Brenner and God sb-7

by Wolf Haas

  Brenner tucked in his shirt, and the two drunks grinned stupidly. Their eyes were glazed from staring, and their heads were craned so far from eavesdropping that their ears were practically brushing against the ad for motor oil that was hanging from the ceiling.

  “But I’m more the kind of person who keeps to hershelf,” the woman said. “I even have to take pills for depresshion.”

  “And do they do anything?”

  “Of course. If they didn’t, do you think I’d be capable of crossing the shtreet? But you know what I think’s a sham? I wouldn’t expect regular shoppers to wind up on security cameras here. I’m not saying anything about them monitoring the drivers-in case one takes off without paying, you have his lischense plate. That I can undershtand. An ordinary shopper, though, who only buys milk, doesn’t need to be taped doing it.”

  “It happens automatically,” Brenner said. “If they’re taping the drivers and a shopper runs into the frame, then they’re automatically on it.”

  “So now it’s shupposed to be my fault,” the South Tyrolean protested. And then she smiled because Brenner looked so dejected. “Don’t worry so much, the little one will turn up again. I can feel it. You can trusht me completely on that, I have a feeling for this sort of thing. The girl’s fine. Besides, the contractor has plenty of dough. It can’t be true that the kidnappers haven’t made contact.”

  “On the one hand, you have a feeling; on the other hand, you make a logical argument.”

  “And you? Only drinking nonalcoholic beer?”

  Then she left.

  That was something! Just said it and left. As the automatic doors opened for her, something new occurred to Brenner.

  “South Tyrolean!” he yelled. This time with a note of urgency. To no avail, though. She didn’t turn around, and when he yelled his cell phone number out after her, she was already through the door and outside before he got to the last digit. He watched through the glass how she walked left around the gas pump, good figure and everything, Brenner thought to himself, if I had met her in my day, and he kept gazing after her as she crossed the street, with the newspaper and milk in her left hand and the pack of Marl boo ros in her right, and disappeared into the house opposite the gas station.

  CHAPTER 10

  He didn’t get the cell phone unlocked at the gas station, and he didn’t find anything out from the South Tyrolean, either. But pay attention to what I’m telling you: nothing’s ever for nothing in life, most of the time you find something different than what you’re looking for. And Brenner now found someone returning a rental car to the gas station. A purple Ford Mondeo, and ten minutes later it was his Mondeo because he told them they didn’t need to wash it, and so you see, he drove the Mondeo to the Lilliput Cafe, and there they unlocked the cell phone for him right away.

  PATRON OF LILLIPUT CAFE. Naturally, that’s how it was later portrayed in the newspaper, as if Brenner had been a regular there, those people really busted his chops on that one, don’t even ask. But my feelings vis-a-vis the Lilliput Cafe are very clear. Listen up: if after everything that’s happened, someone’s still pointing a finger at the Lilliput Cafe, then I honestly have to say, it’s roughly like telling a starving person to put the menu down just because, according to Chinese thought, the micronutrients aren’t in the fifth house right now.

  Brenner knew the Lilliput Cafe because at least once a week he’d picked Kressdorf up from the construction site near there. Or better put, from the planned construction site, on account of the protests of course, and there being not much to see except construction fences and steam shovels and pits. Or he would bring Helena by so that Kressdorf could spend a few minutes with his daughter between appointments. They’d ride the Lilliput train through the wooded areas of the Prater Park and around the site slated for MegaLand, and so Brenner would sometimes wait for the two of them at the Lilliput Cafe.

  Helena was a total fanatic for the Lilliput train rides, and Brenner was a little jealous of her father, because if just once he’d said to his daughter, you know what, today Herr Simon’s going to take you for a ride on the train, he would have done it on the spot, no discussion. But no, when the ride was over Helena would always bawl her head off, and do you think Kressdorf might have given in just once? He didn’t let his daughter wear him down, though. No, Herr Papa got even stricter and: “That’s enough now.”

