Poachers Road

by John Brady

  “I–”

  But then Felix stopped. He wouldn’t let Gebhart look bad in front of this cop.

  “I know,” said Speckbauer. “You were ‘encouraged to.’ I know.

  But look at what happened. He fell for you. He wanted to tell you things, and you only.”

  Felix watched an old woman enter the shop.

  “Hansi Himmelfarb had found a friend in you. So you have a gift, I say. People trust you, you see.”

  Something sagged inside Felix. He thought of Frau Himmelfarb, her leathery face already ruddy from the wind and sun of the spring and her outdoor life, the headscarf she would have put on each morning and left on until going to bed. All the Himmelfarbs had wanted, or expected, was to continue their simple life there on a mountain farm that had probably been in their family for centuries, to carry on the routines, to improve things a little, to hand it on.

  Speckbauer’s scrutiny of him was not the cynical survey he had expected.

  “You are agitated,” he said. “Don’t be suspicious. It’s to your credit.”

  “What?”

  “Agitation suggests you have morals. You are not ‘cool.’ All to the good.”

  “I don’t know where this is going.”

  Speckbauer rested one leg over the other, ankle over knee, and studied the side of his shoe. A woman with deep olive skin and a hijab entered the bakery.

  “You drove down here because you believe you need to be involved,” Speckbauer murmured then. “That’s not irrational. Guilt too, perhaps? Were you trying to think of what you might have overlooked on that visit to the Himmelfarbs’, when you had that pedal ground into the floor on the autobahn, putting the Mercs and the Porsches in your rearview mirror?”

  “Some of the time, yes.”

  “What did you remember then? From when the boy was talking.”

  “That’s the trouble,” Felix said. “Nothing.”

  “The kid said ‘sleep.’ ‘They’re sleeping.’”

  “Yes.”

  “But he wouldn’t go up there. He wouldn’t go out of the house, basically. Don’t you think he knew they were dead?”

  “Who knows what goes on in a mind such as that,” said Felix.

  “The shrinks call it ‘averse.’ Are you sure the boy didn’t mention days, or time?” “No.”

  Speckbauer put his leg back down and he studied the tabletop.

  Then he narrowed his eyes.

  “Well, you were out of town,” he said. “So you didn’t do it, did you?”

  “That’s not funny, if you’ll allow me to say so, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “I will. I certainly will. But you’ve surely copped on to why I’m talking to you here.You know, I’m sure of it. I saw it on your face.”

  When Felix didn’t speak, Speckbauer leaned in over the table.

  “Okay, then, I’ll say it. There is something wrong when a citizen phones his Gendarmerie post with a request to talk to them to a certain officer Kimmel and he and his family burn to death in a house fire not long after. Are you hearing me?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Now you need to know this as well. I we are checking each and every part of the goings on concerning this, including calls and records from the post that day. Even gossip. Things overheard, and passed on. Rumours. Notes left lying around. Remarks passed to spouses. Fiancées, even.”

  Speckbauer’s gaze was not unfriendly.

  “Everyone,” Speckbauer added. “Without exception.”

  The Muslim woman at the counter was not quick with her change. Felix eyed the carefully neutral expression of the clerk waiting. It was the Austrian way in action all right, Giuliana had said many times: whatever you say, say nothing.

  “You have an opportunity now, Felix,” said Speckbauer. “Or Inspektor, if you prefer. Your opportunity is to assist in this case.

  Your expertise is being requested from your post Kontrolinspektor at the moment. Schroek? So it is a semi-big deal.”

  “Expertise? I don’t have any. I’m a probationary Gendarme.”

  “Ah, but you have a friendly face. And you are a local boy.”

  “But my duties at the post?”

  “Duties? Permit me to say this: those duties can be assumed by other staff there. Doing talks to pimply teens who are going out to piss cheap beer into your garden that night anyway, just to show you what they think of your presentation, well that’s a duty fair enough. But it’s one that can wait.You know the area up there, don’t you?”

