LoveClub

2 Dr. Lengyel-2

The camera’s little red light turned on, and Kovacs sat in one of the chairs, his eyes set on Lili. His look was deeply analytical, as if he could see through the walls of the interrogation room. He was ready to attack, his fingers propped on top of the table.

“Your friend couldn’t give us any useful information. I hope you can be of more help,” said Kovacs.

“Bence doesn’t even know the people I live with,” replied Lili shaking her head.

“According to your landlord, you’ve already lived there together with your boyfriend.”

“Yes, we were roommates, but that was last year and he’s moved out since. That was about eight months ago,” nodded Lili.

“Roomies, huh?” Kovacs creased his forehead.

The girl understood the allusion.

“If you’re interested, we had separate rooms. He lived - ” she tried to finish the sentence, but the detective interrupted her.

“And now you sleep together?”

Lili’s face turned red. She moved in with Bence, who was rebelling against his family and studying film directing back then, when she first attended the university. At first she had concerns about sharing an apartment with a boy, but the rent rate for the apartment she had found advertised on one of the social networking sites was too compelling to turn down. She gave it a try. After a couple of weeks of listening to Bence’s sexist comments, topped with his irresponsible untidiness, she was tempted to move. This sentiment changed, of course, when one of their conversations redirected her anger into a much more pleasant feeling, and she found herself in bed with him the next morning. The exact same bed where that atrocity took place. At the time it appeared as if their budding relationship would improve their domestic situation. She hoped that everything would work out for the best and that through some miracle Bence would change. She was wrong. Everything remained the same. She was still living under the influence of Bence’s fluctuating moods. Sometimes in love, with Bence being kind and gentle, and other times arguing, when Bence would state he had no need of her. She had found, on a number of occasions, female underwear intermixed with his belongings. She was fraught and humiliated, but Lili tolerated his actions. Instead of leaving him and their miserable relationship behind, she badgered him, and this eventually scared Bence away. On New Year’s Eve, Bence went out partying and never returned. Later, some guy came by to pick up Bence’s personal belongings. Lili, of course, didn’t tell any of this to the police. They had nothing to do with her personal life.

“A lot has changed since,” she answered after a while, staring at her coffee cup.

Then, as if a rescuer, the door swung open and another man walked in. Lili thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t really place him anywhere. Maybe she had met him somewhere during work and the man got stuck in her subconscious. Not that he had such a distinct look that people would remember straightaway. Comparing him to Kovacs, he seemed rather plain and ordinary. Well, he just looked…like the color black. This thin man in his dark suit looked like a vertical, black line that someone just painted into the air. Yet, he still had some charm about him, and it was a vibe that calmed Lili.

“Please excuse me for being late,” he apologized, placing a red dossier down in front of him.

“Excused,” Kovacs’s smile turned into a scowl.

“David Lengyel,” the man introduced himself, holding out his hand to Lili.

This start was much more appealing to her, so Lili returned the gesture. The man had soft hands, but his handshake was firm, which confused Lili. She preferred people she could read right away, not those with contradictive qualities about them.

“Lili, I know you’ve already been questioned at the scene, but there are some things we have to quickly run over again. I would like to hear the whole story from you directly, and the camera has to record what you say, okay?” Lengyel stated primly, and once Lili approved, he started with his first question. “When did you find the body?”

“I’m not quite sure. We were already asleep with Bence when I woke up to the sound of the door slamming,” Lili began, continuing after taking a deep breath. “I thought it was my roommate, Carmen, who got home, and I didn’t want her to walk in on us. I wanted to prevent that…. Then I saw someone moving around in the hallway, but before I could take a peek, the person had left.”

Lengyel remained silent, keeping his nutmeg colored eyes fixed on Lili. What a dreamy, attractive, infinitely sad look he has!

Even though the man’s dark stubble implied maturity, he seemed far too young for all the pain that seemed to weigh on his soul.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” asked Kovacs.

The girl could’ve taken the question as an insult, but Lili stood her ground. She knew that Kovacs tried to provoke her by pointing out the notion that girls can get hooked up so easily these days. If she’d start guessing, it would seem like they were running a brothel.

“No, I don’t. Carmen has quite a few friends…” Kovacs cleared his throat, which made Lili continue irritably, ”But she rarely brings boys up. She mostly makes friends with girls. If she meets boys, she does it elsewhere. That’s our only rule.”

