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

by Paulus Hochgatterer

  Mauritz came in with Erika Oleschowsky. His face was bright red. “What’s up? You seem to be even more out of breath than usual,” Kovacs said. “A quick coffee will fix it,” Mauritz replied, supporting himself against the wall. He’d rather not hear any more talk of lateness or a second fried egg, please, quite clearly this was going to be one crappy Easter Saturday. The two ladies nodded in agreement. Erika Oleschowsky poured coffee into plastic beakers. Children normally drink out of these, Kovacs thought, and then they make Lego houses, brush dolls’ hair and have battles between their Pokémon figures.

  He had been driving along Seestraße towards Rathausplatz, Mauritz said, at a leisurely speed, appropriate for a holiday, as it were, and suddenly there was this car in Ellert’s toy shop. It wasn’t unusual for cars to be found in toy shops, Kovacs said, he had even bought a green Matchbox Lamborghini when he was a boy, from Heinisch’s toy shop in Bruck an der Mur. He had paid with a twenty-shilling note stolen from his father’s wallet, and although he never stopped being plagued by feelings of guilt, he loved the car. “Some kind of minivan,” Mauritz said, stirring sugar into his coffee, “terrible bodywork, ghastly colour, disabled badge, hydraulic platform at the back.” The car was going backwards and must have crashed through the glass frontage with huge force, only coming to a standstill in the middle of the shop. It seemed to have destroyed all sorts of things, but he hadn’t had the time to inspect the damage in detail. He’d wound police tape around the area several times over and had called the station. “Accident?” Kovacs asked. “Accident, incident, break-in, who cares?” Mauritz said. Jürgensen had come, he’d contacted him before he went off duty. He was now hanging about the crime scene, half asleep, waiting for someone to take over. First an accident, then a crime scene, that was inconsistent, Kovacs said. Mauritz drank up his coffee and put the cup into Frau Oleschowsky’s hand. “You’re such a pedant!” he said. “Do you want to see it?”

  “What?”

  “The crime scene.”

  “There are some things that are never coincidences,” Kovacs said before they got into Mauritz’s Renault. “You mean the kindergarten and the toy shop at the same time?” Mauritz asked. “Who does things like that?” Kovacs thought of the freshly ironed shirt in the renovated house in Sankt Christoph, the purple marks left on the girl’s face, and Relaxo. Then he thought of the precise edging of the flowerbeds in the front garden and how Sabine Wieck had needed to wash her hands afterwards. “Someone who’s had problems in their childhood,” he said.

  “I was always the fat one,” Mauritz said after a time. “What do you mean was?” Kovacs asked. Mauritz laughed. He meant when he was at kindergarten. He had always been the fat one and from day one Mauritz, as if that were his first name. Mauritz can’t walk that quickly, please wait for Mauritz – those were the sentences he had hear the two kindergarten teachers utter on a daily basis. Tante Frieda and Tante Berta, that was it. What the hell was his first name again? Kovacs wondered. Of course it had bothered him sometimes, Maurtiz said, but there had never really been any question of taking his revenge by laying his kindergarten to waste. Anyway, once he’d made it up the climbing frame faster than Christian Rametsteiner. Christian’s trousers had got caught on some wood, he’d just been unlucky. Engelbert, Kovacs thought, that’s his name, Engelbert.

  They were still trying to trace the owner of the vehicle, Mauritz said, there were the usual holiday-related complications. Apart from that they could assume with some confidence that the car was stolen. “How so?” Kovacs said.

  “Would you park your own car in the middle of a toy shop?”

  “An apple-green Lamborghini Miura,” Kovacs said.

  Only a handful of people had come to gawp at the scene. The Jürgensen boy was strutting up and down, trying to look authoritative. When he saw Kovacs and Mauritz he pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. First of all, the shop owner was on his way back from holiday in Italy and would be arriving that evening, a neighbour had told him that. Secondly, although the computer system still wasn’t working, one of the bystanders had identified the vehicle. It belonged to Kurt Frühwald, an insurance broker whose wife was paralysed from the waist down, hence the wheelchair platform at the back. He had asked the man to wait in case Kovacs wanted to know any more.

