by Wolf Haas
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Fürstauer said with a frosty air that reminded Brenner of how chilly it can suddenly feel at night even in June.
But like I said. Fürstauer was a clever guy—if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have made it all the way to being an elementary school teacher. Pedagogical Academy and everything. And then, even switched to VISTAA. If you ask me, he should’ve stayed a teacher. But, character assassination story, unfortunately. No sooner had he finished drumming it into all the kids than they went to the police and provided a full account—with details, too.
Then again, that was fifteen years ago. And he hadn’t been encircled by a flock of interested listeners since. He wasn’t going to let a little goading ruin his fun now. And after a brief moment of silence, like he was letting an impertinent pupil stew for a bit, he continued with his story.
“When we arrived at the accident site, needless to say, first things first, get out the vac-mat. Because with motorcyclists, you never know about the spinal column, and I never do anything without a vac-mat. Maybe he’s lying fresh on the asphalt, happy as a clam, you think, he’s only had a slight shock, and a second later, he’s a paraplegic because you handled him wrong. And on the vac, he gets poured right in, like wax into a mold.
“So that’s why I always see my motorcyclists on TV a year later in the wheelchair Olympics,” Hansi Munz inter-griped now, “because I always forget the vac.” Because it’d got to the point that an 8K’s telling you how to do your job.
But Fürstauer didn’t let it rattle him: “With motorcyclists, always the vac, I say. In a normal case. Today, though, anything but normal. I fling open the tailgate on the seven-forty so I can get the vac out—only to discover that the vac was already occupied. If it wasn’t for his uniform, I wouldn’t have even recognized Bimbo.”
Such an embittered expression came over his face that he even had to spit, and then he said: “Just once I’d like to hear what a uniform critic might have to say about that.”
You should know, in the Emergency Services field, time and again there were uniform critics.
Okay, not among the EMTs themselves, but nurses, let’s say, or these hippie male nurses who have to spend their days shaving pubes, while their own full beards have never even seen a pair of scissors. At the end of the day, though, mouths flapping wide open and playing the part of uniform critic.
Among the men themselves, this kind of thing doesn’t happen, of course. And the whole time Senior was in charge, it goes without saying, the uniform critics didn’t have a chance. And just between us: uniform renunciation would’ve been the death of every EMS organization out there. Because most of the volunteers were only there on account of the uniforms. Fürstauer was no exception.
“At first, I thought Bimbo was just sleeping off a hangover on the vac. Because let’s be honest, it wouldn’t have been the first time that something like that’s happened.”
“Which isn’t for you to say.”
“But then,” the old schoolteacher said, ignoring Hansi Munz, “I was struck right away by how red Bimbo’s head was. Now, granted, Bimbo’s head was always relatively red. But needless to say, a head as red as this, and eyes as red and bulging as these, and a tongue rolled up all the way over his mustache like that one was? Never, not even in one of his drunken stupors, did Bimbo look like that. And as a matter of fact, it wasn’t from alcohol poisoning. It was from the millimeter-thin line of blood that Bimbo had around his neck—that must’ve been one extremely thin wire. I immediately called it in: Big’s dead.”
Big. Not: Bimbo. And from this point forward, everybody only said Big, nobody said Bimbo anymore. Because, like I said, respect for the dead.
“Since when’s an Eight-K allowed to determine a death?” Munz said, giving the chain another rattle.
Fürstauer, though—100-percent Pedagogical Academy—simply ignored his ill-behaved listener: “The dispatch center then sent a backup ambulance for the motorcyclist, but, by the time they finally got there, the motorcyclist was already back on his feet. And if the police hadn’t forced him to take a Breathalyzer, he would’ve got right back on his bent-up bike.”
