Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Interviews with the building’s inhabitants revealed nothing of any use. The victim’s only regular visitor was her brother-in-law, who at the first incomplete account fainted and had to be hospitalized. She had never been seen with any other men. The single, barely credible lead was the testimony of a small girl, who had been watching for her mother from the mezzanine before the fire and insisted that a water sprite had left the building with a big suitcase. From this they deduced that a green coat was involved.

“Want some tea?” Jitka asked when she had finished.

“With plum brandy,” he said automatically, trying to digest the realization that the trail he had been following for almost a month had been a dead end from the start. The man who had probably tortured the Brno seamstress before killing Elisabeth von Pommeren and Barbora Pospíchalová was not one of the original suspects. In all likelihood he had a clean criminal record. Because he had taken six and a half years to commit his second murder and less than a month for his third, it was reasonable to surmise he had finally settled on a form of murder that was to his taste.

Morava felt the sharp scent of wartime tea concentrate, softened with home-brewed brandy, rising into his nostrils as Jitka lightly but securely wound her arms around his neck.

“You’ll catch him, I’m sure of it!” she said, and he was sure he would not disappoint her.

“My mother,” he answered, “is well and is looking forward to meeting you. She sent you her favorite kerchief. And Buback promised he would help your father.”

“So what else do we need, Jan?” she asked him. “Just the baby, then, I guess. Are you too tired?”

“Jitka…,” he whispered and looked into her eyes, hoping that all those awful images would dissolve in her warm brownness. “My love, where have you been all these years? I waited for you my whole life past, and our whole next life you’ll never be rid of me.”

Curiosity was stronger than caution. Just to be sure, he pretended to be fixing the lock on the canteen door until the director and his secretary had sat down to lunch (some sort of gray porridge with red beets, ugh!). Then, for the sake of prying eyes, he casually sauntered up to their office with his equipment in hand. He knocked and waited before entering. In the back room he put down his hammer and pliers on the desk and swiftly yet carefully paged through the daily press. NOTHING!

As he stared unbelieving at the back page of the last paper, he noticed that the police blotter reported a fire in Podskalská Street. The sign on the corner the day before yesterday had engraved itself on his memory, because first he had read the German name, Podskalaergasse, which made no sense to him. He had to read the article out loud before he realized what it meant. Fortunately, he managed to fold the newspapers up, remember his equipment, and leave before he lost control completely.

Locking himself in the toilet, he sat down fully dressed on the bowl, his hands and legs shaking uncontrollably. Who was foiling his plans! How could sheer coincidence have ruined the next of his masterpieces! He had thought that this time they would have to take notice of him, to start piecing together his motive. Instead, once again there was NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING!!

In the meanwhile he had become convinced that his actions should have a regular rhythm, so they could COUNT ON THEM. Discounting the poor start in Brno that had paralyzed him for several years, he had been sure that things would go more or less like last time: he needed two weeks to EXPERIENCE IT, and two weeks to PREPARE FOR IT. Like the moon in the heavens, he realized; he would wane, then wax again.

Twelve a year; the number seemed appropriate and at the same time significant. It too had a SYMBOL in it. But to warn them properly, first he had to let them know he existed; everyone had to understand the rhythm and anticipate the coming PUNISHMENT. That was the only way it could possibly work, the only way the ones who deserved it would fear and repent, become better people, follow the example that would gradually cease to be exceptional, until the world was CLEANSED.

Without the fire, which only SATAN himself could have set, his intention would have been clear by the middle of next month; he would have set a fateful pendulum in motion, destroying another sinner’s heart at each swing. And instead? “The flames spared the rest of the building,” the item had read, “but raged so wildly in the apartment that the tenant could only be identified by her rings and teeth.”

Someone entered the lavatory, pressed down on the doorhandle of his stall, and then began to jiggle it impatiently. Had they found him? How? In a panic he considered opening the ventilation window behind him and crawling out into the light shaft. At the thought of the drop he felt a terrible cramp in his testicles. Vertigo always sapped his strength; he was sure to fall and kill himself at the bottom of the shaft. No! He would turn the lock and open the door so sharply that he’d knock the guy behind it off balance for a few seconds; out in the hall and on the staircase he’d never catch up… unless there were more of them!

He broke into a sweat as he realized that he might be uncovered so quickly and simply. A thorough search and it’d all be over: they’d get the straps from his apartment, and here in the basement they’d find his SOULS! He’d never convince them that he was GOOD. They would sentence him just as easily as they condemned hundreds of ordinary people every day. And none of them had come anywhere as close to humbling EVIL as he had. An image sprang to mind — they were dragging him, bound, to the bloody chopping block — and he felt sick.

The unknown man outside swore, promptly exited, and slammed the door behind him. Meanwhile, he barely managed to turn around and lean over the worn bowl before forcefully throwing up his breakfast. He felt better but remained on his knees, his palms splayed on the filthy tiling and his chin against the cold porcelain, eyes blinded by a gush of tears. Finally his nose felt a piercing sourness. He flushed, scooping the running water into his palms to rinse his mouth out. Checking that he had not soiled his shirt or sweater, he carefully wiped the stall clean with shredded newsprint, and when he flushed again he noticed that his hands had stopped shaking. He could go.

Out in the hallway, fresh air coursed over him. He could see his long-dead friend, one of the first army pilots, who had once saved himself by jumping from a biplane in a parachute. The first thing his friend had requested afterward was to get right into another cockpit again. “Otherwise I would have been afraid the rest of my life,” he confided later.

He realized that he too must overcome his bad luck IMMEDIATELY!

Morava got barely two hours of sleep that night. He gave Jitka a detailed description of his visit with his mother and the trip with Buback. She hung anxiously on his every word, and he realized how worried she was about her father. The first flowering of love in the shadow of death, he thought. There was nothing else he could say, so he took her in his arms and stroked her hair and cheeks until the two of them began to fade with exhaustion and simultaneously fell asleep. He came to in her embrace when the alarm clock had just started to rattle, and she dozed on his shoulder as they rode in on the tram.

When Beran arrived, Morava gave him a brief summary of his trip with Buback and asked, heart in his mouth, what he should be working on.

“This case isn’t enough for you?” Beran queried.

“You’re leaving me on it?”

“Have you lost your courage?”

“I just don’t want to cause you any difficulties….”

“So don’t, then.”