by Wolf Haas
But I have to say, for a lowly sidecar driver it wasn’t the stupidest idea. Listen up: the children his wife looked after were supposed to take a field trip on International Savings Day, and the money was to be placed in one of their little backpacks, i.e., swap-on-the-way, tiny backpack full of cash for Helena. That was his objective, ostensibly, when in reality he’d quietly taken the money out of the backpack for himself back at home before the group embarked. They caught him in spite of this, of course, and no way would he have been able to run because, old saying: well intentioned is the opposite of well kidnapped.
Or better put, of well blackmailed, because he didn’t kidnap anyone. But I say they didn’t have to go and shoot him, although I can understand that the police were nervous with so many children playing. That many children would make anyone nervous-even without a kidnapping. Brenner felt somewhat complicit because he was the one who’d forgotten the sweater at the nanny’s a few weeks ago. Well, not really forgotten, more like intentionally left behind, because he’d never liked the sweater. But maybe he was just using his guilt to whitewash his despair over the fact that Helena was still missing.
The announcer reported further information and an interview with the head of the police operation, and Brenner got incredibly annoyed when just ten kilometers past Walserberg, he lost the Austrian station for good. Suddenly, Knoll passed him out of nowhere, and the Mondeo nearly started bucking on the autobahn just to catch up even halfway to the black Volvo. He wondered whether Knoll had heard the radio broadcast, too, and he wondered where Knoll was headed, why he was driving in the direction of Innsbruck, and he hoped that any additional radio reports would come on only after they were out of the German triangle again, and he prayed he wouldn’t lose the Volvo.
Knoll exited the autobahn at Worgel, and you could learn a lot about the human brain if you were to analyze Brenner’s breakdown here. I think he just didn’t want it to be true that Knoll was headed to where he was headed. But his behavior was becoming rather textbook now, and textbook: always a bad sign. He said to himself, Bundesstrasse, better if I stay behind him because it’s better not to follow from ahead in the mountains. He thought about these kinds of things, you see. Then he dialed around the radio again to see if there was another announcement somewhere. He had to have said to himself, I’m not interested anymore, it was just a sidecar driver, it does zero for Helena, I’m casting it aside. But that’s how people are. Always backward. Then he thought of her forgotten green sweater again with the green duck embroidered on it-terrible! And it seemed to him that Helena hadn’t liked the duck, either. All of this, just so that he wouldn’t have to face facts.
When Knoll turned off just five kilometers before Kitzbuhel, things got stressful for Brenner. And I don’t mean the stress of being stuck behind a truck at a red light while the Volvo pulls ahead. I don’t mean the life-endangering stress of overtaking the truck and racing ahead, either. Because he had the Volvo right back in his sights. But then Knoll turned again. Brenner didn’t like that at all. When Knoll drove up the private street that Brenner knew so well.
There was just one more thing for Brenner, of course. He had to take the cutoff through the woods. He’d taken it once before in Kressdorf’s jeep when the access road had been closed due to a mudslide, because two weeks of constant rain set off a mudslide that even made it onto TV, and the eternal optimists, immediately hopeful: finally the lord god had a revelation and was cleaning up Kitzbuhel. The road through the woods hadn’t been a problem for the jeep back then, but it bordered on miraculous that the Mondeo was able to withstand the trip without breaking its axles. And Brenner even imagined Helena’s guardian angel watching over the Mondeo’s axles, because otherwise, inexplicable. You should know, Brenner drove like the devil. And when he finally came out up at the Hegl Mountain Inn, he could still see where just a hundred meters below, Knoll was parking in front of Kressdorf’s house.
And believe it or not, Knoll knocked on the door. And the man who came out and warmly greeted him, fifty-four hours after the girl’s disappearance, was Kressdorf.
CHAPTER 13
In hindsight it came to this: why didn’t Brenner? Because it’s always simple in hindsight. I like how the clever people went and criticized him of all people, though, when the whole thing never would have gotten off the ground without him.
