Brenner and God sb-7

by Wolf Haas

  “Measured!” Kressdorf laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh that eased Brenner’s mind. Because it was the clipped, dry laugh of a ghost. “You mean tested.”

  “I don’t remember, though.”

  “Why didn’t you stay on the police force?”

  Brenner didn’t reply, because on the cue of “police,” Kressdorf kept right on talking.

  “I’ve done plenty of half-legal things in my life. Or illegal, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows that nothing happens in the construction business without bribes. And MegaLand is far and away the biggest contract KREBA’s ever gotten. But real crimes, kidnapping and blackmail, I’ve never had anything to do with them. Not to mention murder. Or manslaughter. And when I pressured my wife to perform the abortion on that underage girl of Reinhard’s, it was already too much for me. Not because of the abortion, but because of her. I told her that, what with the bank loan, Reinhard had Knoll right in the palm of his hand. That’s why she did it. And to finally be left in peace by Knoll. But not even the bank director managed to subdue Knoll.”

  “Or he didn’t want to,” Brenner said.

  “Or he didn’t want to, exactly.”

  “But, all the same, you got into the MegaLand business because you smoothed the way with the abortion.”

  “That’s correct, Herr Simon.”

  Brenner opted not to say anything more now, because he noticed that Kressdorf was in an overly sensitive mood where he was interpreting everything as a reproach.

  “And then the congressman went into business with my wife.” Kressdorf laughed so bitterly at that, you would’ve thought it was a worse crime than the four people dead in the cesspit.

  “Stachl and I met at a charity golf game. I’d been after him for years. Like every other contractor. Before, he’d always brushed me off like I was just some do-it-yourself builder and he was Donald Trump. But then all of the sudden he was sweet as pie. He whispers to me that Bank Director Reinhard has a problem that my wife can remedy. And in turn, Reinhard might have an opportunity to subdue Knoll.”

  “And to let you build MegaLand.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that easy to build in Prater Park. It started with the golf course, and then it grew from there. For a banker who was in the black, it was a matter close to his heart for half of the Prater to come under his control, and right in the middle of Vienna when the whole city’s in the red. With Stachl he had the right man at his side. People’s protests did in fact hold us up, but we just about had them all cleared out of our way. Then suddenly Helena was kidnapped. We thought Knoll was behind it. And Knoll thought we were behind it. And now you’re telling me it wasn’t even an actual kidnapping. But in the meantime, four people are dead.”

  “Six,” Brenner said, “if you count Milan and the nanny’s husband.”

  “Stachl tried to keep me from pulling you back out. He said, ‘Too much has happened already.’ It didn’t matter to him one bit that Helena was his kid, too.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know?”

  Kressdorf had nothing to say to that. I almost think it didn’t matter to him either at this point.

  When they arrived in front of the South Tyrolean’s house, across the street from the gas station, Brenner still didn’t know how he was supposed to keep the humiliated non-father from killing both him and the South Tyrolean in order to undo history and get his daughter back, not just Helena, but hair, skin, all of her-genetically speaking, as it were.

  Now, for your reassurance. At least the South Tyrolean wasn’t there.

  Now, for your disassurance. The child wasn’t there, either.

  After they’d searched the last room, Brenner tried to convince Kressdorf that he hadn’t lied to him. He explained to him that the South Tyrolean had probably gone to the police after he didn’t come back as promised. Even Brenner didn’t really believe that, although it later turned out to be true. But then Kressdorf did something that filled Brenner with such fright that being dangled from a balcony seemed like a MegaLand attraction by comparison.

  You should know, Kressdorf’s angry outbursts had caused him so much damage both professionally and personally over the years that at some point, as a matter of principle, he’d taken to the age-old trick of silently counting down from ten in hairy situations. But Kressdorf was so far outside himself now that-one hundred hours after his daughter’s disappearance-he forgot about the “silently” part, and although he was indeed counting down, he was doing it out loud.

  “Ten.”

