by Wolf Haas
“No hard feelings, Brenner. It was just a joke.”
“Very funny.”
“That was always your motto, Brenner.”
“Yeah, yeah. Long time no see.”
“Get this: didn’t miss you at all.”
Winkler had put on at least thirty kilos since they’d last seen each other. But Brenner didn’t say anything. He was glad to be sitting in a comfortable Mercedes and glad to be chauffeured out of the Praterstern.
“Jurasic, Helene, lives in Red Heights,” Winkler said.
“Milky Way. Red Heights. You must be going through menopause, making up things like that.”
“Good to see you can still take a joke. Milky Way’s a good one.”
“And Red Heights?”
“Do you know anyone who lives in Red Heights?”
“Sure. Rudolph Schock. I used to always watch him on TV back in Puntigam.”
“I forgot you’re from Puntigam. Then you can’t know what it means to live in Red Heights here in Vienna.”
“Yeah, yeah. Puntigam: a miracle I even know my own name.”
“You didn’t used to be so sensitive, Brenner.”
“Where exactly are we driving?”
“To Red Heights.”
Alas, when two old dopes get going like this, it often ends up with both of them losing their bearings. Because Brenner knew for a fact, of course, that Red Heights was the hill where the overstuffed Viennese keep their houses. And he could tell that Winkler wanted to help him, after he’d laid into him about the Milky Way. But no, Brenner was being stubborn now and just didn’t want to hear anything else.
First, he had to digest his defeat by way of the Ruckzuck method. At some point in your life, you have to pull yourself together via the Ruckzuck method and chalk it up to a flub that Winkler managed to trick you. And he’d never been one of the brightest. But, now Brenner was thinking: best way to find out what Winkler wants to tell me is to keep mum.
But watch closely. It wasn’t really a long enough drive for the silent treatment. Winkler was already driving deep into the enclave of villas atop the hill that was Red Heights—with every meter the convertibles got more and more expensive, with every garden the Rottweilers got more and more nervous, and with every house the automatic firing systems got more and more sensitive.
Brenner didn’t allow his fat chauffeur to get the upper hand, though, and showed only the slightest bit of surprise when Winkler let it slip that the Radkersburg Yugo-whore Helene Jurasic resided here, among the bank directors and ministers.
But when they arrived at her villa, his jaw dropped. Not because of the villa, even though it was a proper Jugendstil or what have you. And not because of the garden, even though it was an immense park. And not because of the two Rottweilers, even though they tried with all their might to squeeze themselves through the wrought iron gate.
But because parked in front of the house was a silver Porsche, gleaming peacefully in the sun.
Maybe it only looked peaceful compared to the two Rottweilers behind the garden fence, though. Brenner walked past the silver Porsche and, without asking any questions, opened the garden gate. Now why would he have no respect for the dogs, when one look at Brenner sent saliva running down their chops?
And that’s where Winkler comes in. Because he’s still sitting in his police Mercedes, grinning, and waiting to see whether Brenner has the balls or not. And needless to say, Winkler was already looking forward to seeing the man who’d been such a hero in his wife’s eyes get—pardon my German—torn a new one by the Rottweilers.
As Brenner opened the gate, he felt Winkler’s gaze at his back, and the Jurasic Rottweilers’ gaze at his feet. Now, they say dogs can smell fear. And that’s when they get really aggressive. Because that must be, for a dog, like when a person, like you or me, walks by a bakery and becomes ravenous just from the smell.
Now, Brenner had opened the gate so quickly, on account of Winkler, that he hadn’t had any time to get scared. And maybe that’s why the Rottweilers didn’t tear him into a thousand pieces. Even though it was right about snack time.
At the last possible moment, though, fear must have entered into it after all. Brenner was giving off an irresistible bakery scent. Because when he was almost to the door of the house, one of the two Rottweilers went flying through the air all of a sudden, like a black snowball, or if you picture those iron wrecking balls that they tear down old houses with. Because the builder thinks, first I’ll drive the wrecking ball in, and then I’ll conjure up an apartment building, marble everything, gilded fixtures and all that, and then I’ll rake the money off to the side, and then I’ll go bankrupt. You see, that’s why there are so many new apartment buildings in between the villas of Red Heights.
