by Graham Brack
‘I was beginning to give up on you,’ said his ex-wife Věra, emerging from the small kitchen area with a saucepan in her hand.
‘Was I expecting you?’ Slonský asked.
‘No, but I had the afternoon off so I thought if you were free it would be nice to cook for you. If you hadn’t come in I’d have left it for later. It’ll re-warm very well.’
She produced a tablecloth from her bag and laid the table before dispensing two portions of stew into the bowls which she had also brought. In fact, it was likely that everything necessary for the manufacture of the stew had been brought in her bag, though Slonský vaguely recognised one of the serving spoons as his.
‘This is all very … unexpected,’ he began.
‘I’ve got you a beer as well. Unless you’ve had enough,’ Věra interrupted.
The concept of having had enough stunned Slonský sufficiently to rob him of independence of action, and before he knew it he was sitting at the table and scooping up gravy with a slab of bread.
‘Good day?’ Věra asked.
‘Not really. We’ve found a dead girl.’
‘Do you mean a young woman or a female child?’
‘A child, about ten.’
‘Oh, dear. Accident?’
‘Murder.’
‘Did you have to break it to her parents?’
‘We don’t know who she is. And there doesn’t appear to be a missing child on our register who fits the description.’
‘Goodness! How awful! So how will you find who she is?’
‘She’s well dressed and groomed, so she hasn’t been living rough. Someone cares for her. I suppose we’ll have to wait until they report her missing.’
‘And if they don’t?’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Well, if the whole family has been murdered, for example.’
‘If they have, why throw one in the river and not the others?’
‘You’re the detective. You tell me.’
Slonský ate in silence for a while, debating whether he could justify the expense of sending police boats along the river looking for the bodies of the girl’s parents. The mode of death would tell him more. It is hard for one man to suffocate or strangle three people, so that would point to a team of criminals.
‘I suppose the parents could be the killers,’ he remarked at length.
‘How appalling!’ said Věra. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
Slonský felt the same way, which was why he was trying not to think about it.
Chapter 4
Slonský pushed open the office door the next morning and was surprised to find Navrátil already scribbling notes on a report he was reading.
‘You’re in early,’ he said.
‘Ten to seven,’ Navrátil replied. ‘About the same as usual. Dr Novák’s preliminary report came through, but there’s a bit extra he’s added that you’ll find interesting.’
‘Say on, young sage,’ Slonský replied, flopping into his chair.
‘Basically, everything he said about the death seems to be right. A girl of around ten, and she’d been raped, probably not for the first time. The DNA retrieved is male but not known to our records.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Not as interesting as the next bit. The victim’s DNA is known to our records. She is Viktorie Dlasková, reported missing seven years ago and presumed dead.’
Not too many things rendered Slonský speechless, but that intelligence came very close.
‘She’s a missing person we never found?’
‘That’s the sum of it.’
‘We thought she was dead, and now she is?’
‘That’s right.’
Slonský rubbed his face vigorously to enliven himself.
‘We’d better dig out her file and find her parents’ details so we can communicate the sad news.’
‘I’ve put in a request, sir. Should be with us in an hour or so.’
‘Good. You seem to have everything in hand, lad. I suppose our next step is obvious.’
‘Sir?’
‘We may as well get some breakfast while we’re waiting.’
There was no avoiding the matter, thought Slonský. He could fill his day with activity, if you were prepared to define the term to include the occasional snack and a beer or two, but at some point he had to think about what he was going to do about Věra.
Nearly forty years before they had been married, but after a little over two years she disappeared with a long-haired poet in a leather jacket. The next contact was a letter from Věra asking for a divorce, so he signed the papers and returned them to her forwarding address. There must then have followed the mother of all alcohol binges, because very little of 1971 to 1973 still existed in Slonský’s memory, and the next life event of which he had clear recollection was being carpeted by his boss for his attitude, his insubordination and being drunk on duty. It could not, in all honesty, be claimed that his attitude or his insubordination issues had been fully conquered, so his personnel file was littered with further appearances over the years, and that was even allowing for the pages he had managed to abstract and shred when he copied Mucha’s key to the personnel department’s file store, but he had reduced his drinking. Reasoning that he was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was plainly impossible not to drink on duty, but he had avoided being drunk on duty since then. More or less.
Then, a little over a year ago, Věra reappeared, having sought him out to explain that she had never actually got around to lodging the signed divorce papers, so they were still legally married. She thought he ought to know, in case he had found someone else. Slonský’s initial reaction was that waiting thirty-six years to tell him he could be an accidental bigamist did not earn her many merit points, but over the succeeding year they had begun to tolerate each other a little better.
This meant that occasionally they visited each other’s flats. Věra liked to make herself useful by doing some cooking and cleaning, and occasionally Slonský thought he detected a hint that she envisaged a future where they were back together. There were attractions to not growing old on your own. On the other hand, he had managed without her for almost all his life, and the hurt was still there. Not to mention the distinct possibility that she would expect him to go home after work rather than having a beer and sausage with friends like Valentin.
