John Brady - Poachers Road

They stopped at the car.

“Hansi? I need my hand back so I can get into the car okay?

For the wah wah?”

That worked. He sat on the edge of the seat.

“It’s loud, you know? Are you ready? Loud, okay?”

He held his hands over his ears. It took a few tries for Hansi to get the idea.

Felix held his finger over the switch and checked to see if Hansi was ready. So this was part of Gendarme Josef Gebhart’s policing duties, he thought, after a fleeting image of Hansi freaking out with the racket that was coming up when he hit the switch: a Gendarme’s day included an escape from the post, getting up in the mountains, tucking into home cooking, chatting about cattle or weather…

Hansi jumped when the siren went off. Felix changed it into highway mode, then to traffic-park. Hansi’s eyes were as big as saucers, but he was smiling. Christmas and birthday rolled into one for this boy, Felix thought. The annoyance had gone now.

“This is to tell someone to stop.”

Hansi let his hands down and began rubbing them together.

Then be began to lift one leg, then the other. Marching?

“This is for when you have to clear traffic, Hansi.”

He didn’t want to say accident.

“You stop and you keep people away. If there is, you know, a problem.”

Hansi didn’t like the slow one. He blinked at the lights as they cycled through. Felix wondered if the geeks who programmed these ever considered they might set off an epileptic fit? He turned it back. Hansi began to jump now.

“Okay Hansi. Genug enough.”

A cruel thought came to Felix: maybe it was like being stoned all the time?

“Wah wah.”

“No more wah wah, Hansi. I’m getting a headache.”

“Wah wah.”

Felix looked toward the windows of the farmhouse. He saw no faces.

“Look, Hansi, don’t be a scheisskopf. You’re not dealing with just a common idiot cop here.”

“Wah wah.”

“I’m going on holidays tomorrow. Did you know? Let’s go back to the house.”

The confused look returned to Hansi’s face. He was getting agitated.

“Wah wah.”

“Uh uh. Go on home, Hansi. Go home to the kitten.”

For a moment Hansi’s frown had Felix thinking there’d be trouble.

“Get some of your mutti’s strudel, okay? Yum yum?”

How could he not take the big lug’s hand again. He wondered if Gebi had a digital camera he hadn’t let on about.

“Sleep.”

“Right, Hansi. A nice nap. Wouldn’t that be good?”

But Hansi had stopped and he wasn’t going to budge. His grip had grown tighter. Felix looked over. Hansi was half turned toward the woods and the boggy uplands behind the barn. The look of concentration on his face could mean anything. Felix glanced down for any signs of a diaper.

“Sleepy.”

“Let’s go, Hansi. Your mother wants you.”

“Komm.”

The tug was more a yank. Felix pulled back. For a moment he saw Giuliana’s face: how she’d throw her head back and do that laugh that came from the back of her throat. The Italian Witch Laugh.

“Hansi, you are getting annoying. You know? Now let’s get out of here. You’ve been cured, okay? Here you are, outdoors. I’ve done my duty. Everyone’s had a good laugh, okay?”

“Sleep.”

What it was exactly that made Felix Kimmel give in was something he would think about a great deal later that day, and into the evening after the detectives had arrived from the Kriminaldiest in Graz. He let himself be led on a 10-minute walk that began almost as a trot, and left him winded. Hansi had been babbling, or intoning, words that Felix could not understand, but he stopped abruptly near a clump of pines that edged out toward a path leading through the woods.

The way back down felt like it took but moments. Felix’s throat and his chest hurt from the spasms that had had him almost doubled up. There was still vomit on parts of his shoes. It was he who had grabbed Hansi by the hand hard to get him to return to the house. On the way up here, his annoyance had vanity for company. He had been proud to have gotten Hansi’s trust, even to cure him in some way. Hadn’t he won him over, when even his own parents hadn’t?

Things skittered through his mind, and fear made him glance over his shoulder many times as he hurried down.

What he said later, much later, to Gebhart was this:

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I guess I felt sorry for him. Or maybe his parents, Christ, Gebi, they look so worn out. I don’t know. Maybe the air up here got to my brain.”

Gebhart had made the call, and was soon a panting, red-faced, out-of-shape policeman with a bauch full of strudel and coffee, his chest going in and out as he stood there after the climb.

Himmelfarb, hardly noticing the steep climb, was standing there too, with a face full of alarm and bewilderment.

“The boy wanted to go for a walk,” Felix said, uselessly.

“A walk,” said Gebhart, his breath whistling. “And look what you got. Holy shit.”

Gebhart took only a few steps, with his hand on his pistol, standing on tiptoe to get another look at the bodies. Felix watched the vein throbbing along his neck.

“This is a crime scene,” he muttered more than once, his voice barely above a whisper. “Be careful.”

“Jesus and Mary,” Himmelfarb said, many times. He had blessed himself a half-dozen times. “Are there more, farther in?”

The blood on their faces was black and brown. One of the men’s heads was swollen at the forehead, and though Felix didn’t’ want to look, there was that slight grin, and a tiny parting between the eyelids.

“When’s the last time you came by here, Karl?” said Gebhart.

Felix had his notebook out. He felt stupid with it hanging there, so he wrote down the time. Then he wrote that Karl Himmelfarb didn’t give a direct answer but merely shook his head.

“Auslanders,” said Himmelfarb. “Look. The shoes. And the schwarzkopfs on them, the black hair? The jackets? Where do you see these in Styria, or anywhere else? Foreigners, for sure.”

“Time enough to find that out, Karl. I said: when were you last up here?”

“Why would I come here? I’m a farmer. There’s damn-all to farm here, can’t you see? Nix.”

Gebhart raised his eyebrows at Felix. Himmelfarb bent slightly and leaned to peer into the depths of the woods.

“This is what we get,” he muttered. “This is what we get in the EU? The end of the borders down there?”

Gebhart leaned over to whisper to Felix.

“Where did you, you know…? I’ll need to tell the KD when they show up.”

Felix searched about, and nodded toward a tree.

“I’m not totally sure, Gebi. Sorry.”

Gebhart backed them out of the woods the way they’d come in.

Their handsets had been fading in and out.

Gebhart grunted and looked at his watch.

“The one day I don’t bring my damned Handi.”

“Handy what?” said Himmelfarb.

“Cell phone my Handi.”

“Hah,” said Himmelfarb. “Those things don’t work up here.

You might as well use a hunting horn.”

Gebi had phoned the post 20 minutes ago, and they had made the climb back up right after.

“Inside the hour, I’m guessing,” he said to Felix. “The whole bit. A site crew, a truck no doubt. Forensics later. You’re one lucky fellow, Professor.”

Before Felix could say anything, Gebhart turned to Himmelfarb.

“Karl, best you wait down at the house. Nothing should be disturbed, you see.”

“It’s my land, you know.”

“Stimmt, Karl,” said Gebhart, and laid a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Just so.”

“Cars come over the alm at night here this past while, you know.”