The Mattress House: A Kovacs and Horn Investigation (Kovacs & Horn 2)

by Paulus Hochgatterer

  Horn put the piece of paper on the table. “This is what I’m here about now,” he said, they had already figured out the Sabrina thing. Marcus looked up at the ceiling for a few moments. “Where did you get that from?” he asked. “From Florian’s mother in the end,” Horn said. “Silly cow,” Marcus said. “I beg your pardon” Herbert said.

  “Nothing. That’s what mums are like.”

  “What are mums like?”

  “Ignorant, moronic, poking around in people’s e-mails.”

  “Like your own?”

  “Yeah, like mine.”

  “And not interested?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He had written that too, Horn said, that not even his closest family members were interested in his music. “In our music,” Marcus said, “in our worthless, good-for-nothing, derivative music.” What he had heard him play was not in the least worthless, Herbert said. Unfortunately his opinion was not worth a damn, nor the opinions of friends or guitar teachers, Marcus said, and Palkovits, the producer they had worked with, had said that they were decent rip-offs but nothing more. Florian had had the courage to ask who, in the man’s opinion, they were ripping off, and this drugged-up bloke with greasy hair said that was beside the point, it sounded derivative, end of argument. Months of intensive rehearsal down the drain, not to mention the work composing the lyrics and music. The man hadn’t even let them play for him, he just said that he had heard enough on the demo C.D., end of story. “And a few days later Florian fell to his death,” said Herbert. Yes, when that happened it was all over, Marcus said, after that he looked at the world as if he were viewing a series of video clips he no longer had anything to do with, and that’s the state he was in when he wrote the letter to Florian, the only person who’d really meant anything to him. “And then …” Herbert said. “I hanged myself,” simple as that. He’d gone down to the basement when it was quiet, chopped off a piece of an old climbing rope with a hatchet, two, maybe three metres, and tied a noose. He had no idea where the rope came from, it had been there for ever and, no, as far as he knew his mother had never gone climbing, nor had any of his various stepfathers. “Various step-fathers?” Horn asked. There had been four so far, Marcus said, the last one had been on the scene for two and a half years. The moment he, Marcus, was born, his biological father had buggered off to the South Tyrol where he originally hailed from, but he’d already told them that about a hundred times. At that moment Horn suddenly saw all the questions that needed to be asked lined up before him, as if on a school blackboard. Have you tried to get in contact with your father? How do you imagine him? Do you have a photograph of him? Which of your stepfathers did you have the best relationship with? Do you still see him? Did your first stepfather beat you? The second? The third? The fourth probably not any more. He felt ridiculous and only asked one question: “Why under the chandelier?” Marcus Lagler again turned his gaze to the ceiling, then looked at Horn. It sounded a bit childish, he said, but he had formed this nice image in his mind: his mother turning on the light and him hanging there peacefully, the light above his head like a halo.

  *

  Sometimes Raffael Horn felt the need for a drink in the middle of the day, and this disturbed him. It happened when there were arguments within his team, when Irene was in one of her detached phases, and when Krem, the commercial director, threatened redundancies. There was also this strange, mental sluggishness, the feeling of having missed something important, without there actually having been anything that he could have missed. You’re going mad, he told himself, there’s no more to the world than what exists. Still, in situations like this he was pleased not to have a beer to hand or schnapps. He went to the tap and drank until his stomach ached. Then he opened the window hoping to smell something strong, such as lilac or rotting reeds. But he could not smell anything at all.

  “There’s always more to the world than what exists,” Leonie Wittmann said, leaning with her shoulder against the wall. This happened from time to time: after the rounds, someone would lean against the wall, a group would form, and weird sentences would be uttered, plucked right out of everyday hospital life. Hrachovec wondered whether that comment about the world wasn’t banal, and Wittmann said, yes, it was to an extent, but on the other hand it was the banal things in life which provided relief, such as realising that you’d never be able to deal with everything and would always overlook something, or that all concrete things in life were symbolic, too, the noose hanging from the chandelier hook, cutting your own skin or showing your naked body to another person. Or slapping a child in the face, Horn thought. “Exactly,” Wittmann said.

