Poachers Road

by John Brady

  Speckbauer consulted his map again.

  “We could have gone by Teichalm, I guess,” he said. “What’s up there? Aside from woods, bog, more woods?”

  “A big inn, a gasthaus. Ski runs. A lake. A very cold lake.”

  There were a few cars up here, more than Felix had expected.

  Speckbauer craned his neck to see a couple with two children plodding near the woods across a marshy patch. All had rosy cheeks, and wet hair. The yellow rain jackets looked like aliens amidst the green.

  “Wise choice,” said Speckbauer. “The yellow. Hunting season and so forth? I’m sure things have happened over the years up in these parts. Hunting accidents?”

  Felix’s mind lingered on how Speckbauer said “accidents.”

  “I suppose,” he said.

  “The two men up in the woods by Himmelfarbs’ weren’t ‘accidents,’” said Speckbauer. “I don’t need an autopsy to figure that one out.”

  “When will those results come back?”

  “Some now, already. I should phone in soon. You know what toxicology is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Than you’ll know they take a long time. I have waited weeks for tests.”

  “Content analysis too?”

  “Well, good for you. What’s in the bauch, the belly, yes. Also what shape their organs are in. It helps to know.Teeth tell a lot. Hair too. Sure, the papers are full of DNA cases and all that, but all that environmental stuff has come on strong in the business the past few years. We’ll need it, I tell you.”

  “Because they had nothing on them?”

  Speckbauer frowned.

  “You knew that? How?”

  “I overheard.”

  “Good for you, I suppose.”

  “So you – so we – don’t know much yet.”

  Speckbauer’s frown changed to a puzzled look.

  “I like the ‘we’ there,” he said after a few moments. “But you’re right. We have no idea who they are. My guess is south of the border. But they had nothing – zero, truly – on them for ID. Wallet, money, smokes, watch – nothing. Anyway. Their photos have gone out to several jurisdictions by now. So, we wait.”

  “Well, can you tell how long they were there?”

  “A guess, again? To me, they are dead more than three days. It is high up there, cool enough. They were out of the sun.”

  “That’s it, then? That’s all?”

  The frown had returned to Speckbauer’s face, Felix saw.

  “Well, what do you think,” he said.

  “You want me to make a fool of myself, four months on the job?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Speckbauer. “There’s a thing called ‘fresh eyes.’”

  “Well, they didn’t fall like that, did they. They were put there.”

  “Genau. Did you get a look at the one with the moustache?”

  Felix shook his head. He wondered if this was Speckbauer being cynical. Surely he’d heard about him vomiting.

  “Well, to me, he was the runner.”

  “The runner?”

  “He was on the move for sure when he was taken down.”

  “The other one, with the, you know?”

  “Right,” said Speckbauer. “The hole over his eye. He’s the one who didn’t know what hit him. There’s no blood up there, did you notice? Ever see a head wound? It bleeds like a pig.You can’t put a bullet neatly into a guy’s kopf in the middle of a fight. It was murder, natürlich – but one was execution. That’s why the second guy ran.”

  “So they were shot somewhere, and then brought into the woods?”

  Speckbauer nodded and looked out across the stretch of open country. It was wild grass and low bushes here, growths that had been hardly enough to survive, dwarfed and delayed here in the open.

  “We are of like mind, so far,” he said. “But there’s no law says we can’t speculate, is there?”

  “But if they are ausländers,” Felix started to say.

  Speckbauer’s head jerked around, almost theatrically, to face him.

  “If they are,” Felix repeated. “Then . . . ?”

  “Right,” said Speckbauer, in a strange voice, half whisper, half sigh. “What the hell were these tschuschen doing up here in the hills? Isn’t that your question?”

  Using the street word for anyone from Yugoslavia was a test, Felix thought immediately, a taunt. He concentrated on driving.

  “Well, Christ and His Mother,” said Speckbauer in the same soft, almost bemused voice now. “Don’t stop now, Gendarme Kimmel.”

  Felix changed for a bend that held a small pool of water by the ditch.

