Poachers Road (45 page)

Felix had heard from his mother or was it one of Lisi’s phone calls? that Opa Kimmel had told them to figure it out themselves.

And that was that.

“Well you have a good, thick Styrian head,” said Gebhart. “And you’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t you? Runs in the family, gell?

How’s that old opa of yours, ‘the marksman’?”

“He is enjoying the attention. But he pretends that he doesn’t.”

“Natürlich,” said Gebhart, with a sly grin and a wink at his wife that she ignored. “I hear he told them to arrest him if they want.

Quite a fellow.”

Felix nodded.

“It’s all Fuchs’ doing, he maintains. Take it or leave it.”

“You believe him I mean I know he’s your opa but do you?”

“Actually I do. Fuchs rummaged all through his stuff.”

“Some friend of the aged,” said Speckbauer. “That old pistol, your opa didn’t even know it was missing?”

“He says no. But now he sees why Fuchs was full of questions about old times, and what he did all those years back.”

“What, he thought Fuchs was studying folklore or something?

Collecting stories, or folk tales, another Peter Rossegger?”

Felix shrugged.

“I think he was glad of the company, that’s all. A chance to talk.

Being alone?”

Gebhart sighed and stretched out his arms.

“Christ but you can wither in here for not doing something,” he groaned. “Are you back to doing your bike stuff yet?”

“Not as much as I’d like, but yes.”

“Come on now. You’re the kind of guy needs activity like that, for energy.”

“I’ll do some more maybe after this week.”

“Well Schroek is Mr. Energy, let me tell you,” Gebhart went on. “He wants to look good with this. He prowls the post like the captain of a ship now, I hear. But, my God, he is nosy, and a gossip, as ever.”

He nodded in the direction of his wife.

“You cleared him out of here one evening, schatzi?”

“I did,” she said. “He was wearing us out.”

“Like another interrogation, I tell you,” said Gebhart. “‘Did he shoot Fuchs first?’ ‘Didn’t he say anything?’ ‘How close was the old man when he put him down with the rifle?’”

Gebhart rolled his eyes and looked down at the carpentry magazines his wife had brought.

“Those two,” he said then, and his face had lost its ease when he looked up from the magazines. “The two James Bonds . . . ?”

“Nix,” said Felix. “The gag order until the investigation reports.”

“‘Must not communicate,’” Gebhart said with a top-heavy irony. “As if they did any, when they were stringing you along. And who would want to talk to those two anyway, the mess they made?”

Felix was aware that Gebhart’s wife was scrutinizing him. He looked to her with a polite smile, but her eyes darted away.

“I forgot to ask you, you know,” said Gebhart. “My brain is on holiday in here. Look, did you see those two show up back at the farm?”

“No. But the place was kind of crazy, with the helicopter and the cars.”

Gebhart smiled.

“That part was funny at least,” he said. “Thinking about them pushing the car into the field to get by. By the way, has the garage phoned? Is it ready?”

“They did,” she said. “They had to replace the handle, they said. And something that winds the window, from inside.”

“That beauty better be perfect,” Gebhart declared. “Or I’ll sue the depp who broke the window and I want it washed after being shoved into that field.That car was taken care of, let me tell you. No BP is going to disrespect that car, smashing a window like that.

Hell, no. Maybe I’ll ask Schroek to look into it. He likes that kind of thing. Then he can take credit for that too.”

“Credit?” said Gebhart’s wife, shifting in the chair, and regaining an even more erect posture. “Let him try. That man . . . .”

Gebhart exchanged a glance with Felix.

“You know,” he said, in a different tone, “the psychology bunch found that married men live longer?”

“They take their wife’s portions,” she said quickly. She fixed her superpower eyes on Felix for a moment.

“Nurses like me have enough nonsense at work,” she said.

“However,” said Gebhart breezily. “I have a point to make here.

What I’m getting at is this: Felix, this is your big chance.You understand what I’m saying?”

“Big chance for what?”

“Look: you score big when you are the wounded hero. Pop the question.”

“Marriage?”

“I could use a party.”

“You’re a matchmaker now, Gebi?”

“Do it. Look, it’s the summer. I’m on leave a few weeks for sure, maybe months. I feel good but I’m not going to let on. You did good stuff, and you’re barely out of your diapers in the job.”

“Good stuff?” said Felix, and looked from Gebhart to his wife and back. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Do I ever joke? Look, they’re going through with the Big One, have you forgotten? One big happy family, our decent, dependable, modest Gendarmerie will now share the playground with the big shots from the BP. And where will we be when the dust settles? Whatever about me, but you’re detective fast track.

Believe me.”

Felix said nothing. Movement on the building opposite drew his eye to the window again. Pigeons, big fat Graz pigeons, were landing on a roof.

“What did I tell you Frieda,” said Gebhart. “He still thinks he screwed up.”

She got up from the chair, and pushed it back to the wall.

“I must show up at some point,” she said. “We’re short, with all the holidays.”

Felix snuck a look at how she reached around her husband’s neck. She murmured something to him and kissed the top of his head. Then she gave a professional look-around to the bed and the drip, settling the bedclothes, and checking how the upper part of the bed was tilted. She tugged at her nurse’s uniform under her raincoat. She glanced at Felix before turning to her husband again.

“Servus, Felix,” she said, crisply. “When we get this depp home, you must visit.”

Felix remembered babbling some reply. Gebhart tried to let on he hadn’t noticed the awkwardness.

“Now,” he said when Felix sat down again. “It just takes a bit of time, see?”

Then he winked.

“Stay away from those farmer’s daughters from Carinthia.

They’ll whip you if you cross them.”

“Really?”

“No,” Gebhart retorted. “I’m making it up so you’ll quit worrying.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

Gebhart waved some irritating thought aside.

