[Josef Slonský Investigations 06] - Laid in Earth

by Graham Brack

  ‘I wasn’t thinking particularly of that,’ Slonský replied, ‘but thank you anyway.’

  ‘Where do you propose to start?’ Rezek demanded.

  ‘The forensic scientists will complete their report soon. Lieutenant Peiperová and Officer Jerneková will search her flat for any clues about her movements. You haven’t asked me where her body was found.’

  ‘If you wish me to know, no doubt you will tell me.’

  ‘It’s a place that might have a meaning for people of our generation. She was in the grounds of the Red House.’ For just a moment there were clear signs in Rezek’s face that this meant something to him. ‘Can you think, General, of any reason why someone would go to a lot of trouble to leave her there?’

  ‘No. I’m sure she would not have gone to such a place voluntarily.’

  ‘But you are familiar with the building and its past use?’

  ‘I’m not a child, Captain. You want to know if I have any connection with it. And you will no doubt have discovered that I was previously a General in the StB.’

  Slonský had not, but this had saved him a bit of work in the files. Since the lines between the Army and the security police were blurred at the best of times, he had suspected that this might have been the case.

  ‘And did you ever work in the Red House?’ he asked.

  ‘From time to time. We all did, when our cases demanded it. But I have not set foot in the place for nearly twenty years.’

  Slonský stood to indicate that the interview was over. ‘Thank you for your assistance, General. We will keep in touch. But now the ladies will drive you home so that you can be with your wife. We have specially trained support officers —’

  ‘Thank you, that will not be necessary.’

  Rezek shook Slonský’s hand and strode from the room, paying no attention to the two women who were compelled to run behind him. Peiperová responded first, with Jerneková straggling behind because she had stayed to exchange a word or two with Slonský.

  ‘Callous bastard, isn’t he?’ she said.

  Chapter 6

  Slonský could think of no better way to collect information on a journalist than to ask another journalist, and since Valentin was a creature of habit who spent most of the hours of daylight in one or other of the nearby bars, it took him only ten minutes to track him down.

  ‘Petr Vlk?’ Valentin asked. ‘Of course I remember him. You must, too.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Petr Vlk? Of course you do.’

  ‘I say I don’t,’ Slonský repeated. ‘Maybe I should, but I don’t.’

  ‘He was a high flyer about a generation ago. Used to front up that programme on television. His dad was something in the Army, I think.’

  ‘I’ve met the dad. Ex-StB General. Nasty piece of work.’

  ‘That’ll be the one,’ Valentin confirmed. ‘Well, his son was much the same. Got somewhere on the back of Daddy’s name. But he wasn’t called Vlk then.’

  ‘His dad is General Rezek,’ Slonský told him.

  ‘Rezek! That’s it. He changed to Vlk when stories came out about what his dad had been up to. There was a spectacular falling out. The son thought he was bulletproof, but he forgot that Daddy giveth and Daddy can taketh away, so when he turned on his father publicly he got sacked by the state broadcaster.’

  ‘Why is that not a surprise?’

  ‘And since the standard of his work was even lower than theirs, he couldn’t get a job for ages. He tried to attach himself to Havel and the Charter 77 mob, but they thought he was an agent provocateur planted by his father, so they never took him in. He finally managed to reinvent himself as a theatre and restaurant critic. This allows him to indulge his favourite hobby.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Getting hammered at other people’s expense. He’s very good at it,’ Valentin said admiringly.

  ‘You’re not too shabby yourself,’ Slonský replied, calling the waiter over for a refill.

  ‘I’m an amateur compared with him. For a start, I can hold my booze. By great good fortune, when I’ve had too much I just fall asleep. I’m no trouble to anyone.’

  Slonský edged away from Valentin along the bench seat.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Valentin asked.

  ‘Giving the Almighty a clearer target in case he decides to send down a thunderbolt. No trouble to anyone? What about the time you impersonated Tina Turner on the bar counter?’

  ‘I don’t remember that. Sure it was me?’

  ‘Dead certain.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d do. For a start I can’t sing.’

  ‘A fact which soon became all too clear.’

  Valentin shrugged. ‘You live and learn. Anyway, Vlk is still writing the occasional column for one of our competitors. He also seems to have cornered the market in those giveaway magazines you see in tourist centres, where he recommends restaurants that meet his key criteria.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘A willingness to pay a suitable fee and keep him in free dinners.’

  ‘That sounds like an expensive way to buy publicity.’

  ‘They probably don’t realise that when they sign up. So do you want to meet this Vlk character?’ Valentin asked.

  ‘I’ve got to tell him his sister has been killed.’

  ‘That won’t be fun. Shall I meet you here at seven o’clock?’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got to find Vlk, remember?’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to do. There’s no point trying to find him before, because he doesn’t get up until late afternoon.’

