The Widow Killer (8 page)

Bruno Thaler rounded out the foursome of potential perpetrators. Born 12 August 1913 in Jihlava of German descent, this trained butcher was sent for psychological treatment when, after repeated vivisections of animals (for instance, disembowling pigs before slaughtering them), he threatened a female coworker with the same fate if she reported him. His statement that on the day of the murder he had been in Austria as an agent of Henlein’s storm troopers was supported by the regional leader’s stamp. After the country’s annexation, no one dared reopen the investigation.

“… And because of his German background, Thaler was removed from the Czech office’s files,” Morava said, wrapping up his briefing.

“We’ll look into it,” Buback commented laconically.

Then he leaned stiffly into his corner and sat out the remaining four long hours, eyes open, until they rolled into Brno amid the military and civilian trucks. Morava fought sleep strenuously; he did not want to display the slightest weakness, especially in front of this man. He almost regretted that Buback was not trying to squeeze information out of him…

“Here,” she said to the luckless Moravian, “choose yourself something warm.”

Barbora Pospichalova was standing in front of the open wardrobe and had to fight the temptation to close it under some pretext or other. Once again she felt she was treacherously writing Jaroslav off, although as she poured out her whole story, Jindfich included, to this poor man on the way home, her heart told her everything was as it should be. Now her guest stood motionless beside her with his suitcase in hand; he looked uncomfortable, as if he were reading her thoughts. Gallantly she encouraged him, to have it over with quickly.

“Don’t be shy; I’d give them away in any event.”

The refugee set his case down, opened it, and scrabbled through it. A swath of green material folded several times fell out onto the carpet. As it unfolded, Barbora recognized it as a well-preserved hunting coat.

“But look, you’ve got…” she blurted, confused, then lost her voice as she saw the straps in the man’s hand.

Instantly he struck her between the eyes with the base of his free hand. In the midday light, the familiar room burst into a colored kaleidoscope. She fell into the wardrobe, slowly sinking into the dense mass of hanging clothes, and the reek of moth powder gave way to Jaroslav’s scent.

Erwin Buback was not particularly worried about the Czech detective. The impression the school notebook had made at their first meeting had deepened over time. The kid was capable and hardworking; it was no surprise that Beran trusted him so. At the same time he was a perfect example of a “lotus flower,” as Hilde called those too-open and guileless souls. (She’d soon proved herself worthy of the title in his eyes.) In the Prague criminal police’s head office, where he had least expected it, he had found two of these characters: in addition to Beran’s adjutant, there was his secretary, a near likeness of young Hilde.

As he sat motionless in the car (his standard wartime tactic around citizens of occupied nations, since he felt that a Prussian military bearing induced respect), the faces of the two women merged into a single image in his mind; he could not determine which of them his inner eye was seeing. It was the first time this had happened since Antwerp, and it confused him. Was the Czech girl strengthening his memory of his beloved wife, or had the indelible image of Hilde awakened a connection he’d first sensed that evening in the bar of German House? This striking similarity of features and characters had to be a signal from fate—didn’t it?

It was days before he learned anything about the girl, and therefore, in an impossibly short time, he imposed on her many of the feelings he had lost with the passing of his first and only true love. He caught sight of her only in the moments when she walked past behind the eternally open door of Beran’s anteroom or when he passed through it himself on the way to see her superior.

A further sign from fate was that he had first seen Hilde in exactly this way. Though she was the daughter of the owner of Dresden’s Schlosskonditerei, her responsibilities as a newly trained confectioner kept her behind the scenes of the business, while her parents and brother moved about the stage of the city’s favorite cafe. Buback took a parade of girlfriends there until one day this shy creature appeared behind the cafe’s new technological wonder—a refrigerated counter from Electrolux—to check which delicacies needed replenishment.

This brief eventless event turned his life upside down. He began to spend all his free time in the cafe, but even so was rarely rewarded with her long-awaited appearance. He prepared his best admiring gaze for her, which, he smugly knew, was infallible—but it never hit its mark: not once did the girl raise her eyes from the sweets.

