by Graham Brack
Slonský glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening. ‘Yes. Or more exactly, no. You’re stood down, Krob. I’ll think what to do next. Go home and I’ll see you in the morning.’
Slonský grabbed his hat and coat and descended the stairs to the desk where Sergeant Salzer was on shift. ‘Salzer, you’ve got children, haven’t you?’
‘A girl of fifteen, sir.’
‘When you register the birth, what do you have to do?’
‘You don’t do much, sir. The hospital does it all and the registrar sends a birth certificate to the hospital. If you’ve already left then he sends it to your home, but usually you get it within a day or two.’
Slonský imagined a little light bulb bursting into life within his head. ‘So the registrar must be given your home address in case he needs it?’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘Therefore, if an enquirer found a birth certificate in a certain name, he could get the address from a hospital?’
‘In a small town he might, because there would only be one possible maternity hospital, but in Prague it wouldn’t work. There are just too many options.’
Slonský thanked Salzer and continued into the street lost in thought. He would have put money on Rezek needing the birth certificate to be sure who the father was and where he lived, and yet Rezek hadn’t bothered. Why not? Could it be that he was going to get someone else to do that for him? Had he spotted that Krob was following him? And why, Slonský wondered, was he wasting valuable drinking time thinking about work like this?
Chapter 9
Hanuš Himl was not a happy man. That is to say that he would not have planted the other flower beds if he had known that just a few days later a group of men with spades and sieves were going to dig them up again.
To his surprise Dr Novák proved to be very sympathetic to his feelings, and the diggers were instructed to lift off the top layer to a specified depth leaving it as undisturbed as possible, and to place it on plastic sheets he had set aside.
‘There’s no danger that we’ll lose any evidence,’ Novák explained to Slonský, ‘given that Mr Himl must have dug this soil over several times over the years.’
Once the top layer had been removed from the flower beds, a team of technicians using ground penetrating radar moved in. Systematically they walked back and forth over the area of interest while Novák watched an image that was being compiled on a computer monitor.
‘Can this really work?’ Slonský asked.
‘It’s better when the bodies are new. It’s been used following disasters to look for people under mud slicks, for example, but we may still get something, especially if the bodies are wrapped in a covering.’
Slonský peered at the screen. ‘It just looks like a mess to me.’
‘That’s because you haven’t been trained to interpret it.’
‘So what do you see, then?’
‘A mess. But it’s not hopeless. Those flat sections are showing us that nothing has been disturbed, but there’s an area that shows an anomaly.’
‘An anomaly?’
‘It’s what we call a disturbance in the orderly layers of sub-soil. In other words, someone has been digging it up. Don’t get excited; it may just be a drain or a cable. But this one is worth investigating, because it’s nearly two metres long.’
‘So a body could be within it?’
‘Could be. There is something solid there.’
‘How long before you send the men with the spades back in?’
‘Let’s finish the radar plot first. But you’ll have to be patient, Slonský. They’re going to be digging very slowly to ensure that they don’t disturb any evidence. Why don’t you go away for a while and I’ll call you when we’ve finished?’
‘I could have a little something to eat,’ Slonský mused.
‘Good idea.’
‘Just to clarify, is this a coffee-and-pastry going away, or a sausage-and-potatoes followed by a piece of cake going away?’
‘I’ve seen how fast you can put a couple of sausages away. We’re talking hours, Slonský.’
‘Ah. Right. I’ll go and see what’s been happening in the world of crime, then.’
‘You do that.’
Krob was hanging around somewhere near Rezek’s house just in case, but the rest of the team were in their offices when Slonský returned, so he suggested that they all decamp to the canteen where he could brief them on his discussions with Jelínek and Novák.
‘Navrátil already knows this, because I spoke to him last night, but it seems possible that there are two other bodies in the grounds of the Red House,’ Slonský told them once they were seated. ‘I’ve just come from there where Dr Novák is doing something or other that lets him see under the ground.’
‘And you’re convinced that General Rezek knows who the original body was?’ Peiperová pressed.
‘No, but if he doesn’t, I don’t know who does.’
‘We’ve gone through Adalheid’s papers,’ Peiperová continued, ‘and they’re not a lot of help. There was a diary entry blocking out Thursday morning, so perhaps she was expecting to be out late on Wednesday night, but not much more. Unopened post and food in the fridge that had passed its best before date.’
‘Well, that’s something. But if she had a night out, where did she go? We could try going round the restaurants and bars, but it’ll take an age, even if we don’t have a drink ourselves in each one.’
‘We don’t know for certain that she had that sort of a night out,’ Navrátil insisted, ‘so it would be hard to justify spending time on a door to door enquiry.’
‘She was wearing very fancy underwear,’ Slonský told him.
‘All her underwear is like that,’ said Jerneková. ‘She’s just given to exotic smalls.’
Slonský felt deflated. His case was crumbling, slowly but inexorably, and if it turned out that Rezek really did know nothing about the bodies in the Red House grounds, then that put the kybosh on his revenge theory. In which event, what alternative did he have?