  Just so you understand why Brenner was so familiar with the Lilliput Cafe. Because he never went for the other things that were there, smuggled cigarettes or a fake wristwatch, and the Lilliput Cafe’s main business was with the parents, of course. Driven to despair by the screams of their Lilliput-train-addicted children, they could get their mothers’ little helpers at the Lilliput Cafe, more convenient than the pharmacy and qualitatively better, more effective and all, where you find yourself saying, it may not be entirely legal but at least I can make it another three days smiling at my child instead of tossing him headfirst over the fence so that the neighbors can smile at him.

  They unlocked the cell phone for him in a matter of seconds. His nonalcoholic beer wasn’t even in front of him yet before he was holding the phone in his hand with a new PIN. You’re going to say, Brenner must have deliberated over the PIN for a long time, because what’s the best combination of numbers to choose? But quite the opposite, Brenner shot it out like a pistol: 1706, because that was Helena’s birthday. But then he reconsidered after all, because a gravestone suddenly floated in front of his eyes, where the date of birth always appears above the date of death, bad omen, as it were. To be on the safe side, he went with a date of death instead. You should know that on November 12, 2008, the last member of Jimi Hendrix’s band, Mitch Mitchell, died-because none of them was granted a long life. Jimi Hendrix was born in November, Mitch Mitchell died in November, and believe it or not, Noel Redding also had an 11 on his gravestone because he died on the eleventh of May. But Brenner was already using Noel Redding for his own cell phone’s PIN, so he dedicated the PIN on Knoll’s cell phone to Mitch Mitchell, i.e. 1211. So you weren’t totally wrong, he did mull the PIN over a bit.

  But he didn’t get around to listening to Knoll’s voicemail, because: “Hey, Herr Simon, over here!”

  Just what he needed. But that’s exactly how it goes when you seek out familiar places. You have to take into account that you might run into people you know. At least it wasn’t Kressdorf himself, but just the watchdog from his construction site. Brenner didn’t recognize him right away because beefcakes with crewcuts and tattoos up to their eardrums, you see them so often on the street today that you can’t know them all by heart. It was the white straw he was sucking on that gave him away, i.e., nicotine withdrawal. Also the be-freckled foreman who he came in with. You should know, the few times Brenner had seen the nicotine-addicted watchdog, he’d always been with the foreman from the MegaLand site, as if he always needed to be hanging on to one of them, cigarette or foreman, didn’t matter which.

  “Waiting on a new job offer?” the foreman asked, and a hundred thousand freckles loomed in front of Brenner’s face.

  “With your qualifications, it’s no wonder your phone’s ringing up a storm!” the watchdog continued and pointed at Knoll’s phone with his plastic straw. Because now that it was unlocked, the messages were chiming up a lightning storm like you wouldn’t believe.

  “A nice steady ball like you two are rolling is what I’m looking for,” Brenner answered. “Sitting in a cafe all day on Kressdorf’s dime, that’s for me.”

  “You wouldn’t be very happy working with us. There’s nothing left at KREBA for someone like you who goes around losing people’s kids.”

  Brenner was getting annoyed by the belt of freckles around the foreman’s stupid grin, because something as nice as a face full of freckles can make a cruel smile even crueler. I can understand where Brenner was coming from-strictly speaking, it’s a betrayal of freckles.

  “Because Kressdorf doesn’t have any more kids to lose,” the one with th
e straw explained.

  “Explaining somebody else’s joke,” Brenner said, “is that a side effect when you quit smoking?”

  The nicotine addict sucked on his straw like a wheezing asthmatic on an inhaler. And it might have done him some good, because once he got his fill again, all of a sudden he acted completely normal with Brenner. Even professional, presenting himself as a colleague, because construction-site security, i.e., armed security services: practically the police.

  Brenner asked him how he knew for a fact that he used to be on the police force, but please-it was a convenient topic for him. So he let the straw-man pass, and he acted like it was the highest caliber of police work, spending all day on the lookout so that nobody steals from the construction site or damages the fences or goes sniffing around the site or hangs up a banner against the Prater Park development. And I honestly have to say, with a project like MegaLand, where you’ve got half the city against you because your boss only has enough money to bribe the other half, it’s not completely outrageous for the security guard to puff up his feathers a little.

