by Graham Brack
‘Dog I had as a boy, sir. He could sniff out a bone at the bottom of a coal mine.’
Lukas turned to walk away.
‘Then get yourself some dogs, man. If she walked, she may have left a scent.’
Slonský took the stairs two at a time back down to the lobby.
‘Mucha, where can I get some sniffer dogs?’
The van disgorged its contents. Slonský was unimpressed.
‘What is that?’
‘It’s a kopov, sir.’
‘A what?’
‘A Slovakian hunting hound. These things trap wild boar, sir,’ his handler proudly announced.
‘Wild boar don’t abduct police officers and make threatening phone calls, so some use this will be.’
‘Trust me, sir, when Malý here gets a scent, he’ll follow it to the end.’
‘We’ll see, Officer…?’
‘Malý.’
‘Malý? The dog’s named after you?’
‘Makes it easier, sir. His kennel club name is something awful.’
‘Right, then, Malý. Let’s see what Malý here can do.’
‘Have you got something of hers, sir?’
‘Navrátil says she was wearing this scarf on Sunday evening.’
‘Very good, sir. Sniff! Not you, sir, I was talking to the dog.’
‘I guessed you were.’
‘He’s got something, sir. It’s been dry overnight, which helps. And I expect she was wearing some sort of scent.’
‘I didn’t notice, but then my nose isn’t as sensitive as his, or I’d be on the end of your leash and he’d be redundant.’
The hound trotted along the pavement. So far so good — Slonský had seen her head this way. The dog also correctly spotted the point at which she had crossed the road. He led Officer Malý to the far side, then turned right and continued along the street to the next corner. Slonský followed close behind, but had to wait for a break in the traffic, so he was a little concerned that they might have slipped out of his sight.
When he caught up with them around twenty metres from the corner he found Malý turning circles at the kerb.
‘Is he having a fit?’
‘No, sir, the trail’s ended here. She was snatched right at this spot.’
Slonský cursed. There were no cameras here, but he could put Dvorník onto looking at the nearest one to get a list of large vehicles that might have come past here just a few minutes after he dropped Peiperová the previous night.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a place, and that tells me the time. I don’t suppose Malý here can sniff a licence plate number?’
Lieutenant Dvorník’s office was small anyway, but the man himself made it look even smaller. He was described by his wife as cuddly, an overly kind epithet but just about plausible if she had long arms. He had the same amount of furniture as Slonský, but less area to accommodate it, so the free floor area was not great even when he was sitting down, and almost non-existent if he stood. A large number of the available surfaces were covered in photographs of his offspring.
Navrátil stated the obvious.
‘He’s not here, sir.’
‘No, even on my worst days I can detect a Dvorník, and there isn’t one here.’
‘Are all those his children, sir? I thought you said he only had three.’
‘He and his wife have been married before. He had two or three with his first wife, and I think his new partner had a couple, and then they’ve had three more since. I’m not sure of the running total, but it’s high time he found some other hobby. At least when you look at his children there’s no need for genetic testing. They all tend towards the fuller figure.’
‘I’d better go look for him, sir.’
‘No need. He’ll be in the canteen. Come along.’
In fact, they met Dvorník in the corridor on his way back from the canteen. He had a coffee in his hand, upon which he had balanced a torpedo roll containing a substantial share of a pig. Slonský explained the job he wanted doing. Since it involved remaining seated, Dvorník was content, though still slightly resentful at playing second fiddle to another lieutenant.
‘Now, lad,’ Slonský continued, ‘how are you going to find Pluskal?’
Navrátil felt obliged to sound decisive, though he had been wondering about that himself.
‘Money, sir. Everyone needs money. He must use cash machines or credit cards.’
‘Worth a try. But Griba’s gang will deal largely in cash. They get lots in, and they can’t bank it without questions being asked, so they work almost entirely in cash.’
‘Driver’s licence?’
‘Well, we know he can drive, so he probably has one. Whether the address is up to date may be another matter, but give it a go.’
‘I can see if any vehicles are registered to him while I’m at it.’
‘I doubt it. He probably drives some of Griba’s. Though of course there’s one less now that he torched the Volkswagen.’
‘Won’t Griba be angry about that?’
‘No,’ Slonský answered with a touch of scorn. ‘Griba probably told him to do it. So far as I know, Griba had no grudge with Holoubek, so he was probably paid handsomely to arrange it. He can stand the loss of an old Volkswagen van.’
‘Who is this Griba, sir?’
‘We don’t know a lot about him. Griba is a nickname, and we don’t know where it comes from. Someone told me it’s a Hebrew word meaning wonderful, so perhaps he’s Jewish. There’s a synagogue somewhere called Griba. He just appeared in his late twenties and he’s been a blight on Prague ever since.’
‘Like Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes?’
‘Not that high level. Griba doesn’t bother with big, high-risk things, just a lot of protection rackets, prostitution, gambling, smuggling, probably some trafficking and plenty of drugs. That reminds me — let’s find Mucha. I asked him to have a word with Colonel Tripka about Griba.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. Nada. Rien du tout,’ asserted Mucha.
