John Brady - Poachers Road

“What did you remember then? From when the boy was talking.”

“That’s the trouble,” Felix said. “Nothing.”

“The kid said ‘sleep.’ ‘They’re sleeping.’”

“Yes.”

“But he wouldn’t go up there. He wouldn’t go out of the house, basically. Don’t you think he knew they were dead?”

“Who knows what goes on in a mind such as that,” said Felix.

“The shrinks call it ‘averse.’ Are you sure the boy didn’t mention days, or time?” “No.”

Speckbauer put his leg back down and he studied the tabletop.

Then he narrowed his eyes.

“Well, you were out of town,” he said. “So you didn’t do it, did you?”

“That’s not funny, if you’ll allow me to say so, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

“I will. I certainly will. But you’ve surely copped on to why I’m talking to you here. You know, I’m sure of it. I saw it on your face.”

When Felix didn’t speak, Speckbauer leaned in over the table.

“Okay, then, I’ll say it. There is something wrong when a citizen phones his Gendarmerie post with a request to talk to them to a certain officer Kimmel and he and his family burn to death in a house fire not long after. Are you hearing me?”

Felix nodded.

“Now you need to know this as well. I we are checking each and every part of the goings on concerning this, including calls and records from the post that day. Even gossip. Things overheard, and passed on. Rumours. Notes left lying around. Remarks passed to spouses. Fiancees, even.”

Speckbauer’s gaze was not unfriendly.

“Everyone,” Speckbauer added. “Without exception.”

The Muslim woman at the counter was not quick with her change. Felix eyed the carefully neutral expression of the clerk waiting. It was the Austrian way in action all right, Giuliana had said many times: whatever you say, say nothing.

“You have an opportunity now, Felix,” said Speckbauer. “Or Inspektor, if you prefer. Your opportunity is to assist in this case.

Your expertise is being requested from your post Kontrolinspektor at the moment. Schroek? So it is a semi-big deal.”

“Expertise? I don’t have any. I’m a probationary Gendarme.”

“Ah, but you have a friendly face. And you are a local boy.”

“But my duties at the post?”

“Duties? Permit me to say this: those duties can be assumed by other staff there. Doing talks to pimply teens who are going out to piss cheap beer into your garden that night anyway, just to show you what they think of your presentation, well that’s a duty fair enough. But it’s one that can wait. You know the area up there, don’t you?”

“The mountains? A bit, I suppose.”

“Of course you do. Your grandparents are seven kilometres across the mountain. Your father spent half his youth up there, didn’t he? Didn’t you go with him at all? Of course you did. All those wee roads and tracks? The passes? The Wildererweg?”

“It was some time back.”

“Really, now I doubt you’ll be so modest in your experience profile when you make a serious try for the Alpini. Stop back pedalling, okay? You can drive, can’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And, equally important, is your interest in night life?”

“Pardon?”

“Come on now. Clubs? You have mates that can still ring the bell late into the night, don’t you?”

In Speckbauer’s gaze Felix now read a sly dare to bite back.

“You could go into a club or a cool-guy bar, and you wouldn’t look like me or, Gott sei dank, our dear Franzi. What I mean is, you won’t look like a cop. Got it?”

“No, actually, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

“‘All will be revealed,’ as the good book says. ‘In the fullness of time.’ For now, take my word on it. Have I come to the problem side yet? The negatives?”

“It sounds like it’s been done.”

“Ah. Funny fellow. Listen to me. This part is not so funny.”

Speckbauer waited for a couple to go by.

“It is now beginning to dawn on you that this is a serious affair, I hope. When we find out who those two dead men are, then I’ll be telling you what that means. But right now, I think that there are people who may be curious about what you know.”

“But I don’t know anything, beyond what I’ve told you.”

“Sure. But who’s to say someone doesn’t think that the Himmelfarb boy, or his family, told you something? And that you know something important that they’d prefer you didn’t know…?”

“Who?”

Speckbauer’s eyes went flat, as though they had slipped out of focus.

“Who could that be,” Felix repeated. “Who are you talking about?”

“Ah. I see I have your attention here.”

“I don’t think you should play games like this, Herr Oberstleutnant, with respect.”

“Really,” said Speckbauer. “You can shove your respect and your Herr Oberstleutnant up your arsch, Gendarme. You’re mad and I know it. That’s good. You should be.”

“This is some kind of a threat you are suggesting?”

“If I knew who ‘they’ were, I’d tell you. I don’t put people’s safety at risk. Especially not a fellow officer.”

Speckbauer sat back and studied the intricacies of the fittings that held the shelves and counters. Felix wondered if the faint low tone he was hearing was Speckbauer humming again. He was about to push back his chair when the sunglasses appeared in the window.

It took Felix a moment to realize that the pale face and the glasses belonged to Speckbauer’s sidekick.

He tried not to study the strange small jerks that Franzi made as he entered the restaurant. Speckbauer did nothing to indicate he had even noticed his partner enter.

“Zero,” said Franz.

“Aber gut,” Speckbauer grunted. “Good enough.”

Felix nodded as the glasses swivelled his way, but he couldn’t see the eyes. The glasses went back toward Speckbauer.

“Well?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Speckbauer. “I don’t think he gets it yet.”

Franzi turned to Felix again.

“I thought you were smart. Let’s not waste any more time.”

Felix sensed that Franz would not be sitting down, no matter how much longer they’d stay. It’d be too much for him getting up again, maybe. He heard Franzi breathe out impatiently.

“Damn it, Franzi, I hear you thinking, even.”

Speckbauer turned to Felix.

“Now we must close this information session. The ‘zero’ you heard is good news. It means that Franz and two other fine veteran plainclothes officers can report that no one is in your apartment.”

“What?” Felix managed.

“Why didn’t you hit him with this earlier?”

Speckbauer waved away Franzi’s question.

“You haven’t come to the correct conclusion, kid,” Franzi went on. “Drop it on him, Horst, for Christ’s sake.”

Speckbauer spoke in a quiet tone now.

“Are you getting it yet?”

Felix was thinking of a farmhouse ablaze, and a dark purple hole in a man’s forehead.

“I think so,” he was able to say. “I think I am.”

Giuliana was trying hard to sound like she wasn’t freaking.

“I can’t tell you any more at the moment,” Felix said, gently.

“It’s to do with that family, those two men they found?”

“It’s a precaution,” he said. “There’s probably nothing to it. I have to be careful.”

He told her he’d be on the platform waiting. That seemed to awaken something in her. He heard her breathing in short gasps then.

“What am I going to do, to take, though,” she said. “God, I can’t think. Where am I going to start? Jesus!”

“We’ll go to the apartment right away,” he said. “There’ll be somebody with us. We get your stuff and we go to your mom’s.”