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  Mumtaz saw Eva Horvathy look away.

  Bela Horvathy looked at Irving Levy.

  ‘Which is where you come in to this story, sir.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Oh, you have done nothing wrong, sir. Far from it: you are a victim.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Irving said.

  ‘Your mother didn’t lose your sister back in 1962,’ the old man said. ‘She gave the child to me.’

  Mumtaz put a hand on Irving’s shoulder.

  His voice, when it came, was weak. ‘Gave her? To you?’

  ‘Because she couldn’t stay with your father,’ Bela Horvathy said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she was not his child. Look at her!’ He pointed to Eva and smiled. ‘My daughter looks like me. When the police came that day in 1962 and asked me who the baby laying in a cradle in my caravan was, I said it was mine and he believed me!’

  In light of how entirely Miriam Levy had disappeared it made sense that she had never actually left the fairground.

  ‘Now, sir, I don’t know what your mother may have told you …’

  ‘Nothing,’ Irving said. ‘She never told me anything.’

  His words sounded bitter and he looked crushed. Mumtaz put her arm around his shoulders. He looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘So why have you been coming here?’ Eva Horvathy asked. ‘Why did you hire these private detectives to come and ask questions?’

  ‘Because I discovered that my mother was not Jewish and because I wanted, if I could, to find out what happened to Miriam before I died. Because I am dying.’

  For a few moments that bald, passionless statement of fact took the breath from the room and everyone except Bela Horvathy looked to the floor for inspiration. Mumtaz wondered at how British they all were and whether the old man despised or admired them for it.

  Irving, who had created the silence, broke it. ‘And so you are Miriam,’ he said to Eva.

  She had his eyes. Nothing else.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘I know you live in a big house and you cut diamonds, but I don’t want what you have. I want everything to stay as it is. I want my Amber back …’

  She broke down. Tentatively, at first, then more firmly, Irving put a hand on her back.

  The younger of the two police officers shuffled his feet. Mumtaz allowed herself an internal smile. This was of no interest to him. Eventually, he turned to the old man.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘if your wife’s death wasn’t an accident and you didn’t kill her, who did?’

  The old man addressed his daughter.

  ‘Irenka, my wife, and the only mother you ever knew, was a sad woman. She couldn’t have children of her own; she couldn’t be where she wanted to be. The war had broken all our lives and what we did to carry on hung heavily upon her. She was cruel to you and I did little to stop her. I take full responsibility for that. If an excuse for my actions exists it is that I was always too busy. Learning a new language, making a living, caring for my family …’

  Eva raised her head. ‘What family? Those freaks? They’re not your family! I am your family. Me and my child and Amber, who you killed!’

  ‘I didn’t kill Amber.’

  ‘You encouraged her to fly! You and those freaks of yours!’

  Her words hurt him. When she spat them out it was as if she’d slapped him.

  ‘When death comes, we tend to tell the truth,’ Bela said. ‘Listen and I will tell you. I’m sure that these police officers just want to do their jobs and leave …’

  Dave Harris said, ‘If it’s relevant to what happened today …’

  ‘In a way, yes,’ he said. ‘I think it may explain why my granddaughter wanted to fly and why I encouraged her.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You know, Eva, when I came to this country, I had nothing except my reputation.’

  ‘Yes, we know you fought with the Hungarian Resistance. We’ve all heard the stories.’

  ‘Which are true,’ he said. ‘Together with my parents and my brothers and sisters I was a trapeze artist in the Magyar Circus, which travelled Europe until 1944 when the Nazis occupied Hungary. My family were divided upon what to do then. My father urged us all to resist. He, my mother and three brothers died doing just that. Only I survived. That is but one side of the equation. My brother Tamas and sister Szuszanna believed that working with the Nazis was the right thing to do. In October 1944, while I was hiding out in the cellars of Budapest, Tamas and Szuszanna were rounding up their fellow Hungarians and shooting them. On the Chain and Margaret Bridges across the Danube, the Arrow Cross Hungarian Nazi Party members murdered their opponents and threw their bodies into the river. I saw Szuszanna with my own eyes. There and then I vowed to kill her. But, as I have said all along, I have never killed anyone. My father always blamed me for not watching my young brother, Egon, when he was a baby. He died in his cot for no reason, but it happened when he was in my care and so I lived under suspicion from then on. But I did nothing to the child, just like I did nothing to Szuszanna.’

