[Josef Slonský Investigations 06] - Laid in Earth

by Graham Brack

  Pausing by the door he looked back into the room. Something seemed odd, but for a moment he could not think what it was, then it came to him. Returning to the bedroom he confirmed his finding and smiled to himself.

  Krob appeared in the doorway with a collection of mail. ‘Most of it is junk, but there are a few letters addressed to a František Kašpar, sir. Do you think he’s our man?’

  ‘I’m sure of it, Krob.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  Slonský produced his evidence envelope. ‘Exhibit one, lad. A small triangle of white paper with a shiny edge on one side. What does that suggest to you?’

  ‘The flap of an envelope, sir.’

  ‘That’s a coincidence, because that’s what I thought too. The flat had been cleaned meticulously but this fragment was on the rug, so I conclude that it wasn’t there when the cleaning took place. Rezek opened an envelope and this little piece fell off.’

  ‘Why would he open an envelope, sir?’

  ‘Presumably because it was addressed to him, Krob. It can’t be ordinary mail, because you’ve just collected that. I’m prepared to bet that Mr Kašpar knew that Rezek would work out who had killed his daughter and would eventually turn up at this flat wanting vengeance. And when he got here he found an envelope containing a letter addressed to him, and damn all else in the flat.’

  ‘What was in it, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know because I haven’t read it. Some taunting, perhaps, a confession, a threat, an invitation to a meeting — who knows? It wouldn’t even surprise me if Kašpar had previously sent Rezek a note of his address.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because it was taking Rezek too long to find him. I’m certain that Rezek knew who had killed his daughter from the moment Navrátil took him to the grave. It’s taken him quite a while to turn up here, but I’m sure he’s been trying to find out where Kašpar lives. Besides, think how much more Rezek must have been annoyed to be sent a letter telling him where to come and then finding Kašpar wasn’t here. All he got for his trouble was another letter telling him to go somewhere else. His blood pressure must be through the roof by now, don’t you think? Kašpar is piling on the agony.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why Rezek expected Kašpar to be at home. He’d said he would be.’

  ‘It could be so, but if so Rezek would have been expecting Kašpar to be lying in wait on the other side of that door, and it would have been incredibly foolhardy to barge his way in. Isn’t it more likely that Kašpar suggested an appointment and Rezek deliberately turned up early when he hoped Kašpar wouldn’t be in? He shouted in the expectation that there would be no answer, but just in case he kicked the door in with his gun drawn. Look at the door, lad. It wouldn’t take more than one or two kicks to get through it. I could do it with my slippers on. Anyway, there’s more. Come with me.’ Slonský led the way to the lounge and halted just inside the door. ‘What do you notice, Krob?’

  Krob looked around slowly. There were some fixed bookshelves on the wall, and a low cabinet on which a television set had once stood. In the centre of the floor was the glass table with steel legs, and two armchairs and a small sofa covered in a mix of burgundy and tawny stripes. Under the table was a sage green rug, and there was a standard lamp behind one of the chairs. Krob walked slowly round the room and paused by the window.

  ‘The rug doesn’t match.’

  Slonský’s face lit up. The boy was justifying the faith Slonský had shown in him.

  ‘Quite right, lad. I’m no interior designer, but that just doesn’t go. And, as I suspect you spotted, the floor by the window is a little paler, suggesting that the rug that was originally here was a bit larger than this one. If you take a squint in the bedroom you’ll see there’s no rug, although you’re more likely to be padding around barefooted in a bedroom than a lounge, so if you’ve got one in the lounge, you’d certainly have one in the bedroom. I suspect this green rug would match the curtains in the bedroom better than it does here. So that causes me to ask myself where the rug from this room has got to, and what do I answer myself?’

  ‘It was used to wrap the body.’

  ‘Bingo! I hate to do this to you, lad, but we’re going to have to reinstate the surveillance of Rezek’s house. He’s going to be going after Kašpar, and our best hope of catching Kašpar is to follow Rezek.’

  ‘Sir, couldn’t we just arrest Rezek for breaking in here? Then Kašpar couldn’t carry out his attack because Rezek would be safe in a cell.’

  Slonský shook his head. ‘Why the hell would I want to keep Rezek safe, Krob? The man’s a murderer. He deserves what’s coming to him. If I frighten Kašpar off I’ll have to find him myself and there’s a chance Adalheid Rezeková, the innocent party in all this, will go unavenged. This way we can pinch the pair of them.’

  ‘It’s risky, sir.’

  ‘Life is risky, lad. I should know. I’ve been eating in the police canteen for half of mine.’

  Chapter 13

  During the investigation Slonský had left Lieutenant Dvorník and Officer Hauzer to get on with their usual work rather than absorb all the available resources on a single case, but now that he needed to keep Rezek under surveillance it was time to brief Dvorník and Hauzer and put them to work.

