date of death, bad omen, as it were. To be on the safe side, he went with a date of death instead. You should know that on November 12, 2008, the last member of Jimi Hendrix’s band, Mitch Mitchell, died-because none of them was granted a long life. Jimi Hendrix was born in November, Mitch Mitchell died in November, and believe it or not, Noel Redding also had an 11 on his gravestone because he died on the eleventh of May. But Brenner was already using Noel Redding for his own cell phone’s PIN, so he dedicated the PIN on Knoll’s cell phone to Mitch Mitchell, i.e. 1211. So you weren’t totally wrong, he did mull the PIN over a bit.
But he didn’t get around to listening to Knoll’s voicemail, because: “Hey, Herr Simon, over here!”
Just what he needed. But that’s exactly how it goes when you seek out familiar places. You have to take into account that you might run into people you know. At least it wasn’t Kressdorf himself, but just the watchdog from his construction site. Brenner didn’t recognize him right away because beefcakes with crewcuts and tattoos up to their eardrums, you see them so often on the street today that you can’t know them all by heart. It was the white straw he was sucking on that gave him away, i.e., nicotine withdrawal. Also the be-freckled foreman who he came in with. You should know, the few times Brenner had seen the nicotine-addicted watchdog, he’d always been with the foreman from the MegaLand site, as if he always needed to be hanging on to one of them, cigarette or foreman, didn’t matter which.
“Waiting on a new job offer?” the foreman asked, and a hundred thousand freckles loomed in front of Brenner’s face.
“With your qualifications, it’s no wonder your phone’s ringing up a storm!” the watchdog continued and pointed at Knoll’s phone with his plastic straw. Because now that it was unlocked, the messages were chiming up a lightning storm like you wouldn’t believe.
“A nice steady ball like you two are rolling is what I’m looking for,” Brenner answered. “Sitting in a cafe all day on Kressdorf’s dime, that’s for me.”
“You wouldn’t be very happy working with us. There’s nothing left at KREBA for someone like you who goes around losing people’s kids.”
Brenner was getting annoyed by the belt of freckles around the foreman’s stupid grin, because something as nice as a face full of freckles can make a cruel smile even crueler. I can understand where Brenner was coming from-strictly speaking, it’s a betrayal of freckles.
“Because Kressdorf doesn’t have any more kids to lose,” the one with the straw explained.
“Explaining somebody else’s joke,” Brenner said, “is that a side effect when you quit smoking?”
The nicotine addict sucked on his straw like a wheezing asthmatic on an inhaler. And it might have done him some good, because once he got his fill again, all of a sudden he acted completely normal with Brenner. Even professional, presenting himself as a colleague, because construction-site security, i.e., armed security services: practically the police.
Brenner asked him how he knew for a fact that he used to be on the police force, but please-it was a convenient topic for him. So he let the straw-man pass, and he acted like it was the highest caliber of police work, spending all day on the lookout so that nobody steals from the construction site or damages the fences or goes sniffing around the site or hangs up a banner against the Prater Park development. And I honestly have to say, with a project like MegaLand, where you’ve got half the city against you because your boss only has enough money to bribe the other half, it’s not completely outrageous for the security guard to puff up his feathers a little.
Brenner let the two of them explain the world to him for a while, what Kressdorf does all wrong, what Congressman Stachl does all wrong, what all of them at the top do all wrong, and how someone just needs to do a better job of explaining to the masses that there’s something in it for them, too, if the Prater starts charging an entrance fee, because golf, tennis, wellness, movies, shopping, entertainment squared instead of just trees and pampas-for that even the little guy doesn’t mind paying a little. Brenner let them pump him about the kidnapping, i.e., where exactly, when exactly, how exactly. And he was even obliging enough to laugh at the crass jokes they cracked about Knoll. When you’re a detective, you can’t be fussy about things like this-you don’t get anything out of people if you don’t let them talk.
