Poachers Road (24 page)

Felix looked over at Speckbauer.

“I would think so. Just like I’m freaking.”

“Are you?”

Now Felix gave Speckbauer a hard look.

“Well, okay then,” said Speckbauer. “But you’re doing a good job keeping it under wraps.”

“What if she says, ‘how long?’ What do I say to her? A day, a week?”

“Hässlich – an ugly question. I don’t have an answer for you.

But tell her it’s a precaution only. That might help?”

“Not much. I can see the reaction right now.”

“Best I can do,” said Speckbauer. “Or would you rather I’d said nothing to you?”

Felix’s anger wasn’t far off now. He studied the road ahead. In the distance the Magna plant had already appeared over the fields.

“Look,” said Speckbauer. “Let’s get a bit of perspective, can we? It’s common to use diamonds for criminal payoff.”

“To me, it says the people involved are used to this,” said Felix.

“Is that wrong?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“You’re holding back.”

“I’m not,” said Speckbauer. “But a cop has to think, well: ‘Was that all?’”

“You mean more diamonds, or something?”

“Right.That’s the one the guy swallowed. Are there more? Were there more?”

“So: a big organization.”

“How can we know?” Speckbauer asked.

Felix had to wait until a long articulated truck had negotiated the bend ahead of them. It was hounded by two motorbikes and an impatient-looking man in a Mercedes 500-series coupe.

“Christ,” said Speckbauer when the Mercedes driver floored it, only a kilometre from the entrance onto the A2. “As long as he only kills himself, I don’t mind.”

Felix was about to ask him why he had changed the subject, but he realized it would get him nowhere.

“Where are you parked again?” asked Speckbauer as Felix slowed for the ramp onto the A2. “I forgot.”

TWENTY-FOUR

F
ELIX WALKED BACK TO THE TOP OF THE ESCALATORS AND
looked out the plate glass to where he had parked the Polo in the yard that fronted the station on Bahnhofgürtel. Ten minutes early.

There wasn’t much going on at the Hauptbahnhof. Wagons were being shunted in the yards far off, but even with the local services, there were long stretches between the trains.

It wasn’t going to go well, of that he was quite sure. He was sure in a hopeless, almost calm way. Already he could imagine Giuliana’s face, how she sat back when she heard something ridiculous. He had tried to come up with phrases that might be an easy way to say things, or would lead into it gently. “It,” he thought grimly, and let some of them stagger through his thoughts in all their wretched uselessness:

Giuliana, something like this has never happened before, and probably never will again. Giuliana, I could never have predicted this. Giuliana, I would have run the other way if I had known any of this was going to happen. But . . . ? But I feel I have to stay and help out – yes, even a new nobody-Gendarme.

He turned and walked back down the hall, the words and phrases following him and still muttering like gargoyles in his ear:

Giuliana, it is possible that the Himmelfarbs’ place was – may have been – set on fire deliberately. Possible. . . ?! And yes, Giuliana, that would mean murder. And yes again, it’s incredible, and it only belongs on TV shows or somewhere else. And, try to understand, my love, it’s maybe possible – again, just maybe – that someone thinks I know something which I really don’t because Hansi didn’t tell me anything, anything that made sense, but he, or they, don’t know that. And if he or they are so crazy or vicious or paranoid to do that to the Himmelfarbs, they might . . .

That’s where it stopped.

He rubbed hard at his eyes and focused a little on his breathing. This jumpy restlessness had been gnawing at him even before he’d stepped out of Speckbauer’s Passat and headed into the city proper. He had run a red light coming down Eggenbergerstrasse, and heard a shout from behind. Sometimes he was sure it was panic. Then later, when he tried to untangle it all, his thoughts dissolved in confusion.

He stared across at the traffic turning down Keplerstrasse toward the Mur, and the old city that began on its far bank, under the Schlossberg. Being used is one thing, he thought again, if it’s part of your job. Wasn’t that what a job was, especially if you were a cop under orders of your C.O.? But on that drive back along the A2 into Graz, Speckbauer had faltered in some way, and in spite of himself, he had revealed something. He had crossed a line, Felix was sure of it.Try as he might, he still couldn’t figure what that was, much less what it meant. The fog of suspicion settled around him again.

He was hungry and he was not. His body was telling him to just get going, to release the tension somehow. He felt alert, too alert, the way you were after you woke up suddenly in the night and were on your feet before you knew it. He found himself looking around every corner of the platform and back into the gallery of shops and the broad, open space above the escalator that gave way to the plate glass and the clock.

Fine, he told himself again: it was normal to be jittery after what had been happening. That’s how shock was, and you should-n’t ignore it, or make light of it. But why did everything seem so different, so suspect? There was that extra second that the shop attendant had looked at him; those CCTV cameras up over the escalators; the half-dozen teenagers with backpacks and headphones lounging on the floor under the clock.

He hadn’t been in the station more than a couple of times since it had been renovated as part of the City of Culture a few years back. There had been ski trains often enough in the high school days, and he and Lisi had been packed on to the Vienna train each winter when they were younger, to be met there by Kiti, a maiden aunt who worked in the university library.

A hatless, whistling ÖBB staff man eyed him, and as he drew close offered him a cautious “Grüss.” Graz was a friendly city, no?

Or more likely Gebi had been right. You could tell a cop whatever way he was dressed or acted, if you knew people at all. Felix lingered by the computer kiosk. He entered some places on the screen just to see the price of the tickets. There were three Nordic-looking backpackers at the ticket booth now, speaking bad German. A woman pushed an old man in a wheelchair. A porter was pushing a trolley half loaded with cardboard boxes. Felix watched him disappear around by the shops.