  When a grown man just starts doing this, it’s a little creepy maybe, but when he’s already deposited four people in a cesspit, and when you can only hear him counting with your right ear because the barrel of his rifle is in your left ear, then you’ve got Brenner’s situation exactly.

  “Nine.”

  Kressdorf took a deep breath, exhaled deeply, inhaled deeply.

  “Eight.”

  Brenner didn’t breathe at all.

  “Seven.”

  Now, while Kressdorf’s slowly counting down so as not to make a mistake because of his temper, I’ll tell you something else real quick now. Pay attention. How did they even get into the apartment? The South Tyrolean hadn’t given Brenner a key. And Kressdorf’s not one to break down a door. He’s not that type of full-service criminal, who you might say, learned the trade from the bottom up, who can do everything from a bike lock to a clean kidney stitch. Kressdorf had only the brutality, the buttoned-up uncompromisingness that you learn in the Business School of Life, but craft and skill, zero. He stood before that locked door like a cow before a gate.

  Brenner, on the other hand. He could have forced him, i.e., gun to the head, to break down the door. First of all, though, Brenner had never been particularly good at breaking down doors, he’d gotten a D in breaking down doors at the police academy. And above all, why should Brenner break down the door when he’d seen where the South Tyrolean hides her keys a few times now? Because she said she’d locked herself out with the damn spring lock three times already, and burglars are going to find a way in anyway, so she might as well leave a key for herself, too. Whether you believe it or not, in a ficus benjamina.

  “Four.”

  You’ll have to excuse me for going into such detail, but it just never fails to amaze me how between a perfectly normal ficus benjamina, between perfectly normally unlocking the door, between a perfectly normal look in the bedroom, look in the kitchen, look in the bathroom, look in the twenty-five rooms filled with plants, look in the closet, between the perfectly normal disappointment of not finding what you’re looking for, and a disappointed perp shooting you in the head-often a matter of just a few seconds.

  “Three.”

  And the earth turns quietly on. Purely from the universe’s point of view, it makes no difference whether Kressdorf squeezed the trigger or not-as far as I’m concerned, it’s no greater difference than whether the key’s hidden in a ficus tree or a rubber plant. No greater difference than the question, was the key made by Mr. Minute or Key Central? To the universe all of it means absolutely nothing, and does Brenner or does he not have a hole in his head, will he die now or in twenty years, will he die quickly or slowly, will he die in despair or at peace with himself and the world, will he die excruciatingly or painlessly-to the universe it’s all the same, you can’t even imagine. Was Brenner even born or was he aborted in maybe the third or fifth month-either way it’s the same to the universe-as if his mother were in her six-hundred and eighty-ninth month, but still no cash on delivery.

  “Two.”

  Brenner was on the exact same page as the universe now. He didn’t care whether Kressdorf pulled the trigger or not, either. And from that you can tell just how afraid he really was. How convinced he was that Kressdorf would snuff him out in an instant. How far into the hereafter he was already projecting himself. How he was basically looking forward to flying with the gnats-because he didn’t remember the good lord anymore, but flying’s a classic human
dream.

  “One.”

  Interesting, though-Kressdorf lowered the gun barrel now and pointed it at Brenner’s heart. But the blood, oh the blood, my god all the blood-one hundred hours after the girl’s disappearance-ran down Brenner’s forehead and through his hair and across his cheeks and over his whole face.

  The world just about flipped on its head, like with Herr Jesus, how you always see him hanging naked on the cross, because they nailed him to it so he wouldn’t fall down, but then on top of that, he’s got this wound in his emaciated ribcage because he hadn’t been able to nab much at the last supper. And so that always means the soldiers had to stick him in the heart to hedge their bets, because you never know exactly when it’s just the cross-maybe he’s just playing dead, and then will walk away from it. The pierced heart is on every Jesus’s right, though, which is the wrong side. I think they stuck it in below the ribs and then up heartward, well thought out by the soldiers. But why was Brenner’s blood shooting an undammed river over his face when the shotgun had been pointed at his heart?

