Chief Commissioner Marie Výrová realized that day that she had never actually met an author before. Not that she didn’t read. Quite the reverse, particularly of late, since she’d made up her mind not to keep getting annoyed at television reports and idiotized by local serials. Basically, she was aware that Bohdan Koliha was the first writer she’d had the opportunity to meet in the flesh. Her new boss Jindřich Šupina, an almost two-metre tall, dry sexagenarian, introduced him to her as she entered his office with a heap of papers and found him debating animatedly with this bespectacled man, who she took to be forty years old and engaged in a profession that did not expose him to any great stress. Koliha wore jeans and a corduroy jacket, having placed his long winter coat over the back of a chair, and as Marie came in he gave a start, as if Great Owl had caught him doing something untoward.

Šupina introduced them and explained that he’d got to know the writer some two years earlier at his previous department, and that at that time Koliha had written a detective story based on one of his cases, which the author then almost apologetically declared to have not actually been a bestseller, but that it had earned some positive reviews.

Marie was not brimming over at the time with any kind of good mood, and she certainly did not feel a need to be torn away from the floods of administrative work that she had set about with a grim determination to sweep the entire backlog from her table that day by idle chit-chat with some hack, who would in any case either romanticize the police, or make corrupt alcoholics out of them. So she just hurriedly assured her boss that she wouldn’t disturb them, handed him a file that he was to go through, approve and sign. To Marie’s and the writer’s surprise, Šupina invited her to stay.

”You should write about her,” he told Koliha. ”It was actually thanks to her investigation that the Interior Minister lost his job. That would be a subject for you.”

Marie frowned at her boss. That was precisely the subject she did not want to talk about at all, and certainly not with somebody who might want to make a big sensation out of it.

”Which one?” the detective writer asked in the tone of a man who had adopted an indifferent attitude towards the political lives of public officials in that country.

”Well, how many Interior Ministers have lost their jobs over the past six months?” Šupina asked in astonishment.

But this did not impress Bohdan Koliha at all. Just as well, Marie thought.

”You mean Gelnar? I did hear something, but then these things don’t grab me that much.

“Mr Koliha is here on account of an old case,” Šupina told Marie. “Try asking the Commissioner here. She’s Olomouc born and bred. I was still in Ostrava at that time.”

“Have you ever heard of that famous murder in the Třebovický family?” the writer turned to Great Owl. She had to admit in all truth that she hadn’t.

“It was a long time ago,” Koliha added by way of apology.

“What happened?” Marie asked out of politeness.

“A six-month-old child was murdered. Quite a lot was written about it at the time.”

“Here in Olomouc?” Marie asked in surprise. The writer had managed to arouse her curiosity after all. “I never heard of it. When did it happen?”

“1987. In August.”

“Aha…” responded Great Owl. “I wasn’t working for the police at that time.”

“I am interested because my wife was there at the time, as a child, of course.”

“At the murder?”

“She was at the Třebovickýs on holiday at the time. She’d made friends with their granddaughter, and on the day she was actually staying at the Třebovický’s house. She hasn’t fully recovered to this day.”

“What happened?”

“The mother cut off her own child’s head on a circular saw,” Koliha said matter-of-factly, as if it happens all the time.

Marie gulped drily. “I’ve never heard of that…”

“Mr Koliha came to ask me if he could have a look at the investigation file from that time.”

“I’d like to compare my wife’s memories with some objective view of what happened,” Koliha added by way of explanation.

“I know the Commissioner here, and when I found out he was serving in Olomouc now, I came to ask for help.”

Marie saw that her new boss was embarrassed. She had heard him say that one of his older cases, in which he had very efficiently tracked down the unusually systematic murderer of some pensioners, formed the basis for a detective story, though he hadn’t read the book, and he didn’t actually know who wrote it. And now the writer had come after him to the new Olomouc workplace to capitalize on her acquaintance again. “Was your wife the subject of the investigation at all?” she asked.

“God forbid. I only know that she testified as a witness. But if you are asking if she was a suspect, then no. After all, she was only twelve.”

“What do you think, Marie?“ Colonel Šupina looked down at Marie from his height of two metres.

“Is anything preventing Mr Koliha from showing the file?” Marie answered with a question.

“I don’t think so.”

“So I shall call the Archive, though it will certainly take some time.”

Bohdan Koliha smiled in satisfaction at Great Owl. If he ever made Marie a character then that smile ensured she would be a positive protagonist. “Not to worry.”

“Why do you actually want to see it?” Marie asked him.

“As I said, mainly because of my wife. It’s traumatized her to this day, basically because she doesn’t think the mother did it.”

(Translated by Melvyn Clarke)