Poachers Road

by John Brady

  “You’ll make them cry, Opa. Can you have that on your conscience?”

  Opa Nagl was already reaching for a jacket. Felix decided not to follow him out, but to watch instead from the window.

  He watched the circumspect exchange of nods and the few words out in the yard as his grandfather greeted Speckbauer. There was a wary handshake. Franzi stayed in the car, wisely enough, Felix thought, rearranging something, or pretending to. He couldn’t lipread at all, but before a minute had passed, his opa and Speckbauer had their backs to the house and were surveying the fields, each casting their arms up in the slow, appraising gestures of farmers.

  They nodded a lot, keeping their gaze on the view.

  Franzi emerged after a few minutes. He was in nondescript outdoorsy clothes, the poncho stowed away, no doubt, and he moved like a robot with the batteries about to go out. Felix watched his grandfather’s face for his reaction. It lasted an instant, the whatin-the-hell look, but it seemed to spur Opa Nagl into an overly friendly mode.

  The door to the yard opened and his grandfather’s resonant voice and thick accent came pouring in. The winter, cattle, how he had ploughed some fields with a horse until ’67, the apple cider you could buy that would close your eyelids in five minutes flat it all filled the hall and seemed to get louder. The Oberstleutnant Horst Speckbauer now making his way into the Nagls’ kitchen spoke in the same gruff, detonating voice of the Styrian farmer. His greeting broke the spell.

  “Servus, Felix.”

  “Give these men breakfast in God’s name Felix,” said his grandfather. “They had night work, they tell me. I’ll go back up to the countess upstairs.”

  Felix put mugs on the table and waited for his grandfather to finish putting things on the tray. Speckbauer seemed keen enough to keep a conversation about corn going.

  From Franzi, there was nothing. Felix could only make out occasional eye movements through the tint on his glasses. In this light, the scar tissue didn’t stand out.

  “Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer, shaking his head slowly in admiration as he found a chair. “And the air up here? Mein Gött! It takes years off my lungs to be up here.”

  “If you’re that keen to stay Horst,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of jobs. I’ll pay you in that mountain air.”

  Horst already, Felix repeated in his mind. So much for The Look. He put down a plate of bread on the table.

  “Beautiful country,” Speckbauer repeated, his serene look setting a little as Opa Nagl’s footsteps clumping began to fade upstairs.

  “This is what Rossegger meant.”

  He turned to Felix.

  “You have a motorcycle on the farm here?”

  “No.”

  “Do the local kids go where they want on theirs?”

  “Not like this,” said Felix. “Why? Are there tracks out there?”

  “There are indeed. They go off out to the road though.”

  “Well he’d hardly just drive down the lane if he was, you know?”

  “Right,” said Speckbauer, but in a tone that suggested to Felix that he believed the opposite. He sipped at his coffee again.

  “Was there anything else out there?”

  Speckbauer shook his head and took butter on his knife.

  “Franzi found some dog shit, I believe.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” said Speckbauer. He slid the plate with two buttered buns across toward Franzi. Felix stole a glance at Franzi’s claw-like hand reaching for them. It put him in mind of a lizard that needs morning sun to wake up. He waited for Speckbauer to look up from stirring more sugar in his coffee.

  “If my grandparents are in any danger, it’s my fault. It’s my fault because you put me up to this nonsense.”

  Speckbauer glanced up from the next bun he was preparing.

  He continued to stare at Speckbauer.

  “Okay,” Speckbauer murmured. “Best you get that talk out of your system now.”

  “It’s not just talk,” said Felix.

  “Well I do. I see us as Gendarmerie together here,” said Speckbauer. “A team. But if you come up with that ‘nonsense’ talk, and that look on your face when you’re working with the Polizei after the amalgamation . . . Well, you won’t get much mercy then.

  ‘Nothing’s the same after the wedding.’ I’d say that’s an expression from up these parts too.”

  He leaned over the table.

  “Eh Franzi?” he said.

  Franzi nodded.

