The Mattress House: A Kovacs and Horn Investigation (Kovacs & Horn 2)

by Paulus Hochgatterer

  Horn pressed his thumb against the side of his front tyre. The pressure was O.K. The nose of a dark-blue Lexus was jutting into the bicycle park. Horn got annoyed and kicked the front tyre.

  As he was cycling westwards along Achenallee, he thought of Tobias, his lethargy, the contempt he showed for adults, and how he’d even gone so far as to crush an egg. He imagined him sitting in the Volvo, bombing along a country road, putting his foot down whenever he could, and the fruit trees whizzing past to the left and right. He pictured triumph and anger in his face. Who taught him how to drive? he wondered, but no answer came. He hadn’t, and Irene certainly hadn’t. Probably one of the dopeheads he hung out with. Maybe he’s got debts and he’s using the Volvo as security, he thought, maybe he’s just doing the decent thing and taking the car to a dealer. Then the phrase “A stinking young man is sitting in a stinking old car” came into his head, just like that, and this made him laugh so much that he careered into the pavement for a second. A lady in a grey felt hat jerked on the lead of her poodle and threw him a filthy look.

  Irene came to meet him outside the house. “Have they got him yet?” she asked. “Has who got who?” he said, steering for the garage. “The police,” she cried, running after him. “Have they got him yet?” The police first had to pass on the information, he said, before any sort of manhunt could get underway.

  “God knows where he’ll have got to by then!”

  Horn got off his bike and locked it away. He wouldn’t get far in that car, he said, the last time he looked the tank was only just half full, and knowing his son, he wouldn’t have any money on him. He went up to her. She recoiled. She could not stand his cynical composure, she said. In this case, he replied, he was responsible for the composure and she for the panic, it was similar to the division of labour in their relationship between rationality and idyll. “Have you at least called him?” she asked. “He’s driving,” he said, “think about it.” She stood there on the gravel path, looking at him and started to cry. I’m playing games with her, I’m letting her deal with her fear on her own, I’m making her feel guilty and this doesn’t make me feel bad, he thought, I love my wife and yet at the same time I need to punish her. He walked towards the house. “What are you doing?” she shouted. “I’m going to get changed and give the climbing hydrangea a prune,” he said. “It’ll give me the chance to think.” He could hear that she had not moved from where she was standing behind him. He did not turn round.

  While he was on the ladder with secateurs and garden wire he recalled the day when he had taught Tobias how to ride a bike, the boy’s stubbornness, his tendency to fall to the left the moment he let go of him, and the triumph that both of them felt when he was pedalling but did not realise for some time that Horn was no longer holding onto him. He recalled that December in Tobias’s third year of primary school when for no apparent reason he had refused to go on a school trip, the birthday party a few months later when he had encouraged all his friends to throw sandwiches and cake at each other, and the miserable state he had been in the previous year when he tore his meniscus in a football match. Horn had packed his knee in ice, prescribed him a can of Coke and two diclofenac pills, and told him about the operation he would have to have. Only after that did he put him into the car.

  He climbed down from the ladder, gathered up the hydrangea prunings in a basket, and took them to where they had their bonfires behind the barn. The air was damp and smelled of grass. A sombre, greenish lustre hovered above the lake, like a pane of frosted glass. It was like that when the elevation of the sun was at a particular point. The Kammwand had a fringe of whitish-yellow clouds. He wondered what sort of a city Tallahassee was, and where. Perhaps beside a lake. Then he remembered the trip to the Limestone Alps in Upper Austria, when his father’s brother had opened the door to his light-blue Opel Kadett and said, “You drive.” He had been sixteen.

  All was quiet in the kitchen. The fridge motor clicked in from time to time. He called the cat, but she did not appear. Easter’s almost upon us, he thought, and yet I’m barely aware of it. He thought of Easter egg hunts and how Tobias used to bite the ears off the Easter bunny. He’s older than I was then, he thought, and obviously he knows how to drive.

  Black with a few molecules of sugar, that’s how she liked it. Horn put both cups on the tray and headed for the barn. She was playing long, deep notes, first descending, then going up again. “Sounds like a didgeridoo,” he said, putting her coffee down. She lowered her bow and said nothing.

