Poachers Road

by John Brady

  Hansi jumped when the siren went off. Felix changed it into highway mode, then to traffic-park. Hansi’s eyes were as big as saucers, but he was smiling. Christmas and birthday rolled into one for this boy, Felix thought. The annoyance had gone now.

  “This is to tell someone to stop.”

  Hansi let his hands down and began rubbing them together.

  Then be began to lift one leg, then the other. Marching?

  “This is for when you have to clear traffic, Hansi.”

  He didn’t want to say accident.

  “You stop and you keep people away. If there is, you know, a problem.”

  Hansi didn’t like the slow one. He blinked at the lights as they cycled through. Felix wondered if the geeks who programmed these ever considered they might set off an epileptic fit? He turned it back. Hansi began to jump now.

  “Okay Hansi. Genug enough.”

  A cruel thought came to Felix: maybe it was like being stoned all the time?

  “Wah wah.”

  “No more wah wah, Hansi. I’m getting a headache.”

  “Wah wah.”

  Felix looked toward the windows of the farmhouse. He saw no faces.

  “Look, Hansi, don’t be a scheisskopf. You’re not dealing with just a common idiot cop here.”

  “Wah wah.”

  “I’m going on holidays tomorrow. Did you know? Let’s go back to the house.”

  The confused look returned to Hansi’s face. He was getting agitated.

  “Wah wah.”

  “Uh uh. Go on home, Hansi. Go home to the kitten.”

  For a moment Hansi’s frown had Felix thinking there’d be trouble.

  “Get some of your mutti’s strudel, okay? Yum yum?”

  How could he not take the big lug’s hand again. He wondered if Gebi had a digital camera he hadn’t let on about.

  “Sleep.”

  “Right, Hansi. A nice nap. Wouldn’t that be good?”

  But Hansi had stopped and he wasn’t going to budge. His grip had grown tighter. Felix looked over. Hansi was half turned toward the woods and the boggy uplands behind the barn.The look of concentration on his face could mean anything. Felix glanced down for any signs of a diaper.

  “Sleepy.”

  “Let’s go, Hansi.Your mother wants you.”

  “Komm.”

  The tug was more a yank. Felix pulled back. For a moment he saw Giuliana’s face: how she’d throw her head back and do that laugh that came from the back of her throat. The Italian Witch Laugh.

  “Hansi, you are getting annoying.You know? Now let’s get out of here.You’ve been cured, okay? Here you are, outdoors. I’ve done my duty. Everyone’s had a good laugh, okay?”

  “Sleep.”

  What it was exactly that made Felix Kimmel give in was something he would think about a great deal later that day, and into the evening after the detectives had arrived from the Kriminaldiest in Graz. He let himself be led on a 10-minute walk that began almost as a trot, and left him winded. Hansi had been babbling, or intoning, words that Felix could not understand, but he stopped abruptly near a clump of pines that edged out toward a path leading through the woods.

  SEVEN

  THE WAY BACK DOWN FELT LIKE IT TOOK BUT MOMENTS. Felix’s throat and his chest hurt from the spasms that had had him almost doubled up. There was still vomit on parts of his shoes. It was he who had grabbed Hansi by the hand hard to get him to return to the house. On the way up here, his annoyance had vanity for company. He had been proud to have gotten Hansi’s trust, even to cure him in some way. Hadn’t he won him over, when even his own parents hadn’t?

  Things skittered through his mind, and fear made him glance over his shoulder many times as he hurried down.

  What he said later, much later, to Gebhart was this:

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. I guess I felt sorry for him. Or maybe his parents, Christ, Gebi, they look so worn out. I don’t know. Maybe the air up here got to my brain.”

  Gebhart had made the call, and was soon a panting, red-faced, out-of-shape policeman with a bauch full of strudel and coffee, his chest going in and out as he stood there after the climb.

  Himmelfarb, hardly noticing the steep climb, was standing there too, with a face full of alarm and bewilderment.

  “The boy wanted to go for a walk,” Felix said, uselessly.

  “A walk,” said Gebhart, his breath whistling. “And look what you got. Holy shit.”

