Poachers Road ik-1

by John Brady

  “… she’s nice. She says it’s an addiction though, but she laughs. For now.”

  “Addiction?”

  “The whole business: the fitness thing, that’s okay, but twelvehour bike marathons up in the Alps?”

  “Right. Is Peter hitting on you?”

  “What? I’m in my room, looking out over the valley, reading.”

  Speckbauer and his weirdo skin-graft sidekick ‘Franz’ returned to the forefront of Felix’s thoughts.

  “And drinking wine.”

  “… and thinking of…?”

  “Of how much a genius Hesse really was.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re thinking?”

  “Basta it’s enough, isn’t it?”

  Speckbauer had given him a mobile number. Maybe he’d go to a call box, phone him and hang up, just to annoy him. Herr Supercop Speckbauer, coming out from city to the lame-head trottels in Stefansdorf because, as everyone knew, the three Gendarmerie there couldn’t put their heads together enough to make heat.

  “Listen, Felix. Go to bed.”

  “I’m in the wrong part of Austria.”

  “Go out and buy a teddy bear or something then.”

  “You make sure you get on that train tomorrow, okay? I’ll pick you up in Graz and we’ll carry on our weekend. I’m sorry it screwed up.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I thought it was over, that business.”

  “I wish I were there, you know. But… ”

  “If,” he began, and then let it go.

  “If what?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She waited “Tell me,” she said then.

  “If he hadn’t have been, well, you know.”

  “The boy you…?”

  “‘Boy,’” said Felix. “Everyone calls him that. That was funny, sort of. But not anymore.”

  “Felix, you’re upset. I’m worried about you.”

  Stubbled faces, the blood gone black as the men’s hair, and the glitter from dead eyes visible where the eyelids were slightly parted.

  “Go to your mom’s tonight, or Lisi, maybe?”

  He returned to her.

  “The cure would be worse than the problem,” he said.

  He found a filler to wind up, and finished the conversation with a small private joke they had about how Giuliana lay when she slept.

  Was he sure he didn’t want to come back up for the Saturday night, she asked. It wouldn’t be the same, he told her. Then he made sure he had the arrival time of the train back to Graz Hauptbanhof.

  He shifted noodles from the freezer to the microwave. He ate them while he finished two cans of cheap lager in front of the TV.

  Then he lay back on the couch and, rather than compose his thoughts as he’d hoped he’d know how, he conked out.

  Felix’s furry mouth had been improved considerably by 10 minutes in the shower the next day at seven o’clock. He had had none of the ghastly dreams he’d expected. He put on a T-shirt and jeans; he didn’t bother shaving. Then he put away the debris from last night, and decided he’d get a croissant and a coffee at the Anker near the bridge. His mood had lifted, he was beginning to believe: there was a holiday to resume, for God’s sake.

  He was pulling the door of the apartment shut when the phone went. He dithered for two rings and answered it.

  “Well, I am glad to hear your voice,” said the caller.

  “You are?”

  “I am Horst Speckbauer. You may remember me from the other day?”

  “Oberstleutnant Speckbauer.”

  “You are not on duty I know, but I’d be much obliged if you could give me a bit of your time.”

  “Well, is this really necessary? I’m supposed to be on holiday.”

  Felix winced at the limp “supposed to be.”

  “It is a matter of some importance. I think you will find it interesting, what I will tell you.”

  “You will tell me?”

  “I know you are concerned, and I wish to assist you. It is a tough thing that has happened, a very tough thing.”

  Felix looked down at the notepad by the phone. A “tough thing” indeed: he was ready to yell that he never wanted to hear either Speckbauer or Gebi or any other cop calling something like this “tough” or “hard.” Cruel, was what it should be, and outrageous.

  “You returned,” said Speckbauer. “Last night, was it?”

  “A temporary visit, I am hoping, Oberstleutnant.”

  “Please. I will come over to your place. Ten minutes?”

  In the few moments before he replied, Felix understood that he’d made up his mind a long time ago: there’d never be another cop talking business where he and Giuliana lived. Gebhart had it right: you keep your family life private, shielded from this. He wouldn’t give Speckbauer the satisfaction of asking him how he’d gotten his home number, or how he’d known his movements.

  “I’m going out for breakfast.”

  “Great. Tell me where.”

  “Keplerstrasse. There’s an Anker there.”

  “Anker?”

  “You know the bakery and restaurant chain? Just across the bridge.”

  Felix looked out to the bike rack to make sure his city bike was still locked there. He checked he had his keys and his mobile. He considered taking a couple of aspirin. His headache was coming back, and he felt a tension starting in his shoulders and neck.

  He took his time on the way to the bridge, trying with little success to relish how sprightly the people were in this green city now booming in late spring. What was wrong? There were even halter tops out, and few enough tourists. He had nothing against tourists, even though the European City of Culture Award a few years back had blown the place wide open.

