Prologue

Think.

Think, man.

Have a drink and think. What else have you got to lose? And what can anyone gain?

I mean, you’ve already lost everything… But you can still redeem yourself. People will forget – it doesn’t matter what they’ll think. It certainly won’t be any worse than what they’re thinking now.

But your family…

What about your family? What if… You can get them out of all the trouble you got them into. Yes, you got them into it, no-one else, so why don’t you admit it finally. Act like a man for once and admit it. No-one else is to blame, only you. You! There are no excuses. Maybe you’d like there to be, but there aren’t. None of them hurt you in any way. No-one wanted anything from you, and yet you dragged them down with you into the shit.

Take a look at yourself. What’s left of you? A wreck. Remember what you used to be like. A guy that people could rely on. But now? No-one wants anything to do with you. And the way people look at you, that’s how they look at Katka and the kids. All because of you. It’s you who brought them down. What were they guilty of? They’re suffering because of you. They’re suffering – admit that as well!

Remember how happy Katka used to be. Everyone envied you, absolutely everyone. She could have had anyone she wanted. God only knows why she chose you. What on earth did she see in you? She’s probably the only one who knows that. That’s in the past now, though. She’s a shadow of her former self and her hands shake whenever the phone rings. That’s all your doing, man.

And the kids? They’re ashamed of you – you can see that straight away. You might have collected them from the maternity ward, wiped their backsides, taught them to walk and ride a bike, but that’s all in the past now. They’re adults and they don’t remember any of that. On the other hand, they’ll never forget the shame of having to move from their home to a two-room rabbit hutch in a block of flats. There wasn’t even enough room there for four people!

So, think, for Christ’s sake! Isn’t it about time to make it up to all of them? Rid them of the worries you brought upon them? It’s difficult to admit, but… No-one will miss you. Of course they’ll have a good cry, but what’s that compared to the fact that they’ll finally be able to live in peace? And you owe them that peace!

Think.

Have a drink and think. This is no way for the four of you to live, but if you do the right thing, you can help Katka and the kids. And you have to help them – it’s your duty! You can atone for all the mistakes you’ve made, so why are you still hesitating? You should be glad of the chance – other people certainly would! It wasn’t so long ago you were begging God to let you die. So do it! You can redeem those three people whose lives you’ve destroyed. Now you can return their lives to them.

What are you waiting for? You have to do it!

Have a drink, man and think.

Think!

 

1.

It was Thursday, an ordinary day near the end of spring. The office was as stale as my life. Soon I’d be forty-five and I’d spent the last year … I don’t even know how. All I can remember are several court hearings with a man who had barged his way into my life, ripped it to shreds and then disappeared. Afterwards, all I could do was search for him, because if I hadn’t done something, I’d have stopped breathing. I’d like to say that when I did find him it was like being released from a cage, but it wasn’t. You might read something like that in novels, but in the real world you’re still standing knee-deep in mud, watching the well-groomed people rush by – people who look down on you and always will.

“Hey, Miko,” said Tony, bringing me out of myself. His eyes motioned towards a fortysomething in a suit who was staring at me through her horn-rimmed glasses.

“I was asking if you had any other questions for my client.” Her flat voice matched her flat chest and flat character. All that was missing was the Gestapo hat. The client she was talking about was a twenty-year-old idiot, Nazi and thief. Unfortunately, you couldn’t prosecute him for the first thing, you occasionally could for the second, but it was because of the third that he was now sitting in our office. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, revealing part of a swastika on his right arm. Not the whole thing – this cretin didn’t have that kind of courage, he just wanted to provoke us. In the meantime he was hiding behind a woman.

“No, we don’t have any more questions,” I muttered. We never even had any from the start. Well, we could think of quite a few, but we knew we wouldn’t get an answer to them. Although this hero had burgled a flat, we were woefully short on evidence, so we couldn’t prove it was him. The only thing we could do was let him stew for a while and let him pick up the lawyer’s bill.

