“OK. Get onto that as soon as you’ve seen Jaan. And I still want your folklore piece for tomorrow.”
Dammit, thought Artur. He hadn’t done it yet. Still, if he could knock out something quickly, by the time he’d finished, Jaan would have arrived, and he could spend the rest of the day on the policeman’s death. Do a bit of digging on his own, show what he was capable of.
He went down the stairs to the floor below, and along the corridor to the reporters’ room – that was the room for reporters who weren’t yet thought worthy of an office to themselves – and sat down at the battered desk facing into the corner. He sighed, and reached up for his copy of The Encyclopaedia of Estonian Folklore.
A little later, a hundred miles to the south, on Herne Street in Tartu, Ülemkomissar Jüri Hallmets, his wife Kirsti, and children Liisa and Juhan, were sitting around the kitchen table, having breakfast. On the table were cheese, smoked ham and herring, boiled eggs, black rye bread and butter. Chief Inspector Hallmets, a tall man in his mid-forties, had lost the two outer fingers of his left hand to a Red Army sabre in the Independence War, as well as acquiring a groove across the top of his head from the same source.
“This herring is remarkably good,” said the Chief Inspector, to no-one in particular, “So, Liisa, what’s the University got for you today?”
“Seminar in Mediaeval History, lecture on the Early Development of the Estonian Language, and German conversation. We’re going to discuss cooking.”
“You won’t have much to say then!” smirked her brother.
“When did we ever see you cook?” snapped his sister, “You schoolboys are all the same – hot air.”
“What have you got today, Juhan?” said Kirsti, hoping to avoid another squabble.
“Physics, maths, English. The usual.”
“Phone!” shouted Liisa, jumped off her stool and ran from the kitchen into the hall. A moment later she came back, disappointed. “It’s just for you, Dad. Some Colonel from Tallinn.”
“Ah, Chief Inspector, Colonel Reinart, Interior Ministry. We’ve a bit of a situation here, and we’d like your help.”
Hallmets recognised the name. He’d met Reinart first in 1919 during the Independence War. At that time he was a staff officer. Now he was a civil servant. He wasn’t sure what exactly the colonel did. But he was important.
“Yes, Colonel, what can I do for you?”
“You know Chief Inspector Vaher?”
Hallmets hesitated. He knew Vaher, didn’t like him. At all. “Yes, Sir. How is he?”
“He’s dead. Impaled on a kiosk below Toompea.”
Hallmets’ mind went blank. Something he’d seen in the war flashed through his head – prisoners impaled alive by the Reds. He shook the thought away. “How did it happen?”
“We don’t know yet. The thing is, we need someone from out of town to investigate.”
“Why’s that? There are plenty of good detectives in Tallinn.”
“I’d rather not speak on the phone. Let me come straight to the point. I’ve spoken to the Minister and the Prefect of Police, and they agree that you’re the person we need. So I’d be very grateful if you’d get on the next train up. I’ll send a car to meet you. You could be here for a few days.”
Hallmets told the family he’d have to go to Tallinn right away.
“Must be a big case,” said Juhan, “If they can’t handle it on their own. Is it gangsters or Reds?”
“Not clear yet, son, won’t know till I get there. Look after your mother and sister.” He left the kitchen to loud complaints from Liisa, and packed a suitcase, not forgetting his pistol, a neat black Browning FN1910 automatic. He put on a woollen overcoat over his dark suit, then took it off again and decided to carry it. He promised Kirsti he would phone that evening. A car arrived from police headquarters to take him to the station, and he caught the eight thirty train to Tallinn.
There was only one other person in his compartment, an elderly woman. She must have got on further down the line, perhaps even at Valga, on the border with Latvia, where the train started. She scrutinised him carefully, and finally pointed to his hand.
“You got that in the war?”
“Yes.” He didn’t want to say any more. Most men he knew who’d been in the Independence War preferred not to talk about it.
“We lost our son. He was only eighteen.”
“You have other children?”
“Two daughters.And Tõnis. He wasn’t old enough, though he wanted to. I suppose we’re lucky, really. Others lost more.” She lapsed into silence, staring out the window.
As the train made its way north, through wooded swamp and straggling forest, with occasional stretches of farmland, Hallmets thought about the dead man. Vaher had, like Hallmets, been in the Independence War. He’d come through it whole, unlike Hallmets, and joined the new police force after the war. He’d worked in Tallinn, then moved to Narva, at the eastern edge of Estonia, before returning to the capital as second-in-command of the kriminaalpolitsei, the CID. Hallmets had met him a few times, and found him patronising and arrogant, although he could be respectful, charming, even obsequious, when dealing with the top brass.
And he despised Vaher’s gung-ho approach to police work. Vaher believed that once arrested, an individual was guilty, and the job then was simply to make the evidence strong enough to get a conviction, or to persuade the suspect to confess. And he seemed to be good at doing that. Hallmets knew many of his own colleagues admired Vaher, and thought, like him, that everybody knew who the bad guys were; you just had to pin something on them. Whether it was something they’d done or not, that didn’t matter too much.
As to why he was dead, Hallmets had no ideas about that. Vaher was hardly the type to kill himself – he was too self-important and ambitious. Could somebody have killed him? He’d certainly made plenty of enemies – that came with the job. But killing a police officer was a very rare occurrence in Estonia. However, no point in speculating now, plenty time for that later.
Hallmets had bought the daily newspaper Postimees at the station in Tartu, and now flicked through, glancing at the headlines. International news was on page 3. The main article, headed, ‘The New Germany Rises,’ gave an account of Adolf Hitler’s swearing-in as Chancellor the previous day, at Potsdam, near Berlin. Hallmets had been to Germany several times, on police training courses as well as holidays, and liked the country and its people. But the Nazis he viewed with horror: race hatred and violence were not his idea of politics. People had told him not to worry, the extremist rhetoric and the parades were just clever techniques to raise Hitler’s profile, and as soon as he was in power, everything would be toned down, he’d become a regular politician. Hallmets wasn’t so sure.
It was half past eleven when the train pulled in to the Baltic Station in Tallinn. Hallmets exited the grey stone building through the main archway, and waited just outside. The weather was cold, and the sky a grey sheet of cloud; he’d put on his overcoat after leaving the train. He could see before him the silhouetted bulk of Toompea Hill. Amidst its crowded jumble of government buildings, rose the spire of the cathedral that gave the hill its name. He let his eyes run from Tall Hermann, the tower at the far right, along the face of the cliff to the viewing platform near the left hand edge.
“Chief Inspector Hallmets?” A young man in a smart army uniform, clean-shaven with blonde hair, approached him, and saluted. “I’m Lieutenant Kadakas, Sir. I’m to take you to the Ministry.” He took Hallmets’ suitcase and led the way to a black Volvo Pv652 sedan, a cut above the usual police vehicle. The driver opened the rear door for him while Kadakas stowed the case and got into the other side.