The Josef Slonský Box Set

by Graham Brack

  ‘Nobody asked him properly. The chances are that they found his deafness too much of a barrier or that he didn’t hear the question properly.’

  ‘That’s very likely,’ said Mrs Kopecká. ‘When I took food in to him, we had a conversation of sorts, but I never felt he knew what I’d said. I think he just answered the question he expected you to ask.’

  ‘A reporter conducted an interview with him by writing down the questions. Mr Hruška said he saw two boys arrive. He thought they were soldiers.’

  Kopecký took a sudden interest.

  ‘Do you know, I believe he’s right. I thought they might have been policemen, but they may have been in fatigues.’

  Slonský understood. In the dark there had not been much difference between the uniforms in those days.

  ‘And of course, it was a police car they got into,’ added Kopecký.

  Slonský came close to taking a bite out of his cup.

  ‘A police car? You didn’t mention that.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ said Kopecký. ‘I must have forgotten. I do, you know. It’s my age.’

  ‘No, I mean you didn’t mention it at the time.’

  ‘I’m sure I did. I don’t mean it was one of the green and white things. It was like a staff car. You know the kind. The ones they come to take you away in.’

  ‘An StB car?’

  Kopecký became agitated. ‘Keep your voice down! We don’t want to upset them.’

  ‘But those cars were unmarked. How did you know it was a police car?’

  ‘Well, because the man who got out was in police uniform. I was surprised he drove himself, because he had a fair amount of decoration on his jacket.’

  Slonský needed to get this straight. ‘Who got out, and when?’

  ‘The car came into the road and turned round with a big loop at the end of the cul-de-sac before it pulled up by the Váleks’ house. It was on the wrong side of the road by then, facing back to town. The driver opened the door and started to run towards the house, but the two boys must have seen him and ran out. The stocky one got in the front so the little one got in the back. The driver was an older man. He put his cap on as he got out but I could see he was quite grey.’

  Slonský understood now. He had already guessed that this must have happened, but he was surprised that the driver had come in person, at some risk to himself. Navrátil had written out a statement which Kopecký signed, then they took their leave, Navrátil politely declining a bag of buns.

  Mrs Kopecká saw them to the door.

  ‘Mr Válek visited the other day. He’s not well, the poor man, but it was good to see him. I don’t think he’ll come again. It upset him too much to see his old house. Bad memories, I suppose.’

  ‘You could meet up in town,’ suggested Slonský.

  Mrs Kopecká shook her head. ‘I doubt it. My husband doesn’t go out much. But perhaps when he has a hospital appointment in town we could see what is possible.’

  They sat in the car in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Surely if he’d mentioned a police car…’ said Navrátil.

  ‘I think he did. He mentioned it to someone who didn’t want to hear. When Holoubek visited he didn’t think he needed to say it again because it would already be in the file, but whoever it was mentioned to didn’t make a note. And I bet that wasn’t an accident.’

  Navrátil started the engine.

  ‘Now where, sir?’

  Slonský lifted his hat and scratched his head.

  ‘I suppose we may as well go and arrest the killers.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘You know who they are?’

  Both men exhibited surprise, Navrátil had no idea that an arrest was imminent, and Slonský had not realised that their identity was not as blindingly obvious to Navrátil as it was to him.

  ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

  ‘No, sir. How long have you known?’

  ‘I knew one of them almost from the start. The other one, I wasn’t certain about until I saw Zelenka’s photograph. There’s just one little bit I’m having to guess. Never mind, I’ll explain when we get there. In the meantime, put your foot down. I want to arrest him at work.’

  ‘It would help if you told me where we were going, sir.’

  ‘What? Oh, park the car at our station. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.’

