by John Brady
“Wolfsberg? A long way from home, isn’t it?”
“Precisely. There is a lesson in everything, I tell you.You didn’t believe me at first, did you.”
“What’s the lesson here, Seppi?”
“The lesson, my young friend, is this: shit lands on our path, unpredictably. So be flexible.”
“Thank you.”
“If you ask me, it’s the bus driver should go up in the dock.
He’s the idiot got off the autobahn, so as the real idiots could start the trouble. ‘But they were going to go in the bus!’ he says.”
“Go, like, pee?”
“Oh it gets better. ‘It’s Number Two,’ says one fellow. ‘I can’t just go in the woods!’ Would this have anything to do with eating salami from the side of a road in Hungary, then unknown litres of beer? Rauschkugal: a proper bunch of drunkards.”
Gebhart left any further lament for the stupidity of the general soccer-going, beer-swilling, bus-taking hooligans unsaid. He returned to the computer, where he pecked out a few words with that tentative, check-every-word style of one who distrusts the device. He saved with a flourish of the mouse and logged off.
Then he scanned what looked like court deposition forms, yanked open the drawer and slid them in, but not before checking something there already. Satisfied, he slammed the drawer shut and laid his meaty hands on his blotter. He watched Korschak head down the hallway to the kitchen, and then turned to Felix again.
“Is that too loud for you today?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“A change from yesterday, then. Let’s get ready.”
Gebhart took keys out of his pocket, fingered his way to the one for the armory, and then squinted up at Felix.
“Remember,” he said. “I really don’t want to hear about it if you’re not one hundred percent because of your, extracurricular, is that the word? This is a paramilitary service you’re in. That’s page two of the manual. Memorize it.You know where the Gendarmerie is from, right? When we had the Turks thinking they’d plunder our green valleys here?”
Felix nodded.
“Pack the gear. Make sure you get the proper tripod, that new one.”
Felix signed out his Glock first. He laid it on the cloth and then replaced each of the cartridges in the clip in turn, feeling the slightly oily smoothness of their tips as each clicked home. He checked the pistol’s action for the regulation six times. Then he inserted the clip, and safetied the pistol. He’d make sure that Gebi would see him loading the pistol later.
Next he replaced the cartridges in the spare, and slid the holster on his belt to just in front of his hip bone. The leather was still stiff and the button clasp on the cover took work to get thumbed down.The Kripo had had the American quick release for years now.
Banditti, Gebi called them.
“Load,” he said to Gebhart.
Gebi nodded and watched him draw one into the chamber, and put the safety back on.
He fastened his belt then, made sure the plastic restraints weren’t dangling at his back, and replaced the signing folder back on the shelf. He looked at the machine pistol locked behind the steel mesh to the side of the armoury safe. It had never been used, Gebi told him, in the seven years since he started here. The station had been staffed for five then. Gebi did the monthly commissioning, removing the gun’s movements from the other safe and inserting them.
Gebhart stepped out and around the corner, and rapped on the kitchen door.
“Fred, sign up,” he called out. “We’re going any minute.”
Felix headed for the equipment room, noted that it was only a minute off six o’clock now. He passed Korschak coming out. He took down the vests first, and then made sure he had the tripod that Gebi was so particular about.The laserpistole the radar gun was a pig on batteries. He took the second pack from the charger and slipped it into the bag that held the odds and ends.
He closed the case again, and parked it, along with the tripod and vests, by the door. Then he returned to the duty room.
“Rush hour until nine,” he heard Gebi say, to Korschak, he presumed. “We’ll probably do three spots, to keep ahead of the snitches.”
Gebhart took two hand sets from the charger.
The dawn was milky, with parchment and orange streaks still.
Gebi helped load the gear into the boot of the Opel, the second of the two patrol cars at the post. Felix had noticed the care Gebi showed in how he warmed the engine, and how he coaxed it up to 100 before backing off and muttering about “strain” and “transmission” and “clear the injectors.”
