by Pavel Kohout
Only the civilian in the beige overcoat acted like a detective; he silently watched Morava wade through the mosaic of fine shards around the table with the woman's torso on it, filling the pages of his notebook with tiny handwriting. However, when Morava finished, it was the hefty one who addressed him. The man's high Gestapo rank was almost palpable; he stood, feet apart, and planted his hands on his hips in imitation of his Fuhrer.
"Your opinion?"
Morava answered as concisely as possible, the way he'd been taught.
"A sadistic murder."
"We figured that out already," the German snarled at him. "Any other bright ideas?"
Morava had always found it difficult to talk to people who raised their voices. His windbag of a father had labeled him a scaredy-cat, and this reputation followed him to Prague. Only Superintendent Beran had realized that it was an inborn aversion to the sort of violence that hides intellectual weakness.
Morava had to clear his throat again, but then he answered firmly. "At the moment, I can only tell you what I see. I'd have to investigate, but given the nature of the case—"
The man he took to be a detective broke in.
"The colonel wanted to know if you recognize an MO."
Morava looked over at the corpse again. This time his training prevailed; he examined it dispassionately, as an object of professional interest. The bizarre and horrible tableau did not remind him of anything he'd read or learned in his few years as an apprentice. He shook his head. The man probed further.
"Do you know of any religious sect that might have done this?"
He should have thought of that himself. Yes, there could be a ritual behind it, but what? There was nothing like this in Czech history, at least.
"No, not offhand."
"Where the hell is your boss?" the large one exploded.
When afflicted, Morava used to imagine his tormentors without their clothes. It still worked; the overfed pig in front of him wasn't the least bit frightening.
"With the rest of my colleagues, at the air-raid sites," he explained. "The city was just bombed for the first time."
"No! You're joking!" The Gestapo officer turned caustic again. "How could we have missed it? You want to know what bombing is, kid? Go have a look at Dresden!"
Suddenly he sounded almost insulted. Morava imagined the sinks and toilets hanging from the walls of the corner house, things their owners had been using just a short while ago. Those people certainly hadn't missed it.
"The police commissioner is having the superintendent tracked down," Morava assured him. "I'm sure he'll be here as soon as he can."
The practical one spoke up again. Slender and gray-haired, he looked like the most reasonable of the lot and differed noticeably from the rest in his behavior and tone.
"Will you wait for him or start the investigation yourself? How quickly can you put a team together?"
A fellow detective, that's why. He tried to explain it to him again.
"Our department is only authorized to investigate criminal acts committed by Czechs...."
"This one will be transferred to you."
"But the victim is German," Morava objected.
"Unfortunately so. Except the murderer is Czech. The building's caretaker met him."
Morava was dumbfounded. Privately he had been betting on a refugee or a deserter hoping to extort money and jewelry from a fellow German. But that was no motive for butchery like this.
"Well, hello," he whispered in Czech.
In addition to years of experience in the field, Chief Inspector Buback brought an extra qualification to his new post in Prague. He was a Praguer by birth and had an excellent command of Czech.
The young detective's involuntary gasp amused him.
Buback imagined all the things he would overhear in the near future. Hanging this case around the neck of the Czech Protectorate's police was one of the masterly moves Colonel Meckerle was known for.
The tactic had nothing to do with the nationality of the criminal or the victim. The von Pommeren clan had a problematic reputation: in addition to the government's general distrust of the German aristocracy, there were doubts about this particular family's loyalty to the Fuhrer.
In the eyes of the Czechs, however, the baroness represented the German elite; her murder could prompt another bloody reprisal. Of course, at the moment that wasn't a possibility. It would be unwise to inflame the natives when this land would soon be the site of Germany's decisive battle with its enemies.
Meckerle knew that until they could deploy the nearly completed ultimate weapon, they would need perfect order in the Protectorate. And for this he needed absolute control of the police. Now that the small and unreliable Protectorate Army had been disbanded, the gendarmes were the only Czechs with an arsenal—even a small and militarily insignificant one—and, more importantly, a good communications system.
The murder investigation would be transferred to the Czech police: a matter of the utmost importance, they'd be told. They'd be hostages! Finding this sort of criminal was like looking for a needle in a haystack, Meckerle had assured Buback. We'll run them ragged! We'll dig in the spurs and pull the reins at the same time! And then, using you, he explained to Buback, we'll get our hands around their throat!
"Elisabeth von Pommeren," the superintendent now told the Czech, "was a member of the oldest noble family in Germany; her husband was a general of the Reich's armed forces and was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross. For this reason, we are invoking the Security Decree of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, signed on first September 1939, section two, paragraph twelve, according to which—and I quote—'the police departments of the Protectorate are required to act on the instructions of the Reich's criminal police,' end quote. What's more, the imperial protector will no doubt offer a reward for the capture of this criminal. The murderer must be found. Lack of diligence will be treated as sabotage."