  The man was sitting inside the shop on a blue children’s chair, concentrating hard on a wooden puzzle. He was absolutely certain it was Kurt Frühwald’s car, he said. He had insured his two horses with Frühwald a week or so ago, and had driven to the stable with him in that same mustard-yellow car to get the insurance company’s expert opinion. Frühwald had told him about his wife’s needing a wheelchair and also that she wasn’t quite right in the head at the moment. “Have you got all of that?” Kovacs asked. Jürgensen nodded eagerly. The man looked at the puzzle in his hand, seemed to consider for a moment whether to pocket it, but then put it back on the shelf. Who would have thought that you have to insure horses as well? Kovacs thought. He reached for his mobile.

  Was he disturbing him?

  He was painting Easter eggs? Of course!

  Wasn’t he the expert in people who weren’t right in the head?

  He should get to the point? Yes, he understood. Did he know anybody by the name of Frühwald? That’s the one, with the wife who was paralysed.

  Oh Christ? What did Oh Christ! mean?

  Why all these questions? Did he know what car Frühwald drove?

  Wrong to answer a question with another question? Not for the police.

  A mustard-yellow minivan. Why was it only other people were able to come up with the phrase mustard-yellow so readily?

  Psycho-what fits? O.K., he didn’t need to understand. Who? The wife? The man was what? Feeling hemmed in?

  What did he do with her? Magnetic clasps? He couldn’t understand a word.

  An accident? Eleven years ago? Where?

  Awkward relationship with children?

  “Did you say over the rim of the paddling pool? … Concrete plant troughs? They’re gone.”

  Kovacs pictured the pirate island, the hares with their ears cut off, and the scraps of coloured plastic which the wind had blown about the lawn. He imagined the woman with the Prince Valiant haircut sewing buttons onto dolls’ clothes, building castles, catching children playing doctors and nurses, but remaining quite calm about the whole thing. Then he imagined children running around the garden, straight through the paddling pool, laughing and screaming as they went.

  Yes, only the car. Kurt Frühwald himself was nowhere to be seen.

  Did he have any idea …? Yes? What was he doing?

  Could he repeat that, please?!

  *

  Of course biologists were friendly people, Veronika Bayer said as she unlocked the boathouse. All that fresh air and regular contact with plants and animals, none of which put you under pressure – it was enough to bring a smile to your face even if you were dragged out of bed early on Easter Saturday. She was a tall woman with broad shoulders and a prominent nose. Her particular area of expertise was owls, she said, but recently she had been focusing on anomalies in the bird population, vagrants from the east such as waxwings, the impact on the settlement of golden eagles in the Lungau and migration dodgers. “What?” Kovacs asked. “Migration dodgers,” she said. More and more individual birds or small groups were not migrating, for different reasons. Most of them wouldn’t survive the winter, but some developed astonishingly adaptive mechanisms. “You don’t bring them inside?” Kovacs asked. Veronika Bayer laughed. No, she said, that wouldn’t help anyone.

  “So you watch them die?”

  Dying went with her job. With a pole she pushed open the door on the water side. A pair of mallards cursed in protest.

  Mauritz eyed the boat. “Wouldn’t it be better if I waited here?” he said. The boat was licensed to take eight passengers, Veronika Bayer said, unplugging the cable from the charging unit. Anyway, there were life vests under the seats. “They never fit me,” M
auritz said.

  They went along a section of reeds, then out into the lake, moving in a wide arc. The sky was overcast, the lake a bluey grey. The sun’s reflection danced here and there on the water. Kovacs sat with binoculars at the bow and felt the occasional spray of water on his face. He liked that.

  There had been times, Veronika Bayer said, when Frühwald had gone swimming every day, and as he had always set off from the jetty at the wildlife observation centre, they had seen each other all the time. Got to know each other? That would be stretching it, he hadn’t ever said much. They’d sometimes met him on the lake, too, so yes, he would be familiar with the electric boat. But Frühwald might still panic or try to escape if he sees me, Mauritz said. Then duck, Kovacs said. “Duck? Me?” Mauritz said, tapping his head.

  They talked about the fish population, about how beautiful the char was, about the school of whitefish at Waiern, and how every year at the end of May the graylings migrated from the river into the lake at the Moosheim end. Kovacs mentioned his chub catch, and Mauritz said that as soon as Nikolaus could hold a rod he would have a go with him.

