by Graham Brack
‘Just sit quietly for ten minutes then I’ll take your blood pressure,’ said the doctor.
Suiting action to the word, Slonský attempted to sit quietly, but he was acutely aware of accumulating pressure in his bladder and decided he had better pay another visit. Pausing to explain his need to the doctor’s receptionist, he found he had to hurry the last few metres and just made it before unleashing his own personal Vltava. When he was quite convinced that the flow had ceased, he gingerly made his way back, though not without careful reconsideration en route, just in case everything was going to erupt again.
The receptionist smiled sweetly at him as he took his seat, then busied herself with renewing the water in the vase of flowers on the windowsill. The steady trickle of fluid from her jug discomfited the old detective, who abruptly left the room once more.
By the time he was invited to enter the consulting room, he was beginning to wonder whether the nine minute test was going to be possible, at least without a comfort break in the middle.
Obediently he stepped onto the scales.
‘Excellent,’ declared the doctor. ‘You’ve lost four kilos already.’
‘Sweat, probably,’ said Slonský.
‘You’ve been exercising?’
Slonský was slightly aggrieved at the incredulous tone he thought he detected in the question. ‘In the gym yesterday.’
‘On Liberation Day? Very conscientious. I’m glad you’re taking this so seriously. To be frank, I wasn’t sure you were going to engage with us.’
The good humour evidenced suggested to Slonský that merely making the effort counted for something.
‘Right, time for the jogging test. Can you manage the kilometre in nine minutes, do you think?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Slonský replied.
‘Good. I’ll set it running at a quick walking speed, and when you’re ready to step it up just tell me.’
Slonský mounted the treadmill and the belt began to run. He took as much of his weight as possible on the handrests and started to walk as fast as he could. Noting this new-found determination the doctor took it as a hint that the pace was comfortable and therefore increased it a notch. Slonský responded by lengthening his stride and before long was breaking into a jog.
‘That’s a quarter of the distance and you’re just off the pace,’ announced the doctor. ‘Let’s step it up a bit.’
Before Slonský could object he found himself fully occupied in keeping up with the belt and unable to protest because he needed all his puff to keep going. It was at this point that the effect of the unwonted exercise began to stimulate his bladder once again. Realising that the quickest way to get off the treadmill was to speed up and get the wretched kilometre covered, he put on a burst of speed, which provoked the doctor into increasing the velocity of the treadmill. By the time he had covered 750 metres the bladder sensation was very uncomfortable indeed, and Slonský was beginning to worry that he might disgrace himself. Just let me hang on for a couple of minutes, he thought. Try not to think about it, he told himself, though that was increasingly difficult to do. Suddenly the doctor began counting down.
‘Five, four, three, two, one and … stop! Well done, Slonský. Comfortably inside the time.’
‘Is the test over?’
‘Yes, that’s a kilometre.’
‘Excuse me.’
Slonský bolted for the door and took off along the corridor.
‘If he’d run as fast as that he’d have done it in half the time,’ the doctor mused.
As part of a pact of support Officers Jan Navrátil and Kristýna Peiperová had undertaken to try to avoid eating in front of their boss, and were therefore already in the canteen when he returned, polishing off their lunches. Slonský ostentatiously helped himself to a bowl of soup and a roll, and came to sit beside them.
Peiperová felt the need to demonstrate her role as chief cheerleader.
‘You’re doing very well, sir,’ she said.
‘Aren’t I?’ agreed Slonský. ‘I’ve just passed my medical with flying colours, including completing a kilometre in seven minutes, fifty-three seconds.’
Navrátil was impressed and said so.
‘I’ve also lost four kilos. At this rate I shall soon be transparent, though not as transparent as the look of incredulity on your face, lad.’
‘Sorry, sir. I’m not disbelieving, just pleasantly surprised. I must admit I thought you’d find it more difficult than this.’
‘Iron willpower, Navrátil. That’s what you’re seeing in action.’ Slonský indicated the folded newspaper at Navrátil’s right hand. ‘Anything happened in the world today?’
‘Unrest in a country I’ve never heard of somewhere near the Black Sea. There’s a bit about that explosion yesterday.’
‘What explosion?’
‘Didn’t you see it on the news? Some of those people who go out with metal detectors found a World War II bomb. Unfortunately it exploded and killed them.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Somewhere near Holice, on the main road to Pardubice.’
‘Poor devils. It’s an odd place to find stuff from the war.’
‘Why, sir? The Germans went past, the Germans came back, the Russians came through. Any of them could have left unexploded bombs behind.’
‘True. But it’s not an unpopulated area. It’s just surprising that nobody found it before. And when they say it was a bomb, are they being literal, or could it have been a shell?’
Navrátil unfolded the paper and scanned the article. ‘It doesn’t say.’
‘No, but it matters. You see, loose language is the enemy of detection. Now, what are you two doing today?’
Peiperová spoke first. ‘I’m dealing with that domestic violence case, sir. The wife still won’t implicate either her husband or her son.’
‘We need to sort that out, lass. Even if nobody else knows who did it, the three of them do, and whichever male didn’t do it will have the other one if we’re not careful. It’s only the fact that one or other has been here that has prevented that.’