  It was more than just the tarted-up museums and galleries and exhibits and sandblasted facades, more even than the gigantic Art Island in the Mur that he’d watched going up, along with the enormous building on the bank beside it. Something had changed in this city, but he couldn’t say what. Maybe, as Giuliana had half joked last year at a party where everyone had shown up and drank far too much into the early hours, maybe Graz had been moved close to Berlin, and away from the East. Just the green mound at the heart of this old city, the Schlossberg, remained. Most times they forgot the “cave” beneath that they’d drilled out for the same City of Culture year, and installed computers and holograms and the like.

  Felix still liked to walk up the steep paths of the Schlossberg. If nothing else, it was a workout of sorts. Once, just after he had started Uni, he had tried to run to the top, with some loony idea that he would race a group whom he had passed on their way to the funicular. He had had to walk about three-quarters of the way up near the beer garden with spots exploding before his eyes and his heart hammering. The last of his ascent had been strange, and unexpected. Maybe it had been his exhaustion, or the sharp, clear October sky, or more likely the absence of anyone else at such an hour, but he had felt he was far from the city then. It had felt like he was actually approaching the summit of some remote peak. The red roof tiles and the gentle curve of the River Mur that held in the old city centre so far below seemed new and unknown.

  But what right did he think to imagine that it was “his” city at all, he thought, as he eyed the traffic on his way to turn up Wickenburg Gasse and head for the Kepler Bridge. It was Giuliana, daughter of an immigrant, who had struggled and succeeded, and had secured herself an enviable place right in the heart of the old city here, something he couldn’t have begun to imagine he’d have found. “Stowaway,” Giuliana had called him several times right after he had moved into her place. A joke, of course, and it had gone on for a while, part of the private language of sorts they came up with. Bedroom talk, silly anywhere else.

  He locked his bike and got his order in before he turned at the creaky door’s opening and the surge of traffic noise.

  “Double that, gnadige frau,” Speckbauer called out as he crossed the floor. “I’ll pay also.”
<
br />   Felix waited. Speckbauer was humming. Then he engaged the woman preparing the tray in a short one-sided banter about spring, holidays, and the need to know when it was necessary to simply stop working and enjoy life.

  Felix took in the studied breeziness. Speckbauer was quite the performer. As though aware of Felix’s thoughts, Speckbauer turned to him.

  “If you’re wondering about Franzi, he is otherwise engaged.

  Saturdays he relaxes in his own way.”

  “Is this a workday for you?”

  Speckbauer seemed to consider the question.

  “It is,” he said and made a smile. “I do believe it is.”

  Then he stretched, and he turned to the windows. Something seemed to please him: the blossoming trees along by the river, the air of purposive, pleasant shopping and Saturday cafe hopping, perhaps, Felix guessed.

  “Ah,” said Speckbauer, and rubbed his hands together briskly.

  “To have all of this. Life is good, huh? For those who can live it.”

  He paid and left a tip, and carried the tray to a table against the back wall.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, tearing up one of the croissants. “So eat up.”

  Felix dipped his and watched a couple disentangle themselves from their embrace near the bridge.

  “I will talk then, if that’s okay with you?”

  Felix looked for any giveaway signs of sarcasm.

  “Go ahead.”

  Speckbauer took a considered sip of his coffee, and dabbed and wiped his moustache with a napkin.

  “Chronologically: your good police work, and the good instincts of our supervisory officer Gebhart, have led to the discovery of a double murder. This is in a remote area, relative to our cities and towns. It is in the forest beside a farm. On a little weg that goes along by the land of the Himmelfarb family. Known locally as Wildererweg. The poacher’s path, or road.”

  At this he paused, stared for a moment at the pieces of croissant still uneaten.

  “The matter is being investigated,” he went on then. “By expert police and police specialists here in Graz, to determine how, when, and ideally why these men were there. And who they are, naturlich.

  So far, by the book, okay?”

  An Asian couple passed outside, one holding a bag tightly to her side, the other a high-end digital camera at the ready.

  “You, a probationary officer, under the guidance of the experienced Bezirkinspektor Josef Gebhart, are now considered officer ancillary to this investigation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you are part of a team. It will be noted to your credit how you helped initiate this investigation. It will be a valuable experience for you in particular. When the Gendarmerie and the Bundespolizei are finally amalgamated, well… ”

  Speckbauer left the sentence unfinished, but gave Felix a knowing glance to indicate the golden future awaiting. Then he pushed his chair back. He took out a starched, cloth handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “Well, may I ask a question?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Speckbauer.

  “Why are you phoning me at my apartment?”

  “Isn’t that your home?”

  “Of course it is. But is there something irregular?”

  Speckbauer eyed him with a glazed look while he blew his nose again. What housewife had starched her man’s handkerchief, Felix wondered. Did anybody else in the 21st century use a cloth handkerchief?

  “Ah. Before I answer this, let me make a guess at something. I think that you wish that you could address me as a person you met on the street, let’s say. As if there were no rank or hierarchy to confuse matters. Is that so?”

  “Isn’t that human nature?”

  “You perhaps want to say, who knows ‘Pas auf? Get lost?’ Or, something like: ‘Who the hell are you to annoy me like this, Kripo guy, with my week’s leave I’ve been dreaming of since I got out of Gendarmerie school?’ Or at the very least, ‘Do I have to put up with you so as not to jeopardize my employment? My chance to be in the Alpini maybe?’”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Sure about that? That you didn’t wish you could speak more, er, directly?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  Felix gave him a dubious glance, but Speckbauer waved his hands.

