by Graham Brack
The sense of emptiness was overwhelming. His cosy flat now looked rather bare. He could see the carpet in some places, which was not an improvement, and his snow boots had vanished.
Rapidly sobering up, he decided he must be professional and make a list of the missing items. He had never bothered with insurance, so he would have to make up the loss himself if his things weren’t recovered, but he knew that they probably would not be. Perhaps he should ring the technicians and get them to check for fingerprints, though only complete idiots would burgle a flat in Prague without wearing gloves these days. Fortunately complete idiots were over-represented in the list of those who burgled Prague flats so there was still a chance, but he thought making the list was more important in case it wasn’t worth all the effort and disturbance of having the technicians snuffling around, not to mention the inevitable embarrassment when word got round the station that Slonský’s own place had been turned over.
The old television was still in the corner, but that wasn’t exactly the most desirable model, unless you were the curator of a museum. For that matter, he could see the radio on the kitchen counter, but he would not have been too distressed to lose that since it did not work anyway, as devices without batteries generally do not. Edging round the room he discovered that the newspapers that had been on the small table had been folded and placed on the shelf beneath, topped by the paperback book he had been reading.
Slinking into the kitchen he saw that much of his crockery had been lifted, leaving horribly bare worksurfaces, except for a folded piece of paper. A ransom note?
He teased it open with the end of a knife in case it bore fingerprints.
Josef, I hope I haven’t moved things around too much. Your boots are in the cupboard behind the television. Don’t flush the toilet until the bleach has done its job. Yours, Věra.
Chapter 11
To Slonský’s mind there was something curiously uncomfortable about a properly ironed shirt, a sensation enhanced by its rarity. In the normal run of things he saw no point in ironing the sleeves, since he never took his jacket off, but since he now had a sharp crease in his sleeves he had better show them off, he thought, so he hung his jacket on the coat-stand under his hat, and began leafing through the papers on his desk.
Peiperová entered with two cups of coffee and deposited one on the corner of his desk. ‘New shirt, sir?’ she asked.
‘No, Peiperová. No uniform today?’
‘The Director doesn’t need me today, sir, so I’m released back to you.’
‘You look surprisingly happy about that.’
‘I’d rather be a detective than a glorified secretary, sir.’
‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, young lady. When you come back from the Director’s Office next year you’ll know a lot of people in high places. More to the point, they’ll know you. And if he gets the job of Director of Police he may send you back before the year is up, because the current Director has a very efficient personal assistant already.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve met Monika. She is talking about retiring when he does.’
‘Surely she’s too young.’
‘I think she’s the same age as you, sir.’
‘As I said, too young.’
Peiperová chose not to respond. Agreement would look like insincere flattery and argument might upset her boss. Instead she sipped her coffee and took out her notebook. ‘What do you want me to do today, sir?’
‘Ah. Good question. Obviously I didn’t know you would be here today so I didn’t plan anything. But there are a number of things we need to do. I need to see your new and very temporary boss, the Director of Criminal Police, to get him to give the rear end of someone in Pardubice a good kicking. What’s his name again?’ Slonský examined several scraps of paper on his desk before triumphantly holding up his pay slip. ‘I knew I wrote it down somewhere. Vondra. Captain Vondra. Made a note of that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We need to drop in on Klinger to see if he has discovered anything about the funding of the new development in Holice, but that’s not a high priority because if he had he would have come downstairs to tell me. Or at least pushed a note under my door.’
‘New development, sir?’
‘Lieutenant Doležal has discovered a plan to build a ridiculously large shopping mall in Holice which the promoters can’t possibly afford and Klinger is attempting to find out whose money is behind it.’
‘I see. Is this a real shopping mall or just a scheme to collect a lot of money and then run off?’
Slonský took a moment to slurp some of his coffee before replying. ‘That’s an interesting thought. Doležal has been to the site and says you can see some half-hearted clearance work, but suppose that’s just for show? I don’t know these things but presumably if you’re serious about building you’d hire some of those big diggers and a few bags of cement. Let’s go and see if there are any.’
‘In Holice, sir? Mightn’t that compromise other officers?’
‘Lieutenant Doležal is being watched closely so he can’t do it easily. Did you have any other officer in mind?’
Peiperová blushed despite her best efforts. ‘We’re not supposed to see each other. You said so yourself.’
‘And I meant it. And no doubt if your paths cross you will both behave in a thoroughly professional manner and pretend you’ve never met. After all, his safety may depend on it. Now, pack up your things and let’s go for a nice day out.’
Navrátil was on the bus to Pardubice. Holice was introducing him to a feeling of claustrophobia that he had not experienced before, and he badly needed a day out himself. Besides, he reasoned, he was supposed to be a normal postgraduate student and surely normal postgraduate students do not study all the time? A couple of hours in a bookshop or doing some sightseeing would recharge his batteries nicely and give him some welcome relief from all that caffeine that was making sleep difficult and causing his ears to buzz.