“Actually, there is just one more thing,” said Tony, seizing his last chance. “What’s that on your client’s arm? From here it looks like a swastika.”

The lawyer x-rayed the idiot’s arm, adjusted her glasses and looked Tony in the eye.

“From here it also looks like a swastika, a symbol of luck which has been venerated in Southeast Asia for centuries and can still be found, for example, on every corner in India.”

“Do you like India?” said Tony, grinning at the cretin.

“What?”

“India. In the dictionary just after idiot, imbecile and impotent…”

“Right, that’s enough,” said Mrs Eichmann, rising from her chair and throwing her business card on the desk with a practised move. “If you do need to speak to my client again, which I very much doubt, call me first.”

“Jawohl,” I answered, nodding to Tony to get those two characters out of our office as quickly as possible.

Where was I? Legs in the mud, well-groomed people rushing by past, and you can only stare at them because they look down on you and always will not good enough for them and never will be. Yes, that was exactly it. Any kind of movement is doubly hard, you can’t run, you can’t jump. Knee-deep in mud, you can’t even laugh.

 

Tereza died in February last year and her murderer was convicted in November. I say murderer even though in the eyes of the law he isn’t one, as he was only convicted of bodily harm resulting in death. He didn’t mean to kill anyone. It had all just been an unfortunate accident.

I stood up and went over to open the window. I had to get rid of the smell of that piece of trash who had taken up a good hour of our time. The fresh air rushed into the room and blew into my face. More specifically, it blew into my beard as I had recently changed my look slightly. Knee-deep in mud, you don’t really want to do a lot of useless things. Talk, shave, hide your greying hair by getting it cut short. Rush around. Do sport. Over the past twelve months I had definitely aged more than a year, despite the fact that my life had slowed down. I still have a taste for wine, but when there’s none left in the fridge, I don’t run to the nearest shop like I did before. I know there’ll be more tomorrow. Some of my favourite T-shirts were starting to feel tight on me. They’re hanging in a corner of the wardrobe and their future doesn’t look promising. They’re edging their way closer to the charity clothes bank.

I’ve been reading more. Books which were written by wiser people than you’ll meet today. Ovid, Voltaire, Laozi. I’m not saying I understand them, but at least I’m trying to.

Incidentally, I have good company. I got Dusty back from my mum. I’d left him with her when I flew to the other side of the world to deal with the matter of Tereza’s murderer. Yes, murderer, I’m allowed to use that word.

So Dusty – my dog that looks more like a cross between a pine marten and a mole – is now lollinig around about again in his usual place in the niche below the bookcase, pretending to diligently watch over all of those classics. We get on as well as we did before. Naturally, he misses his mistress, but he doesn’t ask questions. Fortunately dogs can’t speak, unlike people, whose questions we’d rather shove back down their throats.

2.

The door slammed behind me and I heard Tony slap his file on the desk.

“This has been a really shitty week,” he spat out angrily, and I couldn’t agree more.

On Sunday we had to get our arses off the couch and make an unscheduled trip to Ostrava, where the uniforms had picked up a guy we’d been after for three months during a random check. Come Monday afternoon he was out again. Despite being a suspect in connection with at least six burgled flats, the judge refused to put him in jail as he found no grounds for doing so. And so the hunt for that saint is on again.

Tony and I spent Tuesday at court. The lawyer of an eight-times convicted burglar wanted us there, alleging we had used force to extract his client’s confession. We hadn’t. But now he’d certainly earned himself a few slaps for next time. And then today that little Nazi and his Valkyrie, a case which will end up in the archives due to a lack of evidence.

“And there’s a meeting at two,” muttered Tony.

“One thousand and fifty,” I said, continuing to look out the window.

“Eh?”

