The Josef Slonský Box Set

by Graham Brack

  The receptionist looked as if she had been given a lemon to suck.

  ‘I’d better send for the duty manager.’

  ‘You do that, but give us the list first, or he’ll have to come to the station to bail you out.’

  She printed a list and handed it to him.

  ‘Are these the room numbers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And do you have a spare key to room 10?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can just give you a key like that.’

  ‘If you don’t, I’ll kick the door in and you’ll have a carpenter’s bill, whereas if you give me a key, I can let myself in without causing any damage to the hotel. Wouldn’t that be better?’

  The receptionist handed over the key.

  ‘Very good. Navrátil, just sneak upstairs and see whether there’s any sign of him in the room. If there is, stay there and make sure he doesn’t sneak out before the local lads get here. Peiperová, you tiptoe up behind him and bring back the message. And no nipping into any nooks and crannies on the way, you two. You’re working.’

  Captain Herfort and a couple of other uniformed policemen entered the foyer. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he declared. ‘It will be good to get to the bottom of the monkey business at the old lodge.’

  ‘Have you been watching for the suspect?’ Slonský demanded.

  ‘Yes, a plain-clothes man has been around since you called. We changed them at intervals so he wouldn’t get suspicious. But so far as we know he’s been in his room since mid-afternoon.’

  ‘Very good. I’d like you to sit in on the questioning if you don’t mind in case we need any local knowledge. Are you a local man?’

  ‘Born and bred. I’ve never really wanted to work anywhere else.’

  ‘Excellent. And I hope your colleagues are tooled up for the occasion.’

  ‘Loaded up and ready to go. Are you expecting violence?’

  ‘I don’t know. But bear in mind he’s killed a man with a flick-knife and he’s trained in lethal unarmed combat. I doubt if he has a gun but he’s still dangerous.’

  Peiperová returned. ‘There’s a light under the door, sir, and we can hear a television or radio.’

  ‘Good. Come on, then. I’ve got the key, Herfort. I’ll fling it open then your two lads can charge in with their guns out just in case any rough stuff starts. Meanwhile you and I will let the dust settle before making our entrance. Peiperová, you and Navrátil make sure no passers-by get in the way. I don’t want him grabbing a hostage.’

  They mounted the stairs quietly and paused by the door to room 10. Slonský carefully lined up the key, then pushed and twisted in one move. The first man was through the door within a second, and within five seconds they were all in the room, looking at the puzzled face of Mr Brown, who was sitting up in bed.

  ‘What in hell is going on here?’ he yelled.

  ‘You’re being arrested,’ said Slonský. ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and given in evidence.’

  Captain Herfort checked Brown’s clothing item by item before they let him dress, then he was handcuffed to one of the local officers and marched downstairs.

  Slonský detoured to speak to the receptionist again.

  ‘Your key, miss. Has the gentleman prepaid?’

  ‘We’ve got an open credit card for him.’

  ‘Jolly good. I expect we’ll send someone over to take away his luggage tomorrow. No point in running up a big bill on his behalf.’

  Brown was belligerent, which was a trait not calculated to bring out the best in Slonský. Before long suspect and detective were bellowing at each other like elks disputing possession of a crag.

  ‘You’ve got no reason to arrest me.’

  ‘If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done it. And as a matter of fact, Captain Herfort here arrested you. I just cautioned you, because I like doing that bit.’

  ‘I have a right to know what charges you’re going to bring.’

  ‘And I have twenty-four hours to think about that. Apart from the murder charge, of course.’

  ‘Murder? What murder?’

  ‘The one you’re charged with.’

  Brown tried sarcasm. ‘And just who am I supposed to have murdered?’

  ‘The victim.’

  ‘And his name?’

  ‘You know it’s a man then?’

  ‘It’s a fifty-fifty shot. I guessed.’

  ‘Good. Then you can guess the name of the victim.’

  Brown slapped the table in frustration. ‘It’s late. I want some sleep. If I have to sleep here that’s fine, but just leave me in peace.’

