The Widow Killer Read Free Page A

exploded.
    When afflicted, Morava used to imagine his tormentors without their clothes. It still worked; the overfed pig in front of him wasn’t the least bit frightening.
    “With the rest of my colleagues, at the air-raid sites,” he explained. “The city was just bombed for the first time.”
    “No! You’re joking!” The Gestapo officer turned caustic again. “How could we have missed it? You want to know what bombing is, kid? Go have a look at Dresden!”
    Suddenly he sounded almost insulted. Morava imagined the sinks and toilets hanging from the walls of the corner house, things their owners had been using just a short while ago. Those people certainly hadn’t missed it.
    “The police commissioner is having the superintendent tracked down,” Morava assured him. “I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he can.”
    The practical one spoke up again. Slender and gray-haired, he looked like the most reasonable of the lot and differed noticeably from the rest in his behavior and tone.
    “Will you wait for him or start the investigation yourself? How quickly can you put a team together?”
    A fellow detective, that’s why. He tried to explain it to him again.
    “Our department is only authorized to investigate criminal acts committed by Czechs…”
    “This one will be transferred to you.”
    “But the victim is German,” Morava objected.
    “Unfortunately so. Except the murderer is Czech. The building’s caretaker met him.”
    Morava was dumbfounded. Privately he had been betting on a refugee or a deserter hoping to extort money and jewelry from a fellow German. But that was no motive for butchery like this.
    “Well, hello,” he whispered in Czech.
    In addition to years of experience in the field, Chief Inspector Buback brought an extra qualification to his new post in Prague. He was a Praguer by birth and had an excellent command of Czech.
    The young detective’s involuntary gasp amused him.
    Buback imagined all the things he would overhear in the near future. Hanging this case around the neck of the Czech Protectorate’s police was one of the masterly moves Colonel Meckerle was known for.
    The tactic had nothing to do with the nationality of the criminal or the victim. The von Pommeren clan had a problematic reputation: in addition to the government’s general distrust of the German aristocracy, there were doubts about this particular family’s loyalty to the Fuhrer.
    In the eyes of the Czechs, however, the baroness represented the German elite; her murder could prompt another bloody reprisal. Of course, at the moment that wasn’t a possibility. It would be unwise to inflame the natives when this land would soon be the site of Germany’s decisive battle with its enemies.
    Meckerle knew that until they could deploy the nearly completed ultimate weapon, they would need perfect order in the Protectorate. And for this he needed absolute control of the police. Now that the small and unreliable Protectorate Army had been disbanded, the gendarmes were the only Czechs with an arsenal—even a small and militarily insignificant one—and, more importantly, a good communications system.
    The murder investigation would be transferred to the Czech police: a matter of the utmost importance, they’d be told. They’d be hostages! Finding this sort of criminal was like looking for a needle in a haystack, Meckerle had assured Buback. We’ll run them ragged! We’ll dig in the spurs and pull the reins at the same time! And then, using you, he explained to Buback, we’ll get our hands around their throat!
    “Elisabeth von Pommeren,” the superintendent now told the Czech, “was a member of the oldest noble family in Germany; her husband was a general of the Reich’s armed forces and was posthumously awarded the Knight’s Cross. For this reason, we are invoking the Security Decree of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, signed on first September 1939, section two, paragraph twelve, according to which—and I