The World's Finest Mystery Part 81

She smiled and shook her head. "It is a kind offer, but my place is here."

"When does Mathias return with his dagger?"

"When he's so drunk I have to help him upstairs to his bed."

"Before I leave, could you show me the upstairs apartment? The side facing the wall?"

"Follow me."

She snapped on the stairway light and led him up to Mathias's place. The door was unlocked, and as they entered Michael could smell the odor of beer and stale tobacco smoke. He stood at the window for a moment, trying to gauge the angle down to the wall in the center of Masarak Street. "I need more light," he decided. "Could I return in the morning?"

"Certainly. It may be our last day here if the police drive us out."

"You don't think Lyrik's killer will confess?"

"Whoever did it, he is not a Gypsy. He is not here."

Michael looked again at his watch. "I really must leave. I'll be back in the morning."

She saw him to the door and he headed down the street the way he had come, nodding to some of the Gypsy families lounging in front of their apartments. Though it was after nine o'clock, Rosetta's children were still practicing on their instruments and she was seated on the front steps. As he stopped to say h.e.l.lo, a well-built man with gla.s.ses and a moustache loomed up beside her. "Bruno," she said, "this is the man from the Roma Rights Center that I told you about."

"Bruno Lacko," he said, extending his hand to Michael. "Rosetta tells me you've come to help."

"If I can. Mary- Mrs. Autumn- tells me you're in charge here."

"When I can be. I work long hours for my family."

"What is the feeling among your people? Might one of them have killed Lieutenant Lyrik?"

"In a fair fight, certainly. No one on this block would have fired a rifle at him. No one owns a rifle that I'm aware of."

Michael nodded. "I'd like to return tomorrow and take some measurements from your upstairs window to the wall. Would that be all right?"

"Certainly, so long as you make it before the police deadline. We don't know what will happen then."

Michael slept well in the strange bed and ate breakfast at the hotel. As he retraced his route to Masarak Street he was aware of the police cars slowly circling the blocks. One of them came to a stop at a corner, blocking his route across a street. The window rolled down and Captain Mulheim peered out.

"I did not expect you to be here still, Gypsy. At six this evening Masarak Street will not be a safe place."

"I'm hoping I can help settle this matter before your deadline. Would it be possible for me to examine the lieutenant's body?"

Mulheim shook his head. "It was cremated this morning. He had no wife or close relatives."

"Captain, I ask that you consult with me before moving against those Gypsies."

"I can make no promises," he said, and the car window slid silently shut.

Michael continued on his way, aware that he was never out of sight of at least one patrol car. He entered Masarak Street from the other end, but the street showed little difference when approached from that direction. The first adult he saw was Mary Baxter, directing children into a small van that he guessed must function as a school bus.

"You've come back," she said.

"Of course. Are these children schooled by the state?"

"Not so they learn anything. I've managed to enroll them in a private school for half days. We have to provide our own transportation, but it's better than nothing."

Once the van pulled away from the curb, crowded to overflowing, she relaxed with a sigh. "I don't want them here this evening, in case there is violence. No one knows how serious the police are about evicting us."

"They're serious," he said, following her into the apartment. "If they are driven out, will you return to Ireland?"

"Not until Christmas, whatever happens. My husband-"

"Then there is a Mr. Autumn?"

She laughed. "Yes, there is. He teaches the autumn semester each year at Trinity College."

Michael stood by the front window, staring at the wall again. "Would you happen to have a ball of string or twine?"

"I think there's one in the kitchen. I'll get it."

She returned with it and they went upstairs together. "Is Mathias still here?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. "He came in late, and drunk as usual. He'll still be sleeping."

He followed her inside and opened the parlor window. They were just about opposite the spot where Lyrik had been shot. Hefting the ball of twine about the size of his fist, he said, "I'll see how my pitching arm is." Holding one end, he threw the ball out the window, aiming for the other side of the wall. Leaving a trail of twine as it unwound, the ball just cleared the seven-foot wall.

"What's all this?" a voice growled behind them.

It was Mathias, wearing a dirty nights.h.i.+rt, his tall hulk filling the bedroom doorway. He had the dagger in his hand, as if facing some threatening intruder, but Mary quickly disarmed him. "You met Michael yesterday, Mathias," she reminded him. "He is trying to find out who killed the police officer."

He grumbled something but returned to his bedroom. "Here," Michael said, handing the end of the twine to Mary. "Hold this while I go around to the other side of the wall."

