Poachers Road (39 page)

“Something is different with your reaction. Hey, are you high?”

“Fuck off.”

“Coming down off something? Irritable?”

Kurt looked away.

“Something specific,” Speckabuer went on. “Come on. This ‘feeling.’ It’s not just paranoia, or dope, is it?”

“Give me a break.”

“I’ll give you a break all right. How about I get the KD to pay you a visit? My fine colleagues there on Strassgangerstrasse, in Graz. That’s what I’ll do. And a premises search. The lab will come up with something.”

“I don’t have anything!”

“Except fear, and a ‘feeling.’”

Felix was beginning to feel a faint nausea. Kurt’s bloodshot eyes, his sighs of exasperation that had a whiny edge to them now, and the stale body odour that had began to emanate from him, all mixed with Felix’s own feeling that he was being dirtied by just being here in part of Speckbauer’s dismal world.

“Ok, it’s nothing,” said Kurt then. “Maybe nothing. But Stephi, she’s on weekday evenings, Stephi and I were talking.

Stephi’s lazy, all right? But when I lay it on the line, she’s good. I just have to keep going at her.”

“Excuse me, but where is this going?”

“Wait,” said Kurt. “I’m coming to it. She was complaining about tips and conditions. As if she’s Mausi Lugner or somebody else on that stupid show. Anyway. She gets about, Stephi does. She’s in a restaurant the other day gossiping with one of the trolls she hangs out with. You know the type? The bottle blonde pushing forty, the one who never got over the eighties look? The hubby’s a fat bastard, the kids are brats . . . ? Plenty of them in Weiz. But Stephi sees a guy talking to the manager there. ‘Heck, that guy was in the pub,’ she thinks. Apparently he’s quite a hunk.”

“A hunk?”

“Come on,” said Kurt and made a dismissive wave. “She plays the field, Stephi. She has an eye for the well-dressed guy.”

“Well what about him?”

“The guy spoke with an accent but good German. Well put together, not factory floor. More the office type, says Stephi, ‘professional, dressed nice, polite.’ He’d had a beer the night before.

He’s the guy with the pictures, she said to herself.”

“Pictures?”

“I’m getting to that. Turns out the guy showed Stephi a photo of someone, asked her if she’d seen him. She knew he wasn’t a copper but he had the look of one. He’s doing the same routine the next day in the konditorei. Like, ‘Have you seen this guy?’”

“What guy?”

“How would I know?”

“This guy, tell me more. Well dressed? Speaks German well, with an accent?”

“That’s it.Talk to her oh Christ, wait. She went up to Munich to see her stepfather or something. The bitch.”

Speckbauer rolled his eyes.

“Got a number for her? Her mobile?”

“She doesn’t use one, she says. I doubt that, though. Her ‘stepfather’ probably looks different than what I’d guess an old geezer looks like. If you know what I mean.”

“Nudge nudge, wink wink,” Speckbauer muttered and drew out a small notepad.

“Surname?”

“Giesl. Stephi Giesl. She has a place behind the Billa there, the supermarket.”

“Married, family?”

“Are you kidding? She had a steady. She has ‘visitors,’ I believe.”

“And she’s in Munich?”

“On her way, anyway.”

“When did she decide that?”

“Well guess what, and thanks for asking. That’s why I am so pissed here.Yesterday afternoon she tells me. I’m coming in for the evening shift. Huh. I should have just fired her, you know? Zip. And she thinks I am an idiot, that’s what gets to me. First she mentions this guy, then bumping into him again, and then suddenly she has to go visit her ‘ailing stepfather’ in Munich.”

“She doesn’t have an ailing stepfather?”

“Christ, how do I know? The rules these days, you can’t ask or say a damned thing.You know that, right?”

Speckbauer looked down at the small notepad. Felix returned Kurt’s guileless look.

“Stephi’s from where?” Speckbauer asked.

“She’s from Weiz, born and bred.”

“Her family here?”

“Uh-uh. It busted up years ago. She has as sister, over in Carinthia, I think.”

“She knows the area, though.”

“I suppose.”

“Friends, people she’s in touch with?”

Kurt shrugged.

Speckbauer gave him a glare.

“Wait here will you,” he said to Felix. “So Kurt doesn’t go for another jog. I want to make a call.”

He looked down at the display on his mobile and scowled.

Then he slid out of the booth and went out the door to the street.

There was a laneway to the side of the restaurant, Felix remembered.

Kurt was rubbing his bottom lip slowly with his thumbnail.

Speckbauer’s departure seemed to have calmed him a little. He kept staring across the table at Felix.

“Will you quit that?”

“Am I being rude? Sorry. I just waited to see what a fool looked like.”

“Are you trying to be an idiot with me?”

“How long are you a copper?”

“Long enough. Shut up, why don’t you.”

“Well that’s a change. The other wants me to talk, but you say shut up.”

Felix watched a mother with a pram wait for a traffic light.

“He’ll toss you on the pile eventually,” said Kurt. “You know?”

When Felix made no reply, he went on.

“You’ll graduate. But you’ll be okay. I mean, what’s he got on you, except your own I better be careful, I suppose your own youth.”

“And you?” Felix murmured, watching the cars slowing now.

“You go back to jail or something nice like that?”

“Who knows? No doubt he’ll make a few phone calls.That’s his specialty. Have you met his ghost?”

A van braked hard in the street outside. The woman pushing the pram hesitated. She gave the driver a hard look, and then continued pushing the pram across.

“The spook. He freaks me out. Fritz, what’s his name, Hans?”

“Franz.”

“So you do know him. Looks like the devil sent him back up?”

The light changed. Two elderly women came in the door. One was shaped like a question mark, and wore the green and grey loden. They were greeted and shown a table. Felix heard the hissing of the espresso machine pumping. He rubbed at his eyes.

