John Brady - Poachers Road

“Well, maybe you can be a real cop, with recall like that. They he, Speckbauer wants to talk to you. So the minute you get back, get your notes, get a printout and get ready. I say you should buy a sandwich and do your reading over lunch. You don’t want to look stupid, okay?”

Felix thought about the big mittagessen that Gebi favoured, his favourite soup and pork and potatoes in a small stube at the back of the butcher’s. It was always full of farmers and older men.

“What about you?”

“What about me? I told you, I’m hungry.”

“No. I meant the interview.”

“Oh, I talked to them already. No big deal. But they didn’t want to take you away from the school thing.”

“On my own, these two guys?”

“Was gibt? What’s the issue here? You think they’re going to beat you up, Mr. Prime Suspect?”

“But I didn’t do much, Gebi. Nor did you. And we talked to them yesterday up at Himmelfarbs’, didn’t we?”

“Well, burli, you may be a bit puzzled. So am I. They seem quite keen to talk to you. Don’t forget you and Hansi were together. This Speckbauer, he’s quite the character. I checked him out.

He’s no joker, this guy.”

“Okay. Thanks. Maybe.”

“Don’t let any of that smartass sarcastic stuff leak out of you, didn’t I tell you? That’s if you want to keep this job. ‘Felix the Second.’”

“What’s this about, this ‘Felix the Second’ crap?”

“It was Speckbauer said that: ‘Felix the Second.’ You’ve got to be double careful, I tell you. Bad enough he’s a big wheel from Zentrale, but he’s like the Holy Spirit or something. Knows everything. I’ve got to go I’ve got leberknodel suppe getting cold.”

Felix adjusted the volume on the mouthpiece of his walkietalkie and told Korschak he was back on the road. He put Helpless Hans, the whole two hours of his stupid but instructive antics, and the posters, in the car. Scheisse: the box of bookmarks was full he’d forgotten to hand them out.

“They want to meet over coffee,” Felix said to Gebhart.

“But somewhere else.”

“You’re not making sense,” said Gebhart. “Did they knock you around in there or something? What’s going on?”

Speckbauer came out of the klo. He had combed his hair.

“Can we borrow the kid here, Sepp?”

“A duty call, you want him for?”

“Naturlich. It’s a few details concerning the business yesterday.

You’re senior here at the moment?”

Gebhart hesitated. Korschak pretended to be studying court documents. Even he wasn’t that dumb that he wouldn’t have picked up the tone in Speckbauer’s question.

“No reason why not,” he said. “But not for too long.”

He looked at Felix.

“Give me a minute with him; see what he needs to hand off.”

“Absolutely,” said Speckbauer, and stepped aside. “Half an hour?”

Gebhart motioned Felix over to his desk.

“What have you done, kid?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. They’re yapping and then pitching in a weird question every now and then.”

“That guy with the shades, you know about him yet?”

Felix nodded.

“He went through the wars, I tell you. I phoned a guy I joined with, in Strassgangerstrasse. He knew this guy right away. Nearly got toasted. Wife left him; about a hundred operations. They called him the Mummy, I hear. Speckbauer is a bigwig of some kind. They give him offices, a budget, a bunch of gadgets. He has lines to important people, so off he goes and does his own thing. Has he…?”

Felix shook his head.

“My friend thinks that Speckbauer is part of a group. They work with the guys in the BP or the James Bonds out of the C.I.S.

They sit down with suits from Interpol every month, in Munich mostly, or Brussels, and they talk about satellites and syndicates and poppies and prostitutes. Are you getting any of this?”

“Bits. But what does this have to do with yesterday?”

“Well, ask him,” said Gebhart. “I’d be interested to see how he handles that one. All I’m saying is, these two are not Peter and Paul cops. Watch what you say. Come straight to me or Schroek when you get back so we can figure out what the hell to do about them.”

Felix glanced over at Speckbauer and Franz. Speckbauer leaned against an opposite wall of the hallway, apparently examining his shoes and murmuring to the other. Speckbauer held a large envelope under his armpit.

“Okay, Felix,” said Gebhart, replacing papers with others and closing a folder. “But you have to be there for the two o’clock.

You’re the officer issuing, so it’s in person or the guy can ask for a walk from the judge.”

“Thank you, Bezirkinspektor Gebhart.”

“Don’t be an arschloch,” he heard Gebi whisper as he passed.

The three policemen stood in the Gasse, the laneway, outside the post for a moment.

“There’s a konditorei next to the SPAR,” said Felix. “That’s pretty well it for restaurants here.”

“An excellent choice, then,” said Speckbauer.

There were a few German plates on the cars parked around the platz. Felix returned a greeting from the jaded-looking woman who ran a small blumen shop. She was still a practising hippie according to Gebi, big into flower-power.

“Charming little place,” said Speckbauer. “But kind of compact, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much so.”

“It has to be the smallest Gendarmerie post in the province,” added Speckbauer.

Speckbauer looked up and down the street.

“There’s a rumour it’ll be closed up when we amalgamate with the Polizei.”

Speckbauer’s smile lingered.

“Ach,” he said. “I have the feeling you’re ready for bigger things. But wait your timing in joining up was good. The new police service will open things up.”

“So I have been told.”

“And you know this area? The people, hereabouts?”

“Sort of,” said Felix. “More each day.”

“But the general area,” Speckbauer went on. “Up the mountains, like yesterday?”

Felix remembered Gebi’s caution. He tried to calibrate his answer.

“Well, some, I suppose.”

“You grew up there though.”

“You mean right here? No.”

“St. Kristoff.”

“Yes. That’s where.”

“You knew the Himmelfarbs before yesterday?”

“No. Not personally.”

“But you know your way around, all up there?”

Felix met his gaze.

“It’s been a few years,” he said. “The university thing, and so forth, in Graz.”

Speckbauer nodded at this, the air of kindly interest and the smile undiminished.

Felix held the door of the konditorei for them. He caught a glimpse of graft scars up close as Franz passed. A faint scent of medicine or some hospital smell was left in the air after he passed.

Konditorei Fischbach had made itself over last year, Gebhart had told him. Apparently it had been a dark kitcheny place that hadn’t changed since the Archduke had gotten in the way of a bullet. Now it had gone almost techno.

“Lieber Gott,” said Speckbauer. “A space station?”

The woman behind the counter was the daughter, and she was the brainchild of the reno, Felix had heard. She went with the belief that the new parts factories would be bringing people to the area, even to this sleepy corner.

There were two thirtyish women at a table near the far end. The smell of baking was strong.

“Gruss,” said the woman and nodded at Felix. She pushed back a strand of gelled hair that fell over her eyes like a batwing.

“Servus,” said Speckbauer, brightly. “Coffee I think: a grossen braunen, if you please, gnadige frau.”