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Chapters (63)
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  63. Acknowledgements

Gessen folded the letter and tucked it in a drawer. A male lodger with the Hungarian family downstairs. A foreign boy studying at the Sorbonne. The pieces seemed to slot together. All but one. If Vidor was the son of this family, when – and why – did he change his name to Kiraly? Had there been a family rupture of some kind? And the lodger. Was this Gessen’s mystery boy from the Sorbonne? If Vidor and the lodger were friends, Gessen might have seen them together at a student cafe, and later confused one for the other.

What he didn’t have was proof. He would need photos of the two boys, and evidence of a name change. A single, unbroken line that stretched back from Vidor Kiraly to Vidor Sovàny. Or another that split off at an angle, leading to the mystery boy with no name.

34

Vidor moved close to the hearth to warm his hands. The heavy damask curtains were drawn, shutting out the darkening sky and raging storm. With its walnut bookshelves, glass table lamps, and leather Chesterfields, the room could have been lifted, wainscoting and all, straight from a country house in Hertfordshire. On the low table by the fire, a silver tray of coffee and cakes beckoned.

They had met in this room only a couple of times before. Perhaps, with this latest invitation to have coffee together in the sumptuous atmosphere of the sitting room, the good doctor was finally prepared to treat Vidor as his equal. After all, he was a celebrated scientist and Cambridge don, not some slavering creature grubbing through the rubbish bins in a dark alley. The man captured on that odious video in Copenhagen, shouting and frothing at the mouth, was an unrecognisable lunatic, an aberration, that had nothing to do with him. Nothing could convince him that the video was anything other than a fake. A transparent ploy to frighten him into admitting he was ill. Hypoglycaemia and exhaustion were known risk factors for temporary psychosis. Gessen surely knew that. Chastened no doubt at having lost a patient due to his own carelessness, he might finally have come to his senses.

After the coffee was poured, Vidor waited for Gessen to announce that he was fit as a fiddle and free to resume his position as chair of the Neurobiology department at St Catharine’s. His heart skipped with joy. Surely, four weeks of playing by Gessen’s rules was enough for him to admit the game was up.

‘The cream comes from a local farm,’ Gessen said, pointing to the silver pitcher, ‘famous for its cheese and butter.’