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

his city in all its middle European glory, its history stamped on the buildings and on the people as indelibly as if it had been ink that the centuries couldn’t wash away. That was how Attila had spoken about his city and the Buda Hills that had loomed over it while the country suffered under a range of marauders from both east and west. The Turkish pashas liked to view their dominion from the hills where Gül Baba had been buried. The Habsburg kings enjoyed the fresh air but not the winter winds, so they usually returned to Vienna’s less rustic court as the temperatures fell. The Germans had liked what they saw of the hills and picked their favourite houses to live in once they arrived. Buda had been the last part of the city to be conquered by the Soviet Army and, after 1945, the Communist elite took their turn occupying the best homes in Buda, especially in Rózsadomb. Attila had not spent much time studying history, but, he said, those stories had taken root in his people’s minds. “We’re a small country,” he had told her, “with a small history. But it runs deep.”

When he stayed in her room at the Gresham Four Seasons, he loved looking across the Danube at the hills. Some nights she would wake to find him standing at the wide picture windows, gazing at the other side. In some ways, it was too beautiful, he had said. Like a postcard. With all the grit removed, it lacked reality. If she wanted to see reality, she would have to come to Rákoczi Avenue, where he shared a seedy two-bedroom with Gustav.

The apartment had been grungier than she had expected, and smelled of dog, congealed take-out, and unwashed dishes. Yet, his bed had been freshly made and his coffee was delicious, but she could not imagine living in a less inviting place. “I can’t stay,” she had told him when she woke up and looked at his domain.

“I know,” he had said. “That’s why I wanted you to see it. We inhabit different worlds, and neither of us would enjoy abandoning what we like for what we don’t think we could get used to.” He had seemed both sad and relieved when she packed her holdall and made her way to the door between tall piles of books, stepping over his discarded clothes and Gustav’s half-chewed bones.

She nodded. Of course, he was right.

They had kissed, but it had felt strange, as if they hadn’t kissed before, as if they hadn’t spent some nights together. “Maybe you could come to Paris,” she had said.

“Yes, maybe I could.” But there was no conviction in his voice, as there had been no conviction in her invitation.

She had descended the murky staircase, making sure she didn’t touch the railing. She was still holding her breath when she walked out into the noise of the road.

She phoned Attila from the Astoria’s lobby to tell him that Berkowitz had been killed.

“How?” he asked.

“It could have been a single gunshot. Or a knife. No defensive cuts on his hands. A Glock under the sofa. Silencer. There was a lot of blood under him. If it was a bullet, no exit wound.”

“You didn’t . . .”

“No,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t.”

“‘Of course’?”

She ignored the question. “It looked like he had let in the person who killed him. He opened a bottle of wine. May have sat on the sofa with whoever it was, but not for long because I was there about twenty-five minutes after his neighbour called to tell me that he had arrived at his apartment.”

“You went in . . .”

“Obviously.”

“And the neighbour had seen you.”

“Not then, earlier, when I was trying to find out whether the man who had killed the lawyer was, in fact, Berkowitz.”

“The neighbour would recognize you.”

“Yes, but I wore a wig and stuff. She wouldn’t know me as me.”

“I did.”

“Yes, but you have seen that getup before, and she hadn’t.”

“She?”

“Her name is Zsuzsa Klein. Her grandfather had been a modest art collector. Killed in 1945.”

“How modest?”

“Not very. He travelled a lot, bought paintings and sculptures for his home. In a journal that had been either his or his son’s, he had listed a Verrocchio and a Klimt. The journal is a tiny old-fashioned leather-bound notebook with handwritten lists of paintings and the dates they were painted. There is mention of a Caravaggio, but I couldn’t tell from his Hungarian notes whether it was something he had seen or purchased.”

“How did you find all that?”

“Your Historical Archives of the Communist era. It seems the Kleins were not in the regime’s good graces. Maybe they had too much money before the war.”

“What happened to them?” Attila remembered his own unfortunate experiences with the system that barred anyone considered a class enemy from perks such as education, travel, or a good place to live.

“Zsuzsa’s grandfather — the one who collected the art — was killed by your Nazis.”

“They were not my Nazis.”

“Whatever. One of them took all the art from the house, and the only reason Zsuzsa’s father survived was that his father hid him in a sea chest.”

“He didn’t claim any of the paintings?”

“Zsuzsa said it was impossible before 1989 and too late after. But her father did take her to galleries in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London, Warsaw. Showed her some paintings by artists he may have remembered.” As she said that, she thought of Simon taking her to the famous galleries, wanting her to see the best of the best. And later, to see the fakes no one knew were fakes that the museums displayed with pride. They are, he had told her, also great works of art, nothing phony about them, only about an art world that values objects not for their intrinsic qualities but for the names attached to them.

“Fingerprints?” he asked.

“None of mine.”

“Front door handle?”

“Wiped.”

“Kitchen? Bedroom? The body? Had to touch him to make sure he was dead . .