Poachers Road

by John Brady

  “As a matter of fact I did.”

  “And would you know your way around there if you went on a second visit?”

  “I think so. It’s loud enough now, though. There were guys speaking, I don’t know, in there. They came into the klo when I was there.”

  Speckbauer nodded and slowed. Then he stopped abruptly at a corner.

  “You drive,” he said. “You know your way out? Down toward the bridge. It’ll get you up to Radmangasse.”

  EIGHTEEN

  FELIX REMEMBERED THE MAIN STREETS AND MANY OF THE lanes in the zentrum at least, from wandering here as a kid. His mother would come in for shopping on Saturdays. He could not remember his father coming into Weiz on those trips. But there had been lots of Sundays when his father had taken him up into the forest, or on a radl, where they had to wheel the bikes uphill half the time. It petered out when the adolescent thing had hit, when Felix started wanting to be with his mates, go to the movies, hang out.

  Speckbauer unlocked the passenger door with a key and sat in.

  Odd there were no electric conveniences in this Passat, Felix thought. A crappy police model? Opening the driver’s side, he saw Speckbauer closing the glove box, and locking it.

  “Geh’ma,” said Speckbauer. “What’s it they say? ‘Drobn auf da Alm?’”

  Up on the mountain indeed, Felix thought. He stifled a beery belch.

  “Do you mean Festring, that place with that gasthaus?”

  “That’s the place,” said Speckbauer. “The metropolis of Festring. Population twenty-six, I believe. Blink and you’d miss it, no? A place called Gasthaus Hiebler. It is where Herr Himmelfarb used to go for his beer and card game.You know it?”

  “Only to pass it. It’s a couple of houses near the road only. An oasis.”

  “We’re going to stop off at the Himmelfarb place too,” said Speckbauer.

  Felix noted the change in his voice when he spoke now.

  “It’s something we need to do.”

  Felix looked over.

  “To jog the memory,” said Speckbauer. “It won’t be easy for you, I know.”

  Then he shifted in his seat. His voice took on a strained cheerfulness.

  “But let’s head through your area first. A little ramble.”

  “My area?”

  “St. Kristoff, isn’t it?”

  “St. Kristoff? It’s off up the hills there, not on the way.”

  “We’ll work our way from there over the back roads. The ones maybe nobody knows about except the chosen few. Like you?”

  There was a different sound from the engine than Felix expected.

  “It doesn’t say turbo on the back of this.”

  “Why should it?” said Speckbauer. “Go easy with your right foot.”

  Felix manoeuvred the Passat out from the narrow streets and lanes that made up the old part of Weiz and onto the Klammweg, the road that ran along the Weiz river.

  “What was the objective of the visit to that bar anyway?”

  “To familiarize yourself with it. Call it routine reconnaissance as well. But tell me, why are we going up to this Festring place?”

  “You want to talk to the owner or whoever works there, to see who might have been there the same time Karl Himmelfarb was.”

  “Okay, good. And why is that necessary?”

  “Because he talked to others there. And that’s where people could have found out he was going to call us again.”

  “. . . because of . . . ?”

  “Hansi wanted to tell us things, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “You’re bothered,” said Speckbauer. He had spoken in a slow, considerate tone that Felix could not remember hearing before.

  “Annoyed I’m talking like this?” he went on.

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  Felix felt Speckbauer’s gaze on him. He didn’t look over.

  “Okay,” said Speckbauer, finally. “There’s only one change to make to that.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You said we’d talk or that I would talk. Not so. It will be you.”

  Speckbauer had his hand up even as Felix formed words.

  “You are local,” he said.

  “But I live in Graz,” Felix said.

  “They will know you maybe. One less barrier, don’t you see?

  And look – if they don’t know you, they’ll have known your father.”

  Felix took his foot off the accelerator. He looked over.

  “My father? Why are you bringing him into this?”

  “Is it beneath you or something? Be proud, I say. We need people to have confidence in us. To trust us.We must use everything we have.”

  Felix bit back the words that rose to his mind. An uneasy quiet settled in the car. Speckbauer seemed more interested than ever in the occasional car that passed them now.

  Felix left it in third passing the mill, the last piece of straight road before the Weizklamm, the deep, rocky ravine full of hairpin bends and towering overhangs a couple of kilometres away.

  “Itchy foot?” Speckbauer murmured, without taking his eyes off the view. So do it then. But just for a bit.”

  Felix’s annoyance evaporated when he floored the pedal. There was no lag. He felt his seat had been shoved hard from behind. The wind began to hiss at the small opening at the top of the window.

  “Genug,” said Speckbauer. “You have a beer on the job, you do a Nikki Lauda. Feel better now?”

  The mountains soon closed in on the road, and made it a steep, winding cut at the bottom of the gorge, its bare rockfaces hundreds of metres overhead holding back the light.

  Now Felix felt a cold tension moving into his chest, something he tried to ignore. He knew it was not due to a need to push the car tight to the guardrails. Without thinking about it, he began to count backwards, a countdown to when he guessed they’d be passing the taferl to his father.

