Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

‘And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.’

‘They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grace I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three … funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette — so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn’t want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart—’

‘You slept soundly after murdering a man?’

‘I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenalin rush … well, it did exhaust me.’

‘Did you feel better after killing Dupre?’

‘A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton. You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there. It was all carefully plotted out in my mind. Point by point.’

‘Including your own suicide?’

‘That wasn’t part of the plan.’

‘So you are dead?’

‘I’ll get to that — but only after I tell you about Bodo and Lovas.’

‘I don’t want to hear about how you tortured them.’

‘Yes, you do — and you have no choice but to listen.

Otherwise you won’t find out what you want to know.’

I reached for the Scotch, poured myself two fingers, and threw it back.

‘Tell me then,’ I said.

‘Some weeks before I set my plan in motion, I contacted a friend in Budapest — a man who, like my father, was part of the entire samizdat newspaper brigade that operated for a time in the fifties. He was now in his seventies … and had done time in prison for his crimes of talking back to the State. He had been “rehabilitated” — though he’d also been tortured so badly during his “re-education” that he could no longer walk. I had made one journey back to Budapest in 1974, right after I had become a French citizen. I had a need to see it again, I suppose, as an adult — and had taken tea with this gentleman at his apartment. We couldn’t talk openly — he was certain the place was bugged — but he did ask me if I’d push him out in his wheelchair in a nearby park. Once we were outside, I asked him if he could find the whereabouts of the men who executed my father in front of me. He said, “ It’s a small country … everybody can be found. But are you sure you want to find them? ”

‘I said, “ Not now. But one day, perhaps … ” He told me that when that day arrived, I should inform him by mail that “ I would like to meet up with our friends “, and he would take care of the rest.

‘So, six years later, when I decided to regler les comptes , I sent him a letter. He wrote back, saying, “ Our friends are alive and well and living in Budapest .” I made my plans, deposited my bag at the Gare de l’Est, and cut Henri Dupre’s throat. When I arrived in Hungary I went directly to this gentleman’s apartment. He was now a very old man, very infirm. But he smiled when he saw me and told me he’d like to head out to the park. Once I had wheeled him outside, he handed me a piece of paper and said, “Here are their addresses. Is there anything else you need?” I told him, “ A gun .” He said, “ No problem .” When we went back to his apartment, he sent me rummaging around an attic storage room for a shotgun that his father used for hunting back when Charles I was our King. He even provided me with a saw to shorten the barrel. As I left the apartment — with the gun in my bag — he pulled me toward him and whispered in my ear, “ I hope you kill them slowly .” Then he sent me on my way.

‘I checked into a hotel. I went to an apothecary — they still had such things in Budapest — and bought a cut-throat razor. I went to another shop and bought tape. I took the metro over to the Buda Hills where Lovas had his flat. I found it, no problem. I even rang the intercom and put on a funny voice and asked him if the woman of the house was in. “ She died five years ago. Who is this? ” I said I was a member of the local Party committee for Senior Activities, and apologized for the mistake. Then I went over to Bodo’s flat in some ugly modern block in Pest. This time there was no intercom. But he answered the door himself: a hunched man around seventy in a dressing gown and wheezing while he smoked a cigarette. Of course he didn’t recognize me. “ What do you want? ” Is the woman of the house in? “ She left years ago .” I said, “ I’m from the Party committee on Pensioners and we want to see … ” and I spun some lie about looking into the needs of the elderly. “ Well, the woman you want isn’t here … but if you want to talk about the needs of the elderly … you can come in now and hear an earful. ”

‘Now, I hadn’t expected to carry out my plan so quickly — but I did have everything I needed with me, so I let him usher me into his small, depressing flat. Crap furniture, crap wallpaper, a nasty little kitchen, brimming ashtrays, empty bottles of cheap booze.

‘” So who are you again? ” he asked.

‘I told him my name.

‘” Kadar … like our Party chairman? ” he asked me.

‘” No … Kadar like Miklos Kadar. You remember Miklos Kadar, don’t you? ”

‘” I’m an old man. So many people have come and gone in my life .”

‘” Yes, but Miklos Kadar must hold a special place in your memory … as you executed him in front of his daughter .”

‘By this point we were seated in his little bed-sitting room. I opened the bag. I pulled out the shotgun. He gasped, but I put my finger to my lips and he didn’t say another word.

‘” Surely you must remember his little girl, Margit? You ordered one of your police stooges to keep her eyes open while you lynched him two meters from where she stood .”

‘At that point, he started to feign ignorance. “ I don’t know what you’re talking about … I don’t remember such things .” I hit him on the side of the head with the gun and told him that if he didn’t tell me the truth I’d shoot him on the spot. That’s when he started to cry, to plead, to say how sorry he was, how he was “ only following orders “… Yes, he actually used that expression.

‘I told him, “ My mother and I were whisked out of the country afterward and even paid a pittance of a recompense by the government, because they were ashamed of what had happened. So please do not tell me you were only following orders. The cop who held me, he was only following orders — because you barked at him on several occasions when he let me shut my eyes. You, sir, wanted a seven-year-old girl to witness her father’s death. You wanted that scene burned on my memory forever. You succeeded. I’ve spent the ensuing decades trying to wipe that image away — but it simply will never leave me … a trauma which you inflicted on me out of sheer malice and cruelty —”

‘” You’re right, you’re right ,” he cried. “ I was so wrong. But they were terrible times and —”

‘That’s when I hit him again on the head and ordered him to sit down at his kitchen table. The fool complied. When I told him to lay his hands flat down on the table, he didn’t resist … even though he could have made a break for it when I had to put down the gun to start taping him. I used three rolls of tape — making certain he couldn’t move his arms and couldn’t get out of the chair.