  Kovacs imagined Charlotte at the stern of the boat, a short spinning rod in her hand and her mohican shining far across the lake, then Marlene with her look of disdain, and finally the two of them sitting together at breakfast, eyeing each other mistrustfully.

  “Do you trust this psychiatrist, then?” Mauritz said.

  “Do I look like someone who trusts psychiatrists?” Kovacs replied.

  “So why are we here?”

  Because he saw two possible alternatives, Kovacs said, either the man was hanging from a rope somewhere, or beating up a child. Veronika Bayer gave him a horrified look: “You mean he …?” Kovacs shrugged. “Maybe it was him, maybe it wasn’t – I don’t actually have a clue,” he said.

  “Do you have children?” she asked. Kovacs nodded. One daughter, he said, and yes, he had hit her once. Recently he felt as if the whole world wanted to know whether he had ever hit his daughter. But she didn’t, Veronika Bayer said – she was sure his daughter must be wonderful. Yes, she is, Kovacs said, used to be a sack of potatoes, now she’s a Red Indian.

  “Mine’s called Nikolaus,” Mauritz said, beaming.

  *

  “Look ahead to the left,” Veronika Bayer said. It took Kovacs a while, then he was amazed by how close they had got to the man without noticing him. He looked through the binoculars. “Bald head and goggles,” he said, “and he’s already on his way back.” Frühwald was swimming breaststroke, long, relaxed strokes, and every time he pushed his arms forward he immersed himself as far as the lower rim of his goggles.

  They steered towards the bank at Fürstenau and closed in on him from behind. “Have you actually got a gun on you?” the biologist asked all of a sudden. Kovacs shook his head. “Are you scared?” Mauritz asked. She grinned. “No,” she said.

  When they were right beside him, Frühwald shot them a brief glance. Kovacs was sure he knew who they were. “What are we going to do?” Mauritz asked. “Nothing for the next few minutes,” Kovacs said.

  At a distance of five or six metres they accompanied Kurt Frühwald until they were almost at the shore. In the end Veronika Bayer turned the dial up to maximum so that they arrived at the jetty shortly before him. She let Kovacs and Mauritz disembark and then moored the boat.

  Frühwald was wearing a knee-length wetsuit with short sleeves. He knew that it looked faintly ridiculous on a man of his age, but it was perfect for Easter, a bit of insulation and a lot of freedom of movement. He took off his goggles. “I assume you’re from the police,” he said. Kovacs nodded. Mauritz gave an embarrassed cough. He wasn’t going to deny anything, Frühwald said, he was responsible for it all, the kindergarten stuff and the toy shop, and he realised that he ought not to have done it, but he just couldn’t help it. He had stayed silent for eleven years, and then he had spent half an hour being very loud indeed. “My wife was taken away from me eleven years ago, you see,” he said, “and now they’re taking her away from me again.” He stood there, dripping, red goggle-marks around his eyes. Did they mind if he got a towel? His bag was under the boathouse jetty.

  They walked behind him. Bandy legs, varicose veins and he walks like someone who has carried a lot on his shoulders, Kovacs thought. “It’s been quite a struggle for you,” he said. Frühwald bent down and pulled out the bag. “Yes,” he said, “three and a half kilometres at a maximum of fifteen degrees.” He rubbed his head, arms and legs dry and folded the towel again. “You can get changed inside,” Veronika Bayer said. He would rather do it here and now, Frühwald said, starting to peel off the wetsuit.

  “So why the children?” Kovacs asked abruptly. Frühwald paused. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Why Felix Szigeti, why Britta Kern, why Sen Wu?”

  Frühwald dropped his arms and gave Kovacs a baffled stare. Then he burst out laughing. “Do you know,” he said eventually, “you may be an idiot, but I’m not a psychopath.”

  It was not often that Ludwig Kovacs felt a profound satisfaction when someone called him an idiot. But on this occasion he did.

