The Josef Slonský Box Set

by Graham Brack

  ‘Wondering what you’re doing creeping around personnel with the lights off.’

  Slonský drew himself up to his full height and his chin jutted out defiantly.

  ‘There is a perfectly good reason but I decline to give it.’

  Navrátil shrugged.

  ‘Fair enough. It’s not my place to question your actions. But if anyone saw you, what are you going to tell them?’

  ‘Who saw me?’

  ‘Nobody. I stayed here to keep a lookout.’

  ‘So did you follow me?’

  ‘Follow is too strong a word. I came to talk to you but you were so preoccupied you ignored me.’

  ‘Then I must compliment you on your shadowing technique. I had no idea I was being followed.’

  ‘From the look on your face you wouldn’t have noticed if the Presidential Guard and its band had followed you. So what have you found out?’

  ‘I don’t know just yet. A germ of an idea is forming in my head but I can’t quite see how it all fits.’

  ‘And what did your ex-wife want?’

  ‘Private business.’

  ‘It was private till you bellowed at her in the canteen, sir. After that it was all a bit public.’

  ‘We’ve got something to work out, that’s all.’

  ‘If you want any advice about handling women…’

  ‘I’ll ask someone other than you, thank you. Now, go home, Navrátil, as I am about to do.’

  Slonský strode off along the corridor, leaving Navrátil musing about the events of the evening as he smoothed out a crumpled paper napkin.

  Chapter 11

  It was a chilly morning so Peiperová was wearing a winter coat and boots. She almost walked past the blue Octavia that Slonský was occupying, but he wound down the window and called her.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I thought we were meeting inside.’

  ‘And waste five minutes going in just to come back out? Get your seat belt on and make yourself comfortable. It’s a long way to Dolný Kubín.’

  Peiperová began unbuttoning her coat.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother with that, lass. You’ll be glad of it when you get out to fetch us some breakfast when we’re out of town.’

  Slonský drove at his usual speed, around five kilometres per hour over the speed limit. They drove through the city and headed south-east on the road to Brno.

  ‘Good weekend?’ Slonský suddenly asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir. Yours?’

  ‘You already know about mine, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Some of it anyway.’

  ‘How much did Navrátil tell you?’

  ‘That your wife turned up and there was a bit of a scene.’

  ‘“A bit of a scene”? If you think that was a bit of a scene you should have been there when she said she was leaving.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, sir. It must have been difficult for you.’

  Slonský looked confused as if the idea that it might have been difficult had not occurred to him before.

  ‘Thank you, Peiperová. It’s good to know someone appreciates my position.’

  ‘So what will you do now, sir?’

  ‘Now? I think I’ll pull over by that bakery so you can get us some breakfast.’

  Peiperová was driving as they entered Dolný Kubín and looked for the police station.

  ‘There it is,’ said Slonský. ‘Pull in at the side of the road.’

  They entered the station and effected introductions. A young man in motorcycle gear was detailed to lead them to the Bartoš house. He introduced himself as Officer Jakubko.

  ‘I’ll ride ahead, sir. It’s not too far. Just so I know, am I going to have to arrest them?’

  ‘Not that I know of. They haven’t done anything in the Czech Republic.’

  ‘Very good, sir. They don’t have a good name around here, I’m afraid.’

  A few minutes later Jakubko signalled a right turn and pulled into a small yard. There was a long, low building on one side that had seen better days, a hen house and a fenced compound containing some unpleasant-looking dogs. Jakubko put his motorbike on its stand and smoothed out his uniform, stowing the helmet in a pannier and donning his uniform cap.

  ‘Shall we go in, sir?’

  They walked towards the door, which opened to reveal a scruffy man in a tattered vest who was chewing on a corn cob.

  ‘Whatever it is, we ain’t done it.’

  ‘Nobody is accusing anyone of anything, Viktor. These officers are Czechs. They’ve come all the way from Prague to see your mother.’

  ‘Why should she want to talk to them?’

  Slonský intervened. ‘Because we want to get justice for your brother Ľubomir.’

