So what did he learn? Listen up, Knoll’s alarm system company had installed cameras not only in the building’s lobby, and in the elevator, and in the stairwells, and filmed everyone who entered the building-the police also found two cameras that Knoll had mounted around the time of the first water main break.
Brenner explained that there’s nothing more perverse than an abortion clinic with surveillance cameras, and the two of them agreed with him one hundred percent. But while the watchdog repeated for the third time that there was nothing more perverse, something more perverse occurred to him as he was talking. He presented his idea of what was more perverse as though it were proof that there was nothing more perverse. My god, he had other qualities besides an inflated ego. He and the foreman were so engrossed in conversation now that it was operating like talk among old friends. And that was the best thing that could have happened for Brenner. Because they didn’t notice that Brenner had been waiting the whole time for just the right moment.
You should know, there’s a right moment for everything. For plants, when to plant them, when to water them, when to harvest them; for animals, when to feed them, when to milk them, when to slaughter them; for children, when to make them, when to nurse them, when to kick them out on their own; for fingernails, when to cut them, when to file them, when to polish them; and hair, too, very important. But only a very few know how important the right moment is for the detective counterquestion.
“What do you two have to say about her?” Brenner placed the photo that Knoll had given him on the table.
“Jailbait,” they said almost in unison-a well-rehearsed team. But they were of no help to Brenner because they didn’t recognize the girl. The security guard just got excited at the prospect of proving his professionalism to Brenner. Because he immediately pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the photo. “In case I come across her, I’ll let you know.”
“But only after you come on top of her,” the foreman said with a smirk, and Brenner wondered whether it was his smirk that was crooked or if it only came off that way because his freckles were so unevenly distributed.
“Of course,” the nicotine-nursling said, bringing up the rear of the joke again. “Only after I’ve come on top of her.”
But then his freckled smirk got even more crooked, so crooked that it was like they’d passed the nicotine pipe around and the substance in the pipe was distorting Brenner’s vision. His vision wasn’t the problem, though, because Brenner: A-plus vision. If this weren’t the case, then when he finally turned around and followed the freckled asshole’s glance, he wouldn’t have seen as clearly as he did what was playing out in front of the Lilliput Cafe’s only window.
“Thanks for the warning,” he called out to the two of them from the bathroom, while outside, Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl were climbing out of Kressdorf’s jeep, which was parked right next to his Mondeo. The joke was on him, that much is obvious, because the two of them knew the whole time that they were waiting there for their boss.
No way out now except through the bathroom window. Then Brenner walked along the Hauptallee a bit and listened to Knoll’s voicemail, because he didn’t dare make his way back to the Mondeo until Kressdorf was gone.
My dear swan, Brenner hadn’t been in a funk like this in a long time. And the fact that the idiot watchdog and his Pippi Longstocking had let him fall right into it could only bear half the blame for why his mood just soured with every step. Above all there was the crap that Knoll Jr. was whining about to Knoll’s voicemail. Because that was a burden that would have merited half a year’s psychological counseling right off the bat for any civil servant-and from the most attractive police psychologist no less.
Brenner wasn’t an impatient man otherwise, but he was on the search for a kidnapped child, and with something like this you’ve got to hurry. You can’t just listen to voicemails until the kidnapped victim is old enough to say, I choose of my own free will to remain with my kidnapper because I’ve gotten used to him. No, you’ve got to be swift. Neverending voicemail messages are hard enough to endure in normal life, but in Brenner’s situation it could be filed, strictly speaking, under “accomplice to murder.” His ear practically fell asleep listening, and although on principle he was one to always hold the phone to his left ear, he actually switched briefly to his right. He wondered whether Knoll ever listened to these messages at all. Or maybe it was just a personal hotline where he let the church ladies talk. For those times when it’s necessary to request of an excessive talker: speak your interesting thoughts into a plastic bag, then place the bag before my door, I’ll listen to them later.
But as Brenner was about to turn the phone back off, a message came in that interested him. And I don’t mean the message where Knoll called and offered the honest finder a finder’s fee of a hundred euros for bringing his lost cell phone to his office, because that one came right at the start. No, pay attention: a man’s gravelly voice said to the inbox, “Saturday, nine a.m. One million and no further negotiations.”
Thirty-five hours after Helena disappeared from her Zone of vehicular Transparency, and five hours after Brenner got sent out into the rain by the police, and four hours after Knoll stressed that it wasn’t him but rather the good lord who might have called Helena back to him, Brenner became aware that he still had an irrational fear in his bones of the good lord. Now how did he become aware of this? Believe it or not, for one second, or maybe just for a hundredth of a second-a thousandth of a second if you ask me-the gravelly voice sent by the satellite to the voicemail really did sound like a voice from beyond. Just listen: “Nine a.m. One million and no further negotiations.”
And the voice named a Schrebergarten that Brenner didn’t know. But an old woman who was out strolling explained to him that he had to go back the other way because Greenland, the colony of garden plots in question, was on the other side of the Lilliput Cafe, just a little ways from where the Lilliput train loops around. Absolutely correct information, and then he found Greenland on a park map, too. Pay attention, if you’re coming from the Lilliput train, the colony is situated right behind Happel Stadium, or if you’re coming from the underage prostitutes along the Baby Strip, it’s behind the velodrome. Best you take note of the address right now, because that’s where Brenner was going next: the Greenland Schrebergarten in Prater Park, second gate, first row, third plot on the left.
CHAPTER 11
Schrebergartens are a topic all their own, of course. Much has been said about them because it’s widely accepted that their trees and shrubs grow so well on account of a corpse being the best fertilizer. I don’t count myself among the people who say, more dead bodies in Schrebergartens than in cemeteries, but the particular burden of waste is greater in any case. Because at normal cemeteries they take the worst stuff out of the deceased, the batteries from their pacemakers, the artificial joints, the dentures, and the silicone parts, so that the groundwater doesn’t suffer too much. But Schrebergarten corpses are mostly buried hush-hush and in a hurry, batteries and all. Oddly enough, the plants don’t seem to mind-they thrive like blazes-but long term, the groundwater’s got to be paying for it.