  They discussed body imagery, the question of how badly a child would have to be treated for it to indulge in self-harming later on, and the pleasurable notion of punching Sabrina’s father’s lights out. At the end they talked about subconscious motives for choosing a particular musical instrument. In his view, Hrachovec said, music should never be the reason for a suicide attempt, and Herbert replied that this was the romantic, sentimental drivel of someone who was absolutely clueless. Musicians were always topping themselves, especially guitarists – in fact people expected them to. Horn thought of his wife’s emotional transparency, her red cheeks when she practised, and how she always said that to be really believable a musician had to play as if their life depended on it.

  “Has your strange feeling gone now?” Wittmann asked before they parted company. He listened to his inner self for a moment, then shook his head. It probably had something to do with his obsessive Scotland fixation, he said, nothing else.

  The grey-haired man was waiting for him by the steps. “Possner,” he said, “Armin Possner”. Horn needn’t worry, he evidently had a very forgettable name; by now he knew the face people made, some of them would say Possnik or Posch. He had called his company Apollo, A because of Armin and Po because of Possner, Apollo Recruitment, people didn’t have such difficulty with that. Occasionally he was also called Herr Apollo. He knew he ought to have telephoned ahead, he apologised for this oversight, but he needed some quick advice.

  Horn looked at the man, the neat haircut, the polished shoes and the piece of paper folded many times over. A schizophrenic wife being treated in Graz was what came to mind, and suddenly he wondered whether stripes on ties always went downwards from left to right.

  His daughter had vanished the day before, the man said, like a ghost, without leaving anything behind, no clue, nor any message. She was thirteen and had been very difficult for the past six months – he had briefly mentioned that the last time they met. All he knew for sure was that she had taken money from his office, several thousand euros, which was not that significant as she had always been a thief. He was more worried by the accusations she had been obsessively levelling at himself and his wife: that at the time they had not in fact put her into care, but bought her from her Indian parents, with the intention of “sub-letting” her for short periods – that’s what she called it. He was trying not to get worked up about it, but rather to think about the traumas of her childhood, years in an orphanage, time on the streets, and everything that had happened to her there. This allowed him to come to terms with her behaviour to an extent; his wife, on the other hand, was all over the place, no longer sleeping, talking to the television, and since yesterday insisting that her daughter was dead.

  “What’s her name?” Horn asked.

  “Who? My wife?”

  “No, your daughter.”

  Fanni, the man said, his foster daughter was called Fanni. To begin with she had been a quiet, well-adjusted little girl, but that had gradually changed. Now he didn’t think he could cope with the matter on his own and wanted to report it to the child welfare office, her going missing and the accusations she was likely to be making. That was the first thing he wanted to ask Horn, the name of a contact at the local child welfare office, somebody you could safely tell a story like this to. “Safely?” Horn asked. “You know what I mean,” the man said. “W
ithout the usual prejudices.” After all, they were talking about a foreign girl who looked pretty exotic. Which shouldn’t be a problem, even in Furth, Horn said. “Let’s hope you’re right,” the man replied.

  “And the second thing?” Horn said.

  “Would you treat her?” the man asked.

  “But she’s not here.”

  “When she’s back – would you treat her? She’s quite unstable. You’ve got to believe me.”

  The man looked exhausted and worried. Some people had to shoulder the burden of a schizophrenic wife, add to that a foster daughter who ran away from home, and yet they still managed to iron razor-sharp creases into their trousers. Horn looked at the baggy knees of his jeans and thought about the fact that Tobias crushed eggs, abducted cats and drove vehicles illegally. Then he thought of Irene, who would go through periods of hardly sleeping, who definitely talked to her cello, and repeatedly saw the deaths of her sons played out in her head. In spite of all this he had it good, of that he was certain.