“You know, it’s about time I got out of this place anyway,” said Kurt. “Sure, there’s business. But the crowd is different in the last few years.Younger? Maybe I can’t keep up anymore.”

Felix did not turn away from the window. Outside on the pavement, the woman reached into the pram, and smiling, began to lift out her baby. An older woman who had stopped and greeted her was making those goo-goo sounds that babies seemingly liked.

“You feel sorry for me there, Mister Gendarme?”

“Shut up,” said Felix, without turning from the window.

As the baby was lifted from the pram, Felix saw that it had been crying. He watched the older woman start a little pantomime to distract it. The mom undid the baby’s hat. The short hair was orange and the sun caught it as the hat came off.The mother gently bobbed the redhead in her arms to soothe it.

“Oh you’re going to do well,” he heard Kurt mutter. “You’re an arschloch to begin with.”

Felix turned toward Kurt. He took into the pouchy, bleary eyes.

Under his stubble the sallow skin lay like butter gone bad.

“You ever see a big red-headed fellow in your pub?”

“A red-headed guy? I don’t look at their hair, especially a guy.

What, am I weird or something?”

“Hair like that over there,” said Felix. He watched Kurt squint through the sun filled window toward the street.

“Like that little one’s? You don’t see that often, do you. Maybe he’ll get a job as a clown when he grows up. Is that what you mean, have I seen any clowns in the stübe?”

Felix kept up his stare.

“This is ‘weird question day’?” Kurt added. “Why would I bother to remember something like that?”

“Because it’s out of the ordinary. Think of a big guy, a beard to go with it.”

“A beard? Like some big Kris Kringle?”

“A big fellow, like I said.”

Kurt’s eyes slipped out of focus. After a few moments a wry expression settled on his face. He shook his head and then began to slowly rub his eyes, and then his whole face with his hands. He stopped abruptly and let down his hands.

“Well hell,” he said and smiled. “Funny how the mind works.

‘Red hair.’ ‘Guy.’ None of that means anything at first. But there was a big fellow coming in here, to the pub, every now and then.

Stephi would know him, yes she had a laugh with him. Big, yes.

But a beard? I don’t know about that.”

“But a local guy? From the area, right?”

“Who knows? But he had a helmet yes. He looked like one of those Hells Angels fellows that you see on the TV.”

“And Stephi . . . ?”

“Oh she’d have an eye for the likes of him. Yes, talk to her.

Speck is probably doing a big thing for her right now. Beats me, truly.”

“Is there a name on this guy?”

“I don’t know. But she called him something, if I remember.

No. Wait: something to do with how he looked. Ah, shit, I forget.”

“Come on. ‘Giant?’ ‘Motorbike man’?”

“You’re funny.”

“Hells Angel?”

“This is like I am drunk, this game. Maybe I just dreamed you and Speck have been talking to me, asking me weird questions. And now, this guess-a-word?”

He lifted his hand to his forehead.

“Maybe I have a fever.”

Then his face froze and he stared at a point just over Felix’s head.

“Wait! ‘Foxy,’ I think. Yes? Ah Christ, Stephi talks so much I have to ignore her a lot of the time. But she was laughing about it.

‘Foxy.’ I think. Who knows, but . . . ?”

He put the knuckles of both hands together and winked.

“No real name? Just to do with red hair?”

Kurt sat back with a look of resigned understanding.

“Really,” he said. “You guys are living on a different planet.”

“What about Stephi?” Speckbauer asked as he slipped back into the booth.

“What about her?”

“Does she like ‘adventures,’ say? How she might leave for a couple of days with a new flame?”

“Hmm. A pavement hostess, you’re trying to say?”

“Did I say prostitute? No. I said ‘adventure.’”

“Well yes, if you like,” said Kurt. “She is a person like that. And if she weren’t so damn good with the frigging spenders who keep me in business, well I’d have let her go on a permanent ‘adventure’ a long time ago.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

T
HE STREETS AND LANES OF
W
EIZ HAD BEEN TAKEN OVER BY
the mid-morning people, as Felix had begun to think of them when he was – actually wasn’t attending his lectures back in Graz. The school would not break for lunch for an hour yet. Pensioners took their time, many of them meeting and greeting, speaking in the melodious accent that expressed politeness and a circumspect kind of humour. There were plenty of shops in Weiz, plenty of mothers and infants and babies, steady streams of cars, new most of them.

The clouds were staying away and leaving a postcard sky above the town. The winter that had lingered here until recently seemed a distant, impossible event that had passed quickly, not the dreary, endless months that had lain over the place. The blossoms were out all over the backyard orchards. From somewhere over the next street were the sounds of a pneumatic drill, and the episodic whine and gnarl of saws, followed by the taps of at least two hammers and an occasional yell. A tractor turned into the car park for the supermarket.

Speckbauer was trying to get a glimpse through the window blinds on Stephi’s apartment. He pushed the buzzer again, and held his head close to the door.

“It’s working, all right.”

Felix’s thoughts kept returning to the maps that now lay in that bag on the floor of his car. His father must have talked to Opa Kimmel when he took, or borrowed, the maps at least. And what had the old man told him?

“Phone her number again,” said Speckbauer.

Felix held up the piece of paper on which Speckbauer had taken Stephi’s number from Kurt. Six rings, and again, nothing.

“It’s a bullshit number,” said Speckbauer. “‘I’m sure of it.’” He mimicked Kurt.

“‘I have to phone her a lot ’cause she’s late.’”

“Her car maybe?” suggested Felix.

“Yeah, yeah. A Mazda 131. Look, take a stroll around there, see if it’s parked, okay? I’m going to make some calls here, see if I can move this damn Stephi.”