John Brady - Poachers Road

Speckbauer nodded and looked out across the stretch of open country. It was wild grass and low bushes here, growths that had been hardly enough to survive, dwarfed and delayed here in the open.

“We are of like mind, so far,” he said. “But there’s no law says we can’t speculate, is there?”

“But if they are auslanders,” Felix started to say.

Speckbauer’s head jerked around, almost theatrically, to face him.

“If they are,” Felix repeated. “Then…?”

“Right,” said Speckbauer, in a strange voice, half whisper, half sigh. “What the hell were these tschuschen doing up here in the hills? Isn’t that your question?”

Using the street word for anyone from Yugoslavia was a test, Felix thought immediately, a taunt. He concentrated on driving.

“Well, Christ and His Mother,” said Speckbauer in the same soft, almost bemused voice now. “Don’t stop now, Gendarme Kimmel.”

Felix changed for a bend that held a small pool of water by the ditch.

“Smuggling,” he said. “Sorry, ‘trafficking.’ And that’s why the Kripo is in, why you’re in.”

“Not bad,” said Speckbauer. “Remember I said accident, how shooting two people could hardly be an accident? I wasn’t being sarcastic. And I’ll tell you why: it’s because it was an accident in some way — a mistake, at least. ‘Irregular,’ let’s say.”

“It should not have happened, you mean? Wait — that sounds just blod.”

“There’s been a slip up,” Speckbauer went on. “And that is the policeman’s friend. I worked many years ago with a fine fellow — actually he was an arschlocher to everyone — but he got his job done. He was my first C.O. when I went detective. I will not burden you with his name. But my point is this. As he would say, we do not need to be a genius here, Horst. We just need to find a mistake.”

“Who made this mistake, then?”

“Ah, you’ll give me heartburn with that one. What are they teaching guys like you about trafficking at that Gendarmerieschule these days?”

“Well, that it’s a big business. Drugs, guns, anything. People, women.”

“Okay. So trafficking is about articulated trucks on the autobahn, going hell for leather toward Frankfurt or Amsterdam. It’s trains, it’s plane cargo, five or ten kilometres up there. Depps with stuff in the frame of their car, or in their knickers. Now what?”

“Well, why would two men, auslanders, why would they be so far off the beaten track up here?”

“Congratulations,” said Speckbauer. “You are saying what I say to myself. It’s what I say to my fine colleagues in Graz. It’s what I say to certain persons on the phone from Vienna and places even more exotic than that lovely city. The answer is…?”

Felix shrugged.

“The answer is… we don’t know. And that is why we are up here, believing that this is important, very important. The proof of that is what happened to the Himmelfarb family.”

The low thrum of the engine, and the squeaks from the suspension as the car wallowed and even bucked on the mountain road only made the silence of the last 10 minutes of the journey to Festring more pronounced. In that uneasy quiet Felix soon decided that Speckbauer too was marinating in his own thoughts, maybe even as much as he was in his own. The difference was that Speckbauer was showing no signs of that steady and growing foreboding that had been growing in Felix’s mind. It had almost spilled over into dread at times, a dark swirl of images flaring and returning again, no matter how he tried to contain them.

It was almost a relief when the half-dozen houses of Festring came in sight, arriving abruptly after a bend, nestled in a valley whose bright green meadows had been hard-won from the hills.

Gasthaus Hiebler was a modest affair in the traditional style, with ambitious flowerboxes and what looked like a recent coat of paint.

Two cars were parked in a gravelled area to the side, one an Opel with fancy rims. The spring melt was not done with the land up here yet, and the soft, grassy banks of the ditches along the road outside were still saturated. Felix backed in, turned off the engine and held the keys up for Speckbauer.

“So,” said Speckbauer. “Except for that shitbox Opel there, we are in a time machine up here.”

Felix said nothing.

“This is going to be low key,” Speckbauer went on. “We want to know who was in this place when Karl Himmelfarb was in the other night. Who he might have told about the goings on at his farm. He played cards, had a beer, like always, gell?”

Felix nodded. Speckbauer still held the door handle, and stared at the gap where the door had opened a little, and where the cold air was flowing in.

“And my bet is they’ll know you, your name. Your father?”

And Speckbauer was out of the car with that fast, rolling exit that had him on his toes and stretching by the side of the car, the door shut behind him already. He nodded toward the door of the inn.

It was drawn back just as Felix prepared to push it open. A woman in her fifties with a housecoat took a step back.

“Servus,” Felix said.

“Gruss, und wilkommen.”

She had a business smile and grey eyes that reminded Felix of a bird. They fixed on Speckbauer, who had lingered several steps behind. She returned his greeting in the same high, musical accent she had Felix’s.

“Is the gasthaus open?”

“Of course,” she said, and she unclasped her hands to usher them in.

There was a heavy, brothy aroma in the air. Felix glanced at the empty dining room that was off to the left of the entrance.

“Fine day earlier,” she said.

“It’ll return,” said Felix.

How easily it had come out, he thought; how he didn’t even have to think about the reflexive reply he had heard so often from his grandparents.

“Kommen sie,” she said.

The stube even had a kachelofen, and it had been lighted. An old man was seated at a table, a walking stick beside him. He turned and smiled at Felix.

“Well, look what the day brings us,” he said.

“Gruss, Herr Hartmann,” said Felix. “A nice surprise to find you up here.”

He saw that the woman was eyeing Speckbauer.

“Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer and rubbed his hands briskly.

“Did I smell soup?”

There were playing cards spread out over the gingham cloth at the booth where Willi Hartmann sat.

“You are rambling, Felix, is it? Up for the air?”

“Actually not. My friend here is new to the area. He asked if I would show him the sights.”

“Marvellous,” said Speckbauer to Hartmann. “Splendid countryside.”

Hartmann looked from Speckbauer to Felix and back.

“It is that, sir.”

“May I buy you a krugl of beer, Herr Hartmann?”

“No, no, Felix. Ach, how like your father to have said that! No, thank you. I need but the one glass of beer to get wipsi now.”

Then he offered a weak smile.

“There are no prizes for old age, my friends. I should finish my game and go home for a nap.”

“Home is close then?” Speckabuer asked.

“Herr Hartmann lives in the same village as my grandparents,” said Felix. “St. Kristoff.”

“Six hundred and twenty years,” said Hartmann, with a wink.

“Not all mine of course. My family.”

Speckbauer trailed the woman to the bar.

“Soup and a bun would be great,” Felix heard him say. “Is that possible?”

She smiled, and this time Felix saw gold to both sides of her mouth.

“I am the boss,” she said. “So if it’s possible, I will tell you.”

Hartmann moved in on the bench and motioned to Felix.

“Sit,” he said. “Sit. A nice service for your dad, wasn’t it? A good turnout, eh? Respect. Some things don’t change, even in this flyaway world.”