by Graham Brack
‘I suppose I must. Let me see.’ After some leafing through his diary he recited a number.
‘Thank you. We may be able to track her address from this.’
‘I hope so. It wasn’t far from the restaurant, somewhere near the Slavia stadium in Strahov.’
Slonský drained his cup.
‘I’m sorry, I’m stopping you finishing your coffee, Minister. We may have to ask your wife to verify the time you arrived home.’
‘Of course. I’m not sure she’ll be able to help you — she was already in bed when I got in.’
‘Yes, that’s what she told me,’ Slonský said, causing Lukas’ eyebrows to jerk violently upwards. ‘You see, Minister, we’ve been keeping something from you. Before she died, Miss Gruberová made love to a gentleman friend. Naturally, if there had been someone in the flat, we would have assumed that he was responsible. But since you say there wasn’t, that poses a difficulty.’
‘I said I didn’t see any lights, Lieutenant. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t an intruder in the dark.’
‘Understood. And of course we’ll check out that line of enquiry once we know where the flat is.’
‘Excellent. I’m sure we all want you to redouble your efforts to catch the man responsible for this outrage. Captain, I expect you to put all the resources you can into the investigation. If I can help in any way, please let me know.’
‘That’s very good of you, Minister,’ Lukas answered, inclining his head in acknowledgement.
The Minister drained the last of his coffee from his cup. Slonský jumped to his feet, produced a plastic envelope from his pocket, and dropped the cup into it.
‘I’m sorry, Minister. I was taking your consent for granted,’ he announced guilelessly.
There was a long silence.
‘Of course. Now, if there’s nothing else …’
‘That’s very good of you, Minister!’ Slonský mimicked Lukas’ comment as they walked through the polished corridors back to their car.
‘It would do you no harm to learn some manners, Slonský. Fancy snatching the Minister’s cup like that.’
‘It’s evidence. His DNA will be on it.’
‘You could have asked him to give a swab.’
‘Men like him don’t give swabs. He’d probably get an underling to do it for him.’
‘Do you seriously expect to get a match with the swab from that young lady?’
‘No. He’s probably got an underling who does that for him too.’
‘Slonský!’
‘Well, his type makes me sick.’
‘He is our superior, Slonský.’
‘That’s why he makes me sick. How can you look up to someone who cheats on his wife so flagrantly?’
‘I remind you, Slonský, that he denied having intercourse with Miss Gruberová.’
‘And that’s another reason why he makes me sick. He’s a liar.’
‘Innocent until proven guilty.’
‘Guilty as hell in my eyes. Does he take us for idiots? The girl is holding his hand in that picture. You only have to see the look in her eyes to know that she isn’t going to be bonking someone else a couple of hours later. Even if he took her home at ten, which I accept, is it likely that he left her there and within a couple of hours someone had arrived, had persuaded her into bed, had her and strangled her? I don’t think so.’
‘I grant appearances are against him. What do we do now?’
‘I drop this cup in to Novák. It might be good if you signed the evidence bag too. Then we wait for the DNA match. And if, as I expect, it matches the swab, we turn up at the Minister’s office with a bunch of squad cars, throw a blanket over his head and march him outside while the press photographers click away merrily.’
‘No, Slonský, you’ll do no such thing. The arrest of a minister is a very serious business and must be handled properly. I must inform my superiors who will in turn report to the Prime Minister so that he can make arrangements for the continuity of government.’
‘We mustn’t give him the chance to destroy evidence, sir. He mustn’t know we’re coming. Please emphasise that to the Prime Minister.’
‘I don’t think I’ll … do you think so? The Prime Minister?’
‘Well, you’re the senior officer. And your bosses are too spineless to want to tell the PM one of his ministers has murdered a young woman.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean. But I can’t ask the Director of the Police Service to act with discretion and tact. He won’t listen to me. Perhaps the best bet is if the Director and I go to see the Prime Minister while you get your men into position at the Ministry ready for our signal.’
‘My men? I don’t have men. I have a man.’
‘Yes, where is Navrátil? He was outside the Minister’s office.’
‘He’s been doing a little job for me, sir.’
Lukas stopped dead, goggling at Slonský’s back as the detective strode away.
‘Slonský! Tell me there has been no impropriety here!’
Slonský carried on walking.
‘All right, sir. There has been no impropriety here.’
‘Slonský! Do I see your fingers crossed behind your back?’
Navrátil was in the back seat when they got in.
‘Been waiting long?’ asked Slonský.
‘Long enough,’ Navrátil replied.
‘Well, we’re here now. What did you find out?’
‘His typist didn’t know her. The doormen were sure she had never been inside the building, and she hadn’t signed in.’
‘False name?’
‘You need formal identification to get in, sir. Unless she had something that persuaded the security men she was someone else, she hasn’t been in.’
‘She could have pestered him by phone.’
Lukas felt the need to interrupt. ‘Look, what is this? Are you suggesting that she came to the ministry to make a scene?’
‘Well, if she had we’d have a motive for killing her. A public figure can’t have women turning up at his office alleging intimacy.’