  Viktor considered this as he chewed.

  ‘Bit late. You hanged the poor bugger.’

  ‘Yes, and I don’t know why. But if I could talk to you all inside, we might get some clues.’

  Viktor turned and held the door open behind him with his foot.

  ‘Ma, these folk are from Prague. They want to talk to you about Ľubo.’

  An old woman was sitting by a potbelly stove peeling potatoes.

  ‘What about Ľubo? You can’t pick on him anymore.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Bartošová,’ Slonský replied. ‘I want to find out why he was hanged.’

  ‘There’s no reason. They just did it.’

  ‘Mind if we sit down?’

  ‘If you like. It’ll make a change to have someone to talk to other than Viktor. I don’t get out now, what with my legs.’

  She indicated the limbs in question. There was no obvious problem with them.

  ‘Who’s the maid?’ she asked.

  ‘This is Officer Peiperová.’

  ‘Married? My Viktor’s going spare.’

  ‘I’m spoken for, I’m afraid,’ said Peiperová, causing Slonský to do a double take.

  ‘Shame. You look like you wouldn’t take any lip from a man. He can be a bit mouthy, our Viktor. Gets him into trouble sometimes, don’t it, Jako?’

  Officer Jakubko agreed that it did.

  ‘That, and the vodka,’ the old lady expanded.

  ‘I had the impression you had a big family,’ Slonský began.

  ‘I have, but they’re all married and away now, except Viktor. And Ľubo of course.’

  ‘I’m Lieutenant Josef Slonský. I was visited a little while ago by a retired policeman called Holoubek. He was involved in investigating the murder your son was convicted of. Holoubek told me he had discovered too late that your boy was already in jail in Olomouc when the crime was committed.’

  ‘That’s right. He came over to see me. It was too soon after. I sent him packing. It does you no good to hear your boy’s innocent when they’ve just hanged him.’

  ‘Holoubek was murdered himself a few days ago. I think he was killed because he was trying to get your son’s case reopened.’

  The old lady stopped peeling for a moment.

  ‘That’s a shame. He was a decent man, for a policeman.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why someone in the police came to Olomouc to get your son. Why pick him out? He must have known him already, but I can’t see how. I mean, your son had been run in any number of times around here, but I can’t work out why the villain thought he was the best person to frame. Tell me what your son did after he left here.’

  She resumed peeling.

  ‘He’d been banged up too many times here. I thought if it happened again he’d get a long sentence. He wasn’t a bad lad, just not very bright. He couldn’t read, you know. They thought he was thick, but one of my grandsons is just like him. I don’t know what they call it, when they can’t make out letters to spell words.’

  ‘Dyslexia?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s what the school said. Dyslexic. The grandson gets special help, but poor Ľubo didn’t. He just got written off as an idiot. Couldn’t get a job, so he did odd bits here for me, then he discovered he could climb. That’s when
he took to cat burgling. He got himself a bike and he used to go off places to burgle for a few days, then he’d come back here. But he couldn’t get shot of the stuff, so he said he’d have to move. He went up to Bratislava, then when that got too hot for him, he crossed into the Czech bit of the country to live in Olomouc. It was all one country then, you remember.’

  ‘But how did he come to the attention of a policeman in Prague? I can’t find anyone connected with the case who had ever worked in Olomouc.’

  ‘Just before they hanged him, he said he’d try his luck in Prague. Bratislava was a poor place then, but he thought people were better off in Prague. They’d have stuff worth nicking. So that’s what he did.’

  ‘Why did he get caught?’

  Mrs Bartošová sighed.

  ‘He couldn’t read, could he? He broke into a few houses. At one of them, he stole a medal. He didn’t realise it was some special Russian thing they’d given a bigwig. Shouldn’t be accepting medals off Russians anyhow. But he got caught trying to flog it in Olomouc. They picked him up and charged him with burglary. He co-operated, mind. When they took him back to Prague he showed them where he’d been. He didn’t know they were important people’s houses. He just thought they looked posh.’