‘But we know he has a finger in all those pies.’
‘According to Tripka, they know it, but they can’t prove it. Nobody will finger him and because he employs people with bad records, it’ll stay that way.’
‘Even by Tripka’s standards, that’s a stupid comment,’ Slonský growled.
‘He means that Griba takes on people who have every reason not to want to get back in front of a court. As witnesses against him, they’d be useless. A defence lawyer can shut them up very easily. They make a good living only because Griba helps them commit crimes they were too stupid to get away with themselves, so of course they’re loyal.’
Slonský sighed. ‘Like the Personnel Department.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Mucha.
‘I don’t understand,’ protested Navrátil. ‘What has our personnel department got to do with organised crime?’
‘More than you’d think, except for the word “organised”,’ said Slonský, ‘but I’m not talking about our personnel department. I’m talking about The Personnel Department. It was a setup from the early eighties. A disaffected underling in the Department of Justice hit on the brilliant idea of contacting criminals who had just left prison and couldn’t get jobs. He’d offer them work in his scams. They got their instructions by telephone from “The Personnel Department”, so they couldn’t betray him because they didn’t know who he was. Only one man knew, whose job it was to recruit them and hand over the wage packets. Working in the justice system meant the villain managed to screw up any number of investigations with fake alibis, lost statements and so on. Mind you, we could have done that ourselves in those days.’
‘Yes,’ added Mucha wistfully, ‘those were the days. Do you remember that captain in Jihlava who took a statement from someone who’d been shot dead in a raid three days earlier?’
‘Didn’t even get disciplined. Just moved to a border post near Poland, which admittedly
wasn’t the best career move, not to mention being bloody cold in winter. So is Tripka even trying to nail this Griba character?’
‘He says nothing would give him greater pleasure. He’s convinced that Griba is probably behind one of Prague’s biggest cocaine distribution networks; perhaps not the most valuable, but the widest reach. Of course, he says, his predecessor wasn’t vigorous enough, which allowed Griba to get a toehold.’
‘He would say that, wouldn’t he? Everyone’s predecessor was always too lax. It may be true in Tripka’s case, but he hasn’t exactly cranked up the action in the last couple of years since he’s been there.’
‘There was that big heroin seizure last winter.’
‘Yes, but that had nothing to do with Tripka. The smugglers fell out and one of them snitched on the others. Even then, if he hadn’t driven the van into the police station car park we’d probably never have found it.’
‘You have to admit, Tripka falls on his feet. Luckiest officer I’ve ever known,’ opined Mucha.
‘I wonder how much is down to his father’s reputation. Tripka himself is no great shakes.’
‘But he’s a colonel,’ protested Navrátil. ‘If he was an idiot they wouldn’t have promoted him to colonel.’
‘They would if they were bigger idiots,’ Slonský pointed out. ‘And rumour has it they wanted him out of ethics and internal affairs so when he applied for the leadership of the Drug Squad, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.’
‘What did he do wrong in internal affairs?’ asked Navrátil.
‘He did nothing wrong because he did nothing at all, lad. No case ever seemed to have enough evidence to actually go anywhere.’
‘To be fair to Colonel Tripka,’ put in Mucha, ‘he started unluckily when he charged a sergeant in the drug squad with graft and someone completely different turned up in Morocco with a large amount of cash. He took a lot of flak for that, but many of us thought he might well have had the right man. It made him ultra-cautious after that.’
Slonský was standing open-mouthed.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Mucha.
‘I’m speechless,’ said Slonský. ‘I can’t believe my own ears. “To be fair to Colonel Tripka”? When did we start being fair to people like Tripka?’
‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Mucha, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘I’m all for fair play and decency,’ continued Slonský, ‘but I never thought I’d live to see the day when you’d want to extend it to a nonentity like Tripka.’
Mucha took the hint.
‘I’ll go now.’
‘I think you should,’ agreed Slonský. ‘I’ll allow you to buy me a beer later to restore our friendship.’
‘That’s very good of you, sir,’ said Mucha. ‘Will I be allowed to stand in the same bar and watch Your Lordship drink it?’
‘If you’re good. Now, Navrátil and I have serious work to do. We’ve got to find Peiperová.’
‘I’ll send out an All Stations alert. Have we got a photo of her?’
‘There’s one in her personnel record.’
Navrátil fished in his inside breast pocket.
‘This is a better one. Can I get it back?’
‘Of course,’ said Mucha.
‘Excuse me,’ Navrátil stuttered, and ran off along the corridor.
‘Taking it hard,’ Mucha commented.
‘Yes. But it doesn’t help find her. Let’s get that alert out.’
‘Right away. What’s her first name?’
Slonský looked perplexed.
‘Officer?’ he offered.
Chapter 13
Navrátil looked miserable.
‘We should be doing something,’ he said.
‘We are,’ replied Slonský. ‘We’re having an early lunch so we can devote all our afternoon to finding Peiperová. Don’t you want that?’
‘No appetite.’