It was potentially the most difficult problem he had ever faced.
Mucha never knocked on Slonský’s door. Slonský would not have expected the desk sergeant to do so, given their long association and the utter certainty that if Slonský had insisted on it Mucha would have found some way of embarrassing him in completing the task. Instead, Mucha entered bearing a manila folder on a clipboard, bowed respectfully, and extended the clipboard so that Slonský could retrieve the file.
‘Some mail for you, sir,’ said Mucha.
‘Thank you, my man,’ responded Slonský. ‘But who is minding the desk in your absence?’
‘Sergeant Vyhnal, who is a fine officer, if a little touchy about being called a bastard by our unwilling guests, on account of actually being one.’
‘It is an unwise detainee who annoys Sergeant Vyhnal,’ observed Slonský.
‘Less so since they’ve moved the cells up from the basement so they don’t have to descend that flight of concrete steps.’
‘That’s true. Mind you, we solved crimes a lot faster when we had them. Well, don’t let me detain you.’
‘I’ll stay a minute. You’ll be asking for my help again.’
‘Oh, cocky, aren’t we? Let’s see.’ Slonský opened the folder and scanned the first page. ‘Do we have a telephone number for the Dlasks’ address?’ he asked.
‘No, because they don’t live there any longer,’ Mucha replied. ‘And now you’re going to ask me to track their ID cards, which I beg to report I have already done. And, joy of joys, they’ve separated, so you’ll need to make two trips.’
Slonský emitted a low growl of disappointment. It was going to be a difficult interview anyway, let alone having to go through it a second time.
‘Do you remember anything about the case?’‘Not really,’ said Mucha. ‘I scanned the first couple of pages before I brought it up to check it was the right file, but it didn’t really involve the Prague police too much because she went missing near Most.’
‘So our friends in Ústí nad Labem would have dealt with it.’
‘One would think,’ Mucha replied.
‘You sound doubtful.’
‘I can’t put my finger on it, but the file is very thin for an enquiry that ultimately wasn’t concluded satisfactorily. I’ve asked for anything more that they might have at Ústí.’
Slonský nodded. Mucha was a connoisseur of bureaucracy, and if he judged that the file was scanty, that was not an opinion to be discarded lightly. ‘Give me a few minutes to read this through and I’ll come and find you so we can discuss what was involved.’
‘You know where I’ll be,’ agreed Mucha.
Slonský slowly read the pages, handing each to Navrátil as he finished with it so that the younger man could read it too. In this way they passed around half an hour in silence, before Slonský closed the file with a decisive slap, stood up and had a good scratch of his numb rear end.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I can see why Sergeant Mucha thought it looked thin. There are quite a few statements collected at the time from people who ought to have witnessed something but didn’t, then they seem to have jumped to a conclusion about who was responsible, though they don’t say clearly who that was. They collect some more information about the family and then it’s just a string of negative reports.’
Slonský grimaced. ‘Can we find somewhere better to sit? Let’s collect Mucha and get some coffees. And maybe a pastry or two. I’m feeling deficient in sugar.’
Dumpy Anna at the canteen counter frowned when she saw the plate.
‘I thought you were meant to be watching your weight?’ she said.
‘I am,’ said Slonský. ‘One of these pastries is for Navrátil.’
That this was news to his assistant was clear from the look on Navrátil’s face.
‘Suppose he doesn’t want it?’ asked Anna.
‘I’ll have to find room for it,’ Slonský replied. ‘Can’t waste good food. Or this.’
Anna nodded her head towards a corner of the room and lowered her voice. ‘Love’s Young Dream is over there.’
Following her gaze he saw Peiperová cradling a cup of coffee and looking about as fed up as he had ever seen her.
‘I suppose I’d better let him sit with her. Have you got a cloth in case he dribbles again?’ Slonský marched over with the tray and perched himself opposite his former assistant. ‘Since you’ve been good, I’m letting Navrátil come out to play for twenty minutes. You can hold hands if you like. But that’s all you’re to hold under the table.’
‘Sir!’
Navrátil sat beside her and smiled. That their fingers were intertwining out of sight was apparent from the way her face relaxed and almost seemed to become rosier. Sergeant Mucha took the remaining chair.
‘Well, now we’re sitting comfortably, we can begin,’ Slonský said. ‘Peiperová, you can join in because I need all the brainpower I can muster for this case, and a woman’s perspective might be helpful. Or possibly not, I really don’t know.’
‘What case, sir?’ Peiperová asked.
‘We pulled the body of a young girl from the river just south of the city, lass. She’s about ten years old and she’s been horribly abused over a period of time. But she’s not uncared for. The snag was that no such child had been reported missing.’
‘I checked that,’ Navrátil chipped in.
‘Thank you for reminding me that you’re not completely useless, Navrátil. Now, for various reasons Dr Novák sent material for DNA testing. It doesn’t identify the man who molested her, but it told us something surprising. The victim is a girl who was reported missing seven years ago. Věra something-or-other.’
