Poachers Road ik-1

by John Brady

  The light stayed on. The door wasn’t closed properly. Now he felt that pressure building in his diaphragm, the tingling and tightness at the back of his neck. Again he strained to block out the mutterings from his grandfather. There was nothing.

  The lit interior of the Polo reminded him of a fish tank in the living room at night. There was a shadow following the edge of the door down where it had not been closed tight. The usual junk was still strewn about inside. There was no change, no rearranging he could discern.

  He opened the door and waited a moment before leaning in to check the glove compartment. Again there was nothing different.

  He leaned over to lock the driver’s side. He checked the trunk, and did a walk-around to both doors then to be sure he had locked them.

  His grandfather was fingering Berndt’s back, squinting, muttering.

  “Is your car locked, Opa?”

  “I never lock it.”

  Felix shrugged. His grandfather stood up slowly.

  “Geh scheissen,” he said. “You think we had a visitor here?

  Some gauner…?”

  “You said something about burglary here, and that’s why you bought the lights?”

  His grandfather seemed puzzled.

  “Well I heard that. But your oma wanted them. We always have a crop of dummies in the area, young fellows, but”

  Felix had put up his hand without knowing it. He turned slightly to hear better. It didn’t help much. The driver was not revving it much at all. The engine wasn’t one of the whiny two-strokes, he was sure. Felix listened as the engine surged a little and then lessened on the bike’s descent. It was a four-stroke all right. Whoever was on it was taking hilly ground, and in no apparent hurry. The sound faded quickly then.

  “A motorbike.”

  “What motorbike?”

  “You didn’t hear it, Opa?”

  “Hear what?”

  THIRTY

  Felix had sat by the window for a half-hour. He had left it half open. The night air had turned cold, colder than he had expected. Every now and then he heard some fussing among the pigs, which soon returned to quiet.

  It was nearly midnight now. He still felt wired. He moved around in the chair, and felt the gentle sway and then the tap on his chest as his opa’s ancient binoculars settled again. He was careful not to make a racket moving the maps off his lap. Before he laid them down on the bed, he took another look over the one he had kept open.

  He had seen that old Freytag amp; Berndt logo, the official map publisher, before. With the lousy colour and such a lame cover, he guessed it was 1950s. It qualified as an heirloom, he supposed, maybe even worth something in one of the stalls at the Saturday market off Herrengasse. It had a stale smell that reminded him of sour milk.

  His eyes were itchy, prickly now. He rubbed at them before lifting the bedside lamp to hold over the map. Sure enough, the marks were still there. What had he expected, that the marks would have disappeared, or something? He followed the lines up around the contours of the hills behind the Himmelfarbs’ place. These trails must have changed over the years, he thought again. Thirty, 40 years was enough to grow one of the farmed trees they had put in back then. But there was no doubt about it, no matter how many times he looked at it. He had known it right away when he had first taken this map from the bag and opened it, releasing the tart, stale smell of storage and mouldering paper into the room, his heart beating in his ears almost: the line that had been drawn there ran along where the bodies had been.

  He was getting stiff now. He should get up and move around.

  He looked down into the farmyard below bathed in the harsh light of the quartz floodlight he’d persuaded Opa to leave on. A damned fine piece of acting to get to that point, he was sure. There had to be some award for pretending to be casual about it. He went along with his grandfather’s mutterings about local teens not having enough to do. He smiled when he remembered his grandfather’s expressions: a detschen, a cuff on the ear if he got hold of one of the little bastards. There’d be swat on the head, a watschen, on the way back too. And a solid kick in the arse, of course, to help them remember longer.

  Felix stretched, and let his aching eyes out of focus. He should lie down and get some sleep. He was overreacting. He was overtired.

