John Brady - Poachers Road

Speckbauer was trying to get a glimpse through the window blinds on Stephi’s apartment. He pushed the buzzer again, and held his head close to the door.

“It’s working, all right.”

Felix’s thoughts kept returning to the maps that now lay in that bag on the floor of his car. His father must have talked to Opa Kimmel when he took, or borrowed, the maps at least. And what had the old man told him?

“Phone her number again,” said Speckbauer.

Felix held up the piece of paper on which Speckbauer had taken Stephi’s number from Kurt. Six rings, and again, nothing.

“It’s a bullshit number,” said Speckbauer. “‘I’m sure of it.’” He mimicked Kurt.

“‘I have to phone her a lot ’cause she’s late.’”

“Her car maybe?” suggested Felix.

“Yeah, yeah. A Mazda 131. Look, take a stroll around there, see if it’s parked, okay? I’m going to make some calls here, see if I can move this damn Stephi.”

“Blue?”

“Blue-green,” said Speckbauer. “Old and crappy. Maybe she parks it away from here for vandals or something? Five, ten minutes.

I’ll be here, okay?”

Felix began with the car park for the Billa. He threaded his way through the shoppers’ cars, standing on tiptoe to see over a row, and tried to remember which lanes led off the streets nearby. Maybe the car was being repaired?

He began to imagine this Stephi, cruising around somewhere, her arm dangling out the window and the blonde hair flying about, part of her ‘presentation’ to snare her date. No, he thought then:

Speckbauer was right. If the guy was as sharp as Kurt had said, he’d have his own wheels. They’d hardly be an old box like a Mazda 131.

His thoughts only grew stronger, and his attention on the cars kept on wavering. He had to make an effort to notice specifics. He imagined his father behind the wheel, whistling those stupid old waltzes and polkas, tapping the beat on the wheel: then the instant when he knew he couldn’t avoid the truck. Again, his father, studying the maps he had gotten from his own father’s house. Wondering, noting the marks on them, trying to solve some puzzle that had him covering the back roads for weeks, or even longer, before the accident.

The word echoed again in Felix’s mind. He stopped even trying to spot the makes on the row of cars ahead. Instead of the car park and the door to the supermarket, now he saw the steep sides of the klamm where his father’s car had been crushed, and the wooden taferl just inside the barrier wall. The Association wanted to replace it with a stone effort, a statue of St. Christopher, with the plaque under it. Felix’s mother did not.

Accident. It felt like something had been spinning too fast in his mind but had now come loose, shredding his thoughts. He could sleep for a week, he realized. With Giuliana. And with all the bickering and digs past and forgotten, never to return. And somewhere far from here, far from Stefansdorf, and most of all far from anywhere Speckbauer was ever likely to turn up.

There had to be vacancies when the amalgamation happened.

He could even get a spot up near Salzburg, maybe, where he and Giuliana could make a fresh start there. Into his mind now came the view from the high mountain paths over Kitzbuehl, those twisting bike trails, and the immense purple mountains across the valleys so far below. So high, your breathing was up the minute you got on the bike, even.

The doors of the Billa slid open. An old woman emerged, pushing her trolley feebly. Her head was over at an angle, and she stopped to look around for a car. Had she forgotten where she was?

He should be helping the old girl, real work, instead of this cat and mouse game. But she began to move, sideways like a ship drifting, and as he watched her, his thoughts began sliding away again.

He was startled out of his blank daydream by words that suddenly formed in his head. A police matter, the maps were a police matter. What voice was in his head saying that, his police training, the so-called logical part of his brain? But there was something to that, he remembered now. It had been a joke at the Gendarmerie college right from when they had heard it used in the classes. ‘A police matter’ was the big, heavy phrase you had to learn to deploy if citizens got whiny, or uncooperative, or pissy. It was doubtless supposed to trigger some serious Austrian obedience reflex?

Again he looked back toward the laneway leading to where Speckbauer was on the phone still, scheming no doubt, while he kept a vigil for this Stephi. He should go to the car and bring the maps to Speckbauer and explain.

Then Felix swore under his breath. For what, he thought: so Speckbauer could worm his way like a spreading rot further into his family?

The old woman and her trolley had changed direction. She greeted him cautiously, in a thin reedy voice. Something about the moment the anxious look on the old woman’s face, his tired, crazed mind just giving up, the thought of how simple things should be with Giuliana something scattered Felix’s confusion then.

“Gruss,” he called back to her, gently, and smiled. He had decided something.

He turned his back to the lane where Speckbauer’s Passat was parked, and he opened his phone. He thumbed through to Gebhart’s mobile. For those few seconds before Gebhart’s voice came on, Felix looked over the rooftops at the green hilltops to the north and west. His mind was up by the streams that still ran hard over the rocky beds up there, and on to where the snow still lay on the higher mountains behind, like sheets blown off a clothesline into the shade under trees where the sun could not yet reach.

“Zero,” said Speckbauer.

He took a last look at the door to the apartment.

“Zero. You think she’d leave a key in some obvious spot, like any other citizen.”

“What now?”

Speckbauer looked at him.

“You’re keen, now, are you? Well that’s good. Okay, I’m expecting a call.”

“Concerning Stephi Giesl?”

“She has some paper on her. I gave her a scan. EKIS shows her living an interesting life some years ago. Yes, she has her very own Strafregister.”

“Fingerprints? What were her crimes?”

“Her adventures were pretty well the same as Kurt’s. Isn’t that a coincidence? Well, except for a few items. Mainly her interest in drugs. Forging signatures on cheques is a bit primitive, I have to say.”

“How long ago?”

“Seven years. But that doesn’t mean it stopped, does it.”

Speckbauer let his gaze travel around the car park.

“I am hoping… ” Felix began.

Speckbauer turned to him, with the now-familiar combination of cynicism and a cautious geniality.

“… to get a bit of personal time,” said Felix.

“You wish to absent yourself?”

Felix looked blankly back, and he nodded.

“Personal matters, I imagine?”

“Exactly. But perhaps I can be of assistance at a later time.”

“Be of assistance, eh well that would be good.”

Felix was sure he was hearing sarcasm now but yet again Speckbauer’s easy smile confused him. Speckbauer turned back to his survey.

“Yes,” he said, “It’ll take time. It always does.”

“I will drop you back at my grandparents’ place then?”

“You will,” Speckbauer replied, slowly and reflectively. “Thank you. By the way, have we resolved this concern you had earlier? Your grandparents, their safety?”

“I think so. Yes, I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“You are very protective of them.”

Felix said nothing. Speckbauer seemed to shake himself free of some preoccupation.

“Family indeed. Family carries us on the road of life. Isn’t that the expression? The parents carry the baby, and then the baby carries the parent.”