  ‘I can’t do that. You said yourself I’ve only got a limited period of time before I have to charge you, besides which if I leave you by yourself you might think up all sorts of lies to cover your tracks.’

  ‘Then get on with this charade. But be warned, my lawyer will be very active when he gets here.’

  Slonský produced two of the pieces of paper that Mucha had found from his inside pocket. ‘Recognise this? What about the other one?’

  Brown read each in turn. ‘So?’

  ‘So you see that I know your motive. Herfort, it all begins for me with a little chat with Jan and Jakub.’

  ‘The old pair? The ones who sit on the bench all day?’

  ‘That’s them. They said they used to work on the old baronial estate here when they were boys. That was when the manor house was occupied by Baron Gerhard von Troppau-Freudenthal. Gerhard had a wife and a daughter, and the old boys remembered getting a fistful of silver after they helped some city gentleman shoot a boar on the estate. That was presumably the rich man that Gerhard had earmarked for his daughter’s future husband. Anyway, when the war came along Gerhard went off to do his bit for the Führer on the Eastern Front, and didn’t come back. I imagine a similar fate befell his intended son-in-law, which is not surprising if he needed a boar’s legs tied together with wire before he could shoot it.’

  ‘I don’t see the relevance of this…’ began Brown.

  ‘I’m coming to that. Fast forward to 1945, and the First and Fourth Ukrainian Divisions are sitting on Moravia’s borders, all set to pour in and liberate us, not to mention almost everything that moved. It soon became clear that this was no place for a woman, because women of all ages were being raped and some were being killed. No doubt the Freifrau and her daughter the Freiin had the wit to try to get to the west, where the Americans were advancing. If you’re going to get captured by either, the Americans are much the better choice. And eventually they made it, because there is paperwork showing that the Freifrau and Freiin were in a camp near Strakonice. But as Germans and the widow and daughter of a German army officer, I expect they didn’t have too comfortable a time there. Most of the ethnic Germans were shipped to Germany and dumped in camps there. What saved the Freiin was that an American soldier fell for her. I don’t have a photo, but I guess a twenty-year-old Aryan girl would have interested any bachelor who had been away from home for a couple of years. What made her doubly interesting was that the American soldier was ethnic German himself. So much so that in 1941 he changed his name. He used to be Braun and he became Brown, didn’t he, Mr Brown? He was your father, and the Freiin was your mother.’

  Brown nodded, but said no more.

  ‘I assume that the title passed to your uncle in Austria, but that didn’t really matter. It was the old family estate in Opava that interested you. Your mother never wanted to return, but you grew up obsessed with recovering it. Of course, you’re a patriotic American — your mother was always grateful that the United States took her in and gave her a good life, so she must have been so proud when you joined the army and joined a Special Forces unit. Your service record is a good one, I’m told. The FBI understand these things better than I do, but I’m happy to take their word for it.’

  ‘My service record will stand up against anyone’s, but what does that have to do with anything?’


  ‘We’ll come to that. For the moment I just want to stress the Special Forces connection. Anyway, as we all know the Beneš decrees confiscated a lot of German property, but when the Wall fell there was a good deal of speculation that property would be returned or compensation paid. You even learned Czech so you could argue your case. Sergeant Mucha found a copy of your parents’ wedding certificate showing they married near Strakonice in 1946, but he also found your affidavit relating to the old baronial lands that you lodged in 1992. The problem was that the new law only gives restitution if the lands were seized by the Communists, whereas yours had been seized before the Communists came to power, so the courts turned your application down. It’s a common problem in Moravia, where the seizures were made by the provisional government. So, if you were going to get the land back, you had to buy it, which meant persuading the present owners to sell it. And that’s where Captain Herfort comes in, because earlier this year you paid some Bosnians to frighten the existing owners into selling by burning down the lodge and flooding the parkland. Fortunately they were inept at both.’

  ‘You have proof for this absurd assertion?’