  Slonský thought for a moment.

  ‘You don’t know anyone else he burgled? Did the owners get their property back?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’d spent the money, of course.’

  ‘What money was that?’

  ‘He found some money in one of the houses. Quite a stash by all accounts. But it wasn’t crowns. It was some other sort of money. He had to find someone to swap it with. I think they ripped him off, because he said he only got about a tenth of what it was worth, but he couldn’t argue because he didn’t know where else to trade it and he didn’t want to be found with it on him. They didn’t charge him over the money, because he didn’t have it any longer when he was taken in. I think it was just the eight burglaries. He pleaded guilty, but then they said he’d killed a girl doing one of the robberies and next thing we knew he’d been strung up.’

  ‘Jana Válková.’

  ‘Was that her name? Well, I’m sorry for her parents, but I knew my Ľubo. He wouldn’t hurt a girl. Might chance his arm with her, see if she was interested, but he wouldn’t force her.’

  ‘The odd thing is that Mr Válek didn’t report a robbery, so Jana can’t have been killed during one.’

  Peiperová had her index finger raised as if wishing to discreetly catch Slonský’s eye. He nodded to her to continue.

  ‘May I ask if your son always worked alone? Could anyone have known of his plans?’

  ‘Always alone so far as I know. What kind of help could anyone give a cat burglar?’

  ‘But it sounds as if you knew his plans.’

  ‘Only the gist of them. He kept himself to himself. He said he didn’t trust others not to blab. He told one of his brothers once that he was planning to rob a place nearby and it got out. He didn’t half give his brother a hiding. After that, he got even more tight-lipped. He only told me so I would know where to start looking for him if he didn’t come back. He said if he fell, he’d probably wind up unconscious in hospital somewhere and they wouldn’t know who he was, so we needed to come looking for him.’

  Slonský picked up his hat and stood to indicate they had asked all their questions.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Bartošová, Mr Bartoš. You’ve been a big help.’

  ‘Are you actually going to do anything or was this just for show?’ asked Viktor.

  Slonský’s eyes blazed for a moment, and Peiperová held her breath in anticipation of the angry riposte, but Slonský recovered himself.

  ‘No, I want to find out who framed your brother, who really killed Jana Válková, and who killed Edvard Holoubek.’

  Mrs Bartošová resumed her peeling.

  ‘Mr Detective, if you do find out who it was,’ she said, ‘I hope you’ll tell us so Viktor and his brothers can take a trip to Prague and beat the living daylights out of him.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Slonský responded, ‘we’re expected to guard our prisoners so that doesn’t happen to them. Weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not that weird,’ she added. ‘You gave Ľubo a medical to check he was fit before you hanged him.’

  Jakubko was torn between two conflicting instructions. He was under orders to facilitate the Czech guests’ visit in every way so that they would finish and go home as quickly as possible, and he had been told to do all he could to make them welcome, so when Slonský asked for a recommendation for a café, the young police officer had to decide whether to tell them there were better coffee places elsewhere, or take them to his aunt’s little place which, while small and something of a sixties time warp, did a really good coffee and a nut and poppyseed cake to die for. The conflict did not take long to resolve, and soon the motorbike was propped against the decaying plasterwork of a café while Jakubko, Slonský and Peiperová tackled a large piece of cake each.

  ‘Is it good?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, very good,’ said Slonský. ‘Are there any vacancies for an experienced detective in your force?’

  Jakubko laughed.

  ‘We don’t have one. We have to send to Žilina if we want help.’

  ‘Does it happen often?’

  Jakubko pondered.

  ‘Not since we’ve had all these cameras in the town. We had a bicycle stolen a while ago, but we solved that ourselves.’

  Peiperová delicately replaced her coffee cup on her saucer.

  ‘Sir, did that really get us anywhere?’

  ‘Not really. I mean, it probably solved the crime for us, but apart from that, it was a bit of a waste of time.’

  Peiperová and Jakubko gazed at him in surprise.