  “What sort of staff can one recruit from your firm?” he asked. The man gave him a look of surprise, then smiled. Mainly builders, he said, bricklayers, joiners, crane operators, and plenty of them if necessary, several hundred at a time. But he also had highly qualified staff on his books, software developers, I.T. engineers or security experts for the protection of property and people. Should he ever need it, he could recruit someone to build a stage, write a speech or weld a shark cage underwater. I’d like the shark cage, Horn thought. Then he asked where he got all these people from, and the man said from all over the world.

  *

  Horn turned around, went into the office and picked up the telephone. Leuweritz answered. “Don’t you ever operate?” Horn asked.

  “Are you phoning me to revel in the laziness of casualty surgeons?”

  “More serious than that. You’ve got schnapps in your department, haven’t you?”

  “Sure do!” Leuweritz said. Horn hung up. A trace of Andrea Elmer’s perfume hung in the air – Miyake, if he remembered correctly. A fragment of one of Leuweritz’s phrases came into his head: the tip of a fence post touching their pericardium.

  NINETEEN

  The first thing he saw was a yellow Playmobil island with palm trees. It was on the concrete path by the door, a few metres from the garden wall. It was cracked from the edge to the middle, and a wedge-shaped piece had broken off. Somebody must have stepped on it. In the juniper bushes to the side of the path was a raccoon cuddly toy and a red doll’s bed. Ludwig Kovacs picked up the raccoon and took it with him.

  Two women were standing by the entrance. One of them – thin, grey-haired, slightly odd hairdo – was crying. The other, short and round, and wearing a mint-green poplin coat, was holding her hands, trying to calm her down. “Which of you called?” Kovacs asked. “I did,” said the shorter one. “Are you from the police?” He nodded. “And who are you?” The thin lady sobbed. Her name was Lea Wirth, the head of the kindergarten, the other woman said. She had heard about it from her.

  At 6.34 a.m. a call had come through to the out-of-hours office of the Furth police, and been logged in the usual way. Her name was Erika Oleschowsky, the woman had said, and she was a notoriously early riser, no matter whether it was a weekday, a Sunday, or even Easter Saturday. She lived in one of the terraced houses in Zsigmondygasse, number eighteen, and her bedroom window looked directly onto the rear of the town kindergarten, the playground and the outside terrace. When she had gone out onto her balcony that morning, all she had felt at first was a vague inkling that something was different from normal. Then she had seen that all the ropes on the climbing frame in the playground had been cut. Rope ladders, swings, rings – they were all on the ground. The wind had strewn all across the lawn a mass of brightly coloured scraps of cloth, irregularly shaped, different sizes, she hadn’t been able to identify them. And the door out to the terrace was wide open. As the whole picture looked as though the place had been burgled, she had telephoned the police without delay.

  Jürgensen, a complete newcomer to the service, had been unable to cope and had called Töllmann, and Töllmann had said that since it concerned children it was clear whose responsibility it was.

  Kovacs had rolled away from Marlene’s embrace, wiped a dribble of saliva from her face, and snuck out of the flat. On the stairs he had paused briefly, thought of Charlotte, who was asleep on the gallery, and for some unfathomable reason had pictured the fine veins on Marlene’s breasts. He had felt good and this surprised him. It was, after all, early in the morning on Easter Saturday, and he could now forget about his breakfast à trois.

  “Would you like me to open up?” Lea Wirth asked. The key was sitting in the palm of her hand. She looks like a shrunken Prince Valiant somehow, Kovacs thought. He took the arm of the kindergarten teacher and led her to the door. Yes, he would like her to open up, he said. Kovacs felt her quiver when she put the key into the lock. “It’s not locked,” she said. “Why on earth is it not locked?” He did not say anything and pulled open the door.

  In the hallway two smashed basins were lying side by side, along with several overturned lockers and a large brown floor-vase with willow branches. Lea Wirth gasped. “Are you going to be alright?” Kovacs asked. She stared at the room, making tiny circular movements with her hands. He let go of her and lifted one of the }lockers upright again. “Sit down,” he said. “Frau Oleschowsky will stay with you.” He asked how many rooms there were in total, and Erika Oleschowsky said there were two classrooms, the office, the lavatories, a meeting room, and a quiet room for the little ones. Lea Wirth sat there trembling.