  ‘I have the man who says he put you in touch with the Bosnians. I also have a faxed sketch map you drew for them and sent from the hotel you were in today to the office of a notorious gangster in Sarajevo.’

  ‘And did I sign that map? And was I staying in the hotel on that date? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not under the name Brown, no; but there’s an entry in the register under your mother’s maiden name, which is the name you use whenever you’re in Opava. You registered this time under the name von Troppau-Freudenthal. You even have a credit card in that name.’

  ‘And is that some kind of legal offence over here?’

  ‘Not at all. You’re free to call yourself Mickey Mouse if you want, so long as it isn’t done with intent to deceive others. But let’s keep to the point, if we can. You hired some Bosnians to come to Opava and frighten the old folks out of their home. Your hope was that with a bit of damage, the owners would drop the price until you could afford it. This is where things get a bit murky but I’m sure you’ll be able to clarify them for us.’

  Slonský took a long draught from his coffee cup and continued. ‘The incidents here in Opava were reported to Prague, where the Organised Crime Unit took an interest because they were already investigating the same Bosnians in connection with trafficking girls to the Czech Republic. One officer, a young man named Hrdlička, noticed that the reports weren’t being acted upon. Somebody in the Organised Crime Unit wasn’t fighting organised crime; he was working for them. And, Hrdlička being a bright lad, it occurred to him that if that was happening to these lesser incidents it was very likely that reports on his enquiries were being shared with the very people he was trying to investigate, so he stopped sending reports in. He adopted an undercover role known to comparatively few people so he could keep up the surveillance, and he worked outside the police structure to maintain as much secrecy as he could about his work. For example, he obtained a radio microphone from another source. Sadly, it was cheap rubbish, but he wasn’t to know that.’

  ‘Interesting as this is, it has no bearing on my…’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Hrdlička was watching your building. He was actually watching the Bosnians on the floor below, but you weren’t to know that. In fact, he was only interested in you as a means of keeping track of the Bosnians, if at all. You had been tipped off that he knew about the incidents in Opava and concluded that he was on your trail, and when he showed no signs of giving up, you decided he had to be removed. The sad thing is that he had no idea you were involved. I got off on the wrong track here. I thought Hrdlička’s microphone must be in your office, but actually it was in Savović’s. You just arranged with Savović to make a loud noise while you cruised the river bank looking for someone who reacted to the squeal in their ear. When Hrdlička did, you stepped behind him and used a spring-loaded knife to stab him in the neck. A knife very like the one we found in your jacket earlier.’

  ‘“Very like” isn’t “the same as”.’

  ‘I’ll leave Dr Novák to tell me how alike it is. The point is that we have a lethal weapon in the hands of someone we know has been trained to use it, and who has a motive to kill the person who ended up dead. Your lawyer is going to have a wasted journey, because we’re going to take you back to Prague as soon as a suitable transport arrives. I hope he doesn’t bill you for the two-way trip, because ten hours of a lawyer’s time can be very expensive.’

  A nap in the police station staff room was not particularly comfortable, but Slonský saw no point in paying for a hotel given that it was 4 a.m. before they gave up questioning Brown. After a few hours’ sleep and a healthy breakfast the detectives returned to Prague. Slonský was much more inclined to talk on the way back than he had been on the outward journey, but he still refused to discuss Captain Grigar’s role, arguing that he should put everything to Grigar in person.

  ‘Sir, wasn’t there a lot of guesswork in the story you put to Brown? What hard evidence have we got?’ Navrátil enquired.

  ‘We’ve got the wedding certificate and we’ve got Brown’s service record, which gives the details of his parents, by the way. The coincidence of his mother’s maiden name being von Troppau-Freudenthal was interesting enough, but the Americans helpfully noted that his father was himself an army veteran, so I asked for his record too, from which I pieced together their movements in 1945-6.’

  ‘So how long have you known this, sir?’