  “You’ll be using rank there, every hour of the day. The du and dich stuff from the basic decent Gendarmerie will be piss in the wind then. So keep it up while you can.”

  “You said you’d explain things.”

  Speckbauer tore off a piece of bread and began chewing.

  “I bet you got a lousy sleep,” he said around his chews.

  “Sleep? I am supposed to be on a week’s leave.”

  “Could be worse,” said Speckbauer.

  “Tell me how. A family died in a fire. It looks deliberate, and that’s murder?”

  “Well,” said Speckbauer in the same quiet tone. “It would be that.”

  “On top of the ones in the forest,” said Felix.

  Speckbauer nodded.

  “Now someone was snooping around here last night,” Felix went on. “So I don’t see how it could be worse.”

  Speckbauer nodded again, and studied the piece of bun he was holding. Franzi was chewing slowly and methodically. To Felix, it began to sound like a metronome. The clicking and gulping sounds began to nauseate him.

  “Well, am I the only one who gets this?”

  “Gets . . . ?”

  “That they could be looking for me,” said Felix. “But you say ‘Don’t call in the local Gendarmes, they’ll just screw things up.’ I’m thinking: Someone’s trying to find me, or do a hell of a lot worse.

  Am I getting through to you?”

  Speckbauer glanced at Felix, and let out a sigh.Then he looked over at Franzi.

  “‘Sons of bitches,’ I was expecting,” he said to him. “You, Franzi?”

  “‘Bastards,’” Felix made out through the pause in Franzi’s chewing.

  “Which of us is closest?” said Speckbauer to Felix. “‘Sons of bitches,’ or ‘bastards’?”

  “Not funny,” said Felix. “I’m not going to be jerked around.

  This is not right.”

  “Absolutely,” said Speckbauer, and nodded vigorously. “You are right, again.”

  That seemed to settle the matter for Speckbauer. He made a yawn and turned to his coffee again.

  “So what are you proposing?” Felix asked.

  Speckbauer eyed him again before sitting back and turning to Franzi.

  “Any suggestions for Gendarme Kimmel here, Franzi? I’m too tired to think.”

  “I think Gendarme Kimmel should not panic.”

  “Easy for you to say,” said Speckbauer. “Put yourself in his boots.”

  The man’s lips were slashes, Felix thought, bloodless. For a moment he imagined Franzi’s face on fire.

  “Then he should go somewhere else.”

  “What’s to happen to my grandparents then? I abandon them?”

  “When you go, their troubles are over.”

  Felix stared hard at the glasses. He could not be sure that Franzi was staring back.

  “Look,” said Speckbauer. “We talked about this. Someone thinks the Himmelfarb boy told you something. Something that could drop someone in the shit.”

  “You never said to me that there’s a local involvement in this,”

  said Felix.

  “Is there? Why do you say that?”

  Felix waited for Speckbauer to look over again.

  “If doesn’t help to think I’m an idiot.”

  “We don’t hold your university days against you. On the contrary.”

  Felix had a few moments to consider things but he knew he’d come around again to what he had wanted to tell Spe
ckbauer right away.

  “You’ve been a good help so far, Kimmel,” Speckbauer went on.

  “Don’t think that’s not appreciated. It will look good on you too.”

  Felix put down his cup. He looked at the stain on the saucer for a moment.

  “Okay,” he said, and stood up. “I’m going to do what I should have done before.”

  “Which is?”

  “Phone my C.O., or a bighead in Central Office. Ask to get you two off my back.”

  “Sure about that, Kimmel?” Franzi asked.

  “I’d be interested to know what they think about your project being out of hand.”

  “‘Out of hand’?” said Speckbauer. “You’re being hard on us.

  But I understand. It’s a shock to the system, all this. It’s hard for you.”

  “I don’t give a shit. I just want to protect my family.”

  “Your career,” said Speckbauer. “You hardly want to disgrace your family.”

  “That doesn’t work. At least I’ll be able to get real police up here then.”

