Field of Death

by Graham Brack

  ‘But in your phone call you said that he was complaining of a lack of support.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lukas, ‘which is not like Doležal, who is normally very happy to work on his own. But I begin to suspect that it may be more than just a lack of support. Doležal reports indifference to the fate of a fellow officer.’

  ‘I see. Well, we can’t have that, can we? The makeup of the department is…?’

  Lukas indicated that this was a question for Slonský.

  ‘Vondra, Captain; three lieutenants, Staněk, Klaberský and poor Sedlák.’

  ‘Presumably some juniors?’

  ‘There are, but never seen. They seem to work directly for Vondra,’ Slonský replied.

  ‘An unusual arrangement and one that smacks of insecurity. I think I’ll take a look.’

  Rajka began to rise from his seat but was stopped by a further comment from Slonský.

  ‘One small complication…’

  ‘Out with it!’

  ‘One of my officers is currently working undercover in Holice without the knowledge of the local detectives. I know it’s highly irregular…’

  ‘From what you tell me it’s a damn good thing they don’t know he’s there. How is he contacting you?’

  ‘He isn’t. He’s temporarily working with Poznar of the BIS.’

  Rajka mulled this information over for a few moments. ‘Poznar is a good man. It’s best if that particular rock isn’t turned over.’

  Slonský breathed a quiet but heartfelt sigh of relief. There were people on OII who would have demanded Navrátil’s recall and a full written explanation of this irregularity in triplicate, but fortunately Rajka was much more pragmatic.

  ‘One more thing…’ Slonský began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘You? Why?’

  ‘If they tell you anything useful it would be good to be able to act immediately on it. Plus I want to see Vondra’s smug backside getting a kicking.’

  Rajka gave in. ‘Some company on the drive might be nice. But you let me run things. If they suspect you’re calling me in I’ll be okay but they could make life very difficult for Doležal.’

  ‘And me, I suppose,’ said Slonský.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t care about you,’ said Rajka. ‘you’re old enough to look after yourself.’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ Slonský responded. ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘My car’s round the back,’ said Rajka. ‘Get your coat. If it’s important enough to do, it’s important enough to do now.’

  Slonský had never seen a car like Rajka’s. It was brilliant white, glossy, well-kept, and the inside was immaculate, an adjective that had never been applied to any car that Slonský had driven. It had black leather seats that caressed his back and a dashboard full of switches, the purpose of many of which he could not begin to guess.

  `What’s this for?’ he enquired.

  ‘Heated seat.’

  ‘And this one?’

  ‘The other heated seat.’

  ‘Right. And that?’

  ‘Changes the waveband on the radio.’

  Slonský had never been in a car that had more than one waveband before.

  Rajka suddenly spoke loudly. ‘Play country music.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Slonský replied.

  ‘I was talking to the car.’

  Sure enough, after a couple of seconds the car was filled with the sound of a woman singing a dirge that Slonský could not quite understand but which appeared to express her regret at having chosen the wrong man.

  ‘It can hear you?’ he said.

  ‘Voice responsive entertainment system,’ Rajka answered.

  ‘You mean a radio?’

  ‘A voice responsive entertainment system is more than a radio,’ Rajka protested. ‘Hang on, we don’t want to take all day. No point in having lights if you don’t use them.’

  He flicked a switch and blue lights began to flash from the radiator grille, encouraging cars in front of them to pull to one side and allowing Rajka to press harder on the accelerator. Slonský could not see exactly how fast they were going but the needle on the speedometer seemed to be a lot further round the dial than even he was used to.

  Slonský sank back into the seat. Here he was, driving at very high speed in the company of a man who talked to cars.

  Navrátil was almost regretting having gone to Pardubice now that everything had happened after he came back. He wanted to keep Poznar briefed but he had to be sure that he would not be overheard. The best way of doing that, he decided, was to use his mobile phone while he was out for a run, during which he would find some out of the way place from which to make the call.

  This plan had soon hit an obstacle, which was that there were a lot of trees on either side of the track and the telephone signal found them uncongenial. It was not until he had run around two kilometres out of town and was approaching the village of Veliny that he dipped into a side lane and made his call.

  Poznar came to the phone and listened attentively as Navrátil made his report.

  ‘Good. That sounds very promising,’ said Poznar. ‘But don’t get carried away. Keep your guard up and don’t ask too many questions straightaway. Just let them think that you could be a useful recruit for them, and let them make the pace. Is everything else going all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Someone searched my room the other day.’

  ‘Did they find the camera?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Probably best if you don’t take it with you for your first meeting. If they’ve got any suspicions, that might allay them.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I’ll tell Slonský that you’ve been in touch and all is well.’

  Poznar abruptly hung up, leaving Navrátil to consider briefly whether “well” was the word he would have chosen.

  Slonský received the call from Poznar and relayed the message to Peiperová.

  Rajka swept off the highway without, apparently, feeling any need to use a brake. Although Slonský had experienced some misgivings, he was bound to admit that Rajka could handle a car, though as they approached the police building he would have liked some earlier intimation that Rajka was going to come to a halt.