  “I tell you,” Speckbauer began. “I sure wouldn’t want to meet one of those . . . ”

  He stopped then and looked over.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot. Hereabouts . . . ?”

  “No, it was near the other end.”

  Felix heard the river over the sound of their car’s passage between the rocky walls of the klamm. It still tumbled white and fast, crashing over the rocks in its spring wildness, as they called the melt from the mountains higher up.

  The first of the grassy ledges began to appear after several minutes, along with some bushes. Along with the returning brightness glowing at the edges of the precipices above, these were signs the gorge would soon open, drawing them onto the plateaus and folds that led in turn into the higher mountains.

  Speckbauer opened a map that he had drawn from the door pocket.

  “Remote, you might think,” he murmured. “But not as the crow flies.”

  Felix’s count was out by 20. He did not slow as he drew up to the taferl. Nor did he glance at where his father’s car had gone over into the gorge. He was relieved that Speckbauer had missed it, and with sunlight returning to the car’s interior again, he felt the tightness easing. He eased off the pedal at the turn-off to St. Kristoff.

  Speckbauer looked up from the map.

  “Festring,” said Felix. “That gasthaus, right?”

  “Are we at the turn-off already? Did we pass . . . ?”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Felix let the car out of gear. He freewheeled almost to a stop while Speckbauer consulted the map.

  “No,” said Speckbauer. “We’re going through St. Kristoff, remember?”

  “That’s the other way.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to Graz in time for the train.”

  “I just wanted to point out something. I’m coming back up here tonight, you know.”

  Speckbauer gave no sign he’d noticed Felix’s annoyance.

  “To my grandparents’ house, to sleep,” Felix added. He pointed to the map. “Right here.”

  �
�A beautiful spot – if this is any indication. I’m keen to see it.

  Let’s go.”

  With that, Speckbauer jammed the map down between the seat and the arm rest, and he opened his window more. Felix took the hint. He steered the Passat onto the narrow road that led toward St.

  Kristoff. There were few breaks in the woods that now surrounded the road that would allow any glimpses of the mountains.

  “Quite a place,” said Speckbauer, and let his window down a little. “Tracks, paths, wegs – everywhere.”

  The air was much cooler already. Felix tried to remember how many metres St. Kristoff was, 1200-something or 1800-something.

  “Tell me something,” Speckbauer said. “Your family goes back a long way here, huh? Both sides?”

  “I don’t know how many generations.”

  “Not interested in that sort of thing, the family story?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why did your family leave here? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Felix didn’t answer for several moments. Speckbauer, who had been looking up through the trees for another glimpse of the church and the houses of St. Kristoff, turned to him.

  “Am I being too personal?”

  “Every family has its things, I suppose.”

  Felix slowed when he saw the muddy tracks out onto the pavement. The sound of a chainsaw began to grow louder. He looked down the track that met with the road and caught a glimpse of a white vehicle, then another. One was an Opel Campo pickup.

  Maier, he guessed, or one of the men working for him.

  “You’re stopping?”

  “No. I was just curious. It’s okay, I saw who.”

  “In the woods there?”

  “Same guy we almost bumped into a few days ago,” said Felix.

  “We were on the way up for the anniversary.”

  Speckbauer craned his neck to look out Felix’s side.

  “You can tell from that thing, that white truck?”

  “It’s the guy with the licence to cut here. Maier. I was at school with him, or his family.”

  “Is he a friend of yours? Your family’s?”

  “No.”

  “See? You do know the people up here still then. That’s nice.”

  Felix dropped into second again and turned up the steepest section now, barely a metre from a steep drop off. The woods began to peter out, and the high meadows took over more. The sun hit them then. Felix pulled in and came to a stop to let an older couple in a Citröen coming down. He returned a small wave.

  “They are?”

  “Family Fischbach. They farm two places over from my oma and opa. Well, the next one does. Stephan, I think.”

  “Your oma and opa on your father’s side?”

  “My mother’s, the Nagls. I only have an opa on Dad’s side.”

  Felix pulled out onto the pavement again.

  “You know,” Speckbauer said, “this is a beautiful place. One would have to be crazy to leave here.”

  Felix’s mind was already ahead on the road out to Festring.

  There were 15 or 20 kilometres they’d need to drive on that corkscrew road.

  “Crazier to stay,” Felix said. “Believe me.”

  Speckbauer still seemed immune from any hint of Felix’s irritation.

  “Really? I can understand the attractions of town life, city life.”

  Felix said nothing.

  “Work of course too,” Speckbauer added. “And a bit of adventure. Not everyone can work a farm, or wants to, I suppose?”

  “My mother worked in Graz awhile, before getting married.

  She liked it.”

  “But your dad, he liked the high country up here, I’ll bet.

  Heimat: the homeland, even though . . . ?”

  “Even though . . . ?”

  “Oh oh,” said Speckbauer. Then after a few moments, he added, “Well, it’s just conversation.”

  Felix let the awkwardness curdle more.

  “It’s like you said yourself,” Speckbauer added. “Every family has its things. Anyway. Tell me what I’m seeing up here.”

