The Widow Killer Read Online Free PDF

yourselves?”
    “We’ll go with you,” Beran decided.
    Back downstairs the man had regained some color but was still distressed.
    “How’m I gonna sleep tonight?”
    “Surely you’re not the only one here.”
    “But I am! The dentist who lived upstairs left for the country; his office was on my floor.”
    “And on the other floors?”
    “Used to be Jews living in those apartments. Now the Germans have some offices there or something.”
    Morava opened his mouth and closed it again when he caught Beran’s warning glance. The caretaker opened the main door. Outside, the darkness reeked of ashes. The firemen had left; only a few curious onlookers were hanging around near the ruins.
    “Good night,” said the superintendent. “My assistant, Mr. Morava, will come by tomorrow morning to see if you’ve remembered anything overnight. Litera, step on it.”
    The caretaker nodded and glanced longingly into the car at them. Beran wrinkled his brow as they drove off.
    “I think we can forget about him. Even if we put the perp right under his nose, he’s too frightened to recognize him.”
    “Which our murderer doesn’t know,” Morava realized.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “I’m surprised he let him go. Almost an eyewitness. Must have been an oversight that he let him slip away.”
    “Good point, Morava. So logically… ?”
    “The murderer will certainly be back.”
    Beran nodded.
    “Make arrangements right away. Then come to my office.”
    At Bartolomejska Street, Morava stopped to transmit Beran’s order. Back in the anteroom of Beran’s office, he was surprised to see Jitka at this late hour and could only manage a loopy smile.
    “Hi… what are you still…”
    “I thought maybe you’d need something…”
    Well, yes: he needed to touch her, to confess that for months he’d been thinking only of her; she was the only reason he hadn’t fled when he realized that he’d be saddled with mutilated corpses from now until retirement. But despite his recent success with Beran, he still couldn’t find the courage, so he blurted out an inept question instead.
    “Like what?”
    “I brought a bit of soup from home; I’m heating it up for the superintendent, if you’d like some too…”
    Suddenly the stench of blood and smoke was gone, replaced by one of his favorite childhood smells.
    “Sausage soup!”
    “My family”—she dropped to a whisper as she admitted to a grave crime against wartime economic measures—“slaughtered a pig…”
    “I’d love some,” he said softly. “I… thanks. Thanks, yes.”
    He couldn’t tear his eyes from her and so walked backward into his boss’s office. Beran was just hanging up the phone.
    “I spoke with Pathology. The autopsy confirms your report. He dismembered her alive, almost to the end. But he took something as a souvenir.”
    “What?”
    “Her heart.”
    “My God!”
    “And also, of course… ?”
    “What else?”
    “The straps he used to tie her up. Which means… ?”
    Morava the student knew.
    “That he’ll do it again.”
    “Exactly. I’m declaring an emergency.”
    Erwin Buback put the dead woman out of his mind. It wasn’t his case. He probed for the contentment he had felt at noon and to his joy found it was still there. Not even the disgust he’d felt in the apartment—the worst ever in his career—could destroy this feeling. In his pragmatic way, he had broken the deed down into a series of colorless facts, just as the young Czech must have done.
    He had been sitting alone for over an hour at the end of the bar in the German pub Am Graben; his evident lack of interest in human contact kept the other patrons at a distance. As he sipped a mediocre brandy of suspect origin—oh, where was sweet France?—he considered, for the first time since he lost Hilde and Heidi, what he would do after…
    That unknown After. Would it bring sorrow or new hope? When would it finally come? What form would it take? And how should he prepare for