  Bloody DI Bateman yawned as if he was bored. The old man clocked it, but Dave, fascinated by this time, said, ‘Go on, sir.’

  ‘The next time I saw my sister and brother Tamas was here in London. Refugees from both the Nazis and the Soviets, just like me, or that was how they presented themselves. I wanted nothing to do with them. I had found work at Mitchells Fair. I wanted to start my life again. Let them fool what remained of the Hungarian community here in London! I didn’t care. But then 1956 happened, the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviets and thousands of my countrymen came here seeking asylum. Among them were people who remembered the truth about Tamas and Szuszanna Horvathy.’ He shook his head. ‘You have a saying here that blood is thicker than water. It’s true. I have never really investigated what I did next, but I imagine I did it not for my remaining brother and sister, but for the Szuszanna and the Tamas of my youth. But I punished them too.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I was nothing at Mitchells. Too damaged and stiff to do a proper job, I ran sideshows, including the freaks. Two skinny creatures who couldn’t speak English – what was I to do with them? And so Ping and Pong were born, a freak so bizarre no one could recognise them. I believe I saved their lives. What else is family for, eh?’

  His face was dark; his lip curled into a sneer. He said, ‘My wife, Irenka, hated them. She called them Nazis and traitors. They hated her too. But she was my wife and they respected that. But they were also full of joy when I met up with Adeline again.’

  ‘Adeline?’

  ‘Do you mean Adeline Beltz?’ Irving Levy said.

  ‘How do you know that name?’ the old man replied.

  Could Bela Horvathy be trusted? Maybe, maybe not. But the fact that he’d known the Stasi officer, Gunther Beltz’s aunt, couldn’t, Lee Arnold thought, be a coincidence.

  ‘She was a maid in a big Jewish household in Berlin,’ the old man said. ‘In 1942 we played Berlin and she came with a group of German soldiers who had taken over her employer’s house. But, in spite of all their warrior glamour, she only had eyes for me and I for her. It was just lust. What else could it have been, given the company she kept? She came back the following night and I took her for a drink, then we made love. The circus moved on the next day, but I didn’t forget her. I never saw her again until she came here to this park with her small son in 1960. She told me she was in a loveless marriage to the man who had rescued her from the ruins of Berlin. She came back without the boy later and we made love for the second time. I didn’t know she was pregnant until we returned to this park the following year. There she was with a tiny baby. Adeline gave her to me the following year.’

  ‘How did you know the kid was yours and not her husband’s?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Look at her,’ was all the old man said.

  And she was his image. All except her eyes.

  ‘And the dat
es were wrong,’ Horvathy continued. ‘The diamond cutter couldn’t be the child’s father. Or so she told me.’

  ‘And so the little girl, me, I had to go,’ Eva said.

  ‘To one who wanted you, yes.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘I meant to tell you the truth …’

  ‘Is that why you still have a picture of her with me when I was a baby? Or have you kept that so you can fantasise about her? Oh yes, I know that photograph, Papa. I’ve looked at it many times—’

  Lee interrupted, ‘What did your wife have to say about it?’

  He shrugged. ‘She couldn’t give me a child herself. What could she say?’

  ‘She burned my head with curling tongs, she bit me, she used me as her slave. I was barely out of nappies. I remember it all. You let that woman abuse me so you could keep your fucking secrets!’

  All heads turned towards Eva.

  Then her father said, ‘But you do not remember killing her. I have been grateful for that.’

