Bernhard Aichner - Woman of the Dead - A Thriller

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Of course I’m right.’

‘And what about Herr Puch?’

‘How do you mean, what about him?’

‘Well, he and Jaunig knew each other.’

‘Knew each other? Those two were bosom buddies. Inseparable! It really was a truly wonderful relationship between two men.’

‘Friendships like that are rare.’

‘This whole business has upset Bertl dreadfully. He’s devastated.’

‘I suppose they’d known each other for a long time, had they?’

‘I think they met in the Ötztal.’

‘The Ötztal?’

‘Yes, Bertl was a chef there before he opened this restaurant. At the Hotel Annenhof, a simple little place. Good plain cooking, hardly Michelin-starred. And suddenly his career took off. Bertl became a superstar in just five years.’

‘Wow!’

‘There isn’t a better restaurant in Kitzbühel.’

‘From a provincial hotel to gourmet heaven. I expect you know all the regulars here, don’t you?’

‘Well, not every single one, but as I said, anyone who’s anyone comes here. The top people, if you see what I mean, from the President of Austria to Arnold Schwarzenegger. They all eat here.’

‘Does the name Edwin Schönborn mean anything to you?’

‘The photographer – of course. He’s also a regular.’

‘And another friend of Bertl?’

‘Bertl knows everyone. And everyone wants to be his friend. You know how it is. Wine tastes best in famous company.’

‘Well, here’s to your very good health.’

Blum wipes her mouth. She thinks of her children’s Lego pieces, brick on top of brick. Whenever she reaches for one it fits. Schönborn. Jaunig. Puch. Dunya did everything she could. She told Mark and Blum what mattered. Dunya didn’t know their names or faces but Blum has managed to track them down. Two of them, and soon she’ll have the third.

Dunya told her what the cook did to them, how he fattened them up. I have to feed my little piggies well, he always said. Only the best was put through the openings in the cages, good food, good meat, only the best for the pigs he was fattening. Dunya had told her how he inspected them, weighed them, made them get undressed every time he went down to the cellar. It’s important to check on their health, he would say. He weighed them and kept records. And he made sure they did exercises to stay fit. But good food was the most important thing, it was no fun fucking a starving deer, he would add, hitting them with his belt when they wouldn’t eat any more. They ate tournedos steak with goose liver pâté from plastic bowls, their hands tied behind their backs. They stuffed themselves with coquilles St Jacques in champagne sauce. They were kept like animals and slept on hay, often pissing themselves because they couldn’t get to the toilet in time. Gourmet cooking and the smell of piss. Pearls before swine , said the clown. All the same, the cook insisted on a balanced diet. We must feed our little piggies well , he said. We must muck out the filthy swine , said the clown. And the priest washed them with a garden hose, the water hitting them full whack on their faces and on their wounds. They had to strip naked. They had to clean out their cages, scrub the floor. They had to do everything they were told, for years on end. With calves’ sweetbreads and snail ragout.

Blum pays her bill and leaves. She wants to get out of this place, she doesn’t want to hear any more or replay the scenes from that cellar. At first she couldn’t believe that people were kept in cages, waiting to be fed. She must find Youn, she can’t let another person die. Not one of the good ones, no, please no. Someone must talk.

Blum is on her motorbike again, riding fast along the autobahn back to her life, back to the villa and her little world, which is intact even though Mark is dead. It is intact because she is free, because she can do whatever she wants. No one is stopping her, no one will dissuade her from cutting up Bertl Puch. She wants to know what he is like. She wants to fill in the blanks and get to know this man who casts a spell over everyone he meets. Who beat the three people in the cellar with his belt, masturbating as he did so. Bertl Puch is on her TV screen, on YouTube, that busy little chef with the broad grin and the Tyrolean dialect who has risen to stratospheric heights. The nation’s darling, the man with the beaming smile who makes every housewife think she can change the world with a spoon. She will track him down and find out whether he really is as she imagines him. Blum will talk to him and then she will kill him. Soon.

On the second floor of a building on Neubaugasse, in Vienna’s District Seven, there is a small apartment looking on to the street. The lock is no problem; Mark showed her what to do years ago. They had locked themselves out, but he managed to open the door in a couple of minutes. It’s child’s play, he said. Bertl Puch is on his way to the TV station and will be busy all day. Studio One has been booked for the week to record his cookery show. Blum waited outside the TV station for him yesterday, followed him, sat in the same bar as he did, drinking a beer, and observed him at play. He was a popular man, and looked just as innocent as his friends. None of them would believe what she knew. When he paid and left, Blum followed him. She sat in the same U-Bahn carriage. He travelled six stops, then another ten minutes on foot. He opened the front door of his building and disappeared inside. A light went on. From the street, Blum saw his silhouette in a second-floor window. Bertl Puch was at home in his Viennese apartment, the star chef was about to go to bed. Twenty minutes later the light went off. Blum stayed where she was a little longer, then went to collect her car. She waited until a parking slot was free with a good view of the front door, then lay down in the back of the car and set her alarm. She slept until five in the morning and then moved to the front seat. She waited until he left the building. Bertl Puch was on his way to work.

An elderly woman let herself into the building. Blum walked in behind her as though it were the most natural thing in the world. She smiled at the old lady, who smiled back before going through a door on the ground floor. There is no nameplate on the door, just a lock. A screwdriver, a piece of wood and a hammer is all it takes. Only a faint knocking sound can be heard, and then the door opens and closes behind her. Blum is in his apartment with plastic covers over her shoes, a plastic hood on her head and gloves. Mark always used to tell her how stupid criminals were, how many clues they left at the scene of their crime: hairs, sweat, skin, fingerprints. Blum will do everything by the book. Nothing she leaves in the apartment must betray a search, for evidence, for videos.

The laptop isn’t password protected. It is on the coffee table, flanked by crisps and two empty beer cans. Everything is untidy, there are smears of grease on the computer screen. Blum turns it on. How stupid he is, how very careless. In spite of the chaos of his apartment, Bertl Puch’s computer is tidy, the files are neatly arranged. Blum spots what she is looking for at once, the letters cry out to her. Pig-breeding, they say. Pig-breeding.

Blum in someone else’s apartment, doing things that would have been unimaginable a couple of months ago. She doesn’t stop to think. She’ll do whatever it takes to find out whether this man really was connected to Mark’s death, to Dunya’s death. Blum crossed a line when she handed Schönborn the bottle, when she put him in those coffins. The line has been crossed, the border is open, there is no barbed wire there now. Blum has burnt Jaunig to death and cut his head off. She thought of Dunya as she did it. She saw those empty eyes in Edwin Schönborn’s photographs. They were monsters: Schönborn and Jaunig and Puch, the chef.