Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbøl

forced Sándor to add the correction. “Or … well, she’s my stepmother.”
    Gábor didn’t reveal in any way whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied with the response. He was still waiting. A man in his late forties with light, amber-colored eyes and graying, short-cropped dark hair. Shirt and tie. Strong, rounded shoulders, neck slightly too thick. His broad, calm face was almost gentle, and it wasn’t physical violence that Sándor feared. This was not a man who would push people’s heads into water-logged plastic bags.
    “My biological mother’s name is Valeria Rézmüves.” The words tumbled out of his mouth one by one, oddly disjointed. It sound like one of those computerized phone voices, he thought.
You have. Selected. Zero four. Zero eight. Nineteen. Eight five
.
    “Gypsy?”
    “Yes.”
    Rézmüves was a typical Roma name, so it didn’t take any secret archives or supernatural abilities to guess that. Still, Sándor felt exposed. Poorer by one secret.
    There’s no reason for people to know about that, Ágnes always said. You’re mine now. That other thing—we don’t talk about that. Do you understand?
    He wasn’t even nine yet, but he had already learned that silence was the only reasonably safe response, so he didn’t say anything. And she had just nodded, as if that was precisely what she wanted from him. A child who could keep his mouth shut.
    Gábor stood up.
    “Excuse me a moment,” he said politely. “We’ll continue in a little while.”
    And then he left.
    Sándor sat there on the gray, plastic chair with his elbows resting on the table. It was warm in the room, but not as hot as in his overheated room in the Eighth District. The temperature in here was not governed by such variables as sunlight and outside air. It was warm because a dial had been set to make it so.
    Sándor felt strangely weightless. An astronaut with a severed lifeline, floating above the Earth. He could see it, could see life down there, knew there were people laughing, talking, working, making love, taking baths, arguing, living normal lives. He knew they were there, but he couldn’t reach them. Just a few hours before he had believed he could be like them, but now he knew that would never happen.
    He still hadn’t asked them why he was here. Hadn’t said a word that wasn’t in response to their questions. He knew that wasn’t normal. That if it had been Lujza sitting here, or Ferenc, or Mihály, they would have protested, kicked up a fuss, demanded lawyers and explanations. He also knew that if he wanted to
seem
like a normal person, he should do the same.
    But he couldn’t.
    W ELL OVER HALF an hour passed before Gábor came back. He had a piece of paper with him that he placed on the table in front of Sándor.
    “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.
    It was a list of URLs. Some were Hungarian, others were various dot-com sites: unitednuclear.com , fegyver.net, attila.forum.hu, hospitalequip.org. He didn’t recognize any of them.
    “No,” he said.
    “That’s strange,” Gábor said. “Because we can tell from your computer that you’ve visited all of them and spent rather a long time at each.”
    It took one long, freezing cold instant. Then the realization hit him like a bomb blast. Tamás. Tamás must have done it, that night when he was pretending there was a girl he was desperate to contact. Sándor looked down at the list again. United Nuclear? Fegyver.net? That must be some kind of gun site. Attila Forum sounded like one of those right-wing extremist pages Lujza would get so worked up over. But hospitalequip.org? What on earth was the connection there? And why had Tamás come all the way from Galbeno to Budapest to mess around with stuff like that?
    “I … I don’t really remember,” Sándor said desperately. “I’ve been studying for exams lately. I use the web when I’m studying.” It sounded pathetic and evasive, even to his own ears.
    “I see. And which class are you