“One weekly meeting times the number of years I’ve been doing this job, and it works out at one thousand and fifty, give or take. That’s the number of times I’ve had to listen to the bullshit that awaits me. Always the same.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That if I had known this way back when, nothing would have kept me here. But nobody told me. So now I’m telling you. Go and see the world while you’re still young.”

“And I’m to take that seriously from someone who was a civilian and came crawling back to this office?”

I frowned, to hell with him, and disappeared down the corridor. I knocked on Robert Celda’s door and invited myself in.

“What do you want?” he snarled, engrossed in some papers.

“A drink,” I said, opening his private fridge.

There were three fingers left in the bottle of Grant’s and I started looking around for a glass.

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?”

I didn’t know if he meant drinking, drinking at work, or drinking in the boss’s office, so I didn’t bother answering.

“Want one too?” I asked, having found two empty glasses instead of just one.

“No. And no hanging around here. Put the bottle back where you got it and beat it.”

“I actually came to tell you I can’t be bothered with the meeting today. Tomorrow’s the last time I’m here for a while, so the plans for next week don’t really concern me.”

Robert looked at me, evidently weighing up whether there was any point in trying to pull rank. There wasn’t.

“You’re right for once,” he nodded and then ignored me.

I drank up, put the bottle away along with the glass and returned to my office. Robert was a good boss. Anyone else would probably have fired me long ago, but he stuck with me. I had put him through a lot lately, but he knew he could always rely on me. I’m actually the longest serving cop in our department – even he arrived several years after me. But I’ve never been a climber. I was content with my office, my team and my cases, so Robert didn’t feel at all threatened by me and this equilibrium allowed the two of us to operate together undisturbed.

“Are you still coming to Bytíz with me tomorrow?” asked Tony.

“Of course,” I nodded. We were to question someone at Přibram prison who had never said anything to anyone yet. He was sixty years old and his combined sentences totalled some twenty-five years, but you’d be hard pushed to find a bigger optimist. It would be the same as always: we’d arrive and chat and he’d politely apologise, saying that he’d like to help us but he didn’t grass on others, never mind on himself, and then we’d make our way back to Prague. I’d already had at least ten such meetings with him and tomorrow’s wasn’t going to be any different. Tony could have probably gone by himself, but I didn’t want to spend the last day before my holiday stuck in the office.

“So you’re going to be away for two weeks?” said Tony, working out how long he’d be on his own. But the truth was he’d already been on his own for more than a year now. He did most of the work while I just trailed along behind him. But he never complained. Perhaps he was repaying me for the time when I took him under my wing and taught him all he needed to know when he first arrived at the CID. Tony is a good cop and I like to think I helped lick him into shape.

“Two weeks,” I nodded. I wasn’t going far, just to my home town of Mokřina. I was going to take the dog, a bag and my new second-hand car and set off for Moravia. My mother was going to a spa, so I’d have the house to myself, a pantry full of food and a silence which people would have paid for in Smíchov in Prague.

I planned to enjoy two weeks of peace and solitude. Two weeks with my feet up and a view of the fields, two weeks of wine, books and blissful rest.

To this day I still wonder if I’d have gone to Mokřina had I known what was in store for me there. And I still ask myself if I was right to get messed up in something that had nothing to do with me.

But what’s more difficult: allowing someone the right to revenge, or withholding that right from them?

3.

The lights from the nearby village glimmered between the trees, swaying in a strange dance. Some of them rippled, some darted around, and others attracted the attention of a man whose figure loomed up in the moonlight. The night air was fragrant, embracing everything alive and dead with its strange warmth. It smelled of life, each molecule had the power to save the drowning and the melancholy.

Even the man who was staring rheumy-eyed ahead of him noticed the peculiar fragrance. It filled his lungs and muscles to the point of bursting, and he was increasingly certain that no matter what he did tonight, everything would change for the better.

Think, he said to himself.

Think. What else have you got to lose?

