Deceptions Anna Porter (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

picture was all over their news, it won’t take them long to figure it out. I assume you invited her to Strasbourg?”

“Who told you that?”

“Never mind who told me. Anyway, I didn’t tell their police. I couldn’t tell them and have it all over the French papers. The French don’t control their papers. It’s a stupid excuse for a country and an even stupider excuse for a government. Why would somebody want to kill this lawyer?”

Attila shrugged and raised his eyebrows to indicate he had no idea, though the first thought that sprang to his mind was that Iván Vaszary would have lots of reasons for interfering in what his wife was trying to do. Not all divorces are amicable, and the Vaszarys’ would have included more than a worn sofa, some books, and a dachshund.

“It wasn’t Vaszary,” Tóth declared.

Attila was too caught up in his worries about Helena to listen to Tóth’s theories. He had suggested her to Gizella Vaszary. He thought this would be a lucrative contract for Helena, one she might not refuse, and a chance for them to be in the same city for a while. He had tried to entice her back to Budapest, but that hadn’t worked. Strasbourg was neutral ground.

“He was in Paris. Wasn’t he?” Tóth was asking.

“Yes,” Attila said. “I was with him in Paris. He had meetings with some EU bureaucrats and a guy at the Louvre. Looked to me like he was going to spend a lot of hours in waiting rooms,” Attila said. “He told me to leave.”

“He could have hired the guy who shot the lawyer.”

“Could have,” Attila conceded.

“We can’t have one of our guys involved in a murder investigation,” Tóth continued. “Not even if we don’t like the bastard. Vaszary may still be useful for us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. Us Hungarians, in case you’ve forgotten where you sleep these days. Fucking moron . . .”

Tóth had never been smart enough to disguise who, in addition to the police department, was paying him. The last time, it had been a Ukrainian oligarch; the time before, a gang of Albanians looking to make an easy living off Váci Street shopkeepers. The whole reason for hiring Attila was now out in the open. Someone in the Gothic castle. Acting as Vaszary’s bodyguard had been too peachy an assignment from the start.

“As for the woman on the boat, I suspect it’s your friend, the art expert,” Tóth said.

“My friend?”

“Marsh, her name was, last time she darkened our lives. And you, no doubt, know why she is in Strasbourg.”

Attila affected a startled look. “Helena? In Strasbourg?”

“The coffee! Now!” Tóth yelled, and, as if she had been waiting outside for just such an order, a woman appeared bearing one cup with sugar on the side, placed it carefully on the plastic in front of Tóth (when did he decide to cover the desk in plastic?), and marched out of the room. She rolled her eyes at Attila as she left.

“You’re on the next flight to Strasbourg,” Tóth said. He picked up his cup with one pinky daintily extended and slurped. “Find out what that woman is up to.”

Since leaving the police force two years ago, Attila had managed to eke out a precarious living from a few rich clients in need of information or of evidence of something fishy in their dealings with other businesspeople, but most of his jobs were short-lived and some of his clients declined to pay his meagre daily rate. Tempting as it was, he could not afford to tell Tóth exactly what he could do with this assignment.

Besides, he needed to see Helena.

Chapter Four

The room at the Hôtel Cathédrale turned out to be a two-room suite with a magnificent view of the cathedral. It had been booked in her name and prepaid for four nights. In the hotel room’s safe, there was an envelope with a map of Strasbourg, a black circle around a house on Rue Geiler, and a short note from Gizella Vaszary, inviting her to visit at four o’clock. In the event that the time was not convenient, would she please contact Mr. Magoci, her lawyer, at his cell number to arrange another time. Mrs. Vaszary, however, urged Helena not to delay because there was considerable interest in the “object,” and some of the interested parties were growing impatient.

Helena had come with only a small holdall. Although she hadn’t anticipated a need for excessive caution, she never travelled without her thin Gerber switchblade and her Swiss mini, a handgun so tiny it could hide in the palm of her hand. These could be useful if she encountered the man who had shot the lawyer but could be a problem if she were detained by the police. She was sure every police officer in Strasbourg had her description by now. Given the number of smartphone-wielding tourists on the boat, it was likely that her photograph was also plastered all over police stations and downloaded onto cellphones. And the man might have been aiming at her, not the lawyer. She should have brought along a few of her disguises.

Helena laid the man’s beige coat on the hotel bed and patted it, looking for some sort of identification, but the pockets were empty. The coat was made of a light cotton-and-wool mix, soft to the touch. Silk lined. She thought it was the kind of material her Christie’s colleague James liked to wear. Decidedly British, somewhat androgynous, and soft-spoken, but tough, ambitious, and uncompromising, James was always correctly dressed. He had climbed the corporate ladder to some spot above middle management at the auction house. He had assumed the role of a comfortable upper-class man, though he was neither upper-class nor relaxed. Only his chewed fingernails gave him away.

James had always seemed pleased with her work and used her expertise to make himself look efficient. Yet, despite all his effort, his career had stalled, and Helena knew that he needed a big score soon.

The inside