  Relationships between Slonský and Dvorník were surprisingly good, given Slonský’s belief that Dvorník was a homicidal lunatic who had joined the police in order to provide an outlet for his gun mania. Dvorník belonged to a gun club and spent many hours at the police shooting range, and it had to be admitted that he was a good enough shot to be a sniper. He hunted regularly and had considerable confidence in his own ability, on one occasion shooting a suspect in the arm which was holding a knife to the suspect’s wife’s throat, an operation made even more hazardous by Slonský’s belated realisation that he was standing in the line of fire and it was only the fact that the bullet lodged in the wife’s shoulder that stopped Slonský suffering a nasty accident. This enraged Slonský so much that he stepped over the injured couple to remonstrate personally with Dvorník, temporarily overlooking the need to restrain the suspect whom Navrátil was attempting to disarm.

  Even Slonský had realised that Dvorník had an issue with some aspects of modern policing. While he had no evidence that Dvorník had ever overstepped the mark with a witness, he had heard the lieutenant comment approvingly on threats made to them if they were not telling the truth, and now that Slonský was a captain he would have to take notice of them if they happened again; even if, as on previous occasions, Dvorník had been approving of something Slonský had threatened to do.

  ‘It’s really boring work watching a house,’ commented Dvorník. ‘Four hours is as long as most of us can concentrate for. That means six shifts. How about we get a couple of uniform guys to drive past a couple of times during the night and then divide the day into four four-hour shifts?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Slonský replied. ‘I can’t see him being keen to leave his wife in the house on her own at night. If we have you, Hauzer, the two lads and the two lasses that means everyone gets a day off in three. I can’t see it running on for long. In fact, I’d be surprised if Rezek isn’t already planning his move.’

  ‘There’s no danger he’ll get someone else to do it for him?’ Dvorník asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s too personal. He’ll want to see the whites of Kašpar’s eyes as he puts a bullet in his forehead.’

  ‘Do we have confirmation that the original body could be a Kašpar?’

  ‘Novák is trying to get dental records for the other two bodies and I’ve asked him to add Kašpar to his search. Mucha is looking through our records for anything that might back up the identification.’

  ‘If we find Rezek and it turns nasty, what are the rules of engagement?’

  ‘He’s a suspect, not yet convicted, so we only use force if he uses force on us.’

  ‘So if he draws a gun, we can do so too?’ Dvorník confirmed.

&
nbsp; ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Well, you never want to be the one who draws second, so I may just keep mine in my hand if I spot him.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Slonský agreed.

  Dr Novák was not one to allow excitement to overrule his self-control, but when he telephoned he was very close to it.

  ‘I’ve got hold of Toms’ dental records, and he’s a very close match to corpse three.’

  ‘What does “a very close match” mean?’ Slonský demanded.

  ‘It means it matches very closely.’

  ‘Yes, I got that much, but is it definitely him or not?’

  ‘Slonský, there are over ten million people in the Czech Republic, and only so many ways a set of thirty-two teeth can be configured. By the law of large numbers alone, there must be a few people who would more or less match.’

  ‘Then why do we use teeth to identify people?’

  Slonský could hear Novák sighing.

  ‘Forensic odontologists will —’

  ‘Who?’ Slonský asked.

  ‘People who know about dead people’s teeth.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Forensic odontologists tell us that no two people have identical mouths. That is true. Given x-rays of teeth, we can identify people very well and with a high degree of certainty. The problem comes when we have a description but no actual pictures. The corpse has fillings where the chart says to expect fillings, and the most obvious feature is the loss of adjacent teeth either side of an old mandibular fracture…’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Slonský, somebody put their elbow into Toms’ face while he was playing basketball. It’s documented in his notes and those teeth are gone from the corpse, plus he has a healed break in the upper jaw.’

  Why didn’t you say that in the first place? thought Slonský.

  ‘Bartek is another matter,’ Novák continued. ‘We haven’t yet traced his dental records, but we did find his national service medical records, and corpse two is exactly the height that his records say he ought to be. I’ve asked for a facial reconstruction for each skull, but that takes time. All in all, I think you can take it that we’ve identified those two additional bodies.’

  ‘What about the first corpse?’

  ‘Slonský, I am a gifted pathologist but even I can’t do much in the absence of a body.’

  ‘I thought you had a fingertip or something?’

  ‘Yes, and from it we have extracted some DNA. If you catch this Kašpar character, I should be able to take DNA from him and prove the relationship. But in the absence of any other known blood relatives in the first degree, I can’t do much more.’

  Slonský thanked Novák and was about to put the phone down when Novák spoke again.

  ‘Wait, there’s more! You know I said that Adalheid Rezeková’s body had been in a freezer?’

  ‘Yes, because you found ice on her.’

  ‘Well, I was wrong. Or, at least, not entirely right.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Yes, of course there is,’ Novák told him. ‘Wrong means wrong as in not right. Not entirely right means partly wrong but also, ergo, partly right. The tissue samples show no biochemical signs that she was fully frozen. She was certainly kept in a very cold place, but not necessarily frozen. A walk-in refrigerator such as butchers use would be good enough.’

  ‘But you still think she was wrapped in a rug?’

  ‘We’ve got fibres to prove it.’

  ‘I was in Kašpar’s apartment. His furniture would have matched a red rug, but it’s not there.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It would be forensically very useful. Fibres transfer from the rug to the body, but material will also pass the other way. If he had any sense he’d throw the rug away.’