Buback watched the youth scribbling in his notebook, concentrating so hard his tongue nearly hung out. The kid wasn't their intended audience, but he would convey the message accurately to his superiors. Thirty-three months ago, thousands of Czech hostages had paid with their lives for the assassination of the Nazis' acting imperial protector, Reinhard Heydrich. The boy could certainly imagine the carnage to come if Germany decided that this murder had a political motive.
"Do you want your people to keep the evidence?" the youth asked with surprising practicality.
"I'll tell you what we want," Meckerle thundered. "I want that monster's head. How you get it is your business! Detective Buback will be watching your every move. Unless he finds incredibly good reasons for your mistakes and delays, I will personally bring them to the attention of the Prague Castle and Berlin."
The colonel's explosions always rattled his own men; therefore, it irritated Buback when the kid merely cleared his throat again.
"I understand. May I use the telephone?"
Meckerle gestured with a glove.
"Tell your supervisor that his absence today is quite exceptionally excused. Tomorrow at eight hundred hours I expect to see his personal status report on my desk at Bredovska Street. Even"—and here he raised his voice again—"if it's thundering and bombs are falling!"
More bombs were falling on his beloved Dresden as they spoke, Buback remembered. Was his old home still standing? Anyway, what was the difference ... ? Once the others had trooped off, Buback took his anger out on the Czech.
"Is there a problem? The telephone is in the entrance hall; hop to it and look smart. We haven't touched anything here, it's your neck on the line now."
The kid rushed off and was heard asking a Jitka to get him an autopsy team quickly. Buback was alone in the apartment for the first time. He looked at the unbelievable object, which someone had created not long ago from a human being, and shivered.
He described in a whisper how he had done the deed and, as expected, heard praise. He left the church a new man; the unbearable tensi
on of the previous days was behind him. He had done it! He'd erased the shame of Brno. He had proved he was worthy of trust, and now he, and no one else, would carry out the rest of the assignment. This morning he had still doubted himself; would it be humanly possible? But incredibly she had calmed his fears and confirmed him as her judge on earth.
For the first time in years, his spirits were high. However, he had a new problem. He had less and less control over his body. Even after a long rest, he felt as if he'd been marching all day. But even when doing it he'd just stood there; there had been no resistance. Why this stupor; why did even a light bag weigh him down?
The answer he received was so simple he had to laugh. A woman rolled her bicycle out of a nearby courtyard; as she walked she bit into the heel of a loaf of bread, and his stomach immediately cramped up. Of course, he realized; with all the excitement, he'd had nothing to eat or drink since yesterday.
He placed his satchel on the sidewalk and pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his raincoat. Sure, he had tons of ration coupons left, even halfway through the month; he'd neglected himself completely the last few days. This would have to stop. If he was to succeed and fulfill the highest obligation, he needed strength.
He looked around the unfamiliar street and wasn't the least bit surprised to find a restaurant directly opposite. "Angel's." How appropriate. His spirits revived immediately and he could feel his saliva start to flow.
Superintendent Beran had an excellent alibi. At the ruins of a building in Pankrac that had housed German bureaucrats' families, he had met the entourage of State Secretary Karl Hermann Frank. Frank was the Protectorate's eternal second fiddle, but he had outlived all the first fiddles; he ordered Beran to accompany him as he toured the path of the raid. When the messenger from Police Commissioner Rajner delivered Colonel Meckerle's command, Frank had merely shaken his head briefly.
However, the report, which reached them less than an hour later, roused the impassive Nazi to anger.
"How repulsive—disgusting!" he screamed at the superintendent, as if he had suddenly discovered the Czech to be responsible for the murder. "I expect you to find the murderer immediately. And I hope, for your people's sake, that it's some deviant and not a bloody Resistance fighter trying to frighten the Germans in Prague. Otherwise you Czechs will pay for it from now till doomsday."
Beran proceeded immediately to the scene of the crime but found only a locked building. The single policeman out front was on his way home. The on-site investigation had just ended, he told Beran, and they'd taken the remaining pieces back to the pathology lab. What pieces? The officer hadn't seen them himself and his secondhand description sounded like the product of a sick imagination. The superintendent returned to the Bartolomejska Street office, wondering whom he could put on the case. The Germans had shot his best homicide detective in the Heydrich affair—for "condoning" the assassination—and his senior detectives, both aces, were ill with the flu. He was glad it was the ever-diligent Morava who'd stepped in in a pinch, but his country-born assistant could be as stubborn as a mule; he hoped the kid hadn't made waves.