He then hurried downstairs and circled the end of the wall to the other side. About halfway along he found the ball of twine, much reduced in size. He pulled it taut so that it just cleared the top of the seven-foot wall. If the fatal shot had been fired from Mathias's apartment, or any of the other second-floor rooms in mid block, this was the path it would have taken. Michael had been standing right next to the victim, and he remembered holding out his hand to touch the wall. They'd been thirty inches away from that wall, probably a bit less.

But that close to the wall, the fatal shot would have pa.s.sed nearly a foot over their heads. Any lower and it wouldn't have cleared the wall at all. It was a simple matter of geometry. The wall was too high.

Michael backed up until he could see Mary Baxter in the apartment window, holding the end of the twine. He knew a high-powered rifle can be accurate at a distance of a mile or more, but there were no taller buildings even at that distance. There was nothing but sky, gray with the threat of approaching rain.

He tried reexamining the facts. There'd been the sound of a distant rifle shot and Lieutenant Lyrik had fallen dead. The fatal bullet could not have come from in front of him because of the height of the wall, but Sergeant Cista was behind them. Could he have killed his superior with a pistol shot?

No, because Lyrik was facing the wall at the time. There'd been no blood on the back of his head, only on the front, where he'd been hit over the right eye. Michael turned to the right, looking over the wall at the last house. It had been the first house when he entered the street the previous day, Rosetta and Bruno Lacko's apartment, with its empty second floor.

He tossed the ball of twine over the wall and walked around to retrieve it. "Drop the end," he called up to Mary. "I want to try it again down the block at Rosetta's place."

The children were at school but Michael found Rosetta hanging out the wash. Bruno was in the small kitchen, preparing to go off to his job at the fun fair. "What will you do with that ball of twine?" the man asked.

"I'm trying to determine where the fatal shot might have come from. I ran a line from Mary Baxter's second floor over the top of the wall where Lyrik was standing. Now I want to try it from here."

Bruno Lacko nodded. "I must go," he called to his wife. "I will return before five."

Rosetta came in with her wash basket. "He doesn't want me alone if Captain Mulheim makes good on his threat."

"He cares about you," Michael said.

"He cares about all of us. Too much, I fear. If the police come as they threaten, Bruno will be standing in front of them, blocking their path. I worry about what will happen then."

Upstairs, in the empty apartment, he opened the window next to the broken one and hurled his ball of twine again, aiming down the street toward the center of the wall. This time his aim was a bit short. It hit the wall and came down on their side. "I'll go get it and throw it over," Rosetta said. "Stay here and hold the end. You can tell me where to put it."

He agreed and stood by the window with the end held firmly in hand. Out in the street, Rosetta hurried to pick up the end and then flipped it over the wall. He saw at once that she had not thrown it far enough along for a proper measurement and he sought out a way to help her. The end of the twine could be tied to something in the empty apartment and he could join her at the wall. But what?

He opened a closet door, thinking that even a clothes hook might serve as an anchor, and that was when he found it. A rifle, standing in the corner.

Rosetta watched him approach her with a grim expression written on his face. "I tied the twine to a hook in the closet," he told her. "I found something there."

"What do you mean."

"A rifle. Is it your husband's?"

She shook her head, confused. "Bruno never goes up there. Only the boys use it, for their practice."

"Could one of them, Josef perhaps, have fired the rifle? Is that how the window was broken?"

"That window was broken by a rock hurled by one of the boys across the street, before they put up the wall to protect them from us." She handed him the end of the twine. "Do your measurements. Tell me if a bullet from our rifle could have killed Lieutenant Lyrik."

He strode further down the wall but he saw at once that in order to clear the top a bullet would still have pa.s.sed well above Lyrik's head. "No," he told her. "The fatal shot couldn't have come from over the wall. But it also couldn't have come from any other direction. Are you sure one of your boys couldn't have-"

"Come with me, Michael Vlado!" She walked quickly around the wall with long strides that he had difficulty matching. They climbed the stairs to the empty apartment. "Now show me this rifle."

He went to the closet and lifted it gently from the corner. She took it from him, her concern vanis.h.i.+ng, pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. "My boys would have difficulty shooting anyone with this. It's an air rifle from Bruno's fun-fair booth. He brought it home for them months ago because it was broken and not worth fixing."

"I'm sorry," Michael told her. "I don't usually jump to conclusions like that."

Her mood turned somber again. "We are only a few hours from the police deadline. What will happen then?"

"Perhaps someone will come forward and confess."

She shook her head. "How is that possible? No one is guilty."

