by Graham Brack
Having anticipated some kind of gated compound, Slonský was pleasantly surprised to find it was merely a villa with a low wall to the front, outside which a pair of large men stood smoking.
‘Looks like the place. Keep driving, Navrátil. We don’t want them to know our business. Turn right at the end of the road.’
It turned out to be a dead end, so Navrátil executed a U-turn and awaited instructions.
‘Keep the engine running, lad. We’re going to be retracing our route for about a hundred metres, then we’ll take a sharp left once we’re past the villa. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir. Aren’t you going to get in?’
‘Not just at the moment. I just want to try a little trick I learned at the All-Moravia Artisan Sausage-Making Championship.’
Slonský walked over to the hedge and struck a match. Holding it to a small pile of dead leaves, he kindled a fire, and encouraged it by striking another match and holding it to the hedge itself, before climbing back into the car.
‘Now we wait for it to take hold.’
After a few moments the fire, though not large, was exciting enough for Slonský to suggest a measured retreat. They pulled back into the traffic and were pleased to see the two men walking briskly along the pavement to investigate the blaze. A sharp left turn later, Navrátil and Slonský slipped over the side wall and reached the side of the villa without being detected.
Slonský signalled his assistant to maintain silence, a completely unnecessary gesture since Navrátil’s own well-developed sense of self-preservation had suggested that course of action as soon as they left the car, and together they inched around the building looking for a quiet corner where they might peek through the windows.
The corner room at the back was well-lit, so they ducked down below the sill and made for the next window, where Slonský cautiously raised himself. He could see Savović and Brukić, who were engaged in a game of chess. There was no sign of the girl.
Slonský tapped Navratil on the shoulder and indicated that he wanted to move further away from the building into the garden at the rear. He pointed to a couple of bushes separated by about a metre, and gave Navrátil a gentle push, by which the young detective deduced that he was to go first, and scuttled across the lawn, being followed shortly after by Slonský.
In their hiding place, Slonský felt able to risk a whisper.
‘They’re too relaxed. They know they’ve got the girl. I’ll bet she’s upstairs. Watch the windows.’
‘It could be hours, sir. And if she’s tied up, she won’t come to the window.’
‘Got any better ideas?’
Navrátil peered into the darkness. After a moment or two he saw what he wanted, and ran back across the lawn towards the house. Although originally a single-storey building, it had been enhanced at some point by the inclusion of a room in the roof. Navrátil was slightly built, and although not blessed with great athletic prowess, he was a good cross-country runner, so he must have been quite fit, but Slonský was unprepared for the exhibition he was about to witness. Pausing only to give a sharp tug on the downpipe to test its soundness, Navrátil shinned up the drainpipe to the low roof, hoisted himself aloft, and gently crept along the rooftop to the dormer window, where he cautiously looked in.
He was about to return when the two men appeared at the side of the house brandishing flashlights. Slonský tucked himself behind one of the bushes, but was unable to warn Navrátil before he descended nor, from his hiding place, could he see what happened next.
However, he saw the beams of light sweeping round the garden and made himself as small as possible, which in Slonský’s case was not easy to do, but fortunately the darkness of the bushes swallowed him up. Suddenly the men started shouting. In the emotion of the moment, they were yelling in their own language, which seemed particularly pointless to Slonský, though it was easy to detect that they were shouting some kind of warning. Confident that they were looking at the roof, he risked a peek, and watched open-mouthed as Navrátil ran up the roof, rolled over the ridge, and disappeared out of sight. The guards had finally removed their guns from the holsters under their jackets and were waving them ineffectually before retracing their steps to run round to the front. In the confusion Slonský slipped out over the side wall. If he could get to the car he could drive round to the front and scoop Navrátil up. Except, of course, that he would have to perform a U-turn in a tight side road. It was at this point that Slonský remembered that the car keys were in Navrátil’s pocket.
Damn! At least he had heard no gunshots so far, and he was fairly confident that if Navrátil had made it to ground level with a head start, he may have been able to gain the street, but whether he would be able to return to the car was doubtful. Slonský briefly considered calling Navrátil on his mobile, but that might have been a bit of a giveaway if the young detective were hiding in the shrubbery somewhere nearby.
Hiding behind the car, he had an idea. He telephoned HQ, explained who he was, and issued his orders. ‘All the cars you can, fast as you can. Lights blazing, sirens on full. And patch me through to the first officer to arrive.’
The response was gratifyingly quick. A couple of cars came bouncing round the corner and came to a halt with their lights illuminating the street and the two guards who quickly tucked their guns into the backs of their waistbands.
An officer in the first car opened the door and shouted an instruction. ‘Put your hands up and lie face down in the road.’
To the astonishment of the guards, Navrátil appeared from a thicket across the road and lay face down as instructed. He had decided that the police had been summoned by someone who had taken him for a burglar; and even if that were not the case, people in the custody of the police are unlikely to be shot, so it seemed much the safest option.
It was at this point that Slonský managed to speak to the first officer on scene via the radio. If his instructions were a little surprising, Slonský was well enough known for them to be accepted without question. The officers picked Navrátil up and put handcuffs on him. He tried to speak but they instructed him to keep quiet. Slonský walked towards them, nodding a nonchalant greeting to the two Bosnians.