  The major leapt from the car and glanced over his shoulder to check that Slonský had followed before using his remote control key to lock the doors. ‘Daren’t leave it open. Too much of an invitation to the local wide boys,’ he explained. ‘Nothing they like better than turning over a police vehicle.’

  ‘But yours is unmarked.’

  ‘They’ll know. In any event, there’s more fun in joy-riding one of those than a Trabant.’

  Rajka flung the station door open and marched in, leaving Slonský to make his own arrangement. Rajka still had the lithe movement of the Olympic athlete he once was. His feet barely seemed to contact the ground before he moved on like a panther who had detected the scent of something edible.

  The sergeant on the desk glanced up as Rajka approached but returned to completing some paperwork.

  Rajka slid his identity card across the form. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I have business here.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment, sir?’ asked the sergeant. Even Slonský, who was not normally sensitive to vibrations in the air, could tell that this was a mistake.

  ‘We don’t make appointments, sergeant,’ Rajka responded. ‘We come and go as we see fit. Now, if you’ll just direct me to the regional crime team, I won’t need to disturb your day any further.’

  ‘Through the doors and up the staircase, sir. You’ll find them to the right at the top of the stairs. Their names are on their doors.’

  ‘Thank you, sergeant. Don’t tell them we’re on our way up. We’d like it to be a surprise for them.’

  Rajka bounded up the stairs two at a time, leaving Slonský heartily glad that he was not an OII officer. He would be exhausted by ten o’clock every morning
if this was their normal pace.

  The sergeant had not been strictly accurate, because the door to the large office displayed the names of Staněk, Klaberský and Sedlák. Rajka pushed it open and walked in, holding his ID aloft.

  ‘Office of Internal Investigations,’ he announced. ‘This is an official visit. And you are?’

  ‘Klaberský, Lieutenant,’ said the man at the desk to the right.

  ‘Doležal, Lieutenant,’ added a thin man at the desk to the rear left. A small office occupied the rear right, from which a rotund man emerged.

  ‘What’s going on here, then?’ Vondra demanded.

  ‘No, that’s my line,’ Rajka told him. ‘OII, here on official business.’

  ‘I haven’t been informed…’ Vondra began.

  ‘No, and that’s the way it’s going to be,’ Rajka completed the sentence for him. ‘There are matters of concern and I will be speaking to each of you in turn. Those to whom I have not spoken will not speak to each other or that will be considered to be potentially interfering with my enquiries and may in itself lead to disciplinary action. You have the right to remain silent but a failure to answer a question may lead to adverse inferences being drawn. Do you all understand?’

  Three voices offered a lacklustre assent.

  ‘Note that agreement, Slonský. Now, as I understand things, you, Doležal, are a new arrival and therefore cannot know anything about the incidents that form the substance of my enquiry. You are therefore welcome to make yourself scarce.’

  Whatever business Doležal had been conducting, he knew enough about the ways of the OII to need no second invitation to leave the room, and, indeed, the building.

  Rajka pointed at the vacant chair to his immediate left. ‘This officer — where is he?’

  ‘Staněk is investigating a burglary, sir,’ Klaberský explained.

  ‘Good. If he comes back, tell him to wait for us. Don’t contact him without my knowledge. Clear?’

  Slonský was impressed. Rajka’s whirlwind approach had knocked the wind out of the policemen’s sails. He liked to think that he could put people off guard during questioning, but he was learning from Rajka, and he liked what he saw. There had been suggestions that Rajka had received his promotion based on his athletic prowess, but Slonský could see that he was good at his job. Not to mention being around eighty-five kilos of solid muscle and gifted with a disturbing willingness to smile as he made a man’s life miserable.

  ‘Now, Captain, it’s only right to begin with the head of the department. Shall we use your office? Slonský, would you mind staying here and keeping an eye on Lieutenant Klaberský?’

  Slonský had hoped to be invited into the sanctum, but then he reflected that he had been warned that he was only there under sufferance in the first place, and therefore meekly complied.

  Rajka and Vondra withdrew, leaving Slonský sitting opposite Klaberský, who seemed rather uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Slonský answered.

  ‘If there’s been some sort of … misunderstanding, perhaps I can clear it up without all this fuss.’

  ‘I doubt you can.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Slonský, ‘you haven’t done anything. And among the things you haven’t done is help to find the person who killed your colleague. Wouldn’t you agree that’s rather curious?’

  ‘That’s your job!’ Klaberský objected. ‘Are you blaming me for your failure?’

  Slonský chuckled. ‘You could say that. On the other hand…’ Slonský lunged forward and grasped Klaberský at the throat. The younger man was caught off balance and found his feet flailing as his chair was tipped back. The back of his head hit the wall before the top of the chair came to rest there, his feet waving helplessly in the air. ‘It’s as well for you that Major Rajka wants to talk to you later,’ hissed Slonský, ‘which prevents you and I having the discussion that I would like to have. But if he finds that anyone here has been less than diligent in finding the killers of a fellow police officer I shall be asking him if I can put some supplementary questions while he goes for a walk round town. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘I can’t breathe!’

