Field of Death

by Graham Brack

  The commander returned to confirm that there were no signs that any large vehicle had been on the farm. Rather than move the helicopters again he had sent eight men to inspect the coal yard. They reported that the gun was not there but there were track marks in the coal dust that still littered the place.

  ‘Well, it’s not here,’ said Slonský, ‘and there’s nowhere it could be hiding at the side of the road, so we conclude they took it back to the highway to move it somewhere else under cover of darkness.’

  ‘Perhaps they needed to get a new hiding place ready, sir,’ suggested Peiperová.

  ‘I don’t want to disparage local colleagues,’ Slonský replied, knowing he was about to do just that, ‘but what on earth are they doing while folks are driving artillery around a small town? Isn’t there anyone on duty in the evenings? Things have changed since I was a lad. Back then you couldn’t pump your bicycle tyres up without the whole street knowing about it. Now you can pretty well set up a military coup and nobody bothers to mention it.’

  ‘Do you want a lift back to Prague?’ asked the commander.

  ‘I was taking it for granted,’ snapped Slonský. ‘It’s a hell of a walk.’

  Later, joining Valentin in their usual place, Slonský looked wistfully at a plate of sausages on the next table.

  ‘I’m convinced this diet is causing my brain to shrink,’ he opined.

  ‘Only if you had a fat brain before,’ Valentin replied.

  ‘I just have a feeling that there is something big behind all this stuff with the gun, but it seems so improbable. The security service doesn’t know of any impending threat, the local police are as much use as paper underwear and there isn’t any sign of other thefts. But if they don’t intend to use the gun, why kill to conceal its existence?’

  ‘I’m amazed you haven’t found the gun. I mean, it’s not small, is it?’

  ‘That’s a statement of the obvious if ever there was one. They must have found somewhere else to hide it.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s back where it’s been for the past thirty-nine years?’

  ‘Then why move it at all in the first place? Were they planning a coup for Liberation Day that didn’t come off? There’s no sign of that. And, being Liberation Day, people don’t seem to have paid any attention to large military vehicles rolling round the country. If we put out a public appeal for sightings we’d be swamped with people telling us about jeeps and minibuses.’

  ‘So what do you do now?’

  ‘I’m waiting for the technical report on the grenade fragments. Just maybe there’ll be something in there to give us a lead. Doležal is getting to know the area and maybe he’ll sniff something out.’

  ‘I thought you were looking forward to getting rid of him.’

  ‘I was. I am. But he’s not that bad a detective. It’s as a human being that he’s a failure. Teetotaller. What more need I say?’

  ‘I suppose I’m five-sevenths of a teetotaller now.’

  Slonský shuddered. ‘The world is going mad,’ he said. ‘Completely barking mad.’

  Returning to his office Slonský found himself confronted with another problem, albeit one he might have anticipated, though this one wore a lot of black and tried to avoid notice as far as was possible.

  Just as Slonský had Navrátil to fetch him coffee, applaud his brilliant deductions and do the donkey-work, so Doležal had Rada. Rada was a year older than Navrátil and had graduated in the previous academy intake, and the two of them got on about as well as a pair of bulls in a field full of cows. Slonský knew very little about Rada, but the fact that he was able to provoke Navrátil to uncharitable thoughts fed his concern about the prospect of them working together, because Slonský had found it difficult to irritate his young assistant and had been obliged to up his game considerably before he found a way of doing it. Now, of course, it was much easier. He had only to suggest that Peiperová was developing acne or that she was putting a bit of weight on her midriff to ensure a silent hour or two, but for a long time he was nonplussed by Navrátil’s tolerance and self-discipline.

  Rada was sitting on the corner of Navrátil’s desk making small talk when Slonský entered the room. It took barely a moment to divine from Navrátil’s deep frown that he was struggling to maintain his poise in the face of Rada’s incessant provocation, which, in this case, consisted mainly of continuing to breathe. Time to intervene, thought Slonský, before Navrátil bites the end off his pencil.