“Did she ever break the rule?” inquired the detective.

“I have no knowledge of that. If she ever did, then I wasn’t at home,” replied Lili.

There was a silence. While Kovacs drummed his fingers on the table, Lili had a sudden recollection of a party. On average, they went out partying together once or twice a month, which always ended up being a bit more adventurous than planned. Once, on the way back home, Carmen climbed into a bin, and she had Nicole and Lili push her all the way through town. They were giggling so loud that some people threatened to call the police, but the girls didn’t give a damn. Then, somewhere in the city center, they met three boys who were equally buzzed. The girls tried to get rid of them using wry humor, but the boys didn’t leave. Eventually encouraged by the booze, Carmen invited them up to their apartment. No matter how much Lili protested, the excitement of being young was too strong. While she was chatting with one of the guys, who turned out to be a humanities student, some unmistakable laughter came out of Carmen’s bedroom. That following morning, when Lili went to get her much needed coffee from the kitchen, she saw the same guy, ass naked, making five mugs of cocoa. It was obvious he had joined last night’s foursome, and on top of that, all five mugs were from Lili’s “for-show-only” collection.

“Okay then,” Lengyel broke the silence, “What do you know about the victim, Nikolett Nádori? How long has she been friends with Carmen? Were they on good terms?”

“They attended the same secondary school, that’s where they became friends. It isn’t an exaggeration to say they were best friends. They usually went out together. I think they were planning on going out to the Atomic again, but Carmen sent me a text message saying that Nicole had stayed home,” answered Lili.

“What was Nikolett like?” Lengyel continued his questioning.

“Not too lively. She had her problems. But everyone forgets their problems when Carmen is around. Maybe that’s why she was so attached to her. She came over several times a week, and she often spent the night with us, too. We watched movies, talked about boys,” Lili glanced at Kovacs a glare. “And of course we sometimes went out partying. Nicole was studying to be a photographer.”

The two men looked at each other. Without a doubt, Lili had shared something important.

“Do you know of anyone who would be stalking her, harassing her, abusing her, or threatening her?” Lengyel seemed to have an inexhaustible source of questions.

“I don’t know about anything like that. She was always the one chasing boys, not the other way around. Most of her problems came from the boys she hooked up with at parties, who didn’t want anything more from her than a one night stand. She often exposed herself emotionally and wrote heartfelt messages to guys.

After that ominous five-some --“I’m sorry Nicole!“-- she managed to make a complete i***t out of herself. She totally fell in love with one of the guys, who she almost drove crazy. The guy had to change his phone number so Nicole would finally leave him alone,” Lili finished, not being able to imagine how Nicole ended up being this low. Even though Lili had a couple of her own strange moments with Bence, their relationship had much deeper roots than just a whacky orgy. The whole story happened so long ago that there wasn’t much point of sharing it with the deprecating police.

Kovacs decided that he had heard enough from this line of questioning, so he leaned forward and took over from Lengyel.

“Can you tell us about your roommates?” said Kovacs, disguising his question in kindness.

Lili gathered her thoughts, and told them that she got to know Carmen on a Muse fan-site over the internet. Their relationship turned for the better after Bence had left. She felt like she owed Carmen for all those late night online chats, which helped Lili stay strong until she was able to get back on her feet. When Carmen moved to the capital, she couldn’t afford to pay rent, so Lili instantly invited her to stay over at her place for free. The reason why she was able to do this was that Bence’s parents always paid the boy’s rent three months in advance, which enabled Lili to give Carmen a couple of trouble – and rent – free weeks to sort herself out. She wanted to be an actress, but she had failed her assessments and couldn’t enroll at the university. Rumor was that her former teacher didn’t really like her, so Carmen was advised to try again next year. The disappointed girl found a waitress job at the Creamy Clock Café somewhere in town, and as much as she hated it at first, she eventually grew to like the position. During the day she hardly had anything to do, so she could pursue her favorite hobby: reading. She was crazy about fantasy, and even ran a blog about the books she had read. She started writing a few novels too, but she, of course, never finished them.

“Was there some kind of disagreement between Carmen and Nikolett?” Lengyel’s question surprised Lili.

“No, definitely not,” she couldn’t believe her ears. “They were even planning on working together. Carmen wanted Nicole to do the illustrations for her novel that she had started a couple of weeks ago. They were even prepared for the publishers’ rejection and planned to publish it themselves in episodes over the internet. They hoped that if people started to read their stuff, then someone might actually discover them. They had time to spare and they had some kind of goal in mind.”

