by Graham Brack
He read the chalked items from the menu board.
‘What’s Italian salad?’ he asked.
‘Sliced tomatoes and cheese,’ Dumpy Anna explained.
‘Then what’s Greek salad?’
‘Italian salad with a few olives chucked in.’
‘Vegan quiche? How long have you been inflicting that on us?’
‘Veganism is growing. There are several in this building.’
‘Name the perverts.’
‘I can’t breach confidentiality like that!’
‘You’re not a priest or a doctor, Anna.’
‘Well, there’s Colonel Mach for a start.’
‘I expect if you’re the police service’s head of dog handling you don’t want to go near the cages smelling of meat. Who else?’
‘Are you going to buy anything or are you practising for a new job as a food critic?’
‘What have you got under the counter?’
‘I could rustle you up a thick slice of smoked ham with some mustard.’
‘You are a princess amongst women. I’ve always said so.’
Anna deftly sliced a roll open, laid the ham inside and flicked a spoonful of mustard over the top. She wrapped the sandwich in a paper napkin and told Slonský the price.
‘How much? Don’t I get the whole pig for that?’
‘No, but I’m assuming you’ll want your usual coffee to wash it down. I don’t set the prices.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Alright, so I do. But I have guidelines and targets.’
Slonský fished out a couple of banknotes. ‘Jesus Maria! I could have bought a vegan quiche for that. And it would probably have contained a whole vegan.’
He took his tray to a table and began eating his expensive sandwich. Glancing up, he saw Sergeant Mucha striding into the canteen in his overcoat. He dropped his cap on the table, unbuttoned his coat and sat down opposite Slonský.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ Mucha said.
‘Not at these prices you won’t. I’ll take my business elsewhere.’
‘You’ll pay more, you tightwad. Now, shut up and listen, because I don’t want my afternoon to have been wasted.’ He reached across and tore a chunk off Slonský’s sandwich before popping it in his mouth.
‘Oi! You owe me twenty crowns for that mouthful.’
‘I didn’t have time for lunch, being on urgent police business on behalf of one Captain Slonský.’
Suitably chastened, Slonský gestured to Dumpy Anna to bring something for Mucha.
‘This is the story of Tomáš Kašpar, father of František Kašpar. Are you sitting comfortably?’ Mucha asked.
‘Yes, but can’t I just read it?’
‘I wasn’t allowed to bring the files away so I had to scribble some notes. You’ll never decipher them.’
‘That’s true enough. I can barely read your writing at the best of times.’
Dumpy Anna placed a coffee and another smoked ham roll in front of Mucha.
‘Nice to see you, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘If you want better company you could sit at the table over by the waste bin.’
Slonský held more money out and she tucked it in her apron pocket.
‘I’ll bring you your change,’ she said.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Slonský. ‘I dare say it’ll pay for your shoe leather walking over here.’ He reached across the table and tore an end off Mucha’s sandwich. ‘We’re quits now,’ he announced as he tucked it into his mouth.
‘It looks as if — what’s wrong with you?’
‘Holy God! What’s in that sandwich?’ Slonský spluttered.
‘I like plenty of mustard. Proper mustard, not that tame stuff you get on the street stalls. Dumpy Anna knows that. Anyway, are you going to listen?’
‘I’ll have to. I can barely speak.’
‘Stop being a drama queen. Tomáš Kašpar was born in 1935. Went to the University of Economics and earned a full set of degrees — bachelor’s, master’s and a doctorate. He specialised in something called dynamic resource allocation.’
‘I haven’t got a clue what that is and I bet you haven’t either.’
‘I wouldn’t, but Klinger does, so I went upstairs to see him before coming here.’
‘You went all the way up to the Fraud Squad offices? There’s devotion to duty for you. Did Klinger have you chemically sprayed before he let you in?’
‘No,’ conceded Mucha, ‘but I spotted him rubbing my chair with his handkerchief when I left.’
Major Klinger headed the Fraud Squad, which was something of a hyperbolic description for Klinger and his single remaining member of staff. Undoubtedly intelligent, rigidly methodical and obsessive about keeping his working environment clean, Klinger had never been seen in the canteen, but was rumoured to be the Czech police service’s biggest consumer of coloured sticky notes.
‘And what did Klinger tell you?’ Slonský asked. ‘Had he heard of Tomáš Kašpar?’
‘No, but he says that’s not surprising. Kašpar went to work as a civil servant for a while but he was still doing research part time. He became a dissident when he realised that the government’s Five Year Plan worked by deciding what the country needed and then allocating materials and labour to make that happen, so in effect the whole economic system was locked in to the idea that things wouldn’t change. Yet it was still subject to price fluctuations in the outside world that we couldn’t control. Kašpar came to think that Communist economic theory was built on quicksand, and argued as much in a couple of memoranda.’
‘You’ve proved the powers that be probably thought he was a grade A pain in the proverbial, but how does he get himself killed?’
‘He was part of a delegation to West Germany in 1968, during the Prague Spring, and made some contacts there. He apparently impressed the West Germans, which immediately made the StB suspicious of him, and surveillance was stepped up considerably. When the West Germans had an election and changed their government, their policy towards the East changed.’
