“Werewolves aren’t real,” I protested.
“In Romania they are. And weredogs, priccoltish. With a million dogs on the streets it can’t be surprising if at least one is a weredog. It’s the perfect place to hide. Unless,” she added with what seemed at first a wonderful lack of logical connection, “Badelescu thinks a Turk did it. Maybe he hopes that’s the answer.”
“Why blame a Turk?”
“They ruled us for three hundred years; consequently, many Romanians don’t like them much. Better a Turk than a werewolf. I’ll see if there are any news reports yet.”
Flipping open her phone, amazingly she googled.
“How can you do that?”
“You can do it anywhere in the city center.”
I thought of old women draped in black guarding a single cow or a few geese by the roadside out in the country. Truly, the last shall be first technologically.
“No, nothing yet.” Rather too soon for news.
“Will you take me to Max? And maybe I can see you tomorrow?” In fact, I felt a bit tired, but also I wanted to make notes about the murder scene.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll phone. Yes, probably.” She wasn’t going to seem overeager, but she wanted me to feel eager.
Max’s place proved not to be far, just beyond the boundary where Ceaus?escu’s architectural master plan had erased a vast area of the old city-houses, churches, whatever was in the way-to make space for ostentatious modernity.
The flat was on the top floor of a modest block. To the front, the outlook was upon a line of trees, then some open grass, then low houses with red roofs suddenly abutting a towering wall of vast white apartments. Directly below was a very modest old cottage to which were attached a clutter of small corrugated-roofed sheds, surrounded by rows of vegetables and bean poles-I even spotted some geese and hens-all within a green-painted picket fence.
Incongruously next to this relic of the past was a sizeable ultra-posh house in Art Deco style, gleamingly white.
“Probably an old lady died there and her heirs accepted an offer they couldn’t refuse,” said Max. Max was short and burly and wore an assertively black moustache, although his hair had lightened and receded a long way. I didn’t know if he dyed the moustache.
“So the old woman directly below hasn’t died yet?”
“I’ve never seen her.”
My room contained a double bed, a large wardrobe, and a bench press that seemed to have strayed from some gym. Frills were lacking, yet the furnishings sufficed for sport that I anticipated with Adriana. On the bed, I mean, not on the bench press.
“Chap called Silviu may be coming round to take us somewhere,” Max told me. “Couple of days before I went to the island, Silviu told me the sad story of how his mother’s son by a previous marriage had suddenly died from premature kidney failure. He begged me to lend him three hundred dollars for the funeral because his mother couldn’t afford it. So I did. Very next day, I bump into Silviu and he proudly shows me this expensive new camera he just bought. You know, innocently shows me the camera because he’s so excited and happy. I ought to have got mad at him. But it was my own fault. You don’t lend money to people here unless you’re willing to regard it as a gift. Some day they’ll do something for you, perhaps. Well, Silviu phoned an hour ago and I said, ‘Come and drive us somewhere tonight, right?’ ”
“Somewhere?”
“Educational. In your honour. Writers in the crime line need to research sleaze.” So saying, Max cast himself upon a sofa and reached for an elegant, glossy English-language magazine, published for expats no doubt, its cover a stylish photo of giant terracotta garden urns. Thumbing to the back, he intoned: “Royal Orchid Male Sacred Spot Massage. A gentle digital technique for contacting these subtle places. In the internal way a lubricated finger will be inserted into the anus, and then it will gently massage around the chestnut-sized and -shaped prostate. This feels better when you are somewhat erect and excited and if it’s done during the intimate massage (don’t worry, the girls will take care of that). It will produce a very thrilling orgasm.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m not. This is Bucharest. Take a look.”
I looked, and it was true.
“I thought that mag was the local Homes and Gardens.”
“And casinos and escorts.”
“Um, I don’t want a finger stuck up my bum, Max.”
My writerly colleague grinned. “Do you have piles? Don’t worry, we aren’t doing any such thing. Tonight will only cost a few dollars for drinks. It’s purely educational. Background research. Anyway, what kept you?”
“Ovid Badelescu got called to a murder site.”
“Do tell!”
I proceeded to, but didn’t inform Max about the concealed doors at the back of the lift-I might want to use that detail some day myself. I also excluded Adriana’s notion that a werewolf was responsible. Or a weredog, hiding out among the multitude of anonymous mongrels.
Shortly before Silviu arrived, a long cry and a chorus of yapping from outside drew me to the window. The cry was like that of a muezzin calling worshippers to prayer. A middle-aged woman wearing a baggy multicoloured dress and headscarf was driving her horse and cart loaded with scrap metal and other rubbish that might be worth something. Her cry had excited the dogs. As I watched, she halted beside the humble cottage, dismounted, and rattled the picket gate with a stick. And waited.
Presently, a black-clad shape emerged from the cottage, cradling what I identified as a broken old clock of some bulk. With a surprisingly sprightly step, the old cottager bustled to her gate and handed over the relic, to receive in return, after humming and hawing, some scrap of paper, which might have been a banknote-if so, here in Romania it would have been thin plastic that looked like paper.
As the horse and cart and the scrap-woman’s outcry proceeded onward, the strangest thing happened. Half a dozen strays sidled from different directions toward that garden gate. The black-garbed cottager glanced about, as though to ensure that no one was observing her-she wouldn’t spot me at the window high up-then she offered her hand over the gate. Was she about to feed the strays with scraps? But she was holding nothing that I could see.
One by one those desolate dogs proceeded to lick, or slobber on, her palm-I was put in mind of nothing so much as movies of Italian gangsters kissing the hand of their Mafia godfather! This done, the cottager withdrew her hand, and then herself quickly back into her home.
Travelers in unfamiliar countries often misinterpret things and leap to the wrong conclusions, but I’ve always had a strong sense of intuition, a belief in quasi-magical linkages that others call coincidences. In my novels, such is the way that a dark crime is often solved. There’s a logical sequence of circumstances, yet this is only revealed-illuminated, if you like-by illogical means, by an illogical route. That Ovid should have driven me directly to that blood-stained lift in the former Securitate building, then that I should come to Max’s and overlook that cottage, cast adrift while time and town planning advanced, and that I should glimpse the owner, queen of canines, whom Max had never seen… this spoke to me inwardly, compellingly.
Silviu proved to be a tall, wispy person, wearing a somewhat soiled lightweight cream suit. His eyes seemed to me very blue, and his English was quite good. What an honour to be meeting a famous colleague of famous Max.
We descended to the street, to climb into an elderly white Dacia that had suffered bumps and scrapes through the years. Although it was early evening by now, the air was still sultry and cloying. I felt a strange mixture of reinvigoration due to my sighting of the crone of the cottage, and languor, as though I was surrendering to whatever the night might contain.