  Felix let the Passat freewheel by the lower wall of the graveyard before the road made its last turn up to the village.

  He pointed out places: the school, the village square where the May festival, the Maifest, had been held a fortnight ago. The pine boughs that had been attached were still green. Speckbauer asked how old the church was. Felix came up with something persuasive.

  He wondered if Speckbauer was now going to ask to see the Kimmel family plot in the graveyard.

  “Don’t you want to drop by your grandparents’? Tell them you’ll be by later on, perhaps?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “They know already. And we’re going out by the other way, aren’t we?”

  Felix decided Speckbauer was about to say something, but had held back.

  “Well,” said Speckbauer after a while. “What of your father’s side?”

  “They don’t farm anymore. I mean he doesn’t, my grandfather.”

  “A lifetime of hard work,” Speckbauer said. “No doubt?”

  “It was a hard enough life up here,” Felix said. “In the past, I mean.”

  “Until recently, would you say?”

  “My grandparents could tell you, I suppose.”

  “Ach Mein Gött,” Speckbauer said then. “You can’t buy air like this in the city.”

  “Uh uh,” said Felix. “Spend a winter up here, when you’re a teenager.”

  “Where are teenagers happy, I ask you?”

  “Claustrophobic isn’t fun.”

  “But it’s your home, still, right? Your ties are here, right?”

  “Look. My parents wanted us to go to Uni, and all that.”

  “Your father too?”

  Felix waited several moments, until he was sure Speckbauer had turned away from the window.

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “Why?” Speckbauer repeated.

  “Yes, ‘why.’You’re here investigating a murder, aren’t you?”

  “I am – you too. A very valuable training exercise for you too, I might add.”

  “But all these questions about my family?”

  “I like to learn about people. Variety, human nature – all that.”

  “Hillbillies can be interesting, I suppose. ‘G’scherter’?”

  “What?” said Speckbauer. “I am a g’scherte myself.”

  “Well, you’re not from here.”

  “I’m a Northerner, but a real shitkicker nonetheless. My old man still farms – well, my brother does it actually – over near Linz.

  Look, turnips are nothing new to me.”

  Felix glanced over.

  “Then you’ll know all about little villages, and why someone would want out.”

  Felix geared down to slow the Passat, but it was still picking up speed. Another two bends and they’d be back out on the road that led up higher yet into the mountains.

  “Ach, you have a point,” said Speckbauer. “There’s always more than meets the eye.”

  “So they say.”

  “A lot of things didn’t get talked about around my place. I found out only later, of course. Same for you?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Really? For example, I had an uncle, and he was a real believer. All the way through.You know what I’m referring to when I say ‘believer’?”

  “I think so.”

  Speckbauer’s wan smile faded quickly.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I found out. He wasn’t just a conscript or even a volunteer. He was the whole bit. A zealot. But he got out alive. Talk about lucky, no?”

  “For him,” said Felix.

  “He was in the SS at age twenty. He was proud of it. I know, because I met these old guys at his funeral. I’d never seen them before, never heard of them. Strange thing, family, I began to realize. I liked him when he was alive. But after, a hard man to like.�
�

  Felix pretended to be concentrating on the ditches that ran alongside now.

  “A real jäger,” Speckbauer said. “He loved his hunting. I used to go with him.”

  He shifted the map off his lap.

  “And he did the other thing too, you can be sure. They go together.You know the saying, right?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “Maybe it’s only in the Tyrol. Wilderer und jäger sint brüder.

  ‘The hunter and the poacher are brothers.’ Hard times bring their own means, no?”

  “I suppose.”

  Speckbauer turned in his seat to look behind.

  “You see that?”

  “What?”

  “That clearing, a path. Forestry access, you think?”

  “Probably,” said Felix.

  Speckbauer turned back.

  “‘Wildererweg’ they called them back up in my place growing up. Poachers’ paths. Do they call them that here?”

  “I think I have heard it. Older people though.”

  “I wonder if that’s what they call that place up by Himmelfarbs.’”

  Felix kept his eyes on the bend and the shadows under the trees there. Where the bodies were, he meant.

  “Ach so,” said Speckbauer after a few moments, his tone changing to something almost cheerful. “No doubt we’ll find that out in due course. Hardly the most important detail of this, is it now?”

  Felix nodded slowly once.

  “Ever do any hunting?” Speckbauer asked as Felix let the Passat straighten out after the bend.

  “I’ve done some. Shooting rabbits is as far as I went.”

  “You enjoyed it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Like deer?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Your father made no big deal of when you didn’t want to go on?”

  “No. For my dad and his mates, well it sort of was part of growing up on a farm. But my mother was never happy with that stuff.

  No antlers on the wall in our place.”

  Speckbauer began to study the map again. Felix made sure that Speckbauer would notice him checking his watch.

  Speckbauer didn’t look up from the map.

  “Lots of time,” he murmured.

  NINETEEN

  THE ROAD CROSSED A RIVER NOW AND BEGAN TO CURL AROUND the mountains. They were high enough for the forest to falter, but scattered clumps of smaller, tough pines had managed to root even on ridges close to the summits.