Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Careening through a short, sparse wood that stretched along the rocky hillsides toward Pankrác, they reentered the city they had barely left. The street here was lined with low buildings; originally temporary workers’ houses from more prosperous times, their term of service had been extended when the Depression hit. The car jolted over the bumpy cobblestones. They passed a solitary pedestrian, plodding down to the tram lines below; just then Morava and Buback had to brace themselves to avoid being thrown together.

They swayed even further around the next curve, when Litera swerved around an item near the edge of the roadway. A hat, Morava thought, surprised; what was it doing there? He instantly put it out of his head as they turned into their street. Then he almost yelped in pain as he felt Buback’s nails dig into his wrist.

Litera was already braking by a large glistening puddle. For a moment all three of them looked at the shards of glass and porcelain, scattered amid the carnations…. From me, Morava realized.

They scrambled out of the vehicle.

The chief inspector was unbelievably fast and managed to enter the house first.

It was already clear that the unthinkable, impossible, and inhuman coincidence had come to pass.

A corpse in a checkered suit slumped from the kitchen into the hall. ebesta’s glassy eyes stared wide at the ceiling.

Morava saw the blood suddenly drain from Buback’s face. Like the priest, he remembered.

Has he lost his second love as well? What a horrible fate!

They stepped over the dead body and were in the kitchen.

Between the door and the table lay Jitka.

Buback put his experience from past German retreats to use.

The girl was alive; the wound must have barely missed her heart. They had to get her on the operating table as soon as possible.

While her fiance applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he and Litera removed the sideboard’s narrow door.

Using it as a stretcher they carried her out to the street and gently laid her on the back seat of the vehicle.

The young Czech squeezed himself into the narrow gap next to her, rubbed her pale cheeks, and willed her to live.

Litera drove like a madman again; they made it to General Hospital in under a quarter hour.

As they took Jitka Modrá away, Buback allowed himself to stroke her hand. It was warm.

“She’ll live,” he said to the Czech, as if trying to persuade himself as well. “She will live!”

The youth nodded absently and without a word followed the orderlies off.

Buback arranged for ebesta’s body to be removed. Then Litera drove him back to Bredovská Street. As he got out, he instructed the driver: “Return to the hospital and remain there at Mr. Morava’s disposition. Don’t go back to headquarters yet; they’ll just detain you. I’ll call the superintendent.”

He couldn’t possibly have understood me, Buback realized a bit later, but by then he had already raced into the colonel’s anteroom, stormed past the adjutant there, entered Meckerle’s office, and slammed the door behind him.

The giant sat awkwardly half-hunched in his chair, with a pained expression on his face. At the sight of Buback he practically cringed, as if expecting his subordinate to hit him.

“It’s all right…,” he said weakly. “Calm down, man, nothing happened to her.”

“You call that nothing? She’s fighting for her life!”

Meckerle abruptly stood up and winced even more, holding his right hand over his crotch as if he had a terrible pain there.

“Grete…?”

“Fortunately not! But only because she switched shifts,” Buback shouted into his face. “We had him, he ran right into our trap, except our ambush wasn’t there. As a result, he severely wounded the other woman and killed a policeman. And got away! Who ordered the blockade of the Czech headquarters?”

“I did.”

“And why?”

The colonel was rapidly regaining control; if he had any pain, his anger drowned it out.

“I explained that at the last meeting, and it was clear to everyone, except possibly you. Fuck you and your murderer; you’re not up to the job I gave you!”

“You approved my report.”

“Which blocked the SS special units from doing their job.”

“They won’t find any weapons there unless they plant them. Now we’ve thrown away the advantage of surprise — all for a couple of pistols and rifles that were already registered!”

Meckerle was himself again. Now hell let me have it, Buback thought, seeing the familiar crimson vein throbbing at his temple.

“I’m the one who decides what the right time is. And what’s more, I didn’t appreciate your cheek in thanking me for the fish. You’re getting too big for your breeches, Buback. Dismissed! I’ll inform you shortly of your new posting.”

Buback turned and marched out of the room, pressing his lips closed. Any more slips would just hasten his descent. No, Meckerle had not yet formally ousted him from his post. He had a couple of hours left to catch that murderous beast.

Just to be sure, he avoided his office and went straight to the head of dispatching. Bureaucratic inertia got him a jeep on forty-eight-hour loan with an armed soldier at the wheel.

On the way he stopped at home, expecting to find an explanation. Inside he found a note.

“They came here to pick me up; an unexpected special engagement, they say. M. apparently gave them your address. Will stop at J’s, see if she’ll step in. Take care, love. G.”

He turned the page over and wrote on the back side.

“Your nightmare came true. He found her alone and badly wounded her. I’m going after him, I hope. B.”

And then added: “I was horribly afraid it was you!”

Morava held Jitka’s right hand as it lay beside her body. It was still moist and his thumb fearfully tracked the weak, slow pulse in the vein of her wrist.

The surgeon who had operated on her came back and measured her pulse and temperature. He had done what he could, he explained: a pneumothorax and stitches. Her blood was still flowing bright red from the drainage shunts.

Morava finally dared to ask the question that had been torturing him for hours.

“And the child…?”

“Will survive if she does,” the doctor said, and left.

Was he trying to encourage him or prepare him for the worst?

He drew hope from the expression on her face. Instead of horror, he saw a glimmer of the shy smile that had captured him forever at their first meeting.

Forever?

My beloved, my beloved, stay!

God, how could you do this?

At the end of the platform the abandoned concrete piping seemed to grow out of the bushes rather than vice versa. Sidling up to it, he pretended to be urinating in secret and placed his briefcase inside one of the pipes. He’d risked enough today!

He was the first one here and would have to wait; as usual he read the newspaper. As the front withdrew, the German units had deserted Brno. Il Duce Benito Mussolini had been treacherously ambushed by partisans, then shot and hung by his legs from a gasoline pump. From his battle headquarters in Berlin, the Führer and Reich chancellor had commended the members of the Hitlerjugend.

He stared at the picture of the children in their oversized military raincoats: A man with a demented expression was pinning Iron Crosses on them. In his mind, however, he saw other pictures: The eyes of that whore shining with fear, and the surprise of that cop as he ambushed him.

The train picked up speed, clattering down the battered rail ties. The carriages emptied out as Prague receded and filled up again as they approached Plze . Near Rokycany they braked with a crazed screech. A whistle shattered the air. With detached reserve he watched his fellow travelers rush out of the carriage and across the plowed field to a nearby copse.