  Gebhart took only a few steps, with his hand on his pistol, standing on tiptoe to get another look at the bodies. Felix watched the vein throbbing along his neck.

  “This is a crime scene,” he muttered more than once, his voice barely above a whisper. “Be careful.”

  “Jesus and Mary,” Himmelfarb said, many times. He had blessed himself a half-dozen times. “Are there more, farther in?”

  The blood on their faces was black and brown. One of the men’s heads was swollen at the forehead, and though Felix didn’t’ want to look, there was that slight grin, and a tiny parting between the eyelids.

  “When’s the last time you came by here, Karl?” said Gebhart.

  Felix had his notebook out. He felt stupid with it hanging there, so he wrote down the time. Then he wrote that Karl Himmelfarb didn’t give a direct answer but merely shook his head.

  “Ausländers,” said Himmelfarb. “Look. The shoes. And the schwarzkopfs on them, the black hair? The jackets? Where do you see these in Styria, or anywhere else? Foreigners, for sure.”

  “Time enough to find that out, Karl. I said: when were you last up here?”

  “Why would I come here? I’m a farmer. There’s damn-all to farm here, can’t you see? Nix.”

  Gebhart raised his eyebrows at Felix. Himmelfarb bent slightly and leaned to peer into the depths of the woods.

  “This is what we get,” he muttered. “This is what we get in the EU? The end of the borders down there?”

  Gebhart leaned over to whisper to Felix.

  “Where did you, you know . . . ? I’ll need to tell the KD when they show up.”

  Felix searched about, and nodded toward a tree.

  “I’m not totally sure, Gebi. Sorry.”

  Gebhart backed them out of the woods the way they’d come in.

  Their handsets had been fading in and out.

  Gebhart grunted and looked at his watch.

  “The one day I don’t bring my damned Handi.”

  “Handy what?” said Himmelfarb.

  “Cell phone my Handi.”

  “Hah,” said Himmelfarb. “Those things don’t work up here.

  You might as well use a hunting horn.”

  Gebi had phoned the post 20 minutes ago, and they had made the climb back up right after.

  “Inside the hour, I’m guessing,” he said to Felix. “The whole bit. A site crew, a truck no doubt. Forensics later. You’re one lucky fellow, Professor.”

  Before Felix could say anything, Gebhart turned to Himmelfarb.

  “Karl, best you wait down at the house. Nothing should be disturbed, you see.”

  “It’s my land, you know.”

  “Stimmt, Karl,” said Gebhart, and laid a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Just so.”

  “Cars come over the alm at night here this past while, you know.”

  “We’ll talk about that, Karl. That’s important.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Everything will be taken care of, Karl. There are procedures.”

  Felix watched Gebhart get Karl Himmelfarb started on his walk back. He waited then, and when Himmelfarb turned after a few metres, Gebi had some words for him. There was a lot of head nodding and a bunch of soothing gestures with his hands.

  “I’m lucky, am I?” said Felix when Gebhart made his way back up.

  “Are you okay? Do you need to, well, you know?”

  “Nothing left. Empty.”

  “Ah you poor kid. No, I don’t mean lucky like horseshoes in your arsch. I mean expe
rience.You’ll learn a lot from this.”

  “Whether I like it or not.”

  “Natürlich. It’s the way of the world. They don’t teach that at the Uni?”

  Felix too began to look around at the trees and hills.

  “What do we do now?” he asked after a while.

  “Damned if I know. Never did a murder before.”

  “There must be something.”

  Gebhart turned back and gave him a quizzical, almost pitying look.

  “We just secure the site. The Kripo can do the rest.”

  “Like CSI?”

  “You watch that crap too?”

  “Only when it’s on.”

  Gebhart eked out a thin smile.

  “See? You’re beginning to get it. You’ll make it. Maybe you’ll bring me luck. I should blow my beer money on the Lotto soon as I get back to town.”

  “That’s the kind of luck I prefer.”

  Gebhart sighed.

  “You have a boy like Hansi?”

  Gebhart nodded.

  “You know Himmelfarb from that place?”

