The Camera Killer

  None of the news channels said anything about the press conference being transmitted live, but Heinrich was excited by a ticker headline: “Man Arrested Not the Killer.” Following this: “The twenty-four-year-old man detained after a hectic car chase is very probably not the murderer, said a police spokesman. It was a false trail. The young man has been cleared by several witnesses.”

  It wasn’t him, Heinrich called into the kitchen.

  Eva and my partner came hurrying in.

  It wasn’t him, Heinrich repeated.

  Wasn’t it? Eva asked, and Heinrich said, No, it wasn’t.

  The news reported that the young man had been missing since Thursday night and was consequently under suspicion. It now turns out that the twenty-four-year-old had been barhopping since Thursday. This had been confirmed by several people who saw him at an inn at the time of the Friday killings. On his own submission, the young man fled from the police because his license had been revoked for drunk driving. He had nonetheless driven his father’s car from inn to inn and was under the impression that the police wanted to arrest him for that reason.

  Heinrich said the police were a bunch of morons.

  The twenty-four-year-old wasn’t very smart either, my partner interjected; on the contrary, the whole story sounded very depressing, poor devil.

  Eva laughingly agreed.

  It was interesting nonetheless, said Heinrich; now they would have to go on looking.

  A new lead. The police spokesman stated that this was an unimportant setback and the noose around the killer was tightening. The twenty-four-year-old was only one suspect, and not the chief one. A successful conclusion to the manhunt may be imminent.

  They won’t find a soul, said Heinrich. Eva asked why he was so annoyed. Heinrich condemned the incompetence of people who allowed a murderer to roam around on the loose. He took a swig of beer and shook his head. Chuckling, he said he was going to tell their neighbor to reload his rifle. Eva gave him a warning glance.

  Silence fell.

  My partner drew our attention to the impressive amounts of rain falling outside. Eva shivered. Heinrich rubbed her arms and told her to shut the window. My partner wanted it left open, saying she liked the sound and the atmosphere it created. For all that, she added, she had a bad feeling—a sinister presentiment—though she couldn’t be more precise about its nature.

  Another silence fell.

  Eva asked whether we felt like a hot meal tonight or if bread, spreads, eggs, and smoked ham would suffice. After a while, Heinrich said he didn’t mind. My partner said a cold buffet would be quite enough, and I seconded her.

  Because none of us could bestir ourselves sufficiently to engage in conversation or some other form of activity, Heinrich turned back to the television. This time, the women raised no objection.

  Several channels were transmitting live reports from Frauenkirchen, which was also affected by rain. Heinrich switched to the channel that had broadcast the murder video the previous night. There too a reporter was speaking from the victims’ hometown. Standing beneath a big umbrella, he stated that, at this moment, while a positively biblical tempest was descending on the sorely afflicted community like a sign from heaven, the police were seeking a definite suspect in the vicinity. The trail was warm, it had been announced, and the reporter added his personal opinion: In conversation with a senior police officer, he had gained the impression that the police were very sure of themselves this time.

  Heinrich said he could hardly wait.

  Back at the studio, the anchorwoman referred to the protests against the transmission of the murder video. The broadcasters had handled the subject responsibly, she claimed. They had received endorsements and other favorable responses from various quarters. They had asked themselves what had happened within the Austrian community and whether everyone was fully aware of it. At a time of alarming moral decline, when human life was merely a statistical quantity that was devaluing every day, people should display the courage shown by those in charge of the TV station. It had been, and still was, their duty to publicize the full dimensions of the crime.

  At this point, reference was made to the station’s fundraising drive for the benefit of the bereaved, whose account number was given. There followed a brief summary of what had happened.

  They’re like a dog with a bone, said Heinrich.

