by John Brady
“If they are,” Felix repeated. “Then…?”
“Right,” said Speckbauer, in a strange voice, half whisper, half sigh. “What the hell were these tschuschen doing up here in the hills? Isn’t that your question?”
Using the street word for anyone from Yugoslavia was a test, Felix thought immediately, a taunt. He concentrated on driving.
“Well, Christ and His Mother,” said Speckbauer in the same soft, almost bemused voice now. “Don’t stop now, Gendarme Kimmel.”
Felix changed for a bend that held a small pool of water by the ditch.
“Smuggling,” he said. “Sorry, ‘trafficking.’ And that’s why the Kripo is in, why you’re in.”
“Not bad,” said Speckbauer. “Remember I said accident, how shooting two people could hardly be an accident? I wasn’t being sarcastic. And I’ll tell you why: it’s because it was an accident in some way — a mistake, at least. ‘Irregular,’ let’s say.”
“It should not have happened, you mean? Wait — that sounds just blod.”
“There’s been a slip up,” Speckbauer went on. “And that is the policeman’s friend. I worked many years ago with a fine fellow — actually he was an arschlocher to everyone — but he got his job done. He was my first C.O. when I went detective. I will not burden you with his name. But my point is this. As he would say, we do not need to be a genius here, Horst. We just need to find a mistake.”
“Who made this mistake, then?”
“Ah, you’ll give me heartburn with that one. What are they teaching guys like you about trafficking at that Gendarmerieschule these days?”
“Well, that it’s a big business. Drugs, guns, anything. People, women.”
“Okay. So trafficking is about articulated trucks on the autobahn, going hell for leather toward Frankfurt or Amsterdam. It’s trains, it’s plane cargo, five or ten kilometres up there. Depps with stuff in the frame of their car, or in their knickers. Now what?”
“Well, why would two men, auslanders, why would they be so far off the beaten track up here?”
“Congratulations,” said Speckbauer. “You are saying what I say to myself. It’s what I say to my fine colleagues in Graz. It’s what I say to certain persons on the phone from Vienna and places even more exotic than that lovely city. The answer is…?”
Felix shrugged.
“The answer is… we don’t know. And that is why we are up here, believing that this is important, very important. The proof of that is what happened to the Himmelfarb family.”
TWENTY
The low thrum of the engine, and the squeaks from the suspension as the car wallowed and even bucked on the mountain road only made the silence of the last 10 minutes of the journey to Festring more pronounced. In that uneasy quiet Felix soon decided that Speckbauer too was marinating in his own thoughts, maybe even as much as he was in his own. The difference was that Speckbauer was showing no signs of that steady and growing foreboding that had been growing in Felix’s mind. It had almost spilled over into dread at times, a dark swirl of images flaring and returning again, no matter how he tried to contain them.
It was almost a relief when the half-dozen houses of Festring came in sight, arriving abruptly after a bend, nestled in a valley whose bright green meadows had been hard-won from the hills.
Gasthaus Hiebler was a modest affair in the traditional style, with ambitious flowerboxes and what looked like a recent coat of paint.
Two cars were parked in a gravelled area to the side, one an Opel with fancy rims. The spring melt was not done with the land up here yet, and the soft, grassy banks of the ditches along the road outside were still saturated. Felix backed in, turned off the engine and held the keys up for Speckbauer.
“So,” said Speckbauer. “Except for that shitbox Opel there, we are in a time machine up here.”
Felix said nothing.
“This is going to be low key,” Speckbauer went on. “We want to know who was in this place when Karl Himmelfarb was in the other night. Who he might have told about the goings on at his farm. He played cards, had a beer, like always, gell?”
Felix nodded. Speckbauer still held the door handle, and stared at the gap where the door had opened a little, and where the cold air was flowing in.
“And my bet is they’ll know you, your name. Your father?”
And Speckbauer was out of the car with that fast, rolling exit that had him on his toes and stretching by the side of the car, the door shut behind him already. He nodded toward the door of the inn.
