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?”
When Felix made no reply, Speckbauer glanced over.
“You’re really not looking forward to this visit are you?”
“I don’t see what purpose it’ll serve.”
“Okay. But police science is not always by the book. It’s memory, like I told you before. Your mind plays tricks. When you retrace your steps up that track, you may remember things.”
“Such as?”
“A remark. A reaction. Maybe the boy pointed at some place.
Or his father, the time you all went up. Your colleague, maybe?”
“We went over our notes and statements pretty thoroughly.”
“I hear you. But what I am saying is not a criticism. I’m not trying to catch anyone out. I’m working with evolution, you see? How the mind switches off certain departments, or how it notices things without the owner of the brain box realizing it. And when the lights go on again, sometimes things you did not notice, they come back.”