Peiperová had a suggestion. ‘Why don’t we talk to her colleagues to see if any of them has any information that might throw some light on Adalheid’s life? Eva Čechová told us Adalheid was meeting a man for dinner.’
‘That’s not necessarily a romantic dinner,’ Navrátil remarked. ‘It could just be a business meeting.’
‘We need to clarify that,’ Peiperová agreed. ‘Did Eva just assume it was a romantic event, or had Adalheid said something to encourage that idea?’
‘That sounds like a job for you and Jerneková,’ agreed Slonský. ‘Jerneková, did you find out anything about the car crash that killed Adalheid’s husband?’
‘It doesn’t seem to have been reported to us, sir, at least not for any sort of investigation. We’ve got a formal note.’ Jerneková consulted her notepad. ‘22nd April, 1986, sir. It was a Tuesday.’
Slonský seemed suddenly animated. ‘When you say we’ve got a formal note, what do you mean?’
‘It’s logged in the event diary for the day, but there’s no file opened.’
Slonský rubbed his hands together and evinced every appearance of glee. ‘Splendid! At last we’ve got something!’ Seeing the blank looks around the table, he felt compelled to elucidate. ‘You don’t understand what I’m getting at, do you?’
A variety of mumbled negatives and gently shaken heads displayed their puzzlement.
‘This is where we could do with Krob. After his time with the city police, he would know what I’m on about. Walk it through with me. If this accident happened today, what would happen?’
‘The crash would be reported to either the city police or to us, and whichever heard first would tell the other,’ Navrátil answered.
‘And that explains the log entry,’ Slonský explained, ‘because it would be entered as a notification at the moment it was received. That’s straightforward. What happens next? Come on, Jerneková, you’ve just learned t
his!’
‘Once we heard there was a fatality we’d call the ambulance service and the pathologist. The paramedics would verify that the person was dead, and then the pathologist would look into the circumstances. If he was suspicious he’d call us.’
‘True,’ Peiperová interjected, ‘but we’d probably have picked it up anyway, because it could be some time before the pathologist could give an opinion. In real life, if the police officer and the pathologist agree that there’s nothing suspicious, we’d close the case. If they didn’t, we’d refer it to the prosecutor.’
‘Ah! There you have it,’ Slonský said. ‘We’d open a file at the first report, then we’d add the pathologist’s report, the investigating officer’s report — if one was called out — and the prosecutor’s decision to that file. At that point the file might be closed, but it would remain on file indefinitely so that if any questions were ever raised we could justify the decision. So the log entry exists because it is almost impossible to remove such an entry after the event without creating a huge amount of work renumbering everything since. That makes perfect sense. What is striking here is that there is no file corresponding to the original entry. None at all. Yet you’ve just demonstrated that there must once have been one.’
‘Maybe it was just lost,’ Navrátil suggested.
‘And maybe it was stolen by the evidence pixies. But the most likely reason is that someone with high level access to files stuffed it up their jumper and walked out with it.’
‘Even if that’s true, how does it help us, sir?’ Peiperová asked.
‘Think who the victim was, lass.’
‘We haven’t got a name yet, sir.’
‘No, we haven’t. It would be a good idea if you found us one. But we know one key fact about him. Remember what Vlk told us? “The son of a Deputy Minister of the Interior” was how he described Adalheid’s husband. And that’s exactly the sort of person who would have access to any file he wanted.’
‘He stole the report into his own son’s death?’
‘No, Peiperová. But only a person with more clout than him could have done it with impunity. What would have happened in those days to someone who stopped a Party bigwig getting what he wanted?’
‘That’s an unfair question, sir,’ Navrátil objected, ‘because you’re the only one who is old enough to remember that.’
‘Good point,’ Slonský conceded. ‘Then I’ll tell you a cautionary tale. When I was a young officer, there was a police driver of around my age. I forget his name, but it doesn’t matter. One night he was driving round the city when a car came out of a side street at speed and crashed into his nearside rear wing. The driver of the other vehicle was the State Secretary for Heavy Industry, and he was full to the gills with vodka.
‘Our man reported what happened. The next day he received a statement to sign in which it was alleged that he had reversed into the Secretary’s car. He refused to do so and insisted that the Secretary was drunk. A few days later two fellows with heavy batons turned up and gave him the beating of a lifetime. He still refused to sign the statement, but they just forged his signature anyway. And it is my contention that if anyone had tried to suppress the enquiry into the death of the son of a senior Party figure, a similar thing would have happened, if the senior Party figure dared to arrange it.’
‘But isn’t it possible that his father knew that his son was responsible for his own death and ordered the file destroyed to protect his name?’ asked Navrátil.
‘No, because the father’s best course would have been to keep the file but change the papers within it. The original pathologist’s report saying the boy was drunk would have vanished and a new one would have been inserted saying it was just an unfortunate accident. So, I repeat my question: who has enough clout to get a file removed without consequences to himself? And to save you scratching your heads until you get splinters I’ll give you the answer, courtesy of Sergeant Jelínek; the Deputy Head of Section 4 of the StB could have done it, otherwise known as General Rezek, because Section 4 investigated threats to state security and anything they decided was a threat could be destroyed.
‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Section 4 organised the accident. The only argument against that guess is that some public-spirited person bothered to report it, which suggests that the accident wasn’t followed by sinister fellows in trench coats and dark hats telling people to forget what they’d seen. Remember that Vlk said that Adalheid was beaten by her husband. Can you imagine Rezek just standing by and letting that happen to his daughter? He’d let them separate but then he could take his revenge. I can imagine a couple of StB lads being sent out one evening to doctor the brakes on the husband’s car while another one plied him with drink, including a Mickey Finn or two.’
‘Could the StB really do that, sir?’ Peiperová asked doubtfully.
‘They could do whatever they wanted to do.’
‘But what kind of people were they?’ she continued.
‘People like you and Navrátil.’
‘Sir, I’d never be a party to anything like that,’ protested Navrátil.
‘Lad, you have the luxury of being able to say no. We didn’t. You’d have been prime StB fodder. They’ve have snapped you up lickety-split.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘Because you’ve got brains and you speak a foreign language.’
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘Navrátil, why do you think you were fast-tracked into the police service?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I’ve never stopped to ask.’
‘Then I’ll save you a job by telling you the answer. Historically, the Czech Republic scored very badly compared with other forces in terms of the educational achievements of its police. The quick way to fix that was to get some people with degrees in, hence your graduate entry scheme. Do you know that the StB never managed to fill its complement of officers? That was because to be an officer you had to have a certificate of completion of high school, and most of us didn’t have it. You could be an ordinary StB oik without that, so they could have filled all those posts, but they were held back by not having enough officers to supervise them. And because there was a lot of competition for the lower posts, they could afford to be picky.
‘In fact, there’s some evidence that at one time the lower level personnel were better qualified than the officer caste. And the thing that they prized more than anything else was a gift for languages, because if you’ve going to eavesdrop on what foreigners are up to, you need an awful lot of people who speak foreign languages. You’d have had a really exciting job, lad, spending your days listening to English-speaking tourists telling their families what a wonderful time they’ve had and how great Czech beer is, and writing it all out longhand.’
‘What possible interest is there in that, sir?’
‘None at all, Navrátil, but if you don’t listen to a lot of dross you don’t get to hear the little pearl hidden in it.’
‘So how come you weren’t dragged into the StB, sir?’ Jerneková asked.
‘That’s a very good question, and it’s down to my foresight in being thick at school and trying very hard not to learn any languages. I mean, the only one I ever had to learn was Russian, and to me Russian always sounded a bit like drunk Czech, which is odd because most of the people I heard speaking it were drunk Russians. Anyway, I could never pass any exams in it. I had a narrow escape when I was in the Army and I didn’t realise how low the pass mark was there, but fortunately I scraped under the bar by the skin of my teeth and kept up my record of complete failure. They’d have me in the ordinary police because they couldn’t afford to be choosy, and since the StB and the police were basically one thing at the time I could have been transferred if I’d ever shown any promise, but I’m pleased to say I was a late developer. I also have to give credit to my wife, because her walking out on me sent me off to the bottle and ensured my performance levels were pitiful for the first half of the seventies. Back the
n, I was sucking Mrs Vodka’s teat in a big way.’
‘I can’t drink vodka,’ Jerneková confided. ‘It makes me tearful.’
‘Me too,’ said Slonský.
Eva Čechová produced the requested key when Peiperová and Jerneková returned to visit her. ‘I have to take it back personally, I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘That’s not a problem,’ Peiperová smiled. ‘You can stay while we search Adalheid’s desk if you like. We can talk while we do it.’
Eva nodded doubtfully. ‘I didn’t really know her that well,’ she argued. ‘Not socially. She’s not one for girls’ nights out. I mean…’
‘We know what you mean. There’s a bit of an age difference, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. And she could be quite cynical. On the other hand, I think she hoped that one day Prince Charming would come along.’
‘When we last spoke, you said you thought Adalheid had a dinner date with a man.’
‘Yes. But it was a bit odd. At first I thought it was a romantic thing, but then she was very matter of fact about it, so I wondered if it was something else.’
‘She had a half-brother. Could it have been him?’
‘I don’t know. If she mentioned a name, I’m afraid I don’t remember it.’
‘Was there anyone here she was especially friendly with?’
‘Maybe Barbora. They were about the same age, and I know they went to the opera together once or twice. She works in the finance department.’
‘It would be really helpful if you could ask her if she could spare us a few minutes while we’re here,’ Peiperová said.
‘In here?’
‘Well, nobody else is going to be using this office, are they?’ Jerneková replied.
Barbora was a woman in her mid-forties, and it took no time at all for Jerneková to decide that she was one of those irritating women who can just throw a headscarf on and immediately look good. The absence of a wedding ring marked her out as a woman who could spend her wages on herself, and a good chunk of her disposable income must have gone to her hairdresser. She wore black trousers, impeccably cut, an understated white blouse with a satin stripe and a gold cross and chain around her neck. Her shoes looked like ordinary loafers until you spotted the makers’ name on a little plaque and realised that they came from the kind of store that Jerneková had never allowed herself to enter for fear that she would involuntarily part with all her worldly wealth in exchange for a handbag.