Meanwhile, Kovacs got the dossier from his colleague and opened it. He showed the first page to Lili.

“Did Nikolett draw this?” he asked.

Lili stared at the colored photocopy pushed in front of her. She had already been exposed to Nicole’s occasionally bizarre artwork, so she didn’t flinch when she saw the drawing. In the picture there was a voluminous puddle of blood, and inside the puddle there were two figures entangled, making love. They looked as if they were born out of the crimson pond beneath them. The male figure had a strong back, and lay on top of the female. There were points where the bodies became one: their legs were entwined, the man’s head sunk into the woman’s breast. Her hands appeared to be merging into her wrists as she held her slim arms above her head. The woman’s face was clearly visible, and her mouth was agape, shaped like an ‘O’, with a large lollypop stuffed inside. Her face was snarled in fear, her gaze looking directly into the eyes of the viewer. Compared to the rest of the drawing, her face was developed, realistic…

“I’ve never seen this picture before, but judging from the style, it could be Nicole’s work,” Lili admitted.

“Has the young lady done similar drawings before?” inquired Lengyel.

Lili swallowed hard and held her breath after hearing his question. Nicole doesn’t deserve this.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Lili, I understand it is unpleasant for you to talk about this, but it is extremely important that you tell us the truth,” said the scrawny young man.

“I really don’t know,” she shook her head and pursed her lips.

“Look, up until now you were telling the truth, but now, I know you’re lying. I can read body language. Please, let’s not waste each other’s time.”

“Don’t hinder the investigation!” Kovacs leaned forward.

“She… mostly made erotic themed pictures,” the detectives managed to break Lili. “She was really interested in sexuality; she read tons of books and watched loads of movies about the topic. But why is this important?” asked Lili.

None of the men said anything. Then, in the uncomfortable silence, Lili realized something.

“Oh my god… this is… the… girl…” she stuttered.

“Do you know her?” Kovacs asked.

Lili stared at the drawing with her mouth widely open.

“No… but… she has committed suicide in late July. We’ve written about her.”

“What do you mean you’ve written about her?” Kovacs asked tensely.

“I got a summer job working for News,” Lili tried to explain, keeping her thoughts together. “My editor deals with young people associated with crime. He thinks a couple of big headline stories will discourage people from doing stuff like this. I was originally told to write the article when they found the girl, but they assigned the job to a more experienced writer.”

You could feel the tension in the air. The girl in the picture was called Fanni Nyari; she was the murderer’s second victim. People on their way to work found her at an underpass with her wrists slit, two days after she had disappeared. At first, it seemed like it could’ve been a suicide, but after the medical examination, it turned out that the girl had been raped; bruises on her body told the story. The girl had black hair, green eyes, and was found to be a fan of rock music. Fanni and her friends went to a rock concert on the day she had disappeared. She had told her friends after the show that she was going home. Instead, she ended up at the underpass. Maybe she had gone to someone else’s house, that someone being the one who then, perhaps, dumped her at the underpass. Her friends never overcame the torment. The papers, however, reported it as a suicide, and the journalists blamed the rock band for using motifs of death in their lyrics. They also accused them of using Satanism as a marketing technique. Luckily for the police, the reporters didn’t manage to sniff out the actual circumstances of the death, nor did they hear anything about the bruising found on the body. If it were up to the media, the whole country would know that the girl was raped. This was the reason why Kovacs now worried about Nicole’s drawing: only the police and authorized personnel should know the full details of the case at this point. Yet, the girl who had drawn it illustrated Fanni in a violent, sexually vulnerable way. This couldn’t have been a coincidence, especially now that Nikolett was dead herself.

“Do you have any idea of where your roommate could be?” Kovacs asked Lili aggressively.

“Like I said before, she went out partying. The Atomic is where she normally hangs out, but I have no idea where she could’ve gone on her own. Maybe there,” Lily shrugged her shoulders and started thinking. “But she’s usually home by now…”

The sudden anxiety that overcame Lili grabbed her heart. She looked at the man once again rolled back with her chair. She looked at Lengyel.

“Wait, you’re that psychologist who….Oh, my God! Maybe Carmen’s dead too?”

Lili didn’t get an answer.