  “Smuggling,” he said. “Sorry, ‘trafficking.’ And that’s why the Kripo is in, why you’re in.”

  “Not bad,” said Speckbauer. “Remember I said accident, how shooting two people could hardly be an accident? I wasn’t being sarcastic. And I’ll tell you why: it’s because it was an accident in some way – a mistake, at least. ‘Irregular,’ let’s say.”

  “It should not have happened, you mean? Wait – that sounds just blöd.”

  “There’s been a slip up,” Speckbauer went on. “And that is the policeman’s friend. I worked many years ago with a fine fellow – actually he was an arschlocher to everyone – but he got his job done. He was my first C.O. when I went detective. I will not burden you with his name. But my point is this. As he would say, we do not need to be a genius here, Horst. We just need to find a mistake.”

  “Who made this mistake, then?”

  “Ah, you’ll give me heartburn with that one. What are they teaching guys like you about trafficking at that Gendarmerieschule these days?”

  “Well, that it’s a big business. Drugs, guns, anything. People, women.”

  “Okay. So trafficking is about articulated trucks on the autobahn, going hell for leather toward Frankfurt or Amsterdam. It’s trains, it’s plane cargo, five or ten kilometres up there. Depps with stuff in the frame of their car, or in their knickers. Now what?”

  “Well, why would two men, ausländers, why would they be so far off the beaten track up here?”

  “Congratulations,” said Speckbauer. “You are saying what I say to myself. It’s what I say to my fine colleagues in Graz. It’s what I say to certain persons on the phone from Vienna and places even more exotic than that lovely city. The answer is . . . ?”

  Felix shrugged.

  “The answer is . . . we don’t know. And that is why we are up here, believing that this is important, very important. The proof of that is what happened to the Himmelfarb family.”

  TWENTY

  THE LOW THRUM OF THE ENGINE, AND THE SQUEAKS FROM THE suspension as the car wallowed and even bucked on the mountain road only made the silence of the last 10 minutes of the journey to Festring more pronounced. In that uneasy quiet Felix soon decided that Speckbauer too was marinating in his own thoughts, maybe even as much as he was in his own. The difference was that Speckbauer was showing no signs of that steady and growing foreboding that had been growing in Felix’s mind. It had almost spilled over into dread at times, a dark swirl of images flaring and returning again, no matter how he tried to contain them.

  It was almost a relief when the half-dozen houses of Festring came in sight, arriving abruptly after a bend, nestled in a valley whose bright green meadows had been hard-won from the hills.

  Gasthaus Hiebler was a modest affair in the traditional style, with ambitious flowerboxes and what looked like a recent coat of paint.

  Two cars were parked in a gravelled area to the side, one an Opel with fancy rims.The spring melt was not done with the land up here yet, and the soft, grassy banks of the ditches along the road outside were still saturated. Felix backed in, turned off the engine and held the keys up for Speckbauer.

  “So,” said Speckbauer. “Except for that shitbox Opel there, we are in a time machine up here.”

  Felix said nothing.

  “This is going to be low key,” Speckbauer went on
. “We want to know who was in this place when Karl Himmelfarb was in the other night. Who he might have told about the goings on at his farm. He played cards, had a beer, like always, gell?”

  Felix nodded. Speckbauer still held the door handle, and stared at the gap where the door had opened a little, and where the cold air was flowing in.

  “And my bet is they’ll know you, your name.Your father?”

  And Speckbauer was out of the car with that fast, rolling exit that had him on his toes and stretching by the side of the car, the door shut behind him already. He nodded toward the door of the inn.

  It was drawn back just as Felix prepared to push it open. A woman in her fifties with a housecoat took a step back.

  “Servus,” Felix said.

  “Grüss, und wilkommen.”

  She had a business smile and grey eyes that reminded Felix of a bird. They fixed on Speckbauer, who had lingered several steps behind. She returned his greeting in the same high, musical accent she had Felix’s.

  “Is the gasthaus open?”

  “Of course,” she said, and she unclasped her hands to usher them in.