  On arrival, Slonský instructed Navrátil to see to the most pressing matter on their agenda by fetching two coffees and any non-toxic edible material that the canteen might be stocking, with a stern warning that Slonský did not regard any kind of vegetation as fit food for human beings. Fortunately, there was still some sausage left, so the kindly canteen lady piled some into a roll and wrapped it with care once she knew it was for Slonský. Although Slonský had never been one for flattering any authority figure, he laid it on with a trowel where the canteen ladies were concerned since, in his view, the canteen was the hub of the Czech police force and it was impossible to detect on an empty stomach; or, indeed, a stomach filled with lettuce, which was more or less the same thing. In this opinion, he was at one with Dumpy Anna, who believed that men need meat and that a lot of the young officers she served were much too fussy about their diets. She exempted Dvorník from this criticism, since he was prepared to eat any part of an animal that did not have hair on it and had a particular fondness for tripe stewed with onions, as she did herself.

  Slonský had closeted himself with Lukas. When the door opened and both men emerged, Lukas looked very grave.

  ‘I’ll make some calls to explain the situation,’ he said. ‘Don’t assume they’ll come quietly. Put your vests on.’

  Slonský agreed to do so, though he hated wearing the bulletproof vests, since he hated being shot too. He ate his roll in silence and with an intensity in his gaze that Navrátil found intimidating.

  ‘Ready?’ barked Slonský.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Navrátil reached for his coat.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ said Slonský, and led them down to the front desk, where he exchanged a brief word with Mucha.

  ‘I think cell 7 is available at present,’ Mucha confirmed. ‘Will sir be requiring it for just the one night?’

  ‘Probably a few. We’d better remove any of the frills and extras in there.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Mucha. ‘I’ve got a leaky slops bucket if that suits.’

  ‘Excellent. And don’t give him the wooden seat for the top. Don’t stand with your mouth open, Navrátil, people will think the police are employing simpletons.’

  ‘We do,’ protested Mucha.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Slonský, ‘but not usually at Navrátil’s rank.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Mucha agreed. ‘You need a lot of experience to be truly clueless.’

  Slonský marched across the foyer to the double doors leading into the other wing of the building and climbed the stairs with vigour, Navrátil trying to keep up despite his shorter legs. On the upper floor, they passed through the swing doors into a corridor equipped with a thick carpet. Navrátil could not help noticing that the office doors were polished hardwood and had name plaques on them. Slonský pushed one of these open and marched past the secretary’s desk.

  ‘Is he in?’ he asked, without waiting for an answer.

  ‘You can’t…’ she began to reply, but stopped when Slonský turned to face her and she saw the fire behind his eyes.

  ‘Isn’t it your coffee break?’ he asked.

  Without a word, she slipped from the room, and Navrátil heard her begin to run as she left them. Slonský stared after her then, when he was sure she was not going to turn back, he jerked the handle of the inner office and entered.

  Colonel Tripka was signing papers and looked up only briefly.

  ‘Don’t you knock?’ he asked.

  ‘Not when I’m arresting people, no,’ replied Slonský.

  You had to
admit that Tripka was impressive, thought Navrátil. He carefully replaced the cap on his fountain pen, laid it on his blotter, and fixed his eyes firmly on Slonský’s.

  ‘You had better explain yourself,’ he said, without inviting them to sit.

  Slonský sat anyway.

  ‘It’s really quite simple. Me good guy, you bad guy. Good guy puts bad guy in jail.’

  ‘On what charges, pray?’

  ‘Conspiracy to murder, corruption, conspiracy to kidnap, dereliction of duty in a public official and probably a few miscellaneous other bits we’ll find out as we go along.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ snorted Tripka. ‘Now get out of my office before I get annoyed and stop treating this like the joke it is.’

  Slonský grabbed Tripka’s arm and turned it palm upwards.

  ‘Lesson eighty-six, Navrátil. You can’t control your nervous system. See the sweaty palm. The Colonel — or should I say, soon-to-be ex-colonel — is under stress.’

  ‘This is a career-ending move you’re making,’ Tripka snapped.

  ‘It certainly is,’ agreed Slonský, ‘but not for my career. This all starts when Holoubek came to see me. He wanted to reopen a case from 1976, the murder of Jana Válková. Remember her?’

  ‘Is there any reason that I should?’

