by Graham Brack
Rajka returned to his office, leaving Slonský with his coffee and a ham and cheese croissant he had forgotten having ordered, from which he had just taken a bite when Navrátil and Peiperová rushed in.
‘Sir, Peiperová has just thought of something,’ said Navrátil.
‘Was it so exciting that she couldn’t tell me herself?’
‘Officer Navrátil is being over-dramatic, sir. All I did was ask a question he can’t answer.’
‘Goodness, we can all do that. His knowledge of Czech films of the fifties is pretty minimal and he’s fairly dodgy on anything to do with football.’
‘Not that sort of question, sir. I was explaining to Officer Peiperová where we had got to with the bank siege case when she asked me something I think is important.’
‘Go on, then, lass. Astound me.’
‘Navrátil was telling me that the getaway driver was moved on by the city police, so he wasn’t there when the robbers tried to leave.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘How do we know that?’
Slonský was so surprised that he dropped his croissant. ‘How indeed? The robbers can’t have told us, because they were all dead before they got the chance to share their plans. But Valentin’s newspaper cuttings said it, so somebody knew it, and I never thought to ask how. Well done, lass.’
He carefully reassembled his croissant.
‘Shouldn’t we go and follow this up?’ asked Navrátil.
‘No point,’ said Slonský with his mouth full of breakfast, obliging him to repeat it when he had swallowed.
‘Why not, sir?’
‘Because the person best able to tell us will still be in his pit until around eleven. He keeps journalists’ hours. But if we shuffle around the bars about then we’re sure to find him somewhere, and then you can ask your question again, my girl.’
At ten to eleven Peiperová put her coat on.
‘Going out?’ said Slonský.
‘We’re going to the bar in the cellar you sometimes go to.’
‘Are we? Is it someone’s birthday I’ve forgotten?’
‘Not today. But it’s your wife’s next week.’
‘So it is. Peiperová, may I hold your hand a moment?’
‘Sir?’
‘I was going to get my wife a pair of gloves but I don’t know the size. Once I know if her hand is bigger or smaller than yours you can tell me what size I should get.’
Peiperová held her hand out in the manner of a baroness permitting a commoner to kiss it.
‘About the same length but a bit wider, I’d say.’
‘Size seven, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I could get them for you if you want, sir.’
‘No, thanks for the offer, but I can’t send people out to do my shopping for me. It wouldn’t be right.’
Obviously Slonský’s definition of shopping did not include the hundreds of coffees and pastries that Peiperová had been sent to fetch over the past seventeen months or so.
‘I rang Mr Valentin’s newspaper and left a message for him, sir. I said you’d be in the cellar around the corner about eleven o’clock.’
‘Very enterprising of you. I suppose we’d better go, then. He hates being stood up. Is Love’s Young Dream coming?’
‘Navrátil is waiting for a death notice, sir.’
‘So long as it’s not mine.’
‘He’s trying to find out when Magdalena Broukalová’s parents died. The registry was going to ring him back but that was an hour ago and they still haven’t done it.’
‘Peiperová, you’ll both have to learn a cardinal rule of dealing with Czech civil servants. Always ask their name, and always write it down. Then if there are any deficiencies in the service they know that you’ll be able to direct your boot to the right bottom. Watch and learn, lass.’
Slonský picked up his desk telephone and dialled a number.
‘Captain Slonský speaking. And you are…?’
There was a pause.
‘Indeed you can help me, Mr Škára. A while ago someone from your department came to look at my office with a view to knocking down a wall but I’ve heard no more about it… Mr Mráz, is that him? … If you would get him to call I’d be very grateful. Goodbye.’
He put the phone down.
‘Now, you see, Peiperová, Škára now knows that I know his name and if I’m not happy I’ll make his life miserable. But he also knows that Mráz is the real culprit, so he’ll get on his back, and I won’t have to.’
The phone rang.
‘Who? Oh, Mr Mráz, how good of you to call.’
Valentin felt the natural order of the world had been overturned. He was used to being the one sitting with a drink when Slonský arrived, but he could see his detective friend was already in place, along with Officer Peiperová. Even more alarming, Slonský was drinking a coffee.
‘Have they run out of beer?’ asked Valentin.
‘No, despite your best efforts they can struggle on for at least another few hours.’
Valentin glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose it’s a bit early for beer. I’ll just have a coffee.’
The waiter nodded and was about to walk away when Valentin added, ‘With a small schnapps.’
‘So what’s the reason for your demand for a piece of my time?’ the journalist asked.
‘Those cuttings you gave me were very useful, but they raise an intriguing question that this talented young lady needs answering.’
Slonský produced one of the articles and pointed to the paragraph in question.
‘It says here,’ he began, ‘that the getaway driver was moved on the City Police when he tried to park outside. But how did your reporter know that, because the robbers didn’t survive long enough to give him an interview? And so far as we know the driver pushed off and we don’t know who he was.’
Valentin read the report again. ‘Written by Honza Hanzl, I see. I don’t know the answer to your question, but you’re in luck, because Honza Hanzl still works for us and he’s only a few metres away.’