  Brenner let the two of them explain the world to him for a while, what Kressdorf does all wrong, what Congressman Stachl does all wrong, what all of them at the top do all wrong, and how someone just needs to do a better job of explaining to the masses that there’s something in it for them, too, if the Prater starts charging an entrance fee, because golf, tennis, wellness, movies, shopping, entertainment squared instead of just trees and pampas-for that even the little guy doesn’t mind paying a little. Brenner let them pump him about the kidnapping, i.e., where exactly, when exactly, how exactly. And he was even obliging enough to laugh at the crass jokes they cracked about Knoll. When you’re a detective, you can’t be fussy about things like this-you don’t get anything out of people if you don’t let them talk.

  So what did he learn? Listen up, Knoll’s alarm system company had installed cameras not only in the building’s lobby, and in the elevator, and in the stairwells, and filmed everyone who entered the building-the police also found two cameras that Knoll had mounted around the time of the first water main break.

  Brenner explained that there’s nothing more perverse than an abortion clinic with surveillance cameras, and the two of them agreed with him one hundred percent. But while the watchdog repeated for the third time that there was nothing more perverse, something more perverse occurred to him as he was talking. He presented his idea of what was more perverse as though it were proof that there was nothing more perverse. My god, he had other qualities besides an inflated ego. He and the foreman were so engrossed in conversation now that it was operating like talk among old friends. And that was the best thing that could have happened for Brenner. Because they didn’t notice that Brenner had been waiting the whole time for just the right moment.

  You should know, there’s a right moment for everything. For plants, when to plant them, when to water them, when to harvest them; for animals, when to feed them, when to milk them, when to slaughter them; for children, when to make them, when to nurse them, when to kick them out on their own; for fingernails, when to cut them, when to file them, when to polish them; and hair, too, very important. But only a very few know how important the right moment is for the detective counterquestion.

  “What do you two have to say about her?” Brenner placed the photo that Knoll had given him on the table.

  “Jailbait,” they said almost in unison-a well-rehearsed team. But they were of no help to Brenner because they didn’t recognize the girl. The security guard just got excited at the prospect of proving his professionalism to Brenner. Because he immediately pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the photo. “In case I come across her, I’ll let you know.”

  “But only after you come on top of her,” the foreman said with a smirk, and Brenner wondered whether it was his smirk that was crooked or if it only came off that way because his freckles were so unevenly distributed.

  “Of course,” the nicotine-nursling said, bringing up the rear of the joke again. “Only after I’ve come on top of her.”

  But then his freckled smirk got even more crooked, so crooked that it was like they’d passed the nicotine pipe around and the substance in the pipe was distorting Brenner’s vision. His vision wasn’t the problem, though, because Brenner: A-plus vision. If this weren’t the case, then when he finally turned around and followed the freckled asshole’s glance, he wouldn’t have seen as clearly as he did what was playing out in front of the Lilliput Cafe’s only window.

  “Thanks for the warning,” he called out to the two of them from the bathroom, while outside, Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl were climbing out of Kressdorf’s jeep, which was parked right next to his Mondeo. The joke was on him, that much is obvious, because the two of them knew the whole time that they were waiting there for their boss.

  No way out now except through the bathroom window. Then Brenner walked along the Hauptallee a bit and listened to Knoll’s voicemail, because he didn’t dare make his way back to the Mondeo until Kressdorf was gone.

  My dear swan, Brenner hadn’t been in a funk like this in a long time. And the fact that the idiot watchdog and his Pippi Longstocking had let him fall right into it could only bear half the blame for why his mood just soured with every step. Above all there was the crap that Knoll Jr. was whining about to Knoll’s voicemail. Because that was a burden that would have merited half a year’s psychological counseling right off the bat for any civil servant-and from the most attractive police psychologist no less.

