Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

He started in on the comments Day One-this was three years ago now-and here in Zell where the whole month of January-well, nothing was going anywhere, so Nemec tries to pin the blame on Brenner. Then, Brenner thinks it over and throws in the towel, by which I mean, his job.

Nowadays when you’re forty-four and have spent nineteen of those years on the force, then, a thing like this, you think it over, and I’ve really got to say, hats off, because, at that moment, he had no prospects of anything else.

Then, Meierling calls him a few days later, you know, the boss of the Meierling Detective Agency. Obviously, Brenner was the ideal candidate because he knew the case. On the other hand, wasn’t the highest priority anyway now, let’s say, Brenner absolutely having to solve the case. Because it was primarily an insurance matter.

As far as I know, it was more of a formality, you know, that somebody be present until the insurance matters were settled. And that can take years. So that the insurance company can later say, look, we did everything, nobody can blame us for anything, we even sent our own man after the police had long since gave up on the case.

That he’d actually solve the case, well, at that point in time, nobody could’ve knew that at all.

And today, I really do have to say, hats off to Brenner, because somebody else might not have managed it so easy. A somebody like Nemec might be quicker upstairs, and, on a different case, maybe he’s the better bet. But, be it as it may, it was here. The corpses in the lift, foreigners. No witness, no clues, no motive, no nothing! So, once again, Brenner was the right one.

If you’d seen him looking the way he did in Zell, you wouldn’t have guessed that he was a private detective. Even though he was no undercover detective. Anybody who wanted to know, they got told-he was there on account of the lift scandal. How should I put it, though: he didn’t look like a detective.

The strange thing is that he actually looked exactly like how you might picture a police officer or detective looking. That kind of fireplug type where the shoulders are practically broader than the legs are long. Not big but not small, and a real blockhead with two vertical ruts in his cheeks. And a red, scarred nose like a soccer player-what’s his name, quick, the one with the two brothers.

But, I don’t think you would’ve taken him for a detective or a police officer. His aqua-blue eyes surely played a part in that. They’re always nervously roaming around, and in retrospect, it’s easy to say that it’s on account of him always observing everything so closely.

But if you saw him like that, you probably would’ve just got the impression that he was worried. You’d occasionally see him here and there, on Fussballplatz or at the Feinschmeck Café, or at the Hirschenwirt. Or he’d just be milling around on Kirchplatz or taking a walk down to the lake. And because his face was so red, you could see from a ways away how those blue eyes of his were nervously roaming around. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t exactly the type to command respect. As a human being, sure, but not, let’s say, the way Nemec did.

And that must’ve been it, too, why Nemec didn’t like him-there was just something about him that gave you the sense he didn’t belong there. Nemec made fun of it in public:

“Don’t go looking like that with those Czech eyes of yours, Brenner!”

Just a few days after Nemec took over the department, that happened. And to make matters worse, in front of Brenner’s co-workers, Tunzinger and Schmeller, who got shot six months later during the bank robbery at the, the, the-now where was that again. Brenner wasn’t even aware that he somehow looked strange while he was doing it, and he had no clue what Nemec meant by Czech eyes.

At first he suspected that Nemec possibly had some complex, on account of him having a Czech name. Maybe that’s why he made jokes about Czech eyes. Because Brenner had done a whole slew of training sessions in psychology on the force, especially his first years there.

About that, you should know, Nemec was from Vienna, whereas Brenner-Brenner was from Puntigam, you know, where the beer’s from, Puntigamer, in Steiermark, by Graz. Now, it wasn’t until a year or two later that Brenner found out that the Viennese have all got this idea-or maybe it’s just a bunch of talk-that all Czechs have aqua-blue eyes.

But what am I doing talking about Czechs for. After all, the dead bodies were American. They owned a factory in Detroit. And their son-in-law, Vergolder Antretter, well, he owned the chairlift that they were found dead on. The police figured that out Day One, of course. Just never figured out much more than that, though. And now here comes Brenner three-quarters of a year later and figures out who did it!

Now, you should know the kind of person you’re dealing with. How should I put it-not easy to describe. For instance, it bothered him when somebody he was on a first-name basis with called him by his last name. But that’s how it is on the force: people call each other by their last names.

“What’re you doing looking like that with those Czech eyes of yours, Brenner!”

Needless to say, he had to put up with that from his co-workers pretty often, because needless to say, Schmeller and Tunzinger didn’t keep it to themselves. And when six months later they shot Schmeller, well, it didn’t do him any good, because his other co-workers had caught on in the meanwhile and kept on saying it, too.

But that wasn’t what was giving him a headache. Not the thing about the Czech eyes and not the thing with the name. Only one thing that could give Brenner a royal headache like this, and that was his own head.

About his head, you should know, on the day he quit the force, he also, out of some kind of, I don’t know, quit smoking. And ever since that day, at least twice a month he gets a migraine that leaves him barely able to see out of those Czech eyes of his.

Of course, he couldn’t be sure: was it from quitting smoking-basically withdrawal, because he smoked forty a day. Or did it have to do with the career change, why he was getting headaches more often than he used to get, from the worrying. Or, third possibility, it was just the weather in Zell that didn’t agree with him, especially now, this heat in September, just unnatural.

Anyway. His head was the reason why Brenner was showing up now at the Zell pharmacy and demanding a pack of Migradon from Ewalt the pharmacist.

“For whom are these tablets intended, Herr Brenner?”

“For me.”

“Have you seen a doctor about this condition?”

Brenner now, headache already so bad that he didn’t know where to look-well, the young pharmacist struck him as being a little long-winded.

“Yeah,” he murmured, and was already out the door before the pharmacist could make herself important.

You should know, “Czech eyes”-not what the women were thinking, no, “child’s eyes.” And add to that, two ruts a centimeter deep in his cheeks, and in a skull with four blunt edges, no less. Needless to say, most of them liked that.

He was in a hurry now to get to his hotel room, though. First, take the pills, then, type up the report for the week. Because every week he had to submit a report to the Meierling Detective Agency. And this week he hadn’t done it yet. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to get rid of this headache, pills or no pills. It was three o’clock now, the post office closes at five-thirty, and Brenner wanted to get his report in today’s mail. So he had to hurry, only two hours left for the whole report.

Needless to say, to find a familiar face waiting there in the dingy lobby of the Hirschenwirt, well, he was none too happy. Nor was he happy to hear a familiar voice addressing him at the same time. Both belonged to a young man with a tie green as poison on which the word “okay” was printed over and over in all different sizes.