It was drawn back just as Felix prepared to push it open. A woman in her fifties with a housecoat took a step back.
“Servus,” Felix said.
“Gruss, und wilkommen.”
She had a business smile and grey eyes that reminded Felix of a bird. They fixed on Speckbauer, who had lingered several steps behind. She returned his greeting in the same high, musical accent she had Felix’s.
“Is the gasthaus open?”
“Of course,” she said, and she unclasped her hands to usher them in.
There was a heavy, brothy aroma in the air. Felix glanced at the empty dining room that was off to the left of the entrance.
“Fine day earlier,” she said.
“It’ll return,” said Felix.
How easily it had come out, he thought; how he didn’t even have to think about the reflexive reply he had heard so often from his grandparents.
“Kommen sie,” she said.
The stube even had a kachelofen, and it had been lighted. An old man was seated at a table, a walking stick beside him. He turned and smiled at Felix.
“Well, look what the day brings us,” he said.
“Gruss, Herr Hartmann,” said Felix. “A nice surprise to find you up here.”
He saw that the woman was eyeing Speckbauer.
“Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer and rubbed his hands briskly.
“Did I smell soup?”
There were playing cards spread out over the gingham cloth at the booth where Willi Hartmann sat.
“You are rambling, Felix, is it? Up for the air?”
“Actually not. My friend here is new to the area. He asked if I would show him the sights.”
“Marvellous,” said Speckbauer to Hartmann. “Splendid countryside.”
Hartmann looked from Speckbauer to Felix and back.
“It is that, sir.”
“May I buy you a krugl of beer, Herr Hartmann?”
“No, no, Felix. Ach, how like your father to have said that! No, thank you. I need but the one glass of beer to get wipsi now.”
Then he offered a weak smile.
“There are no prizes for old age, my friends. I should finish my game and go home for a nap.”
“Home is close then?” Speckabuer asked.
“Herr Hartmann lives in the same village as my grandparents,” said Felix. “St. Kristoff.”
“Six hundred and twenty years,” said Hartmann, with a wink.
“Not all mine of course. My family.”
Speckbauer trailed the woman to the bar.
“Soup and a bun would be great,” Felix heard him say. “Is that possible?”
She smiled, and this time Felix saw gold to both sides of her mouth.
“I am the boss,” she said. “So if it’s possible, I will tell you.”
Hartmann moved in on the bench and motioned to Felix.
“Sit,” he said. “Sit. A nice service for your dad, wasn’t it? A good turnout, eh? Respect. Some things don’t change, even in this flyaway world.”
He eyed Speckbauer talking to the woman at the bar.
“My niece is married, you should tell him. Liesl, who runs the place.”
Felix smiled.
“I don’t think he’s up in the hills looking for a wife.”
Hartmann moved his leg again and grimaced. Liesl called out from the bar.
“Soup and jausen for you too, sir?”
Felix shook his head. He asked for beer instead.
“Am I taking someone’s place?”
“Macht nichts,” said Hartmann, with a small wave.
“My chauffeur — he’s in the klo.”
Hartmann’s eyes stayed on Speckbauer for several moments.
“You take your wild card-playing to teach them up here, Herr Hartmann?” Felix said.
“Little teaching they need up here,” Himmelfarb replied. “No.
I go on my rounds here. I am like the priest, you know? My niece married in here years ago. Her husband may own this place, but she is the boss, let me tell you. That’s the Hartmanns for you.”
“And what does the husband work at?” Speckbauer asked.
“This and that,” said Hartmann easily, as though he had been expecting it. “Takes care of the place, he’s handy. There are contracts for the woods, of course. There’s always something, isn’t there? Not like old times, I must say. Your opa could tell you about those, eh, Felix?”
Opa Kimmel, he meant, Felix realized. The eminence grise, was that the expression? The conversation lapsed. Felix looked around the room. It had been kept up, and it was clean, but it had a jaded feel to it. Maybe it was more a hobby, or a custom to keep it open, just to cover costs.