“He probably had another tour bus to jump over,” a young 8K dryly inserted there. His voice was still changing and he didn’t even have a respectable mustache yet. No downy facial hair, either, like Hansi Munz, just individual strands of hair like a pig hide ready for tanning, or like that city councilman in charge of transit, you know, Svihalek. He was trying hard to come up with an even dryer line now. But not a chance, because Munz was back to his jabbering: “Have the Eight-Ks completely lost it now? Since when’s an Eight-K allowed to determine a death? What’s happened to radio protocol?”
“Radio protocol?” Fürstauer spat out scornfully, and then he played his greatest trump: “Maybe if you’d seen Big …”
Because needless to say, nobody there had seen him. “When we sat him up, his tongue was hanging down to his knees.”
“Like that woman I once drove with the gunshot to the knee,” Hansi Munzi cackled. “Suicide attempt! Because she’d asked her doctor ahead of time where the heart is. And what do you guys think he said?”
“This is an old joke,” Brenner grumbled.
“Two centimeters beneath the nipple,” Hansi Munz howled.
Suddenly it seemed to Brenner as if the ghost of Bimbo had wandered into Hansi Munz’s body, because usually only Bimbo talked this much nonsense. And while Brenner was still thinking about whether that sort of thing’s even possible, he asked Fürstauer: “Where’s Big now?”
“Still in the seven-forty. The cops sealed up the garage and left Bimbo lying there for the time being so that no clues get tampered with.”
I’ve got to hand it to them, though, incredible. They sealed up that garage door so superbly that you’d have thought the whole place would collapse if somebody tore the tape down. The small doorway connecting the 730 garage to the 740, though, that they didn’t tape off.
A second later and Fürstauer’s five minutes of fame had already passed. For a while there, he’d been the only one who’d seen Bimbo dead. Because, needless to say, half the crew followed Brenner into the 730 garage and through the narrow connecting door over to the 740. Only the most dutifully timid of volunteers didn’t dare.
But then, when Brenner opened the door to the 740, the first wave turned back, and then, when he climbed in and unzipped Bimbo’s body bag, there were just six of them left in the garage. Because, needless to say, Junior or the cops, who were up on the second floor questioning Mraz in the training room, they could turn up at any second.
And then, as Brenner started examining Bimbo, there were only four of them left.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Fürstauer said frantically, as Brenner went about palpating Bimbo’s neck. Fürstauer still thought that Brenner just wanted a closer look at the wound. He couldn’t have known that he was just moments away from watching Brenner drive his fingers a full centimeter deep into the wafer-thin wound like some kind of Asian miracle healer.
Fürstauer was silent with fright. And Horak didn’t say anything, either. And neither did Hansi Munz.
But they didn’t puke, either. Although it was definitely a major test of their self-control when Brenner fished the gold chain out from Bimbo’s neck.
“Monk and nun,” Brenner said.
“You writing poems again?” At first, Hansi Munz thought Brenner might be in shock. But, needless to say, a well-known fact that people who are in shock often believe that other people are in shock.
“That’s why the gold chain didn’t break off,” Brenner explained.
“Monk and nun,” Hansi Munz echoed back, stunned.
“Did Bimbo never regale you with how his latest gold chain was made? He went on and on about it to everybody: not just links joined together any which way. No, monk and nun method. Just like interlocking roof tiles.”
“Why’s it called ‘monk and nun’?”
“I’ll giv
e you three guesses. Because the one part’s got a slot, and the other’s got a pin that sticks out.”
“And this is something special?”
“You can see it didn’t break, can’t you? Even though it’s this thin. Bimbo said you could hang a grand from it.”
“A gram doesn’t weigh anything.”
“He said a grand, a piano.”
“And you knew about this? That makes you look like you did it.”
Brenner carefully fished out the gold chain from all around Bimbo’s neck until it was draped neatly back along his collarbone like in Bimbo’s better days. “Do you still remember how Lil’ Berti explained to Bimbo that the grime came from his neck?”
“Yeah, so?”
Brenner pointed at the blood-smeared gold chain. “Well, today the grime really did come from his neck.”
