by Graham Brack
‘Especially since he has actually done damn all for his client, so far as I can tell.’
‘Ah, that’s because he doesn’t like being associated with clients who might actually go to jail. If it looks like going belly up it won’t be very long before he discovers a conflict of interest that means he can’t act on Banda’s behalf — unless, of course, the fees are spectacular.’
‘Banda can pay. I’ve seen his bank account.’
‘No chance of a photocopy some time, I suppose?’
‘That would be highly improper!’ Slonský replied in an outraged tone. ‘I’ll see what I can do when this has died down a bit.’
‘Fair enough. Refill those glasses with brain fuel and let’s start writing.’
Chapter 14
Banda had not seen a newspaper for several days, but he was allowed to see Valentin’s handiwork. He smirked at the thought that he might soon be released.
‘I wouldn’t read too much into that,’ Slonský announced. ‘I’m a notorious liar.’
‘You don’t have the evidence to hold me,’ declared Banda. ‘You can’t have, because I’m innocent.’
‘There’s a non sequitur there, or do I mean a metaphor?’ mused Slonský.
‘I think it’s a non sequitur,’ replied Mucha, ‘if I remember my Latin from school.’
‘Something that doesn’t follow? You mean, he may be innocent, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t got evidence that proves he isn’t.’
‘Nailed it in one, Lieutenant. It must be true, because our prisons are full but nobody who gets jailed is ever guilty, or so they say.’
Slonský shook his head.
‘No, everyone is guilty of something. Not necessarily what we bang them up for, but everyone has some little secret they’d rather keep to themselves. Isn’t that right, Dr Banda?’
‘I’ve already admitted I could have behaved better, but that’s a far cry from being a murderer.’
Slonský turned a chair round and straddled it while he rested his chin on the back.
‘You may be right. But if you’ll permit me to put a contrary opinion, here we have a young lady found murdered with your seminal fluid running down her leg, dumped from a car that is the same make and colour as yours, after having dinner and sex with you and after you failed to remember a flat you’d been to — unless the bedhead was outside when you were making love, which I find unlikely — and after you failed to report that you knew a young woman we were trying to identify and whose face was all over the newspapers. Not only that, but a quantity of money you withdrew from your bank, in full view of security cameras, was found in her vagina. A vagina to which, I remind you, you had recently had abundant access, and how many people can we say that about?’
‘It only needed one other,’ Banda remarked with a heavy sigh.
‘So you’re saying the murderer waited politely till you’d finished, then he ran in, strangled Miss Gruberová, found a large sum of money and, rather than pocket it, amused himself by shoving it up her before putting her clothes back on her and driving her five kilometres across town in a car just like yours to dump her by a busy railway station?’
Banda jutted his chin forward defiantly.
‘Yes,’ he growled.
‘Fair enough,’ said Slonský as he headed for the door. ‘It’s good to know what we’re up against. If you happen to think of a name for this murderer, you might want to give me a shout.’
Navrátil heard Slonský’s footsteps approaching and tried hard to look industrious, a task made appreciably more difficult by not having anything in particular to do.
‘Ah, there you are, lad! Some of us have done a day’s work by now.’
‘Sorry, sir. I slept in.’
‘Well, you’ve had a few hard days.’
‘It won’t happen again, sir.’
‘Don’t be daft. Of course it will. We all crash out from time to time. Occupational hazard of being a policeman. Just don’t let me catch you making a habit of it.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.’
‘We’ll say no more about it, unless of course I want something off you. What did you get up to on your day off, then?’
‘Saw my mum.’
‘Jolly good.’
Slonský riffled through a few papers, had a good scratch while gazing at the large map on the wall, then sat in his chair with a loud sigh.
‘Been baking again, has she?’
Mid-morning, Captain Lukas sauntered into the room.
‘I’ve had a telephone call from Mr Koller,’ he announced. ‘He is concerned that his client has not yet been released.’
‘What did you say, sir?’ Slonský enquired.
‘I said that I have a number of cases currently occupying me and I would make the necessary enquiries, which is what I’m doing now. We can’t hold him much longer, Slonský.’
Slonský worried at his thumb with his front teeth.
‘I know. I’m just hoping something will turn up.’
‘If I remember this morning’s newspaper, you were quoted as saying that you had no reason to hold Banda anyway. It’s just as well Mr Koller hasn’t seen that. Why do you so regularly put your foot in it?’
‘I was hoping that the real murderer would give me something more to keep Banda under lock and key, sir. I know we can’t wait long, but sometime today something may happen. If the real killer thinks Banda is getting off, he may help us a bit. In any event, he won’t kill again if it means letting Banda off the hook because he is in custody.’
Lukas turned a sickly shade of white.
‘You think this could be a serial killer?’
‘I hope not, sir, but we can never be sure until he’s locked up. Of course, Dr Banda is at risk himself with the killer still at large. Our cell is the safest place for him.’
Lukas recovered his composure.
‘I may make that suggestion to Mr Koller. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to insist on his client’s release if there’s a homicidal maniac out there waiting for him.’
‘No sane person would, sir. But he is a lawyer.’
