You should know, Kressdorf’s angry outbursts had caused him so much damage both professionally and personally over the years that at some point, as a matter of principle, he’d taken to the age-old trick of silently counting down from ten in hairy situations. But Kressdorf was so far outside himself now that-one hundred hours after his daughter’s disappearance-he forgot about the “silently” part, and although he was indeed counting down, he was doing it out loud.
“Ten.”
When a grown man just starts doing this, it’s a little creepy maybe, but when he’s already deposited four people in a cesspit, and when you can only hear him counting with your right ear because the barrel of his rifle is in your left ear, then you’ve got Brenner’s situation exactly.
“Nine.”
Kressdorf took a deep breath, exhaled deeply, inhaled deeply.
“Eight.”
Brenner didn’t breathe at all.
“Seven.”
Now, while Kressdorf’s slowly counting down so as not to make a mistake because of his temper, I’ll tell you something else real quick now. Pay attention. How did they even get into the apartment? The South Tyrolean hadn’t given Brenner a key. And Kressdorf’s not one to break down a door. He’s not that type of full-service criminal, who you might say, learned the trade from the bottom up, who can do everything from a bike lock to a clean kidney stitch. Kressdorf had only the brutality, the buttoned-up uncompromisingness that you learn in the Business School of Life, but craft and skill, zero. He stood before that locked door like a cow before a gate.
Brenner, on the other hand. He could have forced him, i.e., gun to the head, to break down the door. First of all, though, Brenner had never been particularly good at breaking down doors, he’d gotten a D in breaking down doors at the police academy. And above all, why should Brenner break down the door when he’d seen where the South Tyrolean hides her keys a few times now? Because she said she’d locked herself out with the damn spring lock three times already, and burglars are going to find a way in anyway, so she might as well leave a key for herself, too. Whether you believe it or not, in a ficus benjamina.
“Four.”
You’ll have to excuse me for going into such detail, but it just never fails to amaze me how between a perfectly normal ficus benjamina, between perfectly normally unlocking the door, between a perfectly normal look in the bedroom, look in the kitchen, look in the bathroom, look in the twenty-five rooms filled with plants, look in the closet, between the perfectly normal disappointment of not finding what you’re looking for, and a disappointed perp shooting you in the head-often a matter of just a few seconds.
“Three.”
And the earth turns quietly on. Purely from the universe’s point of view, it makes no difference whether Kressdorf squeezed the trigger or not-as far as I’m concerned, it’s no greater difference than whether the key’s hidden in a ficus tree or a rubber plant. No greater difference than the question, was the key made by Mr. Minute or Key Central? To the universe all of it means absolutely nothing, and does Brenner or does he not have a hole in his head, will he die now or in twenty years, will he die quickly or slowly, will he die in despair or at peace with himself and the world, will he die excruciatingly or painlessly-to the universe it’s all the same, you can’t even imagine. Was Brenner even born or was he aborted in maybe the third or fifth month-either way it’s the same to the universe-as if his mother were in her six-hundred and eighty-ninth month, but still no cash on delivery.
“Two.”
Brenner was on the exact same page as the universe now. He didn’t care whether Kressdorf pulled the trigger or not, either. And from that you can tell just how afraid he really was. How convinced he was that Kressdorf would snuff him out in an instant. How far into the hereafter he was already projecting himself. How he was basically looking forward to flying with the gnats-because he didn’t remember the good lord anymore, but flying’s a classic human dream.
“One.”
Interesting, though-Kressdorf lowered the gun barrel now and pointed it at Brenner’s heart. But the blood, oh the blood, my god all the blood-one hundred hours after the girl’s disappearance-ran down Brenner’s forehead and through his hair and across his cheeks and over his whole face.
The world just about flipped on its head, like with Herr Jesus, how you always see him hanging naked on the cross, because they nailed him to it so he wouldn’t fall down, but then on top of that, he’s got this wound in his emaciated ribcage because he hadn’t been able to nab much at the last supper. And so that always means the soldiers had to stick him in the heart to hedge their bets, because you never know exactly when it’s just the cross-maybe he’s just playing dead, and then will walk away from it. The pierced heart is on every Jesus’s right, though, which is the wrong side. I think they stuck it in below the ribs and then up heartward, well thought out by the soldiers. But why was Brenner’s blood shooting an undammed river over his face when the shotgun had been pointed at his heart?
Simple explanation. It wasn’t Brenner’s blood. It was Kressdorf’s blood. After one hundred hours, in the middle of the fifth day, Kressdorf’s head burst into pieces, because a bullet from Detective Peinhaupt’s gun had hit him so precisely that it probably would’ve wrecked the whole splendid old room-the philodendron and the rubber plant and the cyclamen and the asparagus fern and the avocado and the Busy Lizzie and the orchids and the bamboo and the ivy and the Christmas cactus and the azalea all would have been full of blood-if Brenner hadn’t absorbed most of it, that is.
Maybe that doesn’t sound so pretty, but in all honesty, Brenner hadn’t felt this good in a long time. In spite of having missed his last two pills. But, old saying, nothing helps a depressive mood more than a bullet that misses you by a hair.
CHAPTER 22
The first body to be released for burial was the nanny’s husband, probably because when you’re the police, there’s no lack of certainty over a death that you pulled the trigger on. There weren’t many people there, but Brenner gave the Frau Doctor, of all people, credit for coming to the funeral, even though the man had tried to profit from her misfortune. And whether you believe it or not, she even let the nanny continue to look after Helena. On the one hand, as a single parent you’re happy to have anyone at all for your child, but I can imagine that the Frau Doctor was looking to blame herself once again, along the lines of, if my child hadn’t been in her care, then her husband never would’ve had the opportunity-and maybe, without me, they would’ve grown old together as a happily married couple.
As they lowered his coffin into the cremation furnace, it struck Brenner that the Frau Doctor was crying more than the nanny, but surely her own losses played a role here-because she was really a double widow what with Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl-and it all might have flowed into her tears for the thirty-year-old dilettante sidecar driver, who they lowered to the sound of a cassette recording of his favorite song, “Above the Clouds,” because his dream job: pilot.
Two days after Herr Zauner they buried Milan. Zauner, that was the nanny’s husband’s name, not Resch like the nanny because they were only life partners. You see, you get to know people at a funeral. Milan’s name was Milan Zeco, and three days before his twenty-second birthday he got nailed. At first Brenner was surprised that the authorities would release a stabbing victim so soon based on his witness testimony alone. But then at Kressdorf’s funeral, Peinhaupt told him that Sanja had corroborated his testimony. Which is to say, Milan had put himself between the two thugs so that Sanja could run away. But unfortunately he’d pulled his toy gun, and that was the mistake. Don’t go thinking that Sanja was at the funeral, though. Either she didn’t dare to go, or else Reinhard had told her she wasn’t allowed to, I don’t know.