  The screen was now showing some shots of Frauenkirchen. A spokesman briefly recapitulated the course of events. His report finally reached the point at which reference was made to the murders themselves. This child was doomed to die, he said. In slow motion, with the original soundtrack replaced by unearthly music, we were shown a long shot of the weeping, snot-nosed, gap-toothed brother up the tree. The music steadily increased in volume and became more dramatic the longer the shot lasted. An account number appeared.

  After some three minutes, another patch of forest came into view. The death of the second boy was imminent. To the same unearthly music, the despairing face of the long-haired brother was shown as he crouched in the tree with his eyes screwed up and his chin adorned with snot and saliva. Once more, the music rose in a dramatic crescendo until Eva, when the account number was inserted, asked Heinrich to change channels or, better still, to turn off the television altogether. Heinrich complied without hesitation.

  They would stop at nothing, he said; showing something like that at this time was the bitter end.

  My partner went over to the window and looked out.

  Heinrich stared into space, cracking his knuckles occasionally. After about five minutes, he suggested a game of table tennis. Eva didn’t feel like it. Neither did my partner, who went to the table to light a cigarette and returned to the window.

  After another five minutes or so, Heinrich said we could always play rummy. Thirty or forty seconds elapsed before Eva replied that she had no objection. Heinrich called to my partner to tear herself away from the window and join in. She nodded and returned to the table. I also announced my willingness to play.

  Eva stood up and went to get the playing cards, which she deposited on the table with a weary gesture. Then she went out. Heinrich called after her. Where was she off to? he demanded. She was only fetching a jacket, she replied. She was back within two minutes.

  Heinrich had meantime gotten out the cards, together with paper and a ballpoint pen for keeping the score. After we had been playing for around twenty minutes (Eva was in the lead, followed by me, my partner, and Heinrich, in that order), we heard a voice ring out outside. It grew louder. My partner, who had been hunched over the low coffee table while playing, straightened up and asked whom it could be. Her question was promptly answered: The voice was now coming from inside the house.

  Moments later, the Stubenrauchs’ farmer neighbor strode into the living room, heedless of the fact that the filth on his rubber boots was soiling the wooden floor. Had we heard? he asked, looking at Heinrich. That youngster wasn’t the killer, he went on, waving his arms about. He’d thought as much—it couldn’t have been anyone from around here. He’d heard it on the radio it wasn’t that boy.

  Heinrich asked if there was any new information.

  It wasn’t that youngster, the farmer reiterated; that had been obvious from the outset. How could they have gone and arrested a young man from the neighborhood?

  Heinrich inquired whether the farmer had spoken with his friend in the police. The farmer said they might never catch the killer, who was bound to be long gone. Heinrich rose and towed the farmer outside, saying that he had to show him something; he didn’t know how to carry out a certain repair to the house.

  After the two of them had left the living room, my partner expressed surprise that the farmer had simply breezed into the house like that.

  It was the custom around here and far from unusual, Eva replied. One morning shortly after they’d moved in, when Heinrich was still on leave because of the move, they were in bed together. Suddenly, the bedroom door opened to reveal the postman standing the
re. It’d taken them an embarrassing few seconds to disentangle themselves and pull up the bedclothes. The postman hadn’t turned a hair. Far from beating an apologetic retreat, he’d handed over a certified letter and, in the overly loud voice typical of the locality, insisted on Heinrich signing for it. Heinrich blew a gasket, said Eva; he got out of bed and signed for the letter stark naked. As if that were not enough, the postman had spent a while talking, in his uncouth voice, about their move and the characteristics of the local weather at various times of year. He had also introduced himself and, with an eye to business, drawn their attention to his private poultry farm. Then, and only then, had he finally left the bedroom and the house.

  My partner inquired if the postman had displayed any other signs of mental derangement. None, Eva replied; such behavior was quite customary here. Workmen, chimney sweeps, mayors, sports clubs, brass bands, ticket sellers for the firemen’s ball—all entered without knocking. If they found no one in the living room or kitchen, they blithely combed the whole house without evil intent.

