[Josef Slonský Investigations 06] - Laid in Earth

by Graham Brack

  Valentin knocked back a small schnapps. ‘It’s going to make your job a lot more difficult if criminals start taking away the bodies of people killed by other criminals,’ he said. ‘So where is he going to bury the spare corpse he’s now got? Why not just leave it where it was?’

  ‘They wouldn’t both fit.’

  ‘Couldn’t he dig a bigger hole?’

  ‘And what would he do with the soil?’

  ‘Well, it’s got to be easier to get rid of some soil than a second-hand stiff.’

  Slonský’s signal had finally been spotted by a waiter and a beer arrived in front of him. ‘That’s a good point though,’ he said. ‘What’s he going to do with that other body? He can’t just put it in the freezer.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Valentin asked.

  ‘That’s where he kept the other one.’

  Valentin was completely confused. ‘He put a body in the freezer. Why?’

  ‘To stop it going off, I suppose.’

  ‘Why take it home? You can’t simply plonk it on the sofa. It’ll take a hell of a lot of explaining when you have visitors.’

  ‘These are all good questions, old friend,’ Slonský replied, ‘I just don’t have good answers.’

  ‘And where was all this?’

  Slonský lowered his voice. ‘The Red House.’

  ‘Jesus Maria! You’ve been in there? What were you thinking of?’

  ‘The body was in the garden. Anyway, it’s a teacher training college now.’

  ‘Yes, they used to pretend their buildings had benign purposes. Didn’t it occur to you that if there’s a body in the grounds of the Red House there’s no great mystery about who killed him? And if they buried him there, they didn’t want anyone asking any questions about him?’

  ‘Whoever he is — or she is — they’re entitled to have their killing investigated. Whatever happened to the fearless reporter?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘He disappeared once other fearless reporters of his own age started getting banged up,’ Valentin replied.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything in your files about the Red House?’

  ‘Certainly not! And if I find anything, I’ll burn it.’

  ‘It was closed nearly twenty years ago. Those days are gone now.’

  ‘Yes, Josef, but those people who worked there aren’t, and they still know all those clever little tricks with lighted matches under your fingernails and steel wool on your scrotum.’

  ‘You aren’t cowed, are you?’

  ‘Are you serious? Of course I am. And so should you be. The people who ran the Red House were among the most sadistic bastards this country has ever produced.’

  ‘They’ll be old men now,’ Slonský said dismissively.

  ‘Right. So they’ll be grumpy old sadistic bastards. They’re the worst kind. Be very, very careful, Josef. These fellows can be dangerous.’

  Chapter 4

  Novák had managed to deduce a few extra snippets from information from his examination of the corpse. The woman stood 164cm tall, had naturally light brown hair that had been tinted blonde, pale blue-grey eyes, did not appear to have had children, and was probably at or around the menopause, given the density of her bones. She had a small scar above her left eyebrow and Novák thought she probably wore spectacles most of the time though there were none with the body. And it seemed that her body had been wrapped in a dark red or maroon carpet or rug.

  ‘Is that all?’ said Slonský.

  Novák replied by putting the phone down.

  A few minutes later, the fax machine delivered Slonský a photograph of the body with a note that Novák had sent it to the police artist to have a version made with the eyes open.

  Jerneková took the details Novák had provided and compared them with those of the women known to be missing. She did not have photographs for all of them, but it was soon clear that there were only four who were about the right size, colouring and age. A quick glimpse at a photograph ruled out one, whose face shape was wrong. There were no images for two, and the fourth had only been reported missing that morning and had been seen on Saturday, so it seemed very unlikely that she could have been killed, put in a freezer and buried in time to be found on Tuesday, particularly since the burial must have taken place on Saturday or Sunday.

  ‘Right,’ said Slonský, ‘get yourself over to the people who reported the women missing and show them this photograph. I know her eyes are closed, but they can at least tell you if it’s definitely not her.’ Too late, he remembered the new chain of command. ‘If that’s all right with Lieutenant Peiperová,’ he quickly added.