‘See, that’s what happens when you let ordinary people vote. They change things. That’s why we gave it up for forty years.’
‘Kašpar seems to have decided that the new West German policy was going to make life much easier for the Communist government here and he wrote to his West German friends to see if they could exert some pressure on their government to change the policy back. Of course, those letters never arrived. They’re in his StB file. So it seems that he decided that he needed to go to West Germany. An agent provocateur planted amongst the dissidents reported on a meeting where this was decided.’
‘I always think the “provocateur” bit suggests he was wearing women’s underwear. Pray continue.’
‘Those other two, Bartek and Toms, strongly supported Kašpar’s plan, and they were deputed to get him out of the country and escort him if possible. Their first idea was to smuggle him on the team bus of Bartek’s basketball team when they went to the West, but they got knocked out of some cup or other so that wasn’t going to happen. They knew the border with West Germany was watched closely, so they hit on an alternative by doing the exact opposite.’
‘You mean they’d sneak into Czechoslovakia?’ Slonský asked.
‘No, I mean instead of heading north-west they’d go south-east. They planned to get into Yugoslavia and then get to Greece or Italy, from where they could go on to West Germany. It might have worked if the sneak in their group hadn’t told the StB all about it and they were picked up as soon as they set out.’
‘So family and friends wouldn’t worry about them for a few days because they weren’t expecting to hear for a while.’
‘They’d thought it could take three or four weeks to complete their journey and secrecy was important. They were taken for interrogation and in the end they went to the Red House so Rezek could use his skills on them.’
‘And Kašpar and the others died under questioning?’
‘Kašpar did,’ Mucha c
onfirmed. ‘The others were executed, presumably by Rezek, to conceal the fact that the cell had been infiltrated and to stop news of what had happened leaking out. There’s a note in the file from someone at the Ministry of the Interior rebuking Rezek for taking that action without checking with them first, but it goes on to say that since they would have approved they’re not going to take it any further this time.’
‘That’s nice of them. It’s good to know that summary execution of prisoners isn’t necessarily a barrier to a long and successful career.’
‘The file says that the bodies were disposed of before Kašpar could be examined by a doctor, but there’s a letter from a pathologist in the file saying that the course of events suggests that Kašpar had an electrical defect in the heart, whatever one of those is, that messed up his heart rhythm. When Rezek gave him an electric shock it killed him.’
‘Instead of just making him more talkative as usual. You know, up until now I thought that Rezek was a callous unfeeling bastard with a disregard for human life and dignity, but now I’m starting to dislike him.’
‘You and me both,’ Mucha agreed. ‘So we know why František Kašpar wants to get his own back on Rezek, but we still don’t know how he discovered all this given that he doesn’t have access to the files.’
‘Neither do we, strictly speaking.’
‘Someone owes me a favour.’
‘Yes,’ Slonský conceded, ‘but the point is that you knew where the files would be. Do you believe in coincidence?’
‘Not really. But fortunately the wife does, so I can get away with coincidentally being on shift when her sister comes.’
‘Your wife may, but I don’t,’ Slonský told him. ‘Kašpar may have been brewing this for years but he wanted his father’s body back and somebody told him where it was. And I doubt it was Rezek, so who else could have known?’
Chapter 14
Colonel Rajka summoned Slonský first thing in the morning, so Slonský dutifully turned up at Rajka’s office only to be redirected to the police gymnasium where Rajka was keeping himself in trim.
As befitted a former Olympic wrestler, Rajka displayed grace, power and poise as he performed his exercises, demonstrating an ability to raise his chin above an elevated bar without much apparent effort in his arms. He may have been past forty years of age, but his physique was still impressive in his immaculate kit of maroon singlet, white shorts and white socks. On Slonský’s rare visits to the gym he cut a less dashing figure in his kit (white singlet, shorts which may once have been navy blue and the first pair of socks that came to hand) and he was devoted to exercising with economy of effort.
‘What do I need to know, Slonský?’ demanded Rajka.
Since Rajka was doing some weird form of press-up that required only one arm to lift his body weight, Slonský was impressed that he was able to speak at all without wheezing.
Slonský ran through the evidence that had been collected.
‘So we have enough to arrest this Kašpar character if we can find him,’ Rajka remarked.
‘Comfortably,’ Slonský replied. ‘I don’t think he’s especially worried about escaping. He just wants to buy time to finish the job.’
‘You think he’s going after Rezek?’
‘I think he wanted Rezek to feel the pain of losing a close family member, which is why Adalheid was killed. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in Rezek’s life about whom he cared much at all, except perhaps his second wife. But now that Rezek has had a bit of time to feel that grief, Kašpar will want to consummate his revenge. And that means putting a bullet through Rezek’s skull, or some other inventive malice.’
‘Are we giving Rezek any protection?’
‘I have a rota of officers watching Rezek, but that was more from the point of view of stopping Rezek killing Kašpar before we found him. If Kašpar is going to nail Rezek, he has to lure him to a meeting. Following Rezek seems to me to be the best method we have of tracing where Kašpar has got to. He has to break cover to meet up with Rezek and when he does we need to be there.’
