“Yes, like the others.”
“What’s Horn found out so far?”
“Nothing, effectively,” Sabine Wieck said.
“Why do we need him then?” Kovacs asked.
“Because it’s better for a psychiatrist to find out nothing than a police officer.”
In any case this was not entirely true; Horn had established that neither Felix Szigeti nor Britta Kern appeared traumatised, and yet both were very frightened, as if they felt honour-bound and threatened at the same time. Felix had said that if he told, then the same thing would happen to him, while Britta pressed her lips firmly together and just shook her head. “‘If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll beat you again, but properly this time.’ That’s what ‘the same thing’ means,” Kovacs said. “I don’t know,” Sabine Wieck said.
“What don’t you know?”
Some situations were simple, and the violence towards children was hardly one of the more complicated things in life, Kovacs said. Precisely, and because it is so simple, people don’t generally just hit children on the back, shoulders and head, as Felix and Britta had stated. “People hit children all over,” Kovacs said. Anyway, nobody knew if these two children were telling the truth. “It’s a well-known saying that children and fools speak the truth,” Bitterle said. Kovacs laughed out loud. “Nonsense,” he bellowed. “Children lie – everyone knows that. I lied when I was a child, you lied, and the Felixes and Brittas of this world lie too.” “A fractured collarbone doesn’t lie,” Bitterle said, and Kovacs had no answer to that.
Christine Strobl was standing in the doorway, looking irritable. Since she went home yesterday evening, she said, thirty-two messages had been left on the answer phone, including one at twenty-seven minutes past midnight, one at nine minutes past two, and another at half past three exactly – evidently from people whose biggest problem was insomnia. At least half of the calls were hazy allegations about neighbours or divorced spouses. One man, for example, had said in his message that his ex-wife was owl-shaped, liked dressing in black and had a tendency towards violence against weaker individuals. Most of the other messages were racially motivated: it was common knowledge that the favourite pastime of Muslims was mistreating children – they educated their own to become suicide bombers and sacrificed foreigners’ children for training purposes, and of course the Chinese, well, they were on the point of taking over the world, weren’t they? In her opinion, Christine Strobl said, two of the messages were of interest. First, the nine-minutes-past-two caller, who sounded slightly bewildered and paranoid, said that he had spent his entire life looking into secret societies and there was a whole raft of them with the colour black in their name, including a lot of flowers: Black Rose, Tulip, Lily, Black Eagle, Black Wolf, even Black Hamster – which he found puerile – Black Window, Black Tower, Black Sunday, and of course Black September. On the other hand he had never come across Black Owl, but it might well be a new organisation. If the reports in the media were to be believed, he thought that these blows were not abuse, but rather an initiation rite, a sort of accolade. “Twat,” Kovacs said. Frau Strobl looked offended: “Well, I thought it was interesting anyway.” “It is,” Wieck said. “Horn spoke of a pledge, too.” As a psychiatrist he could allow himself to spout all that stuff with impunity, Kovacs said, standing up. He couldn’t understand it, he said, a few children had been beaten and suddenly people were talking of pledges and secret societies, no doubt only to deflect attention from what he’d been saying before, the fact that everybody did it, hit their children, he meant. Now he was going to go away and try to be productive.
There was just one other point, Strobl said, but if he wasn’t interested then he should feel free to go and she would do something unproductive with the other ladies, like synchronising their premenstrual tension. “Oh, Christ!” Kovacs sighed, raising his hands in submission. “Pardon?” Wieck asked. “I’ll tell you later,” the secretary said. So secondly, Eva Weinfurter, a social worker at the town’s youth welfare office, had left a message just after seven o’clock, with the cautious advice that the investigation team might be interested in what the office had to say on the subject of violence towards children. If this were the case then she suggested that they return her call. Kovacs slumped back down into his chair. “And?” he asked. “What do you mean ‘and’?” Wieck asked.