He cradled his old briefcase as the bus chugged along, having decided that he had better not tempt fate by leaving it unattended again. The false bottom was only a matter of a couple of centimetres, and unless an intruder’s curiosity was piqued by the weight of the briefcase when all the papers had been tipped out, it was unlikely to be detected by anyone who had no concrete suspicions that it was there, but it was better not to run the risk. Navrátil had, however, left his draft thesis in full view. Gentle questioning of his landlady had not adduced any evidence of a visitor coming to the house and it was hard to imagine that anyone could have entered unnoticed through the rear windows given how close the other buildings were, but undoubtedly someone had been in his room and he could hardly imagine his landlady crawling around under his bed.
After breakfast he had taken a closer look at the back door. It had a very basic lock and it would not have been difficult to pick it, he thought, even if it had been locked; and since it was presently unlocked, and seemed to be so most of the day, all the intruder needed to do was to ensure that the landlady was not in the kitchen when he slipped in.
The bus driver was calling his stop, so Navrátil sprang from his seat and made his way to the door. There was a bus a little after five o’clock that he would catch for the return journey. But first, a little rest and recreation amongst the bright lights of Pardubice was called for.
‘Wednesday the thirteenth?’ bellowed Slonský. ‘Wednesday the thirteenth?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Peiperová replied quietly. She had not been looking forward to explaining the Director’s plan but thought that Slonský should know what lay in store for him at the earliest opportunity.
‘Why Wednesday? And why the thirteenth? Is somebody superstitious?’
‘The Director wants to be there in person to say goodbye to Captain Lukas and he’s on holiday in the last week of June. He didn’t have many free evenings in his diary. So he asked me to ensure that you were free so that he could formally bestow your captaincy at the retirement party.’<
br />
‘I see. And where is this shindig taking place?’
‘I’ve booked the main conference room.’
‘No expense spared, then.’
‘It’s the Captain’s retirement after forty years. You can’t just say goodbye in a bar.’
‘Well, that’s what I’d want.’
‘But what matters is what Captain Lukas would want, sir.’
Slonský’s wrath subsided. ‘I can’t argue with that. It would make his wife and daughters happy, and if they’re happy he’ll be ecstatic. So I’ve got less than two weeks to get my uniform alterations done.’
‘The Director has received assurances that your uniform will be ready tomorrow, sir.’
‘The Director? Or the Director’s Personal Assistant?’
‘He asked me to make the call, sir.’
‘Anything else you’ve taken care of that you might like to tell me about?’
Peiperová, who was normally confident, bit her lower lip uncertainly.
‘Spit it out, lass.’
‘The Director wants me to tell you that Mrs Slonská would be welcome too.’
‘Not by me she bloody wouldn’t!’
‘It’s a family occasion, sir, so the Director thought…’
‘She’s not family. She opted out of being family when she ran off with that slimy leather-jacketed so-called poet over thirty years ago. And how, pray, does the Director know of the existence of my estranged wife?’
‘I was asked a direct question, sir.’
‘And you couldn’t lie?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So you told the Director I had a wife.’
‘Yes, sir. I did say that I wasn’t sure what the current state of your relationship was…’
‘Relationship? We don’t have a relationship. Occasionally she comes round and cooks me a meal. Then she goes home. She sweeps the floor and cleans the worktops.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And do you know why she does that?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Neither do I, and it bugs me.’
‘Should I drive, sir?’
‘No, I can drive and shout at the same time. You’re a woman, Peiperová. What, if anything, is going through her head?’
‘We’re not all the same, sir. I can’t presume to know what Mrs Slonská is thinking.’
‘No, I…’
‘But since you asked me,’ Peiperová quickly continued, in case the licence to give relationship advice were about to be withdrawn, ‘I’d say it’s guilt.’
‘Guilt?’
‘Guilt, sir. Women do guilt very well. At least, women of that vintage do.’
‘I’ve seen no sign of it before.’
‘With respect, sir, you don’t expect to see it, so you don’t see it. But she feels guilty about the way things turned out.’
‘And your evidence for this is?’
Peiperová was warming to her theme and turned in her seat to allow herself to engage better. ‘Sir, when you got married you’ll have had ideas about what the future would be like. Maybe you don’t know what’s going to happen over the next ten years, just as Jan and I don’t know exactly. We have plans, of course, but we don’t know if they’ll work out the way we expect. But by the time you’re nearing sixty, everybody’s plans look much the same. If you’ve had children, they’ve left to start their own lives, so the two of you are left to grow old together and be a support to one another.’
Slonský opened his mouth but was silenced abruptly.
‘Please let me finish, sir! So if you see life as a journey, there was a station on the way that you’d get to about now, and you wouldn’t want to make the rest of life’s journey on your own. It’s just that you and Mrs Slonská have finished up going along different routes to arrive at this stop. But she is trying to make amends and get back together so that the two of you won’t be lonely in your old age. She wants your company, sir.’
‘My company? Nobody wants my company, lass. Valentin spends more time with me than anyone else but that’s only because I buy most of the drinks.’