  ‘You’re in charge,’ said Peiperová amicably.

  ‘Why?’ asked Slonský. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

  There was a ritual that had developed over the years that Navrátil had learned could not be varied. When Dr Novák said he had some findings, Slonský went to him, and not the other way around; and if Slonský went to Novák, he usually expected Navrátil to go too, partly because it provided him with a driver.

  In the twenty-six months that Navrátil had worked for Slonský — after the first couple of days — there had never been any misunderstanding about their roles. While Slonský was entitled to a police car, and held a driving licence (albeit one arranged by the Army after he attended tank-driving school), he detested driving in Prague and was very happy to get someone else to drive him around. That was usually Navrátil or Peiperová. Slonský had yet to experience Krob’s driving, and fortunately for Krob he had not suffered Slonský’s either. Jerneková did not drive, but her name had been put down for driving lessons at the police school.

  Slonský would drive on the major roads or anywhere outside Prague, maintaining a steady five kilometres an hour over whatever the speed limit currently was, but even then he would look to hand over the wheel when he felt peckish so that he could use both hands for coffee and a pastry. Peiperová had once woken from a nap on a long journey to discover Slonský with a coffee in one hand and a párek in the other, managing the steering wheel with his two smallest fingers and a knee, and after that she had been quick to volunteer to drive.

  Novák’s phone call summoned Slonský, who grabbed his hat and coat and beckoned Navrátil to come with him. For many trips around Prague public transport was quicker, but since there were parking spaces outside the mortuary Navrátil collected a car and soon they pulled up outside the building and trotted up the steps to the familiar doors.

  Novák was in his office, clad in an immaculate white coat with an impressive selection of ballpoint pens in his breast pocket. He invited his guests to sit and blinked at them a couple of times through the thick lenses of his glasses before reaching for a small transparent plastic box which he slid across the desktop until it rested in front of Slonský.

  ‘A finger bone, probably the right ring finger’s lowest section. It belonged to a man, and that’s about all we can say for certain. My best guess is that it had been in the ground there for twenty years or more, but it’s hard to be definite and I wouldn’t swear to that in court.’

  ‘Age at death?’

  ‘A mature man, so let’s say older than twenty-five, and no arthritic changes at the top surface, though if there were they might not have survived anyway.’

  ‘Height?’

  ‘She was 164. He was around six or seven centimetres taller. I’m not going to try to project a person’s height from a single finger bone.’

  Navrátil rarely asked questions of Novák, preferring to leave it to Slonský, but now that he had progressed to the rank of lieutenant he felt empowered to ask his own. ‘Does it surprise you that you only found one bone?’ he asked.

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ Novák replied. ‘Someone working after dark, as they must have done, without anything more than a lantern or flashlight, must have been very careful indeed to collect all the material.’

  ‘Perhaps only one bone was buried in the first place,’ Slonský suggested.

  ‘Who
would only bury one bone?’ asked Novák.

  ‘Bobík.’

  ‘Bobík? Who is Bobík?’

  ‘My childhood dog,’ Slonský replied. ‘Never buried two bones in the same place. I suppose it’s some sort of risk management strategy for dogs.’

  ‘Slonský, neither of the bodies were buried by a dog,’ Novák said. ‘In fact, the woman was buried by a fairly strong individual. She was around fifty-eight kilos in weight.’

  ‘That brings us back to the question of how the killer got her over the wall,’ Slonský commented. ‘And the only way to determine that is to go to the Red House again and heave a body over the wall. Navrátil, how much do you weigh?’

  Having ascertained that Navrátil tipped the scales at around sixty-four kilos, Slonský was attempting to lift him over the wall, to the amusement of those passing by on the lane that ran down the side of the Red House’s south wall.

  ‘There must have been two of them,’ Slonský decided. ‘Even with your co-operation I can’t get you up that high. Are you sure you’re only sixty-four kilos, lad?’