  Brenner wasn’t an impatient man otherwise, but he was on the search for a kidnapped child, and with something like this you’ve got to hurry. You can’t just listen to voicemails until the kidnapped victim is old enough to say, I choose of my own free will to remain with my kidnapper because I’ve gotten used to him. No, you’ve got to be swift. Neverending voicemail messages are hard enough to endure in normal life, but in Brenner’s situation it could be filed, strictly speaking, under “accomplice to murder.” His ear practically fell asleep listening, and although on principle he was one to always hold the phone to his left ear, he actually switched briefly to his right. He wondered whether Knoll ever listened to these messages at all. Or maybe it was just a personal hotline where he let the church ladies talk. For those times when it’s necessary to request of an excessive talker: speak your interesting thoughts into a plastic bag, then place the bag before my door, I’ll listen to them later.

  But as Brenner was about to turn the phone back off, a message came in that interested him. And I don’t mean the message where Knoll called and offered the honest finder a finder’s fee of a hundred euros for bringing his lost cell phone to his office, because that one came right at the start. No, pay attention: a man’s gravelly voice said to the inbox, “Saturday, nine a.m. One million and no further negotiations.”

  Thirty-five hours after Helena disappeared from her Zone of vehicular Transparency, and five hours after Brenner got sent out into the rain by the police, and four hours after Knoll stressed that it wasn’t him but rather the good lord who might have called Helena back to him, Brenner became aware that he still had an irrational fear in his bones of the good lord. Now how did he become aware of this? Believe it or not, for one second, or maybe just for a hundredth of a second-a thousandth of a second if you ask me-the gravelly voice sent by the satellite to the voicemail really did sound like a voice from beyond. Just listen: “Nine a.m. One million and no further negotiations.”

  And the voice named a Schrebergarten that Brenner didn’t know. But an old woman who was out strolling explained to him that he had to go back the other way because Greenland, the colony of garden plots in question, was on the other side of the Lilliput Cafe, just a little ways from where the Lilliput train loops around. Absolutely correct information, and then he found Greenland on a park map, too. Pay attention, if you’re coming from the Lilliput train, the colony is situated right behind Happel Stadium, or if you’re coming from the und
erage prostitutes along the Baby Strip, it’s behind the velodrome. Best you take note of the address right now, because that’s where Brenner was going next: the Greenland Schrebergarten in Prater Park, second gate, first row, third plot on the left.

  CHAPTER 11

  Schrebergartens are a topic all their own, of course. Much has been said about them because it’s widely accepted that their trees and shrubs grow so well on account of a corpse being the best fertilizer. I don’t count myself among the people who say, more dead bodies in Schrebergartens than in cemeteries, but the particular burden of waste is greater in any case. Because at normal cemeteries they take the worst stuff out of the deceased, the batteries from their pacemakers, the artificial joints, the dentures, and the silicone parts, so that the groundwater doesn’t suffer too much. But Schrebergarten corpses are mostly buried hush-hush and in a hurry, batteries and all. Oddly enough, the plants don’t seem to mind-they thrive like blazes-but long term, the groundwater’s got to be paying for it.

  It took Brenner roughly half an hour to find the right gate, but only half a minute to get into the cottage.

  That he got in so easily wasn’t necessarily a bad sign yet, in case you’re thinking if the Schrebergarten cottage is this poorly secured, then no kidnapping victim’s going to be found here. I could tell you about one case after another where kidnapping victims were held in completely normal houses-no waterfalls, no spring gun, no anything. And no discussion anyway with a two-year-old child. There doesn’t have to be any high-security apparatus, because the only important thing’s that nobody comes up with the idea to look there.

  Brenner was cautious of course, because when you’re a stranger in a Schrebergarten, you always fear for your life, no need to throw a kidnapping into the bargain. But not cautious in the sense that he would’ve wound himself around the doorframe with a Glock in both hands or danced a wide arc around a booby trap like he was at the world tango championship. First of all, he didn’t have a gun on him anyway, and besides, in a situation like this you only make everything worse by having a gun, because without a gun, worst case, you can always talk your way out of it somehow should you run right into the kidnapper’s arms.