Footsteps and a cough came from the hall. A man appeared in the doorway, pausing when he saw the arrivals to nod.
“Servus alles.”
Felix returned the greeting, followed by Speckbauer.
The man was in his thirties, with tousled red-blond hair and two days’ growth of rust-coloured beard under the crinkly eyes.
There was an easygoing look to him, and he was more than amply padded.
“My chauffeur,” said Hartmann. “Fuchs, Anton Fuchs.”
“Toni,” said Fuchs shaking hands, his eye almost disappearing with his smile. He sat in slowly beside Speckbauer.
“I was telling Felix how I can’t win at cards here at all, Toni. In all the years I have tried.”
“No one can,” said Fuchs. His eyes almost disappeared with another smile again. “Liesl can beat anyone.”
“I hear my name taken in vain,” she called out, as she came through a doorway with a tray. She laid a platter of cold meats, and a half-dozen buns next to a bowl of thick yellowy soup. She raised the empty beer glass.
“Mahzeit,” she said. “Your health.”
Hartmann shook his head. Liesl stood back from the table with her hands on her hips.
“That’s not going to change,” said Hartmann, and he gathered the cards. “You have all the luck meant for me, Liesl.”
Fuchs chortled and had another drink from his glass. For a moment Felix thought of Hartmann’s artificial leg. Had he not considered himself lucky to have survived at all?
His eyes strayed to Hartmann’s wrinkled hands, shaking a little, as he packed away the cards.
“This is the best,” said Speckbauer, and spooned in more soup.
It only helped to make the quiet seem even stronger behind the ting of his spoon and the swallows.
“The work goes well, Felix?”
“So-so,” Felix said. “There is always something.”
“Oh come on now. Your dad would have been so proud of you, to see you in uniform there. So proud.”
He turned to Fuchs.
“Felix’s opa and I, we were kids together. I knew Felix’s father too. May God be good to him, as I know He is.”
“Family?” said Fuchs, his smile almost closing the heavy-lidded eyes again.
“Kimmel,” said Felix. “We started out in St. Kristoff.”
“The Kimmels followed us there,” said Hartmann. “Us Hartmanns. They knew a good thing up here in the hills. “ Hartmann stopped shuffling the cards, and put his head back.
“‘In the green wood is my home Beside the stream no more to roam.’”
Speckbauer held his spoon away from his mouth.
“‘To farm and plough, to hunt the doe.
My land to guard against the foe.’”
Hartmann smiled, put down the cards and sat back.
“It’s not often these days that I meet a fan of our great poet, Peter Rossegger.”
Speckbauer finished the spoonful of soup.
“What Austrian could not be?” he said.
“Well, Felix,” said Hartmann, and cleared his throat. “You travel our backroads with scholars. A great blessing.”
Felix noticed the beer belly now as Fuchs settled into the booth. He exchanged a thin smile with him.
Then Hartmann sighed, and shook his head once. His expression turned sombre.
“Terrible thing, the Himmelfarbs,” he said. “Terrible.”
He seemed to be staring, unseeing, at something across the room. He sighed again.
“I heard you were there with the boy?”
Felix sensed Speckbauer had begun listening more intently.
“You heard that?”
Hartmann nodded.
“Karl knew your name,” he said. “Oh yes. You and another Gendarme, the one he phoned. A friend of his, maybe?”
“They had met over a family matter before,” said Felix. “But not me.”
“It was your father,” said Hartmann, and paused to clear his throat. “He knew your father. Like half the province, such a fine man — may angels guard him.”
“It was only by chance I was there really,” he said.
“I didn’t know Karl all that well,” Hartmann went on, his voice barely audible. Age seemed to have returned with a vengeance to his features, Felix thought. Liesl made her way across from a door that led to a big kitchen.
“Family Himmelfarb,” Hartmann said to her.