  ‘Rada! What brings you here?’

  ‘Lieutenant Doležal said I’d be reporting to you while he is on secondment to Pardubice, sir.’

  ‘Did he? I thought he’d given you some work to get on with.’

  ‘He did, but I’ve done it, sir. I wanted to know what you’d like me to do now.’

  Navrátil could have answered that one, Slonský thought, but decided it would be improper to invite him to do so. ‘Has anything come in while I was out of the office?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘I’ve already asked, sir,’ said Rada.

  ‘Is there anything you need to hand over, Navrátil?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m on top of everything.’

  ‘Sit down here, Rada, before Navrátil’s desk develops a slope. I have to admit I thought Lieutenant Doležal might need you in his new role.’

  ‘There’s already a full complement of officers at Pardubice, sir. The only vacancy was the one created by the death of Lieutenant Sedlák.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I realise, of course, that this will all be sorted out in a couple of weeks when Officer Peiperová goes on secondment and there’ll be a vacancy in your team…’

  At this point there was a loud snap as Navrátil broke his pencil. Rada and Slonský instinctively turned to see what the noise was.

  ‘I’ll… I’ll just get a new … pencil,’ Navrátil stuttered.

  ‘Why don’t you have your coffee break now?’ Slonský suggested amiably, ‘then you can bring one back for me when you’ve finished. Rada and I will have a little chat about his future while you’re gone.’

  Navrátil was not at all certain that he wanted to be out of the room while such a conversation was taking place, but the set of Slonský’s jaw inhibited any discussion on the matter, so he nodded mutely.

  ‘There’s a pencil here,’ Rada announced, picking up a stub from Slonský’s desk, which Slonský quickly collared.

  ‘That’s my pencil,’ Slonský grumbled. ‘Navrátil is fussy about his pencils, aren’t you, lad? You’ll want a new, unchewed one.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, run along, Navrátil. Rada and I need a bit of privacy.’

  It must be admitted that in the normal run of things Slonský was not known for his sensitivity to the feelings of others. Peiperová had been pleasantly surprised by his modern attitude to women’s equality, but this was largely based on his hatred of domestic violence, a general feeling that women should be placed on a pedestal and a strong belief that anyone who liked hanging around their home all day was deeply to be pitied, which was entirely understandable where his own flat was concerned. Until his wife Vĕra came round with a mop he had completely forgotten that the linoleum in his kitchen was supposed to be sky blue.

  At this moment he was trying to see things from Navrátil’s point of view, and he did not like what he saw. Navrátil had completed fifteen months under Slonský’s tutelage and, while two years was the normal span for a mentoring post, if he wanted to go elsewhere it would be very hard for Slonský to stop him, short of outright perjury in his appraisal documents. And the continued presence of Navrátil at the desk at right angles to his own was the best lure he possessed to drag Peiperová back after her year with the Director of Criminal Police, when the world would be her oyster and she would, presumably, have become hot property within the police force. Admittedly it had not worked that way for her predecessor Kuchař, but then he was a complex mixture of senior politician’s son and empty skull which had taxed the Director considera
bly until he hit on the idea of recommending him for a posting to Europol, whither he was bound at the end of the month.

  Slonský’s master plan was simple. He would pull the strings, Navrátil and Peiperová would deliver the goods, and he would keep Lieutenant Dvorník on hand in case of any rough stuff. Dvorník was not, perhaps, the most intellectually gifted member of the team of detectives, but he was a keen hunter and possessed a weapons cabinet that would have been the envy of several small nations. Dvorník was assisted by young Hauzer, otherwise known as The Invisible Policeman, who was unobjectionable and kept the department informed of any pending additions to Dvorník’s family, currently standing at eight children but rumoured to be aiming for double figures before he finished. Dvorník and his wife had each been married before and they had custody of all the consequent children, though people were not quite sure which offspring belonged to which relationship. It was claimed that Dvorník himself had it written in the back of his diary in case he forgot.