‘You’ve got her phone number. You can check the calls she made.’
‘It’s a landline. She must have had a mobile phone.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘She was the mistress of a busy man. There are bound to be last minute changes to plans and she can’t sit by the phone waiting for instructions on the off chance. He must have been able to keep in touch with her. Besides, how many women of her age don’t have mobile phones these days?’
‘So we must see whether her address was used for billing a mobile phone.’
‘And his. He may have given her a phone. She won’t have called his office or home, so the chances are that she called a mobile phone he had. Which is probably now at the bottom of the Vltava. If you’ll drop us off here, sir, Navrátil and I have some business in this area.’
The captain obliged, and Slonský watched him drive around the corner and disappear from sight.
‘Nice uniform. Shiny buttons.’
‘What urgent business do we have here, sir?’
‘The Minister told us to redouble our efforts, Navrátil. So we’re going for two beers and two sausages.’
The desk sergeant leaned over the counter in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Do I detect that substances are about to hit the fan?’
‘You do, old friend. I am taking aim at this very moment. But how did you know?’
The lean figure reached under the counter. ‘Technician First Class Spehar left this for you.’
‘Good old Technician First Class Spehar! The title suits him.’
‘He’s always first class?’
‘No, he’s always a technician. Now, Navrátil, let’s hide ourselves in some discreet place and see what Spehar has to tell us.’
Slonský opened the door to the main corridor and held it open while he bellowed. ‘I hope this report explains why the Minister of the Interior denied shagging that woman who was found d
ead a couple of hours after he left her.’ He winked at the desk sergeant. ‘Uninformed gossip is a terrible thing, eh? Better to have facts to work on.’
‘The right and proper order of things, Navrátil,’ Slonský explained, ‘is that I sit with my feet up scanning the report while you make coffee. Instant will do. Top drawer of the filing cabinet.’
‘There are no files in this drawer, sir.’
‘That’s because it’s marked “Unsolved Crimes”, so I don’t need a cabinet as big as that. Plenty of space for coffee and other essentials.’
Navrátil took the kettle to fill it, while Slonský read Spehar’s report.
‘Does it get us anywhere, sir?’
‘A load of technical stuff about the paper used, but it’s widely available. There are no fingerprints on the photograph except ours, but there are quite a lot on the envelope, presumably including the postman, someone at the sorting office, and so on. But it’s not unknown for blackmailers to forget they’ve handled an envelope when they bought it, so we live in hope.’
‘You think it’s blackmail?’
‘No, or our informant would have sent the picture to the Minister, since no doubt he would pay better than we do. I thought of blackmail because it involves stuffing pictures in envelopes. Anyway, if we get a suspect it may be that his prints will match.’
Slonský frowned. ‘Sadly it’s a self-seal envelope.’
‘Sir?’
‘He didn’t need to lick it to seal it. Spehar has sent off a swab for DNA testing but he doesn’t expect it to be very useful. Now, he says the address is more promising.’
‘Address?’
‘Navrátil, can you stop answering everything I say with a question? Yes, the address. My address. Somehow the sender knew that I was working on the case.’
‘It was in the newspapers.’
‘It was in one newspaper, Navrátil. The others that named me didn’t come out until after this was posted. Incidentally, it was posted in the Ninth district. It shows no sign of being folded so it may have been posted at a post office rather than in a street postbox. Spehar says the address has been computer-generated using a laser printer.’
‘Meaning?’
‘There you go again, another question! Meaning that it’s more likely to have been done at work than at home. Not conclusive, of course — there must be plenty of people with a laser printer at home — but most people with home computers will have inkjet printers. And Spehar, clever chap that he is, notes that if we find the computer his whizzkid colleagues may be able to prove that my address was in its memory.’
‘It doesn’t advance us too much, then.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. But then I’ve read the last paragraph. Of course, I already knew it, but it’s good to know that Spehar comes to the same conclusion as me. Did you look at the envelope?’
‘Of course. Plain brown, a bit bigger than A4.’
‘The stamp?’
‘Of course — he’ll have licked the stamp!’
‘No, he dipped it in a bit of water. No saliva on it at all, I reckon, but Spehar is checking that. Look at the address.’
Navrátil held the plastic evidence envelope at arm’s length and tilted it to catch the maximum amount of light.
‘He knows you’re in the Criminal Detection department, and your rank.’
‘It would be odd if it wasn’t being investigated by the Criminal Detection department, wouldn’t it? And my rank was in the newspaper. Look at the address, Navrátil!”
Navrátil shook his head. ‘No, nothing. It’s spelled wrongly, of course, but —’
‘At last! It’s spelled wrongly. He’s missed the haček on the ‘š’ of Holešovice. Now, that suggests two things. First, he probably doesn’t live in the district, or he’d have written it so many times it would be second nature. But the more important point is that it doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t see any meaningful difference between an ‘s’ and an ‘š’. He’s a foreigner, Navrátil.’
‘Maybe his printer just doesn’t print hačeks properly.’
‘Ah, but Technician First Class Spehar has thought of that. “There is no sign that any attempt has been made to deposit laser toner in the haček field,” he writes.’