  ‘Actually, a lot of reasons. The simplest is that you’d met her. Her father remembers thinking you’d be a good catch for her when you came to her birthday party in February. He didn’t think you’d shown any interest so when he was asked about boyfriends he didn’t mention you. But he’d have been delighted. After all, your father was an officer, if not quite a gentleman. And you were destined for high things. You just had to get your national service out of the way, like we all did, by which time Jana would be old enough to get engaged. Then you’d start your long climb up the greasy pole that would elevate you to your current status. He wasn’t wrong, was he? You’d have been a good catch for Jana. In some ways, that is.’

  Tripka was clearly furious. His fists were clenched and the knuckles were showing white.

  ‘Anyway, Holoubek had investigated her murder and had proof — absolute proof — that the wrong man had been hanged. Not only that, but people in the police had known he was the wrong man before the life was choked out of him. It wasn’t much of a life, Tripka, but it was the only one he had and he was entitled to keep it. Normally I’m opposed to the death penalty but I would be willing to make an exception in your case.’

  Navrátil tensed, hoping that Slonský was not going to produce a gun, but he seemed content simply to talk.

  ‘Holoubek returned to see me, and the same day he was creamed by a van driven by a thug called Pluskal. We’ve got Pluskal downstairs by the way. He doesn’t have much of a brain but he does have eyes and ears, and I don’t doubt he’ll tell us a few juicy snippets once we’ve loosened his tongue. Pluskal is employed by Griba, and don’t tell me you don’t know who Griba is.’

  ‘No, I know who he is. One of Prague’s foremost criminals.’

  ‘That’s right. A man you’re paid to try to stop. After all, you’re in charge of our anti-drug efforts, and he sells drugs. It sounds like a good fit. And yet although everyone knows what Griba does, our attempts to stop him have been remarkably ineffective. I wonder why?’

  ‘That’s an offensive insinuation.’

  ‘Hold on to it. I have plenty more. So, who knew Holoubek had been to see me? You see, Pluskal was waiting for the tram. A brighter villain would have followed Holoubek and killed him in his flat, but Pluskal’s orders were to make it look like an accident. Fortunately, he has no idea what an accident should look like. He also left his fingerprints all over the van and some were retrieved before he set fire to it. He’s going to plead guilty to the murder of Holoubek, I believe, but he may try to reduce his sentence by being very cooperative about naming others. Needless to say, he doesn’t know many others, because Griba likes to keep his secrets, but as a personal bodyguard Pluskal knows a few things others might not know. Things like who Griba meets, for example. Oh, and to answer my own question, there’s one person we know for sure knew that Holoubek was here. He asked me what you were doing now, because he’d seen you downstairs. I thought perhaps his son had let the news of his father’s visit slip out, but Ondřej only knew about the first visit. He didn’t know his father had come back, so he could hardly have told anyone. In the time Holoubek was here, someone organised his death. There’s barely time for an outsider to do that, is there?’

  Slonský paused and draped one leg negligently across the other so his ankle rested on his knee before continuing.

  ‘Let’s go back to Jana Válková. Her parents were going out for the evening. You knew that, because your father had been involved in the security arrangements for the banquet, so you’d seen the guest list. It was Friday night, so you got yourself some passes and made your plans. You’d take some food and a lot of drink and have some fun with Jana. You liked her, she liked you. It could have been a good evening. The snag was that you didn’t go alone. I have an eye-witness who has identified you and your companion leaving the Válek house on that evening.’

  ‘Surely it was thirty years ago? You’d never get a conviction based on digging up someone who thinks they might have seen me thirty years ago.’

  ‘We’d have to let a court decide that. But he’s a good witness. His memory is stuck. He doesn’t remember many new things, but he doesn’t forget many old ones either. Memory can work like that. You wanted people to forget, and he can’t forget. He doesn’t know it was thirty years ago, but he knows it was you. And he has also identified your friend Sedláček.’

  Tripka could not conceal his surprise. There was an involuntary stiffening of his shoulders that showed that the name meant something to him.

