She frowned then, and turned from the mirror.
“So you are Herr Kimmel’s grandson. Isn’t it strange we haven’t met.”
“My opa is called Herr Kimmel, even here?”
She gave him a quick glance.
“Well that’s the way with some people, isn’t it? What odds, I say.
But not like your father, I must say. Or you, I think?”
“My father? You knew him, did you?”
She looked toward the group at the booth again, but her eyes were not focused on them, Felix saw.
“Only a while,” she said. “I was sorry to hear of, you know?”
He nodded.
“He used to come here?”
“If I remember it was only for a short while,” she said. “Maybe a couple of years ago? But he dropped by a number of times there, in one week. That’s how I remember. Yes.”
“Driving my opa, was it?”
Again she frowned.
“Well I don’t think so. But such a nice man to talk to. I am sorry if this is not good for you to hear this today.”
Felix smiled.
“He got around, as they say.”
“Oh I knew he was a Gendarme right away,” she said. “Even without any uniform. But that made no difference. Great for a chat.
It gets a bit isolated here after the season, you know. But he liked to know the news, no matter how small it would be from these parts.
Yes. Always had time to listen. Curious about everything, yes.”
She shrugged sympathetically and finished entering the numbers. The till opened as a receipt began issuing out with a scratching sound.
“Yes,” she said, and began fingering some change from the leather purse. “It’s hard on the older ones up here, the ones who want to stay independent. So Fuchsi there, he does them a lot of good.”
She settled on the coins she had chosen as the proper change.
She stopped and counted and frowned again.
“May I phone later, then?” he asked.
“Phone?”
“If you can recall who was here at the time Karl Himmelfarb made his visit?”
“In and out,” she said. “Scraps. They can be quite comisch, these fellows, you know. Quite comical.”
He returned her smile briefly.
“If you can recall who was here at the time Karl Himmelfarb made his visit?”
TWENTY-ONE
Speckbauer kept his window down for quite a while, only closing it when his mobile went off. The connection failed as he answered it. He studied the read-out.
“Patchy up here,” he said. “No signal again.”
Felix let the Passat find its own way down the hills now, biting a little hard into the tighter bends.
“Well, they are true to a type,” Speckbauer said. “Up these parts? The ‘God help us’ and the cards. But damned good soup. You know, I’m beginning to think that country people are the same the world over.”
Felix saw that he continued to stare at the read-out. Waiting for a coverage signal, he decided.
“Gossipy too,” Speckbauer murmured, and looked up. “But how could you not tell people if something like that happened, right?”
Felix didn’t understand what Speckbauer meant.
“Two bodies turn up, you’re going to want to talk about that,” said Speckbauer. “Who could blame him?”
“You mean Karl Himmelfarb?”
“Well yes. I’ll bet what he told those geezers was all over the area in an hour.”
“Which means,” Felix began, and looked over at Speckbauer.
“Yes,” said Speckbauer. “A great big frigging pallawatsch for anyone trying to track who knew what, and when.”
He rubbed noisily at his nose.
“Or what anyone might have decided to do with that information,” he added, almost in a groan, and put down his phone.
“Whatever you said to that woman when you were talking to her, that Liesl,” he said, “you sure know how to make her cry.
Jesus.”
“I hardly said a word to her,” said Felix. “She couldn’t stop crying.”
“You got nothing specific from her? Beyond the names, I mean, the geezers who come by for cards?”
“No. She mentioned my father’s name, and she starts crying again. Too much.”
“Well your family gets about,” said Speckbauer. “Was your grandfather always a card player?”
Felix braked for the junction of the road leading over toward the Himmelfarbs’ farm.
“Tell you the truth, I don’t really know.”
“I get the impression you’re not that close.”
Felix pushed his foot on the accelerator. Speckbauer seemed to take the hint.
“This Hartmann,” he said then. “A game old rooster, isn’t he?”
“Yes and no.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It’s all very well to meet once in a blue moon, but he’s not the most appealing fellow, I remember my dad saying.”
“Is he senile or something?”
“My mother says leave him be. He’s a character.”
“Was that a fake leg I saw on him?”
“The war. It saved his life, I suppose.”
“Sixty something years he’s been bowling along on one leg?
Quite an achievement. A friend of your family?”
“Not really. But he shows up for every memorial. And mass.
And funeral.”
Speckbauer eyed the speedometer while he felt around in his jacket pocket for something.
“Ach,” he said “I think I know the type. Your grandfather and him, they’re…?”
“I don’t know,” said Felix. “Cards maybe, neighbours.”
“Close enough, then.”
“Living in the same area for six hundred years doesn’t make you close.”
“Ah,” murmured Speckbauer, looking at something scribbled on a piece of paper before pocketing it again. “I hear a philosopher, do I?”
“I have to keep up with the poetry guys.”
“Rossegger? Christ, every kid learned that in school in my time.
Didn’t you?”
Felix geared down to overtake a van before the next series of bends.
“Some. But they never told us much about his politics, did they.”
“Don’t spoil it,” said Speckbauer. “How could a poet understand politics? How was he to know he’d be such a hit with the brownshirts a hundred years after? Him and, what’s the name of that outfit, that club he founded, the one they’re in still…?”
“That who’s in?”
“Oh come on — you’re the guy did the Uni thing. You should know. The Blauers, the FPOers, the Freedom Party — Haider and his mob.”
“Sudmark, was it?”
“Stimmt. ‘Only German spoken here in Styria — none of that Slovenian nonsense or the like. Out with the Yugos.’ Or whatever they used to call them back then.”
“Too much history,” said Felix.
“Huh,” said Speckbauer. “But you’ll have a word with your opa then? About who was there in that Hiebler place the other night?”
“If you insist.”
“Oh-oh. Is this a family issue I have stumbled in to?”
Felix shrugged.
“Tell me if you want, or not. But know that personal stuff doesn’t matter to me. I am objective. Would you prefer I ask him?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Let’s just say not everyone gets along as they might.”
“Families,” said Speckbauer. “They’re work, sometimes. That’s a fact.”
Speckbauer’s mobile went off again. The signal seemed to be holding here. He said a half-dozen “jas.” Only one of them was even faintly interrogative, to Felix’s ear. The Oberstleutnant’s tone changed quickly then. He barked a “when” and a “shit, is that the best they can do?” He sounded less dispirited than disdainful about whatever he was being told.
“Franzi,” he said after he ended the call, and stifled a belch.
“What’s wrong?”
“‘What’s right?’ you should ask. He’s been chasing Pathology and the Ident. So far? Scheisslich: crap. But I had been hoping. I always hope.”
“Still no idea who they are?”
Speckbauer shook his head.
“‘Cheap shoes, from the East. ’Wasn’t that what Himmelfarb said?”