28 June, 1:15 PM, “The Czernograd Gazette” newsroom
Gawenda called him back just as he was about to sneak out to pick up a kebab for lunch from his favourite street stall a block away from his building.
“Number 34, Lipska Street, in the Kranburg district.”
“A fancy address,” Igor scribbled on the back of an envelope. “Not bad for a blood sucker.”
She did not engage. “You didn’t get it from me. And please, no more requests.”
“Understood,” he said. He didn’t mean it.
“They’re really paranoid about this case at the top,” she whispered. “I don’t want to get caught in the middle of something...”
“Don’t worry,” he said in his best reassuring tone, honed to perfections over the course of twenty odd years of getting things from people, mostly women. “You haven’t given away any secrets. You wouldn’t have any, because you’re not part of the investigation. And in any case you haven’t really spoken to anyone, me including, have you?”
He heard her take a deep breath.
“Good girl. And thank you. For not giving me any information.”
The Kranburg district was about ten minute’s drive from the Old Town, if there was no traffic. He stopped on the way to pick up his kebab, and drove with one hand on the wheel, trying not to let the sauce spill out of the wrap. He wasn’t successful, but fortunately he was not wearing a suit today, just a pair of old jeans. Now a pair of BBQ sauce stained old jeans. A news bulletin from a serious radio station did not mention of Maciar’s death, only the usual assortment of international mischief and local pathos. He switched to Zora FM, in the middle of the 1980s marathon. Spandau Ballet were playing “Gold”, the song which first came out when he was way too young appreciate anything else but nursery rhymes.
He didn’t know this part of town too well, so he used the GPS. As he drove further east from “The Gazette” building, the opulent public buildings of the Government Quarter slowly gave way to tenements build towards the end of the nineteenth century, with plenty of parks and public spaces in between. It was a pleasant, solidly middle-class part of town. That’s why he had mostly avoided it in the past.
Krasna Avenue was wide, two lanes of traffic each way, with a large tree-lined parkland strip in the middle. He imagined the time decades ago when the succession of traffic lights did not disturb the flow of black limousines and, before them, horse-drawn carriages. It was also the time when an ambitious young man from provinces like him would have at best been driving some fat old rich asshole or his spoiled young mistress. On the second thought, he preferred traffic lights.
Then suddenly there was a different world and he was in Kranburg. The suburb has grown around the shores of Lake Busza, surrounding it with a latticework of old villas, hidden behind tall brick walls and even taller hedges, all immaculately trimmed and sculpted. Two centuries ago, Chancellor Bohdan Spenski – or rather his serfs– had built a canal which linked the lake to Czernograd’s slow flowing thoroughfare, River Nisza. They named the umbilical cord after him, the Spenski Canal, but even though yachts and boats could now sail from the city to the lake, Kranburg remained ever so distant. Igor might have driven here once or twice in the past, no more than that. He never had a need for Kranburg and Kranburg had no need for him either.
His GPS guided him through a maze of quiet streets where the crowns of old trees meshed together above the road like arched ceilings of Gothic churches. It was middle of the day but there were hardly any signs of life as he neared Lipska Street, no pedestrians, no wandering cats and dogs, not even parked cars. Everything was carefully hidden around here from interlopers like him. It was a good place for Mathias Maciar to live, if life indeed it was that he had led before he died.
He turned into Lipska Street, the electronic voice telling him his destination was fifty, forty, thirty metres away. He noticed the first car in Kranburg, a non-descript black Audi with tinted windows that would never otherwise attract his attention if not for three simple facts: it was the only car he has seen so far parked by the kerb, it was parked on the other side of the street from number 34 and there was a man sitting inside behind the wheel.
Igor slowed down but drove on. He couldn’t see the driver very well through the darkened windshield, but he thought that the man glanced at him as he passed him by. Someone was taking Maciar’s suicide really hard.
He turned into a side street, parked his car ten metres from the corner, underneath a giant oak, and walked back towards number 34.
The house was a non-descript two storey villa, at least judging by the top of the upper level and the roof, the only parts of the building he could see from the street over the tall wrought-iron fence and the spikes of a cypress wall growing behind it. It looked as quiet and peaceful – or lifeless? – as every other place he walked past. Maybe all the owners around here have died recently. Then again, what was he expecting, the whole structure draped in the mourning black, like a depressing Christo artwork?
He rang a bell next to the gate. It felt like a long shot. He doubted if Maciar shared the house with anyone; he has always assumed vampires to be rather solitary creatures. For what seemed like a long while there was no response and he rang again, this time almost expecting the guy in the car on the other side of the street to come over and tell him to move on.
Instead he heard footsteps on the other side of the fence, someone walking along a tiled path towards him.
The gate opened a fraction, enough for Igor to peer in, but not enough to step inside. His path in any case was blocked by a woman, tall and thin, dressed in stylish mourning. She looked late thirties or early forties, not beautiful but handsome, now also pale and gaunt, with no makeup to hide the red circles under her eyes. She also wore a tasteful dark scarf on her neck; a fashion accessory in Milan or New York, but in Czernograd pretty much a sure sign of a feeder – and not fooling anyone either.
Wife, mistress, friend or housekeeper?
“Hi,” he said, his voice falling into a gentle, calming murmur of an amateur hypnotist. “I’m sorry to intrude and be a nuisance at this difficult time…”
She was looking at him without curiosity or emotion, her silver ring encrusted hand – it was a myth about vampires and silver, by the way – on the edge of the door, but her whole weight, even if not much of it, behind it.
“…but I work for ‘The Czernograd Gazette’ and would like, if I can, just ask a few questions.”
“I’m not interested. I have nothing to say,” her voice was cold and tired.
“It wouldn’t take too much time. I-“
“I said I have nothing to say,” she raised her voice, yet her expression and posture remained unchanged. “Please leave me alone. Just leave.”
He reached inside his coat and brought up his business card.
“This is in case you change your mind. I would really appreciate-“
“Don’t give me you number,” her voice now shrill, up an octave. “You can shove it up your ass, you and all you other vultures.” Her eyes darted over his shoulder, and she knew that he noticed. Then she snatched the card out of his hand like a raptor clawing a field mouse and hid it in the palm of her hand. “Now get out,” she screamed.
The gate slammed with the screech of a car’s front bumper connecting with an industrial rubbish bin. In the quiet of the street it sounded like an explosion.
Interesting. Igor stood in front of the gate for a moment, one hand in his pocket, the other absentmindedly massaging his chin. Now you know why you came here.
He turned on his heel and glanced at the black Audi. The driver’s side window was partly wound down, and even though he still couldn’t see the man inside, he was pretty sure that the guy has heard what he was supposed to hear. Particularly if there was a directional mike involved.
He shrugged and started to walk back to his car. Over to you, Black Widow.
Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash
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