The Painted Altar

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Plot reminder: Having now returned home from Italy, Mary is surprised to receive a call from Inspector Kubič, who has uncovered her subterfuge in part one of the of the novel.

~~~~~

Far from being indifferent about the case as I had always imagined, Inspector Kubič had in fact been very much taken by it. The temporal gulf which separated the suspected murder from the uncovering of the remains had been viewed not as an annoyance but rather as a challenge. As he would go on to explain to me over the phone on that grey-skied June evening, he had felt a deep and personal connection right from the outset. His Czechoslovakian grandfather had been just 20 when the Nazis had come goose-stepping through Sudetenland and on into Bohemia. The official order of non-resistence must have been like a muzzle to a snarling dog. The only way to save his homeland had been to flee it, leave it there prostrate like a sleeping wife at the mercy of an intruder. Over the Krkonose mountains to Poland, then by ship to France. His first combat experience had been played out in the skies above the folding Maginot Line. Onto Britain then, the last hope not just for Czechosolovakia but for an entire continent. For an entire world. Waiting in the grey English clouds for the incoming hornet's hum of the next Messerscmidt.

"He shot down ten in total," the inspector continued. "Ten weeping German mothers. A hundred too few, he'd always said. Not nearly enough."

It had always fascinated him, Kubič explained. The Second World War. The lives of the foreign nationals like his grandfather who'd found themselves in Britain during those dark years. And so when the remains had been unearthed on the former site of camp 106a, the accompanying military ID tags, well, he'd made a promise to not just to himself but also to his grandfather's grave to do whatever he could to get to the bottom of it.

"In 1940 my grandfather and the Italians stood on opposite sides. One thing the old man always taught me though, nationality is a just mask we choose to wear. Take it off, and underneath we're all just the sons of our mothers. Black, brown, yellow, fascist, communist. Every man is our brother."

It was at that moment that I felt a first spot of rain splash against the tip of my nose, could hear my neighbour calling her children in from the back garden.

"I've just come back from Italy," I told him, scraping back patio chair.

On the other end of the line came a sloshing sound: another swig of beer as he watched the football. I wondered as to his marital status. I'd once read somewhere that police officers are one of the professional categories with the highest rates of divorce.

"Italy? Yes, I thought as much."

Padding back into the shelter of the kitchen, I settled myself on a stool at the breakfast bar, watched the ever thickening raindrops splatter their trails down the window pane above the sink.

"I posted you another letter," I told him,  "just couple of hours ago."

"This one anonymous too?"

"Yes," I murmured. Then: "I suppose my cover's blown now." Trying to make a joke out of it but feeling a damn ruddy fool just the same.

"And this second anonymous letter, does it name any names?"

Again, I found myself murmuring the affirmative.

The background rumble of the crowd, the excitable voice of the commentator, now both ceased. I imagined the inspector sitting himself upright, his attention peaked.

"Well then Ms Rice, let's see if they're the same names I've come up with."

*