Death On Duty

by Graham Brack

  ‘She also said his name was Pavel and that turned out to be wrong.’

  ‘Yes, but he could have told her that was his name to make himself hard to trace. She would know for herself how long he’d been standing beside her. Don’t look so crestfallen, lad. I’m sure you’re right, but I can’t prove it, and we’ll need proof if it goes to court. And it would certainly help the investigation if we could find out what put him on to Opava.’

  ‘Sir,’ Peiperová interrupted, ‘can we find out what he was doing when he picked this up? It must have linked in his mind to an existing enquiry, and he can’t have been tracking the Bosnians because none of us knew about them until a few days ago.’

  ‘Error there, Peiperová. We didn’t know these particular Bosnians, but that doesn’t preclude someone else looking for a bunch of Bosnians who just happened to be the same as ours. If they are the same, which we don’t know. But maybe you’re on to something. Let’s see if we can find out what Hrdlička was investigating in early June. We’re going to have to ask Grigar. If we’re not going to give the game away it’ll require extreme tact and sensitivity. You two had better leave the talking to me.’

  Grigar’s office was empty, but the other desk there was occupied by a sandy-haired lieutenant. He was probably in his early thirties, though his hair had receded markedly at the temples which made him appear a little older. He must have been touchy about the matter, because he had combed his hair forward and across to conceal as much of the bare temple as possible. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Erben, and offered to help in any way he could.

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Officer Hrdlička.’

  ‘Yes, sir. A shocking incident. Are you making progress?’

  ‘Steadily, Erben. We believe that the attack may not be linked to this case, but to an earlier one. Can you give us details of the work Hrdlička has been doing over the past twelve months?’

  Erben looked puzzled. ‘I suppose so. It’ll take a day or two. But I thought he’d been on the current case for over six months.’

  ‘But what is the current case exactly? Tell us from the beginning.’

  ‘We’ve been trying to shut down a protection and vice racket.’

  ‘Protection and vice? Together? Isn’t that a bit unsporting of them?’

  ‘The suggestion was that someone was bringing girls in for the clubs. That’s gone on for a long time. What was making this different was that they were threatening clubs that didn’t take their girls.’

  ‘It’s coming to something when criminals come running to us for protection.’

  ‘They didn’t — not in so many words anyway. The thing with vice is that it’s different.’

  ‘How do you mean? Not like volleyball, not like ice cream…?’

  ‘I mean that there’s always going to be vice, so the best we can do is to keep it orderly. Someone coming in and upsetting the status quo usually leads to an increase in crime, so we try to avoid that. Better the devil you know, you see.’

  ‘So you heard these people were rocking the boat and decided to track them down?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But it’s all done through intermediaries and we weren’t getting anywhere. We trailed a couple of them to that building on the riverside but we weren’t sure how that fitted in, so Hrdlička came up with a plan to watch the building and see just who came and went.’

  ‘And what did he see?’

  Erben looked uncomfortable. ‘We don’t really know. He made very few reports and the ones we got were very sketchy. He mentioned a property tycoon but when we looked into it that came to nothing.’

  ‘Rudolf Smejkal?’

  ‘You already know this?’ stuttered Erben.

  ‘I know lots of things,’ Slonský said, fixing Erben with a gimlet eye. ‘Lots and lots of things, some of which would make your hair curl.’

  Erben appeared bewildered, but said nothing.

  ‘Very good,’ said Slonský. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Lieutenant Erben. Please give my regards to Captain Grigar. He and I go back a long way together. Unless he’s been up to something, of course, in which event we’ve never met. Come along, children.’

  Slonský strode purposefully along the corridor, causing Peiperová to trot and Navrátil to jog to keep up.

  ‘Did that get us anywhere, sir?’ Peiperová enquired.

  ‘Oh, yes. I begin to see light at the end of the tunnel. Or, at least, I can see where the tunnel is.’

  ‘Where are we going now, sir?’

  ‘To the hub of human existence, Peiperová. A place of happiness and plenty, called the staff canteen. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. I’ve left my wallet in my coat — either of you got any money?’

  Mucha was an indoor sort of policeman. He had done his time on the beat, but now he expected to see out the rest of his career as a desk sergeant, which meant he would be inside in the warm, with plenty of coffee on hand and, as senior sergeant and therefore compiler of the staff rota, regular hours. Except, of course, when his wife’s sister came to stay, when he frequently discovered an urgent need to work overtime.

  When he ventured outside, it was usually to go to another police building, because Mucha was a walking compendium of administrative lore. There was very little he did not know about filing, police procedures and the stuff that used to go on that nobody wanted to talk about. Archives that allegedly did not exist were open to him, because it was self-evident to their custodians that if he knew of the archives, he must have access to them. Over thirty-five years he had accumulated a lot of contacts which he was prepared to use shamelessly, and his own blameless police career meant that he was immune from reprisals if he felt like a little honest blackmailing of a colleague who might know something useful to him.

  The task with which Slonský had entrusted him was an intriguing one. Trying to track the path of a police report was never quite as straightforward as it should have been, particularly if someone had attempted to conceal the traces. However, just as Dr Novák could trace a fibre carried from a room, so Mucha knew where the less obvious evidence of a document’s path might be.

