by John Brady
Not something that inspires confidence. All I can find out is that his section is some kind of floater, a ‘task-force.’ No details.”
“In the BP, even?”
Gebhart flicked away the suggestion with his hand.
“Our glorious Polizei? The minute I’d try to weasel anything out of them, an old friend of mine even, they’d be looking in my keyhole.”
He heard Gebhart breathe out heavily through his nose once.
He took it to be exasperation more than humour.
“Okay,” Gebhart said. “If this is true, half of it some of it even you have to report it.”
He gave Felix a hard look.
“That’s my advice. And furthermore, if I was you, starting out my career, and I had an eye on getting places… ”
“Go on, Gebi. Say it.”
“I’d be telling Speckbauer too. That’s the real world these days.
Okay?”
“About my grandfather? I can’t screw over my own family.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gebhart and took a step away. “Don’t forget what you told me on the phone. We’re sticking to that. Or else, I walk.”
“Of course we are.”
“So we are on a timer, right? I give you two hours of my time, two hours I have manufactured as ‘police work’ which is true, even if I have gone along with your fashion request here.”
He paused and indicated his street clothes with a small wave of his hand.
“But if this stuff pertains to a murder investigation, or criminal activity…?”
Felix nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I know. We move it upstairs right away.”
“No family favours,” said Gebhart. “None.”
“No favours,” Felix repeated.
Gebhart seemed to linger on Felix’s words. Then he relaxed.
Felix followed him to his car and they both got in.
“And you’re supposed to be on a beach somewhere,” said Gebhart and turned the key. The diesel caught right away and its first wrenching revs rattled loud in the woods.
“With that nice girl?”
“That’s another story,” said Felix. “But not now.”
“Ah,” said Gebhart, and let it into reverse. He turned to see out the back window.
“Or starting out your new career, maybe looking forward to the heavenly union between us and our betters in the Bundespolizei not running about in off-hours with those two.”
Gebhart checked his mirrors, and then put it in first before the car had even stopped reversing. There was a moment’s hesitation before the car changed direction when Felix thought he too had bogged down. He had not imagined Gebhart capable of blue jeans, or looking like anything but the Gendarme who showed up for work in his uniform each day.
“Those two hounds,” said Gebhart. “They won’t rest long.”
“Speckbauer?”
“They’re not idiots. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all part of their plan.”
“What, us here?”
“Sure. And who is the bigger dummy here, you or me? I should know better.”
Gebhart cleared his throat, and then rolled down his window full. He spat with a peculiar delicacy into the undergrowth slowly drifting by. Felix heard a truck labouring on the road outside, a clash of gears as the driver launched it at the hill with a full load.
“I may be pissing on my pension here,” Gebhart murmured.
“That’s why I had a cigarette. Yes, two and a bit years to go, and I’m starting over. I’ll be the best goddamned house painter you’ll ever see.”
The dark, malty smells from the thawed floor of the forest came through the car even stronger now. Dappled sunlight splashed on the window and disappeared as they rolled bumpily out toward the road.
“I didn’t realize that,” said Felix. “It’s okay if you change your mind.”
“Well now you tell me. But God has made me a magnet for scheisse, it seems. I have no doubt those two pricks will be asking me questions before the day is out.”
“Gebi, look”
“Shut up will you? You don’t know. There’s more here than your mess. All I’m saying is, if I had a brain, I’d be back at the post.”
“I don’t want you to get into scheisse. Look, I’ll go on my way.”
Gebhart sighed.
“Don’t underestimate the desire to get one back,” he said.
“Okay,” said Felix, uncertainly.
“‘Okay’? You haven’t a clue. You don’t need to know. So I never told you.”
“Told me what?”
Gebhart glanced over.
“I didn’t trust you,” he said. “To be frank.”
The car rolled into a lower spot and then a big bump shook the car.
“I know how those assholes work,” Gebhart went on, straining over the wheel to spot any more big dips and bumps. “I learned the hard way. They never believed me. They suspect their own mothers.”
Felix stared at him. Another bump shook creaks from the shocks and Gebhart swore as he righted himself.
“What the hell are you talking about, Gebi?”
“Forget it. It’s bullshit.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to forget it?”
“How can I? What’s with the freak-out here?”
“You want to know? Okay. I’ll tell you. You show up at the post, training for when Korschack heads off for his officer course. He won’t be back, that’s okay. The post is going to be closed anyway, in a year or two. It’s a soft number, a good place to train. Nothing happens in Stefansdorf, right?”
“But why are you mad at me now?”
“Ach! Listen. I won’t be repeating myself. You show up, I was saying. You screwed around in the Uni, making a crap job of it by the looks of things. Then you’re in the Gendarmerie, the Gendarmerie that’s headed for the amalgamation in a year, a new police force that you’ll automatically carry your job into? And you’ll move up by just turning up for duty, because you have your Matura, and a bit of Uni? Home free.”
“You’re like the others, Gebi. You’re suspicious of anyone who doesn’t talk soccer and drink Puntigamer, and trash people.”