Jurasic’s villa, though, hers was a real jewel box. And that’s just on the inside! Because now Brenner was standing inside, in Helene Jurasic’s villa. Because he hadn’t exactly found the time to knock.
“Do you not keep your doors locked?” he said, when the lady of the house came out of her bedroom.
“Pardon me?”
“You. Door. No lock?”
“Most people are respectable,” Jurasic, Helene, said in exactingly high German. And gave Brenner a cheeky look as if to say: first of all, what are you looking for in my house? And second, spare me your pidgin German. On both counts, Brenner felt he was innocent, because it was the Rottweilers that were guilty of the first, and Milovanovic of the second.
“You’ll have to excuse me for barging in like this, but the dogs.”
“You were barging in on the dogs as well.”
Brenner wasn’t going to be able to talk himself out of this one as easily as he might have with Winkler. So he was quiet, because Jurasic was too quick-witted for him anyway. And someone’s got to say it: he belonged ever so slightly to that category of men who get easily intimidated around a quick-witted woman.
She made an immediately intelligent impression on Brenner. But maybe he also belonged to that category of men who think that any woman with short hair and glasses makes an intelligent impression. I can only say this much: on TV game shows when they cheerfully guess your profession, they’d never guess Helene’s, because she didn’t look like a whore—typical hand gestures aside.
He wouldn’t have placed her at more than eighteen years old. Then again, he himself was already of an age where you underestimate the age of all young people. Because Helene was petite and lithe, but she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday last October. Which, in zodiac terms, made her a Libra, but I don’t believe in all that, although—Helene was trying to appease him just now, and so you could say, typical Libra, balancing the scale.
“What are you looking for, then?”
“A friend of yours lost his head.”
“The police already found it.”
“It’s the rest of him I’m interested in.”
“You’d be better off asking him,” Jurasic said, unmoved, and led Brenner into her living room, where Löschenkohl junior was sitting. He looking rather desperate, he cried out:
“That would suit the Yugo-mafia just fine, pinning Ortovic’s murder on my shoulders. But I know I’m going to find Milovanovic here. Even if I have to sit here all night.”
Two minutes later, Löschenkohl junior was standing right back out in front of Jurasic’s jewel box. With Brenner next to him. The two Rottweilers, very well behaved now—they obey that wisp of a woman, heel, incredible. And you see, that’s why I don’t like dogs, one minute they’re practically tearing your head off, and the next they’re pandering to you—if that’s what you’re looking for, you might as well just stick with people.
Now, Brenner didn’t get anything out of Jurasic, Helene. Because Brenner was her third visitor that day. And she hadn’t told Kaspar Krennek anything about her dead ex-boyfriend and Milovanovic, the missing goalkeeper, either. And he at least had known how to behave himself. But anyhow, Brenner was able to get a ride back with Löschenkohl. Just
a pity that he’d bought a round-trip ticket for the train.
He got to Klöch three times faster, though. Because, these days, if you drive 190, nonstop, then you only need an hour to go 190 kilometers. For forty-five minutes, Löschenkohl junior didn’t say a word. Was it a coincidence or not, though, that as they were zipping by a chicken plant, of all places, that had recently gone bankrupt, Junior began talking?
“Six months ago, Ortovic went to the newspapers and claimed that I had bribed him on the elimination game between Feldbach and Klöch. It was a bunch of lies. I couldn’t figure out what he’d get out of slandering me. I was trying to find something out about him back there. A few weeks ago, I got the idea that I could find something about him in the old Yugoslav sports pages. Because, common knowledge, he used to be a big deal in Yugoslavia.”
“Like Milovanovic,” Brenner said.
“I can’t read the Yugoslav papers, of course. But I found a student in Vienna who went to the library and skimmed through the papers for me. She copied and translated those places where Ortovic’s name appears. I picked up the translations from her this morning,” Löschenkohl junior said, pulling a couple of folded pages out of his sports coat and handing them to Brenner.