‘He does?’
‘Yes. He’s now the news editor. If you promise to leave my drink unadulterated I’ll step over and persuade him to join us.’ He leaned forward to whisper into Slonský’s ear. ‘A word of warning. He drinks like a fish.’
Hanzl was an overweight man with a waddle for a walk and a wardrobe that must have been acquired when he was two sizes smaller because neither the jacket nor the waistcoat below it could be fastened. His trousers, though adequate in size, were held up with a pair of braces that were showing signs of fatigue.
Invited to sit by Slonský, he accepted a coffee and schnapps combo and listened attentively as Slonský set out the question that was bamboozling them.
‘Ah, that’s easy,’ said Hanzl. ‘The police told me.’
‘The police? You mean the real police or the City lot?’
‘It was a joint effort. One of the witnesses had overheard one of the robbers telling the others that their driver wasn’t there. When the City Police heard this they checked their notebooks and discovered that the same car’s registration plate had been noted by two of their officers as being illegally parked outside the bank, so they drove round to the place where the car was registered. By that time the driver knew what had happened to his mates so he was very happy to surrender to the City Police because he felt safer in their custody. He was charged with conspiracy to commit theft and got three years, I think. I can’t remember his name exactly — Petrovský, Pernovský, something like that — but I can check when I get back. I covered his trial.’
‘Was there anything said about the robbery that didn’t get into your first report?’ asked Slonský.
‘When I say I covered his trial, I didn’t actually go there. I just bought the usher a drink at the end of the day and got the info I needed.’
‘You see,’ said Valentin. ‘There’s not much difference between journalism and police work after all.’<
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On their return to the office Slonský stopped at the main desk to share this new development with Sergeant Mucha.
‘Very enterprising of him,’ said Mucha. ‘Saves a lot of time, in much the same way as we save valuable police hours finding out what the villains have been doing by reading the newspapers.’
‘So does the name Petrovský or Pernovský mean anything to you, O Oracle?’
‘Strangely enough, it does. Vladimír Petrovský is a regular client of ours. He has a little sideline in tarting up old cars that have been written off by insurance companies.’
‘Is it lucrative?’
‘I doubt it. He keeps getting caught. Somebody was arrested only a month or so back for causing a breach of the peace when he turned up at Petrovský’s workshop with the front end of a car that had fallen off as he drove through town. Petrovský offered to bolt it back on but the customer told him of an alternative place where he could stick it and volunteered to do it for him.’
‘So does that magic box of tricks at your side have any useful information relating to Petrovský’s part in a bank robbery eight years ago?’
‘I tell you what. Why don’t I check?’
‘That would be good.’
‘For you — no charge.’
‘Even better.’
‘I’ll let you know.’
Slonský made for the stairs but was stopped in his track by a mighty roar.
‘Captain Slonský!’
I can’t pretend I didn’t hear that, he thought, and turned to see who was calling. Colonel Urban was striding across the hallway towards him.
‘I thought I should let you know I’ve just taken a call from the Ministry of the Interior. I’ve got the job, starting on the first of November.’
Slonský shook Urban’s hand enthusiastically.
‘I’m really pleased, sir.’
‘I won’t forget this, Slonský. You and Rajka stood up for me and I’m not a man to turn his back on his friends.’
‘I never thought you were, sir,’ Slonský replied, crossing his fingers behind his back.
‘Best say nothing about this until it’s in the public domain,’ Urban said quietly.
Since the earlier part of the conversation had been conducted in the entrance hall of a large and busy police building at full volume this seemed to Slonský to be shutting the stable door after an entire team of horses had bolted, but he smiled and agreed.
Urban slapped him manfully on the shoulder. ‘Good work. Well done. Thanks. Won’t forget this.’
‘Neither will I, sir.’
As Urban turned away something occurred to him. ‘Hardly worth Peiperová coming back just for a month. If she can drop by from time to time to help me get things tidy for whoever succeeds me, that’s enough.’
Now that was cause for celebration indeed.
There are events for which it is fair to say that no matter how much a man has conceptualized them, imagined them, anticipated them, when they come to pass he finds himself utterly unprepared for the reality. Such a moment befell Slonský when he reached his office and told Peiperová what he had just heard.
Peiperová was so pleased that she executed a couple of small jumps on the spot, thus building momentum for the move in which she launched herself into first Slonský, then Navrátil, culminating in a hug which could have been terminal in someone with a heart condition. Fortunately Navrátil had been vaccinated against this by repeated doses of the same thing and was able to withstand the onslaught.
‘I understand your excitement,’ Slonský told her, ‘but we have work to do. Let’s piece together all we can of the lives of Novotná-Broukalová and Nágl.’
‘We’ve made some progress, sir,’ reported Navrátil. ‘It seems that Mr Broukal died in 1999 and his wife followed three years ago. So far as I can discover Magdalena is their only child. She’s now forty-eight years old and married Jan Novotný twenty-seven years ago.’
‘Any children?’
