the good lord wasn’t the perpetrator. The good lord didn’t make the South Tyrolean take Helena. He didn’t make Brenner forget to gas up the night before. He didn’t make the Frau Doctor implicate her husband in a gigantic construction contract by not reporting an abortion she’d performed on a twelve-year-old child. He didn’t make the congressman spoil Prater Park and get his contractor’s wife pregnant. And above all, he didn’t make Knoll make threats in his name.
The good lord just gazed upon all of this with a smile because-free will. The sight of the open pit, into which his memory had disappeared for all eternity, was so discomforting to Brenner that he asked Kressdorf whether he should cover the cesspit back up with the wooden boards or whether it wasn’t worth it because he was still planning to throw him in, too.
“Close it up,” Kressdorf said. “Why do you think I got you back out, Herr Simon?” Because-unbelievable, Kressdorf, still correct, addressing Brenner formally as Herr Simon. “You I still need. And those few boards can always be quickly removed again. But no innocent person should fall in.”
Then he sent Brenner to the shower and had him put on some of his clean hunting clothes. And then they drove to Vienna to get Helena.
CHAPTER 21
One thing I’ve never liked about the human brain: that in the most dangerous situations, it often attaches importance to the silliest little things. So it bothers you that the executioner uses a bad aftershave, it bothers you that the doctor pronounces your throat cancer with a rolled R, and it bothers you that you can’t claim your wedding ring as a tax deduction. And believe it or not, it was bothering Brenner now that he should have to slip into a hunting ensemble while Kressdorf nagged him.
But I have to defend Kressdorf here. What was he supposed to do? There simply wasn’t any other clothing in the cabin. And was he supposed to let Brenner sit on his leather upholstery in his cesspit-soaked clothes? He didn’t have to rush him, either, though. As if it were all riding on these few seconds now. Brenner only had two buckhorn buttons fastened when Kressdorf got impatient and pushed him into the car.
So that Kressdorf wouldn’t notice how bad he was feeling, Brenner said in the car, “Today we’re really contributing something to the rejuvenation of society.” But Kressdorf didn’t react, just kept his sights trained on Brenner so he wouldn’t make a wrong turn on the way out of Kitzbuhel. As if the joke-explaining soul of the newly deceased security guard were inside him, Brenner went on, “Because swapping four imbeciles for one child, society can’t have anything against that.”
But Kressdorf told him he should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on the driving. Whether or not he meant to address Brenner formally as Herr Simon was left open-ended this time because short and succinct: “Shut up.”
As Brenner told him the story of the accidental kidnapping by the South Tyrolean, it seemed like he might actually be halfway reaching Kressdorf again, but no sooner had he begun to hope that his disclosure might turn Kressdorf around and pull him back over to his side, when Kressdorf interrupted him again with a perfectly devoid of emotion “Shut up.”
At least this gave Brenner plenty of time to think about what his best course of action was in order to keep Kressdorf from shooting him as soon as he got the kid. Or if he did shoot him, how he could prevent him from shooting the South Tyrolean, too. Because one thing’s clear: when you’ve come as far as Kressdorf has, you don’t waste any time coddling your witnesses, no, you mop them up like fly droppings because-no sentimentality.
But the longer he thought about it, the more hopeless the situation seemed to him. Between Amstetten and St. Polten, he tried to ensnare Kressdorf in conversation again. “What was it about your wife that Knoll caught on tape and you killed him for?”
“Nothing at all.”
Interesting, though: because Brenner thought “Nothing at all” meant about as much as “Shut up,” he didn’t even entertain the possibility that Kressdorf had just begun to tell him the truth. But maybe Brenner’s silence was good just now, because twenty kilometers outside St. Polten, Kressdorf started talking again. “It wasn’t my wife who Knoll found something out about. It was me. You know how my office is in Munich.”
Kressdorf thought about this sentence for another five minutes, as if he’d discovered an explanation for all the world’s misfortunes in the words “Munich” and “office.”
“That’s why I’d sometimes use my wife’s office in Vienna and keep the bribe money in the clinic’s safe. Once, Congressman Stachl met me there to deliver a kickback. And Knoll got it on his surveillance camera.”
“How much was he demanding for it?” Brenner asked, because now that Kressdorf had gotten to talking, a question in between wasn’t a problem anymore.
“Nothing at all. Knoll was an idealist. His suggestion was: he erases the tape, and I get my wife to close the clinic once and for all. If he’d gone public with his evidence, not only would MegaLand have been history, Congressman Stachl and I would’ve gone to prison, KREBA would’ve gone bankrupt. And so on. I’m not just talking about a few million euros.”
That Kressdorf was telling him all this-ninety-nine hours after Helena’s kidnapping-was not a good sign for Brenner.
“You know what I think?” Kressdorf asked him. But then he just thought it over for a while and kept it to himself. Whether he just wasn’t certain, or he just didn’t want to divulge it to Brenner, I don’t know.
He said, “Knoll was always grinning with that air of superiority. Especially when I explained to him that I’d rather go to prison than cause my wife any harm. He just said, with that smug smile of his, that he didn’t understand where Helena-”
Kressdorf sank so low now, it was as if he’d never speak another word again. Brenner almost finished the sentence for him, just to get it out there. He almost said, this kind of thing has happened to other men before, too. Almost said, the main thing is that nothing’s happened to Helena. But Kressdorf didn’t give the impression of wanting to hear anything more, so Brenner didn’t say anything at all.
“What blood type are you, Herr Simon?”
“I don’t know. They measured it once when I was on the force.”
“Measured!” Kressdorf laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh that eased Brenner’s mind. Because it was the clipped, dry laugh of a ghost. “You mean tested.”
“I don’t remember, though.”
“Why didn’t you stay on the police force?”
Brenner didn’t reply, because on the cue of “police,” Kressdorf kept right on talking.
“I’ve done plenty of half-legal things in my life. Or illegal, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows that nothing happens in the construction business without bribes. And MegaLand is far and away the biggest contract KREBA’s ever gotten. But real crimes, kidnapping and blackmail, I’ve never had anything to do with them. Not to mention murder. Or manslaughter. And when I pressured my wife to perform the abortion on that underage girl of Reinhard’s, it was already too much for me. Not because of the abortion, but because of her. I told her that, what with the bank loan, Reinhard had Knoll right in the palm of his hand. That’s why she did it. And to finally be left in peace by Knoll. But not even the bank director managed to subdue Knoll.”
“Or he didn’t want to,” Brenner said.
“Or he didn’t want to, exactly.”
“But, all the same, you got into the MegaLand business because you smoothed the way with the abortion.”
“That’s correct, Herr Simon.”
Brenner opted not to say anything more now, because he noticed that Kressdorf was in an overly sensitive mood where he was interpreting everything as a reproach.
“And then the congressman went into business with my wife.” Kressdorf laughed so bitterly at that, you would’ve thought it was a worse crime than the four people dead in the cesspit.
“Stachl and I met at a charity golf game. I’d been after him for years. Like every other contractor. Before, he’d always brushed me off like I was just some do-it-yourself builder and he was Donald Trump. But then all of the sudden he was sweet as pie. He whispers to me that Bank Director Reinhard has a problem that my wife can