So what did he learn? Listen up, Knoll’s alarm system company had installed cameras not only in the building’s lobby, and in the elevator, and in the stairwells, and filmed everyone who entered the building-the police also found two cameras that Knoll had mounted around the time of the first water main break.
Brenner explained that there’s nothing more perverse than an abortion clinic with surveillance cameras, and the two of them agreed with him one hundred percent. But while the watchdog repeated for the third time that there was nothing more perverse, something more perverse occurred to him as he was talking. He presented his idea of what was more perverse as though it were proof that there was nothing more perverse. My god, he had other qualities besides an inflated ego. He and the foreman were so engrossed in conversation now that it was operating like talk among old friends. And that was the best thing that could have happened for Brenner. Because they didn’t notice that Brenner had been waiting the whole time for just the right moment.
You should know, there’s a right moment for everything. For plants, when to plant them, when to water them, when to harvest them; for animals, when to feed them, when to milk them, when to slaughter them; for children, when to make them, when to nurse them, when to kick them out on their own; for fingernails, when to cut them, when to file them, when to polish them; and hair, too, very important. But only a very few know how important the right moment is for the detective counterquestion.
“What do you two have to say about her?” Brenner placed the photo that Knoll had given him on the table.
“Jailbait,” they said almost in unison-a well-rehearsed team. But they were of no help to Brenner because they didn’t recognize the girl. The security guard just got excited at the prospect of proving his professionalism to Brenner. Because he immediately pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the photo. “In case I come across her, I’ll let you know.”
“But only after you come on top of her,” the foreman said with a smirk, and Brenner wondered whether it was his smirk that was crooked or if it only came off that way because his freckles were so unevenly distributed.
“Of course,” the nicotine-nursling said, bringing up the rear of the joke again. “Only after I’ve come on top of her.”
But then his freckled smirk got even more crooked, so crooked that it was like they’d passed the nicotine pipe around and the substance in the pipe was distorting Brenner’s vision. His vision wasn’t the problem, though, because Brenner: A-plus vision. If this weren’t the case, then when he finally turned around and followed the freckled asshole’s glance, he wouldn’t have seen as clearly as he did what was playing out in front of the Lilliput Cafe’s only window.
“Thanks for the warning,” he called out to the two of them from the bathroom, while outside, Kressdorf and Congressman Stachl were climbing out of Kressdorf’s jeep, which was parked right next to his Mondeo. The joke was on him, that much is obvious, because the two of them knew the whole time that they were waiting there for their boss.
No way out now except through the bathroom window. Then Brenner walked along the Hauptallee a bit and listened to Knoll’s voicemail, because he didn’t dare make his way back to the Mondeo until Kressdorf was gone.
My dear swan, Brenner hadn’t been in a funk like this in a long time. And the fact that the idiot watchdog and his Pippi Longstocking had let him fall right into it could only bear half the blame for why his mood just soured with every step. Above all there was the crap that Knoll Jr. was whining about to Knoll’s voicemail. Because that was a burden that would have merited half a year’s psychological counseling right off the bat for any civil servant-and from the most attractive police psychologist no less.
Brenner wasn’t an impatient man otherwise, but he was on the search for a kidnapped child, and with something like this you’ve got to hurry. You can’t just listen to voicemails until the kidnapped victim is old enough to say, I choose of my own free will to remain with my kidnapper because I’ve gotten used to him. No, you’ve got to be swift. Neverending voicemail messages are hard enough to endure in normal life, but in Brenner’s situation it could be filed, strictly speaking, under “accomplice to murder.” His ear practically fell asleep listening, and although on principle he was one to always hold the phone to his left ear, he actually switched briefly to his right. He wondered whether Knoll ever listened to these messages at all. Or maybe it was just a personal hotline where he let the church ladies talk. For those times when it’s necessary to request of an excessive talker: speak your interesting thoughts into a plastic bag, then place the bag before my door, I’ll listen to them later.