  “The mountains? A bit, I suppose.”

  “Of course you do. Your grandparents are seven kilometres across the mountain.Your father spent half his youth up there, didn’t he? Didn’t you go with him at all? Of course you did. All those wee roads and tracks? The passes? The Wildererweg?”

  “It was some time back.”

  “Really, now I doubt you’ll be so modest in your experience profile when you make a serious try for the Alpini. Stop back pedalling, okay? You can drive, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And, equally important, is your interest in night life?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Come on now. Clubs? You have mates that can still ring the bell late into the night, don’t you?”

  In Speckbauer’s gaze Felix now read a sly dare to bite back.

  “You could go into a club or a cool-guy bar, and you wouldn’t look like me or, Gött sei dank, our dear Franzi. What I mean is, you won’t look like a cop. Got it?”

  “No, actually, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “‘All will be revealed,’ as the good book says. ‘In the fullness of time.’ For now, take my word on it. Have I come to the problem side yet? The negatives?”

  “It sounds like it’s been done.”

  “Ah. Funny fellow. Listen to me. This part is not so funny.”

  Speckbauer waited for a couple to go by.

  “It is now beginning to dawn on you that this is a serious affair, I hope. When we find out who those two dead men are, then I’ll be telling you what that means. But right now, I think that there are people who may be curious about what you know.”

  “But I don’t know anything, beyond what I’ve told you.”

  “Sure. But who’s to say someone doesn’t think that the Himmelfarb boy, or his family, told you something? And that you know something important that they’d prefer you didn’t know . . . ?”

  “Who?”

  Speckbauer’s eyes went flat, as though they had slipped out of focus.

  “Who could that be,” Felix repeated. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Ah. I see I have your attention here.”

  “I don’t think you should play games like this, Herr Oberstleutnant, with respect.”

  “Really,” said Speckbauer. “You can shove your respect and your Herr Oberstleutnant up your arsch, Gendarme. You’re mad and I know it. That’s good.You should be.”

  “This is some kind of a threat you are suggesting?”

  “If I knew who ‘they’ were, I’d tell you. I don’t put people’s safety at risk. Especially not a fellow officer.”

  Speckbauer sat back and studied the intricacies of the fittings that held the shelves and counters. Felix wondered if the faint low tone he was hearing was Speckbauer humming again. He was about to push back his chair when the sunglasses appeared in the window.

  It took Felix a moment to realize that the pale face and the glasses belonged to Speckbauer’s sidekick.

  He tried not to study the strange small jerks that Franzi made as he entered the restaurant. Speckbauer did nothing to indicate he had even noticed his partner enter.

  “Zero,” said Franz.

  “Aber gut,” Speckbauer grunted. “Good enough.”

  Felix nodded as the glasses swivelled his way, but he couldn’t see the eyes. The glasses went back toward Speckbauer.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said Speckbauer. “I don’t think he gets it yet.”


  Franzi turned to Felix again.

  “I thought you were smart. Let’s not waste any more time.”

  Felix sensed that Franz would not be sitting down, no matter how much longer they’d stay. It’d be too much for him getting up again, maybe. He heard Franzi breathe out impatiently.

  “Damn it, Franzi, I hear you thinking, even.”

  Speckbauer turned to Felix.

  “Now we must close this information session. The ‘zero’ you heard is good news. It means that Franz and two other fine veteran plainclothes officers can report that no one is in your apartment.”

  “What?” Felix managed.

  “Why didn’t you hit him with this earlier?”

  Speckbauer waved away Franzi’s question.

  “You haven’t come to the correct conclusion, kid,” Franzi went on. “Drop it on him, Horst, for Christ’s sake.”

  Speckbauer spoke in a quiet tone now.

  “Are you getting it yet?”

  Felix was thinking of a farmhouse ablaze, and a dark purple hole in a man’s forehead.

  “I think so,” he was able to say. “I think I am.”

  SIXTEEN

  GIULIANA WAS TRYING HARD TO SOUND LIKE SHE WASN’T FREAKING.

