The Widow Killer (21 page)

After a performance for their Italian allies, she received a bouquet of roses. A calling card in it requested her to accept a supper invitation: they could meet at the Hotel Dei Principi, a chauffeur was waiting outside in a silver Lancia—
cordialemente,
Gianfranco Bossi. Ordinarily she would have refused, if Martin had not remarked that she ought to go; this might just be the supermale who could finally slake her nymphomania. She changed and went.

The driver in livery delivered her to the doorman, the doorman took her to the concierge, the concierge brought her personally to the head-waiter. She ended up at a table where a slender, dark man with unbelievably green eyes rose to greet her; he could have been thirty or fifty. If she would like, he said, kissing her hand, they could take dinner together here. With her consent, of course, he would be pleased to invite her for dinner at his home. She liked what she saw, and, furious at Martin, she accepted.

Home, she continued raptly, as if seeing it once again, was in an old palace filled with servants, whose silence reminded her of ghosts: a scene from a film, with silver, candles, the music of a hidden quartet. And after a feast like that, there would have to be a canopied bed… Was she boring him, she asked Buback. Of course not, he said swiftly, for fear of being left alone the next evening.

The Italian remained virtually silent; he ran the dinner with gestures of his handsome fingers. She did the talking: about Hamburg and Berlin, about books and the theater, ever more intrigued to know how this man, evidently an aristocrat, would negotiate the next bend in the road toward their evident goal.

He did it quite differently than she expected. At a certain point he stood up, walked over, helped her pull out her chair, and offered her his arm. Then he led her out past the entrance hall to the door of the palace, where the blacked-out vehicle was waiting to take her back.

He invited her night after night, four evenings running; only the food and music changed. Once the last cup had vanished from the table, the music disappeared as well. From the hallway, the sounds of a small fountain burbled into the dining room. He no longer moved, just gazed at her. Confused, she spun the conversation onward alone, until he rose from the table.

They had two days remaining in Rome when it dawned on her: the moment silence descended, she fell quiet as well. They looked at each other mutely for several long minutes.

He knew she was leaving in two days’ time he remarked suddenly; he would return to Sicily the next day. But the Allies are there already, she replied, shocked. Oh really, he smiled; what’s the difference, a change might be nice. He would like her to accompany him. As? As his betrothed.

She was flabbergasted. But she was here with her husband!

The Italian was apparently well informed. The actor wasn’t really her husband, though, was he? No, not officially; they hadn’t felt it necessary to formalize things, but she had been with him several years already. So why did he let her go out at night with a stranger? If she were Sicilian, her brothers would have killed him long ago. He meant his offer seriously and would prove it by confiding in her: he was a member of an old noble family here on a secret military mission. Couldn’t she stay here with him? Early tomorrow he’d arrange for her luggage and documents.

No, she said, no, she was truly sorry. No tonight or no forever? he asked. He is my fate, she whispered. Only death can release us. In a rush of emotion she then asked if he would like her to stay tonight, at least. He nodded almost solemnly and led her up a marble staircase and along hallways with ancestral portraits; the palace was desolate— and then there it was, the canopied bed, and she felt an indescribable gratitude to him for the way he had exalted her and confirmed her uniqueness. She had never made love more passionately—to be precise, she corrected herself, she had never pretended passion more expertly.

Before she began to get dressed, the Italian made a cross of kisses on her mouth, breasts, and lap.

At home she woke Martin. She repeated everything that was said in the dining room and waited to hear what he would say. And he… even now she swallowed angrily and fumbled for another cigarette— he congratulated her and asked if she needed help packing.

“And I began to hit him, Buback! I hit and kicked him. Until it hurt me just as much. I was punishing part of myself in him too. For the fact that together we killed such a perfect love. He defended himself; he was strong, so he quickly got me in a lock on the ground. Except that I can’t be tamed, you know that. I spat, scratched, even bit him.