‘Not that I can trace thus far. And they don’t seem to have divorced until 2003. The court transcript indicates that he was granted a decree because she could not be traced to be served the papers. With three years’ separation and no counter-petition on her part alleging hardship if the divorce were granted it would have been automatic.’
‘So they separated around the time that Viktorie was taken?’
‘If Novotný’s deposition can be trusted, he had walked out about a month before because she was behaving unreasonably.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Not yet, sir. I can’t find when she left the north or when she arrived in Prague. The first sign we have of her here is a little over two years ago when she registered her new ID card. That was May 2005.’
Slonský made some notes on a pad and pinned the page on the notice board.
‘So they separate in January 2000, Viktorie is snatched in February and by 2003 they’ve been apart long enough for him to get a divorce. Then she reappears in Prague in May 2005. That’s five years we’ve got to account for. Anything on Nágl?’
‘He seems to have lived in the southern part of the city since he became an adult. He moved to the present house in the second half of 2005. By the way, forensics have sent their report on his car. I put it on your desk.’
Slonský retrieved it and read through the summary. Something caught his attention and he turned to one of the interior pages which he read in detail.
‘If he doesn’t have a car, he’s got to use public transport. And if he’s given up his job to go looking for her it tells us that it’s very important to him to silence her. This can’t be his word against hers. She must have some sort of hard evidence.’
‘Maybe he just can’t face losing control of her,’ Peiperová interjected. ‘Some men do that. He wants to punish her for deserting him.’
‘He’s punished her once. Why didn’t he finish the job off then instead of doing half a job and then having to chase round the country looking for her?’
Navrátil bristled at the suggestion. ‘You’re surely not advocating that he should have killed her in the first place, sir?’
‘No, of course not, lad. I’m surprised you should even think of construing it that way. I’m looking at it from his point of view. He clearly maltreated her over that weekend, and she ran away. That must have panicked him, otherwise he could just have let her go.’
‘Exactly my point, sir,’ said Peiperová. ‘He thought she was under his thumb and he could treat her however he wanted with no consequences. She plucked up the courage to leave and we can’t protect her because she won’t ask us for help.’
‘But we can’t ignore the fact that she is likely to have kidnapped a child. It’s the prospect of punishment for that crime that stops her coming to us. For any other woman we’d tell her just to get in touch, but that won’t work with her. The only answer is for us to find her before Nágl does. And we don’t know how much he knows about her past.’
‘Presumably he knew about the abduction, sir,’ Navrátil said. ‘That’s why she couldn’t say anything about Viktorie being abused. If she filed a report he would accuse her of having abducted the child and they’d both go inside for a long time.’
‘That’s the obvious conclusion, but whatever went before, the issue for us is finding the pair of them. The child’s real parents deserve no less than an explanation of what happened to their daughter. Peiperová, I want you to go back to Broukalová’s parents’ district and go door to door. Find out anything you can that might help us to piece together those missing five years. Navrátil, your job is to find out all you can about Nágl. Does he have any family he might be keeping in touch with? Is anyone supplying him to cash to enable him to keep this search going? We didn’t get much out of his work colleagues but perhaps they know something helpful, so try again.’
‘And what will you be doing, sir?’ Navrátil asked.
‘Thinking,’ said Slonský. ‘Thinking very hard.’
P
eterka seemed to regard Navrátil’s return to the office as a clear pointer that Nágl was suspected of something.
‘I can’t comment on that. I’m trying to find anyone who was close to him.’
‘You don’t get close to men like Nágl. I worked with him. I wouldn’t have spent a weekend with him.’
‘He didn’t have any special mates?’
‘He was famous for having no mates at all. He devoted his time to his wife and child. He showed us plenty of photos of them, especially the girl. But now it turns out she wasn’t actually his.’
‘His stepdaughter, I believe.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Did he ever bring her here?’
‘Not to the office, but we have an annual summer picnic. She came to that a couple of times.’
‘What did you make of her?’
‘Pretty girl, nicely dressed, very well-behaved. She was very shy. I might almost say timid. Didn’t play much with our children. In fact, she didn’t play at all. It was as if she was frightened that she’d be told off if she got dirty. She was like a little adult.’
‘Did you ever hear him mention parents, brothers, sisters?’
‘His parents were still alive last year but I don’t know where they are. They can’t be far away because he said he sometimes visited for lunch on Saturdays. I don’t know anything about other family.’
Navrátil was building a picture of the man but he felt he was getting nothing that would help him to understand what Nágl was capable of doing. He decided he needed to push a little harder.
‘I have to emphasise that we’re looking for Mr Nágl to question him. There is suspicion that he may have abused his stepdaughter and maltreated his wife.’
Peterka’s reaction was telling. There wasn’t one.
‘You’re not commenting,’ Navrátil said.
‘Nothing much to say. Am I surprised? No. He was an insignificant man leading an insignificant life. If he had an opportunity to bully someone he’d take it just because they’d be the only people who had to pay any attention to him.’
Navrátil snapped his notebook shut. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.
