by Ian Young
Hanzel’s phone rings, making him jump. The puzzle book tumbles to the floor as he scrambles to pick up the phone.
‘Prosím?’ Hanzel listens carefully, then tosses the phone aside. Krystina’s going to kill him. Unsworth has just been spotted at the airport, using a different name.
It is, of course, entirely reasonable that Unsworth would spend a few days strolling around one of the world’s most beautiful cities, staring at its wonders. It is entirely reasonable he would eat and sleep in the city and visit museums. And it is, of course, entirely reasonable that a Catholic priest would attend a service on a Sunday. Hanzel doubts this priest, or any other, poses a threat to Prague’s residents. He’s more concerned that Unsworth might become the next priest to get too close to a crucifix. But then again, that was a job for the police. He’ll call it in, tell them to keep him under surveillance.
He has abandoned his family for the entire weekend and it’s been for nothing, just traipsing around his city following a man who doesn’t appear to have a care in the world or an agenda to change it.
Zdeněk calls his wife. ‘Sorry, darling, I’ll be home in ten minutes. Let’s spend the afternoon at the cottage. Get the children ready.’
They still have time; it’s only an hour to the cottage his father bequeathed them. They can be there soon after lunch. He’ll take Monday morning off work; the kids won’t complain about missing school. The school won’t dare complain either, and his wife doesn’t work. There’s time to make amends.
Hanzel spots the priest in the crowd, chatting and mingling with the rest of the congregation. It is all entirely normal. There are two people he seems particularly friendly with and Hanzel thinks it wouldn’t do any harm to get their photo – not that they look like killers.
He checks the photo of Unsworth and his friends, zooming in on the little screen to get a better look at their faces, before sending it by Bluetooth to his phone. Seconds later it’s zooming over the network to his office, where someone would run it through the computer. Zdeněk Hanzel is done. He makes his way home and vows never to follow another priest as long as he lives.
Zdeněk’s wife huffs as he walks through the door. ‘The children are ready, I’m ready, only, it seems, you’re not.’
Her tone is sharp. Zdeněk stoops to kiss her and, though she doesn’t flinch, she’s hardly welcoming. He lets out a short laugh that he knows is a mistake, and marches into the kitchen before she can react.
‘I’ll only be a moment,’ he says. ‘Hey, kids, get your shoes on, we leave in ten, nine, eight …’
Zdeněk’s phone rings. ‘Don’t you dare answer it,’ says his wife.
‘Miláčku, don’t worry, I’m not going to.’ He lets the phone ring off. ‘Five, four, three …’
The Hanzel children run into the hallway and slide to the floor, gathering up their shoes like a hitter scrambling to first base. Zdeněk shakes his head. ‘I wish I could still do that.’
As he grabs the overnight bags, his phone rings again. ‘Let me just see what they want … that’s all, promise.’
Krystina frowns and throws him a warning glare. ‘Your ten seconds are up. We’re going to the car.’
‘I’ll be there before you’ve fastened your seat belts.’
‘Prosím?’ he says into the phone.
‘Sorry, sir, but we’ve identified the girl you photographed outside the church.’
Hanzel listens irritably, eyes darting around the room as though following a fly. ‘Can’t the police deal with this?’
‘It’s not a simple missing persons matter,’ says the voice on the other end. ‘She fled, leaving a dead body in her apartment.’
‘Still a police matter.’
‘The women’s boss, a university professor, was killed in a hit and run, just an hour before.’
‘Still a police—’
‘According to our contact at the FBI, the body in the apartment was a private security contractor, former US Ranger, practically special forces.’
‘And?’
‘There’s no way she killed him.’
‘Well, that’s good for her then.’
‘Zdeněk, the day he and the professor died, the seventh of April, the special forces guy receives a call from someone at the airport, our airport, the time you wrote in your report that Unsworth made his calls.’
‘Where are you going with all of this?’
‘Well, Unsworth was with her today, wasn’t he? I don’t believe in coincidence.’
‘Bože! That’s all I need. Couldn’t you have told me this tomorrow?’
Chapter 20
I’m still on the sofa fast asleep when the doorbell chimes. I check my watch: 5.30 a.m. What the hell? For once Mason mustn’t have heard anyone approaching because he isn’t poised, ready to pounce from behind the door. He hasn’t even stirred yet.
There’s something about the rapid knock, a kind of insistence, that suggests it won’t go away. I sit up and wipe my face with my hands as though it will transform me from dazed prey into sentient human. I don’t think it works. As I stagger to my feet the knock sounds again, louder and faster, and I nearly jump clear of the floor.
‘Don’t answer it!’
I jump again. God! Those precious moments after waking too early really screw up the brain. I turn to see Mason, alert and composed like he’s been up for hours.
‘They aren’t going away,’ I say with an impatience I can’t help.
Mason looks through the spy hole. ‘Police. Two of them.’ He opens the door a few inches, keeping his foot tight against the bottom edge.
‘Scott Mason?’ asks one of the policemen.