“Have I finished? No I haven’t. So listen.”
Felix waited.
“Well? You think you know things? Let me tell you this, then.
Your father goes out and there’s a whisper about him yeah, I heard. And don’t look at me like that. You know part of why they’re getting rid of the Gendarmerie? Do you?”
“Money?” said Felix. “The EU?”
“No, and it’s not because they have to find jobs for the Customs guys now the Slovenians and the frigging Hungarians and the goddamned Czechs are EU. And it’s not just about saving money, or some asshole in Brussels or someplace, or 9/11 crap.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? Deals corruption, whatever the fancy word is. Nobody admits it in public. But those guys know, they know how bad it is. It’s been going on awhile. There’s a wave of stuff coming through, since things went nuts in Yugoslavia.
It can’t fit under the carpet anymore, see? So, they suspect everybody, everything. Now, imagine how you look to that pair. A background like you have.”
“You’re serious, I think.”
“God, but you’re a depp sometimes. So frigging naive. It’s why I said that I didn’t trust you. And I still don’t. But not the way you think. I don’t think you’re bent, like some plan to get you to infiltrate the new police thing or rubbish like that. You’re not crook material. Believe me, I know. But I just don’t trust you. I don’t trust you not to land me in the crap with this stumbling around you’re at.
I lost both ways, see?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake… If I stay clear of you and your nonsense, and ignore those two puppet masters using you for bait or whatever they’re really doing up here well there’s my stu
pid conscience screwed. If you get done in, how the hell can I give those brilliant lectures to my kids about doing the right thing?”
The road came in sight. Gebhart slowed his car even more.
Felix felt it begin to sink a little, but Gebi kept it chugging steadily low in second gear.
“And if I get run over again… life has no improvement there, has it?”
“‘Run over?’ ‘Again’?”
“Yes, ‘again.’ They’re not going to do this again. Not to me.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Gebhart, speaking now almost through clenched teeth. “So the moment of truth here arrives. Didn’t you ever wonder what the likes of me, a brilliant policeman, is doing behind the door in Stefansdorf?”
Felix saw that the anger had passed, and Gebhart’s sardonic tone had returned.
“Not really.”
“Well you should. I am a good policeman. It’s my career.”
“What do you want me to say?” Felix said. “I just thought, well Gebi, he has his security. Promotions happen. You like a quiet life maybe. ‘The landing strip,’ right?”
Gebhart brought the car to a slow stop near the entrance, checking for any sign of soft ground beneath. With the car idling, he rubbed at his nose and looked across at Felix.
“That’s what the old guys call it, sure. No. Me, I have other things, far more important. My kids, my family. You probably think that’s schmaltzy crap, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. But anyway, I’ll tell you. Any other day I wouldn’t, but you are digging your own hole in the ground here. But when I’m done telling you, I don’t want to hear any questions, observations, comment. Got that?”
Felix nodded.
“Fifteen years ago, the Yugos started up again, right? It had been brewing. They have to murder one another every few years. I don’t care if that sounds bad. It’s true. It’s in their genes or something. But there’s shooting and killing and it only gets worse. You were still in diapers probably.”
“I was seven or eight, actually.”
“Seven,” said Gebhart, as through it were a joke. “Eight?
Anyway, I’m probably never going to talk to you, or to any cop, about this again.”
Felix looked up to the patches of sky between the conifers.
“Things move. Money, guns, drugs, any crime it all goes with war if you call that ‘war.’ And here we are, just in the EU. It’s only been a few years, but we’re next door to this crap. So a lot starts to happen. One thing leads to another. You see?”
“So far.”
“Here’s me then. I work with a guy, I won’t even say his name.
I’m friendly with him. I respect him. I socialize with him. You see the picture, what I am about to tell you?”
Felix shook his head.
“A policeman? A Gendarme? You guess the rest.”
Felix returned Gebhart’s gaze.
“I think I do, now.”
Gebhart held his forefinger to his head, and pulled back his thumb, and let it go.
“The way out,” he said. “For him. But not for me. Obviously.”
“They thought…?”
Speckbauer nodded several times, slowly.
“So when you show up at the post, fresh out of Gendarmerie school, I think, well, so what. It’s a good post for it. But then I see your name. And I ask myself this: They’re putting this kid with me?
Whose father was…? You don’t have to be crazy, or paranoid, I should say. So: got all that? Enough of it?”
“I had no idea.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Gebhart. “Don’t I know it. I didn’t either. That’s what happened to me. They gave up on me after a while, the Internals, but I know damned well my file was marked that day. I mean, what was my defence when they said I must have some idea what my partner was up to, that no one can be that stupid, or naive, or…? Now: forget this. You know enough now.”
Gebhart put the car in first gear. He peered over the banks that bordered this part of the road here.
“Listen,” said Felix. “Just go back. I never saw you.”
“Well now. You sound as out of it as I was then.”