  Add to that Slonský’s plan to encourage Doležal to find a post somewhere else, and the future had looked rosy from Slonský’s point of view, but now Rada had turned up and lobbed a considerable spanner in the works. Slonský could hardly sack someone he barely knew, particularly because it would leave the department under strength, but neither did he want his beautiful project disrupted. The only option was to persuade Rada to apply for a job elsewhere.

  ‘We should get to know each other a little better,’ Slonský began, using the tone of voice of a benevolent uncle.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I mean in the professional sense.’

  ‘Oh, right, good.’

  ‘Tell me, lad, where do you see your future lying? What would you like to be when you grow — when you have a bit more service under your belt?’

  ‘I’m happy here, sir.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘I like crime, sir. And you get a good mix of it here. Robbery, murder, you name it, we get it.’

  It crossed Slonský’s mind that Klinger in the fraud squad upstairs was always trying to tempt Navrátil away from him. ‘Have you ever thought of a career in fraud?’

  ‘Fraud, sir?’

  ‘Pitting your wits against the criminal, using your meticulous turn of mind to discover what he has been up to…’

  ‘I’m no good at maths, sir.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s as big a barrier in the fraud squad as you might think,’ Slonský suggested, but he had to admit that he wasn’t really convincing himself. Klinger’s one-time deputy would soon be released from prison but even an optimist like Slonský had to confess that the chances that he would be re-employed by the fraud squad given that he had been convicted of fraud himself would be fairly slim.

  Candidates who wanted to fill the gaps in the fraud squad had to submit to an interview by Klinger which, in Slonský’s opinion, was where the problem lay. Having once met their potential new boss, many of them saw to it that they flunked the interview, finding his little habits to be a deterrent. Klinger only ever touched door handles with a handkerchief, and his compulsion to align the edges of folders, lay out his pens in a perfectly parallel arrangement and drink coffee only from his personal crockery led some to feel that they would struggle to provide satisfaction. Add to this the fact that he was a fluent German speaker and was often to be seen with a large hardback book with an impenetrable title in his hands, and the desirability of a career in fraud flickered and died in many breasts.

  ‘All I’m saying, Rada, is don’t rule it out. Klinger must be retiring in a few years and there will be relatively few candidates with the necessary experience to replace him.’

  The flaw in this argument was that Klinger was younger than Slonský, who would therefore retire first, but fortunately Rada was too fixated on denying any interest in fraud to concentrate on that issue.

  ‘I’d rather stay here, sir. I think I could learn a lot from you.’

  If Captain Lukas had heard that he would have cringed, thought Slonský, whose face was then illuminated by a happy thought.

  ‘Of course, Lieutenant Doležal is jumping the gun a bit,’ Slonský asserted. ‘Captain Lukas is still in charge here for the next month and a bit. I couldn’t possibly make any decisions without consulting him. I’ll tell you what, lad. Why don’t you take a good look at the professional development courses we run? This may be an opportunity for you to get some training in your portfolio while the good lieutenant is doing his own thing in Pardubice. Then you’d be equipped to be even more use to him when he comes back.’

  ‘He is coming back, then, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Probably. Can you see Lieutenant Doležal being happy in a backwater like Pardubice?’ Slonský crossed his fingers under the desk. One can but hope, he thought.

  Everyone needs someone in whom they can confide. Slonský would not have admitted it, but for him this role was supplied by Sergeant Mucha. They had joined the police at around the same time, but Mucha had missed out on promotion to lieutenant the first time he tried and had never wanted to face that disappointment again; besides which, he enjoyed work on the front desk. You never knew what was going to face you across that counter.

  At this moment, what faced him was a perplexed Slonský. An old friend like Mucha could tell he was troubled because he had removed his hat so he could think better.

  ‘Quite a conundrum you’ve got there,’ Mucha opined after Slonský had described his interview with Rada.