“I’ll do it,” Bitterle said, turning to Strobl. “Could I have the number, please?” The secretary rolled her eyes and gave her the slip of paper. “Why you again?” she hissed. “I love lists,” Bitterle said loudly. She envisaged that the youth welfare office list might also contain a hundred or so possible culprits. Assuming a certain overlap, that meant that the two lists together would give them perhaps one hundred and fifty suspects. “When will Demski be here?” Kovacs asked. “Never, if you don’t haul him back,” Wieck said.
“What’s Mauritz doing at the moment? And where’s Lipp?”
I’m lacking all assertiveness, Kovacs thought. Instead of immediately ordering Demski back from Berlin, I’m making temporary arrangements. On the other hand, everyone knew that a frustrated Demski was nothing but a burden.
“Lipp’s still on patrol. We could probably get him if you asked Eyltz nicely. But what would we do with Mauritz?” Wieck made a gesture indicating her colleague’s corpulence. “Doesn’t matter. Give him a section of the list. Tell him to leave his chemistry set at home and talk to people,” Kovacs said. “But don’t let him climb any scaffolding.”
Apropos climbing scaffolding: Strobl pointed to Ludwig Kovacs’ right forearm. What she could see of his bandage looked slightly rotten, if he did not mind her mentioning it.
*
Kovacs had to think for while about where he had left the Vectra the day before. I’m getting old, he thought, my tolerance is on the wane, I’m a misogynist in the eyes of my female colleagues, I think people take children too seriously, and finally, I’ve forgotten where I parked the car. To top it all, it’s a filthy pile of junk that reeks of cigarettes, not a work car, he thought, slamming the car door. He drove towards the centre along Seestraße, turned left into Severinstraße, crossed the river and took the western exit at the roundabout. After the petrol station the road climbed for a bit so that he was suddenly on a level with the tops of the poplars that rose above the wildlife observation centre. The sky was full of tiny clouds. They seemed to be standing still, waiting for an order. It calmed him. A grey heron flew in a downwards arc towards the lake.
There had in fact been two categories of beating when he was a boy: the predictable and less predictable ones. The predictable ones were for performing poorly at school, being naughty, or saying no when this was not the answer your old man wanted to hear. Up until the fourth year in primary school they were caned with a slim willow rod, after that with the belt. Basically, all his friends had got this same sort of punishment, apart from Helmut Grimm and Walter Dorner, both of whom were teachers’ sons, and who were brought up differently. What it ultimately amounted to was that your contempt for your parents grew until the point when you were able to pack your things and move out with a good conscience. Occasionally his mother had been able to give him a sign, a blink of her eyes, or a quick movement of her hand: For God’s sake, get out of here! But mostly it had happened to him without any prior warning. People who could use a pen or a soup spoon equally competently with their left or right hand were called ambidextrous, he knew that from Marlene. Sometimes they had other unusual talents, too, like memorising tunes, artwhistling, or reciting entire telephone directories from start to finish. His father could beat him with either hand, one after the other or both at the same time, and you never knew which side the pain was coming from, even a split-second before. He could still feel the sensation of those coarse hands landing on his face, either flat or clenched into a fist, and he also remembered that the worst thing was not the pain or the fear of being beaten, but the vivid image of his father’s fingers: how thick they were, how raised his knu
ckles were, and how unbelievably red, even redder than his face. Afterwards he would squat by the wall of the shed; he could still picture this exactly as it had been, the blood running from his nose and his horror of those fingers. He would fix his gaze on the edge of the forest beyond the ditch in the meadow in Upper Styria and wait for a deer. But none ever came.
The sheds of the poultry farm came into view on his left. Ever since Schilcher had changed to the barn system, the outside walls were no longer covered in graffiti. Kovacs had liked the slogans: FREE THE CHICKENS! DO YOU WANT EGGS LAID BY NAKED SLAVES? ASK SCHILCHER WHERE HE BUYS HIS BREAKFAST EGGS! His favourite slogan, though, had to be I’D RATHER HAVE TOHFU! TOHFU with a silent “h”. Schilcher had repeatedly complained to the police about criminal damage and intimidation, and using his contacts with Eyltz had even got the police to set up a forensic crime scene. Mauritz had moved in with his special sprays and his luminescent lights, allowed himself two days, at the end of which he told Schilcher in confidence that, regrettably, he had only found his, Schilcher’s, fingerprints, which meant that the sole outcome could be a charge against him of attempted insurance fraud, in view of his application to the insurance firm for compensation. After that the matter was shelved with remarkable speed.
