Felix walked back to the top of the escalators and looked out the plate glass to where he had parked the Polo in the yard that fronted the station on Bahnhofgurtel. Ten minutes early.
There wasn’t much going on at the Hauptbahnhof. Wagons were being shunted in the yards far off, but even with the local services, there were long stretches between the trains.
It wasn’t going to go well, of that he was quite sure. He was sure in a hopeless, almost calm way. Already he could imagine Giuliana’s face, how she sat back when she heard something ridiculous. He had tried to come up with phrases that might be an easy way to say things, or would lead into it gently. “It,” he thought grimly, and let some of them stagger through his thoughts in all their wretched uselessness:
Giuliana, something like this has never happened before, and probably never will again. Giuliana, I could never have predicted this. Giuliana, I would have run the other way if I had known any of this was going to happen. But…? But I feel I have to stay and help out — yes, even a new nobody-Gendarme.
He turned and walked back down the hall, the words and phrases following him and still muttering like gargoyles in his ear:
Giuliana, it is possible that the Himmelfarbs’ place was — may have been — set on fire deliberately. Possible…?! And yes, Giuliana, that would mean murder. And yes again, it’s incredible, and it only belongs on TV shows or somewhere else. And, try to understand, my love, it’s maybe possible — again, just maybe — that someone thinks I know something which I really don’t because Hansi didn’t tell me anything, anything that made sense, but he, or they, don’t know that. And if he or they are so crazy or vicious or paranoid to do that to the Himmelfarbs, they might…
That’s where it stopped.
He rubbed hard at his eyes and focused a little on his breathing. This jumpy restlessness had been gnawing at him even before he’d stepped out of Speckbauer’s Passat and headed into the city proper. He had run a red light coming down Eggenbergerstrasse, and heard a shout from behind. Sometimes he was sure it was panic. Then later, when he tried to untangle it all, his thoughts dissolved in confusion.
He stared across at the traffic turning down Keplerstrasse toward the Mur, and the old city that began on its far bank, under the Schlossberg. Being used is one thing, he thought again, if it’s part of your job. Wasn’t that what a job was, especially if you were a cop under orders of your C.O.? But on that drive back along the A2 into Graz, Speckbauer had faltered in some way, and in spite of himself, he had revealed something. He had crossed a line, Felix was sure of it. Try as he might, he still couldn’t figure what that was, much less what it meant. The fog of suspicion settled around him again.
He was hungry and he was not. His body was telling him to just get going, to release the tension somehow. He felt alert, too alert, the way you were after you woke up suddenly in the night and were on your feet before you knew it. He found himself looking around every corner of the platform and back into the gallery of shops and the broad, open space above the escalator that gave way to the plate glass and the clock.
Fine, he told himself again: it was normal to be jittery after what had been happening. That’s how shock was, and you should-n’t ignore it, or make light of it. But why did everything seem so different, so suspect? There was that extra second that the shop attendant had looked at him; those CCTV cameras up over the escalators; the half-dozen teenagers with backpacks and headphones lounging on the floor under the clock.
He hadn’t been in the station more than a couple of times since it had been renovated as part of the City of Culture a few years back. There had been ski trains often enough in the high school days, and he and Lisi had been packed on to the Vienna train each winter when they were younger, to be met there by Kiti, a maiden aunt who worked in the university library.
A hatless, whistling OBB staff man eyed him, and as he drew close offered him a cautious “Gruss.” Graz was a friendly city, no?
Or more likely Gebi had been right. You could tell a cop whatever way he was dressed or acted, if you knew people at all. Felix lingered by the computer kiosk. He entered some places on the screen just to see the price of the tickets. There were three Nordic-looking backpackers at the ticket booth now, speaking bad German. A woman pushed an old man in a wheelchair. A porter was pushing a trolley half loaded with cardboard boxes. Felix watched him disappear around by the shops.
Speckbauer was back in his head: they’ll trust one of their own, had been Speckbauer’s rationale for getting him to drive around the hills. They’d know Felix Kimmel, right? And trust him, the logic went, as they’d known and trusted his father? And that stroll around the remains of the Himmelfarb home were sure as hell not part of the local scenery.
A train arrival was announced, and he looked up:
Murzzuschlag. Who cares?
Staring at the sign, however, Speckbauer was suddenly back in his mind. Him and that ogre he had as a partner, Franzi. And for a moment Felix imagined the inside of the car when it had been sprayed with the fuel. There would surely have been a millisecond before it went up in flames around him when Franzi would have known…
He cursed in a whisper, twice, and checked his watch again.
Late? He’d count to 10, and if it wasn’t announced at least, he’d skip downstairs and buy a sandwich he didn’t need from the SPAR.
He got to eight before the PA came on.
On his way to the platform, he took in the people who seemed to appear from nowhere, as usual when the train came, and the faint twanging sounds from the electric cables overhead as the train approached. The low burn of unease and resentment that had been around his chest like heartburn, or exhaustion, had dissolved and he felt his shoulders, or something at least, ease. He scanned the length of the train as the last metallic squeaks and ring of the coupling chains sounded and doors began to open.