Mason hesitates, but then he seems to slump a few inches. ‘Yes.’
‘May we come in?’
Mason nods and steps away from the door, opening it wide as though trying to suggest he has nothing to hide. Once inside, the policeman looks at me and asks me my name. For a second I wonder whether to give my real name or the one I entered the country under. In the end I follow Mason’s lead.
‘Andreia Menendes, Doctor Andreia Menendes.’ Sometimes my title seems more important than at other times.
‘Could we see your passport, please?’
Shit. Get out of that one. ‘Sure, um, I’m not sure where I left it.’ I make a show of searching around, scratching my head, mumbling to myself.
‘I could call my colleagues to come and help you search if you’re having difficulties.’ The policeman smiles, believing himself to be very clear. He was. The other policeman was already prowling around the room as though looking for evidence.
‘Fine, I’ll fetch it.’ I dig the passport out from my purse and hand it over.
‘Andreia Martin?’ The policeman smiles again and nods. ‘Would you come with us please?’
‘Is she under arrest?’ Mason springs to my defence once more like he’s now my lawyer.
The policeman politely acknowledges his intervention but speaks only to me. ‘We have some questions for you, that’s all, nothing to worry about.’
I look at Mason and shrug. The academic in me is curious to know what these questions are about, but something tells me I would have to answer them whether I go voluntarily or not.
‘What about him?’ I ask, nodding at Mason.
‘I’m sure Mr Mason can look after himself.’
I get into the back of an unmarked car – a Škoda, obviously. The policeman who spoke to me sits in the back too, and his friend sits in the front. There’s a driver, who bids me good morning in Czech, but says nothing more, and a moment later we’re speeding through the deserted streets of Prague.
The two policemen don’t speak during the journey. The car swiftly navigates the empty streets of Prague like they might have done during communis
t times when hardly anyone had a car, or so I believed. But this isn’t communist-era Prague; it’s simply early in the morning. Hopefully their treatment of foreign detainees has moved on too.
We soon pass through the baroque and Renaissance architecture of central Prague towards the early nineteenth-century cubist buildings a little further out. You have to stray quite far from the centre before encountering the bland communist apartment blocks that surround the city like a broken wall. They remind me, a little, of São Paulo: functional monstrosities to house the masses. They have to live somewhere, I suppose. We cross the Vltava River, heading west (I can see the castle to my right). A few minutes later we are clear of the city and into the countryside, or so it seems. I’ve never been out this far before. We appear to be driving by a large park or open space. Surely there’s a police station nearer to central Prague than this?
‘Where are you taking me?’ I ask, beginning to wonder if these guys really are the police.
‘It’s OK, we are nearly there,’ says the policeman beside me.
‘Why are you arresting me?’
‘We’re not arresting you, Dr Menendes. I told you, we have some questions concerning an investigation. That’s all.’
I don’t know what else to say, or whether I should say anything at all. But I wonder if it has anything to do with the dead man in my apartment.
We sweep right from one miniature freeway to another, which then tapers out to a single carriageway. On my right there is what looks like a military complex: a long wall with barbed wire on top, and an array of satellite dishes on the buildings. A tall glass-fronted office block dominates the skyline behind the wall. The driver turns. A uniformed policeman steps out of a gatehouse and checks the driver’s ID. He utters ‘Dobré ráno’ through the window and even nods at me as though I was included in his morning salutation. It’s a relief to see a policeman on the gate checking the IDs that I should have checked before they took me away from the safety of my apartment – and Mason.
Once inside they show me to an austere room, plain off-white walls and floor, a single lamp dangling from the ceiling and a table right in the middle. There’s no blood on the walls so that seems like a good sign. The policeman who did all the talking takes my phone and helps me to a seat at the table, like I might have forgotten what a chair looks like. Perhaps he thinks my mind would be so confused right now I wouldn’t be able to remember how to sit down.
It was almost thirty minutes later when someone comes to see me. A tall man, in his late thirties I would guess, not inoffensive looking, but not exactly – holy cow! I was going to say not exactly like Mason. The man smiles, a friendly smile that they probably all start out with.
‘Good morning,’ says the man, ‘sorry to keep you waiting.’
His English is fluent, barely accented, it sounds more familiar than Mason’s English – American English; I suppose he learnt American English like the rest of the world. Mason, take note.
‘Hi,’ I say, flashing the briefest smile in my repertoire.
‘How are you enjoying your stay in Prague?’
‘Great, until today.’
‘Yes, sorry about this,’ he says, glancing at the ceiling, then at the walls. ‘Perhaps it won’t take long.’
‘Well let’s get on with it, shall we, Mr …?’
The man’s face opens up like I slapped him, but he recovers quickly. ‘Of course,’ he says, smiling. ‘My name is Zdeněk Hanzel, I just have a few questions—’
‘And who are you?’
‘Uh …?’ He glares at me as though his next words might be ‘I ask the questions, missy.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, I just want to know what this is all about.’
‘Of course. I’m with the Security Information Service, and I stress, you’re in no danger here.’