  He began with the fax machine to which the arson report had been sent. Like all police machines, it had a built-in journal. This was printed out when it was full, and filed “just in case”, like everything else in the police was filed “just in case”, and Mucha knew where it would be. Having verified receipt, he discovered from the log where it had been routed, and duly photocopied the relevant page. He debated whether to head there next, but decided that Slonský might not want him to alert the officer concerned, so instead he used his initiative to look for any sign that the damming of the stream had been reported. It appeared about three weeks later in the log, and had been routed to another officer, but the name was crossed out and another written in. The obvious conclusion was that Officer A had suggested that it should go to Officer B who had received the original arson report, since it was likely to be perpetrated by the same villains. That in turn led to the conclusion that it was common knowledge that Officer B was dealing with the arson report, which was quite likely because Officers A and B worked in the same department.

  Mucha buttoned up his greatcoat, carefully replaced his cap, and stepped out into the street. There is no doubt that a bit of inspiration works wonders sometimes, and a little voice was telling him that he ought to pay a visit to Gazdík.

  Before there was Technician Spehar, there was Gazdík. The difference between them was that while Spehar was organised, technologically highly literate, and recognised his limitations, so that he employed others who, whatever their other characteristics, knew their stuff when it came to gadgetry, Gazdík refused to acknowledge any restrictions on his knowledge and surrounded himself with people who knew less than he did so as not to look bad. This probably went some way towards explaining why he had taken early retirement. He now ran a small repair shop where you could take a poorly performing radio to have it comprehensively ruined.

  The littl
e bell over the door announced Mucha’s arrival, and Gazdík was pathetically pleased to see an old colleague. He insisted on making them both a coffee with a little something extra to keep out the cold, though since he was surrounded by two-bar electric fires and his soldering iron was in use, hypothermia seemed an unlikely prospect.

  ‘It’s always good to see someone from the old days,’ Gazdík enthused. They reminisced together for a few minutes, while Mucha waited for his coffee to go cold so he could legitimately throw it away.

  ‘I need a bit of technical help with a case,’ Mucha explained, ‘and I immediately thought of you.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Gazdík. ‘Not that Spehar isn’t a good man.’

  ‘Of course not, but this is a bit unusual. The fact is, an undercover policeman has been killed, and we can’t go through normal channels for reasons I’m not at liberty to explain.’

  ‘Oh, no, I completely understand,’ Gazdík agreed. ‘Mum’s the word in cases like that.’

  ‘Exactly. I knew you’d appreciate the subtleties. Well, it seems the officer in question had a listening device that he didn’t get from us — for a perfectly good reason that I can’t share with you.’

  ‘Understood. Lips sealed.’

  ‘Good man. Now, I got to thinking where a police officer would go to get one of those that wasn’t official, but run by someone of proven discretion and probity. And that brought me to you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course. Who else understands better that the police need to do these things now and again and that if official channels have to be ruled out…’

  ‘For perfectly good reasons that we can’t discuss…’

  ‘Precisely, then of course a young police officer would come to you for advice. And, who knows, you might be able to find him something suitable that was no longer needed elsewhere.’

  ‘Past its useful life, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Of no value, so nobody would be too worried about getting it back?’

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Well, of course old colleagues come from time to time. Do you have any extra information you can share?’

  ‘He wanted a short range microphone and a radio earpiece. It looks like a little bean.’

  Gazdík hopped off his stool and rummaged in a couple of boxes. ‘Like this?’ he asked.

  Mucha had not actually seen the earpiece found in Hrdlička’s helmet, but it looked like the description he had. ‘Very like that. It would have been in the last month or so.’

  ‘Then I think I may be able to assist. A young officer came to ask me for some help.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I remembered him from my time, but he was very new then. These youngsters, there are so many that their names don’t stick, you know?’

  Mucha nodded, even though he disagreed. He could remember almost everyone’s name. ‘Did he explain why he couldn’t use a police microphone?’

  ‘No, and I knew better than to ask. I assumed he must have been in the traffic police, because he had silver paint behind his ear like he’d been hanging around a paint spray workshop, but he explained he needed a radio that would transmit perhaps sixty metres, and a small microphone he could conceal in an office. So that’s what I gave him.’

  Mucha pulled his cap on once more. ‘You’ve been a great help,’ he said. ‘Perhaps some time when you’re passing you can drop in to formally identify the earpiece. But ring first to make sure I’m there. I don’t want other people knowing our business.’

  ‘Certainly,’ grinned Gazdík. ‘Not a sound from me.’

  Slonský knew Mucha had discovered something important when he saw the sergeant coming to his office still wearing his hat and coat. Mucha ignored the invitation to speak in the corridor and grabbed Slonský’s arm, propelling him into the office and closing the door behind them.

  Navrátil glanced up and saw the tension in Mucha’s face. ‘Do you want me to go, sir?’ he asked.