‘Where was he? On the roof again?’
‘Yes,’ said the younger of the two. ‘He was climbing on the roof. He wants to burgle us.’
‘Ah, no,’ said Slonský. ‘That’s not his style. He’ll have been looking for a young woman. What does she look like?’
He gave Navrátil an encouraging nod.
‘Tall, slim, dark hair with a bit of red in it.’
‘And you followed her here?’
‘Yes.’
The two guards looked at each other with undisguised concern.
‘Perhaps I can come in and see the young lady,’ Slonský said.
‘There is no such girl,’ the older man snapped.
‘I think maybe this man saw our cleaner. But she does not live here.’
‘It’s not likely he’d be hanging around your roof for no reason. He’s one of our best-known stalkers. Trust me, he’ll have seen her. I’d best check. Take this villain down to the station and book him. And I don’t want him marked, however disgusting he is.’
Slonský took a couple of the officers with him and insisted on searching the house, though he had misgivings when Savović raised no objection to his doing so. There was no sign of Daniela, nor any sign that she had been there.
Chapter 9
Peiperová had come in that Sunday morning and Slonský had barely spoken to her. Navrátil was in the same position, apparently suddenly invisible. The only relief they had experienced was when someone chanced to mention a critical mark Doležal had made about the progress of the investigation. Slonský had prowled the building like an enraged bear until he was satisfied that Doležal was not in, when he contented himself with an extremely abusive note stuck to the latter’s desk with sticky tape, which he later thought better of and removed. And put back again, and removed o
nce more.
Navrátil returned to the office he shared with his boss, who was busy scribbling notes in the margin of a folder. The atmosphere was as icy inside as it was in the street below.
‘Sir, may I ask you something?’
‘If you must.’
‘Why did you tell the police I was a stalker?’
Slonský laid his pen down. That was a good sign, because when he was annoyed he would throw it on the desk.
‘I told them that publicly, but I had already told the first carful that you were working undercover and I had to give a reason for you being on the roof that wouldn’t blow that cover. And better for the thugs to think you just happened to follow the girl than that they think you’re a police officer trying to find the girl, don’t you think?’
‘But if it’s my fault that Daniela was snatched, as you said earlier, presumably they already know I’m police.’
‘Maybe somebody does. But maybe they think you’re a reporter, or a pimp, or a photographer for a girlie magazine, or one of those pests who keep offering women in the street money to do things he can video and put on the internet. All those would be better for your long-term health than letting them know you’re a police officer.’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘See how kindly Uncle Josef looks after you?’
Navrátil chewed his lip in uncertainty.
‘Out with it, lad.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d explain that to Kristýna, sir. I mean, Officer Peiperová. She thinks you know something about my private life that made the stalker story plausible.’
Slonský frowned. ‘Well, you were quick enough up that drainpipe and onto the roof. Anyone would think you’d done it before.’
‘I’ve climbed drainpipes, sir. But not for that reason.’
Slonský walked to the door and took a deep breath. ‘Peiperová!’ he bellowed.
The officer thus summoned opened her door and looked out as if unsure whose voice that could be. Since Slonský was the only person in the corridor, she could hardly pretend to any uncertainty about the source of the cry.
‘In my office, lass.’
Peiperová obediently trotted along the corridor and took the seat in front of the desk as Slonský indicated. Navratil was to her right, perched on the front of his desk, which was at right angles to Slonský’s.
‘You are an intelligent young woman,’ Slonský began. ‘Look at him. Go on, drink him in. Scan him from head to foot. You will never see a pervert who looks like that. He’s clean and tidy, and he polishes his shoes. He goes to Mass every week, and he has a season ticket for the confessional. He is good to his mother. According to the betting in the staff canteen he isn’t even trying to get up your skirt, let alone anyone else’s…’
‘Sir!’ protested Navrátil, while Peiperová blushed fetchingly.
‘…so why on earth you would think that he would ever be a stalker is beyond me,’ Slonský continued unabashed.
‘Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.’
‘You sound unconvinced.’
‘I didn’t want to believe it, but the officers who came to arrest him spun me a tale about how he was found.’
‘Indeed?’
‘They said he was incompletely dressed.’
‘Navrátil? Incompletely dressed? Good God, woman, he won’t even take his tie off in mid-summer. If there’s one thing we don’t have much problem with in Prague in November it’s indecent exposure. I was there, and I can assure you that Navrátil behaved entirely properly. He even laid down tidily in the road with his hands up as directed. Now, I am going to go down to the desk, ask the duty sergeant to check the log for last night, and then I’m going to radio the cars involved to tell them the joke stops now. In the meantime, I’m ordering the two of you to kiss and make up, then we’ll go and get some lunch. I feel in need of a sausage.’
Slonský marched from the room, closing the door behind him.
Peiperová ordered a plate of pasta with sliced chicken. Navrátil opted for a bowl of soup with dumplings. Slonský decided he would have a pair of sausages to start, with some fried onions and sauerkraut. He also announced that he suspected his brainpower was diminishing because it had been deprived of beer for nearly two days, and he intended to remedy this deficiency with half a litre of Plzeň’s best. Since they were all working on what was technically a day off, he saw no reason why they shouldn’t join him. Peiperová nominated a white wine spritzer as her drink of choice.
