You can picture it for yourself now, and I’ll leave out the grisly details. I’ll just say that without the pills he would have lost his mind by now, at the very least. Although the corpse was still completely covered with, with, with… He couldn’t get a good grip on it, instead, picture it like this: someone with a pitchfork struggling against a sludge-covered underwater monstrosity. And at that moment, when Brenner realized that it wasn’t going to work any other way, when he flipped the pitchfork over and began jabbing at the corpse with the iron tines, and when, with his left foot at the very edge of the pit, the shit started seeping into his shoes, he heard a voice.
The voice of Jimi Hendrix. Brenner took his cell phone out of his pocket, and believe it or not, “Unknown Caller.”
“Brenner?”
That he even answered the phone, of course, can only be explained by the fact that in an extreme situation like this, man brings everything to bear on himself-epicenter of the world, as it were. And it wouldn’t have surprised him if, on the other end of the line, the good lord himself had laughed into the phone while observing Brenner through a telescope from his hiding place.
“South Tyrolean shpeaking,” a woman’s voice said into the telephone.
It took at least three seconds for Brenner to switch gears. Probably because he was struggling so hard to keep the slippery corpse from slipping right away from him. With his left hand now he simply reached into the putrid sauce while holding the cell phone in his right, but still his wires were crossed. Even though the voice said, “South Tyrolean shpeaking,” and not “It’s Monika,” because then it would have been excusable for him not to recognize it, or even more than excusable, it would have been understandable, because he had no idea that the South Tyrolean’s name was Monika. But even so, when she said, “South Tyrolean shpeaking,” it took him half an eternity.
At that moment Brenner was overwhelmed by the greatest feeling of happiness of his entire life. But not because of the South Tyrolean. Because at that moment he realized that it wasn’t a child’s body. You should know, fifty-eight hours after Helena’s disappearance, Knoll’s face came bobbing out of the mud.
“From the gas shtation,” the South Tyrolean said, trying to jog his memory.
He looked at Knoll desperately, as if maybe he could explain to Brenner how the South Tyrolean got his number.
“Or do you go shouting your telephone number out after every woman you meet?”
But it was all he could do to keep Knoll and his cell phone both from sliding into the cesspit, and you can’t be angry at him for not having a good line at the ready. He really couldn’t believe what an uncanny memory she had for numbers.
“What’s wrong with you?” the South Tyrolean asked.
“Why, what would be wrong?”
“You sound like you jusht saw the devil.”
“Why would the devil show his face to me?”
“Maybe this isn’t a good time? You’re gashping like you’re-”
“Why wouldn’t I be gasping?”
Then Brenner puked into the cesspit, but don’t go thinking that he at least hung up the phone first. No, the South Tyrolean was allowed to hear everything beautifully, and she asked him, “Did you jusht throw up?”
“Why would I throw up?” Brenner asked.
“There’s shomething important I need to tell you.”
Brenner would have preferred to tell her to keep it to herself, that important something. Because he’d never liked it when a woman started off with, there’s something important I need to tell you. It’s always, every single time, something unwelcome! And you always have to act interested because otherwise it instantly means: or are you just not interested?
“Or are you jusht not intereshted?” the South Tyrolean asked.
“Tell me.”
“I hope your phone hashn’t been tapped.”
Brenner began to tremble, out of fright that Knoll was dead and out of relief that it wasn’t Helena, so much so that he wasn’t really listening to the South Tyrolean anymore.
“Because I did in fact see shomeone that day.”
“This just occurred to you?”
Now she was the one who didn’t answer.
“What did he look like, then?”
“I’m not talking about a he. It was a she.”
It seemed to Brenner like Knoll’s face was grinning snidely at him. But that wasn’t the reason why he dropped him back into the cesspit. Because let’s be honest: what else was he supposed to do with him?
CHAPTER 14
Sixty-three hours after Helena’s disappearance and just before midnight, Brenner stood in the South Tyrolean’s doorway, and immediately, she rolled her eyes. And believe it or not, Brenner rolled his eyes, too. Let’s be honest, great love stories don’t usually begin this way, but the eye rolling was warranted, and in fact, both sides were fully entitled.
Brenner rolled his eyes because he could barely make it through the door on account of all the plants-“gardening” doesn’t come close. And she rolled her eyes because Brenner still gave off a residual whiff of cesspit, even though he’d showered for fifteen minutes in the cabin’s swank bathroom and then put on a fresh set of clothes from his duffel bag. And before you ask what he did with his dirty clothes-he threw them into the Kitzbuhel Ache River. But the stink must have settled somewhere deep in his pores, or else the South Tyrolean simply had an acute sense of smell. Her description of the woman at the gas station was the opposite of acute-exactly as vague as his whiff of cesspit. Approximately all the women in the world were brought under suspicion. No height, no hair color, no nothing. And as for the child, she wasn’t even a hundred percent certain whether there’d been one.
“But she wasn’t a man-that you’re sure of,” Brenner grumbled. Because he was starting to get the suspicion that she had lured him over under false pretenses, just because she was getting bored without a newspaper.
“You think I don’t have eyes in my head?”
Brenner didn’t say anything to that, because first of all, he was far too tired to argue, and second, the South Tyrolean had cooked him such good midnight spaghetti that he nearly fell blissfully asleep at the table. Because South Tyrolean women: always good cooks. And when, after three plates of pasta, Brenner felt more pregnant than any patient who’d ever shown up at the abortion clinic, the cook even offered that he could spend the night. Not what you think, though! Because the South Tyrolean made it abundantly clear to him that he shouldn’t misunderstand her.
“Woascheh,” the South Tyrolean said to Brenner, but it was in South Tyrolean and really only meant, “You know, eh?”
Brenner understood it, no problem, because a classmate of his at the police academy was from Sterzing. Ladinig was his name, always won all the executive ski championships, and an avid mountain climber in the summer, driving home every weekend and mountain climbing. Interesting though, it wasn’t in South Tyrol where he crashed, but on the Matterhorn. Two weeks after their graduation from the police academy. Ladinig had always used the catch-all “Woascheh,” too, and so Brenner was able to understand the South Tyrolean now without any trouble.
And interesting: after just that one word he knew truly everything, and she wouldn’t have to explain in any detail why the topic of sex had long been, and would always be, off-limits for her. She wouldn’t have to open up to Brenner about how, during her early active years in South Tyrol, she’d already completed a comprehensive study of this science. Brenner would’ve understood, too, if she didn’t want to list off every fire department, every music festival, every small town disco, every teacher, every priest, every church choir director, before coming to the conclusion that “Tyrolean men are such emotional halfwits, you can’t even imagine.”
That surprised Brenner, because Ladinig had been one of his nicest classmates, beloved by women and everyone else. Personally, I can’t fathom how the Tyroleans could be such losers and brutes, but that’s exactly how Monika saw them. I think if she’d happened to grow up somewhere else, maybe she would’ve blamed it on that region, but she never came down off it, the Tyroleans in general and the South Tyroleans specifically-coldhearted Pinocchios.