He took the turn-off for Waiern, drove through the village and straight after the church turned westwards onto the old lakeside road. The sliding door to Fred Ley’s boathouse was open. As he drove past he could see the hulls of two white catamarans on stands, side by side. This is where Kovacs had left his own dinghy over the winter, and if any repairs were needed, Ley saw to them without asking much. Right next to it, the clubhouse of Waiern sailing club. Fred Ley had been its president for more than twenty years. Some things followed a simple logic. The road that gave access to the lakeside restaurant, the supermarket and the primary school. There was no black owl here, although people no doubt hit their children in Waiern, too. The agricultural machinery dealer with his excessively large showroom, then three residential roads which all led north. Kovacs took the third. The gabled houses all looked the same, even the front gardens held little to distinguish themselves from one another. Forsythia bushes, white and purple lilacs, daffodils, grape hyacinths, and the first irises dotted here and there. In front of number twelve there was a fountain with a concrete carp spouting water.
The woman who opened the door was holding a shoehorn. Kovacs stared at it, puzzled. For a moment there was a bizarre paralysis between the two of them. Then the woman said, “No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m tidying up.” She took a step backwards. Tidying up was basically all she’d been doing since the accident, she said, working and tidying, there wasn’t anything else. She worked in the office of the old people’s home in the village and could do overtime, as much as she wanted. No-one noticed at home, because her husband came home late anyway and Leo, her younger son, didn’t want to have anything to do with her at the moment. “As if I’d done it,” she said. “What?” Kovacs said, even though he knew what she meant.
“What do you think?”
Did that mean that she still thought her son had been pushed from the scaffolding? Kovacs asked. She couldn’t bear to contemplate the alternatives. “Could you imagine your child slipping on a pool of lubricating oil and falling to their death? Or tripping over a piece of timber that someone had left there?” Kovacs thought of the bandage hidden by the sleeve of his jacket and said nothing.
Gerlinde Weghaupt was a strong, dark-haired woman; one could imagine her quite comfortably living with three men. A woman who laughs even though they’re all a bit complicated, Kovacs thought; a woman who asks her husband week after week to mow the lawn; a woman who makes sure that the fridge is full and that the council tax is paid on time. She just hadn’t reckoned on this tragedy. She walked ahead of him. By the stairs that led to the upper floor she turned around. “On the television relatives always offer detectives a cup of coffee,” she said. “I hope you weren’t counting on one. I just can’t do those sorts of things at the moment.” Kovacs waved the suggestion away. For goodness sake, no, he knew that Demski had spoken to her a number of times already, and that the whole process was an imposition for her, but sometimes he needed to see things with his own eyes, and anyway, he liked looking at people’s rooms.
The wall going up the stairs was hung with watercolours of flowers. She paints them herself, Kovacs thought. In autumn she turns over the soil in the vegetable patch, and in spring she paints crocuses and wood anemones. “Where does your husband work, exactly?” Kovacs asked. For Apollo, a temping agency, the woman said, climbing the stairs in front of him. It might sound like poor money and exploitation, but it wasn’t. As a paper-machine engineer he was able to seek out the good jobs and organise his work in such a way that he had time to play at weekends and during Carnival. Accordion, she said when Kovacs remained silent, dance music. He played in a quartet: accordion, fiddle, clarinet and double bass. They were in demand all over Austria, sometimes in Bavaria and Switzerland, too.
The woman took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door. Kovacs imagined her doing this on a daily basis now, locking the door again once inside the room even though there was nobody else in the house, and then sitting on the bed or at the desk.