The assistant detective was now sitting on the other side of his desk. The photos had not yet arrived, so Morava was reading his notes from the scene to Beran. They were far beyond anything even Beran had ever witnessed.
"Point A: The victim, forty-five, a well-bred woman in good physical condition, evidently offered no resistance. Apart from the mutilations listed below, there are no scratches on her skin, and her nails show no traces of a struggle;
"Point B: Using several strips of wide tape (the sort used at post offices and to protect windows against bomb blasts), he taped over her mouth and genitals; the doctor's preliminary investigation suggests that she was not raped;
"Point C: The perpetrator tied the victim to the dining-room table with straps—judging by the cuts on the skin—on her back, so that her head fell back over the edge; he tied her arms at the elbow to her legs underneath the tabletop;
"Point D: The perpetrator cut off both breasts just above the chest and placed them next to the victim on an oval serving dish, which he apparently took from the sideboard;
"Point E: The perpetrator sliced open the victim's belly from chest to below the waist, pulled out her small intestine, twisted it skillfully into a ball, and placed it in a soup tureen;
"Point F: The perpetrator cut the victim's throat almost through to the spinal cord; however, he did not cut the cord itself, so the head remained hanging beneath the body and the blood ran into a brass container, which he had taken from under a potted ficus tree;
"and finally, Point G: Not even the doctor could determine in his first examination when the victim died. But the panic in her eyes," Morava added, closing his notebook, "leads us to conclude that unfortunately she did not die immediately."
His boss reacted much as Morava had at the scene of the crime.
"Good job, Morava. Is it the dream of a mad butcher?"
"Or a surgeon ..."
"And the Germans think it's the Resistance?"
"The perpetrator was Czech; that's all they needed."
The superintendent studied the closely written notes he had made during the presentation.
"Was anything missing?"
"The victim had precious stones on her hands and neck. More valuables and a considerable sum of cash were found in her handbag and in a small air-raid suitcase by the apartment door."
"How did the murderer get into the apartment?"
"She must have opened the door for him herself. The keys were in the lock, inside. When he left, he just pulled the door shut."
Morava watched tensely as Beran worked his way down the feared list of question marks. For years now it had been his goal to answer all of them correctly. So far he had never made it; today he sensed he was the closest yet. An idea popped into his head: if he did it today, he'd go talk to Jitka too, before someone else beat him to it.
"Was the front door of the building unlocked?"
"No, but every occupant has a key."
"Who could have let the perpetrator into the building?"
"Apparently the victim herself did it."
"Arguments for."
"From his apartment, the caretaker saw her come in and heard the elevator going up. Soon after that the sirens sounded; he wanted to make his usual rounds to see that everyone was in the shelter. But the bombs were already falling, and he ran out onto the embankment in a panic—as he realized later, not just in his slippers, but without his keys. If the door had been locked, he wouldn't have gotten out. So she was the one who forgot to lock up, and the murderer took advantage of it."
"Unless he was waiting in the apartment."
Morava gulped.
"How could he ... ?"
"Can we rule out the possibility that he got into the building before she did? Say, as a repairman? Or that he got the keys from her?"
Morava saw both his goals recede into the distance.
"No..."
"So we can't determine how long the slaughter took him."
Slaughter! His boss had found the precise word for it. And at the same time was testing him.
"That we can. After all, he couldn't have started without her."
Beran grinned in agreement and Morava's confidence grew; at least he hadn't fallen for a trick question. His instructor plowed on through his thicket of notes.
"The caretaker says he began his rounds a quarter hour after the raid."
"I'd say half an hour after."
"Why?"
"I went back along the route with him. He waited under the bridge in case there were more bombs. He was already in a state of shock."
"Even half an hour isn't much for such a complicated vivisection. We can draw some conclusions from that."
"One thing's clear as day." Morava excitedly put forward his theory. "He was prepared in advance; he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it. He had everything with him, like a master craftsman. I
doubt we'll even find his fingerprints. And he must be incredibly skillful; the caretaker didn't notice anything odd about him, even after that butchery."
"What did he think when he met him?"
"Outside all hell had broken loose; men from the gas and electric companies were going building to building to assess the damage...."
"And have you simply ruled out," Beran asked, with obvious incredulity in his voice, "that it might be a false lead?"
Morava was shocked.
"You mean that the caretaker did it himself? Mr. Beran, you'd have to meet the man! When he found the apartment open and saw the butchery, he knew he'd met the murderer. He was sure the guy would be back soon to kill him too, and he lost control of his bowels right there."
