Monty.’ Burnell knotted the bathrobe more tightly. Monty had been sacked from his post at the University of East Anglia some while ago. There had been a small scandal. Finances had gone missing. Burnell, not caring about the matter, had forgotten the details. ‘What are you doing in Budapest?’
‘Little private matter, old chum.’ He had a dated way of addressing people, smiling and nodding as he did so, as if agreeing with something off-stage. ‘Helping out a bit at what they call the “Korszinhaz”, the round theatre in the park. Scenery, you know. Well, scene-shifting. To tell the truth, only been here four days. Wandered round in a daze at first. Didn’t know where I was …’ He paused and then, seeing Burnell was about to speak, went on hastily, leaning a little nearer. ‘Between you and me, old boy, I’m here consulting a very clever chap, sort of a … well … a specialist. You see, something rather strange has happened to me. To say the least. I’d like to tell you about it, as an old friend. You still with WACH, I presume? Perhaps you’d care to buy us a drink? Fellow countryman and all that kind of stuff, compatriot … Excuse the towel.’
They went up to Burnell’s room. After opening the mini-bar, Burnell slipped into a shell-suit. He handed Monty a sweater to wear.
‘Fits me to a T,’ said his visitor. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I hung on to it, would you? Bit short of clothing, to tell the truth – here in Budapest, I mean. Some crook nicked all my luggage at the airport. You know what it’s like … They’re a dodgy lot.’
Burnell poured two generous Smirnoffs on the rocks. They raised their glasses to each other.
‘That’s better.’ Monty Broadwell-Smith sighed. He licked his lips. ‘I’ll come straight to the point, old pal. “Music when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory …” So says the poet. I expect you remember the quotation. But let’s suppose there’s no memory in which those soft voices can vibrate …’
Burnell stood by the window, saying nothing, contemplating Monty with distrust.
‘I’m forty, or so I believe. Four days ago, I found myself in an unknown place. You’ll never credit this. I found myself in an unknown place – not a clue how I got there. Absolutely at a loss, mind blank. Turned out that I was here, in Budapest. Budapest! Never been here before in my natural.’
He was already contradicting himself, Burnell thought. If he were lost, how had he known his luggage was stolen at the airport?
‘So now you’re staying in the Gellert?’ Burnell spoke challengingly, determined not to be touched for Monty’s air fare to England. Knowing something of the man’s background, he felt no particular inclination to help.
Monty leaned back in his chair so as to look as much the invalid as possible. ‘Terrible state poor old England’s in. Read the papers. To what do you ascribe it, Roy?’
‘Neglect of education, lack of statesmen. What’s your problem?’
‘Couldn’t agree more. I suppose that’s why someone like you has to scout round for a job abroad?’
‘No doubt. What’s your problem?’
‘It’s very serious. I know you’re a sympathetic chap. I’m attending the Antonescu Clinic. Mircea Antonescu is a foremost specialist, right at the cutting edge of psycho-technology. Well, he’s Romanian. They’re a clever race …’ He gave Burnell a sidelong glance under the eyebrow before hurrying on. ‘I’m not staying at the Gellert. Couldn’t afford it. Too expensive for someone like me. I’m renting a cheap room in Pest – view of the gasworks, ha ha … You see, Roy, old pal, this is the bottom line: I’ve lost ten years of my memory. Just lost them. Wiped clean. Can’t remember a thing.’
Burnell uttered a word of condolence. Monty looked slightly annoyed.
‘Perhaps you don’t understand. The last thing I can really remember is, I was thirty. Ten and a bit years have passed since then and I’ve absolutely no notion what I was doing all that time. No notion at all.’
‘How terrible.’ Burnell suspected a catch was coming, and was loath to commit himself.
‘FOAM. That’s Antonescu’s term. FOAM – Free Of All Memory. He sees it as a kind of, well, liberty. There I beg to differ. You know what it feels like to lose your memory?’
Despite himself, Burnell was interested.
‘It’s like an ocean, old chum. A wide wide ocean with a small island here and there. No continents. The continents have disappeared, sunk without trace. I suppose I couldn’t have a top-up of vodka, could I?’ He held out his glass.
As he poured, Burnell admitted he had seen Monty once or twice during the previous ten years, before his sacking; perhaps he could help to fill the gaps in his memory. Monty Broadwell-Smith made moderately grateful noises. There was no one else he could turn to in Budapest.
When asked if his memory-loss was caused by a virus, Monty professed ignorance. ‘No one knows – as yet at least. Could have been a car crash, causing amnesia. No bones broken if so. Lucky to be alive, I suppose you might say. But what’s going to happen to me, I’ve no idea.’
‘Your wife isn’t with you?’
Monty slapped his forehead with his free hand. A look of amazement crossed his face. ‘Oh my sainted aunt! Don’t say I was married!’
He drank the vodka, he kept the sweater, he shook Burnell’s hand. The next morning, Burnell went round to the Antonescu Clinic as he had promised. Monty wanted one of the specialists at the clinic to question Burnell, in order to construct a few points of identification. Monty suggested that this would help towards a restoration of his memory.
Burnell had agreed. He felt ashamed that he had so grudgingly given his old sweater to a friend in distress.
2
Murder in a Cathedral
‘Nothing to worry about, old chum,’ Monty Broadwell-Smith had said. ‘They’re masters of the healing art.’
The Antonescu Clinic was not as Burnell had imagined it. Cumbersome nineteenth-century apartment blocks, built of stone expressly quarried to grind the faces of the poor, lined a section of Fo Street. Secretive Hungarian lives were lived among heavy furniture in these blocks. They parted at one point to permit entrance to a small nameless square.
The buildings in the square huddled against each other, like teeth in a too-crowded mouth. Instead of dentistry, they had suffered the exhalations from lignite still burnt in the city. A nicotiney taint gave the façades an ancient aspect, as if they had been retrieved from a period long before the Dual Monarchy.
The exception to this antiquity was a leprous concrete structure, a contribution from the Communist era which announced itself as the Ministry of Light Industry. Next to it was wedged a small shop hoping to sell used computers. Above the shop, when Burnell ascended a narrow stair, he found a huddle of rooms partitioned out of a loft. A dated modernity had been achieved with track-lighting and interior glass. Tinkling Muzak proved the Age of the Foxtrot was not entirely dead.
Burnell sat in a windowless waiting-room, looking at a post-Rothko poster which displayed a large black cross with wavery edges on a dark grey background.
A man with a thin cigar in his