  My partner said she wouldn’t stand for such behavior; in the Stubenrauchs’ place, she would keep the front door locked at all times.

  That would be unthinkable, Eva rejoined; such a step would cause people in the district to promptly infer either that they, the Stubenrauchs, had something to hide or that they didn’t feel part of the local community. Both inferences would entail certain disadvantages, principal among which were social ostracism and the withholding of neighborly assistance. In this neck of the woods, said Eva, you have to run with the pack.

  Heinrich came back into the house and took off his shoes. Looking into the living room, he swore at the dirt on the floor and went to fetch a mop. In a low voice, Eva asked if he had managed to shake the farmer off. He mopped the floor with gritted teeth until the sweat stood out on his forehead.

  Hadn’t he done well? he demanded, smiling at us. By showing the farmer a hole in the gutter, he had given him something to worry about and distracted him from his tirades. Eva hoped Heinrich hadn’t been unfriendly. He had combined cunning with tact, he replied; the farmer would have nothing to reproach him for. Eva manifested relief at this. She was the one that spent the most time with these people and had to get on with them, she said, being at home while Heinrich was at work.

  Heinrich asked if we could go on playing. My partner fetched two packets of chips and two bottles of mineral water from the kitchen. Depositing them all on the coffee table, she said, Yes, she was ready. We went on with our game.

  After we had played three more hands, the telephone rang. Grumbling, Heinrich searched around for his shoes, which the in-voluntary movements of his feet had pushed in different directions beneath the table, then jumped up and hurried out into the passage.

  While he was speaking with the person on the other end of the line, my partner reverted to the subject of lack of privacy. She asked why people should consider it so reprehensible of someone to keep their house locked up during the day. After all, everyone agreed that half of the rest of the world’s inhabitants were a bad lot. Why should it be any different here? Eva said she didn’t know, but now that unheralded visits from neighbors no longer made her feel uneasy, or she had gotten used to them, she had stopped thinking of locking the front door.

  Unpleasant situations were rare. Indeed, if she discounted the postman’s intrusion, she could think of only one other incident that had unnerved her. On one occasion, one of the African immigrants who roamed around with self-produced and terribly ugly paintings had walked into the house when she was on her own there. Most of these men were students, she said. They went from house to house, mainly in rural areas, offering their little works of art for sale.

  Some days before the visit in question, there had been a press report that Africans had committed two rapes in Graz, so the black picture-seller’s entrance had made her nervous. As a rule, she always gave such people something. This time, she had told him she was poor and he should leave. He’d laughed at her and said she had nice hair. Where was her husband?

  That really alarmed her. He was working upstairs, she’d replied. The picture-seller laughed again and said he didn’t believe her; she was all on her own, and he’d appreciate something to eat and drink. Under other circumstances, said Eva, she would have given him something, but because she found him frightening, she told him to leave.

  He’d started on again about her husband’s absence, however. This had caused Eva to leave the house and request assistance from their neighbor, who was strolling around his farmyard. On seeing the farmer, the picture-seller had promptly fled without trying to interest him or his wife in a picture.

  So my partner could see, Eva concluded, that being embedded in the rural social structure has definite advantages.

  My partner, who was about to raise some objection, was interrupted by an exclamation from Heinrich. We listened. He kept saying, aha, yes, so that’s the way it is.

  Just as my partner was about to respond once more, Heinrich hung up and hurried into the room. The podiatrist had called, he said, but first he needed a drink. He poured himself a glass of wine from a bottle that had been standing around since the previous night.

  The podiatrist? asked Eva.

  Heinrich nodded. Yes, he said, the podiatrist they’d patronized several times since living in the district had called. Some thirty policemen and paramilitaries had passed her house, guns at the ready and heading north. Heinrich surveyed us expectantly.

  My partner asked what he inferred from this. Where did the podiatrist live and what lay north of there?