  ‘If only that were true, but you must be breathing because I can hear you whimpering. Now, why aren’t you giving Lieutenant Doležal the kind of support that he is entitled to expect?’

  Slonský released his grip and allowed the front legs of Klaberský’s chair to return to the floor.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ stammered Klaberský.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Slonský told him. ‘Just remember I’m only a big thug but Major Rajka is a very strong man with an Olympian grip and a terrible dislike of bent coppers. If you’ve got anything to say you’ll get a more sympathetic hearing from me than you will from him.’

  ‘You didn’t sound very sympathetic a minute ago.’

  ‘I’m not; but I’m a teeny bit more sympathetic than Rajka. He’ll want you humiliated and thrown out of the police, whereas I’ll be satisfied if you just die in office.’

  ‘You can’t say things like that to me!’

  ‘I just did. Do you want me to write it down in case you forget it?’

  The door opened and Rajka stepped out, closely followed by Captain Vondra, whose face was ashen.

  ‘I think I’d like to talk to you now, Klaberský,’ said Rajka.

  Klaberský rose from his chair and edged round his desk. However he did it, he would have to go within a metre of Slonský, who took the opportunity to grab his arm as he walked past.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ Slonský said.

  Rajka preceded Klaberský out of the small office and demanded the address of the building where Staněk was investigating the burglary. Vondra wrote it down, his first movement in nearly half an hour since Rajka had finished with him. Slonský had judged that his best way to keep the pressure on was not to speak to Vondra, so he had immersed himself in a copy of the police newspaper until Rajka indicated that it was time to move on.

  ‘You will not speak to Staněk until I have done so,’ Rajka ordered. ‘Is that clear?’

  There was a murmur of assent from Vondra and Klaberský.

  ‘And you will not speak to each other about the discussions each of you has had with me. Remember that you are both under active investigation.’

  Rajka swept from the room leaving Slonský to catch up, an effort that required a certain amount of jogging on Slonský’s part before he could get close enough to talk.

  ‘Won’t they just compare notes now that we’ve left?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course they will.’

  ‘And what exactly is “active investigation”?’

  ‘It means I haven’t got bored and shelved it. More to the point, if they’ve got any sense they’ll stop doing whatever it is they’re doing that I might be looking into.’

  ‘Don’t you have to tell them what you’re investigating?’

  ‘Strangely enough, no. At least, not at this stage. In about a fortnight I’ll have to write to them telling them what the issues are, but let them sweat till then. By the way, I don’t know what you said to Klaberský but he was nicely softened up. I don’t often make officers of his experience cry.’

  ‘I just suggested that he could be doing more to help us find who killed Sedlák.’

  ‘That’s good. I told him the same thing.’

  They climbed into the car and Rajka reversed out of the parking place with no obvious checking of mirrors.

  ‘Forgive my asking,’ Slonský said, ‘but why was Captain Lukas so confident that you would be prepared to get involved in this?’

  ‘Because I’d do anything for him if I could. It goes back to when I was picked for the Olympic trials. I’d already used my leave allocation. Before the Wall came down I’d have been given as much time off as I needed, but these arrangements were frowned on after the end of Communism. Amateur sportsme
n had to be genuine amateurs, so I switched shifts and took time off to enter competitions. He was in charge of my local station and I went to see him to say that I wanted to leave the police. He asked why, and I explained I couldn’t let my big chance go. With no leave left to take, I’d have to resign to enter the trials. So he said he would do my shifts for me. I don’t know any other officer who would have done that. For about six weekends over training camps he stood in for me, and then I got selected and had a week-long camp before we left. Somehow he managed to get me the time I needed. He even persuaded the other fellows in my section to do one extra unpaid shift each so that I could have my tilt at a medal. Then, of course, I went to the Olympics and came back without one. Still, I had my chance, and I have Lukas to thank for it. He’s a good man. He’ll be missed.’

  ‘Yes, he will,’ replied Slonský, thinking — for the first time — what a hard act Lukas would be to follow.

  Staněk did not seem to have been informed of their intentions, nor was he excited to see them. He listened to Rajka’s questions, answered them tersely, but, so far as Slonský could tell, honestly, and then returned to his investigation.

  ‘What do you think?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘Whatever is going on, I think he’s not part of it, but he knows enough to know he doesn’t want to be part of it. If he doesn’t know what’s going on it’s because he has chosen not to know.’

  ‘He seems to be a bit of a loner.’

  ‘Not a bad thing to be if something untoward is happening.’

  ‘Are we any further forward?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘I think so. I can’t prove it, but I think there’s something going on outside the police that Vondra and Klaberský know about but Staněk doesn’t. They don’t trust him to keep the secret so they haven’t let him in on it. Any idea what it is?’

  ‘We’re suspicious about a plan to build a huge shopping mall near Holice.’

  ‘Near Holice? Why the hell would they want a shopping mall at Holice?’

  ‘I don’t think the public there does. But somebody does. I think Sedlák stumbled across some evidence and was killed to keep him quiet. The others were murdered because they happened to be there at the time.’