  ‘Solved the crime? How? Who?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing till I’ve checked it, but I now have a hypothesis to test. And that’s one more than I had when we came. Now, shut up and enjoy your cake. Actually, I might just have another piece, seeing as Jako’s aunt went to all the trouble of cooking it.’

  ‘What time will we get back, sir?’

  ‘That depends on how fast you drive, Peiperová. If you press on that pedal under your right foot, the car goes faster.’

  ‘I know, sir. I just don’t know the roads very well.’

  ‘Like the Slovaks themselves, lass, they’re often dark and twisted.’

  ‘Sir! That’s really prejudiced of you!’

  ‘Joke, girl, joke. It doesn’t represent my real view of Slovaks. Given that they don’t have our advantages and the beer is maiden’s water, I admire their sturdy independence. Jakubko was a nice lad.’

  ‘Yes, he was, sir.’

  ‘I hope Officer Navrátil isn’t the jealous type. I don’t want him driving up here and challenging Jakubko to an inter-force duel.’

  ‘He has no reason to be, sir. You’re just stirring things.’

  ‘You know, you’re very wise for one so young.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. To return to my original question, when will we get back?’

  ‘If we drive non-stop, a little before nine o’clock. However, that nice Captain Lukas has approved an evening meal for us, so we could stop somewhere and eat at public expense at a reasonable time, rather than grabbing some fast food just before bedtime.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan, sir. I’d be happy with that.’

  ‘Good, because the alternative was that you sat in the car until I’d eaten mine, and I might have felt slightly guilty about that. If I ever felt guilty, which I generally don’t. Now, I’m going to snatch forty winks. Wake me up just before you hit anything.’

  Instructed to find somewhere to eat around halfway, Peiperová spotted an inn about forty kilometres east of Brno and pulled off the road. It turned out to be an excellent choice, and by the time Slonský had filled himself with home-made venison sausages, dumplings of various kinds and a litre of the local brew, he was feeling benig
n. Peiperová had expected to switch seats, but Slonský had other plans.

  ‘You’ll be nicely rested after that break, so you may as well carry on driving for a bit.’

  As they drove along they chatted about police life, promotion prospects, Prague, promotion prospects, inside information on other officers that they might not want made public, and promotion prospects. Slonský found himself experiencing an unexpected feeling. Having regarded Peiperová as a supplementary nuisance, over and above his existing necessary nuisance, he now found himself thinking that keeping her around would make life more interesting. This was strange, because it was only a little over three months before that his arm had been twisted to take Navrátil under his wing. Officers assigned to work with Slonský seemed to have an above average sickness rate, and eventually Lukas had run out of options. However, the academy was sending Navrátil to him for further in-post development, and someone had to supervise him. While the idea that Slonský could supervise anyone made the average senior officer gulp, Lukas was in a position to exert pressure. It was Navrátil, or work on your own, so Slonský took Navrátil, having been assured that he could work a kettle. As Lukas had suspected, Slonský enjoyed having a captive audience. Navrátil laughed at his jokes, was impressed by his successful deductions, made or fetched coffee on demand and was happy to do some of the tedious grunt work that Slonský detested. Lukas also suspected that Navrátil might have been doing some of Slonský’s paperwork, the quality of which had improved markedly in the last three months. Tackled on this point, Slonský claimed that it was because he felt an increased responsibility to do it well. Lukas noted waspishly that this increased responsibility seemed to run to numbering his list entries consecutively, indenting his paragraphs in a consistent way and no longer typing random headings in a completely different font.

  Thus the partnership between Slonský and Navrátil had flourished, and now Peiperová had come along. By skilfully keeping them apart, Slonský had avoided the worst of Navrátil’s impersonations of love’s young dream, and there was no doubting the fact that Peiperová was clever, conscientious and very, very ambitious. It was undeniably true that three people could do more work than two, and nowadays Navrátil needed much less supervision. In fact, Slonský belatedly realised, Navrátil was the best policeman he had worked with for a long time, despite his youth, and one day this pair of puppies would become top dogs in the Czech police. He only hoped he had retired by then so he never had to work for them.