, sounding more annoyed than he really meant to.

‘Oh, I’m sure you have. When are you coming home?’

‘In a day or so.’

‘That sounds very precise.’

‘Look, I can’t discuss this on an open line.’

‘No, of course you can’t.’

‘You’re upset, Lise.’

‘I’m tired and I’m big as a house and my back aches; I’m
sweating
like a pig, I’m sick of being pregnant and I’m sick of my husband just running off and not even bothering to call home to ask if his pregant wife is okay. And whether she’s maybe gone into labour early.’

His heart began to pound. As if he had run a long way very fast.

‘Have you? What are you trying to say. Is there something wrong?’

She laughed and her laughter warmed his heart. Now he
recognised
her again.

‘Ooh, the daring detective was worried there for a moment, eh?’

‘Is something the matter, Lise?’

‘No, Per, you stupid old fool. I’m fine. I went for a check-up yesterday. Everything is just as it should be. If we didn’t know it was a girl I would swear we were having a boy. She’s got a kick like David Beckham. She can’t come out quick enough as far as I’m concerned. And I would really like to hear from my husband, even if he is racing all over the world, playing at being James Bond.’

‘Okay.’

‘You and your “okay”. You’re not on your own now, you know. What if I had gone into labour? You wouldn’t have known.’

‘Yes, but you didn’t.’

‘Ah, but what if,’ she said again, but he could tell that she was no longer mad at him.

‘Then I would have flown home in my private, supersonic James Bond jet. You know – the one with the caviar and champagne and the three big blondes.’

‘Just you try …’

‘I love you, Lise,’ he said, the words coming as a surprise even to him, uttered as they were without any ulterior motive.