  He was paranoid: time spent with Speckbauer would do that though, wouldn’t it? He stopped in mid-stretch and opened his eyes. No amount of talking to himself in his head would douse that feeling that something was moving around him, or by him, like the slow, almost imperceptible stirring when a landslide begins, before it gathers speed, sweeping away everything in its path He opened his phone and checked for a signal. A quarter-strength would do. He tiptoed over to the bed and pulled the duvet over his head. He already had Speckbauer’s card ready. He hesitated, and he thought about just stretching out and falling asleep. A night’s sleep would clear his head, and let him think straight. Speckbauer wouldn’t thank him for a call at this hour of the night.

  Screw Speckbauer.

  Felix dialed, and pulled the duvet back up. His mind raced through the farmhouse as he heard to the first ring, and he tried to remember where Opa kept his shotgun. Maybe Oma hadn’t hidden it as she had said she would even years ago, leaving him with only a pellet gun for the crows.

  He almost hung up after the second ring. Then it was a low voice, Speckbauer’s, flat and terse.

  “Oberstleutnant?”

  “Kimmel?”

  “I am sorry to phone you at this hour.”

  “Don’t be. What is it?”

  “I’m not sure, but things are going a bit, weird.”

  Speckbauer waited. Felix heard music played faintly in the background, a piano.

  “I’m up at, well, you know well I think maybe something strange is going on.”

  “Strange?”

  “Maybe I’m just jittery. I might have a visitor up here. Not invited.”

  “You need to be specific here and where are you, in I mean, are you in your car or something? You sound like a dirty telephone call.”

  “I don’t want to wake my grand I don’t want to scare them.

  But someone was snooping around here earlier tonight, I think.”

  “Serious? Not a farmer who lost his way home from the gasthaus, maybe?”

  “Herr Oberstleutnant”

  “Give me something to go on.”

  “The dog heard something, it was after eleven-”

  “You had something going on at eleven? Eleven was the time to call me then, gell?

  “I don’t want to overreact.”

  Speckbauer swore softly.

  “You know,” Felix began to say.

  “Okay,” said Speckbauer, with little conviction in his voice.

  “You’re right. Everything counts. I’m on my way.”

  “But maybe it is unnecessary?”

  “Shut up, will you? Be quiet a moment. I need to get info off you.”

  Felix heard creaking, a whispered curse, rustling.

  “You’re in your relatives’ house up there?”

  “Yes — it’s the far side of”

  “You drove there, right? Your car is there?”

  “That’s what I wanted to mention. I think someone was looking around the inside of the car.”

  “Eleven, you say?”

  “Just after Zeit im Bild.”

  “The late news on the TV?”

  “Right. The dog was yowling. Berndt. He’s an old fart but game enough. We thought maybe a loose dog got a bite out of it.”

  Felix paused when he heard Speckbauer’s laboured breathing.

  There were footsteps, then the sound of a door opening. Someone made a low whistle, and called out “raus.” The phone was muffled then, but Felix heard some intonations. The hand was removed after a few moments.

  “I’m listening, keep talking.”

  “Anyway, it looks like someone or something hit the dog, or bit it, or something.”

  “‘Hit?’
‘Bit?’ ‘Something?’”

  “He came back to us yowling. I looked around and the light was on in my car.”

  “Farmers don’t lock their cars?”

  “No.”

  “Any other car there?”

  “My grandparents’.”

  “Their car too?”

  “I couldn’t tell. I don’t think so.”

  He heard a man’s voice, not Speckbauer’s.

  “That’s it?” Speckbauer asked.

  “Yes. That’s why I didn’t want to call.”

  “I’ll be there, maybe forty minutes. It’ll give me time to think.”

  “Is it really necessary for you to drive up here? Maybe… ”

  There were sounds of more doors, heavier ones, closing now.

  “Yeah, bring it all,” Speckbauer called out in an exasperated tone.

  “Oberstleutnant,” said Felix. “I don’t want police crashing in the door here.”

  “I see,” said Speckbauer, with a leaden tone. “We do not specialize in kicking down doors. But that’s what could have happened if you had phoned the local posten, and roped in some of the Gendarmerie from there, let me tell you. So it’s good: keep this to yourself, for now.”

