The blood on their faces was black and brown. One of the men’s heads was swollen at the forehead, and though Felix didn’t’ want to look, there was that slight grin, and a tiny parting between the eyelids.
“When’s the last time you came by here, Karl?” said Gebhart.
Felix had his notebook out. He felt stupid with it hanging there, so he wrote down the time. Then he wrote that Karl Himmelfarb didn’t give a direct answer but merely shook his head.
“Auslanders,” said Himmelfarb. “Look. The shoes. And the schwarzkopfs on them, the black hair? The jackets? Where do you see these in Styria, or anywhere else? Foreigners, for sure.”
“Time enough to find that out, Karl. I said: when were you last up here?”
“Why would I come here? I’m a farmer. There’s damn-all to farm here, can’t you see? Nix.”
Gebhart raised his eyebrows at Felix. Himmelfarb bent slightly and leaned to peer into the depths of the woods.
“This is what we get,” he muttered. “This is what we get in the EU? The end of the borders down there?”
Gebhart leaned over to whisper to Felix.
“Where did you, you know…? I’ll need to tell the KD when they show up.”
Felix searched about, and nodded toward a tree.
“I’m not totally sure, Gebi. Sorry.”
Gebhart backed them out of the woods the way they’d come in.
Their handsets had been fading in and out.
Gebhart grunted and looked at his watch.
“The one day I don’t bring my damned Handi.”
“Handy what?” said Himmelfarb.
“Cell phone my Handi.”
“Hah,” said Himmelfarb. “Those things don’t work up here.
You might as well use a hunting horn.”
Gebi had phoned the post 20 minutes ago, and they had made the climb back up right after.
“Inside the hour, I’m guessing,” he said to Felix. “The whole bit. A site crew, a truck no doubt. Forensics later. You’re one lucky fellow, Professor.”
Before Felix could say anything, Gebhart turned to Himmelfarb.
“Karl, best you wait down at the house. Nothing should be disturbed, you see.”
“It’s my land, you know.”
“Stimmt, Karl,” said Gebhart, and laid a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Just so.”
“Cars come over the alm at night here this past while, you know.”
“We’ll talk about that, Karl. That’s important.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Everything will be taken care of, Karl. There are procedures.”
Felix watched Gebhart get Karl Himmelfarb started on his walk back. He waited then, and when Himmelfarb turned after a few metres, Gebi had some words for him. There was a lot of head nodding and a bunch of soothing gestures with his hands.
“I’m lucky, am I?” said Felix when Gebhart made his way back up.
“Are you okay? Do you need to, well, you know?”
“Nothing left. Empty.”
“Ah you poor kid. No, I don’t mean lucky like horseshoes in your arsch. I mean experience. You’ll learn a lot from this.”
“Whether I like it or not.”
“Naturlich. It’s the way of the world. They don’t teach that at the Uni?”
Felix too began to look around at the trees and hills.
“What do we do now?” he asked after a while.
“Damned if I know. Never did a murder before.”
“There must be something.”
Gebhart turned back and gave him a quizzical, almost pitying look.
“We just secure the site. The Kripo can do the rest.”
“Like CSI?”
“You watch that crap too?”
“Only when it’s on.”
Gebhart eked out a thin smile.
“See? You’re beginning to get it. You’ll make it. Maybe you’ll bring me luck. I should blow my beer money on the Lotto soon as I get back to town.”
“That’s the kind of luck I prefer.”
Gebhart sighed.
“You have a boy like Hansi?”
Gebhart nodded.
“You know Himmelfarb from that place?”
“It’s more that he knows me. Like a dummy I went there in uniform once after work. Well, straightaway I was a movie star.
There’s something about a uniform.”
“That’s why he phoned?”
“He didn’t know who to phone.”
“Social work, they call that, don’t they?”
“Call it what you want. Up here the Gendarmerie do a bit of everything.”
Felix shook his head. Gebhart said nothing further. He seemed to be listening for some sounds from far off. Then he took out his cigarettes, the Milde Sorte that everyone said they bought to try to cut down. He didn’t offer one to Felix. He needed only one flick of his lighter to get the cigarette going.
“So here we are,” Gebhart murmured after several moments.
“Up here in the arschloch of Styria. Excuse me the picturesque centre of Styria. And you’re on the job, what three months? You go for a walk with this fellow. Then, Jesus, you come back down to the farmhouse, with your face as white as a sheet with your news.”
“With puke on my shoes, don’t forget.”
Gebhart let his eyes wander to the hills behind Felix.
“Who cares,” he murmured.
“Can I ask you something?”
Gebhart blew out smoke and nodded.
“Did you set me up with that big lug, going for walkies, holding hands? So you could get a laugh?”
“You think I would do that to you?”
“I’m asking you. I heard stuff like that in training.”
“You want to know? I looked out the window and I thought: there’s a good day’s work being done. It was kind of nice, actually.”
“Nice?”
“You were trying to get the kid out and about again. That’s good.”
The voice on the walkie-talkie was very clear now.
“Whoa,” said Gebhart. “That was fast. They’re close.”
He waved Felix off using his walkie-talkie and began to give sparing directions.
Felix didn’t want to look back to where the bodies lay. The woods seemed to be blanketed with an extra quiet now. He heard birds only occasionally, and far off. The clouds must have come lower. Sure enough, the crest of one mountain to the south was cut off. That sick feeling had left him, as had the swarming thoughts, but he could hear his own pulse. He realized he was glad of the cigarette smoke around him. Maybe there was a smell coming from the bodies that he hadn’t noticed himself, but Gebi had. He watched as Gebhart smoked, and nodded, and said “yes” almost too often, his thumb stroking near the button on his walkie-talkie.