“There you go, you see? Is it your age that makes you think nothing happens without your permission or something? Don’t you get it yet? It’s just a shitty thing happened. It’s the way stuff happens. That’s it, that’s all of it. Sure, you can predict some stuff, and get out of the way of a lot of shit, but . . . ?”

Felix looked at the Gebhart’s hands working the air.

“You’re doing the philosophy thing, Gebi.”

“Ach I’ll try to keep it simple. Ready? You put greedy people, stupid people, people who are bored, or do drugs, or drink all day, you put them near anything tempting, well you’re going to get trouble. Is that too hard for you?”

Felix nodded, just to have it over for now.

“So get out of here and work on that proposal, okay?”

On the tram back down to the city centre, Felix realized that he had forgotten the Croatian guy’s name. It unnerved him. Was it the concussion, he wondered, a sign that his brain still wasn’t right?

Getting worse, even? He could remember Fuchs’ heavy weight over him, crushing him into the farmyard cement. There was something of that in his dreams, he sensed, and he had awakened several times with the dread feeling of being held, or tied, or at least being unable to move.

He rubbed hard at his eyes, as if that would help stop the replaying that was still coming to him, in sleep and at unexpected moments. Fuchs’ murmurings, and that small jolt that he had thought was Fuchs trying to rise, but was a bullet that tore into his upper chest by his throat. A smell from something, a passing farm lorry on patrol last week, had brought back the nausea, and the feeling that something was flowing over the back of his hands there in the car.

D. He opened his eyes. The name started with a D. Gebi had said his name: Dal . . . Dov . . .

An old man was watching him from the seat opposite. He made no bones about his scrutiny either, taking the aged’s right to pry openly. Felix glared back into the rheumy, light-blue eyes, but the gaze didn’t waver. He got off two stops early, thinking of his grandfather’s slack face in shock that day, aware that he had killed a man and saved others. And Fuchs, was Felix’s last thought stepping down from the tram, trying to fight off the sour feeling that was surrounding him: Fuchs interred in the graveyard at St. Kristoff himself, his family plot not a hundred metres from the Kimmels’ own.

Giuliana whispered something. He opened his eyes. He was still here, in bed, and he hadn’t slept. She whispered something else in Italian: a table? Set the table? She swallowed slowly, and rubbed her nose and resumed her steady, slow breathing. He closed his eyes again. It was probably worse, he had decided, to try to stop the relentless orbit and roll of thoughts that crowded into his mind yet.

They only came back stronger. Lisi might be right, he knew, and some day he’d admit it: go to the shrink before it gets worse. Post-trauma is real.

Soon he heard the first birds, a scooter one street over, and the beginnings of sparse traffic.Then it was bright. He stared at the ceiling: the big day, finally 9:30 at Strassgangerstrasse, for the investigation report. But had he slept?

FORTY-TWO

F
ELIX FOUND PARKING ON
W
ETZELSDORFERSTRASSE
. H
E WAS
20 steps along when he spotted Edelbacher’s car parked in sight of the gate into the Gendarmerie kommando that stood across the junction ahead, where Strassgangerstrasse started its run along under Buchkogel and the low hills that formed the western edge of Graz.

And sure enough, it was Felix’s mother sitting in the passenger seat.

Edelbacher had seen him from a distance in his mirror. It was his job, after all, Felix thought. Felix mustered a quasi-cheerful nod, and even a smile, for his mother now getting out onto the footpath.

Edelbacher was in full uniform, as always, and crisp and smart as the Gendarmes on the pamphlets Felix had been distributing all that week in the schools. His tan from the holiday looked overdone.

He thought of asking Edelbacher how he had gotten time off for this.What reason had he given, if any? Moral support for his friend’s son when the tribunal of inquiry released its findings today? Loyal and fatherly concern, in place of . . . ?

Felix tried harder to stifle the aversion. He kissed his mother on the cheek, and braced himself for Edelbacher’s handshake.

“Felix,” said Edelbacher. “A good day ahead of us, no?”

“I hope so.”

“Hey, you look good! Those idiots in the Ministry should see what a Gendarme uniform can do. A crime to change our uniform, it is. A crime.”

Felix’s mother reached up to tuck some hair behind his ear.

“Yes,” Edelbacher went on. “Today will be a great day, the day those damned cowboys will get their feet burned.”

“You’re sleeping better?” Felix’s mother asked.

“Soon,” was all Felix could offer by way of a reply.

“And how is Giuliana?”

“She sends her best. She says it’s better she goes to work.”

Edelbacher chuckled.

“Now there is the proper attitude,” he said. “I like that girl, yes I do. Oh . . . ”

Edelbacher had spotted Schroek’s Nissan slowing nearby. On it went, with a wave from Schroek, in search of a parking spot.

“Good C.O.?” asked Edelbacher. “Is he? Doing right by you?

Supportive?”

“Yes,” said Felix.

“Atta boy.”

Edelbacher turned to watch Schroek’s progress. The slow trolling for a spot continued, with traffic backing up behind the Nissan.

Felix fell into slow step beside his mother.

“You’d like Rhodes,” she said.

“When I get the chance,” he said.

She squeezed his arm, and began to describe losing her purse in a restaurant in Rhodes, but it being handed back to her later, with nothing missing. The place had been full of tourists, she told Felix, but the drunken ones were few this time.

“You’ll try where next?” he said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe we’ll try Cyprus.”

“Absolutely,” said Edelbacher, who had caught up to them now. “Great place, I hear. Super.”

“I hear that Israel can be nice,” she went on. “I’m not sure I could relax there.”

Edelbacher turned as he strolled to watch the Nissan trolling for a spot further along the street.