Broken Heart (48 page)

‘He had a hand in killing your mother.’

‘A mother I never knew.’

‘An innocent woman, then.’

‘I know.’

‘He kept quiet, knowing your brother was innocent.’

She shrugged. ‘I know what he did. That’s why I said I’m not sure if I can forgive him. But that doesn’t change who he was to me for ten years. I loved him. He was the kindest, gentlest, most interesting person I’d ever met in my life.’

I gave her a moment and then pushed on.

‘So when did Robert finally track you down?’

Her eyes jumped to the walls, zeroing in on a piece of paper high above me on the right. I turned and stared up at it. It looked to be some sort of timeline, typed on a sheet of yellow paper. The typewriter had a broken
E
, so every time Hosterlitz had incorporated a word containing the letter, it was missing.

‘He says on there that it was just before he had his stroke in 1974,’ Korin said. ‘He was back here in the UK by then – had been for four years. In between all the horror movies he was making, the booze, the pills, whatever else, he kept coming back to his research. That’s what he called all of this – his research. All this stuff he collected over the years. On the timeline up there, he says he connected me to the
Ring of Roses orphanage sometime after 1966, and then went on to film the whole of Pierre Street on his old Super 8 before the TV work dried up and he was forced to leave the States in 1970. He made those videos so he could remind himself of what the building and the streets looked like. He said he often played the footage when he got to the UK, trying to keep himself motivated. That footage was only supposed to be for reference, but of course, in the end, he used the video of the road and some of the building itself in his films.’

‘So he figured everything out in 1974 – then what?’

‘Two years later, after he recovered from his stroke, he found me. I was doing some modelling in Paris. I got a phone call in 1976 from Isaac Murray, the producer on the
Ursula
films, asking me if I wanted the lead in a movie. It took me completely by surprise. I had very little acting experience. I told him that and he said it didn’t matter because I had “natural charisma”. That was a polite way of saying he liked how I looked.’ She smiled. ‘I always thought I owed my acting career – if you could call it that – to Isaac Murray. But it turned out that Robert was the one who had put my name forward when he agreed to the
Ursula
gig.’

‘He wanted a chance to meet you.’

‘Just once, yes.’

‘And what was he going to do after he met you?’

‘He was finally going to turn himself in.’

‘To who?’

‘To a cop called Ray Callson.’

00:28:02

‘You started to believe Martin Nemeth was innocent?’

Ray Callson sucks in a breath. ‘Put it this way, him writing me every month, it got me thinking. It got me wondering if I’d missed something. Problem was, if I’d gone to my captain and said, “I think there’s something screwy going on here,” I’d have been placed in a holding pattern for the next ten years. Every juicy case that comes up after that, you get shoved aside for, because you’re the guy who reopened a case that had already been solved and prosecuted, and everyone was happy with. Reopening a case like that – it makes the cops look bad, the DA, the court system, whatever else you want to throw in. But yeah, when one of the kid’s letters arrived, I’d sometimes dig the case file out and take a look at it, and after I put it away again the same things would stay with me: Zeller and Cramer, and why the kid was so adamant they were involved – and then the booze and the drugs.’

‘The booze and the drugs?’

‘I’m teetotal, see? Always have been. Went to World War Two as a kid and got good and plenty drunk out there a bunch of times, but when I came back I stopped and I just kind of stayed that way. Point being, at the time I didn’t know a whole lot about booze. Still don’t, really, but you learn as you get older. Anyway, the empty whisky bottle on the floor of Room 805, it was Carcraig’s. Ever heard of it?’

‘No.’

‘It’s Scottish, single malt – and it’s expensive. A hundred bucks a pop these days, the equivalent back then too. You can probably see where I’m going. How the hell does a kid working in the kitchen of an ass-crack diner afford whisky like that?’

‘Maybe he stole it.’

‘Yeah, maybe he did.’

But it’s clear Callson doesn’t believe that.

