Free The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout Page A

investigation.
    “… And because of his German background, Thaler was removed from the Czech office’s files,” Morava said, wrapping up his briefing.
    “We’ll look into it,” Buback commented laconically.
    Then he leaned stiffly into his corner and sat out the remaining four long hours, eyes open, until they rolled into Brno amid the military and civilian trucks. Morava fought sleep strenuously; he did not want to display the slightest weakness, especially in front of this man. He almost regretted that Buback was not trying to squeeze information out of him…
    “Here,” she said to the luckless Moravian, “choose yourself something warm.”
    Barbora Pospichalova was standing in front of the open wardrobe and had to fight the temptation to close it under some pretext or other. Once again she felt she was treacherously writing Jaroslav off, although as she poured out her whole story, Jindfich included, to this poor man on the way home, her heart told her everything was as it should be. Now her guest stood motionless beside her with his suitcase in hand; he looked uncomfortable, as if he were reading her thoughts. Gallantly she encouraged him, to have it over with quickly.
    “Don’t be shy; I’d give them away in any event.”
    The refugee set his case down, opened it, and scrabbled through it. A swath of green material folded several times fell out onto the carpet. As it unfolded, Barbora recognized it as a well-preserved hunting coat.
    “But look, you’ve got…” she blurted, confused, then lost her voice as she saw the straps in the man’s hand.
    Instantly he struck her between the eyes with the base of his free hand. In the midday light, the familiar room burst into a colored kaleidoscope. She fell into the wardrobe, slowly sinking into the dense mass of hanging clothes, and the reek of moth powder gave way to Jaroslav’s scent.
    Erwin Buback was not particularly worried about the Czech detective. The impression the school notebook had made at their first meeting had deepened over time. The kid was capable and hardworking; it was no surprise that Beran trusted him so. At the same time he was a perfect example of a “lotus flower,” as Hilde called those too-open and guileless souls. (She’d soon proved herself worthy of the title in his eyes.) In the Prague criminal police’s head office, where he had least expected it, he had found two of these characters: in addition to Beran’s adjutant, there was his secretary, a near likeness of young Hilde.
    As he sat motionless in the car (his standard wartime tactic around citizens of occupied nations, since he felt that a Prussian military bearing induced respect), the faces of the two women merged into a single image in his mind; he could not determine which of them his inner eye was seeing. It was the first time this had happened since Antwerp, and it confused him. Was the Czech girl strengthening his memory of his beloved wife, or had the indelible image of Hilde awakened a connection he’d first sensed that evening in the bar of German House? This striking similarity of features and characters had to be a signal from fate—didn’t it?
    It was days before he learned anything about the girl, and therefore, in an impossibly short time, he imposed on her many of the feelings he had lost with the passing of his first and only true love. He caught sight of her only in the moments when she walked past behind the eternally open door of Beran’s anteroom or when he passed through it himself on the way to see her superior.
    A further sign from fate was that he had first seen Hilde in exactly this way. Though she was the daughter of the owner of Dresden’s Schlosskonditerei, her responsibilities as a newly trained confectioner kept her behind the scenes of the business, while her parents and brother moved about the stage of the city’s favorite cafe. Buback took a parade of girlfriends there until one day this shy creature appeared behind the cafe’s new