  Slonský raised a quizzical eyebrow but Mucha gave a discrete shake of his head. ‘No need. But I didn’t want everyone here to overhear this. I know where Hrdlička got his earpiece. He went to see Gazdík who set him up with one.’

  ‘Gazdík?’ said Slonský. ‘Who in their right mind gets anything technical from Gazdík? He must have been desperate.’

  ‘Or gone to the only person he thought a senior officer couldn’t have nobbled. And I also know where the reports from Opava went to.’ He unfolded the photocopies of the two pages and indicated the relevant lines. Navrátil was too distant to read them, but he could see the effect they had on Slonský, whose blood pressure rose sharply, causing his cheeks to redden and his nostrils to flare. Navrátil just had time to note the resemblance to an enraged bull before Slonský seized the pages savagely and threw the door open.

  ‘Someone has some explaining to do,’ he growled, stomping along the corridor and flinging another door so fiercely that its hinges squealed in protest.

  The occupant was sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a report while chomping on a sandwich. He froze in mid-chew when he saw that Slonský appeared displeased about something.

  ‘What?’ said Dvorník.

  ‘Of all the half-witted, cheese-brained nincompoops who have ever worked here,’ began Slonský, ‘you stand in a league of your own.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Dvorník reasonably, having taken the view that more than one word might be construed as provocative.

  ‘Explain this to me,’ Slonský snapped, and waved the pages in front of Dvorník.

  ‘I don’t know a thing about the arson report,’ Dvorník protested, ‘but when the stream incident came down the line and the station in Opava said they’d already reported the arson, I thought the same officer should deal with both enquiries. It seemed logical at the time.’

  ‘So how did you find out which officer that was?’

  ‘I asked the fax office who they’d given the arson report to.’

  ‘And they said?’

  ‘They said Lieutenant Doležal. So I went to see him and handed the stream one over.’

  Slonský was not mollified. ‘And it never crossed your mind to ask him why he’d done nothing in three weeks about the arson?’

  ‘Of course it did. Well, not in so many words. I asked how it was going, and he said that Organised Crime had rung to take it off him because it was connected with an enquiry they were running, so he’d passed it on.’

  Slonský straightened up and took a step back. ‘I’ll come back for you later.’

  Doležal was more inclined to be combative. He agreed that he had received the arson report, and that Organised Crime had asked him to turn the report over to them.

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell Opava that?’

  ‘If Organised Crime were already liaising with them about a case, they’d mention it, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘And if someone in Organised Crime was covering up a case he wouldn’t, would he? And you would just have made that a damn sight easier for him. And you didn’t ask Organised Crime to keep us informed?’

  ‘It’s their case. You can’t ask them to report to us.’

  ‘You can if it’s ordinary crime. What evidence did they give you that organised crime was involved in this in any way?’

  ‘Their word,’ responded Doležal indignantly. ‘If you can’t trust a fellow policeman, what’s the world coming to?’

  Slonský seized Navratil by the collar, dragged him forward and pointed at him accusingly. ‘Navrátil here is as simple and trusting as they come, and even he doesn’t trust Organised Crime to tell us the truth. They spend their whole lives around hardened criminals. Some of it’s bound to rub off. Now, think, man: who asked for the file?’

  Doležal shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was just a phone call.’

  ‘And you didn’t wonder how they knew about a case that had only just been faxed to us here?’

  Doležal shuffle
d uncomfortably. ‘No. Perhaps they’d discovered it by other means. They have their own informers, you know.’

  ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ Slonský hissed icily. ‘Let me help you remember something in exchange. I am only Acting Captain at present, but I hear Captain Lukas may not be fit to return. If so, I shall apply for his job, and I expect to get it. And when I do you will be spending the rest of your career in a one-man police station in one of those villages where everyone is everyone else’s uncle and half of them look like sheep. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘I think you’re being unfair,’ Doležal protested.

  ‘I haven’t started yet,’ yelled Slonský. ‘I can get a damn sight more vindictive than this, believe me. I have given forty years of my life to this police force. Through good and bad times, I believed it was the best hope we had, and that it housed some good people who one day, God willing, would see justice restored and corruption ended. Yes, there have been some useless idiots, some clueless bosses and some outright dishonest ones, but I’ve sweated blood for this force. And a good officer has been killed because he couldn’t trust someone above him. You made that possible, Doležal. You didn’t ask some obvious questions, and Hrdlička is dead as a result. It’s just as well for you you’re only terminally stupid, because if I thought you were corrupt as well you’d be dangling over the stairwell hoping your shirt collar is well attached. And the only thing that would stop me dropping you is that I’d be worried some poor innocent would be minding his own business in the basement when you landed on him.’

  Doležal straightened his jacket and attempted to retain whatever dignity he had left. ‘You’re overwrought,’ he said. ‘Despite that, if anything occurs to me, I’ll make an immediate report.’

  Peiperová was on edge. She knew that what she was doing could go very badly wrong and, if it did, she would only have herself to blame. It would probably mean the end of her career in Prague even if she survived it, which was by no means certain; but she could think of nothing more constructive than to retrace Daniela’s steps trying to work out where she had been kidnapped.