  ‘Last time I weighed myself, sir. Of course, I’d just come out of the shower.’

  ‘Unless you’ve got unusually heavy underwear that wouldn’t make much of a difference.’

  Navrátil was jumping up and down on the spot.

  ‘What are you doing, Navrátil?’

  ‘Trying to see the grave, sir.’

  ‘Why don’t we just walk round and look at it?’

  ‘I’m wondering how he would know where to put her over the wall. It’s not necessarily the case that she went over at the point nearest to the grave.’

  Slonský scratched his chin in thought. ‘That’s true.’ He looked along the length of the wall. ‘But there’s nowhere substantially lower, is there?’

  ‘No, sir, but perhaps there’s a place where he would be less conspicuous to passers-by.’

  They strolled along the wall. At one point there were bushes against the wall, which militated against getting close enough to pass a corpse over it, but Slonský suddenly stopped and pointed upwards. ‘When we get inside, let’s see what’s behind those trees, shall we?’

  If Navrátil was unaffected by walking through the gates, the same could hardly be said of Slonský, who felt a shiver as he crossed the boundary.

  ‘It looks so ordinary,’ Navrátil remarked.

  ‘Evil often does,’ Slonský replied. ‘If you look at a gallery of serial killers they resemble people you’d meet in a post office.’

  The burial site was still roped off with incident tape, so Navrátil could see which way to go and strode to the flower bed.

  ‘When you arrived, sir, was the whole flower bed disturbed?’

  ‘Good question. No, when you stand with your back to the wall, the left end was slightly higher than the right.’

  ‘Then how did the killer know where to dig?’ Navrátil asked.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said Slonský, though he was beginning to understand a little better himself.

  ‘Well, the killer arrives with body number two. But he didn’t just come across body number one, did he? If it was a surprise to him there was no reason to take it away. He could either leave body two here anyway or, if he wanted to avoid detection, he takes it somewhere else. It’s a nuisance for him, but either way he leaves body one. What point is there in taking it away unless he always intended to do that?’

  ‘If Novák is right,’ Slonský replied, ‘and he usually is, then the murderer invested a lot of time in collecting a set of bones and taking them away. And while a red carpet may have been fine for bringing an intact body here, it wouldn’t be much help in taking a disconnected skeleton away, so we have to assume that he came with some kind of holdall or sack.’

  ‘In which event he came prepared, and we can deduce that he knew that there was a body here,’ Navrátil said.

  ‘That puts a different complexion on things, doesn’t it? For a start, how did he know that?’

  ‘And how did he know where it was, given that the gardener didn’t? He didn’t have to dig the entire bed up.’ Navrátil paced the length of the bed. ‘This must be about five metres, sir, but he picks the correct two metres to dig up.’

  ‘Not so fast, lad. He may have started in the middle and extended in the direction he needed to go once he found something.’

  ‘Perhaps. But either way, he knew there was a body under this flower bed.’

  Slonský glanced around in each direction. ‘I can’t see any obvious markers or alignments.’

  ‘Go back twenty or thirty years, sir. You’ve had a prisoner die under questioning and you need to dispose of the body. What would make you put it here? Why not right at the back?’

  ‘There must have been something here that made it a good pick. Nowadays it’s too open. You’d see that the ground had been dug up.’

  Navrátil had walked back to the main driveway and was counting steps again.

  ‘What is it, lad?’

  ‘The path forks north and south, but the south fork is shorter than the north one. You see, sir, it’s closer to the building. I bet it wasn’t built that way.’

  ‘It would have been symmetrical at the outset. Obviously that little wing that juts out on the north-east side wasn’t there then, but otherwise it looks like two identical sides to the building, north and south.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but why put the main door here, in the west side, and then put the lawn to the right? Wouldn’t the building be in the middle of the site? And wouldn’t the main lawn be in front of the main door?’