“Start over by Semmarach,” he said to Felix. “There’s a spot near a farmhouse there.You know it? You get the real headers tearing up there. They know they’re close to the autobahn.”
Felix checked the car radio with Korschak and gave him their destination.
“That Korschak,” said Gebhart, straining to look back at a bread van unloading.
“What about him?”
“I used to think he was one of those. You know? Don’t tell him.”
“Playing for the other team?”
“Yeah. Your bunch knows all about that, of course. Who am I to talk?”
“Do you mean people who live in Graz? People my age, or other gay men like me?”
“Very funny, Professor. I meant your generation. As if I cared whether a man is gay or not. Macht nichst.”
“It makes no odds to you at all?”
“You seem surprised. My generation is not allowed to be tolerant?”
The sky behind the hills was still glowing now, but a tiny sliver of moon remained over the last of the lights on the houses. It might be shirtsleeves by midday today yet.
“Morning drivers are quite polite when you nail them,” said Gebhart then. “Did you know that?”
“I’ve only done one trap. It was in the afternoon.”
“You’re going to track a couple of real fliers at least, though.”
Now wasn’t the time to tell the same Gebhart that last October he’d gotten to Vienna in 90 minutes on the autobahn. There was a separate corps in the Gendarmerie for the autobahn patrols and traffic. Quite a serious bunch too. They could take your car for that kind of a stunt.
“The real damage gets done on the local roads, doesn’t it,” he said to Gebhart.
“Stimmt. Those are stats you can’t argue with. They’re speeding just to get to the autobahn, just to save what, two minutes? What does that say about human nature?”
“That people are predictable, maybe?”
“Did you make that up just now? Or is it some fancy logic thing, some philosophy thing?”
“Who says people aren’t cranky this time of day?”
Gebhart gave him a considered look. Felix had learned to grade them. This one was minor not quite glare, more curiosity and skepticism together.
“I was trying to make a point. So do we need the irony crap? I say no. What, you thought I didn’t know irony? I respect the book stuff. I respect your, uh, poetic leanings. Just don’t be a pain in the arsch.”
“Thanks. Nothing personal. Right, Gebi?”
“Absolutely.You know that.”
“‘Nothing personal, Felix, but you’re an idiot’?”
Gebhart chortled.
“You’re good,” he said. “When you’re not being a dummy.
Come on now. We have a job here.”
There was a line of six cars behind the Opel already. None dared pass, of course. Felix began to wonder what some of them were thinking, especially the guy in the Mercedes two back.
Swearing probably.
He liked the way this was turning out.
FIVE
BY NINE, GENDARMES KIMMEL AND GEBHART HAD AMASSED A reasonable sum for the coffers of the Austrian state. Gebi had even nailed two drivers for flashing the oncoming traffic too. One of the flashers had played it right, however, saying he hadn’t realized it was an offence. He spoke in a respectful, resigned tone about how he
had been merely hoping to slow down a couple of crazy ones; that he thought it might lower the danger, blah blah. But Gebi had shown no mercy to an elegant woman in a 7 Series BMW. Felix heard him mutter something about a boy-toy coming too early, as she accelerated away, expressionless. She had been unperturbed by the fine.
The one to remember was a large, morose man in an old Kadett. Felix had written him up. For a while he couldn’t concentrate on the form. His mind was full of the man’s sullen menace. It was as if it was being pumped across the air between them in a relentless cloud. He became preoccupied almost immediately with re-enacting the drills in his mind, the ones for pacifying a guy who had an obvious size advantage. The man hadn’t said more than two words in total. Felix wondered if the guy would do more than keep up that baleful, blank stare at him.
Gebi was good, better than he let on, at picking up on things like this. He must have noticed the guy’s expression. When Felix looked up from the clipboard again, Gebhart had left the lazerpistole and taken up a position behind the driver’s side of the Kadett, his hand in his belt. The move wasn’t lost on the driver. His eye strayed from Felix to his mirror more often. Gebi shifted to see better when Felix handed the driver the ticket. After a count of 10 he barked at the driver.