  ‘Why do people think that if they change what they are doing, everything in their life will fall into place? I have no answer to that. Like me, Irenka came from a circus background. She wanted to go back but, like me, she couldn’t fly any more. So she began working on acts from clowning – but she was too fat – to escapology. Her father had performed some of Houdini’s acts. She knew what she was doing. What she didn’t know was that the child she had so reluctantly taken in was watching her.’ He shrugged. ‘Ping and Pong found her, but it was too late. They told me the child pushed her into the fire and held her there. When I found my Eva she was holding Irenka’s legs, so that she couldn’t move. She was seven years old and her face was quite blank. Like it is right now.

  ‘And so we never told her. The Twins, as we call my brother and sister, may be destructive, but even they have a limit. I did not know they told my daughter about you, Mr Levy, and I am sorry for that. But you must understand that for all the kindness I have shown Tamas and Szuszanna, I have also never allowed them to have their own lives. I have been kind to be cruel, and so when my granddaughter and I wanted so much for her to fly, they helped because I believe they thought it would end in tears. And it has. But what can one expect of Nazis, eh? I wanted the world for my granddaughter, the only person in this family to look like my passionate Adeline, and I ended up killing her because I am an old fool.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Mumtaz finally arrived home later that night, she sat down with a cup of tea and began to look through the messages on her phone. There were a lot from Farzana at the refuge. But then her phone rang and, seeing that the caller was Wahid Sheikh, she picked up.

  ‘Wahid-ji,’ she said, ‘to what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘You are a difficult woman to track down,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to find you for some hours.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve been working …’

  ‘If you look out of your window you will see that I am seated in my car outside your flat,’ he said.

  Mumtaz felt her face go cold. She ran to the window.

  ‘It is a silver Mercedes C-Class Cabriolet,’ he said. ‘If you’d care to join me in it, we can sort out that enquiry you recently made about your late husband.’

  Tasneem brought Farzana a cup of tea. All the women had finally gone back to bed and they’d cleaned as much of Shirin’s blood off the floor as they could see.

  Farzana said, ‘What a night!’

  Tasneem shook her head. ‘What can you say?’

  ‘I’ve seen many things since I’ve worked here, but nothing like that. Nothing. And the husband! Dead! God I do hope that she—’

  ‘Oh, Shirin killed him,’ Tasneem said quietly and, astonishingly, calmly. ‘She told me when I took her to the toilet. She also told me what he’d done to her. He deserved it.’

  ‘He has a right to know,’ Irving Levy said as he allowed his body to fall into his chair.

  ‘Could open up an even bigger can of worms,’ Lee said, as he gave him a cup of tea. ‘Can I leave you here for a minute, while I just pop out for a fag?’

  ‘Oh, have it in here,’ Irving said. ‘I really don’t care. There’s an ashtray that belonged to my father on the sideboard.’

  Lee retrieved a heavy multicoloured bowl he recognised as Murano glass and sat down.

  ‘As Mr Horvathy said, blood is thicker than water,’ Irving said. ‘Look at what he did for his family. Mr Beltz is a member of my family, whether I like it or not.’

  ‘He was in the Stasi …’

  ‘And Mr Horvathy’s siblings were Nazis. Family tests us.’

  ‘Irving, you’re Jewish, you can’t forgive Nazis.’

  ‘No, and I don’t,’ he said. ‘Now that the truth is out, the wartime crimes of Tamas and Szuszanna Horvathy can be investigated. But I repeat, Herr Beltz has a right to know what happened to his aunt and why. I don’t know whether Adeline, my mother, killed Rachel Austerlitz or not. Who can know that now? But at least the poor woman rests under the house where she was loved not just by her family but by Joachim Beltz as well.’

  ‘God, you’re a bloody saint if you ask me, Irving,’ Lee said.

  He smiled. ‘Death gives one a view, Lee. Much of which is that life is too short to be bitter. I think that Mr Horvathy has lived his life in that way for a long time.’

  ‘He’s caused a lot of trouble in his time.’

  ‘By trying to do the right thing by those he loved, whoever they were,’ he said. ‘And you know, Eva Horvathy was right when she said she wanted their lives to simply remain what they always had been.’

