had changed. In any case, Boerescu still knew a few people at the General Directorate for Criminal Investigations.
Max imagined the mocking smiles behind the back of this old shipwreck of a man as he struggled his way into the directorate straight from another time, coming for his annual inspection of his old stomping ground from all the way behind the Iron Curtain.
“You’d be surprised at what you can learn around a coffee machine,” Boerescu offered, eyes twinkling.
“About Kevin Dandurand, for example?” Max suggested.
“Came in from Montreal by way of Zurich a week ago. He claimed to a customs agent he’d be staying at the Helvetia. Never checked in.”
“His movements around town?”
“No idea. No one saw him, no one spoke to him. They couldn’t even find the cab driver who brought him into the city.”
“So someone might have picked him up.”
“Maybe.”
“Who’s in charge of the case?”
“Inspector Adrian Pavlenco.”
Boerescu explained that Pavlenco was conscientious and professional, an ambitious young guy impressed by American methods. He’d been confined to investigating criminal fires for the longest time, and hated it. He spent his days in rubber boots trudging through wrecked homes and smelling smoke. He did have a cordial relationship with the media, though, despite the lingering stench on him.
Boerescu made a face. Back in his day, the media had been nothing more than the mouthpiece of the Romanian police. Puppets, really, used to make the work of inspectors easier. Things had changed, unfortunately. The press gave itself licence to criticize. Asked questions. Demanded answers. Cloaked itself in irreproachable morals. Freedom of the press? Bullshit! The press had all the freedom, more like! Freedom to cause mayhem, which only helped the bad guys!
The old man blew his nose loudly. Then, with a tired gesture, he pulled a folded newspaper out of his jacket pocket, and showed it to Max. “Twenty-three Roma burned alive in a building on Zăbrăuţi Street. For once a story about Gypsies makes the front page.… Usually they’re somewhere in the middle, between soccer scores and lottery results.”
“Maybe because the cops already have a suspect to throw to the press?”
“Maybe. But you know who the real criminals are? The city authorities, they’re the ones who allowed the neighbourhood to go to hell.”
Ferentari, the Bronx of Bucharest. Streets lined with boarded-up buildings filled far beyond capacity by Roma under the sway of local mafia types.
Kevin was a convenient patsy. Doubly so because Bucharest was currently hosting the Conference of European Cities, Boerescu explained. An organization dedicated to social and urban planning, dynamic management of human resources, alternative solutions to drinking-water supplies. Soporific subjects each and all, but this year the organizers were lucky. On the menu: the Romani “problem,” which affected most European countries. And now this criminal fire everyone was talking about. Max now understood why, at the Intercontinental, he’d had to fight his way through a thick crowd. They’d been a harried bunch, computer bags over their shoulders, eyes tired after long flights. Handshakes and hugs, friendly pats on the back and laughter. Periodic reunions, probably. Paris one time, Rome or Venice the other. This year Bucharest and its damn Roma.
Pariahs who haunted the cityscape, an underclass to be wary of. Where were they from, exactly?
Northern India. Around the year 1000 they left their country for an unknown reason — perhaps chased off by an invader, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, it was sometimes claimed — and made their way west through Afghanistan, Turkey, then Greece, where they were first mentioned in the thirteenth century. The Greeks gave them the name atzigani — still used to refer to Hungarian Roma, or tziganes — a reference to a heretic sect that practised palmistry. Today they preferred Rom or Roma, meaning “man” in Romani, their most frequently spoken language.
After Greece, waves of migrants moved to Wallachia and Moldavia. They were enslaved, not to be freed until 1856. In the fifteenth century, other groups entered Europe, coming from the east through Bohemia. They’d been offered safe passage by the king. From then on they became known as Bohemians, or Egyptians, because they were believed to be from “Little Egypt,” a part of Greece. The Egyptians mentioned in Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid? That was them. In English, Egyptians became Gypsies. In Spanish, Gitanos. In Spain they were divided into two groups: those living in Catalonia in the north, and those in Andalusia in the south.
Over the centuries, Roma travelled across Europe, living from one end of the continent to the other. More often sedentary than not these days, they now lived all over the globe.
They’d always been choice victims for human cruelty. During the Second World War, they were exterminated in death camps alongside Jews. A tragic story that continued to this day. Second-class citizens in most countries. Foreigners in every land, characterized only with faults: chronic begging, knavery, black magic …
“Here, I want to offer you a gift.” Boerescu held up a pin in the shape of a small candy cane. Max had noticed everyone in Bucharest was wearing similar pins, even tourists.
Max fixed the pin to his coat.
“Do you have time for a drink?” Boerescu asked.
“Another time.”
The two men agreed to meet the next day after Max’s meeting with Adrian Pavlenco. Max flagged down a cab and offered Boerescu a lift. A Dacia, the Romanian copy of the Renault 12. Max opened the door for his fixer, then folded up the walker and placed it in the trunk. “Intercontinental Hotel. But first …”
“Victoriei Avenue,” Boerescu said.
Max hadn’t been in Bucharest since 1989, in the last days of the Ceauşescu regime. He’d been on a job, promising to line the pockets of a bureaucrat responsible for IT procurement in the dictator’s government if he chose Max’s client instead of an Australian competitor. The city then had been dreary, whatever new construction there was in a state of almost immediate disrepair. He’d seen a tourist or two, at most. Eaten in awful restaurants. Stayed in cavernous hotels.
Today Bucharest was unrecognizable. Max had been expecting a sleepy city, still licking its wounds from the previous century. Instead, he discovered an animated capital, its sidewalks teeming with young people, teenagers who’d never known the Ceauşescu era, for whom the revolution of 1989 was already ancient history.
At a red light a group of Roma pestered tourists. Children were pulling on the clothes of passersby.
Boerescu turned toward Max. “They’ve got another trick. They saunter into a butcher’s, right, and start feeling up the meat in the displays, waiting for the owner to notice them. When he does, he gives them the tainted meat just to get rid of the bastards.”
He burst out laughing. “The Lovari, they used to be horse traders a long time ago. Well, now, they’ve become used car salesmen. Once upon a time, they applied wax on old nags to make them look younger. Today they tamper with odometers!”
Boerescu told him about other tricks of the Romani trade. Names, for example. They changed theirs depending on the country they were travelling through. Multiple identities to confuse the gadje.
