Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Meckerle now stiffened up as well and gave them a parting shot for good measure.

“I want that man, here and soon,” he bellowed, pointing imperiously at the floor between them. “I want to be the first to ask him personally why he did it. I might even save us the expense of an execution.”

Then, finally, he stuck out his arm in the German salute.

As usual, Morava shook off his jitters quickly; the knowledge that he was doing his best calmed him. Feeling Beran’s confidence buoyed him as well.

The tumultuous events of the evening before had further sharpened his wits. He had woken, as he’d planned, at five o’clock, even after his first night of love. For a while he had gazed in adoring disbelief at the girl beside him. Once he had made sure that he wasn’t dreaming, he went downstairs quietly in the dark, found the chicory in the unfamiliar kitchen, and made himself a quite drinkable coffee. As he sipped it, he wrote down neatly what had already happened, what was happening now, and what must happen in the near future.

He could cross off the site investigation and the autopsy. He had dictated a detailed report (including, among other things, the fact that the murderer had worn gloves and left no traces) to Jitka yesterday in the office — a century ago, he smiled to himself, before that magnificent radiance had descended on them. .. The superintendent had managed to have the report translated into German overnight, and left it for Meckerle.

In Buback’s office, a bulletin was being sent by telegraph or courier to all the police stations in the Protectorate. It ended with a directive to review all the old police blotters; any cases with even a distant resemblance should be brought to Prague’s attention. At this point Morava fell silent and looked inquiringly at his boss.

The superintendent turned to the German. “I request your permission to examine the blotters from the former Czechoslovak Republic; we will be looking for any leads in this case.”

The German answered without hesitation.

“I will permit it — as long as an agent from the appropriate German security detachment is present at all times; afterward the logs will be resealed immediately.”

He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and the authority to back it up, Morava evaluated. He finished by asking if the chief inspector had any additional suggestions.

“For now, the press is not to report on this item.”

“The censor’s office has already been alerted, but it only reviews the Czech press,” Morava said, pleased that he had anticipated this demand.

“I’ll deal with the German office myself,” the man behind the desk snapped.

The upholstered doors opened noiselessly. A young man with a shaven skull handed Buback a sheaf of paper and disappeared. The German looked over the report and turned to Beran again; my first goal, Morava thought, will be to get this man to stop ignoring me.

“Why are your people at the house on the embankment?”

“I ordered them to watch the caretaker,” Beran said, taking responsibility. “He’s a potential witness for the prosecution; the perpetrator might try to eliminate him.”

“Call them off. There are German organizations housed in the building; we’ll take care of it ourselves.”

Beran nodded again genially. Morava could sense what he was thinking: We’ll save on overtime, and now we have a good idea where their counterespionage is.

Buback abruptly stood up. Social graces were clearly not his strong point.

“I expect your reports daily at eight hundred, fourteen hundred, and twenty hundred hours. At an appropriate point I’ll join the investigation. Prepare an office for me in your building with two telephone lines.”

He did not wish them well, but neither did he say Heil Hitler. From his position at the side of the desk, Morava spotted the faces of two women in a picture frame. Unbelievable, he thought. Despite the events of the last twenty-four hours, Jitka was still on his mind. But could Germans still feel love, after everything they had done?

As they walked down past three checkpoints to the ground floor of the Gestapo fortress, a wave of antagonism rolled over him. These run-of-the-mill sergeants with the skull and crossbones on their caps behaved with incredible arrogance toward the highest officer and best detective of the Protectorate police. They were infinitely worse, he thought, than any Czech guard in Bartolomejska would dare be even to a prisoner. It filled him with a chilling sense of his own insignificance. Only a couple of steps separated them from the infamous basement that had swallowed several of his colleagues, among them Beran’s right-hand man. The only way out of there was via the concentration camps or the military firing range in Kobylisy.

Morava believed that Meckerle, who was in charge of all this, was dead serious. If they did not bring him the murderer’s head, he’d take one of theirs, and Morava had no doubt which of the three of them would be least missed and would thus suit them best as a general warning.

At times his people’s humiliation and degradation had infuriated Morava so much that he would gladly have given his life for their freedom. Thus far no one had ever offered him the chance. But last night for the first time, love had lit up his world more dazzlingly than the pilots’ magnesium flares, and now he wanted desperately to live.

That morning, when Jitka had opened her eyes, he had felt fear instead of happiness at her presence: how easily he could lose her or be lost to her in this strange time!

He asked himself: Is happiness a cage for souls to cower in, robbed of their courage?

No! He remembered the passages his grandmother used to read to him from the Bible: It is a shield that would protect him, Jitka, and their children from harm.

My love, I swear to you: in the name of our happiness, I will catch that butcher!

An insistent thought woke him: TODAY! He kept his eyes closed so as not to frighten off the long-awaited images.

He saw himself there again as she lay down on the dining-room table transformed into a sacrificial altar. A couple of times in the past few days he’d heard HER reproach him sternly for losing his nerve. He countered that he had a cold, that he must have caught a draft as the pressure wave (he’d remembered it only later) blew out the window-panes. He knew, though, that it was a feeble excuse. Something in him balked; he had gone soft again, and it took all his strength just to keep his workmates from noticing.

Brno still haunted him, though it hadn’t been a complete catastrophe. Even if he had screwed it up, at least he’d saved his skin for the next attempt. And after all, the newspapers had hashed and rehashed the story; even in the words they used to humiliate him — labeling him mentally ill — he heard a poorly concealed sense of admiration and horror. In the end, though, a depressing sense of his own failure won out. Add to it the memory of how the girl screamed and fouled herself, and the whole affair had tied his hands for years.

Now that he had finally dared to ACCEPT THE MISSION again, he was eager to see what the newspapers would say. On the second and third days he was patient when the news brought only pictures of disfigured victims from the first Prague air raid — although it annoyed him that his IMMACULATE WORK would not be contrasted with the random results of bomb explosions.

On the fourth day he was constantly tempted to break the strict rules he had set for himself and sneak into the director’s office — where the daily papers resided — during the man’s short daytime absences. In the end he held out and was all the more disappointed. The focus of attention was the Prague air-raid victims’ state funeral; there was not a word of his DEED.