Rajka was casually tossing a dumbbell from one hand to the other as he thought. ‘You’re probably right,’ he concluded. ‘Just bear two things in mind. Rezek is no fool and he’s trained to throw us off the scent. He’s not going to be easy to follow. And if this all goes wrong we finish up with more bodies and a bit of explaining to do. Needless to say, I’ll be delegating that explaining to you.’
Navrátil was hovering outside Slonský’s office when the latter returned from the gymnasium.
‘I wonder if I could have a word, sir,’ said Navrátil.
‘You regularly do,’ said Slonský. ‘Say your piece.’
‘In private, sir,’ Navrátil continued, and gestured towards Slonský’s office door.
‘You’re not going to resign or anything daft like that?’ Slonský asked.
‘No, sir,’ replied Navrátil, seemingly surprised that such a thought could have occurred to Slonský.
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Slonský, and led the way into his room, indicating a chair in which Navrátil might have sat had he not noticed two folders, a coffee cup and a box bearing traces of pastries on the seat pad. ‘Well, out with it, lad!’
Navrátil looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘You know I’m getting married, sir?’ he began.
‘Good God, man, everybody in the place knows you’re getting married. If it was meant to be a secret, I’ve got to say your fiancée hasn’t done a great job of keeping it.’
‘We hoped you’d be coming to the wedding, sir.’
‘If invited, of course I will.’
The emphasis on “if” was not lost on Navrátil. ‘The invitations are going out this week, sir. And of course you’re getting one. May I ask if you want us to include Mrs Slonská too?’
That was a sore point. Slonský had been married to Věra for around two years when she ran off with a leather-jacketed poet, after which he had not seen her for another thirty, until she had reappeared about two years earlier. After a distinctly awkward spell they had started to spend a little time together, and it was clear that Věra hoped for a reconciliation. Slonský did not know what he hoped would come of it, but it had got as far as dinner on her birthday at which a man had recognised her and disclosed that her account of the missing thirty years was not entirely accurate, since he had been with her for about three of them. After that, they had not seen each other again, and although Věra had sent him a couple of notes he had decided not to reply.
‘It’s a kind thought, but I think I’ll be unaccompanied, lad.’
‘As you wish, sir. We just wanted to make the offer.’
‘And it’s appreciated, but if that’s all…’
‘It isn’t all, sir. I was wondering if — that is to say — we had it in mind — what I mean is…’
‘Spit it out, Navrátil, I won’t bite.’
‘I wondered if you would be my best man, sir.’
In forty years of adulthood Slonský had rarely been speechless, and he firmly believed that since he had seen everything there could be no surprises left, but he gulped air like a goldfish for a few moments.
‘Don’t you have friends of your own age?’ he asked.
‘Not really, sir. And we thought that since you brought us together…’
‘Irina Gruberová brought you together,’ Slonský answered, referring to the murder victim whose death he had been investigating when he took Navrátil to Kladno where they met Officer Peiperová, as she then was, with whom Navrátil was obviously and instantly smitten.
‘You’ve known us as long as we’ve known each other, sir,’ Navrátil continued, then, seeking to head off a possible objection, he quickly added, ‘of course, there’s no obligation to make a speech.’
Slonský stood up and extended his hand to be shaken. ‘Young man, there are no circumstances in which I’m keeping quiet at this event.’
‘Just to be clear,’ Navrátil added, ‘I wasn’t pl
anning on having a bachelor party.’
‘What’s a bachelor party?’
‘It’s what you see British tourists doing. The groom and his male friends go out drinking heavily and behaving stupidly.’
Slonský frowned. ‘How is that different to a normal night out in Prague?’ he asked.
The normal course of a police investigation does not follow a definite pattern, but they can be broadly divided into two types. In type A the culprit is immediately apparent, all the evidence points one way, there is an early confession and the police breathe a sigh of relief and add a tally mark to the crime statistics. In type B the evidence trail is partial, deduction gives way to guesswork and matters proceed at a glacial pace. If the crime is solved at all, it involves many hours of laborious comparison of statements; but once in a while, the enquiry takes a leap forward because something that Mucha would call intuition, Slonský would call experience and Valentin would call luck allows things to step up a gear.
Following his costly episode in the canteen Slonský had temporarily switched to lunching out, and he was skipping down the stairs to the front door debating which of two possible troughs he was going to dip his snout in when a question came to him. He had no idea why this had popped into his mind at that moment and not before since it was so obvious a question that he ought to have asked it much earlier, but better late than never.
Mucha was occupied in explaining to a tourist that the Prague City Police was an entirely separate organisation with its own stations, so Slonský waited until he was free so that he could ask his question.
‘That folder you gave me,’ he began.
‘I’ve given you many folders. Which particular one?’ Mucha asked.
‘The one about Jiří Holub.’
‘I remember. Go on.’
‘Why did you get it?’
‘Because you asked me to.’
‘Ah — you misunderstand my question. It was exactly what I wanted, but how did you find it amongst so many other files?’
‘I didn’t. I asked the custodian to fetch it for me.’
‘But why?’
‘Because you asked me to find any examples of StB officers who had connections with the Red House.’