  There was a heavy, brothy aroma in the air. Felix glanced at the empty dining room that was off to the left of the entrance.

  “Fine day earlier,” she said.

  “It’ll return,” said Felix.

  How easily it had come out, he thought; how he didn’t even have to think about the reflexive reply he had heard so often from his grandparents.

  “Kommen sie,” she said.

  The stübe even had a kachelofen, and it had been lighted. An old man was seated at a table, a walking stick beside him. He turned and smiled at Felix.

  “Well, look what the day brings us,” he said.

  “Grüss, Herr Hartmann,” said Felix. “A nice surprise to find you up here.”

  He saw that the woman was eyeing Speckbauer.

  “Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer and rubbed his hands briskly.

  “Did I smell soup?”

  There were playing cards spread out over the gingham cloth at the booth where Willi Hartmann sat.

  “You are rambling, Felix, is it? Up for the air?”

  “Actually not. My friend here is new to the area. He asked if I would show him the sights.”

  “Marvellous,” said Speckbauer to Hartmann. “Splendid countryside.”

  Hartmann looked from Speckbauer to Felix and back.

  “It is that, sir.”

  “May I buy you a krügl of beer, Herr Hartmann?”

  “No, no, Felix. Ach, how like your father to have said that! No, thank you. I need but the one glass of beer to get wipsi now.”

  Then he offered a weak smile.

  “There are no prizes for old age, my friends. I should finish my game and go home for a nap.”

  “Home is close then?” Speckabuer asked.

  “Herr Hartmann lives in the same village as my grandparents,”

  said Felix. “St. Kristoff.”

  “Six hundred and twenty years,” said Hartmann, with a wink.

  “Not all mine of course. My family.”

  Speckbauer trailed the woman to the bar.

  “Soup and a bun would be great,” Felix heard him say. “Is that possible?”

  She smiled, and this time Felix saw gold to both sides of her mouth.

  “I am the boss,” she said. “So if it’s possible, I will tell you.”

  Hartmann moved in on the bench and motioned to Felix.

  “Sit,” he said. “Sit. A nice service for your dad, wasn’t it? A good turnout, eh? Respect. Some things don’t change, even in this flyaway world.”

  He eyed Speckbauer talking to the woman at the bar.

  “My niece is married, you should tell him. Liesl, who runs the place.”

  Felix smiled.

  “I don’t think he’s up in the hills looking for a wife.”

  Hartmann moved his leg again and grimaced. Liesl called out from the bar.

  “Soup and jausen for you too, sir?”

  Felix shook his head. He asked for beer instead.

  Speckbauer returned to the booth. He leaned in to shake hands with Hartmann and then he slid into the bench opposite. He looked at the cards, the half-empty beer glasses.

  “Am I taking someone’s place?”

  “Macht nichts,” said Hartmann, with a small wave.

  “My chauffeur – he’s in the klo.”

  Hartmann’s eyes stayed on Speckbauer for several moments.

  “You take your wild card-playing to teach them up here, Herr Hartmann?” Felix said.

  “Little teaching they need up here,” Himmelfarb replied. “No.

  I go on my rounds here. I am like the priest, you know? My niece married in here years ago. Her husband may own this place, but she is the boss, let me tell you. That’s the Hartmanns for you.”

  “And what does the husband work at?” Speckbauer asked.

  “This and that,” said Hartmann easily, as though he had been expecting it. “Takes care of the place, he’s handy. There are contracts for the woods, of course. There’s always something, isn’t there? Not like old times, I must say.Your opa could tell you about those, eh, Felix?”

  Opa Kimmel, he meant, Felix realized. The eminence grise, was that the expression? The conversation lapsed. Felix looked around the room. It had been kept up, and it was clean, but it had a jaded feel to it. Maybe it was more a hobby, or a custom to keep it open, just to cover costs.

  Footsteps and a cough came from the hall. A man appeared in the doorway, pausing when he saw the arrivals to nod.

  “Servus alles.”

  Felix returned the greeting, followed by Speckbauer.

  The man was in his thirties, with tousled red-blond hair and two days’ growth of rust-coloured beard under the crinkly eyes.