A little after two o’clock Sergeant Mucha called.
‘Someone just delivered a package addressed to you.’
‘It’s not my birthday. Was it a tall, leggy blonde in a short skirt?’
‘No, it was a motorcycle courier with greasy hair and a star tattooed on his neck.’
‘So what did he leave?’
‘It’s addressed to you! How would I know?’ Mucha sounded outraged.
‘You didn’t open it?’
‘Certainly not. But I did ask who sent him. He says he was told by phone to go to a block of flats and look in a particular person’s mail box. There would be an envelope there and if he opened it there would be something to deliver and a handsome fee for doing so.’
‘And was there?’
‘A padded envelope and a thousand crowns. Not bad for ten minutes’ work.’
‘We’ll be right down. Or at least Navrátil will.’
Slonský put the phone down and smiled at his assistant.
‘Better go by way of the canteen, lad, and bring some coffee and a sausage or two. I think somebody up there likes us.’
Banda’s cell was looking rather more lived-in now. He had been allowed a table at which to write, and low piles of paper, meticulously sorted, covered half its surface. He was writing vigorously. Unfortunately he no longer had the gold fountain pen with the mother of pearl inserts in the barrel that he used at his desk at the ministry. It was now in a cardboard box that Mrs Bandová had been invited to collect so that his personal effects did not go missing before he was released. The Prime Minister’s abominable secretary sniffily conveyed the message with an undertone that implied that the release could well be sometime around 2050. All Banda was allowed was a wooden pencil bearing someone else’s teethmarks. Since he was not allowed an eraser, presumably in case he committed suicide by breaking it in half and ramming a piece up each nostril,
he was obliged to consider his words carefully before committing them to paper, but Banda would have done that anyway. He finished the letter he was writing and called Sergeant Mucha.
‘I’d be obliged if you would arrange for this to be posted,’ he said. ‘I assume I haven’t been given an envelope so that you can read it before it is sent.’
‘You assume correctly,’ replied Mucha. ‘There’s nothing questionable in it that might offend my delicate sensibilities, I hope?’
‘Of course not,’ Banda growled. The man was insufferable. If he ever got his old ministry back there would be a few policemen put out to grass before you could say ‘Welcome back, Minister.’
Mucha scanned the letter.
‘I’m not posting that!’ he announced. ‘What kind of language is that to use about a Prime Minister?’
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘It says “Philistine”.’
‘Does it?’ asked Mucha doubtfully. ‘You want to work on your handwriting, mate.’
‘It does. And don’t call me mate. I’m not your mate.’
‘Dead right,’ said Mucha. ‘I’m too fussy for that.’
Navrátil was pressed against the far wall as Slonský contemplated the envelope on his desk.
‘Are you sure it’s not a bomb, sir?’
‘Why should it be a bomb?’
‘It’s in a padded envelope. And if he thinks you’re getting close to him it’s the kind of thing a murderer might do.’
‘Navrátil, it takes a certain set of skills to make a letter bomb. Someone who strangles women is not a prime candidate for a cold-hearted bomb-maker. Besides, Mucha almost certainly steamed it open before he rang upstairs, and since there wasn’t a hell of a bang from the front desk I feel fairly confident about opening it. But if you want to cower any further away, Lukas isn’t in his office at the moment.’
Navrátil was barely reassured, but he did not wish to be thought craven, so he advanced three or four paces towards the desk as Slonský peeled the envelope open.
‘I was wrong, lad,’ he announced, causing Navrátil to flinch in anticipation of an explosion that failed to come. ‘No, Navrátil, I was wrong about Mucha steaming it open. The seal was intact. Now, what have we here?’ Reaching into the envelope, he slid out a large colour photograph and examined it closely. ‘Weird. Why send this to me?’
Navrátil inched closer and accepted the photograph that Slonský proffered him. It took him a moment or two to understand what he was looking at.
‘I know that man, don’t I? The one in the pool.’
‘Not in the biblical sense, I hope. It’s the opposition’s spokesman on finance, Daniel Soucha.’
‘Who’s the other man?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘What’s Soucha doing?’
‘Well, I doubt he’s checking if it’s a whistle.’
Navrátil blushed.
‘I mean, why is he letting people take pictures of him doing that sort of thing? There are still plenty of people who wouldn’t vote for a gay man.’
Slonský stood up and arched his back to relieve the stiffness he felt more with each day that passed. The sun was setting behind the rooftops in a dramatic peach-coloured sky. There was a sharp chill in the air, but Slonský opened the window and leaned out. There was the profound quiet of a city muffled in snow, broken by chugging buses and the occasional whine of a spinning car wheel as it slipped on the icy road.
‘It’s not a new photo, Navrátil. Look at the garden through the windows — roses in full bloom, which is unusual in Prague come February. So why hang on to it that long? Why send it to a homicide detective? What they’re doing is not a crime, assuming the dark-haired man is as old as he looks.’
Suddenly Slonský snapped his fingers.