‘The son went home this morning.’
Slonský paused with his spoon hovering in mid-air. ‘Shame. We should have gone with him to hear what was said when he got there. Perhaps you can engineer a pretext to go out and check a bit of a statement, just to see how things are lying.’
Peiperová nodded
‘Now would be good,’ Slonský added.
Peiperová nodded again.
‘And you?’
‘Burglary at Karlín, sir.’
‘Excellent. Well, since the chances that the burglars will hide their stash here are pretty low, perhaps you’d better go somewhere else to look for them, don’t you think?’
Navrátil reluctantly agreed, while wondering whether Slonský’s snappishness was a consequence of his dieting. Slonský was thinking the same thing himself, but since regret was not a feeling that occupied him very often or for very long, he soon put it to one side and got on with reading the little handbook that was essential reading for all officers of the rank of captain and above, if Human Resources were to be believed.
He was absorbed in “How to Lead a Successful Team” when he realised that he was no longer alone. Glancing up from the book he found himself gazing into the bloodhound eyes of Sergeant Mucha.
‘Didn’t see you arrive,’ he explained.
‘Obviously. Are you all right?’
‘All right? Yes. Why shouldn’t I be all right?’
‘I have been deputed, as your oldest and closest friend in this building, to find out why you’re behaving like a bear with piles.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re outvoted about fifty to one on that one.’
‘I’m my normal self.’
‘Exactly — a bear with piles. But more so than usual. If this is what becoming a captain does to you, let it go. We’d rather have the crusty old curmudgeon we know and love, without having you biting everyo
ne’s head off as an optional extra.’
Slonský considered this a moment. ‘This isn’t a wind-up?’
‘No.’
‘You really feel I’m being hard on people?’
‘Yes.’
‘You personally — my oldest and, up to now, closest friend here?’
‘Yes.’
Slonský refolded Navrátil’s newspaper slowly and rose from his seat. ‘Tough,’ he said.
Slonský was back in his office when the telephone rang. It turned out to be Dr Novák, the pathologist, for whom Slonský had a lot of respect though, of course, it would not do to let him know that.
‘That explosion at Holice,’ Novák began. ‘Did you see it in the papers?’
‘No, I didn’t. Nor on the television, nor on the radio, nor tattooed on my backside while I was asleep. Why?’
‘There’s something odd about it. I’ve been at the site all morning and I think you should take a look at this.’
‘It’s not my case.’
‘Well, whose case is it?’
‘It isn’t anyone’s case. It’s not a crime.’
‘I think it might be,’ said Novák, ‘but I need an experienced policeman to tell me so.’
Reluctantly Slonský agreed to drive over to Holice, and since he disliked driving, this meant selecting one of his team to act as chauffeur. The short straw was selected for Peiperová, who drove back to collect Slonský and take him along the road.
‘No point disturbing Navrátil when he’s only just started work on the Karlín thing,’ Slonský explained.
Peiperová opened her mouth to protest but decided not to do so. Slonský occasionally needled one of them to see whether their romantic relationship was affecting their objectivity. In fact, they were being highly professional about it all, and kept it strictly out of the office.
They pulled in opposite the entrance to a field and strode through the open gate. Peiperová had boots in the back of the car, whereas Slonský had to make do with some disposable overshoes.
Novák was standing to the left of the field which was basically rectangular. To the right of the gate were some thick bushes, or possibly sawn-off trees that screened much of the field from view. There was a crater about twenty metres into the field around which four bodies lay under sheets of blue plastic.
‘They’re still here?’ asked Slonský.
‘Yes, because I wanted you and Professor Brandl to see them in situ, so we erected a tent over them last night.’
Novák introduced a slight, dapper man who could well have walked out of the nineteenth century. Brandl wore a three-piece suit with a large gold chain looping across the front, and had a neat silver beard. Since much of his moustache was still black this gave him a slightly strange appearance.
‘Professor Brandl is a renowned international authority on blast injuries,’ Novák explained.
If he is so renowned how come I’ve never heard of him, thought Slonský, but said nothing.
‘I invited him to have a look at the site and he concurs with my opinion, but I’ll let him explain,’ Novák continued. ‘Professor?’
Brandl squatted and pulled back the ends of the blue sheets nearest the crater. It was not a pretty sight.
‘As you can see, all the men suffered serious leg injuries.’
‘Well, if they were standing by a shell when it went off, they would,’ Slonský replied in his most reasonable tones.
‘Ah, just so; but there are two cogent reasons for doubting that explanation,’ the professor continued. ‘First, the seats of their trousers were muddy. They had been sitting in the mud. Why would they do that when there are two large logs just a few paces away?’
‘That’s a fair question,’ Slonský conceded.
‘And the second reason,’ Brandl continued, ‘is that they somehow contrived to explode a shell when their hands were tied together.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll see here — this is the best example, but they all have it to some degree — that the skin around the wrists has been cut into by something quite narrow. And Dr Novák here will show you why.’
Quite the little double act, thought Slonský.