  There was an easygoing look to him, and he was more than amply padded.

  “My chauffeur,” said Hartmann. “Fuchs, Anton Fuchs.”

  “Toni,” said Fuchs shaking hands, his eye almost disappearing with his smile. He sat in slowly beside Speckbauer.

  “I was telling Felix how I can’t win at cards here at all, Toni. In all the years I have tried.”

  “No one can,” said Fuchs. His eyes almost disappeared with another smile again. “Liesl can beat anyone.”

  “I hear my name taken in vain,” she called out, as she came through a doorway with a tray. She laid a platter of cold meats, and a half-dozen buns next to a bowl of thick yellowy soup. She raised the empty beer glass.

  “Mahzeit,” she said. “Your health.”

  Hartmann shook his head. Liesl stood back from the table with her hands on her hips.

  “That’s not going to change,” said Hartmann, and he gathered the cards. “You have all the luck meant for me, Liesl.”

  Fuchs chortled and had another drink from his glass. For a moment Felix thought of Hartmann’s artificial leg. Had he not considered himself lucky to have survived at all?

  His eyes strayed to Hartmann’s wrinkled hands, shaking a little, as he packed away the cards.

  “This is the best,” said Speckbauer, and spooned in more soup.

  It only helped to make the quiet seem even stronger behind the ting of his spoon and the swallows.

  “The work goes well, Felix?”

  “So-so,” Felix said. “There is always something.”

  “Oh come on now.Your dad would have been so proud of you, to see you in uniform there. So proud.”

  He turned to Fuchs.

  “Felix’s opa and I, we were kids together. I knew Felix’s father too. May God be good to him, as I know He is.”

  “Family?” said Fuchs, his smile almost closing the heavy-lidded eyes again.

  “Kimmel,” said Felix. “We started out in St. Kristoff.”

  “The Kimmels followed us there,” said Hartmann. “Us Hartmanns. They knew a good thing up here in the hills. “ Hartmann stopped shuffling the cards, and put his head back.

 
“‘In the green wood is my home Beside the stream no more to roam.’”

  Speckbauer held his spoon away from his mouth.

  “‘To farm and plough, to hunt the doe.

  My land to guard against the foe.’”

  Hartmann smiled, put down the cards and sat back.

  “It’s not often these days that I meet a fan of our great poet, Peter Rossegger.”

  Speckbauer finished the spoonful of soup.

  “What Austrian could not be?” he said.

  “Well, Felix,” said Hartmann, and cleared his throat. “You travel our backroads with scholars. A great blessing.”

  Felix noticed the beer belly now as Fuchs settled into the booth. He exchanged a thin smile with him.

  Then Hartmann sighed, and shook his head once. His expression turned sombre.

  “Terrible thing, the Himmelfarbs,” he said. “Terrible.”

  He seemed to be staring, unseeing, at something across the room. He sighed again.

  “I heard you were there with the boy?”

  Felix sensed Speckbauer had begun listening more intently.

  “You heard that?”

  Hartmann nodded.

  “Karl knew your name,” he said. “Oh yes. You and another Gendarme, the one he phoned. A friend of his, maybe?”

  “They had met over a family matter before,” said Felix. “But not me.”

  “It was your father,” said Hartmann, and paused to clear his throat. “He knew your father. Like half the province, such a fine man – may angels guard him.”

  “It was only by chance I was there really,” he said.

  “I didn’t know Karl all that well,” Hartmann went on, his voice barely audible. Age seemed to have returned with a vengeance to his features, Felix thought. Liesl made her way across from a door that led to a big kitchen.

  “Family Himmelfarb,” Hartmann said to her.

  “My God,” she said and clasped a dishcloth to her chest.

  “Terrible,” she murmured, and then blessed herself. “But ‘Straight to heaven go the honest and the innocent.’”

  Felix caught Speckbauer’s eye as the spoon was taking the last of the soup toward his mouth. Poetry, right off the bat? Speckbauer might not be the cynic about rural piety like this, then.