by Graham Brack
Mrs Dlasková stuck doggedly to the story she had told seven years earlier.
‘It was the third of February, a Thursday. They had predicted snow but only little wisps of it were falling when I walked up to the kindergarten to collect her.’
‘This was after work?’ asked Slonský.
‘Yes. I worked in a small supermarket on the tills from 7.30 to 2.30. I didn’t like doing so many hours but if I didn’t we couldn’t afford to pay for child care for her.’
‘So you walked up around 2.30?’
‘No, it would have been nearer to 3 o’clock when I set out. I had to do some shopping myself first. So I arrived at the kindergarten around 3.15.’
‘And what was the drill there? I mean, what should have happened when you got there?’
‘We weren’t allowed into the buildings. The parents used to stand by the low fence around the playground. The staff could see us there and would bring our children out to us. But there were quite a few who always came at this time, so they would start getting those children ready in advance. I suppose there were about six of us waiting when they started bringing children out. It was just so very normal. The parents collected their children and started taking them home, and I was still there.’
Mrs Dlasková took a drink of her coffee, holding the cup with both hands because she was aware that she was trembling.
‘There was a young assistant, Katja. I don’t know her surname now. She was training to be a kindergarten teacher. She saw me and said “Haven’t you got Viktorie?” I said I hadn’t seen her, and Katja ran inside. When she came out again I could see that there was something wrong. She ran straight across to the Director’s office and I could see her burst in. The office had a big window looking out on the yard. The Director stood up and seemed to be arguing with her, but eventually she came out and marched over to me. “There’ll be a perfectly simple explanation for this,” she said, and told Katja she was a silly girl. I climbed over the fence and ran across to join the search. Viktorie’s teacher told us she’d gone for Viktorie’s coat but when she came back Viktorie wasn’t there. Her first thought was that Katja had left the door open and Viktorie had run out to me. They searched the buildings but I insisted that they had to call the police. The Director didn’t want to do that but I made her.’
Slonský passed a pencil and notepad to her. ‘Can you draw a plan of the school so I can understand the geography?’
Mrs Dlasková drew, occasionally stopping to discuss something with her husband.
‘So,’ said Slonský, ‘we’ve got two long buildings with a short gap between them and a little porch on the end opening onto the gap. Viktorie’s classroom was the first one in the building to the left, the one nearest the gap. The Director’s office was in the near corner of the other building. Then there was a playground around the whole building with a low fence. Could Viktorie have climbed it?’
‘No,’ Dlask insisted. ‘It was well made and the horizontal struts were too high for her to climb on. It was sound as a bell. No gaps, no broken planks.’
‘And you’re standing on this side of the building. What’s at the back of it?’
‘There were some bushes at the two ends, but in the middle there was a flat area where the Director used to park her car. You could maybe get another couple of cars there.’
‘And presumably there was a gate?’
‘Not there. The Director used to go out of the main gate and walk all the way round.’
‘What was Viktorie wearing, Mrs Dlasková?’
‘A red skirt, red tights and a white jumper. And she had a white jacket. I’ve still got that — the teacher kept waving it at me as proof that Viktorie couldn’t have left because her coat was still there.’
‘Did she always wear that jacket?’
‘I think so. She had one we kept for best, but white goes with everything. And we couldn’t afford a lot of clothes for her when she was growing so fast.’
‘When the police came, what did they do?’
‘Next to nothing,’ snapped Mr Dlask. ‘I got there before they did, and they kept trying to persuade Natalka — my wife — that she must be mistaken and that Viktorie had come out to us but we’d somehow missed her.’
‘But I saw every child who left,’ insisted Mrs Dlasková, ‘and Viktorie wasn’t among them.’
‘Did they interview all the staff?’ Slonský asked next.
‘Yes, nobody was allowed to leave until the police had spoken to them, even the teachers in the other room. It was nearly eight o’clock before they let the teachers leave,’ said Mrs Dlasková.
‘And what about the other parents?’
‘I don’t know if they spoke to them all, but quite a few told me they’d been visited by the police. They were all concerned. Nobody wanted to believe that someone was going round kidnapping our babies.’
Slonský asked for the names of the other mothers who had been there and wrote down those the Dlasks could remember.
‘Let’s get you home,’ he said kindly. ‘Peiperová, your shift has finished. You’re stood down.’
‘I’m happy to drive, sir.’
‘Good girl. Mr Dlask, Mrs Dlasková, I’m sorry the police didn’t do a good job seven years ago. But I will find out what happened to your daughter and I will see someone prosecuted for it.’
They murmured their thanks and followed him to the car.
When they reached her house Mrs Dlasková held her husband’s hand and told him she didn’t want to be alone. He nodded, and they got out together.
‘That was sweet,’ said Peiperová.
‘We don’t know what drove them apart, but losing their child can’t have helped.’
‘Do you think he blames her?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that’s not fair!’
