anyway. Nobody came and nobody went. It’s no wonder then, that as the time wore on, Brenner became more aware of the impressions streaming in at him from his immediate surroundings. Namely, the magnificent aroma coming from the restaurant at the Inn. Nobody thinks of that, either, that Brenner hadn’t eaten anything all day. As a detective you’re supposed to resist everything, and in hindsight that means: Why didn’t he? What was he supposed to do?
He quickly got himself something to eat from the Inn, and before anybody gets excited: in those five minutes absolutely nothing happened. And while he was eating his bacon rolls in the Mondeo, nothing happened, either. And then nothing happened for another hour. And then another hour and nothing happened. The Inn closed and the waiter drove off. The sun slowly made its way down toward the mountain peaks, the cabin cast an increasingly ominous shadow, and Brenner began to grow nervous that he’d have to spend the night there.
It’s interesting, though, what looking off into the distance can do to you. It simply affects the thought process. A monk or a hermit can spend years doing something like this, and you can only imagine how much they must experience if a few hours is enough for Brenner’s question to be suddenly freed of snow in his mind, like after a long hard thought-winter: why did the Frau Doctor have Congressman Stachl’s cell phone number? And so you see once again how unjust the unconscious can be. Because the mistrust that had sunk its teeth into Brenner ever since he saw how friendly Kressdorf had been in greeting Knoll was now spreading to his wife, and what was she doing with Congressman Stachl’s cell phone number at all?
You’re going to say, my god, business crony, guest at the house, so the woman has his cell phone number, or maybe her husband gave her the number for emergencies, maybe in her panic she’d called the congressman’s office and gotten the number. You see, you’re exactly like Brenner! He was telling himself that, too, now to put his mind at ease, my god, business crony, and so on. But when a question like that washes to the shore of your consciousness, you don’t get rid of it that quickly. You look away briefly, and then look back again and-it’s a little strange that she sent the congressman a text message. And so you toss the question aside again, but when it comes back yet again, you know you need a better answer.
As Brenner was looking down at the cabin below, where it was still completely quiet, he thought about whether he should call and ask Natalie. Or even Peinhaupt, because he’d mentioned during the interrogation that the poor mother hadn’t been able to reach her husband at first, and even then it was via the congressman. Brenner didn’t think anything of it yesterday, because when you’re wading deep in feelings of guilt, you don’t ask a question that concerns the child’s mother, of all people. And even now he shoved the question aside, but then- I could ask Harry. You should know, Harry was Congressman Stachl’s chauffeur, terribly fat, for years he was the driver of the mayor of Vienna, but when there wasn’t room in the car for two anymore, he got decommissioned to the slim congressman. Brenner had talked to Harry two or three times at the MegaLand construction site, a pleasant enough person, but he didn’t end up calling him now after all. Namely, because he didn’t have Harry’s cell phone number, and you see, there was that question again: why then would the Frau Doctor have the congressman’s cell phone number when I don’t even have Harry’s?
I don’t know where you stand on things like telepathy. Personally, I’m totally against it, pure nonsense if you ask me. Is it supposed to get transmitted over the airwaves or something? How do people imagine this working? But if I ever let myself get talked into believing in it for at least one second, then case in point-Brenner’s looking down at the cabin, has no idea what Knoll’s talking to Kressdorf about, and voila, this question occurs to him. A person gets to thinking.
In hindsight, of course, it gave Brenner something to think about, too. But he couldn’t have known at the time that the two of them were inside the cabin just then, discussing the very question that was going through his head, too. And he didn’t have any more time to preoccupy himself with the question, either. Because fifty-seven hours after Helena’s disappearance, the black Volvo suddenly rolled back out onto the street and drove down into the valley. Brenner expected the jeep to soon follow, but nothing doing, the jeep didn’t stir from its place.
Then the worst thing that can happen to a detective happened to Brenner. Fifty-seven hours after the girl’s disappearance, he became innocent. Which is awfully dangerous in a situation like this. And when you, the detective, begin to sense that you’re innocent, then it’s only right that you rehash ten times whether you’d convinced yourself of things just so you could justify taking action. And one thing you can’t forget: due to the personal shock, due to the pangs of guilt, even Brenner was in danger of making a move too soon. He convinced himself that he’d seen Kressdorf sitting in Knoll’s Volvo earlier. Then he pulled himself back together, because how’s the naked eye going to recognize who’s sitting in a car from this distance?
