Deceptions by Anna Porter (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📗

people ahead of her. She waited, said something to the guard at the door, and disappeared into the darkness before Attila had a chance to stop her.

Earlier, he had returned to the residence to check that Iván was back. The Vaszarys had been sitting in the blindingly white living room, she on the sofa, he in the armchair, both with large martinis. The only hint of trouble between them was that neither of them had been talking when he entered. He had known few other couples with such a calm approach to their impending divorce. Tonight they seemed to share a taste for vermilion — his three-piece slim-cut suit was paired with a red shirt and matching fob; her form-fitting dress with a slit up the side was also a striking red. All of it looked very expensive, if a bit theatrical. Rumour had it that she liked a French couturier, and he had his suits made by a tailor in Rome. How they could afford such luxuries on government salaries would have been puzzling elsewhere. In Hungary, everyone took it for granted that the European Union’s lavish funds were siphoned off for the benefit of the party faithful.

Vaszary’s appointment to the Council of Europe had been predictable for a consistently vocal advocate of the government’s policies on wall-building at the southern border and ejection (by force if necessary) of all refugees. In his famous Szeged speech, he had suggested that separating children from their parents had proven to work in the United States, where the steady influx of migrants had eased once border guards put children, irrespective of age, into separate concrete holding bins. If the Americans could do it, why not the Hungarians?

Vaszary’s career moves had included ordering the imprisonment of illegals who had managed to cross the border, arresting anyone who aided refugees, and fomenting the appearance of a national crisis in order to gain votes for his deeply authoritarian prime minister. Cynics in Budapest’s cafés were betting that Vaszary would become the Council of Europe’s commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management. It would be hilariously appropriate, and an exemplary way for the government to make a joke of the Council of Europe’s responsibilities. That position was still open, and the prime minister was strongly urging representatives of other nations to back his choice. The Belgians and the Norwegians were stubbornly opposed.

Attila had never been involved in politics, but he loathed brutality, and he had made unhappy noises about the prisons for refugees. All the more puzzling that he had been chosen to babysit the Vaszarys in Strasbourg.

“How were your meetings in Paris?” Attila asked.

“Better than we had expected,” Iván said. “The French don’t much like us.”

“Are you going out tonight?”

Vaszary shook his head.

“We are expecting guests,” Gizella said with a little smile. “No reason not to be civil.”

“We won’t need you,” Iván said. “It’s a couple of the Brits who share our enthusiasm for Brussels.”

Neither of them had mentioned the dead lawyer.

When Helena came out of the cathedral’s exit door, she seemed to have lost her easy stride. In fact, she was limping. Her left arm was extended down her left side, the right arm crossed over her chest, supporting the left, as if she had walked into a door, or been hit hard. He stood up to help, but she shook her head so vigorously she almost dislodged the sunglasses.

She sat very carefully next to him, her back straight, her arm still extended, smiled, and ordered a coup de champagne from the passing waiter.

“What’s happened?” Attila inquired.

“Other than the incident on the boat, you mean?”

“Of course the . . . incident,” he whispered, “but what just happened in the church?”

“The cathedral? Not much. I had to retrieve something.”

“But you are hurt,” he said.

“Hurt? No. Perplexed.”

“That means what?” he asked, exasperated. “You were limping just now. Did someone . . . ?”

“Perplexed means mystified, baffled, bewildered by what happened today. I barely arrive in Strasbourg — for a little job you hired me to do — and a man I am with gets killed; I discover that the painting I am to study is to be sold in three weeks or less; I then run into a very rich Ukrainian I have known who is bidding—”

“Azarov?”

“Of course. He is a collector.”

“A criminal who should have an international warrant against him. But Interpol is too chicken to issue one. Perhaps now that they have a Russian at the top, it will be easier to get a warrant out on that man.”

“On the other hand, it will be damned near impossible to have any warrants issued for Russians, and Vladimir told me Piotr Grigoriev is also arriving and god knows how many—”

“Vladimir?” Attila’s voice rose. “Since when do you call him Vladimir?”

How had Attila become so childishly possessive? “I’ve always called him Vladimir,” Helena said.

“My turn to be perplexed?”

“No. It’s your turn to explain what the hell is going on here.” Helena drank her champagne in one easy swallow. “But first I have someone to meet inside,” she said, tossing €10 on the table then limping into the hotel’s entrance.

Attila ordered a draft beer and settled down for a long wait.

Louise was ensconced in one of the hotel’s high-backed lobby chairs, her hair held up by a couple of large pearl-tipped pins, her light mauve dress fanned out around her, her feet tucked under her, fully engrossed in her iPad. Despite her actual age of fifty-one, she looked like a child lost in a video game. When she saw Helena, she stood, turned into her businesslike self, handed her the small black plastic case with the usual variety of wigs and passports, gave her a piece of paper with the Vargas research, and suggested, quietly, that since Helena had been photographed on a tour boat with the murder victim, it would be a perfect decision for her to go home to Paris and resume working for Christie’s or the Tate, since