Felix took another mouthful of beer.
“Why are you avoiding this, Gebi?”
“Avoiding what? Avoiding making a depp out of myself, jumping to conclusions?”
“You’re not suspicious, not even a bisschen, the tiniest bit?”
“Look,” said Gebhart. “Give them a day or two. What if it’s just an accident? There’s the father, Himmelfarb, and he’s not sleeping because the kid is up all night. There’s a word for that, I think.”
“‘Sleep deprived.’”
“Right. So wait for a preliminary, I think they call it. Nothing’s instant in the job, even for the PlayStation generation.”
“I feel a lecture coming on.”
Gebhart took a long drink and sighed.
“It’s like your mutti always told you: Morgen kommt besser.”
“‘It’ll be better in the morning?’ My mom never said that.”
“Listen to you. You are like our resident bookworm in there.
Whatever I say, she is always ‘But,’ or ‘No,’ or ‘You haven’t a clue.’”
“Did I say those things?”
“You don’t have to. What’s behind the look, or the words is:
‘You’re a dummy. No, you know zip because you’re not online or glued to your mobile. Geezer.’”
“What century were you born in, Gebi?”
“This is how you repay hospitality? Beer?”
Felix was sure he saw a flicker of humour on Gebhart’s face.
“What century? Well I sometimes wonder. Come now, you don’t want to hear my philosophy, if you can call it that.”
“‘Go home, get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll see.’”
“Exactly.”
Felix’s gaze strayed to the photos again, and his mind wandered to questions he’d someday ask Gebhart.
“A fine bunch, huh?”
Felix broke his gaze on the pictures.
“Guys you worked with?”
“Genau. Some times we had, I tell you. By God they could enjoy themselves, these fellows.”
“Not you?”
Gebhart hesitated before replying.
“Things you do,” he said, and shrugged. “At certain times in your life.”
FIFTEEN
Giuliana had a sleepy voice. Her replies were slow and yawny.
“You’re reading, aren’t you,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know you. Because you get into something and you don’t stop until it’s finished. What is it, are you back to those old bores like Hesse?”
“He’s not an old bore. Everyone should read him again.”
“I’d rather be tearing your clothes off and reading your skin, and watching your face as you come.”
“My my,” she said, and he knew she was smiling. “You’ll have to tie your hands behind your back when you go to sleep tonight.”
He slouched back further in the sofa.
He felt himself putting the conversation on automatic while his thoughts wandered.
“You went out for a walk at least?”
“Yes, the guilt got to me. I met up with a wife of one of your mountain guys. She’s not into the crazy biking and…”
He listened, but he was thinking about what fire would do to an old house like the Himmelfarbs’. It would have been an inferno in minutes. But Gebi was right: what farmer wouldn’t keep paraffin around for getting a blaze going on a heap of weeds or rubbish, or even running a heater to keep the chill off newborns in the shed.
“… she’s nice. She says it’s an addiction though, but she laughs. For now.”
“Addiction?”
“The whole business: the fitness thing, that’s okay, but twelvehour bike marathons up in the Alps?”
“Right. Is Peter hitting on you?”
“What? I’m in my room, looking out over the valley, reading.”
Speckbauer and his weirdo skin-graft sidekick ‘Franz’ returned to the forefront of Felix’s thoughts.
“And drinking wine.”
“… and thinking of…?”
“Of how much a genius Hesse really was.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re thinking?”
“Basta it’s enough, isn’t it?”
Speckbauer had given him a mobile number. Maybe he’d go to a call box, phone him and hang up, just to annoy him. Herr Supercop Speckbauer, coming out from city to the lame-head trottels in Stefansdorf because, as everyone knew, the three Gendarmerie there couldn’t put their heads together enough to make heat.
“Listen, Felix. Go to bed.”
“I’m in the wrong part of Austria.”
“Go out and buy a teddy bear or something then.”
“You make sure you get on that train tomorrow, okay? I’ll pick you up in Graz and we’ll carry on our weekend. I’m sorry it screwed up.”
“Don’t be.”
“I thought it was over, that business.”
“I wish I were there, you know. But… ”
“If,” he began, and then let it go.
“If what?”
“It’s nothing.”
She waited “Tell me,” she said then.
“If he hadn’t have been, well, you know.”
“The boy you…?”
“‘Boy,’” said Felix. “Everyone calls him that. That was funny, sort of. But not anymore.”
“Felix, you’re upset. I’m worried about you.”
Stubbled faces, the blood gone black as the men’s hair, and the glitter from dead eyes visible where the eyelids were slightly parted.
“Go to your mom’s tonight, or Lisi, maybe?”
He returned to her.
“The cure would be worse than the problem,” he said.
He found a filler to wind up, and finished the conversation with a small private joke they had about how Giuliana lay when she slept.
Was he sure he didn’t want to come back up for the Saturday night, she asked. It wouldn’t be the same, he told her. Then he made sure he had the arrival time of the train back to Graz Hauptbanhof.
He shifted noodles from the freezer to the microwave. He ate them while he finished two cans of cheap lager in front of the TV.
Then he lay back on the couch and, rather than compose his thoughts as he’d hoped he’d know how, he conked out.
Felix’s furry mouth had been improved considerably by 10 minutes in the shower the next day at seven o’clock. He had had none of the ghastly dreams he’d expected. He put on a T-shirt and jeans; he didn’t bother shaving. Then he put away the debris from last night, and decided he’d get a croissant and a coffee at the Anker near the bridge. His mood had lifted, he was beginning to believe: there was a holiday to resume, for God’s sake.
He was pulling the door of the apartment shut when the phone went. He dithered for two rings and answered it.
“Well, I am glad to hear your voice,” said the caller.
“You are?”
“I am Horst Speckbauer. You may remember me from the other day?”
“Oberstleutnant Speckbauer.”
“You are not on duty I know, but I’d be much obliged if you could give me a bit of your time.”
“Well, is this really necessary? I’m supposed to be on holiday.”
Felix winced at the limp “supposed to be.”
“It is a matter of some importance. I think you will find it interesting, what I will tell you.”
“You will tell me?”
“I know you are concerned, and I wish to assist you. It is a tough thing that has happened, a very tough thing.”
Felix looked down at the notepad by the phone. A “tough thing” indeed: he was ready to yell that he never wanted to hear either Speckbauer or Gebi or any other cop calling something like this “tough” or “hard.” Cruel, was what it should be, and outrageous.
“You returned,” said Speckbauer. “Last night, was it?”
“A temporary visit, I am hoping, Oberstleutnant.”
“Please. I will come over to your place. Ten minutes?”
In the few moments before he replied, Felix understood that he’d made up his mind a long time ago: there’d never be another cop talking business where he and Giuliana lived. Gebhart had it right: you keep your family life private, shielded from this. He wouldn’t give Speckbauer the satisfaction of asking him how he’d gotten his home number, or how he’d known his movements.
“I’m going out for breakfast.”
“Great. Tell me where.”
“Keplerstrasse. There’s an Anker there.”