  “I can’t tell you any more at the moment,” Felix said, gently.

  “It’s to do with that family, those two men they found?”

  “It’s a precaution,” he said. “There’s probably nothing to it. I have to be careful.”

  He told her he’d be on the platform waiting. That seemed to awaken something in her. He heard her breathing in short gasps then.

  “What am I going to do, to take, though,” she said. “God, I can’t think. Where am I going to start? Jesus!”

  “We’ll go to the apartment right away,” he said. “There’ll be somebody with us. We get your stuff and we go to your mom’s.”

  “She’ll freak if she knows.”

  “Well, don’t tell her, okay?”

  “Where will you go? Your mom’s?”

  “No. I’ll tell you later.”

  The detective who had come up with Speckbauer was hanging around by the door, drinking one of Giuliana’s fruit drinks.

  “Nice,” he said to Felix. “Nice place. Very artistic.You?”

  “No.”

  Felix went to the living room. Speckbauer was eyeing the goings on in the small sliver of Kurosistrassse that could be glimpsed between the poplars in front of the apartment block.

  “Well,” he said. “How’d it go?”

  “You can imagine.”

  Felix looked around the living room. The laptop, he’d take for sure, right now. Giuliana could figure out what she’d want when she made it in this evening.

  “Is Gebi getting the same attention?”

  “No. Why, should he?”

  “Well, he was at the farm too.”

  Speckbauer seemed to ponder this information. From the kitchen, Felix heard the soft sigh of the fridge door opening.

  “You want a Gösser, take one,” he called out.

  “Good,” said Speckbauer. “If you’re not being sarcastic, that is.

  Surveillance is no picnic. Christ, but you can get hemorrhoids like nobody’s business.”

  Felix headed for the bedroom to pack some things.

  “What did you discuss with Gebhart anyway?”

  “When?”

  “Last night. At his place.”

  “Ask him, I should think.”

  “I did.”

  Felix stopped in the doorway and turned. Speckbauer turned away.

  “Get some stuff,” he called out. “You’ve got five or six hours to kill before your girl shows up. After that, you and me are going spatzieren yes, taking to the hills.”

  True to his word, Speckbauer got into a police Passat and took out two maps from a folder under the seat. There was a stale smell of peppermints in the car, but Felix had spotted the top of a small magenbitter bottle in the trunk as Speckbauer had cleaned space there for his bag. The hint of gastric trouble for Speckbauer pleased Felix a little.

  “Am I at work now?”

  “Work? Do you see a desk here?”

  “Well, I think I should know the conditions here.”

  “Okay.Yes you are on the job ‘ancillary officer.’”

  “You guarantee I get back here, to the bahnhof, I mean, by seven?”

  “I guarantee that. And you will guarantee that you will show me the ins and outs of the high country.”

  “The maps?”

  “But I want to follow your way too,” said Speckbauer. He tapped a forefinger on his forehead several times. “What way would a guy like yourself go, one who knows a bit about the area?”

  “Take the Lendkai down and come back over the Schönaügurtel,” said Felix. “It’s not bad. Then there’s the A2. Get off at Gleisdorf. We’ll go by Weiz, and then up.”

  Speckbauer nodded at the mass of the Schlossberg between the buildings.

  “Is going that way worth it?”

  “It looks long,” Felix replied. “But it’s quicker.”

  Speckbauer nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “A good start. See, I knew you had it in you.”

  When Felix finished his phone call, Speckbauer was already passing the station at Münzgrabenstrasse and accelerating down the link to the Graz Ost ramp onto the A2.

  “That’s a little awkward,” said Speckbauer, himself thumbing his Handi.

  SEVENTEEN

  “YOU’LL PARDON ME, BEING SO OUTSPOKEN. BUT I COULDN’T help but hear.”

  “It’s my grandparents’ place,” said Felix. “It’ll be fine.”

  “You know it well?”

  “A fair bit.”

