John Brady - Poachers Road

Felix waited several moments, until he was sure Speckbauer had turned away from the window.

“Why are we talking about this?”

“Why?” Speckbauer repeated.

“Yes, ‘why.’You’re here investigating a murder, aren’t you?”

“I am — you too. A very valuable training exercise for you too, I might add.”

“But all these questions about my family?”

“I like to learn about people. Variety, human nature — all that.”

“Hillbillies can be interesting, I suppose. ‘G’scherter’?”

“What?” said Speckbauer. “I am a g’scherte myself.”

“Well, you’re not from here.”

“I’m a Northerner, but a real shitkicker nonetheless. My old man still farms — well, my brother does it actually — over near Linz.

Look, turnips are nothing new to me.”

Felix glanced over.

“Then you’ll know all about little villages, and why someone would want out.”

Felix geared down to slow the Passat, but it was still picking up speed. Another two bends and they’d be back out on the road that led up higher yet into the mountains.

“Ach, you have a point,” said Speckbauer. “There’s always more than meets the eye.”

“So they say.”

“A lot of things didn’t get talked about around my place. I found out only later, of course. Same for you?”

“Maybe so.”

“Really? For example, I had an uncle, and he was a real believer. All the way through. You know what I’m referring to when I say ‘believer’?”

“I think so.”

Speckbauer’s wan smile faded quickly.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I found out. He wasn’t just a conscript or even a volunteer. He was the whole bit. A zealot. But he got out alive. Talk about lucky, no?”

“For him,” said Felix.

“He was in the SS at age twenty. He was proud of it. I know, because I met these old guys at his funeral. I’d never seen them before, never heard of them. Strange thing, family, I began to realize. I liked him when he was alive. But after, a hard man to like.”

Felix pretended to be concentrating on the ditches that ran alongside now.

“A real jager,” Speckbauer said. “He loved his hunting. I used to go with him.”

He shifted the map off his lap.

“And he did the other thing too, you can be sure. They go together. You know the saying, right?”

Felix shook his head.

“Maybe it’s only in the Tyrol. Wilderer und jager sint bruder.

‘The hunter and the poacher are brothers.’ Hard times bring their own means, no?”

“I suppose.”

Speckbauer turned in his seat to look behind.

“You see that?”

“What?”

“That clearing, a path. Forestry access, you think?”

“Probably,” said Felix.

Speckbauer turned back.

“‘Wildererweg’ they called them back up in my place growing up. Poachers’ paths. Do they call them that here?”

“I think I have heard it. Older people though.”

“I wonder if that’s what they call that place up by Himmelfarbs.’”

Felix kept his eyes on the bend and the shadows under the trees there. Where the bodies were, he meant.

“Ach so,” said Speckbauer after a few moments, his tone changing to something almost cheerful. “No doubt we’ll find that out in due course. Hardly the most important detail of this, is it now?”

Felix nodded slowly once.

“Ever do any hunting?” Speckbauer asked as Felix let the Passat straighten out after the bend.

“I’ve done some. Shooting rabbits is as far as I went.”

“You enjoyed it?”

“Not really.”

“Like deer?”

Felix nodded.

“Your father made no big deal of when you didn’t want to go on?”

“No. For my dad and his mates, well it sort of was part of growing up on a farm. But my mother was never happy with that stuff.

No antlers on the wall in our place.”

Speckbauer began to study the map again. Felix made sure that Speckbauer would notice him checking his watch.

Speckbauer didn’t look up from the map.

“Lots of time,” he murmured.

The road crossed a river now and began to curl around the mountains. They were high enough for the forest to falter, but scattered clumps of smaller, tough pines had managed to root even on ridges close to the summits.

Speckbauer consulted his map again.

“We could have gone by Teichalm, I guess,” he said. “What’s up there? Aside from woods, bog, more woods?”

“A big inn, a gasthaus. Ski runs. A lake. A very cold lake.”

There were a few cars up here, more than Felix had expected.

Speckbauer craned his neck to see a couple with two children plodding near the woods across a marshy patch. All had rosy cheeks, and wet hair. The yellow rain jackets looked like aliens amidst the green.

“Wise choice,” said Speckbauer. “The yellow. Hunting season and so forth? I’m sure things have happened over the years up in these parts. Hunting accidents?”

Felix’s mind lingered on how Speckbauer said “accidents.”

“I suppose,” he said.

“The two men up in the woods by Himmelfarbs’ weren’t ‘accidents,’” said Speckbauer. “I don’t need an autopsy to figure that one out.”

“When will those results come back?”

“Some now, already. I should phone in soon. You know what toxicology is?”

“Of course.”

“Than you’ll know they take a long time. I have waited weeks for tests.”

“Content analysis too?”

“Well, good for you. What’s in the bauch, the belly, yes. Also what shape their organs are in. It helps to know. Teeth tell a lot. Hair too. Sure, the papers are full of DNA cases and all that, but all that environmental stuff has come on strong in the business the past few years. We’ll need it, I tell you.”

“Because they had nothing on them?”

Speckbauer frowned.

“You knew that? How?”

“I overheard.”

“Good for you, I suppose.”

“So you — so we — don’t know much yet.”

Speckbauer’s frown changed to a puzzled look.

“I like the ‘we’ there,” he said after a few moments. “But you’re right. We have no idea who they are. My guess is south of the border. But they had nothing — zero, truly — on them for ID. Wallet, money, smokes, watch — nothing. Anyway. Their photos have gone out to several jurisdictions by now. So, we wait.”

“Well, can you tell how long they were there?”

“A guess, again? To me, they are dead more than three days. It is high up there, cool enough. They were out of the sun.”

“That’s it, then? That’s all?”

The frown had returned to Speckbauer’s face, Felix saw.

“Well, what do you think,” he said.

“You want me to make a fool of myself, four months on the job?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Speckbauer. “There’s a thing called ‘fresh eyes.’”

“Well, they didn’t fall like that, did they. They were put there.”

“Genau. Did you get a look at the one with the moustache?”

Felix shook his head. He wondered if this was Speckbauer being cynical. Surely he’d heard about him vomiting.

“Well, to me, he was the runner.”

“The runner?”

“He was on the move for sure when he was taken down.”

“The other one, with the, you know?”

“Right,” said Speckbauer. “The hole over his eye. He’s the one who didn’t know what hit him. There’s no blood up there, did you notice? Ever see a head wound? It bleeds like a pig. You can’t put a bullet neatly into a guy’s kopf in the middle of a fight. It was murder, naturlich — but one was execution. That’s why the second guy ran.”

“So they were shot somewhere, and then brought into the woods?”