  “Okay then,” said Felix. “First is, how do you know all these things? My phone number, what I might want to work at? My girlfriend’s name?”

  “When you enter the Gendarmerie, you allow information such as this to be open for inspection by certain branches of our service.”

  “I don’t understand how anyone could just access those files.”

  “I am not just anyone. What were your other observations?”

  “Am I suspected of doing something wrong?”

  Speckbauer gave a short, sudden guffaw.

  “No. But did you wish to volunteer information perhaps?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “You are too polite to put other questions, perhaps.”

  “I am here talking with you. That means something.”

  With a slight nod, Speckbauer seemed to flick away a retort unspoken.

  “Indeed,” he said instead. “On your first ‘normal’ weekend since you started. Wait until you have a family.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh sure. You’ll move up the ladder if you have kids. You’ll be awarded the sacred weekend more often. You’ll do great, I’m sure.

  Education and all that.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll bear that in mind, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “‘Herr Oberstleutnant?’ Are we back to that?”

  Felix gave Speckbauer a skeptical look.

  “I think it might be preferable, under the circumstances.”

  “What, are you suspicious of compliments?”

  “But how can you make that observation?”

  Speckbauer’s eyes narrowed, but not unkindly.

  “For example, you held the hand of this unfortunate boy, Himmelfarb, when it was necessary. You won his confidence, didn’t you?”

  “I-”

  But then Felix stopped. He wouldn’t let Gebhart look bad in front of this cop.

  “I know,” said Speckbauer. “You were ‘encouraged to.’ I know.

  But look at what happened. He fell for you. He wanted to tell you things, and you only.”

  Felix watched an old woman enter the shop.

  “Hansi Himmelfarb had found a friend in you. So you have a gift, I say. People trust you, you see.”

  Something sagged inside Felix. He thought of Frau Himmelfarb, her leathery face already ruddy from the wind and sun of the spring and her outdoor life, the headscarf she would have put on each morning and left on until going to bed. All the Himmelfarbs had wanted, or expected, was to continue their simple life there on a mountain farm that had probably been in their family for centuries, to carry on the routines, to improve things a little, to hand it on.

  Speckbauer’s scrutiny of him was not the cynical survey he had expected.

  “You are agitated,” he said. “Don’t be suspicious. It’s to your credit.”

  “What?”

  “Agitation suggests you have morals. You are not ‘cool.’ All to the good.”

  “I don’t know where this is going.”

  Speckbauer rested one leg over the other, ankle over knee, and studied the side of his shoe. A woman with deep olive skin and a hijab entered the bakery.

  “You drove down here because you believe you need to be involved,” Speckbauer murmured then. “That’s not irrational. Guilt too, perhaps? Were you trying to think of what you might have overlooked on that visit to the Himmelfarbs’, when you had that pedal ground into the floor on the autobahn, putting the Mercs and the Porsches in your rearview mirror?”

  “Some of the time, yes.”

  “What did you remember then? From when the boy was talking.”
/>
  “That’s the trouble,” Felix said. “Nothing.”

  “The kid said ‘sleep.’ ‘They’re sleeping.’”

  “Yes.”

  “But he wouldn’t go up there. He wouldn’t go out of the house, basically. Don’t you think he knew they were dead?”

  “Who knows what goes on in a mind such as that,” said Felix.

  “The shrinks call it ‘averse.’ Are you sure the boy didn’t mention days, or time?” “No.”

  Speckbauer put his leg back down and he studied the tabletop.

  Then he narrowed his eyes.

  “Well, you were out of town,” he said. “So you didn’t do it, did you?”

  “That’s not funny, if you’ll allow me to say so, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “I will. I certainly will. But you’ve surely copped on to why I’m talking to you here. You know, I’m sure of it. I saw it on your face.”

  When Felix didn’t speak, Speckbauer leaned in over the table.

  “Okay, then, I’ll say it. There is something wrong when a citizen phones his Gendarmerie post with a request to talk to them to a certain officer Kimmel and he and his family burn to death in a house fire not long after. Are you hearing me?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Now you need to know this as well. I we are checking each and every part of the goings on concerning this, including calls and records from the post that day. Even gossip. Things overheard, and passed on. Rumours. Notes left lying around. Remarks passed to spouses. Fiancees, even.”

  Speckbauer’s gaze was not unfriendly.

  “Everyone,” Speckbauer added. “Without exception.”

  The Muslim woman at the counter was not quick with her change. Felix eyed the carefully neutral expression of the clerk waiting. It was the Austrian way in action all right, Giuliana had said many times: whatever you say, say nothing.

  “You have an opportunity now, Felix,” said Speckbauer. “Or Inspektor, if you prefer. Your opportunity is to assist in this case.

  Your expertise is being requested from your post Kontrolinspektor at the moment. Schroek? So it is a semi-big deal.”

  “Expertise? I don’t have any. I’m a probationary Gendarme.”