  “It’s more that he knows me. Like a dummy I went there in uniform once after work. Well, straightaway I was a movie star.

  There’s something about a uniform.”

  “That’s why he phoned?”

  “He didn’t know who to phone.”

  “Social work, they call that, don’t they?”

  “Call it what you want. Up here the Gendarmerie do a bit of everything.”

  Felix shook his head. Gebhart said nothing further. He seemed to be listening for some sounds from far off. Then he took out his cigarettes, the Milde Sorte that everyone said they bought to try to cut down. He didn’t offer one to Felix. He needed only one flick of his lighter to get the cigarette going.

  “So here we are,” Gebhart murmured after several moments.

  “Up here in the arschloch of Styria. Excuse me the picturesque centre of Styria. And you’re on the job, what three months? You go for a walk with this fellow. Then, Jesus, you come back down to the farmhouse, with your face as white as a sheet with your news.”

  “With puke on my shoes, don’t forget.”

  Gebhart let his eyes wander to the hills behind Felix.

  “Who cares,” he murmured.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Gebhart blew out smoke and nodded.

  “Did you set me up with that big lug, going for walkies, holding hands? So you could get a laugh?”

  “You think I would do that to you?”

  “I’m asking you. I heard stuff like that in training.”

  “You want to know? I looked out the window and I thought: there’s a good day’s work being done. It was kind of nice, actually.”

  “Nice?”

  “You were trying to get the kid out and about again. That’s good.”

  The voice on the walkie-talkie was very clear now.

  “Whoa,” said Gebhart. “That was fast. They’re close.”

  He waved Felix off using his walkie-talkie and began to give sparing directions.

  Felix didn’t want to look back to where the bodies lay. The woods seemed to be blanketed with an extra quiet now. He heard birds only occasionally, and far off. The clouds must have come lower. Sure enough, the crest of one mountain to the south was cut off. That sick feeling had left him, as had the swarming thoughts, but he could hear his own pulse. He realized he was glad of the cigarette smoke around him. Maybe there was a smell coming from the bodies that he hadn’t noticed himself, but Gebi had. He watched as Gebhart smoked, and nodded, and said “yes” almost too often, his thumb stroking near the button on his walkie-talkie.

  EIGHT

  WHEN FELIX AWOKE, HE HEARD GIULIANA’S BREATHING. THERE was a faint lisp at the beginning of each breath in, and now he felt it on his shoulder. The room came out of the darkness, and brought the shapes he knew and expected, the corners and bulks, the lines, light and dark. Felix let his eyes run along them many times and he listened to her breathing. Well, he had slept awhile anyway.

  He had to think a minute to remember the big-shot detective’s name from the Kriminaldienst: S not Schmidt. It had two syllables. It was a real Austrian name: Speckbauer. Horst? Yes Horst.

  How hard could it be to come up with a normal Austrian name like this, he wondered. It wouldn’t be that hard, unless your brain was scrambled by hours of interviewing, plodding, talking, writing, remembering, sorting out.

  Speckbauer was a heavily moustached Oberstleutnant with hair running to grey.The rest of him was running to fat under the expensive suit that Gebi whispered they liked to wear. “They”:

  Speckbauer and others, one a detective Engel who stood around a lot of the time, saying little, taking lots of digital shots and using a minicam.

  Gebi had said he’d seen Speckbauer before somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where. It certainly wasn’t on a visit to HQ down in Strassgangerstrasse, in a western suburb of Graz. It might have been a piece in the Gazette. He looked like a proper Bananenbiegers, Gebi had muttered. When Felix asked him later what exactly a banana bender was, or did, Gebhart only waved the question away.

  Speckbauer had a quiet tone like he was attending a funeral.

  Was there a weariness there, Felix had wondered, because he knew from long practice there were procedural questions he had to go through, but expected little from them? There were odd ones that Felix thought about afterwards: Did Hansi use any word except sleep? Can Hansi tell time? Did he make any other gestures? Did he point at places?