‘Give it here, then. She’ll be fine, lad. So long as we’re looking for her, we’re not working on the Holoubek case, and that’s what the abductor wants. He has no reason to hurt her. If he does, he loses the only weapon he has.’
‘How can you eat at a time like this?’
Slonský put Navrátil’s sandwich down.
‘If I don’t eat that, how does that help find Peiperová?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘Thank you,’ said Slonský, picking it up again. ‘My point exactly. There’s enough misery in this without letting good food go to waste.’
‘I’ll have to tell her parents.’
‘Ah. Yes, we should.’
‘We. Or me?’
‘No, it’s my job. Give me their number and I’ll ring them.’
Navrátil tore a page from his notebook and copied the telephone number from his mobile phone.
‘There.’
Slonský picked up his sandwich and his coffee.
‘I’ll do it now. You bend your mind to finding Pluskal. Wherever he is, she is.’
The phone rang. It was Valentin.
‘I wondered what had happened to you,’ said Slonský. ‘I thought maybe you were too busy signing autographs to do the little favour you promised for me.’
‘It wasn’t a little favour. It was a thumping big mega-favour and it cost me a bomb in phone calls.’
‘You’ll get it back.’
‘I certainly will. Where can we meet?’
‘Is it important?’
‘I think so. But since you never tell me anything, what do I know?’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Across the street.’
‘Valentin, why don’t you come in here?’
‘No chance. I get a shiver up my spine every time I walk past that place, let alone go inside. When they’ve frogmarched you inside with a sack over your head and kicked you in the cellars you tend to get clammy about a place.’
‘That sounds painful — a kick in the cellars.’
‘It was. And when you’ve stopped the cheap innuendo at my expense, get yourself down here.’
Slonský’s voice became grave.
‘Someone has snatched Peiperová.’
‘The blonde girl? Why?’
‘To get me to lay off the Holoubek case.’
‘Then I’m right. You will want to hear what I’ve found out. And so will Navrátil. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but his eyes light up whenever you mention her. I think he may have a soft spot for her.’
‘Actually he has an extremely hard spot, and I’ve told him to take some cold showers to get over it. But I’ll give him a call and get him back here. Meet me on the steps in half an hour.’
As it happened, Navrátil was already coming back. The search of driving licences had been fairly pointless, because Pluskal had not amended the address on his record. The new inhabitants of the flat, a young architect and his pregnant girlfriend, had never heard of Pluskal. Navrátil was finding it hard to think of any new lines of inquiry. There must be some, but he simply could not think straight.
He saw Valentin on the steps.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you,’ said Valentin. ‘Now you’re here, Slonský may deign to talk to me.’
Before Navrátil could open the front door, Slonský erupted from it.
‘I’ve been a bloody fool,’ he announced, before striding past them and heading for the café on the corner. Pushing open the door, he entered and looked around. It was almost empty except for a few hardened drinkers, some of them police officers. Navrátil and Valentin walked towards the bar, only to notice that Slonský was not with them. He had taken a perch on a high stool in the middle of the room and was turning from side to side as if bewildered.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Valentin.
No answer came. Instead Slonský closed his eyes and slowly revolved on the stool. When he had completed a whole revolution, he opened his eyes.
‘What’ll you have, sir?’ asked Navrátil.
&
nbsp; ‘Hm? Oh, coffee,’ replied Slonský abstractedly.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, Navrátil, coffee,’ answered Slonský, as if no other answer had ever been possible.
‘Pastry?’
‘This is no time to eat, lad. Valentin, come and tell us your story.’
They sat at the adjoining table. Navrátil and Slonský had a coffee each, while Valentin tackled a small beer with a brandy chaser.
‘You asked me to check the reports of the Válková death,’ Valentin reminded Slonský.
‘Well remembered. And did you?’
‘Yes, I did. At least, I checked our files, both published and unpublished. Nothing much in the unpublished, of course. Nobody keeps papers for thirty years. But there was something that struck me as odd about the published stuff.’
‘Go on, we’re listening.’
Valentin took a lubricating mouthful before continuing.
‘The murder was late on Friday night, so it’s no surprise there was nothing in Saturday’s edition. There was nothing on Sunday either. The first mention is a report on Monday, but with no by-line.’
‘Which means?’
‘Probably that it was written by the state news service and just printed verbatim. It tells you nothing you didn’t already know, but I’ve brought you a photocopy. There’s nothing much for a few more days, then eventually the announcement of the arrest of the Slovak boy. And that’s it.’
Slonský glanced over the copies.
‘A brutal murder in Prague and that’s all the papers say?’
Valentin smirked.
‘It’s all the Czech papers say. But I was doing a bit of internet searching and I discovered a report had appeared on Monday in a Hungarian newspaper. It was dated Sunday. Now, the story was filed by a chap called Möller. I knew him. He was quite an old man when I started out, but he was a good reporter. He would have done his homework, so I thought I had better get that story. To cut a long story short, our man in Budapest managed to trace a copy and get it translated. You owe him a couple of bottles of something nice.’
‘A couple?’
‘One for him and one for the translator. On second thoughts, you don’t want to look mean. Our man probably ought to have two for himself.’