Poachers Road

by John Brady

  “Well let’s hope that ‘plank’ doesn’t have as many knots in it as my ‘plank’!”

  Felix heard his grandfather tut-tut in that clicking, humorous way that had been the hallmark of this couple since he could remember. He thought again about asking his grandfather to get the hunting rifle out. He’d tell him he wanted to go after rabbits or something. But it’d never work. His opa would know something wasn’t right.

  He searched the fields and hedges as he made his way to his car. He opened the bonnet to check for oil, and to make sure the stupid fan belt wasn’t about to shred like it had in Graz traffic last October. He scanned the bushes and the shadows where the forests began. Somehow they looked even darker now with the full sun closing on its height. Everything looked near, as though it had moved in toward the farm while no one was looking. A trick of light, or shadow, he had to decide, probably his own half-addled brain most of all.

  He checked his phone for battery. He’d meet Gebhart by the church. Felix had been wondering again if he should check on Fuch’s place, even a drive-by, on his way to his grandfather’s. No, he decided: just go straight to the old man. After all, that was why he had gotten Gebhart into this now.

  He stopped when he had reached the road and looked for any sign of the Passat. He half expected to see Franzi, gnome-like, sitting on the bank watching him from behind the two dark insect-eye lenses that protected his eyes from the light of day.

  He turned off the engine for 10 seconds, and listened, but heard only the birds, and his own heart beating faster now.

  FORTY

  GEBHART SAID NOTHING, BUT MERELY WAITED FOR FELIX TO finish. He wore that look of vague interest that Felix had learned was a screen for something else.

  “So there,” he said to Gebhart when he had finished. “That’s about the only way I can describe it.”

  Gebhart nodded his head slowly, as though something had happened as he had predicted, or didn’t understand and didn’t want to try. He looked out through the gap in the trees over the forestry road into where they had driven after leaving from the village. Felix had backed the Polo in at speed. It sank to the rims almost immediately. Gebhart, standing by his own car, made no comment.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” said Felix.

  “I don’t. Just some days. And today is such a day.”

  Felix looked down at the tracks his shoes had made in the carpet of brown pine needles.

  “Well I think you’re stuck,” said Gebhart.

  “That’s why I phoned you. I swear to God I’m not making this up.”

  Gebhart drew on the cigarette and grimaced before exhaling.

  He nodded toward the Polo.

  “The car, I was referring to,” he said. He held out his cigarette and looked at it as though it had appeared from nowhere, and he frowned. Then he stubbed it out on the edge of his heel, before grinding it into the mushy ground underfoot.

  “But it’s your own doing,” he said. “You look like you want to dump the car.”

  “I’m a bit whacked. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Neither man spoke for several moments. The smoke from Gebhart’s cigarette was whipped away immediately by soft gusts of wind. The breeze was inconstant here amongst the trees, but it still had the trunks groaning faintly behind the louder hush of the conifers’ branches high up.

  “As odd a request as I’ve ever had,” Gebhart said then. “Tell me again you’re not on drugs. Or going nuts?”

  “Look, I really appreciate this. Gebi?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe anything from Speckbauer.”

  “Well I can see that. The minute I saw that guy, well, that was clear enough.”

  “I thought he just wanted a local guy to drive him around, maybe introduce him to the locality. But he has a different movie going on in his head.”

  “But of course he would,” said Gebhart. “‘The Big Picture’ fellows.”

  “He must have a lot of clout to get Schroek to put me working for him.”

  Gebhart nodded.

  “Has Schroek talked to you about him, maybe?”

  Gebhart eyed him.

  “Only to say that cooperating with him and his group is a priority.”

  “Group?”

  “Well naturally I looked him up,” said Gebhart. “As far as I could, before I’d get noticed. But I kept banging into unknowns.

  Not something that inspires confidence. All I can find out is that his section is some kind of floater, a ‘task-force.’ No details.”

  “In the BP, even?”

  Gebhart flicked away the suggestion with his hand.

  “Our glorious Polizei? The minute I’d try to weasel anything out of them, an old friend of mine even, they’d be looking in my keyhole.”

  He heard Gebhart breathe out heavily through his nose once.

  He took it to be exasperation more than humour.

  “Okay,” Gebhart said. “If this is true, half of it some of it even you have to report it.”

  He gave Felix a hard look.

  “That’s my advice. And furthermore, if I was you, starting out my career, and I had an eye on getting places . . . ”

  “Go on, Gebi. Say it.”

  “I’d be telling Speckbauer too. That’s the real world these days.

  Okay?”

  “About my grandfather? I can’t screw over my own family.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Gebhart and took a step away. “Don’t forget what you told me on the phone. We’re sticking to that. Or else, I walk.”

  “Of course we are.”

  “So we are on a timer, right? I give you two hours of my time, two hours I have manufactured as ‘police work’ which is true, even if I have gone along with your fashion request here.”

  He paused and indicated his street clothes with a small wave of his hand.

  “But if this stuff pertains to a murder investigation, or criminal activity . . . ?”

  Felix nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. We move it upstairs right away.”