‘As for the sleeping pills, back in the day, not a lot of people were combo-ing drugs like Martin Nemeth did that night. Or, at least, not in the full knowledge of what they were doing. What I mean to say is, unless you were in the medical profession, most ordinary joes weren’t aware that one counteracted the effects of the other. We just didn’t see shit like that when we were dealing with narcotics cases.’ He shrugs. ‘So maybe the kid was just ahead of his time, right? Maybe that’s the explanation. We tried to trace Életke Kerekes’s prescription history, to confirm they were hers, but ’scrips at that time were a mess. There were no computers, so everything was done on paper, and the problem with paper is that it can disappear pretty quickly if a business isn’t inclined to be organized. Plus, doctors back then, they were handing out pills left, right and centre, to anyone who wanted them. One prescription for one woman – that would be like looking for a needle in a barn full of haystacks.’

‘Are you saying you don’t think the pills belonged to Kerekes?’

Callson sniffs and glances out of the window. ‘At the time, I totally bought it,’ he says softly. His voice is laced with regret. ‘All the evidence pointed to the kid. The pills were hers, because we found nothing that said they weren’t. Her nail marks were all down his arms, her blood was all over him, her hair was in his fingers, it was so compelling, it was hard to argue with it. In fact, if you’d argued against it, you’d have looked like a nut. These days, you’d throw it all over to forensics and they’d crank it through the computers they’ve got, and the technician would come back and say, “This is all bullshit.” But, in the fifties, that sort of stuff, it was a science-fiction film.’

‘What about the speed?’

‘The kid was adamant he didn’t take any.’

‘But it was found in his system.’

‘Could have been pep pills. We sometimes used to call them “bennies”. We were given them during the war to keep us awake. At the time, amphetamines were in drugs for sinus inflammation, obesity, a whole bunch of stuff. And it was all available over the counter. I’m not saying he didn’t take a ton of them, fully aware he could get high on them – but, equally, there’s a chance he took them because he had sinus problems or whatever. I mean, you’d open a magazine or a newspaper and – boom – there’s your benzedrine sulfate or something else phosphate. Everyone was on them. So, if he bought them, he wasn’t doing anything illegal.’ Callson runs a hand through his thinning hair, his scalp shining in the light of the room. ‘Like I said, first few years, all his letters would go in the trash. But then, maybe seven, eight years later, something just made me decide to read one of them. After that, I started reading them all.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘In 1976, I get a call. Now I haven’t forgotten about Martin or his case – not least because his letters keep coming – but it’s been a long time.’ Callson swallows and rubs his fingers together. They make a coarse sound, like sandpaper. ‘I kind of think about it less often, I suppose. Something about it still eats at me, but only when one of his letters turns up, or I open that file again, which isn’t happening as much.’

‘Who called you?’

‘Someone patches the call through and says the guy won’t give his name but that he’s requested me specifically. So I pick up and the guy says, “Is that Detective Callson?” and I say, “Sure.” And he says, “I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Életke Kerekes and the wrongful conviction of Martin Nemeth.” ’

There’s a pause.

‘I was in my fifties by then. I’d been a cop for over twenty-five years. I was thinking of getting out. The seventies, they were a pretty shitty time at the LAPD. Racism and corruption and whatnot. I guess what I’m saying is, I was pretty down on the job when the call came through – I didn’t give much of a damn – but when I picked up, it was like my blood started pumping again.’

‘You were excited?’

‘For about thirty seconds, yeah.’

‘Only thirty seconds?’

‘This guy,’ he says, and then stops.

‘Did he tell you who he was?’

‘No. Not to start with.’

‘Did you meet him?’

‘No. He said he was “overseas” somewhere. It was a long-distance call, so the line was terrible. But this guy, he sounded …’ Callson looks away. He seems uncomfortable. ‘I thought he was some sort of kook.’

‘Crazy?’

‘Yeah. I mean, he was talking so fast I could hardly even hear him, and when I told him to slow down, I realized the guy was loaded.’

‘He was drunk?’

‘Yeah, absolutely stinko. I said to him, “Hold on a second, hold on a second. Let’s start with the basics here. What’s your name?” He said to me, “It doesn’t matter what my name is, just listen to what I’m trying to tell you,” and he started telling me how Glen Cramer and Saul Zeller were responsible for the death of Életke Kerekes, and that another man who he didn’t ID was involved too, and that they – all three of the men – framed the kid to cover up what they’d done.’