He howled, and I was sure he’d wound me too. But suddenly he let me up, opened himself to my blows and whispered, Thank you, thank you, until I screamed furiously, for what? And he said: for still caring that much. At that I burst into tears. And then we made love till morning like in Hamburg.“

Early the next morning the chauffeur woke her; he had brought a ring from the Sicilian. A large diamond was set in platinum between two emeralds the color of his eyes. She knew it cost more than all the money she had ever earned. For the few minutes she held it in her hand, she felt the way she had always longed to feel: the chosen one among women. Then she showed it to Martin and sent it back.

As if this last memory exhausted her more than her whole life story, she laid her forehead on her knees. Buback’s tiredness, meanwhile, had completely fallen away.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why did you return the ring? It’s not as if you deceived him. On the contrary…”

And then he realized he was jealous of both the Italian and the actor.

“That’s odd…” She shook her head.

“What’s odd?”

“Martin asked the same thing. Typical that you’d ask as well.”

“Why is it typical?”

She yawned, threw off her towel, and slipped under the quilt, without even a longing glance at the bathroom.

“Think about it, Buback. Or sleep on it; with you it amounts to the same thing. Good night, love.”

The woman’s newly widowed sister found the corpses. Despite their ghastly appearance, she kept her head; instead of fainting or raising an alarm, she relocked the apartment and went down to the police. Jan Morava, accompanied by all the free men in his group (and by Buback) was for once able to arrive on the scene of the crime first and secure the evidence. Soon Beran arrived, called by a pale Jitka out of his latest useless meeting with Police Commissioner Rajner, who was agonizing over how long to keep serving the occupying powers.

The three men on duty yesterday at the graveyard were there too. Sebesta remembered the murdered woman well; he had seen her hurry off through the side gate toward the embankment. He swore solemnly that no one had been following her, and Morava spotted a gaping hole in his net: the murderer would have taken Jana Kavanova for a widow by her clothing, even outside the cemetery.

Jana’s sister cleared up the mystery of the dead youth. His flight from the trenches could no longer harm anyone.

The perpetrator had as usual chosen a time for his attack when men were away at work, children at school, and women at the stove. According to the witnesses, only the garbagemen, coalmen, a policeman, and a postman had come down the street since morning. These testified to seeing only a pair of housewives. Once again the unidentified killer had left no trace. He appeared and then vanished into thin air.

Morava had to summon all his strength to keep on track. Outwardly he seemed fine, but inside he was in utter despair. There was one person, however, who did notice. When the German finally left to inform his office, the superintendent clapped his adjutant on the shoulder.

“Take me along with you.”

Morava was so crestfallen that he fell speechless. He waited, suffering, for Beran to say the inevitable words. Halfway across the bridge from Ujezd to Narodni Avenue, the superintendent turned to the driver.

“Stop here, Litera. We’re going for a little walk.”

Morava saw the driver cast a sympathetic glance his way. He followed the superintendent down the stairs to Stfelecky Island like a condemned man. At the bottom, Beran strode along the path for a while in silence, stopping finally at an old oak. He ran two fingers along a slender twig sprouting from it that was dusted with miniature greenery.

“Nice progress since last time, don’t you think?”

Of course, Beran did not expect an answer; he understood his companion’s mind was elsewhere.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? I have to say it, though. Yes, I’m taking this case away from you.”

Morava must have been the very picture of misfortune.

“Don’t act like you’ve been betrayed and abandoned, Morava,” Beran snapped irritably. “You did nothing you shouldn’t have and everything you should have. Personally I can’t find fault with you, because I’m no idiot. We’re hunting a treacherous predator. For now he has the upper hand, but you’ve set a ring of hunters on his trail, and the noose will eventually tighten around him, as long as he keeps to his habits. At the moment yes, the murderer is fixated on widows and the Vysehrad cemetery. I wanted to tell you clearly, face-to-face, that you have no reason to criticize yourself. I’m taking over the case so that they won’t ask for your head; Rajner is scared out of his wits and is looking for a sacrificial lamb.”

Morava found his tongue.

“And you think you’re a better target because your surname means ‘ram’?”

“He won’t touch me, because he knows the whole operation would shut down without me. They executed my potential replacement, and the next best person would be you.”