  Speckbauer pushed his cup away.

  “That would not be a wise plan,” he said. “It will complicate matters in ways you can’t imagine.”

  “Are you going to phone my C.O. and get him to give me an order on that?”

  Felix took the cordless phone from the wall. He thumbed through his mobile for a number he knew he had, one for Payroll.

  They’d switch him from there.

  Speckbauer rubbed at his nose and muttered something to Franzi. ‘The old ones,’ Felix heard. Franzi rose, Speckbauer didn’t.

  “Look, Felix,” said Speckbauer. “I’m looking forward to meeting your grandparents when we get through this little chat. But for the moment I’d like them to stay where they are, so they do not overhear some things I need to tell you.”

  Franzi had taken up a stiff-looking lean against the staircase.

  “Don’t make that phone call now. Make it later, if you decide then. I won’t stop you.”

  Berndt had taken a shine to Franzi, it seemed. Felix heard his murmurs to the dog and the sighs as Franzi stroked its head.

  “Really,” said Speckbauer. “I’ll answer your questions. Please sit. Now, do you want to start, or will I?”

  Felix sat slowly.

  “Okay, I will. There are two dead men. We don’t know who they are yet. It looks like they are there a couple of weeks. One of them swallowed a diamond. He wrapped it in a condom. So, we are curious: A) was he carrying it back to wherever he came from for himself, maybe? Or . . . B) he knew he was in a tight spot. Okay so far?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Now. We are almost certain now that the Himmelfarb family was murdered.”

  He paused, eyeing Felix for a reaction.

  “That is not public knowledge. It will not become so until I decide. If you want to know, someone used an accelerant know what that is? inside the house. People who know such things are ninety percent sure it was paraffin. The house burned hot, all that old wood. Intense, I should say. So here is deliberate, calculated murder of people who someone supposed might know something about the two dead men. Will I stop now?”

  Felix glanced down the hall. He was sure that Franzi was watching him.

  “The person, or the people, who knew something about this are connected with the people who know something about those two men from the forest. Got that?”

  “Maybe the same people,” said Felix. “Or person?”

  “Exactly,” said Speckbauer. He tilted his cup to move coffee around. “It is not hard to suppose they’re one and the same, or that he is the one who has done everything. Verstehst?

  “So far,” said Felix.

  “Next, then. A more personal matter for you. And please, let your head into this more than your guts.”

  Speckbauer gave him a teacher’s look, to see if he were paying attention.

  “We are beginning to suspect,” he said slowly, “that someone considers you have knowledge about the former matter. The two in the woods, what started this.”

  “Someone thinks Hansi Himmelfarb told me something?”

  “Right. Maybe just or a hint, a clue. Something that will lead to them.”

  “‘Them’? You seem pretty sure.”

  Speckbauer sat back.

  “Really? And why do you say that?”

  Felix nodded in Franzi’s direction.

  “Your job is not about any single criminal.”

  “Ah,” said Speckbauer. “You put it so well. And you’re right.

  We leave petty criminals to the hardworking men in uniform, the real backbone of the Gendarmerie.”

  “Is that what we are considered?”

  “Absolutely: the backbone, the foundation.”

  “Not a bunch of clowns working with the dummies up here, in the hills?”

  “Now really,” said Speckbauer. “You know that’s a myth.”

  Felix’s irritation was cresting.

  “Look,” he said. “My grandparents are trusting people. They thought my dad was the greatest. They think I am half-sainted too now because I’m ‘following in his footsteps,’ or something.”

  “And you are,” Speckbauer offered.

  “My point is they have to be told what’s going on here.They’re probably up there saying to one another how nice it is that Felix’s colleagues are dropping by, and how important his work is and . . .

  It’s all crap. Something has to get done. Right now.”

  Speckbauer seemed to think about Felix’s words. He sighed and shifted a little.

  “Maria,” he muttered. He stopped rubbing at his eyes and looked at Franzi.

  “Didn’t I tell you,” he said. Franzi said nothing but made a small shrug. Felix imagined his grandparents upstairs, listening.