‘I didn’t say it was fair. You asked what he thought, and I told you. He knows he wasn’t to blame, and somebody must be, so he takes it out on those around him. It’s a common enough story. But when we went through the detail he realised she did exactly what she should have done. Maybe he needed to be seven years away to see that.’
‘What now, sir?’
‘Swing by the kindergarten, lass, and let’s get our bearings.’
‘It’s probably changed in seven years, sir.’
‘Not if it’s relying on public money, Peiperová. A lick of paint if they’re lucky.’
Peiperová had no trouble finding it and it was soon clear that the Dlasks’ drawing was very accurate. Slonský climbed out of the car and stepped over the fence.
‘Do you need a torch, sir?’
‘No, it’s light enough for my purposes. I just want to test an idea I had.’ He returned to the car. ‘Drive round the back so we can see how the Director gets to work each day.’
Peiperová turned at the next left turn, then found the lane that led to the car park, a patch of gravel and concrete. She turned round as instructed.
‘Go back to the end of this road, but don’t turn right. I want to see where we can go.’
Peiperová turned left, and the road curved slightly to join up with the main road to Most.
‘Turn left here and let’s see how far we are from the kindergarten.’
They drove around three hundred metres before they saw the turning to the kindergarten down which they had driven in the first place.
‘Satisfied, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you. What a bunch of blithering idiots!’
‘Who, sir?’
‘Mankind in general, but the local police in particular. Let’s pay our colleagues a visit and see if we can find any relevant files.’
‘It’s quite late, sir. The archives staff will have gone home.’
‘Then we’ll get them to come back. And don’t pull that face. The Director said I could have you for today. He didn’t say anything about tomorrow, and you’re as keen to get to the bottom of this as I am.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So, pedal
to the metal, my girl, and let’s go to Ústí and kick some bottom.’
The duty sergeant at Ústí was as accommodating as he could be, given that nobody connected with the case was in the building. He did not personally remember the incident, but he was confident that the local crime inspector would because he had been there for over ten years.
‘And he’ll be in tomorrow morning?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Excellent. I’ll wait. Peiperová, you may as well take the car back to Prague and I’ll catch the train back.’
‘As you wish, sir.’
‘Now, don’t pull that face. The Director let me have you for the rest of today. He’ll need you in the morning.’
‘He has a meeting at the Ministry of the Interior until lunchtime, sir.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I wouldn’t be missed if we were finished here by eleven o’clock.’
‘And where do you propose to sleep? You plainly can’t stretch out on a couple of chairs like I planned to do.’
‘There may be a hotel in town with cheap rooms, sir. You’ve said yourself in the past that if they haven’t let them by this time of night they’ll be glad of anything we’re prepared to pay.’
‘Meaning that the police service is prepared to pay?’ Slonský sighed and turned to the desk sergeant. ‘Is there anywhere you would recommend?’
‘Actually,’ the sergeant said, ‘there’s a brewery that has a few rooms. You get a free beer if you’re booked there.’
Slonský brightened at once.
‘And where is this demi-paradise?’
An hour later, Slonský was having an animated discussion with a couple of locals about prospects for the hockey season, while Peiperová excused herself after dinner and retired to her room, but not before collecting her free beer and giving it to Slonský.
It was not quite too late to call Navrátil to update him, so she hung up her uniform so the creases would fall out and lay on the bed.
‘Good evening, Officer Navrátil,’ she began.
‘Good evening, Officer Peiperová. And where are you?’
‘I’m in a hotel room in Ústí nad Labem. Don’t worry, I’m alone.’
‘I never doubted it.’
‘We need to talk to the crime team here about the abduction so Captain Slonský agreed we should stay over rather than come back another day. But I need you to do me a favour.’
‘Of course.’
‘Will you write a note to my boss telling him where I’ve gone and stick it on tomorrow’s page of the big diary on my desk?’
‘You mean you haven’t asked him?’
‘He’s in a meeting in the morning but just in case we don’t get back as quickly as we expect…’
Navrátil was resigned to doing her bidding. ‘All right. Did you get anywhere?’
‘We viewed the kindergarten. I think Captain Slonský thinks the child was abducted over the back fence where a car was waiting.’
‘I didn’t need to go there to deduce the same. But who handed her over the fence? And who was waiting on the other side to receive her?’
‘Ah, not much progress there yet. But we’ll keep at it.’
A thought crossed Navrátil’s mind. ‘Have you got a change of clothes with you?’
‘No. I’ve taken my uniform off to keep it smart. If you must know, I’m lying here on the bed in my underwear.’
‘Kristýna!’
‘I feel like one of those girls in the chat line advertisements you see. Shall I talk dirty to you?’
‘No, thank you,’ Navrátil replied briskly.
Chapter 5
Slonský regretfully declined the offer of more beer with breakfast, feeling that it might provoke comment when he arrived at the police station, but he gleefully accepted a business card for the hotel and tucked it securely in his wallet. If you had to go somewhere on holiday this was as good a reason for choosing a place as any, he thought.