  He’d been thinking, he said, and he had now remembered the second time that he’d hit Tobias. It had been on his birthday, she must remember it. He’d booked a table in La Piccola Cucina, especially for the boys and the restaurant’s pizza diavolo. Tobias was sitting in the living room, he said that “Mr Bean” was on and that Horn could go and stuff his birthday dinner. Then Horn asked him again whether that meant he would rather watch “Mr Bean” than celebrate his father’s birthday, and Tobias said, yes, exactly.

  She drained her coffee, put the cup on the floor and set a sheet of music on the stand. Horn sat on one of the chairs by the wall and listened. Sometimes it was comforting to feel that you didn’t have to behave like an arsehole all the time.

  The call came half an hour later. Horn fished his mobile out of his trouser pocket. Irene, who had been practising again and again a short, wild piece Horn did not know, broke off in mid-flow. It was Michael. Tobias had just turned up at his work, with the Volvo and the cat. He didn’t want to come home for the time being, so Michael would take him back to his flat. “With the cat?” Horn asked. Yes, with the cat, but that was a long story. Anyway, he was fine, and Gabriele would be back from work soon to look after him.

  “Look after? Tobias?”

  Yes, he obviously needed a bit of looking after and, no, he hadn’t had an accident, nor had he been brought in by the police. Eighty, he had driven about eighty kilometres in all. Yes, a small stretch of motorway, too. No, he didn’t want to talk to his parents just yet.

  “Is he stoned?” Horn asked. “What, are you mad?” Michael said. Horn looked at Irene, as if Michael’s answer were her responsibility. She sat there crying. Two brothers, Horn thought, just those two words. “Do you mind if I ask just one more question?” Horn said. “Did you teach him how to drive?”

  “What do you think?” Michael said.

  FIFTEEN

  At two o’clock in the morning the April sky was like summer. Ludwig Kovacs was standing on the flat roof, his head back. Corona Borealis was at the zenith, directly to the west was red Arcturus, to the east the Summer Triangle: Deneb in Cygnus, Vega in Lyra and Altair in Aquila. The sky’s reliable, he thought, everything’s in its right place at the right time. He looked through the eyepiece of his telescope and swivelled round to Albireo, the head of Cygnus, a double star in which one partner shone orange, the other blue. To the north of Daneb he found Lacerta, the little lizard, a constellation one could only see if the conditions were really good. He was delighted and freezing cold. In summer he would sometimes bring his mattress and duvet up to the roof and spend the night outside. He had not yet been able to persuade Marlene to do the same. Now she was probably fast asleep on that strange futon in her flat. Charlotte ought to spend the first evening alone with him, she had said, with nobody resembling a stepmother anywhere nearby. But she wasn’t a stepmother, he had said, and she had replied that, yes, she was one, of sorts. “But I’d still love you to be here,” he had begged her, and she had said, “You’re such a cowardly father.” Now he was indeed alone in the flat with his daughter, he felt insecure and hassled and was gazing at the stars. Sleep was out of the question.

  He thought of Marlene, of the double crown at the back of her head, right by his nose when he lay behind her, of her passion for old things and the flights of jealousy that sometimes overcame him. The truth is that I’d like to have her as my mother and not as my daughter’s stepmother, he thought, but that’s almost as kitsch as those chubby-fac
ed porcelain dolls in her shop. He thought of the things she had told him about her marriage, about her husband’s gambling addiction, his infidelity, and his fits of despair. She had shown understanding, acted as his guarantor and paid up; in the afternoons he had gone to addiction counselling, and in the evenings to the casino. In the end they had got divorced; she was left with forty thousand euros of debts, and he had vanished from one day to the next, just like that, no forwarding address: The number you have dialled has not been recognised. She swore never to let a man near her again, and kept this up for two years. Then came the break-in.