  ‘It’d be a large thing to dispose of. Maybe we’ll have to scour the refuse dumps for it.’

  ‘You could try. Personally, I’d take it to a cleaner.’

  ‘To a cleaner? Why?’

  ‘Because having it cleaned will destroy quite a lot of the forensic evidence, and if I give a false name and don’t go back for it that gives somebody else the headache of getting rid of it.’

  Slonský thanked Novák once more. As he returned the telephone to its cradle he reflected, not for the first time, that a pathologist who turned to homicide would be a very difficult adversary to nail. Except that Novák probably wouldn’t be able to resist ringing the detective to tell him how clever he had been.

  Peiperová’s hunch had also paid dividends. Inspecting the video footage from Hloubětín produced a clear identification of Adalheid walking towards the metro station at 09:17 on a Thursday morning, presumably the day that she had been killed. She appeared to be wearing the clothes in which she had been buried. Following the image trail as far as she could, Peiperová could find Adalheid on the platform at Hloubětín, boarding a metro train on line B and alighting at Hůrka. She left the station there and no further pictures could be traced.

  However, the video posed some interesting questions. Adalheid was carrying a handbag. At Hůrka she opened it, withdrew a folded piece of paper, and seemed to be looking for landmarks as if following directions. Where were the handbag and that piece of paper now?

  Peiperová printed out a screen capture showing the handbag in as much detail as possible and made a second copy for Jerneková.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘The handbag wasn’t with the body, it wasn’t in his flat and he wouldn’t want it to be found anywhere connected with him. It must be somewhere, though. So where would you get rid of a handbag you didn’t want?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jerneková. ‘I haven’t had a handbag for years. If I didn’t put it in the trash, I suppose I’d give it to a mate.’

  ‘You and I could do that,’ Peiperová replied, ‘but it’s not so simple for a man. Where could he get rid of a handbag?’

  ‘It’ll have to be the trash, then.’

  ‘He can hardly take it to a recycling yard, and if he put it in his own bin we might have found it there. Besides, I think the waste management teams pick out handbags in case they’ve been stolen. We get descriptions of them from time to time.’

  Jerneková twirled her hair around her index finger, which was the acknowledged sign that she was thinking hard. ‘If we want to know what a man would do, why don’t we ask a man?’ she decided at length.

  Peiperová shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not?’ She tapped Navrátil’s number into her mobile phone and waited for it to connect. ‘Lucie is with me and you’re on the speaker,’ she commented, just in case Navrátil had it in mind to say something inappropriate. It had never happened before, but there is always a first time.

  ‘Hello, Lucie,’ said Navrátil.

  ‘Ciao, Jan,’ came the reply.

  ‘Jan,’ Peiperová continued, ‘suppose you had a handbag and you wanted to dispose of it so that it wouldn’t be traced back to you. How would you do it?’

  ‘This is about Kašpar, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m arguing that if he puts it in his trash it may be picked out as potentially stolen and reported to us.’

  ‘He could heave it into the river. Or just leave it under a bush.’

  ‘I suppose so. But there’s always the risk that it will be found and traced back to him somehow.’

  ‘Only if there’s an appointment letter in there.’

  Peiperová felt rather crestfallen. She had assumed that anyone who picked it up would do what she would do; report it to the nearest police station. But maybe a woman who found a handbag would just start using it.

  ‘There’s one other thing I can think of,’ Navrátil broke in on her thoughts. ‘He could leave it outside a charity shop.’

  ‘That would do it,’ agreed Jerneková. ‘The best way of knowing it won’t come back is to know that some other woman is using it.’

  Hauzer was reporting, once again, that nothing was happening.

  ‘You don’t have to keep
telling me that,’ Slonský explained. ‘If I know you’ll tell me if Rezek is doing something, I’ll deduce that when you don’t say it it’s because nothing is happening.’

  ‘I’m not complaining, sir,’ Hauzer said, ‘but it’s not the most exciting job I’ve ever done.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many detective shows on television, haven’t you? The thing is that real police work is mostly tedious and boring, punctuated by the occasional burst of excitement when somebody shoots at us. This is the norm, lad. Long hours of sitting in cars watching paint dry. Whole afternoons typing a statement. Days of comparing notes to see where there’s a difference. You’d better get used to it.’

  Hauzer shifted in his seat because he believed that he might be losing the feeling in his rear end. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Lieutenant Dvorník will relieve you at 18:00. Don’t bother coming back here. Just go home, Hauzer.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, thank Rezek. The moment he moves nobody gets any time off until we’ve nailed him.’

  Physiologists tell us that adrenaline produces a series of changes in the body such that we do not feel the need to eat while under its influence. This makes evolutionary sense because stopping for a snack when you are running away from a lion may not be your best survival strategy. Slonský, on the other hand, often felt the need for a nibble of something when the chase was afoot, and preferred to fortify himself for potential future activity by keeping his blood sugar stores replenished at all times.

  Thus it was that the realisation that Rezek might move at any time, including, horror of horrors, mealtimes prompted Slonský to slip down to the canteen to see if there was anything edible on the menu.