John Brady - Poachers Road

“She’ll freak if she knows.”

“Well, don’t tell her, okay?”

“Where will you go? Your mom’s?”

“No. I’ll tell you later.”

The detective who had come up with Speckbauer was hanging around by the door, drinking one of Giuliana’s fruit drinks.

“Nice,” he said to Felix. “Nice place. Very artistic. You?”

“No.”

Felix went to the living room. Speckbauer was eyeing the goings on in the small sliver of Kurosistrassse that could be glimpsed between the poplars in front of the apartment block.

“Well,” he said. “How’d it go?”

“You can imagine.”

Felix looked around the living room. The laptop, he’d take for sure, right now. Giuliana could figure out what she’d want when she made it in this evening.

“Is Gebi getting the same attention?”

“No. Why, should he?”

“Well, he was at the farm too.”

Speckbauer seemed to ponder this information. From the kitchen, Felix heard the soft sigh of the fridge door opening.

“You want a Gosser, take one,” he called out.

“Good,” said Speckbauer. “If you’re not being sarcastic, that is.

Surveillance is no picnic. Christ, but you can get hemorrhoids like nobody’s business.”

Felix headed for the bedroom to pack some things.

“What did you discuss with Gebhart anyway?”

“When?”

“Last night. At his place.”

“Ask him, I should think.”

“I did.”

Felix stopped in the doorway and turned. Speckbauer turned away.

“Get some stuff,” he called out. “You’ve got five or six hours to kill before your girl shows up. After that, you and me are going spatzieren yes, taking to the hills.”

True to his word, Speckbauer got into a police Passat and took out two maps from a folder under the seat. There was a stale smell of peppermints in the car, but Felix had spotted the top of a small magenbitter bottle in the trunk as Speckbauer had cleaned space there for his bag. The hint of gastric trouble for Speckbauer pleased Felix a little.

“Am I at work now?”

“Work? Do you see a desk here?”

“Well, I think I should know the conditions here.”

“Okay. Yes you are on the job ‘ancillary officer.’”

“You guarantee I get back here, to the bahnhof, I mean, by seven?”

“I guarantee that. And you will guarantee that you will show me the ins and outs of the high country.”

“The maps?”

“But I want to follow your way too,” said Speckbauer. He tapped a forefinger on his forehead several times. “What way would a guy like yourself go, one who knows a bit about the area?”

“Take the Lendkai down and come back over the Schonaugurtel,” said Felix. “It’s not bad. Then there’s the A2. Get off at Gleisdorf. We’ll go by Weiz, and then up.”

Speckbauer nodded at the mass of the Schlossberg between the buildings.

“Is going that way worth it?”

“It looks long,” Felix replied. “But it’s quicker.”

Speckbauer nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “A good start. See, I knew you had it in you.”

When Felix finished his phone call, Speckbauer was already passing the station at Munzgrabenstrasse and accelerating down the link to the Graz Ost ramp onto the A2.

“That’s a little awkward,” said Speckbauer, himself thumbing his Handi.

“You’ll pardon me, being so outspoken. but I couldn’t help but hear.”

“It’s my grandparents’ place,” said Felix. “It’ll be fine.”

“You know it well?”

“A fair bit.”

“Servus, Franzi,” said Speckbauer then. He held the phone tighter to his ear. “Yes. We are prospecting. The name of the woman who runs that pub again? The one in that hole in the hedge up by the Himmelfarbs?”

Felix began rummaging in his mind which place Speckbauer could mean.

Speckbauer finished the call with a grunt. How long had these two policemen known one another, he began to wonder.

Speckbauer didn’t signal when he changed traffic lanes. The needle ran quickly enough to 200 but he eased off. Through the blur of hedges and barriers that raced past, Felix spotted tractors at work often, their passage semaphored by circling gulls. Speckbauer hummed intermittently. It was a strange waltzy melody that stopped and started, and kept no proper time.

“Your colleague works 24/7 also?”

“Franzi? Christ, no. He is the laziest. Well, maybe I should not say that. When he is doing something that interests him, he is a goer.

It’s not like he doesn’t have the time.”

“Like yourself, perhaps?”

“How nicely you put your questions. You were well reared. Well, let me put it to you this way: Franzi and I are veterans of the same campaigns.”

Felix didn’t want to sound too inquisitive.

“But his wife is a bitch,” said Speckbauer. “But mine is, was, always sweet.”

He glanced over toward Felix.

“I’ve made many mistakes, let me tell you. But isn’t that how we have progress?”

The Gleisdorf junction was soon upon them. Speckbauer seemed to enjoy leaning hard into the curve, using the gears.

“Smaller screw-ups,” said Speckbauer. “That’s how we know we’re winning.”

“Winning?”

“Christ, this is an interview?”

He snorted once. They skirted Gleisdorf, and Speckbauer soon had them on the road up to Weiz, rocketing past a laggard lorry before a succession of blind bends.

“She couldn’t take the changes,” said Speckbauer.

“Your wife?”

“Franzi’s wife. To be fair, it wasn’t the injuries, the physical deformities, totally. No. But Franzi is hard to live with. Take my word for it. He always was. Me, I fell into my job. It went to my head. I fell in, and I couldn’t get out. The current took me. But my former wife is a wonderful woman.”

“I’m sorry to hear of that.”

“That she is wonderful?”

“You know what I mean. Perhaps I should not have said anything.”

“‘Herr Obersleutnant,’” said Speckbauer. “You forgot, that time.”

“Well, what am I supposed to call you? Are you my C.O. or not?

I have never done this kind of work.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Call me the devil if you wish. And no I’m not your C.O. You are seconded temporarily. Do you know what that means, seconded?”

“I think so.”

“Being as you are Felix the Second…?”

Felix kept his eyes on the hedgerows.

“You’re not offended, I hope. Your father’s good name travelled on down to you, I understand?”

Felix shrugged. He wondered if it had been Gebhart’s doing, letting slip the nickname that was so rarely used now.

“Well, what was I saying… We try to stay flexible. It is no use dropping some big shots on something like this. We need locals, locals’ knowledge. Wissenschaft is what it is, yes: the lessons of ecology need to be applied to Euro-crime.”

Felix looked over.

“You like that Euro-crime bit?” Speckbauer asked.

“Is that what’s going on?”

“You may get to see a bit of the inside of a very frigging big, complicated, messy federal investigation. What am I saying ‘Federal’? I should be precise: transnational. You may be the only probationary cop in our country so privileged. There’s destiny for you. You are working with the Vatican.”

“The Vatican?”

“It’s an expression. No, it’s not about fellows rappelling from helicopters. In our world we adapt. We go small and quiet. Think small mammals in the dinosaur world. Who survived?”

“And who are the dinosaurs?”

“I will tell you who they are not: Serbian gangsters are not.

Albanian Mafia are not either. They are the rodents. Rodents are smart.”