Morava stared, dumbfounded, at the man who had just demoted him and then paid him the very compliment he’d desperately longed for.

“Yes, Morava, I sense a talent in you, the same kind—all modesty aside—that I once had. And you’re just as tenacious. There are dogs who won’t let go of their prey even if you swing them round in the air by their legs. You’ll get that monster!”

“But how, if I’m not—”

“I don’t have the time to reinvent the wheel, and fortunately I don’t need to. I will officially conduct the meetings of the investigative team, but will always ask you first, one on one, how to do so.”

“But—”

“Don’t try to make my life any harder than it is already, or yours any easier. In public I’m taking responsibility away from you, but in private you will run things for me. Now, listen closely. I’m convening the team for two this afternoon to take charge myself. Fifteen minutes before that I want you to give me a precise plan of action and tomorrow’s task roster—for everyone, including yourself. Take two more laps around the island to clear your head; in the meanwhile I’ll inform Rajner and the Germans.”

As he left, he turned around once more.

“You can let your beloved in on our little secret this evening. Just so she doesn’t think she’s marrying a good-for-nothing.”

As directed, Morava set off around the sandy oval, trying to make sense of his public fall and private resurrection. He knew he had not made any mistakes, but also that this meant precious little. One of Beran’s first pearls of wisdom, which Morava had written into his notebook, was that a seasoned detective had to do more than just what was necessary; he had to think one step further.

He felt sure the superintendent would want a fresh idea from him at a quarter to two. A new, more urgent message for the newspapers? He doubted strongly that widows would read it. A further appeal to a wider circle of specialists, maybe with a photograph of one of the horrid death altars? He remembered Beran’s solemn warning. Reinforced surveillance of the cemetery? He knew the team was stretched to its limit; the criminal police could barely keep up as it was. Stretch them any thinner, and Prague would become a playground for thieves, robbers, and “ordinary” murderers.

He rounded the tip of the island for the second time. Leaning against a tree, he looked out across the water. Charles Bridge, the castle—this scene always raised his spirits, but now he barely noticed it. The worst thing, he admitted to himself, was that he had lost his spark, lost the thread, couldn’t even concentrate; he caught himself thinking in turns about his mother, Jitka, their child—treasures the war would threaten far more than the widow killer ever could.

A long object slid into the corner of his vision; a barge drifted down the Vltava, with a solitary fisherman and two rods attached to the stern. Slowly and silently it floated down toward the nearby weir as a weak wind carried the rumble of falling water off toward the Old Town bank.

Morava knew how deceptive an idyll like this could be. Since their March expedition to Moravia, the images of a powerful German army massing to the east had never left him. He sensed that despite all the defeats of the past two years, there was enough destructive strength in those soldiers to turn the Protectorate into a vast wasteland. In the upcoming conflict of responsibilities, how come he hadn’t chosen his personal ones? Why wasn’t he on one of those final trains right now, bringing his mother back here? Why hadn’t he found her and Jitka’s parents a place to rent long ago, maybe with farmers outside Prague? Was it the unholy sum it would cost? And what was he saving for, if not to protect his own family? Why hadn’t he refused Beran right off?

Out of solidarity with him? Should it take precedence over solidarity with his family? Or out of fear for himself? But Beran had seen to that when he claimed the case as his own cross to bear. So then? Had Morava’s gloomy craft become so crucial to him that he would risk endangering his loved ones for it?

Yes, he answered himself, but not for the sake of his career. Catch that monster, Jitka had told him; he frightens me more than Hitler does. He understood what she meant. Adolf Hitler was the product of a deranged nation’s political will, horrible but explicable, and therefore defeatable. The unknown and unpredictable widow slaughterer stripped the thin veneer of civilization from mankind and threatened to return humanity to its savage prehistory.

The fisherman rowed closer; he lifted both lines from the water, opened an old can, and spindled wriggling earthworms on the hooks. Then he flung his arm wide and the floats whistled down between the dinghy and the shore. The man in the boat waved to him, but Morava just stared dumbly back.