In Budapest, a cop and a private detective discuss whether a new corpse is part of a larger pattern:
“Whoever kidnapped her kept her alive for a week. The wounds are all recent. Bladed weapons, maybe something like a whip, and there are some strange marks, like the bites of a beast.”
“Do you think it's all the work of one hand?”
“Too early to say. I've been doing this job for fifteen years, and I've never seen anything like it.”
“Ever since you warned me that she had been found, something has been buzzing around in my head that hasn't even crossed the minds of the big shots.”
“What is that?’
“In the last month, five girls have disappeared, an average of one a week.”
“In the whole country, four hundred people disappear every year, Vilmos. And almost always, they do it to get away from a family they don't want anymore, from a wife, from a husband, or from some debt they can't pay off.”
“I know that very well. But here, we're talking about five girls, Greta, very similar in size and appearance, who disappeared at regular intervals. Of these, only your victim has been found. Maybe she has nothing to do with the others, including the one I am looking for. Or maybe she has. Maybe the others also met the same end, and their bodies are somewhere, waiting for someone to discover them. The victim was tortured before being killed. Maybe, in the meantime, the perp entertained himself in some other way, or spent his time in the company of another victim. Five girls disappeared in a month at regular intervals. That's one a week. Five young and beautiful girls... don't you understand? Someone kidnaps one girl after another so as not to be left empty-handed!”