Later she confessed to a small deception. From the very beginning she had seen him through the grating in the kitchen, so she knew of his numerous companions. He had captivated her from the first with his masculine good looks and suave manner, and for precisely this reason she resolved not even to look his way lest she fall victim to his charm. She was afraid of ending up like the rest of his transitory acquaintances. Hilde had been born and raised for one great relationship; she intended to offer her love only once and forever. If she were mistaken, she told him soon after the wedding, she would crack. How? he said, not understanding. The way bells crack, she answered; they keep their form, but lose their sound and with it their purpose.

He had no choice but to bring the mountain to Muhammad and, for the first time in his life, take sole responsibility for meeting a girl, instead of letting her do the work. The only polite way of doing so at the time entailed more serious obligations.

“Dear Miss Schafer,” he wrote her,

I beg your forgiveness for troubling you; as an excuse I can offer that I know you by sight, as a regular customer of your establishment. If I may be permitted to make a request of you and your parents, I would like to invite you this Sunday for tea at five o’clock at the Waldruhe Restaurant. Should this request meet with your favor, I will call for you at the private entrance of the Schlosskonditerei at half past four. With deepest respect, I remain

Police Clerk Erwin Buback.

Eventually he received Ludwig Schafer’s letter of cautious agreement (which, he later learned, Hilde’s parents had argued over for two days and nights). On the day, he arrived with a bouquet for her mother and had the carriage wait outside so he could converse politely with Hilde’s parents, all of which made a suitable impression. Hilde was released with the admonition to be home no later than half past seven.

As it turned out, he only needed the first ten minutes. Before they brought out the service, he had the opportunity to look through her tender eyes into the depths of her soul, and as they stirred the tea, he addressed her.

“Dear Miss Schafer, I don’t know how it happened, and I know this flies in the face of convention, but I am simply in love with you. I’ve never actually loved anyone before in my life, and I thought I lacked the capacity for true feeling. Then I saw you, and from that moment I’ve known what love is. I beg you, put aside your shyness and the suspicion you feel toward me, a man you barely know. Please hear me out; I’ve felt love for the first time and now I know I cannot live without you. What do you say?”

Even now, in the car heading down the shattered road toward Brno, he could see the scene in his mind’s eye as if it were yesterday, and suddenly he realized that he could honestly and forthrightly say virtually the same words to the young Czech woman, whom he had known roughly as long as he had Hilde when he proposed to her.

In his comic fashion, Morava coughed timidly before addressing him.

“We’re already in the suburbs of Brno, Herr Oberkriminalrat…” So?

“Would you like to go to the hotel first?”

His body ached from sitting turned toward the right; he would gladly have lain down for an hour, but knew that he’d do better to break this train of thought.

“No. Let’s get straight to work.”

He sat in the rocking chair and slowly swung his weight there and back. Forward. Backward. Forward. Backward. The regular motion calmed him; it was all he could manage at the moment. His arms and legs had become burdens again; whatever it was that made them part of his living body had evaporated. They had no feeling, no substance to them; they merely weighed.

His mind was fully occupied by the two commands rocking the chair. Backward. Forward. Backward. Forward. Yes, that made him feel good, now he was comfortable! The most effective way to rest and renew his strength would be to lie down on the double bed; he could see it through the adjoining doors at each rock of the chair, but it was too far. So instead he just kept on. Forward. Backward. Forward. Backward.

He had the impression that white smoke was rolling over his brain, as in the Turkish baths he liked so much. It was usually so refreshing; so why did resting exhaust him instead of reviving his muscles? If it became necessary, he was sure he could… aha, he realized, but there’s no reason to hurry, and nowhere to go. She had said herself that she lived by herself! The repeated word with its different meanings amused him; he rocked again with renewed interest.

Backward. Forward. Backward. Forward.