And besides, what was he supposed to do? Call the police so that he could get arrested again? Or pound on the door with his own fist and say, “The game’s up”? Or climb onto the roof and storm down the chimney like some kind of Santa Claus in order to free Helena?
Those people, really, I could just partially-. And from his parking spot at the Hegl Mountain Inn, he had box seats. The Kressdorf cabin gleamed in the sun-no match for van Gogh-except his view of the two cars was cut off by the cabin. The most brilliant sun wouldn’t have done him any good. But nothing was stirring around the cabin anyway. Nobody came and nobody went. It’s no wonder then, that as the time wore on, Brenner became more aware of the impressions streaming in at him from his immediate surroundings. Namely, the magnificent aroma coming from the restaurant at the Inn. Nobody thinks of that, either, that Brenner hadn’t eaten anything all day. As a detective you’re supposed to resist everything, and in hindsight that means: Why didn’t he? What was he supposed to do?
He quickly got himself something to eat from the Inn, and before anybody gets excited: in those five minutes absolutely nothing happened. And while he was eating his bacon rolls in the Mondeo, nothing happened, either. And then nothing happened for another hour. And then another hour and nothing happened. The Inn closed and the waiter drove off. The sun slowly made its way down toward the mountain peaks, the cabin cast an increasingly ominous shadow, and Brenner began to grow nervous that he’d have to spend the night there.
It’s interesting, though, what looking off into the distance can do to you. It simply affects the thought process. A monk or a hermit can spend years doing something like this, and you can only imagine how much they must experience if a few hours is enough for Brenner’s question to be suddenly freed of snow in his mind, like after a long hard thought-winter: why did the Frau Doctor have Congressman Stachl’s cell phone number? And so you see once again how unjust the unconscious can be. Because the mistrust that had sunk its teeth into Brenner ever since he saw how friendly Kressdorf had been in greeting Knoll was now spreading to his wife, and what was she doing with Congressman Stachl’s cell phone number at all?
You’re going to say, my god, business crony, guest at the house, so the woman has his cell phone number, or maybe her husband gave her the number for emergencies, maybe in her panic she’d called the congressman’s office and gotten the number. You see, you’re exactly like Brenner! He was telling himself that, too, now to put his mind at ease, my god, business crony, and so on. But when a question like that washes to the shore of your consciousness, you don’t get rid of it that quickly. You look away briefly, and then look back again and-it’s a little strange that she sent the congressman a text message. And so you toss the question aside again, but when it comes back yet again, you know you need a better answer.
As Brenner was looking down at the cabin below, where it was still completely quiet, he thought about whether he should call and ask Natalie. Or even Peinhaupt, because he’d mentioned during the interrogation that the poor mother hadn’t been able to reach her husband at first, and even then it was via the congressman. Brenner didn’t think anything of it yesterday, because when you’re wading deep in feelings of guilt, you don’t ask a question that concerns the child’s mother, of all people. And even now he shoved the question aside, but then- I could ask Harry. You should know, Harry was Congressman Stachl’s chauffeur, terribly fat, for years he was the driver of the mayor of Vienna, but when there wasn’t room in the car for two anymore, he got decommissioned to the slim congressman. Brenner had talked to Harry two or three times at the MegaLand construction site, a pleasant enough person, but he didn’t end u
p calling him now after all. Namely, because he didn’t have Harry’s cell phone number, and you see, there was that question again: why then would the Frau Doctor have the congressman’s cell phone number when I don’t even have Harry’s?
I don’t know where you stand on things like telepathy. Personally, I’m totally against it, pure nonsense if you ask me. Is it supposed to get transmitted over the airwaves or something? How do people imagine this working? But if I ever let myself get talked into believing in it for at least one second, then case in point-Brenner’s looking down at the cabin, has no idea what Knoll’s talking to Kressdorf about, and voila, this question occurs to him. A person gets to thinking.