  The ‘for now’ echoed in Felix’s mind several times. He thought of Gebhart again. It only made sense to phone him in the morning, no matter what Speckbauer said.

  “You need directions?”

  “No. I’ll find you, don’t worry.”

  Felix scratched the top of his phone with his nail. Why had Speckbauer wanted him to drive all over the damned countryside earlier on, then?

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” said Speckbauer. “I’m going to phone you as soon as I get there, as soon as a few minutes from your place okay? Do you have a good charge on your mobile there?”

  “I do, yes.”

  Felix stared at the pattern on the duvet cover. The colours on the flowers were muted to dim greys in the weak light coming in from the lamp. He realized that it was Gebhart he should have phoned.

  “Look,” he said. “Maybe I’m not thinking straight here?”

  “Straight, what?”

  “It’s just that, well after all, there are kids here. Maybe one of them saw my car and knows I’m a Gendarme.”

  “We can talk about that when we get there,” said Speckbauer.

  “If you’d like?”

  The sarcasm was plain enough.

  “But right now the plan is this,” Speckbauer went on. “We won’t call to the house. We just keep an eye on it, and see. When it gets light, we’ll show up at the house, say hello, do a little acting job if that would suit you. Nobody freaks then. Verstehst?”

  “If you say so.”

  “You won’t see us until daylight, but we’ll be there. And don’t go telling anyone we’re about. Really. Got all that?”

  “I just don’t want a false alarm, or to waste people’s time.”

  “Okay,” was Speckbauer’s parting advice. “So if it turns out to be nothing, we’ll take it out of your pay.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The minutes seemed to hang there in the still air of the room. Felix wasn’t sleepy anymore. He was even able to lean his head against the window and not feel drowsy. The occasional sound came from the old house, but never even a tiny gurgle from the pipes for the heating. The system had been turned off, he was sure, by his grandfather, a man who placed his faith in the kachelofen, the massive stone and tile fireplace. Opa was still a guarder of schillings, or cents, or Euro as they had come to be. Windows flung open to cool air, and bedcovers back until midday were still the ways here.

  If you couldn’t see your breath in the morning over the bedcover, well that meant it must be summer, right?

  Felix toured the house in his mind again, seeing the kitchen door out, then back to the hall door that no one used. Down the hall his mind moved, like an arcade game, a PlayStation shooter, he thought. Except he had no shooter.

  Again, he tried to quench the worry by letting his mind out over the twisting, narrow roads that led down from the mountains.

  He thought of Speckbauer making his way up from the distant motorway, blasting by Weiz no doubt, and slowing only for the narrow roads that were the last parts of the journey. It was relief as much as embarrassment he was feeling. At least things were in motion, and he couldn’t stop them now. Hadn’t Speckbauer said it was okay? Well he’d throw it back at him if he was grumpy.

  Giuliana, yes, again. He should text her, not sit there watching a farmyard in the middle of the night. With his thumb over the key pad, lust descended over him. Instead of the yard bathed in the garish light that had probably burned into his retina forever now, he was seeing her violin shape as she lay on her side. There was that stripe across her back last year where her swimsuit strap covered.

  He’d get her to go over to the lake at Stubensee, and lie there again by the lakeside like last summer: half asleep, half soused with the Chianti that went down so well with the snack.

  Then his heart leaped. Where had that thud come from? He sat up, and tilted his head, and listened. His gaze fixed on the bedroom door.

  There was a lesser, longer, fart this time. Opa was probably not even awake. Felix smiled and for a moment his grandfather’s face came to him from the darkness near the door, his wink of glee lighting up the whole face of this 70-something-year-old kid. It was now 20 minutes since the phone call: 20 hours it might as well have been.

  Was this what they meant in the drug-use lectures at the Gendarmerieschule, this half-crazy, half-panicky agitation that druggies got, a skin-crawling need to do something? He looked around the yard again. It was like a yellowed stage, a set for some weird movie. He began to imagine questions he’d put in the Dienstprufung, the final exam:

  Describe the effects of crack on a user who hasn’t had any recently. Would it be: A) paranoid B) aggressive C) skin-crawling D) antsy E) panicking F) jumpy G) berserk…

  He stopped at the H, and made it the all of the above.