  Mauritz answered straightaway. “Who’s ruining my peace?” he asked. “Who do you think?” Kovacs said. He realised that Mauritz was probably just about to tuck into his second fried egg, and that he and his wife were congratulating each other on the fact that Nikolaus had finally gone off to sleep, but regrettably it looked like a case for forensics. Another scaffolding incident? Mauritz wondered, and Kovacs said no, a kindergarten, sorry to disappoint, all on the ground floor, four steps up to the front door, but there was a wheelchair ramp.

  “Can I finish reading the sports section?”

  “No,” Kovacs said, and he shouldn’t forget the police tape or the spare battery for the camera. “Blood?” Mauritz asked. No blood, as far as he could tell, just lots of broken stuff, Kovacs replied. “Who on earth would wreck a kindergarten?” Mauritz said.

  Kovacs went slowly from door to door. It was as if a tornado had passed through the rooms, or a gang of hooligans. Overturned shelves, the contents of cupboards tipped out, emptied Duplo and Lego boxes, drawings ripped from the walls, a pirate ship with a real skull-and-crossbones flag trampled to bits, a family of dark-grey corduroy hares with all their ears ripped off. In the lavatories the third basin along was hanging downwards from its left-hand fitting. The mirrors had been smashed, the children’s footstool, which had clearly been used as an implement, was beside the door. Only in the office and meeting room did everything appear to be untouched. Two folders labelled PERSONNEL lay on the desk. In a water jug stood a forsythia branch, hung with a few painted Easter eggs.

  “I found these in the garden,” Kovacs said, showing Lea Wirth several strips of coloured plastic. “Have you any idea what these are?” The teacher nodded. “From our paddling pool,” she said. “But we don’t usually bring that out until the middle of May.” It’s been cut up, Kovacs said, probably with a Stanley knife. Lea Wirth thought for a moment, then shook her head. “What is it?” Kovacs asked. Nothing, she said, the paddling pool was folded away in the garden storage room, behind the hose reel and terracotta flowerpots, but hardly anybody knew that. Had that room been broken into as well? “Broken into? What do you mean?” “Well, what else?” Lea Wirth asked. There was no sign of a break-in on the terrace door, and she had seen the front door herself. “Do burglars have keys?” she asked. Duplicate keys, skeleton keys, everything, he said, and Erika Oleschowksy asked
how nutty someone had to be to cut a paddling pool to bits.

  Kovacs asked Frau Oleschowsky to make them all a cup of coffee. In truth her curiosity and green coat were getting on his nerves.

  “Incidentally, do you know Felix Szigeti?” he asked. Of course she knew him, Lea Wirth said, and Britta Kern, too, if that was what he was driving at, Sen Wu was the only one she didn’t know, he’d gone to the kindergarten in north Furth. Anyway, Felix and Britta had been delightful children, both a bit eccentric, and Felix could be a little impulsive sometimes. In her view, only someone who was seriously mentally disturbed would go around beating up children. She hesitated for a moment. “But you don’t think that the two are …” “No, I don’t,” Kovacs said.

  He asked all the usual police questions, even though he knew they would not get him anywhere. Is there anybody you think might have done this? Have you or any of your colleagues been threatened recently? Maybe in the past? Any unpleasant scenes with parents? Grandparents? Do the neighbours feel disturbed by the noise the children make? Lea Wirth kept shaking her head. The last time there’d been a disagreement was the previous week, she said eventually. A four-and-a-half-year-old boy had invited a girl to touch his penis while they were playing doctors and nurses in the dolly corner. The girl’s mother had reacted with indignation, going on about sexual abuse and teachers neglecting their responsibilities. Funnily enough, in the end what pacified the woman most of all was the argument that it did no harm if a girl discovered early on what it felt like to touch a penis; it was said to increase self-confidence. Kovacs found himself getting irritated by the well-rehearsed way in which this elderly kindergarten teacher spoke about sexuality.