He staggered. Those weren’t his words… Or were they? He took a few hesitant steps forward, but stumbled and fell to his knees. Sharp stones dug into his hands, tearing the skin.

Think. Get up and think. You can’t do much on your knees.

He wanted to get up, but couldn’t. As soon as he tried to straighten up, some force pushed him to the side, and the thoughts in his head collapsed in a heap. He closed his eyes and squeezed them shut. Did he just imagine it, or did someone help him up? Or perhaps he had just found the strength within him – after all, he knew fine well what he had to do. What was that word again? Liberation? No, that wasn’t it. Reconciliation? Maybe. Extri… He stumbled, though this time he didn’t fall. Extri… He could feel saliva running down his chin, so he wiped it with a sweeping gesture of his hand. Extrication? No, something else…

He stood up. Trying to remember that unfamiliar word had exhausted him so much he needed to rest. He could no longer stand, so he sank slowly to the ground. First of all he rested on his hands and then he sat down with a thump. He swayed and another load of foamy saliva ran down his chin, this time accompanied by tears.

Would they understand him? Dan and Lída were adults now – they knew that not everything happened according to some naive plan. They were smart – he and Katka had brought them up well, despite… Would they understand something like this? Would they get it, that he had done it for them?

He rubbed his face, smudging the tears on his cheeks. Would the kids at least understand that he wasn’t crazy? That this was nothing more or less than… Redemption! That was the word! How had it come to him? Think, man. How did that word come to you? Where did you get that idea – just a moment of pain, maybe not even that, and then finally peace? All worries gone, only endless quiet, blades of grass, the silence of the stars, the cooling breath of the moon… All of that was waiting, just a moment of pain and then darkness.

Redemption, that was the word.

Once again, an unknown force got him back on his feet. Maybe it was the arms of angels that helped him on his way, maybe the arms of his last remaining friends. He didn’t know and didn’t dwell on it.

He reached a stone embankment, the ground swaying under his feet, but the benevolent arms didn’t let him fall. He was crying but smiling too. Not everyone had abandoned him, he still had a soulmate. He had Katka and the kids, and he was going to do what he owed them. Yes, that was what the voice had said to him today. The voice which spoke of redemption. Where was it from? From heaven?

He wanted to look up at the night sky, but as soon as he lifted his head the whole world began to spin round. First he fell on his back and then the crown of his head struck something incredibly hard in the dark. He squeezed his eyes hard several times and then with difficulty sat up. A huge glowing wheel was turning in front of him like at some crazy fair, and it wouldn’t go away; instead it shone even brighter. There was an unbearable noise in his ears, which pressed down on his brain so hard that he had to take his head in his hands. He had no idea the redemption he had been waiting for so patiently would be like a roaring hellish beast. Its jaws came nearer and nearer. He could smell its breath, which stank of asphalt and hot iron. He pressed his hands against his ears to escape the animal’s wheezing.

No! He couldn’t take much more of this, the heat and the racket were unbearable. He had to stand up and get out of the way of this beast, because a moment of pain wasn’t going to be enough for this creature! The monster would tear him to pieces, spread his bones all over the place, and all the pain he wanted to get rid of would pollute the soil, contaminate it, and then later germinate and never disappear!

With his last remaining strength, he got to his knees. If he could quickly get out of the beast’s path, perhaps it wouldn’t even notice him. It would run past him and tear along until it disappeared over the horizon.

He supported himself with his hands and stood up. He was breathing so hard that for a moment it even drowned out the wheezing of the approaching iron beast. He breathed deeply and felt his chest swell. One step was enough. One step to the side and I can disappear into the darkness, no-one can redeem themselves through such pain, it’s just…

But his guardian angels hadn’t left him. They consoled him in his moment of despair made sure he would face up to his responsibilities. They held on to him, blinded him, pinned his arms to his side, turned his legs to stone. And when his body had finally merged with the beast as one, they slipped quietly away into the moonlight.

 

Translated by Graeme Dibble