  You had to hand it to Sergeant Mucha. If there was anyone in the Czech police service who knew where to find a file, he was the one. It was widely believed that when the Wall came down and everyone knew what was going to happen next, the StB had burned all the incriminating files. There was good evidence for this, because many people recalled the Little Bonfires, a period of about a fortnight during which the country’s fire brigades were repeatedly called out to deal with fires in the middle of fields, many of which appeared to involve burning documents. It was true that the StB had started many fires and had burned a lot of documents, but it was barely scratching the surface. To Mucha’s certain knowledge at least four million pages had been retrieved and some lucky person spent all their working days scanning them into computers. Even if a particular file had been destroyed, there were usually so many cross-references in other documents that it could be reconstructed.

  Successive governments had tried to ensure that no traces of the StB remained, but even after thirteen and a half thousand people had been dismissed, a recent trawl had found eight hundred had managed to slip back into the police.

  Most former StB officers had just been sacked, but a selection had faced criminal charges as a result of evidence linking them to crimes or abuses, and it was this list that Mucha had been carefully scrutinising.

  He had an idea that he remembered one name, and checked on the police computer. Sure enough, the man had been arrested and charged with a serious assault leading to death. A little more delving produced the information that the victim had last been seen entering the Red House in 1985, and that the perpetrator was one of two men who had been jailed for twenty years. It was likely that they had been released, but if they could be found then perhaps one or other of them would be a helpful source of information about what had gone on there.

  There was no point in having a name if he could not find the man, though, so Mucha fetched himself some coffee and made himself comfortable for a long session in the databases.

  Given that Mucha and Slonský were of similar ages, it was instructive to contrast their attitudes to, and competence with, modern technology.

  Slonský was generally not permitted to review security videos until someone had verified that a copy had been made, following the regrettable incident with the “record” button following a supermarket robbery. He relied upon Navrátil to work the DVD player
in the Situation Control Room and was never quite sure which of the screens in there was going to show the images he wanted. Until Peiperová came to work for him, he had no idea that his telephone incorporated an answering machine, let alone how to retrieve the messages from it.

  Mucha, on the other hand, used the access to databases via the computer terminals at the front desk to good effect. In that respect he did not differ from hundreds of other officers in the Czech Police.

  Where he stood out was in his knowledge of the tens of thousands of files that had not yet been computerised, their contents and their whereabouts. And here he played mercilessly on the historical tendency of records officers throughout Prague going back to the early days of Communism, for whom one self-evident truth dictated their approach to requests for access.

  If you know a file exists, you’re probably entitled to see it.

  Westerners had introduced this strange notion of Freedom of Information, the idea that everything ought to be accessible to the citizen unless there were compelling reasons to prevent it. No such idealism had taken hold in the Czech Republic, where the prime purpose of archivists was generally to find a reason why you could not have the documents you wanted; but against that, the really sensitive stuff had always been subject to outright denial of existence. ‘You can’t have that file because it doesn’t exist’ had been a staple excuse of records staff for sixty years, but if you knew that it did exist that could only be because you were entitled to know of its existence and, ipso facto, you should be allowed to have it.

  Thus it was that Mucha emerged from a dusty warehouse clutching a battered folder relating to a prosecution in the mid-nineties which he tucked under his arm inside a new folder already housing a prison release certificate. He strode back to police headquarters and lost no time in skipping up the stairs to place them in the hands of Captain Slonský.

  This was where his plan came slightly adrift, because Captain Slonský was not there, and these were not documents that could just be left on a desk, so Mucha retraced his steps and headed for the canteen. If Slonský was not there either, he could ask Dumpy Anna if she had seen him, secure in the knowledge that it was unlikely that Slonský would go much more than ninety minutes between visits.

  As it happened, a familiar figure attracted his attention. Slonský was preparing to go out to find Vlk and since he did not know how long that would take, he thought he ought to top up his blood sugar with a pastry or two first.

  ‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Mucha.

  ‘Well, I’ve noticed that wherever I am, it’s always “here”,’ Slonský replied. ‘If I go anywhere else, by the time I get there it’s become “here” too.’

  ‘Odd, that. It happens to me too.’

  ‘Maybe we should ask someone about it.’

  ‘Or we could return to the real world and you could devote some attention to the file I have cunningly obtained for you.’

  ‘Did you sign it out?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Mucha replied.

  ‘Damn. That means I’ll have to remember to return it.’

  ‘No, it means I’ll have to remind you to return it.’

  ‘So who’s the lucky ex-inmate?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘A man by the name of Jiří Holub, ex-captain in the StB.’

  ‘And why does Ex-Captain Holub interest me?’

  ‘Because he was sent to prison for twenty years for the manslaughter of someone he was interrogating in the Red House.’

  ‘Is he still inside?’

  ‘No,’ Mucha replied, ‘released late last year at the two-thirds point of his sentence and transferred to the Probation and Mediation Service’s loving care.’

  ‘Conditional release, then.’

  ‘Six years and eight months left to serve if he is a naughty boy again.’

  ‘Spare me the reading of the file,’ Slonský said. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Holub and another officer, Mrázek, arrested someone back in 1985 for anti-state activities. I forget the victim’s name, but it’s in your file. They were convinced that he had a contact in a Western embassy who was passing and receiving information, so they questioned him to find out who it was. At some point they took him to the Red House to continue the interrogation. This had become necessary because a German journalist had been tipped off about the arrest and was hovering outside the police station asking awkward questions.’