He felt safe and blissfully aware that he had done it again. And flawlessly. And not only that: out of thousands of widows he had found this one. He had been right to deceive her; she had deserved it! After all, she had shamelessly confessed that she was a whore! Her new john would be shocked tomorrow when he saw her laid out for her wedding night.

With this thought his strength returned so unexpectedly that it threw him out of the chair. Almost broke my neck, he thought, his heart pounding from fear; they would have found me here unconscious… He shook off his fright and stood up. His legs held steady. On the table beneath him he could see his achievement and felt a sudden pride.

NO WHITE DOVE!

Today she would be happy to hear his news.

The entire Brno contingent was waiting for them. Matulka, the head of the city’s criminal police, owed his job to his faithful collaboration; he was a member of the Fascist organization Flag, the pro-German National Union Party in the Protectorate government, and the Anti-Bolshevism League—and was probably an informer to boot. That morning on the island, Beran had described him to Morava as the biggest stain on what remained of the Czech criminal police’s honor. Matulka was even permitted the luxury of not speaking German; it was whispered that through the whole war he had only made it as far as lesson three. Morava therefore translated for Buback and his local Gestapo equivalent.

Matulka first fawningly dismissed Bruno Thaler from suspicion, thanks to his Germanic origins and, as he called it, his demonstrated patriotic activity outside the Protectorate at the time the seamstress Kubilkova was murdered. Buback commented that the crime took place before the Protectorate existed, and that he would personally look into Thaler’s alibi, thus completely derailing Matulka from his script. Morava was struck by the Germans’ open condescension toward their local ally. Does treason stink even to those who profit from it?

It clearly affected the man; he began to sweat and stammer until finally he relinquished the floor to his deputy Vaca, who seemed equally unprofessional. Reading from a paper he was evidently seeing for the first time, he stumbled through a report on two of the suspects from 1938.

Josef Jurajda had been an invalid ever since he fell down a long flight of stairs while painting the Brno town hall. Currently he was employed as a night watchman in the registry office. Only his wife could supply him with an alibi for the fourteenth of February. According to her, he had slept all day while she had washed dishes at the Grand Hotel. There were no direct witnesses as to when he began his rounds of the building, although the cleaning ladies met him there at five the next morning. The gentlemen from Prague could interrogate him here whenever they wished.

Jakub Malatinsky had taken a holiday that day and refused to give details, but stated that in a pinch he could produce an airtight alibi. Brno had directed him, via a local police order, not to leave his workplace. If the gentlemen so desired, he could be escorted here immediately.

Morava was delighted when Buback announced he intended to drop in at Castle Celtice tomorrow for Malatinsky. My God, he thought, maybe I’ll see my mother on the way…

As far as Alfons Hunyady was concerned, Vaca concluded, wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief, the Gypsy had been transferred to the authority of the Reich’s Commission on the Racial Question; further investigation lay outside the purview of the Protectorate police, who could offer the gentlemen no further help…

When he had finished translating, Morava asked Buback whether he would check on Hunyady’s case as well as Thaler’s. For the first time, his request met with uncomprehending eyes. Then the German told him he could safely forget about the Gypsy. With this the agenda for the meeting was exhausted.

Matulka apparently considered the meeting a mere pretext, since he invited all present to a festive evening which he had organized at the Grand Hotel. Buback declined fairly rudely, set Jurajda’s interrogation for 8:00 A.M., and left with the Brno Gestapo agent. So much for Beran’s theory that this investigation was a red herring designed to distract the whole Czech police force, Morava thought.

The young Czech could not refuse the invitation and, what was more, did not want to; he was not satisfied with the way the session had gone and hoped to extract more information from Matulka and Vaca. Not long into dinner he realized that Buback had their number. The two policemen had failed to invite the rest of their office in the hope of hogging all the credit for the research, and they themselves apparently knew only what their subordinates had put on their desks. The pair even fawned over him, a run-of-the-mill assistant detective, and he quickly sensed that they were in the grip of a practically demented fear.