“Get moving there, Citizen. You’re a hazard here. Read your ticket at home.”
The sun broke through the mist at last, and the greens and blues took on depth. They moved three klicks down to the next exit and set up on the Birkfeld Road. Gebhart hung back awhile in the Opel listening to the traffic on the radio. There had been an accident near Birkfeld.
Felix set up and checked the charge in the laserpistole. He half enjoyed the effect their car was having on the traffic, the glances, the brake lights, the frequent embarrassed smiles. Prevention was part of the job too. The sun grew warmer on the back of his neck and he heard a tractor’s diesel clanking from somewhere. Behind the hill the constant hush of the autobahn spread across the fields and hedges.
Gebi closed the door and made his way over.
“We’ll get a few of the grocery and school mob now,” he said.
“Some of those characters you pinch on their way to the autobahn, boy, they give me the creeps. Like that gypsy in the crapmobile, that Kadett.”
“How do you know gypsy? ‘Strozek.’ That’s Hungarian back somewhere.”
“You think I turn my safety off and loosen the button on my shooter for a guy just because he has a Hungarian-sounding family name? Grow up.”
“Fake papers? Wouldn’t that have popped up when I radioed in the licence?”
“Gypsy. Albanian. Chechen? Who knows. Who knows where the Balkan Route begins or where it ends. These days.”
Felix looked at his partner, and for the first time that he could remember, he couldn’t tell if Gebi was putting out some sly humour, or not. At least he hadn’t come up with the real slur, Die Tschuchen. If “nigger” was brought to Europe, and slapped on anyone from the Balkans, this would be it.
“Maybe I should have done him an emissions test?” Felix tried.
“See the smoke when he took off?”
“Now there’s a thought,” Gebhart murmured.
He turned to let his glare stay on a Mercedes that had braked hard. The radio came to life.
“Zentrale to Stefansdorf Ein.”
Korschak. By the book, always: never just Car One. Stefansdorf One, never Stefansdorf Two. It didn’t matter there was only one patrol car out at a time from the post, ever.
“Go ahead Zentrale.”
“Telephone call for you Gebi, you might want to consider it after your assignment. Local, not urgent.You want it, over?”
Gebhart frowned.
“Might as well, Zentrale. Over wait, give me a name first, and I’ll know.”
“Family Himmelfarb?”
“What about them? Over.”
“Will you be up his way today, he wants to know. Over.”
“What does that mean? A police matter?”
“He didn’t say. But you know him, his son, he said. Over.”
Gebhart hesitated.
“Look,” he said then. “I’ll phone him when we get back. Over?”
He shook his head as though bewildered, and replaced the mouthpiece. He sagged lower into the seat and looked out the side window. Felix stole a glance over. To see if there was any clue about what the message meant. There was none.
He drew into the lay-by that was in sight of a small scatter of older houses.
“Okay,” said Gebhart. He seemed to rouse himself from whatever had made him turn in on himself. He checked the laserpistole he had been holding and tugged the side of his green vest tighter.
“Let’s pinch a few hausfraus,” he said. “The little ones are in the school now, and the hubbie’s gone to work. This is the hour the entertaining starts.”
The raised eyebrow and the refusal to smile left Felix baffled.
“Entertainment?”
“And they’ll be speeding, let me tell you.”
Gebi Josef, or Seppi Gebhart wasn’t a cynic, Felix had come to conclude. He had wondered at first how a 41-year-old Gendarme had not moved up in all those years of service. He rarely mentioned his family, and it seemed that he kept work and home very distinct.
Felix had found out from Korschak who had muttered something about having smart daughters who gave him grief, a son who had some issues. “Issues?”
Out on the road now, he took up position beside Gebi, who had the pistole mounted and scanning quickly. He watched Gebi’s impassive face as the cars came by. None tripped the pistole limit.