  ‘Not that long. Don’t worry, I wasn’t keeping it all from you. Mucha only retrieved the marriage certificate in the last couple of days. It was you who put me onto it all.’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  ‘You plural, not you singular. It was that kind and thoughtful gift of yours.’

  ‘The sausage championship?’

  ‘Yes. Remember that the criminals distracted our attention from one crime by staging a second one. I didn’t think that was the motive in Brown’s case, but I got to thinking that maybe we were seeing a connection that wasn’t quite as we imagined it. And since the only reason I could think of for Hrdlička to do what he did was that he’d jumped to the conclusion that the Opava incidents and the trafficking of girls were connected. So they were, but only in the sense that the same people were hired. Nejedlý had met up with Savović and Brukić on one of his plum-buying missions and was working with them. When Brown needed some heavies Nejedlý told him where he could find them. And when Savović and Brukić needed a bolthole when they were kicked out of Bosnia, Nejedlý found them a place in the same office building. Nejedlý sat in the middle. It’s hard to imagine a less competent criminal than Nejedlý, but he made it all possible.’

  ‘What about Milena and Daniela, sir?’ asked Peiperová.

  ‘I think Milena really did kill herself. We might have a try at getting a murder conviction, but it won’t be easy. There’s no real evidence that the Bosnians were involved in anything more than disposing of her body. The wounding of Daniela is a different thing. Once she has recovered I expect she’ll be able to give us a good identification of the people involved. She has already fingered Brukić as one of those who took part in it. The only concern is that she wants to go back to Bosnia and we need to be sure she’ll return to Prague to give evidence. She’ll get protection in Sarajevo but it’s not impossible that Savović’s friends will threaten her.’

  ‘Sir, it’s a bit underhand, but if we were to guarantee the cost of her operations she’d have a reason for coming back here,’ Peiperová remarked.

  ‘It’s a good thought. And having been wounded on Czech soil she’s entitled to compensation here. We’ll pick up a tidy sum when we get Savović’s business assets seized, which would more than cover the healthcare. Make her the offer, lass, and I’ll get it organised with the Director. In any event, I want you to keep in touch with her.’

  ‘She has nothing to keep her here,’ N
avrátil chipped in. ‘She certainly wouldn’t want to go back to dancing in clubs.’

  ‘Ah, I’m glad you mentioned that,’ Slonský beamed. ‘Our respected leader had an answer to that.’

  ‘The Director, sir?’

  ‘No, Navrátil; Captain Lukas. Remember that Daniela plays the flute and piccolo. One of Lukas’ daughters is studying music at the Conservatoire. I can never remember which one.’

  ‘Eliška, sir,’ Peiperová inserted, causing Slonský to marvel once more at how people can ever remember all these trivia like names and places.

  ‘Yes, that one. She’s managed to get the loan of some instruments and Daniela can practise there for a while. Eliška reckons there’s probably some work going for a good flute player.’

  ‘Ah, the wanderer returns,’ said Mucha. He picked up a small folded note and held it out on his open hands like an altar boy holding a copy of the Gospels.

  ‘For me? How kind,’ said Slonský. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says that the Director of Criminal Police presents his compliments and wishes you to get your backside over to see him immediately. He wants to see you.’

  ‘That’s good, because I want to see him.’ He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Can you babysit this pair? It’s a shame we don’t have a crèche.’

  ‘A small ball pool in the foyer would be an option. But I’ll see they get a hot drink and a biscuit.’

  ‘Very good. Don’t let Navrátil have anything with bright food colouring in it or he won’t sleep after lunch.’

  Slonský ascended the stairs and straightened the nondescript piece of maroon cloth that passed for his tie before pushing the swing doors open and approaching the Director’s office. Kuchař was sitting outside and jumped to his feet when Slonský approached.

  ‘Good morning, Acting Captain Slonský.’

  ‘Good morning, Kuchař. I have been summoned.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll just let the Director know you’re here.’

  ‘If I just walk in, he’ll know that for himself.’