Novák produced a clutch of transparent evidence bags, in each of which was something that looked like two or three centimetres of black worm.
‘Cable ties, plastic. What would they be doing in a field, I wonder? My suspicion is that the men were killed, then someone came back to remove the ties, but he didn’t find all the pieces in the mud.’
‘Were they dead before the explosion?’ asked Slonský.
‘We doubt it,’ Novák answered. ‘We both think they were alive when the bang went off. There was substantial arterial blood spray indicative of beating hearts. One or two might have been killed by the explosion, but a couple of them bled to death from their wounds.’
Slonský circled the grisly scene.
‘Paint a picture for me, Novák. What am I looking at here?’
‘My best guess — and it is just a guess — is that the men were tied up and made to sit on the ground. Perhaps their ankles were also tied and those are among the pieces of cable tie we found. They were positioned in a cross with their feet meeting at the centre. Then someone lobbed a grenade into the middle.’
‘Jesus Maria!’ exclaimed Slonský quietly.
Peiperová, who was possessed of an abnormally strong stomach, peeled back the cover from one of the victim’s faces. It was blackened on one side and there were slashes in the skin where small metal fragments had sliced into it.
‘Do we know who they are, sir?’
‘Yes,’ answered Novák, ‘the local police know them all. One of them is a policeman himself, the local lieutenant in the criminal branch. The uniformed chief has told the families. They probably guessed, of course, when their men didn’t come home last night.’
‘Time of the explosion?’ Slonský snapped.
‘It was heard just before six o’clock last evening,’ Novák said. ‘Getting time of death from these bodies would be pretty tricky.’
Slonský thanked them curtly and was about to move away when Novák stopped him.
‘There’s something else you may want to see.’
He led them to the lower edge of the field where it butted against the road. There were two parallel gouges in the ground there.
‘A lorry?’
‘The tracks are too wide, Slonský. And too heavy, I think. But whatever was here wasn’t moved that long ago. In fact, you’ll see the ground is quite dry in the centre. The rain yesterday morning didn’t reach that bit of ground.’
Slonský nibbled his lower lip.
‘I ought to have been more suspicious when they said four men with metal detectors had blown themselves up. If anyone ought not to be killed by unexploded shells in the ground it’s people who have metal detectors. So, something big was here yesterday, but it’s not today. And four men were murdered in the same field.’
He beckoned to Peiperová to follow him as he walked out of the field towards the road.
‘There are tracks through the gate, sir.’
‘Yes, but not as deep because it was moving quite quickly and didn’t sink in as much as when it was stationary. But that’s not what I want to know. You go that way and I’ll go this. I want to know in which direction it went.’
Peiperová began to walk towards the village while Slonský ambled back towards the road from which they had turned off. He had almost reached the road when he found what he was looking for, and whistled to Peiperová to join him.
‘Look!’ he exclaimed. ‘It couldn’t quite make the turn so the back wheels ran over the verge.’
‘That’s not a standard tyre tread,’ said Peiperová. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Slonský, ‘but we need to find out.’
Chapter 3
Captain Forman slurped his coffee which was being supported by his ample belly.
‘It’s awful,’ he said, f
or the umpteenth time.
‘Awful,’ echoed the mayor.
‘That such a thing could happen in our village!’ added Veselý, the deputy mayor who, despite his name, was anything but cheerful.
Peiperová sat with her pencil poised, waiting to capture anything helpful that the three local worthies said, except that in the first fifteen minutes of the meeting they had said nothing useful of any kind.
Slonský gave them some encouragement. ‘Describe the victims to me so I get as complete a picture as possible of these men.’
Each looked at the others before the mayor decided it was his duty to speak.
‘Let’s start with Lieutenant Sedlák. He was fifty-eight, I think, a man with an excellent police record — though no doubt you already know that — married, no children that I know of. Jakub Lacko, fifty-three, an engineer, and his son Pavel, who was about twenty-six. And then there was the chairman of the detectors’ club, Karel Procházka. He was in his forties and ran a motorbike repair shop in Pardubice.’
Slonský had never heard of Sedlák, but on reflection he realised that he had never heard of any policeman from the Pardubice region. They liked to keep themselves to themselves and rarely asked for help. Nonetheless, as a fellow criminal policeman he thought he ought to know him.
Forman pointed to a picture of a man receiving some sort of certificate from the mayor.
‘That’s Sedlák.’
Ah, thought Slonský, that Sedlák! Mr Anonymous Bore-The-Pants-Off-Everyone-Else Sedlák.
‘Good copper,’ said the mayor. ‘Got the crime rate right down.’
Slonský was about to suggest that this had been achieved by simply not bothering to report any crime when he decided that you can’t speak ill of the dead.
‘I don’t know what we’ll do without him,’ agreed Forman.
‘The field where it happened,’ Slonský said. ‘Do you know who owns it?’
Forman glanced to the others for support. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, could you find out?’ hissed Slonský.
‘It might be difficult,’ Forman replied. ‘Nobody came forward to say it was their field.’
‘The gate was recently oiled,’ interjected Peiperová, ‘so somebody has been going there.’