There weren’t even any dives, those half-funny giveaways that showed the driver had been speeding.They must have been spotted.
“Don’t give up yet,” said Gebhart. “A few more minutes.You’ll see.”
Felix looked across the wet fields, his mind drifting. It was seldom lately that he’d found himself wondering whether some cynic, or maybe some old enemy of his father, had put him here in Stephansdorf, with Gebhart, as a joke. Maybe it was a test: prove you can work with anyone, Kimmel: we’ve been saving this one for you. Survive this, and you’ll do fine. Or had it been a kindly gesture in disguise, from someone in Postings who had read something into Felix’s CV, and his temperament, and engineered his posting here as a warning: this is what a stale cop looks like. Do you want to grow to be like this cop?
Then he heard the alarm go from the laserpistole.
“What did I tell you,” said Gebhart, and he raised his arm.
“Blonde, of course.”
Felix thought of the rasp of Giuliana’s skin on his knee, the way she pushed and arched, the way she muttered and even grunted at him when she was close to losing it. Parsley, he thought suddenly, and realized that he must have been thinking about this somewhere.
That was it: the scent of her was parsley.
SIX
FELIX DROVE THE PATROL CAR BACK. HE TURNED BY THE PLATZ, and into the station yard.
It took time to get the gear out and tame the paperwork.
Gebhart had Nescafé and a bun with salami for his brotzeit, his morning break. He stood chewing and nodding slowly while he took a phone call. After it was over, Korschak talked to him about how if it wasn’t floods in some of the fields again this year, it’d be drought by July.
Felix thought about a sandwich but fell instead for something sweet. He took some lebkuchen from a package by the kettle.
Gebhart came over and poured a half cup of leftover water from the kettle into his mug, smelled it, and then drank it.
“Come with me,” he said. “A minor job. Let Manfred get the glory here.”
“Out to . . . ?”
“Die bauern,” said Gebhart. “Maybe you’ll learn something from it.”
Felix waved his hand over the forms he had been collating and checking.
“They’ll keep. Geh’ma jetzt off we go.”
Gebhart drove. Felix could afford to enjoy this u
nexpected escape from an afternoon of paper, phones, and a small pile of inquiries for licences, criminal checks, and court preparation requests. He totted up the hours remaining before he had his freedom. It would be five hours to the beach, and as little time as possible with Giuliana’s relatives.
Gebhart coaxed the Opel over through hairpins with the gears more than brakes. They passed waterlogged ditches and bottlegreen fields exploding with growth. Soon they were in the hills, and there was no let-up. Still the road climbed, up beyond the last of the trees, until it slowly descended a little to patchy scrubland where the conifers took over again, hesitating it seemed many of them, in small, scruffy plantations on this high plateau.
“You know this area?”
Felix shook his head. Gebhart squinted up out of the windshield at the heights that came slowly closer as they wove through the curves.
“They’re a bit cracked up at these altitudes,” Gebhart said.
“Spinnt, as they say.You think it’s true?”
“‘Nothing personal’ here, right?”
He was glad to see a small grin eke out over Gebhart’s features.
The air was cool, with an edge to it. There were few cars. Gebhart slowed and stopped by the entrance to a mildly rutted road. He scrutinized the roof of the house that nestled behind a brake of trees there.
“A red roof on one of the barns” he muttered, and moved on “I thought . . . ,” Felix began, but stopped awkwardly.
“That I know this area, or where we’re supposed to be going?
Well I don’t.”
“But a rough idea? Isn’t the person a, well someone you know?”
“I only met him a few times. In a place in town. He has a kid, I have a kid.”
Something in Gebhart’s tone drew a curtain down over further questions.
A half-dozen Simmentals clustered around a feeding cage at the corner of a half-hectare patch to the right.
“There’s a red roof,” said Felix.
“That’s the one,” said Gebhart, “I’ll bet.The big wooden gate too.”