Poachers Road (31 page)

Gebi would be up already. He pulled out the phone but hesitated then, and gazed back out the window and up to the slopes. A flood of sunlight built up behind the hills was about to burst.

“We’re taking care of it,” Speckbauer had pronounced. And “we”

were . . .

Someone was stirring upstairs. Now the dog was getting up himself, the lazy and contented old bag, plodding clumsily down through the kitchen. Felix closed the phone. He had enough to think about. He’d need a plan, a clear head, to sort out Speckbauer.

Felix’s grandfather clumped down the stairs half-sideways.

“I thought I heard someone.”

He stared at the kitchen window with a faraway look in his eyes.

Then he turned to the dog.

“Have you let this old bag of bones out yet, Felix?”

“No.”

“Out you hound,” his grandfather growled at the dog. “You’ve had your charity.”

“I’ll take him out, Opa.”

“Hell, no. Let him go wander out there. Or he’ll end up like me when I don’t do a day’s work locked up in the joints.”

“The thing is, I’m expecting someone to drop by here.”

His grandfather turned to him.

“A visitor? Up here? At this hour? And why are you looking at me like that?”

“I can’t understand what you say, some of it.”

A rueful look crossed his grandfather’s face.

“It’s too early for all this hubbub. But if it’s a beautiful maiden you’re expecting, I’ll put my teeth in for that. Does the name start with a G?”

“I wish. It’s another policeman.”

Felix took in his grandfather’s skeptical look.

“Here? Our house? Visiting?”

“He phoned me. He’s on his way back from a job. He wants to stop by, and have a chat.”

The coffee burbled as it fed down through the filter. His grandfather tilted his head slightly and squinted.

“Why not,” he said. “If that’s the crazy time the man works.”

Felix watched him pour coffee, and place a small cookie on the saucer he’d be bringing upstairs for Oma Nagl. His grandfather yawned and headed back to the stairs.There he stopped, his foot on the first step, and looked over.

“Is this visit about last night, or something?”

Felix had prepared for the question, and even tried to rehearse an answer.

“Can I tell you later, Opa?”

Felix had a half-cup of coffee in him when he heard his grandfather’s voice upstairs again, speaking to Oma, and then her reply in a voice still clotted with sleep.

His grandfather paused at the bottom of the stairs, exchanged a look with him and shuffled on to prepare some breakfast. Felix watched him pause as he stooped and craned his neck to see into the fridge. He took out some rye bread to add to the buns on the table.

“Sure enough,” he said then, and stopped filling the kettle.

“Here’s someone now. Two men, a white VW.”

Felix got up.

“Opa I’m sorry to ask you this”

“You need to talk in private. I knew you’d ask.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank my arse. But I want to meet them first, look ’em in the eye. I want to give them The Look. You know what The Look is?”

Felix waited.

“It says:You’re in my house.These are the mountains, not some city street where putting on a suit makes you important. So mind your manners, Gendarmerie or not. And don’t try to put one over on this boy here. That’s what The Look says.”

“You’ll make them cry, Opa. Can you have that on your conscience?”

Opa Nagl was already reaching for a jacket. Felix decided not to follow him out, but to watch instead from the window.

He watched the circumspect exchange of nods and the few words out in the yard as his grandfather greeted Speckbauer. There was a wary handshake. Franzi stayed in the car, wisely enough, Felix thought, rearranging something, or pretending to. He couldn’t lipread at all, but before a minute had passed, his opa and Speckbauer had their backs to the house and were surveying the fields, each casting their arms up in the slow, appraising gestures of farmers.

They nodded a lot, keeping their gaze on the view.

Franzi emerged after a few minutes. He was in nondescript outdoorsy clothes, the poncho stowed away, no doubt, and he moved like a robot with the batteries about to go out. Felix watched his grandfather’s face for his reaction. It lasted an instant, the whatin-the-hell look, but it seemed to spur Opa Nagl into an overly friendly mode.

The door to the yard opened and his grandfather’s resonant voice and thick accent came pouring in. The winter, cattle, how he had ploughed some fields with a horse until ’67, the apple cider you could buy that would close your eyelids in five minutes flat it all filled the hall and seemed to get louder. The Oberstleutnant Horst Speckbauer now making his way into the Nagls’ kitchen spoke in the same gruff, detonating voice of the Styrian farmer. His greeting broke the spell.

“Servus, Felix.”

“Give these men breakfast in God’s name Felix,” said his grandfather. “They had night work, they tell me. I’ll go back up to the countess upstairs.”

Felix put mugs on the table and waited for his grandfather to finish putting things on the tray. Speckbauer seemed keen enough to keep a conversation about corn going.

From Franzi, there was nothing. Felix could only make out occasional eye movements through the tint on his glasses. In this light, the scar tissue didn’t stand out.

“Wunderbar,” said Speckbauer, shaking his head slowly in admiration as he found a chair. “And the air up here? Mein Gött! It takes years off my lungs to be up here.”

“If you’re that keen to stay Horst,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of jobs. I’ll pay you in that mountain air.”

Horst already, Felix repeated in his mind. So much for The Look. He put down a plate of bread on the table.

“Beautiful country,” Speckbauer repeated, his serene look setting a little as Opa Nagl’s footsteps clumping began to fade upstairs.

“This is what Rossegger meant.”

He turned to Felix.

“You have a motorcycle on the farm here?”

“No.”

“Do the local kids go where they want on theirs?”

“Not like this,” said Felix. “Why? Are there tracks out there?”

“There are indeed. They go off out to the road though.”

“Well he’d hardly just drive down the lane if he was, you know?”