“Lil’ Berti didn’t mean it that way, though. Otherwise, it’s look like he did it.”
“Everybody looks like they did it, as far as you’re concerned.”
“That’s the damn thing about a thing like this. From the get-go, everybody’s a suspect. That’s why I’m glad they’ve already got somebody.”
Brenner was just thinking that dead Bimbo was looking pretty bad. But now he himself looked even worse. “What did you say? Who’ve they got?”
“Lanz.”
And then, a hailstorm, the likes of which would’ve had you thinking: in all twenty-three of Vienna’s precincts, twenty-seven had simultaneously erupted, i.e. all ablebodied men to the rescue. Because to the cops, it truly was a catastrophe to discover somebody giving their corpse a working-over.
There were four of them, two in uniform and two in sports coats. Interesting, though! Even though they were both wearing practically identical sports coats, you could still tell which one was the boss by his coat. But maybe it wasn’t just the coat. Because needless to say, the boss was also the one who wasn’t shouting. In their world, it’s the deputy who does the shouting.
“ID!” the deputy shouted.
“I’ll just run get it. I live just upstairs here at the station.”
“No way! You’re coming with us.”
“You can only take me in if I’d gone through the taped-off door. But you forgot the side door. That’s something you learn Day One from Franzi: ‘Adjathent doorth and windowth, likewithe, theal ’em off,’ ” Brenner said, imitating the lisp of Hofrat Franzmeier, who’d been the director of cadet training for a good twenty years.
The next shout remained lodged in the deputy’s throat. The fact that the side door hadn’t been taped off, needless to say, his mistake. He didn’t dare glance over at his boss right now. And the mention of Franzi told him the rest.
In a situation like this, though, a boss has got to rein in his subordinate and hold off on telling him off until later. “Former colleagues who mix themselves up in our work are our absolute favorites,” he said sarcastically.
But when Brenner showed him the gold chain on Bimbo’s neck, he simmered down.
“How did you know that?” the deputy found his tongue again.
“He always wore one. That’s why I looked for it. But it wasn’t all that hard to find, because under his collar there in the back, a chunk of it was still sticking out.”
There are certain types of bosses who are unable to nod. Not because their necks are that thick, but because they’re too good to nod, i.e. you’d have to grow another foot and a half before we’re on nodding terms; i.e. it’s nodding enough if I just stare vacantly into your eyes for two seconds instead of bawling you down another couple of inches.
And when those two seconds were over, the cop in the boss coat withdrew his glossy choleric eyes from Brenner and ordered his uniformed colleagues to book Lanz and then take Bimbo to autopsy.
“And you stay here and watch out that these nutjobs don’t tamper with the evidence,” he said to his sports-coat twin.
Back outside, Junior was dispersing everybody from the courtyard, i.e. What I’d like to do most is take my new Raab Kärcher–brand high-pressure hose to this whole mess. Brenner was just glad that he could slip away to his apartment now amid the general confusion.
“Brenner,” Junior said, as Brenner went past him. Nothing else, just: “Brenner.”
As he unlocked the door to his apartment, Brenner was still contemplating whether that had been a greeting or a threat or a cry for help.
He didn’t contemplate it long, though. Because he saw that somebody had slipped a handwritten note under his door. “Please call me: 47.”
Now, you’re probably thinking, 47’s a response code. And you wouldn’t be completely wrong, because if you ask me, the telephone truly is an event to be responded to. But listen up to what I’m telling you.
They used to have to call each other with a regular phone system, and so they had to pay the regular fees for calls. But then, when they got the new dispatch center, it came with a new phone network, too. Junior let all of them in the building switch to internal extensions, and ever since, they’ve been able to talk on the phone for hours with each other, and it doesn’t cost them a schilling. And 47 was Lanz’s extension.
Even though Brenner had just seen the uniforms drive off with Lanz, he dialed the number anyway.
“Lanz residence.”
“Your father slipped a note under my door,” Brenner said to Angelika.