The famous photograph of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert hung above the bed, next to it Chick Corea with Bobby McFerrin on a huge open-air stage, and Friedrich Gulda in a photograph from the time before he wore a cap. “He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father,” Kovacs said. The woman shook her head. “He took it more seriously,” she said. “It wasn’t just about earning money and that.” Kovacs went over to the nut-brown piano by the wall to the right of the window and lifted the lid. GEBRÜDER STINGEL, WIEN, he read, K. & K. HOF-CLAVIER-FABRIKANTEN. The woman smiled briefly. The compulsion to lift the lid of a piano, he’d had that too, she said, he’d always got himself into trouble in museums, like at Mozart’s birth house in Salzburg. He was still quite small at the time, but his hand was straight on the piano lid and bang! One of those ghastly museum attendants was there in a flash, barking “Please, don’t touch!” Kovacs pressed down a key, carefully so that it did not make a sound. He could feel the felt of the hammer touching the string. “It’s from 1908, a Viennese action mechanism. He bought it on eBay from a junk dealer in Ljubljana. Last summer he did a course in piano restoration specially,” the woman said. In a golden frame on top of the piano was a photograph of a black man at a grand piano. Thelonious Monk, the woman said – he’d been an idol, someone for whom music was everything, for whom nothing else existed. Kovacs thought that there were things he knew something about, such as freshwater fish, the way in which people dealt with loss, and the difference between a red giant and a white dwarf; but other things he was totally ignorant of, such as spring-flowering plants, what women liked to wear, or music. “The piano’s a solo instrument, isn’t it?” he asked. The woman gave him a wary look. “Didn’t your colleague tell you?” she asked. “About the band, I mean?”
“No, well, maybe he did and I wasn’t really listening.” Sometimes you lie and don’t know why, he thought, you obey an impulse and can’t explain it. There were five of them, the woman said, guitar, bass, drums, flute and him on the keyboard. He also played piano on some numbers, but not many. “They’re good,” the woman said. “He composed and wrote lyrics, they mainly played their own songs.” R. & B., he would say if you asked him what sort of music he played, Austro R. & B. – she didn’t really know what it was herself. They’d recently been to see a production company in Vienna to discuss a recording project. Although it hadn’t gone well, and the person there had sent them away after talking only about the sales they might expect and a possible deal where they’d put in some of their own money, something would come of it soon, she was absolutely sure. “What are they called?” Kovacs asked. She did not immediately understand. “Who? The label?”
“No, the band. What’s the band called?”
The woman thought for
a moment and then shrugged. She didn’t know, she said, the band had been called many things, to begin with it was Furth Five, then names like Stille Nacht or Grobverputz; she couldn’t say what the current one was. Now she’s lying, Kovacs thought, he couldn’t possibly say why, but she is. He thought of Weather Report, Attwenger, Manhattan Transfer, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Rammstein, and all of a sudden wondered whether The Black Owl might not be a brilliant name for a band. He was close to asking her, but then let it pass.
She talked about the family crisis caused by her son’s decision to leave school after the fifth year to begin a builder’s apprenticeship, and how he’d been a role model for his younger brother, with his passions and his sharp critical mind which had never blunted, even though he spent every day building brick walls, cementing foundations and pouring screed. Finally she explained how her husband would occasionally stand outside their son’s door, listening, and how in the beginning, when they were lying in bed at night, he used to call him an idiot whose obstinacy was doing him out of his school-leaver’s certificate and a university education, but then he had started to rave about how musical he was and the power of his lyrics. “Can I see some?” Kovacs asked.
“What?”
“Lyrics.”
“No,” the woman said, shutting the piano lid. Had he now seen what he’d needed to see, she asked. Kovacs nodded. He thought so, he said. By the way, he wanted to tell her that her son definitely hadn’t slipped in a pool of lubricating oil up on the scaffolding. Nor had there been any lengths of timber lying around that he might have tripped over. He knew because he’d been there himself. The woman looked over his shoulder towards the door. She knew something else, as well, she said: Her son had definitely not killed himself.
The Mattress House: A Kovacs and Horn Investigation (Kovacs & Horn 2) Page 13