  ‘I’m not an architect, Navrátil. Those fellows have some funny ideas.’

  ‘It would be good to know what was here before.’

  ‘There’s absolutely no chance that the StB will have produced a guidebook. I’ll be surprised if we can find a photograph from the last fifty years.’

  ‘Maybe so, sir, but that wall isn’t new, so a photograph before that might give us a clue.’

  ‘You won’t let it rest, will you?’ Valentin sighed, as Slonský badgered him again.

  ‘Valentin, are you going to look for a photo in your archives or do I have to send a couple of heavies in with a warrant?’

  ‘Our editor wouldn’t be frightened of that.’

  ‘I could send Peiperová and Jerneková.’

  ‘Now let’s not be hasty. There’s no need for that sort of threat.’

  ‘You’ve never met Jerneková.’

  ‘You said she was like a slightly more female version of the young you, and that’s an awful enough image for me. I’ll see what I can find.’

  ‘Good. Drink up.’

  ‘Drink up? Josef, it’s not even half past seven.’

  ‘No time like the present. We’ll get a bottle of something warming to take with us. I imagine that your office can offer us a couple of glasses for the schnapps.’

  ‘We’re not complete savages, you know.’

  Slonský tucked the schnapps in his coat pocket and they took the Metro to Valentin’s newspaper’s office.

  ‘I’ll have to get you past security somehow,’ Valentin muttered.

  ‘Security? Is this the usual muscle-bound goons in black t-shirts?’

  ‘No, it’s a couple of old soldiers who need a bit of pocket money.’

  Slonský produced his badge and held it up for inspection.

  ‘I don’t want to be awkward…’ began one of the guards.

  ‘Then don’t be,’ Slonský responded. ‘If any shooting starts, just keep down behind your desks. My men will keep you safe. But mum’s the word, eh? Don’t want to jeopardise a carefully planned police operation, do we?’

  The two old soldiers agreed at once that they would not indulge in any heroics, would keep away from the windows and would not tell anyone Slonský was inside the building.

  ‘Easy peasy,’ muttered Slonský as he and Valentin climbed the stairs. ‘No-one will ever know I was here.’

  The office was surprisi
ngly quiet given that a new issue was going to press in just a few hours.

  ‘A lot of the journalists work from home and email their articles in these days,’ Valentin explained.

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘No, for two reasons. My typewriter doesn’t do email, and I wouldn’t work at home when I could be sitting in a nice warm bar.’ Valentin pointed to an office where a light could be seen. ‘That’s a stroke of luck. The picture editor is in. Come on.’

  Valentin effected introductions and explained that Captain Slonský was involved in a case that required him to look for old photographs of the Red House.

  ‘I doubt we’d have any,’ the picture editor argued. ‘The StB were funny about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Before their time,’ Slonský explained. ‘I want to know what it was like before they got their hands on it.’

  ‘Well, our archives only go back to the end of the First World War,’ the editor said, ‘but we have access to some online libraries of photographs that go back further. What was it called before it became the Red House?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was the home of some baron or other.’

  ‘Okay, let’s start there. I’ll bring up a map of Prague and you can show me where exactly it is.’

  Slonský soon located it, and the editor, who had introduced himself as Matěj, then found a map of Prague in 1908 so that they could compare the modern and antique versions.

  ‘There we are,’ said Matěj. ‘It’s described as the home of the Baron Pfarrenstein. I’ve heard of him. He was a minor Austrian baron who married the daughter of a Czech noble and came here because that’s where his wife’s money was. He was small fry in Vienna but a big fish in Prague.’

  Matěj found a photograph of Pfarrenstein and displayed it on his monitor. A small, tubby man with a black spade-shaped beard and pince-nez, his coat was embellished with a number of insignia and medals and he wore a sash over his waistcoat.

  ‘There are fifteen photographs in this particular library of the house,’ Matěj announced, and displayed them as thumbnails on the screen. None showed anything other than the actual house.