Wolf Haas - Brenner and God

“Nothing at all. Knoll was an idealist. His suggestion was: he erases the tape, and I get my wife to close the clinic once and for all. If he’d gone public with his evidence, not only would MegaLand have been history, Congressman Stachl and I would’ve gone to prison, KREBA would’ve gone bankrupt. And so on. I’m not just talking about a few million euros.”

That Kressdorf was telling him all this-ninety-nine hours after Helena’s kidnapping-was not a good sign for Brenner.

“You know what I think?” Kressdorf asked him. But then he just thought it over for a while and kept it to himself. Whether he just wasn’t certain, or he just didn’t want to divulge it to Brenner, I don’t know.

He said, “Knoll was always grinning with that air of superiority. Especially when I explained to him that I’d rather go to prison than cause my wife any harm. He just said, with that smug smile of his, that he didn’t understand where Helena-”

Kressdorf sank so low now, it was as if he’d never speak another word again. Brenner almost finished the sentence for him, just to get it out there. He almost said, this kind of thing has happened to other men before, too. Almost said, the main thing is that nothing’s happened to Helena. But Kressdorf didn’t give the impression of wanting to hear anything more, so Brenner didn’t say anything at all.

“What blood type are you, Herr Simon?”

“I don’t know. They measured it once when I was on the force.”

“Measured!” Kressdorf laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh that eased Brenner’s mind. Because it was the clipped, dry laugh of a ghost. “You mean tested.”

“I don’t remember, though.”

“Why didn’t you stay on the police force?”

Brenner didn’t reply, because on the cue of “police,” Kressdorf kept right on talking.

“I’ve done plenty of half-legal things in my life. Or illegal, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows that nothing happens in the construction business without bribes. And MegaLand is far and away the biggest contract KREBA’s ever gotten. But real crimes, kidnapping and blackmail, I’ve never had anything to do with them. Not to mention murder. Or manslaughter. And when I pressured my wife to perform the abortion on that underage girl of Reinhard’s, it was already too much for me. Not because of the abortion, but because of her. I told her that, what with the bank loan, Reinhard had Knoll right in the palm of his hand. That’s why she did it. And to finally be left in peace by Knoll. But not even the bank director managed to subdue Knoll.”

“Or he didn’t want to,” Brenner said.

“Or he didn’t want to, exactly.”

“But, all the same, you got into the MegaLand business because you smoothed the way with the abortion.”

“That’s correct, Herr Simon.”

Brenner opted not to say anything more now, because he noticed that Kressdorf was in an overly sensitive mood where he was interpreting everything as a reproach.

“And then the congressman went into business with my wife.” Kressdorf laughed so bitterly at that, you would’ve thought it was a worse crime than the four people dead in the cesspit.

“Stachl and I met at a charity golf game. I’d been after him for years. Like every other contractor. Before, he’d always brushed me off like I was just some do-it-yourself builder and he was Donald Trump. But then all of the sudden he was sweet as pie. He whispers to me that Bank Director Reinhard has a problem that my wife can remedy. And in turn, Reinhard might have an opportunity to subdue Knoll.”

“And to let you build MegaLand.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that easy to build in Prater Park. It started with the golf course, and then it grew from there. For a banker who was in the black, it was a matter close to his heart for half of the Prater to come under his control, and right in the middle of Vienna when the whole city’s in the red. With Stachl he had the right man at his side. People’s protests did in fact hold us up, but we just about had them all cleared out of our way. Then suddenly Helena was kidnapped. We thought Knoll was behind it. And Knoll thought we were behind it. And now you’re telling me it wasn’t even an actual kidnapping. But in the meantime, four people are dead.”

“Six,” Brenner said, “if you count Milan and the nanny’s husband.”

“Stachl tried to keep me from pulling you back out. He said, ‘Too much has happened already.’ It didn’t matter to him one bit that Helena was his kid, too.”

“Maybe he didn’t know?”

Kressdorf had nothing to say to that. I almost think it didn’t matter to him either at this point.

When they arrived in front of the South Tyrolean’s house, across the street from the gas station, Brenner still didn’t know how he was supposed to keep the humiliated non-father from killing both him and the South Tyrolean in order to undo history and get his daughter back, not just Helena, but hair, skin, all of her-genetically speaking, as it were.

Now, for your reassurance. At least the South Tyrolean wasn’t there.

Now, for your disassurance. The child wasn’t there, either.

After they’d searched the last room, Brenner tried to convince Kressdorf that he hadn’t lied to him. He explained to him that the South Tyrolean had probably gone to the police after he didn’t come back as promised. Even Brenner didn’t really believe that, although it later turned out to be true. But then Kressdorf did something that filled Brenner with such fright that being dangled from a balcony seemed like a MegaLand attraction by comparison.

You should know, Kressdorf’s angry outbursts had caused him so much damage both professionally and personally over the years that at some point, as a matter of principle, he’d taken to the age-old trick of silently counting down from ten in hairy situations. But Kressdorf was so far outside himself now that-one hundred hours after his daughter’s disappearance-he forgot about the “silently” part, and although he was indeed counting down, he was doing it out loud.

“Ten.”

When a grown man just starts doing this, it’s a little creepy maybe, but when he’s already deposited four people in a cesspit, and when you can only hear him counting with your right ear because the barrel of his rifle is in your left ear, then you’ve got Brenner’s situation exactly.

“Nine.”

Kressdorf took a deep breath, exhaled deeply, inhaled deeply.

“Eight.”

Brenner didn’t breathe at all.

“Seven.”

Now, while Kressdorf’s slowly counting down so as not to make a mistake because of his temper, I’ll tell you something else real quick now. Pay attention. How did they even get into the apartment? The South Tyrolean hadn’t given Brenner a key. And Kressdorf’s not one to break down a door. He’s not that type of full-service criminal, who you might say, learned the trade from the bottom up, who can do everything from a bike lock to a clean kidney stitch. Kressdorf had only the brutality, the buttoned-up uncompromisingness that you learn in the Business School of Life, but craft and skill, zero. He stood before that locked door like a cow before a gate.

Brenner, on the other hand. He could have forced him, i.e., gun to the head, to break down the door. First of all, though, Brenner had never been particularly good at breaking down doors, he’d gotten a D in breaking down doors at the police academy. And above all, why should Brenner break down the door when he’d seen where the South Tyrolean hides her keys a few times now? Because she said she’d locked herself out with the damn spring lock three times already, and burglars are going to find a way in anyway, so she might as well leave a key for herself, too. Whether you believe it or not, in a ficus benjamina.