  There was no sign that the shop door had been forced, not even a scrape. The burglars had taken a Renaissance cupboard with alabaster inlay, and had chiselled out a safe which had been built into the wall behind the desk in her office. It had contained a few watches and pieces of jewellery from people’s personal estates, which beneficiaries had given to Marlene to sell on commission. She ran around the shop in circles, again and again – he remembered it well – saying, “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him.” He spent some time taking photographs and making notes, notified Mauritz, and finally brought her a large mocha with whipped cream from the café across the road. She looked at him with wide eyes and he said, “Strong coffee’s good when someone’s done you over, and whipped cream’s always good.” She gave a sudden laugh and sat down to go through the details with him. Two days later he already knew that she liked wearing brightly coloured underwear and what it felt like when she grabbed him between the legs.

  A hand’s width above the hills to the north, and shining bright yellow, was Capella, the goat’s head on the shoulder of Auriga, the charioteer. The flashing light of a plane slid slowly between the breasts of Cassiopeia. Further to the west, the night lights of the woodworking factory diminished the view. Kovacs put the lens cap back on the eyepiece.

  Eyltz had given him an earful when he went to request Lipp: What sort of a team was it if they needed back-up for such a trifling matter? And was Demski just doing university work again? Demski was busy joining international networks that dealt with sex offenders, Kovacs said, and the fact that this matter was trifling was what made it so difficult – nobody took it seriously and yet everybody was getting worked up about it. Get Demski back from Berlin, Eyltz ordered, a day or so wouldn’t make any difference, and anyway, Furth was hardly a hotbed of child pornography. Michaela Moor, that’s all I’ll say, was Kovacs’ reply, and Eyltz said, yes, but that was now nine years ago, the perpetrator was a tax officer from Wels and there had been nothing international about that case, no Internet deals or any stuff like that. He didn’t really know much about the Internet and that sort of stuff, Kovacs said, standing up, but he knew it wasn’t good. Eyltz shouted after him that he could have Lipp if he promised to nail the culprit by Easter. “Which year?” Kovacs asked, but Eyltz must already have been out of earshot. He’s wearing a new jacket, Kovacs thought as he left, brown tweed with leather buttons, and he pictured Eyltz shooting ducks or wild goats on one of those Hebridean islands, and then having himself measured up for the jacket.

  He folded up the tripod, put it on his shoulder and went down the iron spiral staircase to his flat. He leaned the telescope against the wall of his bedroom and did not even attempt to go back to sleep. He stood in the living room and cocked an ear to the gallery, where Charlotte was sleeping. Nothing. “How do punks sleep?” he had asked her, and she had said, “Standing up – so you don’t ruin your mohican.” He had believed her at first. They had eaten olives and cheese and drank lemonade. He told her about the black owl, described how her grandfather’s hands had felt on his face, and admitted that he still found the issue confusing. She looked at him sceptically and said hitting children was sick, irrespective of whether it was with bamboo sticks, belts or hands. “And?” he asked. She knew what he meant straight away. “Yes, once,” she said.

  “When?”

  “You were drunk.”

  “You’re mistaken. I only started drinking after you left.”

  “No, you’re mistaken.” He’d come home one evening, muttering that old Strack was a Nazi who didn’t have a clue about investigative work, but could drink like a bloody fish. Kovacs had staggered through the flat, reeling from one wall to another, and she had been absolutely terrified. When he’d gone to take a pee and left the door open, she’d told him, “That’s not on,” and he’d slapped her immediately, once on her left cheek, she remembered it clearly, and she also remembered that shortly afterwards at school she’d learned about the effects of alcohol and nicotine, and she’d felt very ashamed. It was in the first year, you learn about these things in the first year, she said, and he thought it was obviously a good age to be smacked, too. He did not say he was sorry. He would have thought it ridiculous after such a long time.

  He switched on the kettle, put a few dried mint leaves into a glass and poured the water. The mohican had nothing to do with neglect, Charlotte had said, on the contrary, it had to be groomed and stiffened every day, which you could sort of manage yourself so long as it was not taller than a hand’s width. No, she didn’t get any help from her mother on that score, nor in buying clothes; her mother didn’t see the point of black leather with studs. Kovacs was absolutely certain that Yvonne still wore beige suits from April onwards, and grey trouser suits from October, but he kept quiet. Who beats seven-year-old children? he thought. Fathers who leave the door open when having a pee. He took his first sip of peppermint tea and scalded the tip of his tongue. As usual.