  ‘So they covered Mr X with a blanket and chucked him in the back of a car?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘That’s a fair summary,’ Mucha replied. ‘You could almost have been there.’

  ‘Lucky guess. So he arrives at the Red House, and…’

  ‘It seems from the medical evidence that he had an asthma attack brought on by the stress. Holub and Mrázek delayed getting treatment for him, and he died. That’s why they were charged with manslaughter, by the way, rather than murder. The beating they’d given him contributed to his distress or shock, but on its own it wouldn’t have killed him.’

  ‘It’s a deliberate assault that caused him harm from which he died. But for them he’d have been alive the next day. I’ve have gone for the murder charge myself,’ Slonský said.

  ‘That’s immaterial. You’re not the Prosecutor.’

  ‘No, more’s the pity. Things would be very different if I —’

  ‘May I finish?’ Mucha interrupted.

  ‘Please do. Just stop waffling and get to the point.’

  ‘They decided the best thing to do was to return the body to the police station and let the police deal with it,’ Mucha continued. ‘Together they concocted a story that he’d had the attack in the station and died before medical help could arrive. Unfortunately, when the Wall came down and scores were being settled, one of their ex-colleagues decided to deflect attention from his own misdemeanours by shopping them. The denunciation on its own might not have been sufficient, had it not been for the happy chance that someone who knew the victim was on duty at the guard post by the main gate and vividly remembered him being brought in alive twelve hours after he had allegedly died in custody in the police station.’

  ‘That’s very clever of him.’

  ‘Their defence lawyer decided to take the line that they had been acting under orders and that the treatment he had received was no different than anyone else, all of whom had survived up until then. It didn’t wash with the court and they went down. Mrázek died in prison but Holub survived, and on that nice green slip of paper you’ve got the address that he told the Probation Officer was where he would be living. So if you want to, you can pay him a visit.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slonský. ‘I’ll do that tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s only half past four,’ Mucha remarked. ‘It’s not knocking off time yet.’

  ‘I know what time it is. I’m about to go to a pre-arranged interview with General Rezek’s son, Petr Vlk.’

  ‘Petr Vlk? The one who used to do the television stuff?’

  ‘The same. Do you want his autograph?’

  ‘No, but if the opportunity arises to give him a kick behind the knee for being a smarmy git, give him another one from me.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘No, I just took a dislike to him when I first saw him on screen. I don’t need to know someone to despise them.’

  ‘I feel the same way sometimes,’ Slonský agreed. ‘It must be a gift.’

  Valentin had already made some enquiries before Slonský met him.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  ‘Hang on,’ Slonský responded. ‘This is taking us out of the bar.’

  ‘Yes, we’re leaving.’

  ‘Allow me to point out that I haven’t had a drink. It goes against the grain to leave without having something.’

  ‘We’re leaving because Vlk isn’t here. According to my sources, he’s likely to be in a club in the Old Town.’

  ‘You leave if you want to. I need to lubricate myself for the journey.’

  ‘
Well, if you’re having one, I’ll keep you company. But our quarry may get away.’

  ‘It’s just the one. And I got the impression that Vlk likes to settle in for the night.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  They each took a mouthful of beer and let it roll over their tongues.

  ‘Slightly on the warm side, but not bad,’ Slonský judged.

  Ten minutes later honour was satisfied and the two men headed for the address that Valentin had gleaned by telephoning Vlk’s office and asking where to find him, although the person answering had conceded that Vlk’s movements were not always in line with previous notification, especially if someone else was buying the drinks.

  The club indicated was not as unsavoury as its address had suggested, boasting an ordinary glass front door rather than a steel shutter, and sufficient light within to be able to see the person opposite without squinting. There were a number of semi-circular bench seats, many of which were filled with groups of young men and women. A glance at the prices led Slonský to suppose that these were upwardly mobile types with limited financial commitments.

  Vlk was sitting in one of the curved booths with no company except a squat tumbler containing an amber liquid. Slonský could just about recognise him as the same person he may have seen on television fifteen or so years ago, largely because Vlk’s dress sense had not changed in the meantime. He wore a sports jacket and a black roll-neck sweater, slightly flared black trousers and a pair of elastic-sided boots of the kind that had been very popular around the time Slonský got married. Vlk’s hair, once jet black but now flecked with grey, was a little too long to be fashionable or, indeed, controllable, so a cantilevered section that had begun the evening lacquered into place had begun to flop downwards as the heat in the club made him sweat.

  Despite his substantial consumption, Slonský had not had a drink problem for over thirty years. He would, if pressed, admit that he could not remember much of the years 1971 to 1973 after his wife Věra left him, but aside from that extended period of oblivion, he had been careful to keep within his limits. In this regard he was now assisted by his bladder, which saw to it that he had plenty of exercise walking back and forth to the toilet, but also by a determination never to be out of control. However, he knew the signs of alcohol dependency, and when he looked at Petr Vlk he could see a full set. Although he could only have been drinking for an hour or two, Vlk was looking a little tired and his speech was not as clear as he might have hoped.