  ‘Lukas must have put up with this for years,’ Slonský whined.

  ‘Well, from you, certainly,’ agreed Mucha.

  ‘I almost feel guilty now about some of the stuff I dumped on him. Almost.’

  ‘So let’s get this straight. If Rada joins your team when Peiperová goes, you think Navrátil will have a hissy fit and pack his bags.’

  ‘I don’t think. I know. There’s something about Rada that gets right up Navrátil’s nose and turns him from a fluffy bunny into a psychotic rabbit. I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s there.’

  ‘There you are, then. The first step is to find out what it is. But if he hasn’t volunteered it, it’s probably something that he doesn’t find easy to talk about, so you’ll have to be tactful and sensitive.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Slonský responded. ‘Tactful is my middle name.’

  On the way up the stairs Slonský decided that the most tactful way to approach this with Navrátil was not to talk to him at all. There was an alternative way to discover Navrátil’s innermost thoughts, so he made a quick phone call and fixed an appointment for around twenty minutes later in the café on the corner. This was a favourite meeting place though it suffered from the considerable drawback of being full of police much of the time, many of whom Slonský did not want to speak to, but it caused him to reflect that it should not surprise him that there was one colleague whom Navrátil disliked given that he himself despised around a third of the police he had ever met.

  It dawned upon Slonský that he had not eaten for a while, so he ordered a pastry with his coffee and listlessly picked at it while he waited for his informant to arrive. How often had he done this during his career! Sitting in grubby cafés with a coffee watching the clock tick by, reading yesterday’s newspaper and trying to avoid being recognised. At least on this occasion he wasn’t going to have to pay for information.

  Peiperová entered and sat opposite him.

  ‘Sir, you haven’t lapsed, have you?’

  ‘Lapsed?’

  She pointed at his pastry.

  ‘It’s lunch. I haven’t had time to eat. It’s the heavy responsibilities of my job, Peiperová.’

  ‘I thought you were having lunch with Valentin, sir?’

  ‘It was a liquid lunch. A non-alcoholic liquid lunch,’ he added mournfully.

  Slonský was touched to see the obvious concern on Peiperová’s face.

  ‘I hope you’re not becoming anorexic, sir.’

  Never in his entire life had Slonský antic
ipated hearing those words. At the age of four he had been told by the nurse at the polyclinic that he must eat less or he would grow up fat and that warning had been repeated with varying degrees of intensity over the succeeding fifty-five years, but never, ever, had anyone expressed a concern that he might not be eating enough. He was quite touched.

  ‘Just exercising iron self-control, Peiperová. Pure, unadulterated willpower.’

  ‘I’m impressed, sir. I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll ever need to, lass. You’ve got good genes. I, on the other hand, inherited a propensity to the fuller figure. Not quite on the scale of my Aunt Eva, admittedly, but we Slonskýs incline towards being well covered.’

  Slonský had been very attached to his Aunt Eva, of blessed memory, a woman who closely resembled a ninety kilogram onion in appearance but whose strudel would have delighted the angels. She might have lived longer if she had left them bigger portions.

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘I did. I do,’ he corrected himself. ‘I want the inside information on Navrátil’s dislike of Rada.’

  Peiperová was surprised. Navrátil had disliked Rada for longer than she had been in Prague, but had Slonský only now noticed this?

  ‘So far as I know, sir, it goes back to their days at the police academy.’

  ‘But they weren’t in the same cohort.’

  ‘No, sir, but they knew each other slightly. Rada passed out with top marks in his year, but Jan has always maintained that he cheated on one of his assessments.’

  ‘Did he indeed?’

  This was what Slonský wanted to hear. Malfeasance of this kind might not be a sacking offence but it would be a very handy thing to keep up his sleeve if it could be substantiated.

  ‘And Navrátil, of course, only came second in his year.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That rankles a bit. He doesn’t dispute that someone may have been better than him, just that if he had been a year older he would certainly have been in first place.’