  Simple explanation. It wasn’t Brenner’s blood. It was Kressdorf’s blood. After one hundred hours, in the middle of the fifth day, Kressdorf’s head burst into pieces, because a bullet from Detective Peinhaupt’s gun had hit him so precisely that it probably would’ve wrecked the whole splendid old room-the philodendron and the rubber plant and the cyclamen and the asparagus fern and the avocado and the Busy Lizzie and the orchids and the bamboo and the ivy and the Christmas cactus and the azalea all would have been full of blood-if Brenner hadn’t absorbed most of it, that is.

  Maybe that doesn’t sound so pretty, but in all honesty, Brenner hadn’t felt this good in a long time. In spite of having missed his last two pills. But, old saying, nothing helps a depressive mood more than a bullet that misses you by a hair.

  CHAPTER 22

  The first body to be released for burial was the nanny’s husband, probably because when you’re the police, there’s no lack of certainty over a death that you pulled the trigger on. There weren’t many people there, but Brenner gave the Frau Doctor, of all people, credit for coming to the funeral, even though the man had tried to profit from her misfortune. And whether you believe it or not, she even let the nanny continue to look after Helena. On the one hand, as a single parent you’re happy to have anyone at all for your child, but I can imagine that the Frau Doctor was looking to blame herself once again, along the lines of, if my child hadn’t been in her care, then her husband never would’ve had the opportunity-and maybe, without me, they would’ve grown old together as a happily married couple.

  As they lowered his coffin into the cremation furnace, it struck Brenner that the Frau Doctor was crying more than the nanny, but surely her own losses played a role here-because she was really a double widow what with Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl-and it all might have flowed into her tears for the thirty-year-old dilettante sidecar driver, who they lowered to the sound of a cassette recording of his favorite song, “Above the Clouds,” because his dream job: pilot.

  Two days after Herr Zauner they buried Milan. Zauner, that was the nanny’s husband’s name, not Resch like the nanny because they were only life partners. You see, you get to know people at a funeral. Milan’s name was Milan Zeco, and three days before his twenty-second birthday he got nailed. At first Brenner was surprised that the authorities would release a stabbing victim so soon based on his witness testimony alone. But then at Kressdorf’s funeral, Peinhaupt told him that Sanja had corroborated his testimony. Which is to say, Milan had put himself between the two thugs so that Sanja could run away. But unfortunately he’d pulled his toy gun, and that was the mistake. Don’t go thinking that Sanja was at the funeral, though. Either she didn’t dare to go, or else Reinhard had told her she wasn’t allowed to, I don’t know.

  The two gas station drunks were there. And they cried for Milan-Brenner hadn’t seen anything like it his whole life. Preimesberger, Erich, so the fat one was named, born 1967, sign Pisces, Capricorn ascendant, and the thin one was Strobl, Peter, December ’65, Sagittarius, ascendant unknown.

  Brenner learned all of this at a Shell gas station by the cemetery where they drank to Milan. They deliberately drove past a BP station that was closer by, i.e., one-day funeral boycott since the BP company had fired Milan over nothing.

  Brenner’s cell phone didn’t ring once the whole time they were at the gas station, but Preimesberger, Erich must have had an incredibly good sense of hearing, because after a few beers he started humming Jimi’s “Castles Made of Sand,” pitch perfect. Just for fun, to pull Brenner’s leg. And believe it or not, it wasn’t until that moment when Brenner heard it as just a hummed melody that the missing lyrics finally hit him, as though Jimi Hendrix had tried to warn him from the start that MegaLand would cause him mega-problems. And, I should add, he really would’ve needed to tune in better to hear what Jimi Hendrix had been telling him. Or, for those who don’t believe in Jimi Hendrix, the unconscious mind. Because why else would Brenner have picked out this song, which had never been his absolute favorite, just a few weeks after he took the job? You see, so it begins.

  Annoyed that this was only just clicking into place for him now, he switched his ringtone back to normal right there in the Shell shop. Or, better put, he couldn’t do it himself, but Strobl, Peter-incredibly adept at this sort of thing.