The colonel who directed the regional criminal police left them in the company of Captain Velek. Velek was in his early fifties, and although not a local man, he had been there for over a decade and recalled the investigation quite well, though taking pains to stress that he had not led it.
‘Meaning you’d have done things differently?’ asked Slonský.
Velek strolled along with his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
‘There wasn’t much scope for doing things differently. We did what we had to do. I might have shown a bit more urgency and I certainly would have given the Director of the Kindergarten a harder time.’
‘What for?’
‘Basically for being a heartless bitch. All she wanted to prove was that it wasn’t her fault, and Captain Matuský left her alone once he’d determined that she wasn’t implicated. But their systems were archaic and inadequate and I’d have thrown the book at them because it was just asking to happen again.’
‘Do you think whoever snatched the child knew that?’
Velek scratched a pattern in the dirt with his toecap while he thought.
‘There were other kindergartens they could have targeted. On the other hand, this one was made for a getaway. You only have to drive a few hundred metres and you’re on the main road.’
‘We drove around it last night and established that,’ Slonský confirmed.
‘The only good thing was that they operated a rule that parents couldn’t just wander in past the fence. The children were brought out to them, so if all the witnesses were telling the truth the parents at the gate couldn’t have been implicated. In particular, Mrs Dlasková was in sight the whole time. Captain Matuský thought that was suspicious, as if she was trying to draw attention to herself.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I think a mother whose daughter has been snatched is entitled to be an attention-seeker. But it wasn’t so much what happened on the day. It was the fact that nobody reported any sightings in the succeeding weeks. Captain Matuský thought that either the child was killed at once — and how many children are abducted and immediately killed? — or she was with people she knew where she wouldn’t be thought out of the ordinary if spotted. She wasn’t a little baby. She knew her parents and grandparents. Why wouldn’t she kick up a fuss?’
‘Silver Blaze,’ murmured Slonský.
‘Come again?’
‘It’s a story by the British writer Conan Doyle. A horse is stolen from a stables where there is a guard dog and the dog doesn’t bark.’
‘So the dog knows the thief?’
‘That’s right. But if not the family, what about the workers?’
‘We checked out the movements of all of them but they were all in sight the whole time.’
‘So if I summarise this correctly,’ Slonský said, ‘you concluded that the child was kidnapped, but it couldn’t be anyone from outside because they would have been seen, or anyone inside because everyone was in view of somebody else the whole time.’
Velek shrugged again. ‘That’s about the sum of it.’
‘I see,’ said Slonský. ‘The difficulty with that conclusion is, of course, the small ugly fact that someone got the child, however impossible that should have been.’
‘It’s a puzzle,’ agreed Velek. ‘The little one didn’t seem to scream or shout out, but neither was there time to render her unconscious unless she was smothered.’
‘And there’s a further puzzle,’ commented Slonský, ‘because if she was smothered in 2000 what’s she doing turning up newly dead in 2007?’
Velek’s eyes widened to the point that Slonský wondered whether they would close again. ‘Newly dead?’ he asked.
‘Found in a river a few days ago and identified by DNA.’
‘Ten years old?’
‘Well, we didn’t saw her in half and count the rings, but if she was three when she went missing seven years ago, ten would be a pretty good bet.’
‘But I don’t understand…’
‘Neither do I. But the d
ifference is that I’m going to do something about it.’
Velek shut the door to his office and indicated that they should sit in the chairs beside his desk.
‘Look,’ he began, ‘I’m not saying there weren’t deficiencies in the initial investigation. I’ve already said that I didn’t trust the Director’s testimony.’
‘Yes, you did,’ agreed Slonský. ‘But what did you actually do, because it seems to me that Matuský was convinced the parents staged it all?’
Velek waved away the information impatiently. ‘That was all that woman’s fault. It was all a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’
‘Matuský’s first report certainly hinted at the parents being the culprits but he withdrew it later once it became clear that the Director hadn’t been entirely honest with us.’
‘In what way?’
‘She gave us the impression that the parents had only reported the girl missing around five o’clock, long after she should have been collected. It was only later that it became clear that they had been begging her to ring the police for over an hour. That time was critical, because you can get to the border with Germany in around forty minutes. Matuský became convinced that the reason he wasn’t getting any leads locally was that she had been taken out of the district and the likeliest direction was north to the border.’
‘There’s no request to the German police for help in the file.’
‘He probably telephoned and didn’t bother to note it.’
‘And is there anything else you can remember Matuský doing and not noting?’ growled Slonský.
Velek shook his head sadly. ‘He didn’t do much, so I shouldn’t think so.’
‘He didn’t, for example, haul the Director over the coals for deliberately misleading us?’
‘Not that I know of.’
Slonský grabbed his hat and strode to the door. ‘Better late than never,’ he snapped.
The Director was surprised to find her office invaded by a large and indignant Prague detective and a tall, blonde haired policewoman. She prided herself on her reading of body language, but little expertise in that area would have been required to detect that Slonský was very angry.