  *

  “You should put something more comfortable in your office.” I’m being woken by a grey-haired angel, Kovacs thought, making sure he did not move – anthracite-coloured roll-neck sweater, a narrow face full of intelligence and goodness, and a hand resting on my shoulder, which will relieve the pain that’s coming. “I can’t bear to look,” Eleonore Bitterle said, “the way you’re sitting there.” “Don’t look, then,” Kovacs said, pushing on the armrests of his swivel chair and slowly manoeuvring himself into an upright position. “Are you the first?” he asked.

  “Yes, but the others will be here soon. What’s that? Evidence?” She pointed to the desk.

  “Yes, of my cluelessness.” It was a present he had decided not to give after all. “For Marlene? I’m sorry. I mean, it’s none of my business …” Bitterle said.

  “That’s O.K. It’s not for Marlene anyway.”

  “Who then?”

  “Charlotte.”

  “Your sack-of-potatoes daughter?”

  Just so. The point was that his sack-of-potatoes daughter had recently got herself a bright-green mohican, and with the best will in the world a sun-yellow belt was not going to go with that, rhinestones or no rhinestones. He was right, she said. “Did she send you a photo?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Have you got it on you?”

  “No,” Kovacs said. Why am I lying? he wondered.

  Sabine Wieck and Florian Lipp arrived together, followed soon afterwards by Mauritz with the breakfast pastries. He could not stop humming. “Good sex, then?” Wieck asked. “No,” he said, “I mean, that anyway, but Nikolaus said his first word: ‘Papa’.” “At ten months? – Yeah, right!” Wieck tapped the side of her head. Mauritz looked hurt. Lipp knocked him on the shoulder. “They just don’t understand us – have you noticed? And that starts at ten months.” “Ask Elisabeth,” Mauritz said. Wieck grinned. “About the sex or ‘Papa’?” Mauritz took off one of his shoes and threw it at her.

  They began with a situation report while they drank coffee and ate pastries with hazelnut filling. Lipp was visibly enjoying himself. There were no hazelnut pastries for breakfast when he was with the uniformed officers, nor did he get the chance to sit next to Sabine Wieck. Like an adolescent, Kovacs thought, the roughly cropped black hair, the zit scars, and the way he beams and looks around nervously when he talks to her. Lipp was twenty-four, played badminton and, contrary to what Kovacs had concluded the previous ye
ar, was apparently not gay after all.

  What have we got? Kovacs wrote on the whiteboard and sat down. “A Siamese catfish,” Mauritz said with his mouth full. “A what?” Wieck asked. Mauritz gave her a dismissive wave of the hand. “Later,” he said.

  Panic in the community, Bitterle said, media hysteria and politicians working out their tactics, but most importantly three children who have all been beaten in the same way, two seven-year-olds, one eight-year-old, one girl, two boys. They all go to the same school, the two seven-year-olds are in the same class. It happened to the first one, Felix Szigeti, mid-morning, between 10.40 and 11.25, to be more precise, during the Catholic catechism class he didn’t take part in. Britta Kern and Sen Wu were attacked after class, Britta on a Friday between 11.30 and 12.30, Sen Wu the following Tuesday between 12.30 and 1.30, both of these incidents most likely taking place on the way home from school.

  Why was she talking about an attack? Lipp interrupted. How else to describe it? Bitterle said. After all nothing was taken from the children, Lipp said, and Bitterle replied that she saw it differently.

  The pattern of the beatings was the same – back, shoulder, head – and a hand and bamboo stick were used to administer them. The blows did not appear to have been particularly forceful. The injuries to Sen Wu had probably not been intentional; only his family, his doctors and the school had known about his condition. It was Britta Kern who had described the perpetrator as a “black owl”, both verbally and in a crayon drawing. The other two had basically confirmed the name. What did “basically” mean? Lipp wanted to know and Bitterle said, “They’re not saying anything.” The psychiatrist who had conducted the interviews with the children had said that it was not a post-traumatic reaction, nor selective mutism, but unwillingness to give information because of a concrete fear. “If I say anything the same thing will happen to me,” she said. “What same thing?” Lipp asked. “Great question,” Mauritz said.