  “No family favours,” said Gebhart. “None.”

  “No favours,” Felix repeated.

  Gebhart seemed to linger on Felix’s words. Then he relaxed.

  Felix followed him to his car and they both got in.

  “And you’re supposed to be on a beach somewhere,” said Gebhart and turned the key. The diesel caught right away and its first wrenching revs rattled loud in the woods.

  “With that nice girl?”

  “That’s another story,” said Felix. “But not now.”

  “Ah,” said Gebhart, and let it into reverse. He turned to see out the back window.

  “Or starting out your new career, maybe looking forward to the heavenly union between us and our betters in the Bundespolizei not running about in off-hours with those two.”

  Gebhart checked his mirrors, and then put it in first before the car had even stopped reversing. There was a moment’s hesitation before the car changed direction when Felix thought he too had bogged down. He had not imagined Gebhart capable of blue jeans, or looking like anything but the Gendarme who showed up for work in his uniform each day.

  “Those two hounds,” said Gebhart. “They won’t rest long.”

  “Speckbauer?”

  “They’re not idiots. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all part of their plan.”

  “What, us here?”

  “Sure. And who is the bigger dummy here, you or me? I should know better.”

  Gebhart cleared his throat, and then rolled down his window full. He spat with a peculiar delicacy into the undergrowth slowly drifting by. Felix heard a truck labouring on the road outside, a clash of gears as the driver launched it at the hill with a full load.

  “I may be pissing on my pension here,” Gebhart murmured.

  “That’s why I had a cigarette.Yes, two and a bit years to go, and I’m starting over. I’ll be the best goddamned house painter you’ll ever see.�
��

  The dark, malty smells from the thawed floor of the forest came through the car even stronger now. Dappled sunlight splashed on the window and disappeared as they rolled bumpily out toward the road.

  “I didn’t realize that,” said Felix. “It’s okay if you change your mind.”

  “Well now you tell me. But God has made me a magnet for scheisse, it seems. I have no doubt those two pricks will be asking me questions before the day is out.”

  “Gebi, look”

  “Shut up will you? You don’t know. There’s more here than your mess. All I’m saying is, if I had a brain, I’d be back at the post.”

  “I don’t want you to get into scheisse. Look, I’ll go on my way.”

  Gebhart sighed.

  “Don’t underestimate the desire to get one back,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Felix, uncertainly.

  “‘Okay’? You haven’t a clue.You don’t need to know. So I never told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  Gebhart glanced over.

  “I didn’t trust you,” he said. “To be frank.”

  The car rolled into a lower spot and then a big bump shook the car.

  “I know how those assholes work,” Gebhart went on, straining over the wheel to spot any more big dips and bumps. “I learned the hard way. They never believed me. They suspect their own mothers.”

  Felix stared at him. Another bump shook creaks from the shocks and Gebhart swore as he righted himself.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Gebi?”

  “Forget it. It’s bullshit.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you to forget it?”

  “How can I? What’s with the freak-out here?”

  “You want to know? Okay. I’ll tell you.You show up at the post, training for when Korschack heads off for his officer course. He won’t be back, that’s okay. The post is going to be closed anyway, in a year or two. It’s a soft number, a good place to train. Nothing happens in Stefansdorf, right?”

  “But why are you mad at me now?”

  “Ach! Listen. I won’t be repeating myself. You show up, I was saying. You screwed around in the Uni, making a crap job of it by the looks of things. Then you’re in the Gendarmerie, the Gendarmerie that’s headed for the amalgamation in a year, a new police force that you’ll automatically carry your job into? And you’ll move up by just turning up for duty, because you have your Matura, and a bit of Uni? Home free.”

  “You’re like the others, Gebi. You’re suspicious of anyone who doesn’t talk soccer and drink Puntigamer, and trash people.”

  “Have I finished? No I haven’t. So listen.”

  Felix waited.

  “Well? You think you know things? Let me tell you this, then.

  Your father goes out and there’s a whisper about him yeah, I heard. And don’t look at me like that. You know part of why they’re getting rid of the Gendarmerie ? Do you?”

  “Money?” said Felix. “The EU?”

  “No, and it’s not because they have to find jobs for the Customs guys now the Slovenians and the frigging Hungarians and the goddamned Czechs are EU. And it’s not just about saving money, or some asshole in Brussels or someplace, or 9/11 crap.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? Deals corruption, whatever the fancy word is. Nobody admits it in public. But those guys know, they know how bad it is. It’s been going on awhile. There’s a wave of stuff coming through, since things went nuts in Yugoslavia.

  It can’t fit under the carpet anymore, see? So, they suspect everybody, everything. Now, imagine how you look to that pair. A background like you have.”

  “You’re serious, I think.”

  “God, but you’re a depp sometimes. So frigging naïve. It’s why I said that I didn’t trust you. And I still don’t. But not the way you think. I don’t think you’re bent, like some plan to get you to infiltrate the new police thing or rubbish like that. You’re not crook material. Believe me, I know. But I just don’t trust you. I don’t trust you not to land me in the crap with this stumbling around you’re at.