In hindsight, of course, it gave Brenner something to think about, too. But he couldn’t have known at the time that the two of them were inside the cabin just then, discussing the very question that was going through his head, too. And he didn’t have any more time to preoccupy himself with the question, either. Because fifty-seven hours after Helena’s disappearance, the black Volvo suddenly rolled back out onto the street and drove down into the valley. Brenner expected the jeep to soon follow, but nothing doing, the jeep didn’t stir from its place.
Then the worst thing that can happen to a detective happened to Brenner. Fifty-seven hours after the girl’s disappearance, he became innocent. Which is awfully dangerous in a situation like this. And when you, the detective, begin to sense that you’re innocent, then it’s only right that you rehash ten times whether you’d convinced yourself of things just so you could justify taking action. And one thing you can’t forget: due to the personal shock, due to the pangs of guilt, even Brenner was in danger of making a move too soon. He convinced himself that he’d seen Kressdorf sitting in Knoll’s Volvo earlier. Then he pulled himself back together, because how’s the naked eye going to recognize who’s sitting in a car from this distance?
After half an hour he couldn’t stand it anymore and drove down. He hid the Mondeo in the wooded bend before Kressdorf’s driveway, then crept around the cabin three times. Heart pounding, don’t ask, because it had been a while since he’d done something like this-and no more guns since the pills because the lawmakers had said, it’s wiser if you give us back your gun license.
Just to be on the safe side, he knocked, because he’d have to come up with something if Kressdorf opened the door. But nobody opened it, nothing moved at all. The jeep was still parked in front of the house, but Kressdorf wasn’t there anymore.
Fifty-seven and a half hours after his little ward disappeared from his car, dissolved into nothingness, dematerialized in her car seat, got swallowed by the Zone of Transparency-Brenner only needed half a minute to climb up over the wooden balcony and into the cabin. And while he searched the lavishly appointed cabin for Helena, while he searched the living room, searched the rabbit pen, searched the upstairs bedrooms, searched the closets, searched the bathroom, with every centimeter that he searched, he became more depressed. Interesting, though, how often depression will send you searching for false assignments of guilt! At this point Brenner wasn’t connecting his depression with his fear of finding Helena dead, because he didn’t dare think that far ahead yet; instead it was the cabin that was to blame. Brenner escalated to full-blown cabin rage now. Everywhere you go, these cabins, Schrebergarten cottages, mountain houses-why can’t rich people just live in normal palaces? There was once a revolutionary who said, War on the Palaces, Peace to the Cottages, his slogan, as it were. He’d like the look of things today. Because these days, when rich people are caught up in such a house-frenzy, where the largest businesses snap up the ski and beach and mountain houses, he’d have to say: War on the houses! And everyone who inhabits a farmhouse or a mountain house or any kind of house-but the only calluses on their hands from playing golf-take up your torches!
Brenner stormed out into the fresh air with rage in his belly. But there was no relief outside either. And certainly no reason to take a deep breath. The insects descended on him, reminding him of his conversation with Knoll about the gnats. They let loose on him like he was crossing the most poisonous river, say, the Jordan. Especially back behind the moldering shed it was completely black with gnats, maybe because of the rotting wood that Kressdorf had deliberately left there, because he said, it has a certain flair, the original, and don’t just renovate everything to death. But Brenner couldn’t see much of the ornamental decay because there was nothing but gnats and more gnats. And the longer he searched, the more flies that joined the gnats. More and more flies and more and more hornets and more and more gnats. He imagined this being the right track now-where there were more and more flies and gnats, then his friends, the flies and gnats, would lead him to Helena.
But behind the shed door that hung on rotting hinges, no Helena, beneath the shed’s outer steps, no Helena, in the firewood bin, no Helena. He turned every woodpile over, all but reaching into the molehills. He slowly began to realize that the insects were leading him in circles. Here and there he’d make a point of walking away from the gnats and flies and searching off on his own. Even though he knew for a fact that he had to be inside the swarm for the gnats to lead him, not out on the flowering meadow.