  He decided to head downstairs. From the kitchen widow, he might catch a glimpse of the lights of Speckbauer’s car down the valley. He held the binoculars against his chest, and he tiptoed toward the door. His mind was already running to excuses for his oma or opa, if he woke them: I can’t sleep, I’m reading. I’m going to the klo.

  The door had a small squeak at the end of its travel. He stood in the threshold, listening for Berndt. Then he made his way to the stairs. He waited there for any sound from his grandparents. The sound of the clock from downstairs came to him, and the manifold smells of the house, something stale to do with the dog probably, his bed or food, and the ever-present soupy scent from the kitchen mixed with the smells of firewood, and dried herbs and ashes.

  He stopped on the landing.

  Kerosene?

  His heart pounded hard enough for him to wonder if wasn’t echoing through the house. He sniffed again, but it wasn’t there this time. He descended a few steps and waited. Nothing. Wasn’t there such a thing as smell hallucinations? He looked down the hall to the Berndt’s place by the kitchen door. Half-deaf or not, the dog’s head came up when Felix stepped off the stairs, a faint creak following him.

  “You know me, Berndt,” he whispered as loud as he dared.

  “Lass. Lie down.”

  The biscuits were in the usual place. The dog stayed in his basket and crunched on them. Felix crouched by him, looking through the doorways, trying to hear anything above the chewing and slobbering. He had a view out the kitchen window here, toward the road. There were no high beams from Speckbauer’s Passat snaking through the bends and darkness up to the village.

  He dropped to his knees after a while, and soon he had settled on the floor a short arm’s-length from the dog, with his back against the door jamb. He kept patting and stroking the dog, but paused several times, not a little surprised that he could now simply sit there like this, waiting.

  An ache began to make itself known above the
tension that clawed at him steadily still. Though he couldn’t pin it down, Felix began to believe that it had something to do with the fact that he was a not kid anymore, a kid just sitting with the dog. It had been Olli in those years before Berndt, a supremely stupid but goodnatured dog that his grandfather hadn’t the heart to get rid of, but no different from this slob here: an uncomplicated presence, a beating heart, warmth.

  The ache grew in him. He remembered how his grandmother had told him so often he was truly his mother’s son, when she saw him with animals. Even now this old house seemed to breed contentment. The rare visits to his Opa Kimmel made him feel he was a kid again, but a kid being sent to the office. Was it possible that happiness left something of itself in the walls of this house? His father had been drawn to this place, and so much so that he had pretty well made it his home. With his eye on their teenaged daughter, he had still been able to relax here in the company of the Nagls, that elderly pair now sleeping above.

  Berndt gave a low grunt of contentment, and ran a wet tongue over Felix’s knuckles.

  “Enough is enough,” he whispered, but his hand seemed to be independent of him, and it had returned to rubbing the dog’s head.

  He looked at the darkness on the kitchen window again, but there were no car lights anywhere down the valley. He checked his phone again, and saw that there was still a signal. Then he went through the menu to be sure he had set it to vibrate.

  Thinking about Speckbauer driving through the darkness out there, he realized that he had forgotten something. Opa Kimmel had been up in Gasthaus Maier for cards too, along with Berger Willi Hartmann when Karl Himmelfarb had come by. No, he reflected, maybe forgotten wasn’t the right word. Maybe the word was hidden, hidden it from his thoughts so he wouldn’t have to do it. But it was either he talk to his grandfather first, or Speckbauer would find his own way to do it. He’d bring the maps too, and see what the old man would say about the marks on them.

  With that, Felix’s thoughts passed across the village and out to his Opa Kimmel’s farm. It was two kilometres from the Nagls’ house, out on its own, at the end of the road. Pfarrenord, they called it locally, but no one else would know it even had a name. Indeed it was the North Parish, and it always seemed windy and cooler there.