“Really. I phoned you, and you turned me down. I’ll drop all this on Speckbauer, the maps, what I heard from my grandparents, all that.”
“Really?” said Gebhart, from some far place behind his squint.
“I’m over my head. Everything’s screwed up.”
Gebhart drew in a breath, held it, and let it out noisily.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “But the world has already spun on.”
“What does that mean?”
“I put in the search on this Fuchs guy.”
“So the system logged you.”
“The system logged me. Or Korschak, or whoever was in the post. It shouldn’t take them more than one half-second to figure out who.”
“‘Them,’” Felix muttered.
“Funny, isn’t it? ‘Them’ ‘Them’ is us, right?”
“Yes,” said Felix. “But are you sure you got the right Fuchs?”
“‘Equipment operator ‘seasonal operator’ in the forestry, the mill?”
“Red hair, beard?”
“No beard on his driver’s licence. Reddish, rusty maybe.”
“Equipment operator? The only time I met him, he was driving an old man to his card games, having a beer and jausen.”
“Slacker?”
“I don’t know, but probably. What’s his record?”
“Surprise: Herr Fuchs is not a criminal.”
“You’re joking.”
“This is not a joking day. Zero. Like I said. I go left here, right?”
The smoother section of road that Gebhart let the Golf onto soon resumed its steep climb, the clattery sound of the engine coming back to Felix from the banks that lined it here.
“What was the passport picture like?”
“He doesn’t have one. But the EU’s a big place to wander now, isn’t it? Anyone can get into a car and drive to, I don’t know, Paris, and no one has to know.”
“Married, family or anything?”
“Not married, in his thirties, does what he pleases. Sounds like a pretty good life to me. I’ll bet he has a killer CD collection and a garage full of decent tools.”
“And who knows,” Gebhart added after a few moments.
“Maybe he’ll turn out to be a half-decent fellow. So he drives some local geezers about a bit? Sounds like a good thing, one would say.
Families are busy these days, you know. So busy.”
Felix checked his watch.
“Well I phoned my Opa Kimmel. He’s not going out this afternoon, he said.”
“Is he used to you calling in on him?”
Felix shook his head.
“He has all his marbles?” Gebhart asked. “Or enough of them?”
“We’ll see,” was all Felix could come up with. “He can be a bit.. remote.”
“You said the village,” said Gebhart. He pushed against his seat belt to look around at the church and houses receding in his mirror.
“It’s spread out,” said Felix. “Go up the hill here, and watch for tractors. It’s tight. It gets narrower further up.”
Gebhart weaved his head about to get a last look at the church tower in the side mirror before the car took the summit. The road began a gradual descent into a small valley that appeared to be the last before the mountains started behind.
“Is that your family church back there, the graveyard?”
“It is.”
Gebhart braked and then he geared down when the road entered a curving cut between banks. The first of the grass in the meadows here had established itself, and to Felix now seemed to almost hover above the fields in an almost luminous filament, more like baby hair than the hardy, thick grasses they’d be before the month was out.
“Well you won’t often see that,” Gebhart said. “
Those masons know their stuff.”
“The masons?”
“That wall by the graveyard. The road was made later, or it sank or something?”
“I suppose.”
“You mean you don’t know, and you grew up hereabouts?”
Flattened cakes of mud from tractor wheels began to spread out more across the pavement. The rumbling coming up from the tires became more constant. Winter had chewed up the edges of the road in many places. Without planning to, Felix had been rehearsing how he’d approach his grandfather, how he’d persuade him to talk about his past. He could already imagine the distant gaze and the indifference in his eyes, the slow, steady enunciation of his words, each weighed.
Gebhart slowed for two potholes.
“Maybe we should have parachuted in.”
“Well you’ll have something to talk to my Opa Kimmel about then.”
“Parachutes? Potholes?”
“He wanted to be a paratrooper. ‘To land on Crete’ my dad told me once.”
“And did he?”
“He was fourteen when that was going on.”
Gebhart changed into second for a steep section.
“All the wind and air up here maybe,” he murmured. “Gets into you, maybe?”
The Golf chugged through the section of road that ran almost through the Klamminger’s farmyard.
“What?” said Gebhart. “The one place we pass, and there’s no action here?”
There was fresh mud in the yard, clothes on the line.
Something about the turn in the road, or the drumming of the muddy roadway, had awakened something in Felix. He thought of his Grandfather Kimmel, that upright way he sat in the church pew, as though he were in a trance.
“Talk about out of the way,” Gebhart went on. “Is he a hermit or something?”
When Felix didn’t answer, Gebhart looked over.
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
“No. I’m thinking. Keep going.”
Felix opened the window. There was a sharp edge to the air up here. Gebhart sighed and reached for his mobile.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Nothing now. I had one bar back in the village.”
Felix pointed to a line of electricity poles and the ragged clump of conifers, a windbreak, where it ended.
“You’ll see the roof in a minute,” he said.
“Where is everybody?” asked Gebhart. “Doesn’t everyone here depend on their neighbours?”