“Right,” said Speckbauer, but in a tone that suggested to Felix that he believed the opposite. He sipped at his coffee again.

“Was there anything else out there?”

Speckbauer shook his head and took butter on his knife.

“Franzi found some dog shit, I believe.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” said Speckbauer. He slid the plate with two buttered buns across toward Franzi. Felix stole a glance at Franzi’s claw-like hand reaching for them. It put him in mind of a lizard that needs morning sun to wake up. He waited for Speckbauer to look up from stirring more sugar in his coffee.

“If my grandparents are in any danger, it’s my fault. It’s my fault because you put me up to this nonsense.”

Speckbauer glanced up from the next bun he was preparing.

He continued to stare at Speckbauer.

“Okay,” Speckbauer murmured. “Best you get that talk out of your system now.”

“It’s not just talk,” said Felix.

“Well I do. I see us as Gendarmerie together here,” said Speckbauer. “A team. But if you come up with that ‘nonsense’ talk, and that look on your face when you’re working with the Polizei after the amalgamation . . . Well, you won’t get much mercy then.

‘Nothing’s the same after the wedding.’ I’d say that’s an expression from up these parts too.”

He leaned over the table.

“Eh Franzi?” he said.

Franzi nodded.

“You’ll be using rank there, every hour of the day. The du and dich stuff from the basic decent Gendarmerie will be piss in the wind then. So keep it up while you can.”

“You said you’d explain things.”

Speckbauer tore off a piece of bread and began chewing.

“I bet you got a lousy sleep,” he said around his chews.

“Sleep? I am supposed to be on a week’s leave.”

“Could be worse,” said Speckbauer.

“Tell me how. A family died in a fire. It looks deliberate, and that’s murder?”

“Well,” said Speckbauer in the same quiet tone. “It would be that.”

“On top of the ones in the forest,” said Felix.

Speckbauer nodded.

“Now someone was snooping around here last night,” Felix went on. “So I don’t see how it could be worse.”

Speckbauer nodded again, and studied the piece of bun he was holding. Franzi was chewing slowly and methodically. To Felix, it began to sound like a metronome. The clicking and gulping sounds began to nauseate him.

“Well, am I the only one who gets this?”

“Gets . . . ?”

“That they could be looking for me,” said Felix. “But you say ‘Don’t call in the local Gendarmes, they’ll just screw things up.’ I’m thinking: Someone’s trying to find me, or do a hell of a lot worse.

Am I getting through to you?”

Speckbauer glanced at Felix, and let out a sigh.Then he looked over at Franzi.

“‘Sons of bitches,’ I was expecting,” he said to him. “You, Franzi?”

“‘Bastards,’” Felix made out through the pause in Franzi’s chewing.

“Which of us is closest?” said Speckbauer to Felix. “‘Sons of bitches,’ or ‘bastards’?”

“Not funny,” said Felix. “I’m not going to be jerked around.

This is not right.”

“Absolutely,” said Speckbauer, and nodded vigorously. “You are right, again.”

That seemed to settle the matter for Speckbauer. He made a yawn and turned to his coffee again.

“So what are you proposing?” Felix asked.

Speckbauer eyed him again before sitting back and turning to Franzi.

“Any suggestions for Gendarme Kimmel here, Franzi? I’m too tired to think.”

“I think Gendarme Kimmel should not panic.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Speckbauer. “Put yourself in his boots.”

The man’s lips were slashes, Felix thought, bloodless. For a moment he imagined Franzi’s face on fire.

“Then he should go somewhere else.”

“What’s to happen to my grandparents then? I abandon them?”

“When you go, their troubles are over.”

Felix stared hard at the glasses. He could not be sure that Franzi was staring back.

“Look,” said Speckbauer. “We talked about this. Someone thinks the Himmelfarb boy told you something. Something that could drop someone in the shit.”

“You never said to me that there’s a local involvement in this,”

said Felix.

“Is there? Why do you say that?”

Felix waited for Speckbauer to look over again.

“If doesn’t help to think I’m an idiot.”

“We don’t hold your university days against you. On the contrary.”

Felix had a few moments to consider things but he knew he’d come around again to what he had wanted to tell Speckbauer right away.

“You’ve been a good help so far, Kimmel,” Speckbauer went on.

“Don’t think that’s not appreciated. It will look good on you too.”

Felix put down his cup. He looked at the stain on the saucer for a moment.

“Okay,” he said, and stood up. “I’m going to do what I should have done before.”

“Which is?”

“Phone my C.O., or a bighead in Central Office. Ask to get you two off my back.”

“Sure about that, Kimmel?” Franzi asked.

“I’d be interested to know what they think about your project being out of hand.”

“‘Out of hand’?” said Speckbauer. “You’re being hard on us.

But I understand. It’s a shock to the system, all this. It’s hard for you.”

“I don’t give a shit. I just want to protect my family.”

“Your career,” said Speckbauer. “You hardly want to disgrace your family.”

“That doesn’t work. At least I’ll be able to get real police up here then.”

Speckbauer pushed his cup away.

“That would not be a wise plan,” he said. “It will complicate matters in ways you can’t imagine.”

“Are you going to phone my C.O. and get him to give me an order on that?”

Felix took the cordless phone from the wall. He thumbed through his mobile for a number he knew he had, one for Payroll.

They’d switch him from there.

Speckbauer rubbed at his nose and muttered something to Franzi. ‘The old ones,’ Felix heard. Franzi rose, Speckbauer didn’t.

“Look, Felix,” said Speckbauer. “I’m looking forward to meeting your grandparents when we get through this little chat. But for the moment I’d like them to stay where they are, so they do not overhear some things I need to tell you.”