  I lost both ways, see?”

  “No.”

  “For God’s sake . . . If I stay clear of you and your nonsense, and ignore those two puppet masters using you for bait or whatever they’re really doing up here well there’s my stupid conscience screwed. If you get done in, how the hell can I give those brilliant lectures to my kids about doing the right thing?”

  The road came in sight. Gebhart slowed his car even more.

  Felix felt it begin to sink a little, but Gebi kept it chugging steadily low in second gear.

  “And if I get run over again . . . life has no improvement there, has it?”

  “‘Run over?’ ‘Again’?”

  “Yes, ‘again.’ They’re not going to do this again. Not to me.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Well,” said Gebhart, speaking now almost through clenched teeth. “So the moment of truth here arrives. Didn’t you ever wonder what the likes of me, a brilliant policeman, is doing behind the door in Stefansdorf?”

  Felix saw that the anger had passed, and Gebhart’s sardonic tone had returned.

  “Not really.”

  “Well you should. I am a good policeman. It’s my career.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Felix said. “I just thought, well Gebi, he has his security. Promotions happen. You like a quiet life maybe. ‘The landing strip,’ right?”

  Gebhart brought the car to a slow stop near the entrance, checking for any sign of soft ground beneath.With the car idling, he rubbed at his nose and looked across at Felix.

  “That’s what the old guys call it, sure. No. Me, I have other things, far more important. My kids, my family.You probably think that’s schmaltzy crap, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Bullshit. But anyway, I’ll tell you. Any other day I wouldn’t, but you are digging your own hole in the ground here. But when I’m done telling you, I don’t want to hear any questions, observations, comment. Got that?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Fifteen years ago, the Yugos started up again, right? It had been brewing. They have to murder one another every few years. I don’t care if that sounds bad. It’s true. It’s in their genes or something. But there’s shooting and killing and it only gets worse. You were still in diapers probably.”

  “I was seven or eight, actually.”

  “Seven,” said Gebhart, as through it were a joke. “Eight?

  Anyway, I’m probably never going to talk to you, or to any cop, about this again.”

  Felix looked up to the patches of sky between the conifers.

  “Things move. Money, guns, drugs, any crime it all goes with war if you call that ‘war.’ And here we are, just in the EU. It’s only been a few years, but we’re next door to this crap. So a lot starts to happen. One thing leads to another.You see?”

  “So far.”

  “Here’s me then. I work with a guy, I won’t even say his name.

  I’m friendly with him. I respect him. I socialize with him. You see the picture, what I am about to tell you?”

  Felix shook his head.

  “A policeman? A Gendarme? You guess the rest.”

  Felix returned Gebhart’s gaze.

  “I think I do, now.”

  Gebhart held his forefinger to his head, and pulled back his thumb, and let it go.

  “The way out,” he said. “For him. But not for me. Obviously.”

  “They thought . . . ?”

  Speckbauer nodded several times, slowly.

  “So when you show up at the post, fresh out of Gendarmerie school, I think, well, so what. It’s a good post for it. But then I see your name. And I ask myself this: They’re putting this kid with me?

  Whose father was . . . ? You don’t have to be crazy, or paranoid, I should say. So: got all that? Enough of it?”

>   “I had no idea.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Gebhart. “Don’t I know it. I didn’t either. That’s what happened to me. They gave up on me after a while, the Internals, but I know damned well my file was marked that day. I mean, what was my defence when they said I must have some idea what my partner was up to, that no one can be that stupid, or naïve, or . . . ? Now: forget this.You know enough now.”

  Gebhart put the car in first gear. He peered over the banks that bordered this part of the road here.

  “Listen,” said Felix. “Just go back. I never saw you.”

  “Well now.You sound as out of it as I was then.”

  “Really. I phoned you, and you turned me down. I’ll drop all this on Speckbauer, the maps, what I heard from my grandparents, all that.”

  “Really?” said Gebhart, from some far place behind his squint.

  “I’m over my head. Everything’s screwed up.”

  Gebhart drew in a breath, held it, and let it out noisily.

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “But the world has already spun on.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I put in the search on this Fuchs guy.”

  “So the system logged you.”

  “The system logged me. Or Korschak, or whoever was in the post. It shouldn’t take them more than one half-second to figure out who.”

  “‘Them,’” Felix muttered.

  “Funny, isn’t it? ‘Them’ ‘Them’ is us, right?”

  “Yes,” said Felix. “But are you sure you got the right Fuchs?”

  “‘Equipment operator ‘seasonal operator’ in the forestry, the mill?”

  “Red hair, beard?”

  “No beard on his driver’s licence. Reddish, rusty maybe.”

  “Equipment operator? The only time I met him, he was driving an old man to his card games, having a beer and jausen.”

  “Slacker?”

  “I don’t know, but probably. What’s his record?”

  “Surprise: Herr Fuchs is not a criminal.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “This is not a joking day. Zero. Like I said. I go left here, right?”

  The smoother section of road that Gebhart let the Golf onto soon resumed its steep climb, the clattery sound of the engine coming back to Felix from the banks that lined it here.