‘Forgive me, sir, but you’re wrong. She’s doing these things for you as a sort of penance.’
‘I thought Navrátil was the one who was big on penance.’
‘He is, sir. Really big.’
‘So why are you doing his work?’
‘We’ve talked about it, sir. I’m sorry, it’s none of our business.’
‘And what conclusion did you and Romeo come up with?’
‘That you’re wounded, and rightly so, but that you deserve some companionship in your retirement, and nobody would suit you better than your wife.’
There followed an awkward silence that lasted about five kilometres.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve overstepped the mark.’
‘Yes, you have.’
‘I didn’t mean to interfere in your private life. Jan and I just want you to have the happiness we have.’
‘I know. I will think about what you’ve said. But for now we have some murderers to catch, so could we please give our undivided attention to that?’
Slonský had decided that a coffee would be the first matter requiring attention once they reached Holice, and immediately headed for the most visible café, which happened to be the one that Navrátil favoured. He and Peiperová placed their order at the counter.
‘Sit anywhere you like and I’ll bring them over. If you don’t mind, there’s a young student who usually sits at the table by the electricity socket. He’s not in yet but he’ll probably show up soon.’
Peiperová began to speak but Slonský got in first. ‘What’s he a student of?’
‘I don’t know exactly. He’s doing a questionnaire about being Czech.’
‘We’ll look out for him,’ Slonský replied with a smile. ‘It sounds like fun.’
They took their seats and Slonský opened a map he had obtained through Mucha. Goodness knows where Mucha got it, but there must be a store of maps somewhere at headquarters.
‘Doležal says they’re evicting people from these cottages here. We’ll drive over there after coffee to take a look around.’
‘What are we looking for, sir?’
‘Anything that shouldn’t be there. I think he’s probably on the right track when he says that crime money is behind this. It’s a way of laundering a stash. But there’s just a possibility that there’s something on the site that Veselý wants to get hold of without drawing attention to it — a mine, for example. We’ll probably find it’s fenced off but I’ve got some opera glasses in my pocket.’
‘You like the opera, sir?’
‘Don’t sound so incredulous, Peiperová. No, I didn’t say I like opera. But I like opera glasses. They fit my coat pocket nicely.’
The café owner brought the coffees and waited for Slonský to move the map so she could place them on the table. When he showed no signs of doing so she stood with them in her hands. ‘Where would you like me to put these?’
‘Anywhere you like except where my finger is,’ Slonský replied.
‘Planning an outing?’ she asked.
‘No, we’re here to inspect the site of the new shopping mall. I hear it’s going to be quite something.’
The owner snorted. ‘If it ever gets built.’
‘You’re doubtful?’
‘Look, it’s one of Veselý’s schemes, isn’t it? I was at school with him. He was always full of big ideas.’
‘He’s going to need a lot of money to build this one. Done well since he left school, has he?’ Slonský asked.
‘He’s comfortable. He’s built a few houses here and there and got himself made deputy mayor. But if he’s got this kind of money why does his wife do her own hair?’
‘That’s a good point. These cottages here — what’s going to happen to the old people there?’
‘The cottages? Why should they have to move?’
‘Well, the plans call for the hotel and the old people�
�s flats to be built across there.’
The woman was indignant. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it. The story in the newspaper only mentioned a mall. There was nothing about hotels or moving people out.’
Slonský rummaged in his pockets until he found a photocopy and opened it out. ‘There you are. Shopping mall, cinema, hotel, restaurants, flats.’
She snatched it up and examined it closely. ‘We’ll see about that. My aunt lives in one of those cottages.’ She eyed him suspiciously. ‘You’re not an investor, are you?’
‘Madam, do I look like I’ve got cash to throw at a white elephant?’
‘No, but you read about eccentric millionaires who wear the same coat for years.’
Peiperová coughed as she tried to deal with the coffee that had somehow found its way into her nose.
‘You must forgive my assistant,’ Slonský remarked. ‘She’s going to another job next week and she’s demob happy.’
‘Well, if you’re not an investor, what’s your interest in all this?’ the owner asked. Slonský flashed his badge. ‘Goodness, the place is crawling with new police lately!’
Slonský hoped that Navrátil had not been rumbled. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, the other day there was a new one in here. Thin chap, dark haired, thinning on top, moustache.’
‘Face like a bloodhound?’
‘That’ll be him.’
‘One of our team. He’s filling in for poor Lieutenant Sedlák.’
‘That was a real shame. Sedlák was a good sort.’
‘Did you know the others who died?’
‘I didn’t know the one who ran it all. But the Lackos used to come in now and again. Jakub was good with his hands. He could fix almost anything. His son wasn’t able to help much.’
‘Following in his father’s footsteps?’
‘No, Pavel was a bit odd. He worked for his dad because he couldn’t get a job anywhere else. He had Down’s Syndrome. Lovely boy, never any trouble. Followed his dad everywhere. In a way it’s a blessing he died in the accident. He’d have been lost if he’d survived and his dad hadn’t.’