  Three beers later he wouldn’t have been able to do it anymore, because he’d need both hands to hold onto the counter. Brenner paid for everything, out of sheer gratitude that they were content to blame Milan’s death on BP and not on him. At least three of the fifties from the envelope Reinhard had given Brenner were put to practical use here.

  In retrospect, the seven funerals seemed like one single long funeral to Brenner, even though nearly three weeks passed between the first and the last. It’s always fascinating when human paths cross, and two people can be born a thousand kilometers apart, grow up on different continents, never hear of each other, and then by some fatal accident while on vacation they should meet. And it was exactly the opposite for the four in the cesspit now. They would’ve been buried together, but first they had to be fished out, and of course autopsies had to be performed, and so they landed in four different cemeteries.

  For the security boss, Brenner even had to drive all the way to the Czech border, because he was interred in Gmund. Nobody recognized Brenner in Gmund because, even though he’d been in the newspaper again, this time as a liberated Kressdorf-hostage, black bars had been put over his eyes. At first the funeral seemed a little strange to him, but then he realized that the parents of the deceased were Jehovah’s Witnesses, ergo their own rites and rituals. And after the funeral he had to call the OAMTC because the Mondeo wouldn’t start. But don’t go thinking that the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Gmund had something against him. Because a marten had chewed through the fuel line.

  For the foreman, he also had to drive outside of Vienna, but only half an hour out to Tulln. You should know, Vienna’s workers generally come from the surrounding areas-Waldviertel: the forest region, Weinviertel: the wine region, Bucklige Welt: land of a thousand hills, Burgenland: the sunny side of Austria, Steiermark: Austria’s green heart-never from Vienna itself. Because the Viennese, generally speaking: lazy hogs. The foreman had a twin brother who resembled him down to the last freckle. And that was enough to make your skin crawl. Like the deceased was standing at his own grave site! The brother was a very decent male nurse at a regional hospital in Krems. The little girl at his side really looked like Pippi Longstocking what with her pigtails, and Brenner wondered whether she was the daughter of the dead or the living twin.

  Interesting, though: regardless of whether it was her father or her uncle lying in the coffin, Brenner had enormous sympathy for this girl, who he didn’t know and hadn’t known about. But a few days later at Kressdorf’s funeral, when he saw Helena again for the first time-zero feelings. If that’s even possible! He cast an aloof glance at her from ac
ross the church pews to where she stood holding her mother’s hand behind the coffin. As though he hadn’t spent days fearing for her life. As though he hadn’t been holding on to a chocolate bar for weeks just for her. And he even forgot to give it to her now. I can’t fully explain it, but maybe a psychologist could, who might say, such and such, and therefore, Brenner, at that moment, no feelings.

  And while I’m on the topic of psychologists: maybe that’s where the answer lies, and Brenner paid no attention to Helena because he was so worked up about Natalie. Or, actually about Peinhaupt, because he wondered what the cop was doing hanging around Natalie this whole time. What was there for him to go snooping around for at a funeral?

  Brenner was of two minds. Because on the one hand, you shouldn’t be ungrateful to the person who saved your life; on the other hand, Peinhaupt had interrogated him so much the last few days that he could have gladly done without him. And one thing you can’t forget: as a cop, you don’t usually go to the funeral of a criminal who you shot dead.

  At least Peinhaupt didn’t go to the congressman’s funeral. Neither did Natalie. And even with the best of intentions, the Frau Doctor couldn’t go. The newspaper people would have pounced on her, don’t even ask. You should know, Stachl’s murder by Kressdorf was hyped as the jealousy drama of the year- Othello ’s got nothing on it. They couldn’t get enough of the “double widow” who got her child back on the same day that she lost both of her men.

  They didn’t know anything about the bribes, because that was the small deal that the cops and the politicos and Brenner and Bank Director Reinhard all agreed on: that a connection didn’t need to be established unnecessarily between the jealousy drama and MegaLand. And for that they were willing to cooperate with Brenner on the matter of the South Tyrolean, i.e., the South Tyrolean was released and was only charged for having waited as long as she did before turning the stray child in to the police.