  ‘What? Never changing? Not possible.’

  ‘I mean going back to a past none but the old man could remember,’ he said. ‘To me that smacks of the fascism of the mythical “golden past” nationalists always refer to. But for Eva to not want to know me or even accept my help …’ He shook his head. ‘You know, I think she has wanted to know me, really. I think it is her I’ve seen sometimes standing outside this house. And I would give her everything.’

  ‘She doesn’t want it,’ Lee said.

  ‘Maybe, after what she did all those years ago, all she has ever wanted is some peace of mind.’

  Lee nodded. ‘Even if we don’t remember something, it leaves a mark.’

  He smiled. ‘Doesn’t it just.’

  Rizwan Sheikh stank. Mumtaz, as one of his victims, knew that it was no more than the evil old gangster deserved, but as a human being, she pitied him. How could his family let him get into such a dreadful state? Lying on a filthy bed, in filthy nightclothes, surrounded by chocolate wrappers and stinking of pee?

  She said, ‘Why is he like this? This is awful!’

  Wahid Sheikh frowned. ‘Doesn’t it please you? He is your enemy, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a human being!’ she said. ‘And your brother! And that woman we saw downstairs is his daughter!’

  The man on the bed tried to say something, but failed. But his eyes looked at her with hatred in spite of what she was saying. Mumtaz felt her whole body cringe.

  ‘So say what you have to and let’s have done with it,’ she said.

  Wahid Sheikh offered her a tattered, stained chair, but she refused to sit.

  He sat on his brother’s bed.

  ‘As you can see, my poor brother can’t do anything very much. His speech is very slow and extremely poor. So I will speak for him.’

  Rizwan Sheikh managed to nod.

  His brother smiled. ‘Mrs Hakim, your husband was a very bad man,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’ Mumtaz leant against the bedroom door, as if making sure of a swift exit. ‘He left me in debt and he brutalised myself and his own daughter. Whatever he did to you, he did far worse to us.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well then, tell me otherwise,’ she said. ‘I know you want to shock me in some way. But you’ve already done that by bringing me here. Get on with it.’

  ‘Your husba
nd, Ahmet Hakim, made my niece, Rizwan-ji’s favourite and youngest daughter, Aqsa, pregnant.’

  Ahmet had been with other women. He’d boasted about it. But to have sex with the favoured daughter of a gangster was reckless, even by his standards. Was it true?

  Mumtaz worked hard not to appear ill at ease. She said, ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

  The man on the bed made a noise. His brother put a hand on his arm. He turned his head towards Mumtaz.

  ‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘But I can show you the report written by the coroner.’

  He passed her a double-sided document headed Eastern District of London Coroner’s Court. It was dated 2011, the same year Ahmet had died.

  ‘You should note that my niece was fourteen at the time.’

  Fourteen, four months pregnant and she had died by ingesting disinfectant. Mumtaz put a hand to her mouth. The verdict had been suicide. But she knew that ‘suicide’ could have different meanings.

  She threw the paper down onto the bed. ‘Did you make her kill herself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I know what “honour” means,’ she said. ‘Not that such an abomination is anything to do with honour …’

  ‘The poor child came home one afternoon and committed the sin of suicide all by herself.’

  ‘So, how do I know that Ahmet was the father of this …’

  ‘Because I tell you that he was,’ Wahid Sheikh said. ‘And because, as I think you have finally realised yourself, Mrs Hakim, why would we pursue your family so relentlessly if this were just about money?’

  Now Mumtaz needed the door behind her for support. She said, ‘And so you make me, who suffered at that man’s hands, suffer …’

  ‘Your husband is dead,’ Wahid said. ‘We cannot do anything more to him.’

  ‘You killed him!’

  ‘If my understanding is correct, then you believe that a man who is now dead, poor Aqsa’s brother Naz, was the killer of your husband. Although you said nothing of this to anyone, much less the police, at the time. And now that, as I say, Naz is sadly dead too, hence my brother’s awful physical condition, we will never know.’