  ‘I see you know who I mean. Not that you could deny it. Just as Navrátil here is standing next to his best friend in his class photo, so you’re next to Sedláček in your national service group photo, which Major-General Zelenka was kind enough to lend us. And he remembers the two of you as best buddies — or are you going to tell me the Major-General is feeble-minded too?’

  ‘No, Sedláček was my best friend. But it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Strange how you never really know someone, isn’t it? I suppose if you’d known about the stuff Sedláček had in his pockets you might not have taken him. Because it was Sedláček who started it all, wasn’t it? He took his drugs and turned nasty, didn’t he? He raped Jana and started torturing her. And you didn’t stop him.’

  The statement was greeted with silence.

  ‘I said you didn’t stop him, did you?’

  Tripka reached for the telephone.

  ‘I think I’d like my lawyer here now.’

  Slonský threw it on the floor.

  ‘All in due time. All the lawyers you want. You can fill your cell with lawyers. But first I’m going to tell you what a spineless little worm you were. You tried to stop her bleeding with a towel. But it had already been going on a long time by then. You’d enjoyed it at first. You’d even joined in. The forensic report tells us that two different hands had done the stabbing. Did you take the drugs too? Or were you perfectly sober when you sliced into her arms and belly? You were sober enough to ring Daddy for help, weren’t you? The telephone record vanished but you rang the hotel where the banquet was taking place, and your father came to fetch you. You were seen arriving by the old man across the road, and another witness saw you climb into a car driven by a senior policeman. Just to convince you he knows what he saw, I’ll tell you Sedláček climbed into the front and you rode in the back. I don’t know if Jana was actually dead by then. Can you tell me?’

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ Tripka croaked.

  ‘No, you want a long pointy stake up your backside with plenty of splinters sticking out. But all in due time. Let’s go on with the story. It was your great good fortune that Válek’s wife wanted a senior officer to take over the case, so they r
eplaced Holoubek, who might have discovered the truth, with Vaněček, who wouldn’t have seen the truth if it was painted on a buffalo and paraded through Prague. He was floundering, and then a colleague gave him a bit of help. He produced a ready-made confession from Ľubomir Bartoš. Bartoš was in jail in Olomouc after trying to flog a Soviet medal, so Vaněček didn’t even have to find him. What wasn’t said, and Vaněček didn’t ask about, was that Bartoš had been in jail at the time of the murder, which is usually reckoned to be a pretty good alibi. Even in those days, we didn’t let prisoners out to commit murder and then let them back in again afterwards. Now, here’s the bit that was a stumbling block for a while. I can understand the need for a scapegoat, but why Bartoš? What had he done that put him in the frame? The man was a cat burglar with no record of violence at all, but someone went to a lot of trouble to frame him.’

  Slonský retrieved a bundle of papers from his pocket, selected one, and unfolded it so Tripka could read it.

  ‘There’s your answer. The list of houses Bartoš burgled during a spree in Prague. Your dad helped to compile it by driving him around town, but your father was only really interested in one. Your old house is on it. But even that isn’t much of a reason to see someone hanged. However, when you add to it with his mother’s testimony it becomes clearer. Bartoš stole some money, but not Czechoslovak money. It was dollars. Quite a bundle of dollars. And in those days ordinary people couldn’t get dollars. It wasn’t even allowed for most people in high places to hold dollars, but your father had access to them. He’d sneaked a few here and there and built a little stash, and now it was gone. No wonder he was mad. He couldn’t report them as stolen because he wasn’t supposed to have them in the first place, so if he couldn’t have redress, he’d have revenge. And that’s why Bartoš hanged. Your father went to Olomouc, persuaded him to sign a confession — which, by the way, he couldn’t read — and dumped him in court to face the music. I can’t prove it but I suspect he squared the judge to throw Bartoš in the cells and proceed in his absence so he couldn’t deny anything. Poor Bartoš didn’t know what had happened, but he did give us one good clue. He told the chaplain that the police officer who took his confession knew Mandy.’