After half an hour he couldn’t stand it anymore and drove down. He hid the Mondeo in the wooded bend before Kressdorf’s driveway, then crept around the cabin three times. Heart pounding, don’t ask, because it had been a while since he’d done something like this-and no more guns since the pills because the lawmakers had said, it’s wiser if you give us back your gun license.
Just to be on the safe side, he knocked, because he’d have to come up with something if Kressdorf opened the door. But nobody opened it, nothing moved at all. The jeep was still parked in front of the house, but Kressdorf wasn’t there anymore.
Fifty-seven and a half hours after his little ward disappeared from his car, dissolved into nothingness, dematerialized in her car seat, got swallowed by the Zone of Transparency-Brenner only needed half a minute to climb up over the wooden balcony and into the cabin. And while he searched the lavishly appointed cabin for Helena, while he searched the living room, searched the rabbit pen, searched the upstairs bedrooms, searched the closets, searched the bathroom, with every centimeter that he searched, he became more depressed. Interesting, though, how often depression will send you searching for false assignments of guilt! At this point Brenner wasn’t connecting his depression with his fear of finding Helena dead, because he didn’t dare think that far ahead yet; instead it was the cabin that was to blame. Brenner escalated to full-blown cabin rage now. Everywhere you go, these cabins, Schrebergarten cottages, mountain houses-why can’t rich people just live in normal palaces? There was once a revolutionary who said, War on the Palaces, Peace to the Cottages, his slogan, as it were. He’d like the look of things today. Because these days, when rich people are caught up in such a house-frenzy, where the largest businesses snap up the ski and beach and mountain houses, he’d have to say: War on the houses! And everyone who inhabits a farmhouse or a mountain house or any kind of house-but the only calluses on their hands from playing golf-take up your torches!
Brenner stormed out into the fresh air with rage in his belly. But there was no relief outside either. And certainly no reason to take a deep breath. The insects descended on him, reminding him of his conversation with Knoll about the gnats. They let loose on him like he was crossing the most poisonous river, say, the Jordan. Especially back behind the moldering shed it was completely black with gnats, maybe because of the rotting wood that Kressdorf had deliberately left there, because he said, it has a certain flair, the original, and don’t just renovate everything to death. But Brenner couldn’t see much of the ornamental decay because there was nothing but gnats and more gnats. And the longer he searched, the more flies that joined the gnats. More and more flies and more and more hornets and more and more gnats. He imagined this being the right track now-where there were more and more flies and gnats, then his friends, the flies and gnats, would lead him to Helena.
But behind the shed door that hung on rotting hinges, no Helena, beneath the shed’s outer steps, no Helena, in the firewood bin, no Helena. He turned every woodpile over, all but reaching into the molehills. He slowly began to realize that the insects were leading him in circles. Here and there he’d make a point of walking away from the gnats and flies and searching off on his own. Even though he knew for a fact that he had to be inside the swarm for the gnats to lead him, not out on the flowering meadow.
But easier said than done of course, when your greatest fear is that in searching you might find something. He stepped off course again now, away from the foul recesses where the squadrons of insects wanted to lure him, out to the yarrow, out to the chrysanthemums, out to the spignel. To the burnet, to the white clover, to the lady’s mantle. Out to the devil’s claw. He was so exhausted by his fear about Helena at this point that he lay in the grass and thought about how easily he used to deal with the basic questions surrounding death. How he used to have a good handle on the hereafter when he was a young man.
There are many schools of thought on this, and I tend to say you shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it because it won’t get you anywhere. Brenner was different. Early on he’d staunchly believed that the most beautiful women would want to know whether you were one man for one brief life, or whether they could count on you in the afterlife, too. And so he developed a staggering sense for which answer would make the best impression in any given situation. For a time Asian beliefs were in demand, and reincarnation all the rage, then back to everything being contained somehow within nature as a whole, then you’d be well served by the shamans again.