‘Right, lad, we’ll get nowhere setting each other puzzles like that. Let’s get some answers. Run it across to Spehar and let’s see if it came from the same source as the first photo. Then we need to find out where it was taken. Judging by the angle I’d guess it’s a still from a security camera in the roof over the pool. It’s a pool in a private house, and I’ll lay odds it’s not Soucha’s own or he’d have known the camera was there. So the first thing to do is to find out where it was taken.’
‘I thought you said the first thing to do was to take it to Spehar, sir.’
‘Yes. And this is the next first thing. Off you go, youngster. I’m going to find Valentin.’
Slonský returned within the hour.
‘Didn’t you find him, sir?’
‘Of course I found him, Navrátil. I’d be a pretty poor detective if I couldn’t find a toper who spends all his days in one of three or four bars within a few streets in town.’
‘Could he help us?’
‘I didn’t ask. I just wanted him to find an expert for us. It’s going to take a couple of hours so we’ve just got time to line our stomachs. I have a feeling it could be a heavy session tonight, so get some sustenance inside you.’
Valentin was sitting in a booth rather than his usual stool near the door.
‘The chief problem with this seat is that you have a devil of a job catching the waiter’s eye. My glass has been empty for nearly ten minutes,’ he muttered.
‘Let me fill it for you, old friend. No, I insist.’
‘I wasn’t arguing.’
‘I know, but if people hear me say that they’ll think it can’t be you in this booth.’
Slonský smirked as he barged to the bar, returning with four large glasses of beer. He set one before each of them and put the fourth on a coaster in front of the seat opposite Valentin.
‘You and I are having the outside seats, Navrátil. It’s best if people don’t get a good look at our guests.’
‘Guests? Who’s the other guest?’
A young bearded man in the next booth stood up and tapped Navrátil on the shoulder.
‘I am. Shift over so I can get in.’
He extended a large hand and greeted each in turn. He plainly knew Valentin, who introduced him to Slonský and Navrátil.
‘This is Martin,’ announced Valentin. ‘Be content with his first name.’
‘Of course. Pleased to meet you, Martin.’
‘I hear you have something I’d very much like.’
‘I think so. But I can’t give it to you. At least, not yet. It’s evidence. But I’ll see to it you get first option on it — assuming, that is, that whoever sent it to me doesn’t publish it himself first.’
Slonský reached inside his coat and slid a folder across the table. Martin arched his eyebrows with curiosity before raising the flap and carefully examining the contents.
He let slip a low whistle.
‘Do you know who this is?’
‘I think it’s Soucha.’
‘So do I. That’s dynamite.’
‘You didn’t know?’
Valentin waved a hand between them.
‘Hello? I’m here. May I see, so I know what you’re talking about?’
Slonský nodded, and Martin passed the folder across the table to Valentin.
‘Well, I never knew that!’ the old journalist exclaimed.
‘Neither did I,’ said Martin, ‘and it’s my job to know. If he’s managed to keep this quiet for so long, and I haven’t heard so much as a whisper, he must be very discreet.’
Navrátil could contain his curiosity no longer.
‘What exactly is your job, Martin?’
‘I trade scurrilous stories to the press. I used to edit an underground magazine, but when it didn’t need to be underground anymore it switched to running exposés of corruption. Really big ones get sold on, like this one will when I can use it.’
‘Is it a big story? There must be plenty of gay politicians.’
‘Yes, but not in top jobs. This will finish Soucha’s career. I can’t believe he’s been that stupid. And I can’t believe I didn’t know.’
Slonský drained his glass.
‘I didn’t know either. That’s why I needed to check it with you. And if you didn’t know, that suggests that only a very small number of people did. Since Spehar tells me the label on the envelope came from the same printer as the first envelope, it means we can narrow down our possible suspects. It’s got to be someone who knew the Minister was having an affair and also knew that Soucha was gay. Not only that, he knew where he could collect photographic proof of both facts. He’s an insider.’
‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand …’ Navrátil began.
‘No, there are lots of things you don’t understand. This is just the latest.’
‘Point taken. But if these connections narrow down our possible killers, why draw our attention to himself by sending us the pictures? Does he want to be caught?’
Slonský stared at the ceiling in deep thought.
‘That’s a very good question, lad, and I shall ponder it carefully while you get us another round of drinks.’
‘I’ll help you carry them,’ volunteered Valentin, and showed a surprising agility in sliding from his seat without disturbing Slonský.
Slonský rubbed his chin in thought while Martin examined the photograph again.
‘Any idea where it was taken?’
‘That’s what I’m pondering. Nowhere I’ve been. It must be a big house to have a pool that size. But Soucha has a lot of powerful friends — bankers, industrialists and so on — so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a guest there.’
‘But if he’s discreet, as you seem to be telling me, then he can’t risk someone just walking in on that. They must be alone in the house.’
‘Or the other man owns it. But I have no idea who he is, and anyone who owns a house this size near Prague I would know.’
‘Could it be taken abroad?’
Martin nodded slowly.
‘Soucha travels quite a bit. There’s only one way to find out. You’ll have to ask him. If you need a shorthand writer, I’ll make myself available any hour of the day or night just to see his face when you show him this.’