‘Not Věra, sir,’ said Navrátil. ‘Viktorie.’
‘Quite right. Věra was a girl reported missing thirty-six years ago. I can’t think why that name came to mind. Anyway, this Viktorie…’
‘Dlasková,’ Navrátil supplied.
‘Thank you — Viktorie Dlasková disappeared aged three some years ago, so we sent for the file on her disappearance.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Peiperová interrupted. ‘How did they identify her as the victim?’
‘Because if we can we secure a sample of known material from the girl so that if an unrecognisable body is found later we may be able to identify her from DNA, so in this case the officers who visited the Dlasks’ house secured some blonde hairs of hers from her hairbrush.’
‘Thank you, sir, I understand now.’
‘Good. So we have the conundrum that somebody, presumably not her parents, who have separated, has been looking after this girl for some years but hasn’t apparently felt the need to report her missing. Of course, her new family may have been killed in the same attack and are waiting to be discovered somewhere.’
‘How awful,’ said Peiperová.
‘The abduction was near Most, up in the north of the country, and nowhere near the place where she was put in the river after death, so there’s one problem. Where has she been living in the interim? Second problem, who has been looking after her? Third problem, why haven’t they come forward to report her missing?’
‘Then there’s her case report,’ Mucha observed.
‘Yes, and that’s a bit of a puzzle too. There are several statements from people who were apparently in the vicinity of the place where the girl went missing, mostly parents of other children of a similar age.’
‘Where did she go missing from?’ asked Peiperová.
‘From a nursery school. Without seeing the place it’s hard to picture, but it seems that the children were being collected by their parents and it was all very confused. Lots of little ones and lots of parents, and when the dust cleared Mrs Dlasková was left standing but there were no children left. She was adamant that she didn’t even see Viktorie. The nursery superintendent was equally clear that Viktorie was one of the first to leave, as she always was.’
‘The trouble with that is that when something always happens there’s a tendency for witnesses to convince themselves that it must have happened on a particular day,’ said Mucha.
‘Correct. Let’s park that a moment. There are some photos in the files that explain a little more. The nursery school consisted of two buildings like corrugated iron sided huts which formed a straight line, like a short train, and their doors faced each other with a small porch at the end of each building. So the parents waiting at the gate couldn’t see the doors clearly because there was a sort of small alleyway between the buildings that the children had to come down. The superintendent claimed that she opened the door and watched the children leave and she saw them all go into the yard where the fence and gate was where their parents were waiting. The officer in charge, whose signature I can’t decipher, proved to his satisfaction that in fact she couldn’t see what she said she saw from where she must have been standing. He didn’t think she was involved in the disappearance, but he thought she was trying to prove it couldn’t have been the nursery staff’s fault. You take over, Navrátil. My coffee’s getting cold.’
‘Yes, sir. The next bit I find troublesome is that all this is supposed to have happened a little after four o’clock, but it’s nearly five before the police are called. Questioned about this, Mrs Dlasková says she insisted on it because the superintendent didn’t want to call until they’d finished searching the buildings and grounds and was convinced Viktorie would turn up. They thought perhaps she’d gone to the toilet and locked herself in or something like that.’
‘But she didn’t shout?’ asked Mucha. ‘When my niece was that age she
could make herself heard across three fields if she got separated from Mummy.’
‘She doesn’t seem to have shouted at any time, or at least not so it was heard over a class of little kids running to their mums and dads,’ Navrátil answered.
‘Would you hear one squeal among so many?’ posed Slonský.
‘A mother would,’ Peiperová affirmed. ‘They tune in to their child’s sounds. When a child cries out a mother always knows if it’s her child or not.’
‘Is that fact or folklore?’ Slonský enquired.
‘Widely believed but possibly true despite that,’ Mucha told him.
‘I’m not so sure. Anyway, the statements collected seem to indicate that none of the mothers heard a child cry out in distress, so true or not it’s probably an irrelevance. So, to recap, after the first day they’ve got a statement from all the parents present and all the nursery staff. They take Mrs Dlasková home and while they’re there they search the house in case she’s made her own way home — bit unlikely for a three-year-old, I’d have thought, but anyway — and they quietly take some hairs from her hairbrush for DNA testing in case a body is found later. That’s how we know this body is hers.’
‘But then it gets really weird,’ Navrátil said. ‘You’d have thought they’d have checked out any known child molesters in the district, but if they did, they didn’t provide a list. They simply say that they don’t think that’s likely.’
‘That’s about five days later, so they had time to conduct some enquiries. And maybe they did, but their record keeping is rubbish,’ added Slonský.
Mucha tutted loudly.
‘Then the next thing we find in the folder is a report from a social worker who has been asked to work with the parents,’ Navrátil continued. ‘She describes their home and that Viktorie is an only child, that she hasn’t exhibited any unusual behavioural problems, that her father works as an engineer and her mother has a job as a shop assistant. And that’s it! I don’t know what to make of it.’