‘Okay, but maybe he deliberately spelled it wrongly to put us off the scent so we would think he wasn’t a Czech.’
Slonský’s face fell. ‘You’re not as green as you are cabbage-looking, Navrátil. He may indeed. But he knows who the Minister of the Interior is by sight, and not many Czechs would pass that one.’
‘He’s one of the more recognisable ministers, sir.’
‘He’s certainly one of the shortest, Navrátil. What do you think — one metre fifty-five? And did you notice his desk layout?’
‘I was outside, sir.’
‘So you were. Well, Navrátil, you’ll have to rely on my powers of observation. The Minister used his mouse with his left hand.’
‘So?’
‘So maybe this time Novák has hit the nail on the head. Our Minister is a left-handed dwarf.’
Chapter 5
Sergeant Adamec was a lugubrious, slow-moving walrus of a policeman who had been detailed by the Strahov station hierarchy to help Slonský find Gruberová’s apartment. The details given by the Minister were no use at all. He described a couple of landmarks and a very general description of the building that seemed to be applicable to most of the houses in the area. As for the telephone number, it proved to be an internet café and nobody there knew where she lived. Adamec had checked the station records but nothing had come to their attention, and the district council did not have a record of her either.
‘Not surprising if she was renting, though,’ Adamec muttered. ‘It would be the landlord who appeared there.’
Slonský sighed. He had met some miserable swines in his time but it was depressing him just to be on the same planet as Adamec.
‘It can’t be every day that the Minister of the Interior comes to Strahov. Somebody must have recognised him.’
‘Maybe it’s because nobody recognised him that he came here,’ said Adamec. ‘Bit of peace and quiet. I could do with that myself.’ He sat on a windowsill and mopped his brow. It was a cold day, but Adamec was struggling after this unaccustomed effort. ‘It’s all go, this serious crime lark. I don’t know how you stick it.’
‘Trying to find the killer of a fellow citizen helps to keep me going,’ barked Slonský, who realised immediately how pompous it sounded. ‘Let’s apply a bit of lateral thinking. If you had a bit on the side and wanted to get a flat for her round here, where would you look?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But it’s your area!’ Slonský snarled.
‘I know,’ Adamec explained in his most reasonable tone, as if addressing a particularly dim five-year-old. ‘But I don’t have a mistress, so I don’t know how a man who has one would think.’
‘Humour me,’ whined Slonský. ‘Let’s pretend.’
‘I don’t know if I can. It’s so far out of my experience.’
Slonský removed his battered grey fedora to let the steam escape from his head, pinched the crown into shape, and replaced it carefully.
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes,’ said Adamec, fishing in his pocket to produce an elderly black and white mugshot. ‘Maria. Twenty-eight years together. She’s a gem.’
‘Yes,’ said Slonský. ‘She must be. Children?’
‘Little Petr and Little Maria. That’s them there. Of course, that was ten years ago. They’re bigger now.’
‘They would be,’ agreed Slonský. ‘Your name wouldn’t be Petr, would it?’
‘Yes!’ Adamec cried. ‘How did you know?’
‘Lucky guess. Or detective’s intuition. Well, suppose young Maria came to you and said “Dad, I want a flat of my own here, respectable area, somewhere I can keep nice”, what would you say?’
‘I’d say “You stay at home with your old dad until you’re ready to
get married, young miss”.’
‘And suppose she was ready to get married?’
‘Then I’d keep out of it. She’s her husband’s responsibility then. Take my word for it, coming between a girl and her intended is a bad move, Lieutenant. You can’t win. Anyway, why all these questions? Is your daughter moving out?’
Slonský was beginning to feel that murderers may not all be bad people. Some might just have spent an hour with someone like Sergeant Adamec.
‘I don’t have a daughter. I was trying to imagine how the murder victim would choose an apartment.’
‘But didn’t you say she was someone’s mistress?’
‘Yes. The Minister’s.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t have chosen, would she? He would.’
‘I thought that, but he says he doesn’t know where it is.’
‘So how could she afford this unless he was paying for it? Did she have another job somewhere?’
‘If she did, they haven’t missed her.’
‘Maybe she did work that you don’t have to clock in for. On the game, for instance.’
‘Too clean.’
‘Lap-dancing?’
‘Possible. But then, how did the Minister meet her?’
‘Maybe he goes lap-dancing.’
‘That is too disgusting a picture for words, Adamec.’
‘I meant as a customer, not a performer.’
‘Thank goodness for small mercies. She must have had friends, though. Young women are sociable, aren’t they? They all have friends. How come none of them has tried to contact us?’
‘Perhaps they don’t read newspapers. Watch a lot of television, though. Here, are you going to do one of those reconstructions on the television?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether Tom Cruise is free to play you. Come on, Adamec, you and I are old-timers. We don’t understand this modern world. If she doesn’t have a tax number, and she doesn’t seem to be on the game, how does she afford a flat?’
‘Easy. Lover boy pays for it.’
‘Then he must be paying in cash, because he knows we can get his bank records and then he’d be exposed as a liar if we find he’s been paying her rent.’