“My God,” she said and clasped a dishcloth to her chest.
“Terrible,” she murmured, and then blessed herself. “But ‘Straight to heaven go the honest and the innocent.’”
Felix caught Speckbauer’s eye as the spoon was taking the last of the soup toward his mouth. Poetry, right off the bat? Speckbauer might not be the cynic about rural piety like this, then.
“The boy — God forgive me,” said Hartmann. “My brain is rusty: but what was his name…?”
“Hans,” said Felix. “Hansi.”
“He was everything to them, that boy,” said Liesl, her voice quavering. “There was a problem when he was born, they say. None followed. But on they went, with just the boy. Such a terrible thing.
Tragisch.”
She took out a paper hanky.
“Karl visited here,” said Hartmann. A game of cards, a coffee.
Never alcohol. Right, Liesl?”
She was crying quietly now. She nodded.
“Not so long ago?” said Felix.
“He was here but a day before this happened,” said Hartmann.
He looked around the table with a slow, baleful stare, as though to find agreement.
Fuchs, whose head was down now also, studying the glass, nodded.
“A ‘friend of the house’?”
“Indeed,” said Liesl between sniffs. “For years… And such a dignified man. I can think of no other word. Oh, but he had a cross to bear!”
Several sobs escaped her. Hartmann’s veiny hand reached up.
Felix looked at the patterned brocade curtains by the windows, the folk art on the walls and behind the counter.
“Did you speak with him, Frau Hiebler?”
She nodded.
“The crops,” she said. “The spring. The government. But so polite!”
Felix could feel Speckbauer’s questions piling up unspoken, but he waited.
“Schnappsen,” Hartmann said. “He played only to be polite.
But I think he enjoyed himself. The way a quiet man would. And now look.”
“Indeed,” said Felix, and he turned to tousle-haired Fuchs.
“Did you?”
Fuchs sh
ook his head.
“Working,” he said. “I only heard from the TV. Then a neighbour. That was after the other thing.”
“The other thing?”
“I thought they’d gotten it confused,” said Fuchs, “Or that I had. We all heard about what they found up there behind the farm.
The two, the two auslanders.”
“The poor man!” said Liesel, her eyes shining. “And his poor family!”
“He must have had a terrible shock,” said Hartmann.
“Did he talk about it all, when he was here?”
“Well, it was one of us, I think brought it up,” said Hartmann.
“If I’m remembering. Let me see, who was by… ”
Then Hartmann’s head went up, followed by the rest of him.
He stared, eyes wide at Felix.
“What am I saying, Meine Gott, I am losing my marbles! Your opa was here! Yes! Of course he was! Speak up there, Toni! You brought him, for heaven’s sake.”
Fuchs nodded bashfully, and scratched at his head.
“Toni here is not one much to blow his trumpet,” said Liesl.
“‘The chauffeur.’”
“You drive people?” Felix said to Fuchs.
“Well, only if they can’t find someone,” he said.
“Now Toni,” said Hartmann, his voice back. “No one is accusing you of being a saint, but come on now!”
He looked to Felix again.
“Toni drives us old geezers about sometimes — yes, don’t be modest now, Toni! We aren’t safe behind the wheel, you see. So Toni steps in. When he can, of course.”
Fuchs gave a shrug, and waved away the compliments.
“And helps out,” Liesl added. “With something they can’t do themselves.”
“Oh yes,” said Hartmann. “Fix a window — ask Toni. Move furniture — ask Toni.”
Fuchs shook his head gently, and scratched it again.
“Lose at cards — ask Toni,” he said quietly. He had not looked up.
The smile returned to Hartmann’s face for several moments.
“Well, have you seen your opa since the memorial?”
“No,” said Felix.
“I think it’s a good decision, no?” Hartmann asked. Felix didn’t get it.
“Moving,” said Hartmann. “It’s hard, but it’s the right thing to do, for him.”
“I daresay,” said Felix.