“That wasn’t my father. It was me.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Could you maybe pop by and see me?”
As he left his apartment, he could already hear a door opening upstairs, and before he even got there, Angelika had already turned on the light in the hall for him. The Lanz apartment was just one floor above his own.
Even in her sweatpants, Angelika was wearing her belt with the gold buckle that had the letters “ESCAPADE” emblazoned on it, which Brenner had never seen her without. And you’d see her pretty often during the day, because it was only in the evening that she waited tables somewhere.
“Did you get off work early tonight?” Brenner asked, in that way that you say something when you’re paying a visit to a woman in the middle of the night so that it doesn’t get awkward.
She didn’t say moo or baa, though, just held the door open to Brenner and showed him to the kitchen, which was exactly as small as Brenner’s was.
“Want something to drink? I only have coffee, though.”
“No, thanks.” Brenner was beginning to feel ill anyway just from the fluorescent overhead light, which lit up the kitchenette like an operating room. Or maybe you shouldn’t always blame everything on poor fluorescent lights. Maybe it was a side effect of his gold-chain post-mortem.
“Coffee at this hour,” Angelika said, with an apologetic smile. “But it doesn’t have any effect on me. And I’m not getting any sleep tonight anyway.”
“What happened to your father?”
She had this way of smoking where every drag made a centimeter-deep hollow in her cheeks. As if the situation were flipped, i.e. the whole kitchenette was full of life-endangering flue gases, and it was only through the filter of her Kim that a little oxygen would get in.
She didn’t sit down with Brenner at the table, but leaned against the refrigerator so that there were three, four meters between the two of them. “They think he strangled Big.”
“What does your father say to that?”
“I don’t know. They took him away before I could see him.”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“Junior called the company lawyer.”
“Do you think he did it?”
She shook her head. Very slowly, as if she didn’t want to shake her head so much as sniff the air to see in what direction the truth might lie, like in an animal documentary on TV.
And only when her Kim was smoked down to the filter did she say: “Those idiots think he did it on account of the other night in the Kellerstüberl.”
Brenner didn’t quite know where
he should look. On the inside, he was nodding. But on the outside, he didn’t nod. And all the sudden he realized that he was doing it exactly like the boss cop in the sports coat did. Not even nodding. Just staring, obstinately, straight ahead.
If it hadn’t been for the sports-coat cop, it never would’ve occurred to him that he was playing the dopey no-nodder to Angelika. But now that it had occurred to him, he quickly said: “So that’s why they immediately took him away.”
“Bimbo was provoking him all the time.”
“Yeah, so? You don’t just go and kill somebody for that.” Angelika assumed her thoughtful animal-documentary mien. I’m no Doctor Doolittle from TV, but if I had to translate that look, I would guess that Angelika was using her animal look to say: I’m not so sure that somebody wouldn’t strangle Bimbo for that.
But in fact, all she said was: “That’s not all. My father drove the seven-forty with Bimbo today.”
Brenner didn’t nod. Not even on the inside.
“But in spite of all that, it wasn’t him that did it,” Angelika said, as she lit up her next Kim with a “Give the Gift of Life: Donate Blood” lighter.
Fluorescent lights notwithstanding, Angelika seemed much prettier than usual today to Brenner. And when you’re on the force, you’ll come to make this observation time and again. The first time it struck Brenner was when his colleague Knoll’s wife was killed in an accident. That was still in his uniform days, so, over fifteen years ago. A petite, funny Carinthian, good skier, but always went too fast behind the wheel. I think she enjoyed it—that as the wife of a police officer, she could just tear up her speeding tickets.
After the accident, Brenner was struck by how his colleague changed. That probably sounds somehow, I don’t know. The only way I can put it is this: the sadness somehow made Knoll beautiful. Knoll of all people, who even a simpleton could see that, apart from skiing and TV, nothing whatsoever in his skull—and fat, too, only thirty-five years old.
