‘Leave the hammer here. You can get it later.’
‘Why?’
Balázs wondered how to put it. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if…’ He started again. ‘Let’s say the police get involved, and you’ve got a hammer…A weapon. D’you see what I’m saying? We won’t need it anyway.’
Gábor was doubtful. ‘We won’t need it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’ After a further hesitation, Gábor said, ‘Okay.’ He put the hammer down quietly and they passed through a fire door into the heavy, monied hush of the hallway on the other side. It was unlike anywhere Balázs had ever been, the sort of place he had only seen in American films — that was how it felt, like he was in an American film.
They were standing outside 425, the lacquered woodwork of the door. Listening, they heard nothing. Then Gábor swiped the sensor, the lock whirred and disengaged, and they went in.
‘What’s this?’ Gábor said. He sounded surprised, almost disappointed.
There were three people in the room, which was large and well lit — Emma and two Indian men, all sitting down, and all seemingly waiting patiently, in polite silence.
‘Okay, listen,’ one of the Indians said immediately, standing. ‘We want to talk to you.’ He was much the older of the two of them and had been sitting on an upholstered chair between the tall, draped windows.
Gábor ignored him and said to Emma, in Hungarian, ‘What’s going on?’
She shrugged. ‘There are two of them.’
‘I can see that. What’s been happening?’
‘Nothing.’
The older man was wearing a tweed jacket and seemed to be waiting for Gábor to finish speaking to Emma.
Gábor turned to him and said, in English, ‘Only one of you can be here.’
‘Yes, this is what we want to talk to you about,’ the man said.
‘Only one of you,’ Gábor told him again.
‘I understand, I understand…’
‘Okay, you understand. So one of you go. Please.’
The Indians — the older with his nice jacket and manners, his elegant cologne; the younger, scrawny in a Lacoste polo shirt, and still in his seat — were profoundly unintimidating. There was a fairly obvious sense that Balázs, standing with his arms folded near the door, displacing a lot of air, would be able to deal with them simultaneously if necessary. The older man’s exaggerated politeness, with its weird edge of suppressed hysteria, may just have been an acknowledgement of that.
‘I understand,’ he was saying yet again. ‘The young lady told us that only one of us could, uh…you know,’ he said. ‘I understand. That’s okay. That’s okay. My, uh, my young friend will be…will be doing that.’
Moving only his eyes, Balázs looked at the younger man. He was about twenty perhaps, or even younger, and, slumped in his seat, staring at his loafers, seemed not even to be following what was happening.
Gábor said to Emma, again in Hungarian, ‘Do you have the money?’
She nodded.
‘Who paid you?’
She pointed to the older Indian, who said, ‘I just want to watch.’
Gábor turned to him. ‘You want to watch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Baszd meg.’
‘Is it a problem?’
‘Yes, it’s a problem,’ Gábor said in a louder voice.
‘Why?’
‘Why? Why?’ With what seemed to be a sudden loss of temper, Gábor seized the man by the scruff of his jacket and first swung and then started shoving him towards the door, until Balázs, packed into his lurid turquoise shirt, intervened and separated them.
There was a moment of tense quiet while Gábor, evidently struggling to maintain a professional demeanour, focused on his shoes.
Then he looked up and said, tautly, ‘It’s a problem, okay. A problem. Please?’ With stiff politeness, an extended hand, he showed the man the door.
The Indian was starting to sweat somewhat. Nevertheless he seemed determined to negotiate it out. Panting slightly, he said, ‘No, just a minute. Please. I also say please. Just a minute.’
‘Let’s go,’ Gábor said.
‘Please,’ the man went on. ‘Let’s just talk for a minute. Let’s just talk. Your friend said the money was for a whole night with the, the young lady. Your friend said that.’
‘Yes,’ Gábor said, with strained patience.
‘Now, listen,’ the Indian said, his pate starting to shine, ‘what I want to suggest is, uh, that we only take an hour or two of her time — but that I’m allowed to watch. Just watch! Is that fair? Doesn’t that seem fair?’
‘Look,’ Gábor said. ‘She doesn’t do stuff like that, okay? She’s a nice girl.’
‘Oh, she’s a nice girl — of course she’s a nice girl…’
‘Yeah, she’s a nice girl. Let’s go.’
‘Okay, you want more money,’ the Indian said, as if surrendering, as Gábor took hold of his arm. ‘How much? How much? A thousand pounds,’ he offered.
Gábor, transparently surprised by the size of the offer, did not say anything. He swallowed cautiously and looked at Emma.
‘Okay? A thousand pounds?’
‘Uh,’ Gábor said, frowning as if trying to work something out. He seemed unable to do so, however, and finally said, ‘It’s up to her.’
‘Of course!’ The man turned smartly to Emma. She was sitting, with some dignity, in a tub chair. The man said, ‘A thousand pounds, madam, simply to sit in the corner. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse. What say you?’
Even the young Indian lifted his overlarge head, with its cockatooish plume of blow-dried hair, and looked at her now as they all waited to hear what she would answer.
‘Just say no,’ Gábor said to her, in their own language. ‘Just say no, and we’ll get rid of him.’
‘Why?’ she said finally. ‘What difference does it make?’
Gábor’s face underwent a very slight distortion.
‘What difference does it make?’ she said again.
‘You’ll do it then?’
She shrugged, and Gábor turned to the waiting Indian, who had not understood the exchange, and said, ‘Okay. Where’s the money?’
‘I, uh, I have it here.’ He took from the inside pocket of his jacket a tan leather wallet.
As he counted out the money, Gábor said, ‘You just watch.’
‘Of course, of course,’ the man said distractedly.
‘You don’t touch.’
A shake of the shining head. ‘No.’
‘Any trouble, we’ll be here.’
The man held out the money. ‘I promise you, there won’t be any trouble.’
‘Give the money to her,’ Gábor said.
‘Oh, excuse me. Madame?’
Emma stood up — even without her shoes she was taller than the dapper man — and took the money and put it in the small handbag which was on one of the tables next to the brocaded expanse of the bed.
‘Okay,’ Gábor said to Balázs, while she was doing that. ‘Let’s go.’
—
Gábor hardly spoke for the rest of the night, his face swallowed by shadow in the parked Merc. He had speculated bitterly, as they walked back, on the nature of the Indian’s perversion, but once they had taken their seats on the anthracite leather, he seemed to have nothing more to say.
The previous night had also challenged his composure, though not nearly to the same extent. Zoli had told them, when he came as usual to collect his money, that the client for that night did not want to go to the hotel, so they should go instead to his house. It turned out to be in a grand square of stucco terraces. The two men had watched through the windscreen as Emma, in the familiar little flesh-coloured sheath of a dress, went up the steps to the porticoed entrance, with its big hanging lantern, and pushed the doorbell. A minute later the house swallowed her.