Then, Brenner read that it was Ortovic who had stomped on goalkeeper Milovanovic’s head.
“Now I understand why you’re looking for Milovanovic. But I still don’t understand what Ortovic gets out of slandering you.”
When you’re driving from Vienna to Klöch on the autobahn, you have to exit at Ilz. Then you can take either the western route via Feldbach or the eastern route via Fürstenfeld. Fürstenfeld’s nicer, and then you can take the Wine Road down to Klöch. But via Feldbach and Riegersburg, it’s a little faster. And those fifteen kilometers between Ilz and Riegersburg, Löschenkohl junior vacuumed them right up in his Porsche—Brenner swallowed in Ilz, and by the time they hit Riegersburg, the spit wasn’t even all the way down yet.
And then, on the way from Riegersburg to Feldbach, Löschenkohl junior said: “I don’t know, either. I only know that my wife disappeared at practically the same time Milovanovic did. And that Ortovic’s head turned up that same week.”
The church in Feldbach had a modern steeple made out of concrete. It used to be gray, but then they got a young priest—he’d even been a hippie at one time—the gray concrete steeple didn’t appeal to him. So he’d had it painted, top to bottom, with bright splotches of color. And because the hills aren’t any higher, you can see the steeple from far away, long before you get to Feldbach. Of course, when you zip by as fast as Löschenkohl junior, though, you only see it for a few seconds.
“Did you see that house of Helene Jurasic’s? What do you think a bungalow like that costs in Red Heights?”
Löschenkohl junior pronounced it with an “a,” as in “bangalow.” There have always been two schools on this: the one says it with a “u” and the other with an “a,” and maybe that’s the reason the word’s fallen out of fashion.
It even seemed to Brenner now that he hadn’t heard it since his aunt in Puntigam had taken part in a bungalow contest. She’d only won a yellow plastic weeble, though, and she’d given it to Brenner. But memories like these can whip through your head at a speed that a Porsche can’t possibly match. And immediately Brenner answered, “Fifty thousand a month she’s shelling out.”
Then, Löschenkohl junior’s arrogant laughter again. A mixture of condescension and “Please don’t hit me.” A dangerous mixture, Brenner thought—although if that’s the way it is, then nearly every one of us must be dangerous.
And Löschenkohl junior was looking more pitiful than fearsome now. In a car, you see the other person pretty close up. So Brenner could see that his fat neck was so sweaty and covered in flaking skin that involuntarily he thought: no hair—but dandruff in spite of it—that’s just cruel.
“Jurasic, Helene, doesn’t pay a single schilling a month for her house,” Löschenkohl junior said.
“If you’ve got the right friends.”
“Helene Jurasic doesn’t have any friends anymore. But she has a twenty-million-schilling house in Red Heights. It belongs to her—I looked it up in the land register.”
“What sort of bank lends that kind of money?”
“No mortgage.”
I kind of think it bugged Brenner a little that Löschenkohl junior was playing detective all on his own—and not too clumsily, either. At any rate, he said somewhat sarcastically, “Really quite useful, a register like that, where you can just go and look everything up.”
“And to think that just a few weeks ago, she was still down here with us, climbing into any car for three hundred schillings.”
They were just passing Bad Gleichenberg. Then, it was over to St. Anna, and at ten to six, the Porsche was parked in front of the chicken joint in Klöch.
Brenner didn’t even have the opportunity to thank him for the ride, because within a moment of Brenner getting out of the car, Löschenkohl junior was already speeding off. Just a Brenner delivery, but no interest in seeing his father.
That morning, Brenner had taken off for Vienna full of optimism. Out into the world. And now it had snapped him straight back to Klöch like a rubber band. One thing I’ll say: Brenner wasn’t the hysterical type, I know him at least that well. But now, at ten to six, this dump on the Slovenian border was nearly making him hysterical.
Now, when you’re close to hysteria, it’s best if you eat something. Brenner ordered himself a Cordon bleu, and then went up to his room.