"That's true," he agreed, and left her standing alone in the empty apartment with a promise to return.

The rain had started by the time he reached the street, not the hard, driving sort that autumn sometimes brought to his home in the foothills of the Carpathians but a misty, sweeping shower that warned of worse to come. He bundled his jacket around him and saw at the opposite end of the block the sudden appearance of a police armored vehicle. Go away, he wanted to yell as if confronting the angel of death. It's not yet time! But instead he hurried along in the opposite direction.

It was the sight of Sergeant Cista parked in a police car across from his hotel that told Michael what he must do. The officer had obviously been a.s.signed to keep track of him, and Michael made certain he was seen entering the place. Then he retrieved the raincoat from his luggage and left the hotel by a rear door. He came up to the police car from the rear and was into the front pa.s.senger seat before Cista knew what was happening.

"What are you doing?"

"You should keep your doors locked, Sergeant. I want to talk to you."

Cista squirmed about, trying to reach his holstered weapon, but Michael laid a hand on it first, yanking it free. "You don't need this. I only want to talk."

"I'm just following orders. I have nothing against the Gypsies."

"I know what happened at the wall yesterday."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Lyrik was standing too close to the wall to have been hit by a bullet from one of the Gypsy apartments. I know because I took measurements of the angles today. The bullet couldn't have come from behind, where you stood, because there was no blood on the back of his head. The wound was over his right eye, yet I was standing on his right side, s.h.i.+elding him from that direction."

The sergeant ran his tongue over dry lips. "What are you trying to say, that his murder was impossible?"

"Exactly. It was impossible, and therefore it didn't happen. Lieutenant Lyrik is still alive and you're going to take me to him."

The rain had let up by the time they reached the little farmhouse some distance from the city. With his raincoat bundled around his face, Michael was unrecognizable until Lyrik had already opened the door to admit Cista. Then he shoved his way inside, knocking the lieutenant to the floor. "Don't go for a gun," he warned. "We wouldn't want the report of your death to be proved correct after all."

Lyrik rolled over on the floor, cursing his sergeant. "You told him! Mulheim will have our heads for this!"

"No, no! He already knew!"

"How could he know, unless someone told him?"

"Someone told me today. Someone told me that no one could have killed you and they were right. Captain Mulheim said the fatal bullet pa.s.sed through your head, yet there was no blood on the back of your head, only on the forehead. The bullet couldn't have pa.s.sed through. I remembered too that I heard the shot a split-second before you grabbed your forehead and the blood appeared. A bullet from a high-powered rifle would travel faster than the sound. You had a capsule of blood hidden in your hand, and when one of Mulheim's men fired a shot in the air you squashed the capsule against your forehead and fell over. Sergeant Cista came running and the captain was summoned with an ambulance. I was kept away from the body, so I wouldn't discover that you were still alive. The whole thing was a plot on Mulheim's part. He wanted an excuse to rid that block of Gypsies."

"And he'll do it," Lyrik said with a smile. "In less than two hours."

Michael showed him the sergeant's 9 mm automatic pistol. "I have this now. And you're coming with us to Masarack Street."

It was a wild ride back to the city, but they reached the street with ten minutes to spare. Every Rom was outside, facing the police, and Mary Baxter stood at their front with Bruno Lacko, not twenty feet away from Captain Mulheim. Cista had to blow his horn to cut a path through the waiting police and militiamen.

Michael was the first out of the car, and Mulheim raised his pistol to face him.

"You arrived just in time for the evacuation," he said, "unless you've come to confess to Lyrik's murder yourself."

"Hardly that! I have Lieutenant Lyrik alive and well in this car, and you have a great deal of explaining to do."

When they saw Lyrik, the residents of Masarak Street shouted and cheered, knowing the threat was ended. Captain Mulheim hesitated just an instant, perhaps contemplating the killing of them all. Then he turned and waved his men back. "There'll be other days, Mr. Vlado," he promised.

It was not a promise he was fated to keep. In the morning, as Michael prepared to return home, Mary Baxter brought him the good news. President Havel and the government had negotiated the removal of the walls in the Gypsy sections of their city and usti nad Labem to the north. The wall was already being torn down and the Czech government had promised to give both cities money to improve social conditions. Meantime, a formal investigation had been opened into the faking of Lieutenant Lyrik's murder and the plot against the Gypsies of Masarak Street.

"If I'm ever in Ireland I'll visit you," Michael told her as he prepared to leave for home.

Mary Baxter smiled. "So long as it's not in autumn."