  “Okay,” said Speckbauer then. “I’ll get to the point here. It’ll save you all these theatrics.You wonder, don’t you, why Franzi and I are up here. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ you wonder. ‘If these two coppers are the real thing, they would pull out all the stops and have police crawling all over the area.’ Right?”

  Felix waited for him to continue.

  “Back to the dead men in the forest. Remember I said they shouldn’t be there?”

  Felix nodded.

  “That sounds stupid, no? I mean, they’re not there by choice.

  It wasn’t just their mistake being there. No. A mistake was made by whoever shot them. Someone did something unplanned. ‘Off the radar.’ ‘Freelance,’ you could say.”

  “You believe a local killed them, then.”

  “I don’t know,” said Speckbauer. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know how a local could get those two, two strangers, into the woods like that.”

  “They walked,” said Speckbauer. “That’s how.”

  “Voluntarily?”

  “They trusted who they were with,” said Speckbauer. “They knew him, or they knew them. My bet is that one of them was getting a bit suspicious. The one with the diamond in his guts.”

  “You think he just swallowed it up there on that track?”

  “No. Of course not. It wouldn’t have made its way to where they found it. ‘An hour’ is what those lab rats told me, the pathology people. But one of the two was suspicious for a while.”

  “It’s not getting any clearer.”

  “How do you gain a person’s trust? Answer me that.”

  “Trust?” said Felix. “I don’t know. Help them some way?”

  “Let’s say you’re a foreigner.”

  Felix’s annoyance and his clouded thoughts suddenly evaporated.

  “Language.”

  “Right.You speak the language. That’s a start. A few words, at least.”

  “Well, you know Serbo-Croatian,” said Felix.

  “Badly,” said Speckbauer quickly. “I think I have a mental block against it.”

  Then his eyes settled, unfocused, on the table.

  “And
it has held me back, held us back, I must say, that lack of follow-up. I stopped being able to assimilate my learning in SerboCroatian some time ago. It was the day my colleague became a human fireball. It was on a shitty little side street in a shithole city in the former-shitty-Yugoslavia. Got that?”

  His gaze went to the window. His fingers began to drum slowly on the table top.

  “What were you doing in Yugoslavia? The Gendarmerie doesn’t do that stuff.”

  “Did I say we were Gendarmerie then? Imagine for a moment that there are far-seeing people who run things in the Interior Ministry. Let’s say they realize that to beat these guys, you have to be as flexible as they are – the bad guys, I mean. You’d be smart enough not to broadcast what you’re doing, in a law-abiding social democracy like Austria.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Six years in August. ‘James Bond’ came home. And he never went back.”

  “So you were some kind of, I don’t know, agent then?”

  Speckbauer almost grinned, but the effect was merely a grimace.

  “Yes. A bad one.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I am sitting here in the lovely mountains of my native Austria, ‘never more to roam,’ as our great poet of river and forest Rossegger would say. Where things should be much simpler.”

  Felix did not know what to say.

  “Anyway. This shouldn’t concern you. Back to the not-sosimple matter at hand here. Apparently you want a battalion of Gendarmerie to guard your grandparents.”

  “Don’t make a joke out of it.”

  “It certainly would make a joke out of things if you had your wish.Think for a moment. Not many people know you’re here.That was part of the idea, remember.”

  It did seem like an age ago, Felix thought.

  “Well what happened? Passing along the road out there, someone anyone would look over and see your car. So: that brings us back to the ‘local,’ doesn’t it? That’s why I wanted you in on this, or at least available. The extra edge: local.You.”

  “I didn’t get any James Bond training,” Felix said.

  Something seemed to have given way in Speckbauer’s voice now when he spoke.

  “Let me tell you something,” he went on. “This from a guy who did get the ‘James Bond’ training. It isn’t foolproof. Sure, I have the badge, the hardware, and we were given room to be, shall I say ‘flexible’ but you don’t know what it takes away.”