  “Servus, Franzi,” said Speckbauer then. He held the phone tighter to his ear. “Yes. We are prospecting. The name of the woman who runs that pub again? The one in that hole in the hedge up by the Himmelfarbs?”

  Felix began rummaging in his mind which place Speckbauer could mean.

  Speckbauer finished the call with a grunt. How long had these two policemen known one another, he began to wonder.

  Speckbauer didn’t signal when he changed traffic lanes. The needle ran quickly enough to 200 but he eased off. Through the blur of hedges and barriers that raced past, Felix spotted tractors at work often, their passage semaphored by circling gulls. Speckbauer hummed intermittently. It was a strange waltzy melody that stopped and started, and kept no proper time.

  “Your colleague works 24/7 also?”

  “Franzi? Christ, no. He is the laziest. Well, maybe I should not say that. When he is doing something that interests him, he is a goer.

  It’s not like he doesn’t have the time.”

  “Like yourself, perhaps?”

  “How nicely you put your questions.You were well reared.Well, let me put it to you this way: Franzi and I are veterans of the same campaigns.”

  Felix didn’t want to sound too inquisitive.

  “But his wife is a bitch,” said Speckbauer. “But mine is, was, always sweet.”

  He glanced over toward Felix.

  “I’ve made many mistakes, let me tell you. But isn’t that how we have progress?”

  The Gleisdorf junction was soon upon them. Speckbauer seemed to enjoy leaning hard into the curve, using the gears.

  “Smaller screw-ups,” said Speckbauer. “That’s how we know we’re winning.”

  “Winning?”

  “Christ, this is an interview?”

  He snorted once. They skirted Gleisdorf, and Speckbauer soon had them on the road up to Weiz, rocketing past a laggard lorry before a succession of blind bends.

  “She couldn’t take the changes,” said Speckbauer.

  “Your wife?”

  “Franzi’s wife. To be fair, it wasn’t the injuries, the physical deformities, totally. No. But Franzi is hard to live with. Take my word for it. He always was. Me, I fell into my job. It went to my head. I fell in, and I couldn’t get out. The current
took me. But my former wife is a wonderful woman.”

  “I’m sorry to hear of that.”

  “That she is wonderful?”

  “You know what I mean. Perhaps I should not have said anything.”

  “‘Herr Obersleutnant,’” said Speckbauer. “You forgot, that time.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to call you? Are you my C.O. or not?

  I have never done this kind of work.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Call me the devil if you wish. And no I’m not your C.O. You are seconded temporarily. Do you know what that means, seconded?”

  “I think so.”

  “Being as you are Felix the Second . . . ?”

  Felix kept his eyes on the hedgerows.

  “You’re not offended, I hope.Your father’s good name travelled on down to you, I understand?”

  Felix shrugged. He wondered if it had been Gebhart’s doing, letting slip the nickname that was so rarely used now.

  “Well, what was I saying . . . We try to stay flexible. It is no use dropping some big shots on something like this. We need locals, locals’ knowledge.Wissenschaft is what it is, yes: the lessons of ecology need to be applied to Euro-crime.”

  Felix looked over.

  “You like that Euro-crime bit?” Speckbauer asked.

  “Is that what’s going on?”

  “You may get to see a bit of the inside of a very frigging big, complicated, messy federal investigation. What am I saying ‘Federal’? I should be precise: transnational. You may be the only probationary cop in our country so privileged. There’s destiny for you.You are working with the Vatican.”

  “The Vatican?”

  “It’s an expression. No, it’s not about fellows rappelling from helicopters. In our world we adapt. We go small and quiet. Think small mammals in the dinosaur world. Who survived?”

  “And who are the dinosaurs?”

  “I will tell you who they are not: Serbian gangsters are not.

  Albanian Mafia are not either. They are the rodents. Rodents are smart.”

  “But . . . the agencies that are trying to . . . ”

  “Yes? You are getting warm.”

  “I think I get it.”

  “Ach so. I don’t wish to be disloyal. But the good guys are never going to get anywhere unless we size down and let people use initiative.”