  Felix had counted five police cars at one time, along with the wagon, and a big Mercedes commercial van that had two windows high up on one side. It was like a survey crew, with the markings and the tape and the screen they put up around the bodies. A generator had been started and flood lamps brought into the woods. Flashes went off every now and then. A movie set? A lot of guys in suits standing around, three one woman included in the white jumpsuits and hats, who later shed them (including, to Gebhart’s keen interest, the woman technician) like chrysalises at the back of the van.

  Of course there had to be royalty from the Gendarmerie showing up. By two o’clock, it was Pommer, the Gendarmerie kommandant for the district, and his 2-I-C. He had called Gebhart Sepp and he had told Felix that he had done good work.The pat on the shoulder, the direct look, and tight smile had confused Felix. Gebi saved him with a cough: this was one of those rare times when a Gendarminspektor should salute, and do it parade-ground style.

  Gendarmerie Kommandant Pommer returned the salute, much pleased, and perhaps even a bit surprised.

  “Your father would be proud of you, Inspektor Kimmel.”

  “He knows everyone, does Pommer,” he remembered Gebi telling him as the Gendarmerie Kommandant moved off.

  “He knew my dad?”

  “Everyone, I said. Now Pommer knows you. I’d better keep my eye on this Kimmel kid, I’ll bet he’s thinking. He’s no depp, is Professor Kimmel. At this rate, he’ll be Commissioner soon.”

  He and Gebi had stayed until 5:30. He remembered being given soup, and bread, by Frau Himmelfarb, and eyeing Hansi holding hands with his father at the door out to the yard. Felix had stayed at the post to get his notes word-processed and filed into the database. Had to be done, Gebi had said, not without sighing a few curses. It was all too likely one or more of those detectives would go straight to GENDIS this evening for some detail or other. They worked whatever hours they had to, he’d explained.

  Then Felix thought again about Speckbauer, and the slow lumbering way he moved about. His handshake, the “We’ll be in touch, Inspektor Kimmel” that had no real irony he could be sure of, had been delivered under his still, flat eyes. Kuhaugen, Felix’s Oma Nagl might call that look, cow’s eyes, resting on his for longer than felt normal.

  He had phoned the garage and gotten his car back finally late in the evening, with a call to the guy’s home to get the key. His head was still spinning when he got to the apa
rtment finally, and he felt some vague cloud of something had followed him in. At first he did not intend to tell Giuliana, but it didn’t take long. He remembered her not-impressed face as he downed three Gösser from the fridge as he talked.

  Later he had wanted her ferociously. She was puzzled and slow and quiet, and he said he was sorry later, but she shushed him. He remembered her drowsy later on, her skin hot and damp everywhere and his own body dissolving into the sheets.

  He rested his eyes on the drapes that mostly had the yellow glow from the platz below. A car no, a small truck or van to judge by how its diesel clattered went by. In a few hours he’d be sitting into his car and heading over to the post. They had to get the traffic safety thing started at the schools this week. It was to be his pleasure alone, Gebi had told him.

  “Are you okay?”

  She had been so quiet.

  “Yes. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  He pulled the sheet over her shoulder and he kissed her neck.

  There was that scent again, of vanilla and parsley carried to him from the bedwarmth that wafted up over him. She muttered something. He waited for her breathing to lapse into that steady measured sigh that would mean she was asleep again.

  Sometimes he teased her when she couldn’t remember waking up in the night to go to the klo. The sight of her hips swaying and the swell of her bottom as she stumbled out, more sleepwalking than anything else, was more than he could bear by times. He stirred and the ache settled and grew. He glanced down at her. No, it wasn’t fair: tomorrow was a workday for her too.

  He lay very still and tried staring at the patterns on the wallpaper. That trick had often worked when he was a kid. Giuliana was way off on that stuff, he decided. If they ever could decide where they were going to move, there’d be no wallpaper, retro chic or not.

  He pretended to be drowsy then, but still his thoughts played on, roaming farther, sharpening, and leading him back again to the woods above that farm. No longer were those meadows and trees just a background, like a mental postcard, typical sights you knew as far back as you could remember and just took for granted. Was it the shock of coming on those two, or did everything change when you were a cop? Nothing could go back to the way it was.