That’s odd. I would expect a kidnapper to tell me I was in no danger, but not a policeman. Am I in danger?
‘Tell me, slecna Menendesová—’
‘What?’ I pull a face and immediately recognise the combative tone in my voice. ‘Sorry, I mean, I didn’t understand.’
‘Czech formal speech,’ he says. ‘It’s how we would say Miss Menendes in my language.’
‘Oh, right, in that case it’s Doctor Menendesová.’ During my three months here I’ve realised that titles mean far more than they do in LA. There’s a guy living across the hallway from us whose mailbox addresses him as Ing – Engineer. They use the title as they would Dr or Prof, even someone with a master’s degree uses Mstr in front of their name. Insisting on being addressed as Doctor Menendes might just attract a little more respect and a little less peril. Maybe.
‘Yes, of course, Doctor Menendesová.’ Hanzel smiles, it seems genuine and courteous. But that could change.
‘So, tell me – Doctor Menendesová – how do you know the Catholic priest, Sean Unsworth?’
I’m not really listening because, after three months, I’ve just realised something: the Czech version of family names for women adds ‘ová’ at the end, from the Latin for egg. The image of Finch flashes in my head. He is dead too? Oh God.
‘Doctor Menendesová?’
‘Yes? Oh, how do I know who?’
‘Look … can I call you Andreia?’
‘Sure,’ I say, shrugging. So that was my pompous idea about titles out of the window.
‘Andreia, we know you are wanted in the United States for questioning about a dead man in your apartment, and your sudden disappearance. I’m not interested in that, though my close colleagues in the American embassy would probably appreciate my help in their search, but I do—’
‘I really don’t know who you’re talking about.’
Hanzel produces a photo and lays it on the table, twizzling it around to face me. I frown when I see me and Mason outside the church, chatting with the priest.
‘Oh, him! Sorry, I didn’t remember his name.’ I look up at Hanzel and shake my head. ‘I really don’t know him, we only spoke briefly.’
‘That’s OK, Andreia.’ Hanzel gathers up the photo. ‘How do you know him?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know him. He just came and sat next to me in church and we started to chat, just boring things really. He said it was his first time in Prague and that he’d like to come back.’
‘Did you arrange to meet him again?’
‘No, he said he was going home tomorrow, well, today …’ I look at my watch ‘… and that he loved the city.’
Hanzel nods as if acknowledging that anyone would love Prague. ‘Why did you come to Prague?’
‘Why not? It’s a beautiful city.’
He nods again. ‘True, but there are many beautiful cities. So why not, say, Lisbon? This is also beautiful, is it not? And you speak the language. Paris, Madrid, you speak these languages, no?’
‘Yeah, but …’ How does he know that?
‘So why Prague?’
I just shrug; I have no answer for him.
‘Did you exchange contact details with Unsworth?’
‘No way!’ I scoff and shake my head theatrically, glad to be on easier ground again.
‘Oh?’ Hanzel raises his eyebrows and cocks his head.
‘Well, I …’ It suddenly becomes obvious that admitting my atheism to Hanzel was going to make turning up at church a bit suspicious.
‘But you’re a Catholic, I assume?’
‘Uh, yeah … my father’s a priest … he likes me to go to church, but I’m not really into all that.’ Top answer, Andi. I almost give myself an congratulatory smile.
‘A priest with children?’
‘It was a late calling. Having children gave him some kind of road to Damascus moment.’ That was true.
‘Road to … I don’t understand.�
��
‘It’s a story in the Bible,’ I said. ‘My dad saw the light and became a priest.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Hanzel sits back in the chair and stares at me as though waiting for the truth that silently creeps out moments after a lie. His tactic works because I find myself trying to explain.
‘I was raised as a Catholic, but my scientific mind renders me incapable of taking the whole thing seriously. I mean—’
‘How about …’ The policeman cuts me off before I could get going. He looks at his notes ‘… Mr Mason, is he religious?’
‘He has an open mind …’ I say, trailing off as I thought about that.
‘Do you think Mason might have met Unsworth before?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
Hanzel laughs and looks down briefly. ‘You ask a lot of questions, but don’t give too many answers.’ He was still smiling; it doesn’t seem too threatening.
‘Sorry, it’s an academic tactic,’ I say, feeling pompous again. Actually, it’s how I end up arguing with Mason so much. ‘Understanding the reason behind a question helps find the right answer.’
‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘I’m just not used to it.’ Hanzel turns his head away and coughs. ‘OK, the dead man in your apartment was a highly trained soldier and a private security contractor. So is Mason. I wonder if there is a connection.’
I pause for a moment, knowing that my lack of surprise at this would be interpreted as me knowing far more than I was letting on. ‘You said you weren’t interested in the dead body.’
‘I’m not, but I am trying to piece things together. Would I be right in suggesting Mason killed the man in your apartment?’
‘The bastard was trying to kill me!’ I blurt this out without thinking, but then carry on blurting. ‘He beat me and strangled me. If Mason hadn’t turned up, I’d be dead now.’