‘Why would you want someone to water your wine down?’ enquired Slonský, but ordered it through gritted teeth. Navrátil was torn between wanting to have a beer to bond with his boss and the fear that incipient alcoholism would be added to voyeurism on his fiancée’s charge sheet if he did so.
‘Is that two wine spritzers then?’ Slonský asked. ‘Or do you want them to top your beer up with mineral water?’
‘Actually, I’m a bit cold,’ Navrátil replied. ‘I think I’ll just have a coffee.’
‘Better make it decaffeinated,’ Slonský told the waiter. ‘We don’t want to excite his urges again.’
Peiperová’s attention was caught by something behind Slonský. ‘Isn’t that your journalist friend, sir?’
Slonský turned to observe Valentin surrounded by a pile of crumpled newspapers.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I invite him over?’
‘No. He’s working. We’ll eat first and then speak to him. We don’t want to spoil our meal by sitting with a miserable old codger.’
Just then the door opened, and Captain Grigar walked in, looked around and stomped over to join them. ‘Thought I might find you here,’ he began. ‘We badly need to talk. So far as I can see, we’re on each other’s turf. I’m busting a gut trying to find out who murdered my man while you’re swanning off rounding up trafficked girls. Where have you taken them?’
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘May I remind you I’m a senior officer in the Organised Crime Squad and you’re not?’
‘And may I remind you that the Organised Crime Squad is the most corrupt unit in the entire Prague police and leaks information like a sieve? Present company excepted, of course.’
The waiter arrived with the drinks, which brought about a hiatus in the conversation.
‘Drink, sir?’ the waiter asked Grigar.
‘Like a fish,’ Slonský interposed. ‘Just bring a keg and a length of rubber hosepipe.’
‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ said Grigar.
‘Another white wine spritzer then,’ announced Slonský, seizing the one on the tray and knocking it back in one. ‘In fact, we’d better have two so the young lady can have one, and I’ll have her beer instead.’
‘Actually, I’ll have a beer too,’ Grigar said.
The waiter slipped away before the order was changed again.
‘I don’t want to be difficult,’ Grigar began, ‘but I want to know how you’re doing in finding young Hrdlička’s killers.’
‘You’ve seen Novák’s pathology report?’
‘Yes. Special forces’ work, he thought.’
‘We’ve established that Savović has been rounding up girls in the Balkans, spinning them a yarn about hotel work in Prague, and then putting them on buses escorted by Brukić. At some point the girls are concealed in lorries owned by Nejedlý, who also shares that building, and somehow they place them in the clubs. At least a couple of those clubs seem to be owned by the Bosnians. We’ve upset them a bit by taking some of their dancers to a place of safety.’
‘What about Hrdlička?’
Navrátil interrupted. ‘Where did he get his earpiece, sir?’ he asked Grigar.
‘Earpiece? What earpiece?’
‘He was wearing an earpiece inside his helmet, but the technical department says it’s not one of ours, so far as they know. We’re assuming that the killer found the radio microphone and worked out who was listening in on them by setting off a loud alarm clock next to it.’
‘Well I never!’ exclaimed Slonský. ‘Who would have thought it? How ingenious.’
Navrátil believed he was colouring, but continued gamely. ‘Hrdlička wouldn’t hear the killer approaching because he would be deafened by the alarm clock.’
‘So why did he still have his helmet on when he was killed? Wouldn’t he yank it off to stop the noise?’
‘Good point,’ said Slonský. ‘How does this imaginative alarm clock theory of yours deal with that, Navrátil?’
Navrátil’s mouth opened a couple of times, but no suggestion came forth.
‘Perhaps that’s what he was doing when he was killed, sir?’ offered Peiperová. ‘Nobody actually saw him praying just beforehand. Maybe he ducked his head to pull the helmet off and that exposed his neck.’
Grigar seemed to accept that. ‘So the accomplice sees who reacts and then kills him from behind,’ he concluded.
‘There’s no need for an accomplice,’ Slonský muttered.
‘No?’
‘No. It’s an alarm clock. They ring at a predetermined time. All he has to do is set it for, say, four o’clock and then make it his business to be on the river bank at that time. He can see as easily from there as he can from a window. There may be two of them,’ Slonský added, ‘but there doesn’t need to be. One would do, too.’
Grigar rubbed his chin and took a reflective pull on his beer. ‘I didn’t authorise an earpiece. Mind, I would have done if I’d been asked. But where would Hrdlička get one? Why didn’t he just ask for one from the technicians?’
That’s another good question, thought Slonský. ‘Isn’t there anything in his notes on the case?’ he voiced aloud.
‘Very little. Hrdlička seems to have kept very sketchy notes, but then he didn’t come into the office much while he was doing surveillance duties. It may be that there’s a notebook somewhere we haven’t found.’
‘Was he married, sir?’ asked Peiperová.
‘Yes, with a little boy of eighteen months.’
‘And he didn’t say anything to his wife?’
