A silence.
“What is ‘cockblocking’?” Jan asked.
Jacob broke up laughing, and for the first time, Jan grinned, and then they were two cops laughing together, bound by resentment of superiors.
“In this — in this context, uh — like, stalling. Like, they’re blocking my, uh. Cock.” Jacob pointed.
“Yes, okay. I like this word. I, also, am cockblocked.”
Jacob said, “That’s why you wanted to see me. To see how tall I was.”
Jan nodded.
“You were at the bar last night.”
“My sister.”
Jacob smiled. “Tatjana.”
“This is what she told you? Her name is Lenka.”
“Well, whatever. She found me.”
“She said, ‘Jan, don’t worry, he is like a nice guy, he bought for me a beer.’ She wants to be a policewoman, too. I told her it’s not a good job for her. I said, ‘You are young, be happy.’”
“Says you. What are you, twelve?”
“Twenty-six.”
“How in the hell are you a lieutenant?”
“After the Revolution...” Jan whistled and made a wiping motion. “We begin again.” He sighed. It turned to a cough.
“Lenka,” he said. “Lenka, Lenka.”
He slapped his thighs. Stood up.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Chapter thirty-three
Dlouhá veered southward to Old Town Square, silent but for the purr of pigeons foraging between the legs of café tables.
Jan laid a hand on a park bench, one of many ringing a sprawling bronze monument.
“The girl was here,” he said. “She was crying, like very upset. She says there is a man, he tried to rape me outside the synagogue. The patrolman calls for the ambulance to take her to hospital, then he goes to look for the man. Follow me, please.”
They walked over damp cobblestones and onto Pařížská, toward Josefov.
Jacob should’ve known better than to trust his father’s guidebook. The former Jewish quarter was no longer run-down, but leafy and posh. Designer clothing draped mannequins posed behind boutique windows. A man in a chef’s jacket emerged from a basement door to tip a bucket of sudsy water into the gutter.
Jan said, “The městská policie cannot investigate murder, they must call us. Usually there are several detectives, crime technics. But when I came, I didn’t find this, only one patrolman. Very soon a technic I don’t know arrived to collect the remains.”
“Was he tall, too?”
Jan had to think. “... yes. I didn’t pay attention to this. I was not investigating him, I was investigating the scene. This is what you experienced?”
“Basically.”
“The technic was making me crazy, because I wanted to look carefully, and he says, ‘Hurry, please, we must go quickly.’ I thought he wants to clean up before the tourists arrived.”
He paused his account to snap a picture of a metallic gold Ferrari with Russian plates.
“Lenka wouldn’t approve,” Jacob said.
“She is too angry. I told her, this time is over.”
“Not for her.”
“This is because she was not there. I told her, you can’t be angry, you need to be practical. It’s the same with the police. These guys who were working for — do you know what is ehs-teh-beh?”
Jacob shook his head.
“Státní Bezpečnost. Czechoslovak secret police. Most of them, they left after the Revolution. Some were very bad guys, okay, it’s true. But some of them, we said, ‘Stay,’ because they have experience, knowledge.”
“You don’t find that uncomfortable? Working with them?”
Jan shrugged. “The policeman, he’s the hand of the law. Before, our laws were bad, so...” He mimed slapping a face. “Now, we have good laws. So it’s okay. Okay, we are here.”
Jacob recognized the shape of the Alt-Neu Shul from the grainy black-and-white guidebook photograph. In real life, it was waist down the color of parchment, its upper half layered in brown, scabby brick, as though the orange roof tiles had bled downhill and clotted. Ten steps led to a cobbled area inset with a central drain, given onto by an embossed metal door.
Trash cans were stacked nearby: this was the service entrance. A cloudy stained-glass rosette cut into the building’s exterior wall revealed its considerable thickness.
A stack of metal rungs rose to a smaller wooden door, three stories up.
Weighty with soot, sunken into the earth, the entire structure seemed nevertheless to hover, its contours uncertain.
Jan paused halfway down the steps. “You are coming?”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. He followed. “Yeah.”
“The head was here.” Jan was crouched near the drain, indicating with his finger.
He pointed two feet to the left. “There, the vomit.”
Standing, he arched his back and coughed. “This was like difficult for me to understand. There is no blood, so it must be they washed it to the drain. But the head and the vomit they left.”
“Same thing with me. I figured the murder took place somewhere else.”
Jan shook his head. “The girl, when she goes, the man is standing here. The patrolman comes, the body is here. The killer takes him away, cuts his head, and brings it back? This is not logical. There is not enough time. Where can he do this? I search the neighborhood. There is no blood. There is no weapon. Nobody hears nothing. Nobody sees nothing.”
Despite himself, Jacob felt his own theories starting to slip. He had come seeking the certainty of common ground. “We’re in the middle of the city. No witnesses?”
“At that time, it is quiet.” Jan pointed across Pařížská, to the luxe apartments set over a brasserie. “These flats, the bedrooms are away from the street. The jewelry store has a camera, but the angle is not right. Here, it’s like invisible.”
Jacob’s gaze traveled up to the small wooden door.
... moving quickly in the dead of night, they ascended to the garret...
Jan said, “It was open.”
“That door?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, Jacob’s field of vision pinched. When the world returned, Jan was staring at him, brows knit. “Jacob? You are okay?”
“Fine.” Jacob swallowed, smiled. “Jet lag.”
He turned to study the undersized door. At that height, it appeared to serve no purpose, as though a child had gotten hold of the blueprint and scribbled it in, builders following the instructions unthinkingly before anyone noticed the absurdity.
“Any idea how it got open?”
“The man in charge of security for the synagogue said a wind.”
“Was it windy that night?”
Jan shook his head: I don’t know.
Distantly, unwillingly, the city stirred: arthritic trams, gaseous hiss of street sweepers.
“Tell me about the girl. What brought her here?”
“She works in the synagogue, cleaning at night. She is standing here, there is a noise behind. She turns and sees a man with a knife. He grabs her, she is fighting, boom, he lets her go, and she runs away.”
“Did she see what happened to him?”
“She was scared, she’s not staying there to wait.”
“She could positively ID the head as the same guy who jumped her, though.”
“I came to hospital to show her a picture. She started to scream again.”
“I assume that she denied having anything to do with killing him.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you believe her.”
“She was not strong enough to do this.”