Speckbauer was back in his head: they’ll trust one of their own, had been Speckbauer’s rationale for getting him to drive around the hills. They’d know Felix Kimmel, right? And trust him, the logic went, as they’d known and trusted his father? And that stroll around the remains of the Himmelfarb home were sure as hell not part of the local scenery.

A train arrival was announced, and he looked up:

Mürzzuschlag. Who cares?

Staring at the sign, however, Speckbauer was suddenly back in his mind. Him and that ogre he had as a partner, Franzi. And for a moment Felix imagined the inside of the car when it had been sprayed with the fuel. There would surely have been a millisecond before it went up in flames around him when Franzi would have known . . .

He cursed in a whisper, twice, and checked his watch again.

Late? He’d count to 10, and if it wasn’t announced at least, he’d skip downstairs and buy a sandwich he didn’t need from the SPAR.

He got to eight before the PA came on.

On his way to the platform, he took in the people who seemed to appear from nowhere, as usual when the train came, and the faint twanging sounds from the electric cables overhead as the train approached. The low burn of unease and resentment that had been around his chest like heartburn, or exhaustion, had dissolved and he felt his shoulders, or something at least, ease. He scanned the length of the train as the last metallic squeaks and ring of the coupling chains sounded and doors began to open.

TWENTY-FIVE

“I
T REALLY IS,”
G
IULIANA WHISPERED, AND PAUSED, AND HER
hands began to flail about weakly for words. She left the rest unsaid.

She wouldn’t even look at him. Even with the light from the overhead in the café, he saw that her face still looked kind of chalky.

“It’s just . . . ” she tried again, and let that go too.

“Look,” he said. “Do you want a beer or something instead?”

She shook her head. She had left the biscuit on her plate. It looked like she’d be leaving most of the coffee behind too.

“I’m sorry,” he said and added it to his total. He had said sorry four times now that he could recall. “I never expected this.”

“It is just like, Jesus a movie,” she said, and a little gasp finished her words. “I’m waiting for, I don’t know, it to be over. Just pazzo crazy.”

She fixed him with a hard look now.

“I am so numb that I’m not even scared yet. How stupid is that?”

“It’d be just a precaution,” he said. “That’s all.”

“But Felix, listen: this is for someone else. Tell me that, can you? You’re starting out, you have a job, and it’s not this crazy, dangerous stuff. Right? You go into schools and talk to kids, you catch hooligans or something, get back stolen cars. Right?”

He nodded.

“Not all in one day.”

“Don’t try to be funny,” she said. He was momentarily glad to see she was moving out of the paralyzed state she seemed to have entered.

“Just don’t try to be a comedian, okay? Who is this guy you spent the day with, this big shot?”

“He’s a higher-up from HQ. A detective. He’s a ranking officer.

He seems to run his own show.”

“But I don’t get it. Are you changing jobs? Were you at work today? What?”

Felix sat back and stretched. He did not want to see the dark rings around her eyes again, the ones that had seemed to erupt when the colour left her cheeks a few minutes before.

“What do they say back at your post? The one you work with, Gebhart?”

“I think he’s telling me to stay back from this.”

“You think?”

“It’s hard to be sure what’s on Gebi’s mind sometimes. He doesn’t expose his feelings much.”

He heard her draw in a deep breath and she put her hands around the coffee cup.

“But your boss there, what’s his name? Sch . . . ?”

“Schroek. He’s okayed the job. Gebi went to him, because he had to okay it.”

“But isn’t Schroek the guy you told me, he’s so low-key there that the place runs itself? Half-retired already? Does he have a clue what this is about?”

Felix didn’t have an answer. Still, he felt he had to offer something.

“It’s going to be fixed,” he said. “It’ll get settled, it’ll be okay.”

“How do you know this?”

“What can I tell you?”

“You can tell me we have a week together, and that we’re going to get in the car and drive to Italy and do what we said we were going to do. You could tell me that you stood up to them and said, ‘Look you idiots, I’m not trained in any of this, I haven’t a clue what’s going on, and you should leave me alone.’”

He looked down at her hands when they came to rest on the tabletop again.

“Well?”

He shook his head.

“What does that mean? ‘Let’s go to the beach’?”

“I’ve got to see the thing through,” he began and raised his hand to meet hers already coming up. “Just a bit longer but I’ll tell him I’m no use, I want out.”

“Christ,” she said, and sagged in her chair. For a moment he thought she’d cry.

“We’re stressed,” he said. “At least I am, I know.”

“You can say that again. Understatement of the year I just can’t take it in yet. I really can’t.You’re actually telling me it’s a good idea to stay out of my of our apartment because . . . ?”

All he could manage was a nod. He reached for her hands.

“Come on,” he said.

“Come on where?”

“Anywhere.”

“What? Where are we going to go this evening?”

Her eyes had set into a hard look.

“My grandparents’ place.”

She took her fingers out of his grasp.

“No way. I wouldn’t feel right. And don’t even say we’ll go to your mom’s, or your sister’s. It just wouldn’t be right.”

He waited a few moments.

“We could find a gasthaus somewhere then, a hotel even?”

He heard her sigh.There was more than exasperation in it now.

“Look,” she said. “This isn’t going to work. Are you listening to me?”

“I am.You mean this apartment thing.”

She waited until she had his eyes locked on hers.

“I can’t do this, Felix. Do you understand that? Do you?”

“It’ll only”

“You’re not hearing me. It’s more than this.”

“I’m getting time off instead,” he said. “And we can just hang around here, can’t we? It saves money, even, you see? It’s crappy but . . . ”