  TWENTY

  I explain the way to her. I say, “Faistauersgasse, Ruderclubweg, Fürstenaustraße,” and she says, “True.” I say, “There’s a train going through the mountain.” She stops, listens and says, “False.” I say, “The rock looks like an owl,” and she says, “I’ve never seen it.” Then we laugh. I say, “Past the mattress house.” She says, “Funny name.” I say, “Escape route number one, florist’s, dead end.” She sniffs the air and says, “Florist’s is right.” I say, “Findus, a wombat.” She says, “Nonsense.” I say, “Yellow factory building,” she asks me why a dead end is called a dead end. I say, “Wire factory, scythe production, galvanising plant,” and she asks why escape route? At one point I say, “Moped, edge of the pavement, billboard.” She says, “You’re lying.” Sometimes I say, “Volvo,” just for the hell of it, and she says nothing.

  Lara is my herald. I chose her for the job. If I committed seppuku she’d be my kaishakunin. She’s got her own bodyguard, another kind of kaishakunin. So there’s a little chain. I like that. Lara sat in front of Switi in class. Switi breathed onto her back or spat crumbs into her neck. That’s why I took her. She knows what Switi smelled like. And apart from that she’s more attentive than anyone else in the world.

  The elder shrub, the tin barrel, the three wooden boards. The bodyguard whines softly. “Quiet,” she says. We go down the narrow steps. She holds the lead in her right hand, and with the left she supports herself on the wall. “Don’t worry, it’s light down below,” I say. We both laugh.

  I take her to the workbench. She puts her hand on the edge. I show her my tools, the hammers, the files and the lubricated grindstone I bought myself. She turns the crank. The stone turns very gently. “There’s no electricity down here,” I say. I’ve managed though.

  Longbottom looks for a spot under the window and lies down. I push the old iron-framed chair over to her and say, “Sit down.” She runs the tips of her fingers along the keyboard, over the touchpad, along the edge of the screen. “I bought that, too,” I say, “the grindstone and the Notebook. It’s got a built-in D.V.D. drive and a battery that lasts six hours.”

  “Wait a moment,” I say. I go behind the wooden screen and pull on the cuculla. When I return Longbottom gets up and grumbles. Then he lies down again. “You’ve changed,” Lara says. I go over to her, take her hand and place it on the material. She makes tiny movements with her fingers. “Folds,” she says, “so many folds. Really lovely.” I tell her it’s a gown for feast days and that I just took it because I liked it. “Who from?” she asks, and I say from someone who doesn’t need it any more. Then I test her and ask, “What colour?” She feels it with great concentration and says, “Dark blue, purple or black. Dark, anyway.” “Black,” I say. I don’t know how she does that.

  I put the double D.V.D. box on the workbench. I tell her everythin
g. One side is yellow, the other’s red, I say, and there’s another D.V.D. under the red one.” I also tell her that the film is thirty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds long and that there aren’t any breaks, it’s non-stop. I tell her she’s got to sit through the whole thing if she wants to be Switi’s friend and my herald, and I say that she has a bodyguard and she has me. Before I press play I tell her that I’ll be standing behind her all the time.

  *

  That’s it. It’s the bit when all you can see of her is the white froth with the bubbles. In the top left a bit of the concrete slab with the iron ring. A few blades of grass. Everything is still.

  Longbottom is standing beside Lara, licking her hand. Her face is deathly pale and she’s jiggling backwards and forwards on her seat.

  “Who is that?” she asks. “Who is that?” “There are three of them,” I say and I tell her that she doesn’t know them and they’re on a list.

  “One of them’s giving instructions,” she says. “That’s the one I stole the cuculla from,” I say.

  I bend down and fetch the bamboo stick from under the workbench. “Turn to me,” I say. I pull the hood over my head. Long-bottom grumbles again. “Quiet,” she says, putting her hand on his head.

  “You will be my herald,” I say. Then I say that I’m proud of her because she’s Switi’s friend and only asked What are they doing now? eleven times and didn’t try to run away like Sen Wu, or puke like Britta Kern. I tell her she’s got a special job to do and that it’s going to get a bit unpleasant now, but it has to happen.

  When I raise the bamboo stick Longbottom growls. I’ve never heard him growl before. She closes his eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Nothing’s going to happen,” she says.

  I walk around her and hit her on the back, on the shoulders and on the head, alternating between the stick and the palm of my hand. I give her medium-hard strokes and say: “I am the black cowl, dark snow that covers everything.” I say the phrase nine times, then three times, then again three times with not much interval between. That’s the ritual.