But easier said than done of course, when your greatest fear is that in searching you might find something. He stepped off course again now, away from the foul recesses where the squadrons of insects wanted to lure him, out to the yarrow, out to the chrysanthemums, out to the spignel. To the burnet, to the white clover, to the lady’s mantle. Out to the devil’s claw. He was so exhausted by his fear about Helena at this point that he lay in the grass and thought about how easily he used to deal with the basic questions surrounding death. How he used to have a good handle on the hereafter when he was a young man.
There are many schools of thought on this, and I tend to say you shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it because it won’t get you anywhere. Brenner was different. Early on he’d staunchly believed that the most beautiful women would want to know whether you were one man for one brief life, or whether they could count on you in the afterlife, too. And so he developed a staggering sense for which answer would make the best impression in any given situation. For a time Asian beliefs were in demand, and reincarnation all the rage, then back to everything being contained somehow within nature as a whole, then you’d be well served by the shamans again. There were also those who needed a challenge, though, so Brenner said, alas, there’s nothing on the other side, because with them it got you farther than if you guaranteed them a heaven.
And believe it or not, just a few weeks earlier, he’d tried that route with Natalie. But alas, just the painful realization that the old recipes weren’t working so well anymore. He thought he could provoke her with a few quotes from Knoll’s brochure, i.e., when does life begin? He spited himself nicely with that one, though, and he came to understand right away that Natalie stood head and shoulders above him. She had considered the problem in such a balanced way and had such an understanding of the opposition that it was almost too much for Brenner. It’s difficult, of course, the psychologist said, to determine the exact day when you can safely say, up until this point, it can still be removed because it’s not a person yet — well, soul and all still negligible- and from that point on, it can’t very well be removed anymore, because it’s already too much of a person and even a hint of a soul.
The insects tried every means of shaking him awake and forcing him to get up. They stung him and tormented him, but he wasn’t quite ready yet, he wanted to escape a little further into this nice memory. Of this good conversation and how he’d answered Natalie that it’s difficult everywhere in life to draw such exact lines. For example, in criminal cases there’s always this type of development, too, at first it’s harmless really and not an actual crime yet, you think about it only theoretically, who you’d have to kidnap if you were to do it-a party game, as it were. And then you contemplate how the ransom handover would have to be arranged, still not a crime yet. And the
n maybe you do a little prep work, buy a good roll of tape at the hardware store-still not a crime yet-and finally, tidy up the basement. That, too, still isn’t a crime yet.
But then there is the one step where you can’t go back anymore, where you can’t dismiss the reality anymore, where you’ve got the child irrevocably in your stomach or the kidnapped victim irrevocably in your basement.
The insects made Brenner understand that he couldn’t go back anymore either now. He’d come along like a man sentenced to death. Nothing else could help him now. He’s already here, he’s got to finish it, too. And so the searching takes on its own dynamic entirely, and even if you hope you don’t find anything, you keep searching. He was escorted by the gnats, which he didn’t really notice anymore. Just like you stop noticing your bodyguard over time-he’s just there, and he simply must have been there when Helena was kidnapped-so, too, the insects buzzed around him now and directed him along the west side of the cabin toward the driveway. The wood still retained the warmth of the sun and smelled terrifically good, the old wood that the cabin was built from, the wooden beams, the wooden shingles, the planks of the balcony, the railing on the stairs, the window frames, and the firewood, but the bleached wood lining the driveway smelled best, i.e., the age-old boards that covered the cesspit.
When Brenner removed the first board, of course, it didn’t smell so good anymore, because a cesspit like this greets you with the stench of many generations. And with the stench came swarms of gnats, climbing out from the slats between the boards, you can’t even imagine, as though the collective dead or unborn humanity were lurking there beneath the rotting boards for Brenner.
You’re going to say, why would the gnats take Brenner under their wings, what’s their motive? Because for the average gnat, a human murder isn’t the least bit interesting, and even if you believe all that-before life, gnat, after life, gnat-then it bears saying all the more, as far as of one of these eternal gnats is concerned, a human murder’s the least interesting thing that there is.