  Heinrich took a map from some wooden shelves in the corner. Back at the table, he lit a cigarette although he already had one smoldering in the ashtray. Unfolding the map, he said it was the most detailed graphic representation of the area obtainable; indeed, he doubted if even the CIA possessed a better one. He spread the map out on the table (actually, he held it in his hands for a while until we had cleared away playing cards, glasses, bottles, paper and pencils, cigarettes, ashtrays, etc.).

  Then he asked Eva for the pen and drew a line. This is where the podiatrist lives, he said. He had gotten her to describe precisely which way the police were headed and where they had turned, etc., so he was able to plot their route with great accuracy. He extended the line on the map and said, This is where we live, here in the north, then drew a circle around the Stubenrauchs’ house.

  My partner asked how far apart the houses were. A mile or two, Heinrich replied.

  You mean they’re coming here? my partner exclaimed. Is the murderer roaming around in this area? Her voice broke.

  Heinrich said it didn’t amount to anything yet, but first he wanted to have a word with the farmer and instruct him to ask his acquaintances in the district by phone if they had observed any unusual police activity. He himself would do likewise, though he didn’t know many people around here. Meanwhile, we could listen to the radio and look at the news on online.

  Just as Heinrich rose, we heard the neighbor’s voice outside the door. Once again, he came stomping into the living room in his rubber boots. He told us that a Herr Zach had called him and reported that a horde of policemen had tramped through his farmyard. They were heading for the property of the Weber family, not far from here.

  Great excitement reigned in the room.

  This is it, said my partner.

  Heinrich picked up the map. Going over to the farmer, he asked him if he could point out or mark Herr Zach’s farm and the Weber family’s property with the pen. The farmer held the map away from him and squinted at it, then took it over to the window, with the result that his huge, gnarled, filth-encrusted hands and his equally huge, black fingernails were clearly visible.

  Eva quietly remarked that it had stopped raining.

  What did you say? asked Heinrich.

  In the same tone of voice, Eva repeated that it had stopped raining.

  Lucky for the policemen, Heinrich said casually.

  He
once more asked the farmer if he could indicate a definite location. Being unable to read a map, he couldn’t. Laboriously, Heinrich showed him which house lay where and which places, roads, and hills were shown. In that way, he managed to give the farmer an approximate idea of what the map conveyed. The man took the pen and drew on the map.

  Heinrich came back to the table. With the aid of finger movements and oral explanations, he made it clear that the two police contingents so far identified were moving toward each other and said that the Stubenrauchs’ house lay roughly on their line of convergence. My partner sprang to her feet without uttering a word or doing anything else. It was evident that the situation Heinrich had described alarmed her. It didn’t really mean anything, said Heinrich; on the contrary, it was highly amusing.

  About to add something, he was interrupted by the entrance of the farmer’s wife. She said a brief hello, then breathlessly informed her husband that the mayor had called to say he couldn’t get through.

  The mayor? said the farmer.

  Yes, she replied, Hans Fleck.

  He called? said the farmer.

  Yes, she replied, he can’t get through.

  Get through where? asked the farmer.

  By car, she replied.

  Heinrich intervened. Had the mayor really called and what exactly had he said? The farmer’s wife replied that he had called to say he’d meant to drive to Farmer Kienreich’s, which was only a third of a mile from here, but a police roadblock had held him up—him, the mayor. The whole area was cordoned off. The murderer was being sought here. Even the mayor himself had been prevented from driving on. He had called to tell the farmer to lock his door, and everyone in the area should do likewise. It was outrageous that nothing had been said on the radio.

  Frozen-faced, my partner demanded that we leave at once by car. She had no wish to stay here, she said. Before I could reply, Heinrich told her she was being absurd. In the first place, a single individual posed very little threat to the persons assembled here. Secondly, she ought to ask herself if she wouldn’t have to summon up even more courage to drive along deserted roads under potential threat from the camera killer. And thirdly, she mustn’t leave him and Eva all on their own. This he said with a smile. My partner sighed and rolled her eyes.