Maybe you’re familiar with this: it’s too early to go to sleep, but you also don’t know what to do with the evening. That’s what old man Löschenkohl had put a small TV in Brenner’s room for. But TV wasn’t the right thing now, either. A VCR would’ve been good right about now, and not just any old VCR, but the kind where you can fast-forward your own life a full day ahead.
He must have fallen asleep in his clothes because at ten-thirty he was startled awake.
I’d prefer not to say what startled him, trust me on this. It had to do with you-know. Intimacy. And what it comes down to is—it’s nobody’s business but your own. And everybody should do as they please.
The waitress must have had a needlepoint sign hanging over her bed that said: “Work Before Play.” Because she worked a lot, Brenner could see that every day. A good waitress, you’ve got to admit, with strong arms for schlepping beer steins.
And about the play, what should I say. He could hear it again now, just like he did every night. But today it seemed even louder to him, maybe only because he’d just been asleep. Brenner was just amazed that the waitress managed to find so many lovers. Because one thing’s got to be said in all honesty. A beauty she was not. Nice, yes, competent, yes, pretty, no. No need to discuss.
And when, punctually at eleven-thirty, he overheard her lusty cries, Brenner thought: and now I’d like to know what kind of lover the waitress has taken up to her room tonight.
Now, this is something you can only know if you’ve slept in the staff’s quarters at an inn before. That they often—unique to old country inns—only have thin wood partitions. It was once an attic, and now it’s the staff quarters. And so you see all over again how important it is for a detective to have a good pocket knife with a corkscrew. Because with a corkscrew you can drill a small hole into a wooden wall that thin, just like so.
I don’t know, was it just curiosity that had Brenner thinking, and now I’d like to know who exactly this lover is? Or, what with the Porsche snapping him back to his room so fast, was it the shock from reentry into Klöch? Either way, he had to do something to get himself thinking about other things.
Or was it a certain sexual, you know, after all. Like the little boys who like to peek over at the other side of the changing rooms at the swimming pool. You’ll laugh, but there are wunderkinds who can’t swim an inch, but who could take over the Chair of Gynecology in an instant.
But when Brenner saw Horvath on the other
side, he grabbed his pistol and hopped on over to his neighbor’s room.
CHAPTER 9
When Brenner woke up the next morning, at first he thought, a dream, of course. Because when human beings don’t want to know something, first they hope it’s a dream. But no, it was no dream that he had found Horvath in the waitress’s room.
Brenner remained very calm, though, and thought to himself, I just won’t let on. First, I need a little more information about Horvath before I can take any action.
He knew that both Marko and Palfinger had farmhouses in St. Martin, and before he’d even had breakfast, he was down at the stop waiting for the nine o’clock mail truck to St. Martin. He stood on the side of the road for an eternity before he finally saw the truck off in the distance. As the green mail truck slowly crept down through the green hills—a spectacle of nature, just wonderful, I’ve got to say. But Brenner, needless to say, somewhere else in his thoughts.
He didn’t get much out of the drive, either, he was so preoccupied with Horvath. It could have been a wonderful drive in the nearly empty nine o’clock mail truck. I certainly don’t want to come across as patriotic, or as the saying goes: no place like your own home. But I’ve gotten around a little in my life, too, last year, Egypt, convenient arrangements, and at the breakfast buffet—you can take as much as you want! And the pyramids, of course, stunning sight, nothing like it.
But driving through Styria in an empty mail truck, as Brenner now was, remains some of the greatest beauty that you can experience in this world: the sun, the fields, the vineyards, and the one-story toy farmhouses, any one of which could have won a floral decorating contest. And don’t even bother about the suicide rate again, because suicide rates are everywhere, but floral decorating contests? Not everywhere.
Once in St. Martin, Brenner was on the lookout for the most beautiful farmhouse, and on the mailbox, needless to say: Marko. After the fourth ring, though, still nobody had answered. Now: should I ring a fifth time, or should I knock, or should I shout, or should I give up?
