“She was strong enough to fight him off.”
“Yes, okay, but this is not the same. She had no blood on her clothes.”
“She could have changed.”
“I’m telling you, it is not possible.”
“The reason I ask, it was a woman who called in my case.”
Jan raised his eyebrows.
Jacob got out his phone, and together they listened to the audio file. It disturbed him to realize that he was still hearing the voice as Mai’s. He thought he’d worked through that possibility, and dismissed it.
If Jan noticed anything amiss with the woman’s words, he didn’t mention it.
“This cannot be the same person,” he said. “She was Czech girl.”
Jacob believed him — believed that he believed it, at any rate.
On the sidewalk above, a man with a briefcase hurried past, barking into his headset, paying the detectives no heed.
“Where’d you find the Hebrew?” Jacob asked.
Jan pointed out a blank cobblestone, less foot-worn than those around it. “When I came back from United States, it was replaced.”
“What happened to the original?”
“The case was not mine, so I was not able to ask questions.”
“Do you have a picture of it?”
“On my computer. I can send it to you.”
“Thanks.”
Jan said, “The man in charge of security for the synagogue, I showed him this word. It means, ‘Justice.’ This made me think of the girl’s boyfriend or brother or father. But she has no boyfriend or brother or father. She has a sister. It cannot make sense. The killer, where did he come from? I look for footprints, for fingerprints. There is nothing. It’s like a bird came down, shhhhp.”
He paced a bit. “You cannot say he heard the girl screaming and came to save her and had a big knife and cut off a head and closed it up. It’s like not possible. There was a plan to do this, you must agree. So what, he’s hiding in the bushes, waiting for someone to rape a girl, with special tools? It isn’t logical. I conclude, the man who tried to rape the girl, somebody else was following him. But this is not logical, either. How does the killer know what this guy will do?”
“It’s not logical, unless they already knew each other.”
“Hah?”
Jacob elaborated on the Creeper killings.
Jan paled by shades, until he said, “Ach jo.”
“Yup.”
“This is sick.”
“Yup.”
“You think your guy, he killed my guy? And then someone kills him?”
“I don’t know,” Jacob said. “Right now it’s all I got.”
Jan nodded politely, but his expression said: Tell me another fairy tale.
“Please tell me you got DNA.”
“This requires special permission.”
“Which you couldn’t obtain.”
“No.”
“We could sample the remains.”
“If nobody claims after one month, they are going to the crematorium.”
“Shit. Shit. Fuck.”
“I am sorry, Jacob.”
“Not your fault.”
Jan made a sorrowful face that suggested that everything was his fault.
“You don’t remember anything similar, either in Prague or another city?”
“No, no, I told you, we don’t have this in Czech Republic.”
“Now you sound like the Board of Tourism.”
“We have solution rate of ninety percent. Always when we come, the guy is still there. He is too drunk to leave.”
“Better than drive-bys.”
“Drive-by?”
“Gangs,” Jacob said. “They shoot out of cars.”
“Ah, we have gangs, too. They are not so bad like American gangs. They steal bicycles, to sell over the border, in Poland. They make pervitin.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Jan searched for the word. “You know the show, Breaking Bad.”
“Meth.”
“Yes, meth.” Jan paused. “I enjoy this show very much.”
They made a circuit of the building, stepping through a thicket littered with cigarette butts and crushed cans, and ending at Maiselova Street. Jacob spied CCTV cameras mounted at the main entrance. Jan shook his head.
“They are not real. I asked the security man for the tape. ‘There is no tape, we don’t have money for this.’”
The synagogue didn’t open for well over an hour. A number of tourists were already out front snapping away.
Jan said, “I had one idea. The security man told me on Friday night before the murder, a British man came to prayers. They didn’t let him in, because he’s acting suspicious. I started to investigate. The same week, there is a hotel manager complaining to the police about a British tourist who didn’t pay his bill. It’s not unusual, people do this, but the manager was like very upset, calling very often, because the man stayed for a month.”
“What makes you think it could be the same guy?”
“I talked to the manager, he said this man, Heap, left all his clothing.”
“Heap.”
“This is like his name.”
“Uh-huh. Did you show him the picture of the head? The manager, I mean.”
“Of course not. This would create a big sensation. I am supposed to be quiet.”
“I take it you didn’t contact the British embassy, either.”
“If they come to us to say, ‘Our citizen is missing,’ okay. But this never happened. Two weeks, I’m starting to make phone calls, my boss brings me to his office. ‘You have a new job, sex trafficking.’ Boom. I am on airplane to U.S.”
“And that’s that.”
“Yes,” Jan said. “Cockblock.”
“So what’s the official story?”
“The tall men gave me a paper to sign. The man tried to rape the girl. She escaped, the man became scared and tried to climb up the ladder to hide in the synagogue.”
“Hence the open door.”
“Yes. Then he fell down.”
“Severing his head?”
“Yes, I know.”
“And sealing it? And writing Hebrew letters on the ground?”
“I know. I said I wouldn’t sign this. Then they told me I am going to lose my job. I feel like a criminal, but what can I do? I have my family. I sign.”
Jacob nodded to show he would’ve felt the same — and done the same.
He looked up at the shul’s saw-toothed façade, a frozen flame reaching against the burnished blue morning.
“Can I ask you a personal question? Are you Jewish?”
“I am atheist. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jacob said. But he was remembering Mallick’s words. It’s your background I’m interested in. Were Jewish cops so rare in Prague? Or perhaps they — whoever they were — had gone with the young lieutenant, expecting him to be compliant.
He took out his notepad. “Do me a favor? Contact information for the security guy and the girl? The hotel, too.”
Jan hesitated.
“I’ll keep your name out of it. I promise.”
While Jan took the pad and wrote, Jacob consulted the black-and-gold clockface on an adjacent building and saw that it was, impossibly, four p.m.
Then he realized his error: the characters were Hebrew letters, the clock hands reversed, making it eight a.m.
Jan returned the pad. He’d printed three names: Peter Wichs, Havel (Pension Karlova), Klaudia Navrátilová. Beside the latter two were addresses.
“The guard, I’ll send you his number, it is on my computer. The hotel is close, you can walk there. The manager, I don’t know his family name. The girl, she quit the synagogue, now she’s working at this place, a café.”
“How’s her English?”
“Maybe you will need a translator.”
Jacob looked at him hopefully.
“I apologize,” Jan said. “I must go to work.”