Callson pauses for a moment. ‘I said to him, “I’m extremely interested in what you’ve got to say” – and I meant every word of it – “but I need your name before we can go any further,” and he said, “Just look into it! Just look into it!” I mean, he’s screaming down the phone like a fucking lunatic at this point. I said, “Calm down and give me your name, sir. I want to hear what you have to say. I genuinely mean that.” But he was already talking over me again, saying, “Zeller will try to tell you someone else did it, but it was him, it was him. I know it was him. He killed Életke Kerekes, so did Cramer, so did …” He stops short of telling me the name of the third guy. Then he said, “Look, if you don’t do anything about it, I’m going to go to the newspapers.” At that point, I knew he was bluffing. He wasn’t going to go to the newspapers, or anyone else for that matter, because he’d already given himself away. He’d given himself away when he’d stopped short of telling me who the third guy was. So I waited there, let him chew on the silence for a while, and I said to him, “Were you the third guy that night, sir?” ’

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He said he wasn’t.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘I’m not sure what I believed at the time. You’ve got to remember, this guy sounded like a crank. We had junkies and freaks and fanatics calling us all day every day confessing to things, trying to get people they hated arrested for crimes they’d never committed. Half my time used to be spent filtering out pricks like that. But this case was so old by that time – why would someone call up over twenty years later just to feed me a bunch of bullshit?’ Callson looks over at the windows, huge and black now that night has fallen. ‘It didn’t make any kind of sense to me.’

‘So what did he say next?’

‘Nothing. He hung up. He got cold feet.’

‘Cold feet?’

‘I think the reason he called was to confess. I could hear it in his voice. But he didn’t have the stomach for it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.’

‘Did you go and see Zeller and Cramer again?’

‘Yep.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Same as before. I didn’t tell them about the phone call I got, because I couldn’t corroborate it. I just told them I was looking through some old files and came across the Kerekes murder. They were just as helpful in ’76 as they had been in ’53, but two decades after the crime, what the hell was I likely to find tying them to a murder?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly. Zero.’

‘But, eventually, you found out it had been Robert Hosterlitz who had called you that day – is that correct? And you found out that he was telling you the truth?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How did you find out it was Hosterlitz?’

Callson, who has been looking directly into the lens, shifts his eyes left, just to the side of where the camera is set up on its tripod.

He is looking at the person asking the questions.

‘Because, two days ago, he turned up on my doorstep.’

70

The rain had finally stopped.

I dropped my eyes to the letter again, to the last few paragraphs. The handwriting had become less legible, the letters slanted, everything more hurried.

All I’d wanted was to meet you once, to see you again as a grown woman, to see with my own eyes that you were flourishing, and then I’d hand myself in and take the punishment that I deserved. But, halfway through that conversation with Callson, I just had this epiphany. I was drunk when I called him – that was the last drink I ever took – but not drunk enough to misunderstand the opportunity I had. As I talked to Callson, I thought, ‘It doesn’t have to be the end. I can make things up to Viktoria’ – or Lynda as you were then. ‘If I go on and do this movie with her instead of handing myself in, I can work with her every day.’

Again, basically, I was – I am – a weak man. I suppose, in a way, this cancer is my punishment. To die like this is my punishment. I never dreamed you might be attracted to me. All I wanted was the chance to meet you and spend some time with you – to listen to you talk. I would have been happy just to look at you and watch you. But I got more than that, much more, and it was wonderful. And yet, the whole time, the secret I was keeping from you, the fact that I still hadn’t confessed, was playing on my mind. A part of me needed to confess, even then, because I knew it was the right thing to do, the moral thing; but another part couldn’t because I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t want what we had to be over. Our life, our marriage. So that was why I hid those messages in my films. I was confused, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Maybe I thought the truth would pass to you by osmosis – the more you watched the films, the more questions you’d ask, the more you’d understand what I was saying. But the better I hid things, the less likely I realized that would be, and that made me happy too. I tried to tell you and I tried not to tell you; I wanted to and I didn’t want to – and that was the battle that raged inside me for ten years.