remedy. And in turn, Reinhard might have an opportunity to subdue Knoll.”
“And to let you build MegaLand.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that easy to build in Prater Park. It started with the golf course, and then it grew from there. For a banker who was in the black, it was a matter close to his heart for half of the Prater to come under his control, and right in the middle of Vienna when the whole city’s in the red. With Stachl he had the right man at his side. People’s protests did in fact hold us up, but we just about had them all cleared out of our way. Then suddenly Helena was kidnapped. We thought Knoll was behind it. And Knoll thought we were behind it. And now you’re telling me it wasn’t even an actual kidnapping. But in the meantime, four people are dead.”
“Six,” Brenner said, “if you count Milan and the nanny’s husband.”
“Stachl tried to keep me from pulling you back out. He said, ‘Too much has happened already.’ It didn’t matter to him one bit that Helena was his kid, too.”
“Maybe he didn’t know?”
Kressdorf had nothing to say to that. I almost think it didn’t matter to him either at this point.
When they arrived in front of the South Tyrolean’s house, across the street from the gas station, Brenner still didn’t know how he was supposed to keep the humiliated non-father from killing both him and the South Tyrolean in order to undo history and get his daughter back, not just Helena, but hair, skin, all of her-genetically speaking, as it were.
Now, for your reassurance. At least the South Tyrolean wasn’t there.
Now, for your disassurance. The child wasn’t there, either.
After they’d searched the last room, Brenner tried to convince Kressdorf that he hadn’t lied to him. He explained to him that the South Tyrolean had probably gone to the police after he didn’t come back as promised. Even Brenner didn’t really believe that, although it later turned out to be true. But then Kressdorf did something that filled Brenner with such fright that being dangled from a balcony seemed like a MegaLand attraction by comparison.
You should know, Kressdorf’s angry outbursts had caused him so much damage both professionally and personally over the years that at some point, as a matter of principle, he’d taken to the age-old trick of silently counting down from ten in hairy situations. But Kressdorf was so far outside himself now that-one hundred hours after his daughter’s disappearance-he forgot about the “silently” part, and although he was indeed counting down, he was doing it out loud.
“Ten.”
When a grown man just starts doing this, it’s a little creepy maybe, but when he’s already deposited four people in a cesspit, and when you can only hear him counting with your right ear because the barrel of his rifle is in your left ear, then you’ve got Brenner’s situation exactly.
“Nine.”
Kressdorf took a deep breath, exhaled deeply, inhaled deeply.
“Eight.”
Brenner didn’t breathe at all.
“Seven.”
Now, while Kressdorf’s slowly counting down so as not to make a mistake because of his temper, I’ll tell you something else real quick now. Pay attention. How did they even get into the apartment? The South Tyrolean hadn’t given Brenner a key. And Kressdorf’s not one to break down a door. He’s not that type of full-service criminal, who you might say, learned the trade from the bottom up, who can do everything from a bike lock to a clean kidney stitch. Kressdorf had only the brutality, the buttoned-up uncompromisingness that you learn in the Business School of Life, but craft and skill, zero. He stood before that locked door like a cow before a gate.
Brenner, on the other hand. He could have forced him, i.e., gun to the head, to break down the door. First of all, though, Brenner had never been particularly good at breaking down doors, he’d gotten a D in breaking down doors at the police academy. And above all, why should Brenner break down the door when he’d seen where the South Tyrolean hides her keys a few times now? Because she said she’d locked herself out with the damn spring lock three times already, and burglars are going to find a way in anyway, so she might as well leave a key for herself, too. Whether you believe it or not, in a ficus benjamina.
“Four.”
You’ll have to excuse me for going into such detail, but it just never fails to amaze me how between a perfectly normal ficus benjamina, between perfectly normally unlocking the door, between a perfectly normal look in the bedroom, look in the kitchen, look in the bathroom, look in the twenty-five rooms filled with plants, look in the closet, between the perfectly normal disappointment of not finding what you’re looking for, and a disappointed perp shooting you in the head-often a matter of just a few seconds.
“Three.”
And the earth turns quietly on. Purely from the universe’s point of view, it makes no difference whether Kressdorf squeezed the trigger or not-as far as I’m concerned, it’s no greater difference than whether the key’s hidden in a ficus tree or a rubber plant. No greater difference than the question, was the key made by Mr. Minute or Key Central? To the universe all of it means absolutely nothing, and does Brenner or does he not have a hole in his head, will he die now or in twenty years, will he die quickly or slowly, will he die in despair or at peace with himself and the world, will he die excruciatingly or painlessly-to the universe it’s all the same, you can’t even imagine. Was Brenner even born or was he aborted in maybe the third or fifth month-either way it’s the same to the universe-as if his mother were in her six-hundred and eighty-ninth month, but still no cash on delivery.
“Two.”
Brenner was on the exact same page as the universe now. He didn’t care whether Kressdorf pulled the trigger or not, either. And from that you can tell just how afraid he really was. How convinced he was that Kressdorf would snuff him out in an instant. How far into the hereafter he was already projecting himself. How he was basically looking forward to flying with the gnats-because he didn’t remember the good lord anymore, but flying’s a classic human dream.
“One.”
Interesting, though-Kressdorf lowered the gun barrel now and pointed it at Brenner’s heart. But the blood, oh the blood, my god all the blood-one hundred hours after the girl’s disappearance-ran down Brenner’s forehead and through his hair and across his cheeks and over his whole face.
The world just about flipped on its head, like with Herr Jesus, how you always see him hanging naked on the cross, because they nailed him to it so he wouldn’t fall down, but then on top of that, he’s got this wound in his emaciated ribcage because he hadn’t been able to nab much at the last supper. And so that always means the soldiers had to stick him in the heart to hedge their bets, because you never know exactly when it’s just the cross-maybe he’s just playing dead, and then will walk away from it. The pierced heart is on every Jesus’s right, though, which is the wrong side. I think they stuck it in below the ribs and then up heartward, well thought out by the soldiers. But why was Brenner’s blood shooting an undammed river over his face when the shotgun had been pointed at his heart?
Simple explanation. It wasn’t Brenner’s blood. It was Kressdorf’s blood. After one hundred hours, in the middle of the fifth day, Kressdorf’s head burst into pieces, because a bullet from Detective Peinhaupt’s gun had hit him so precisely that it probably would’ve wrecked the whole splendid old room-the philodendron and the rubber plant and the cyclamen and the asparagus fern and the avocado and the Busy Lizzie and the orchids and the bamboo and the ivy and the Christmas cactus and the azalea all would have been full of blood-if Brenner hadn’t absorbed most of it, that is.
Maybe that doesn’t sound so pretty, but in all honesty, Brenner hadn’t felt this good in a long time. In spite of having missed his last two pills. But, old saying, nothing helps a depressive mood more than a bullet that misses you by a hair.
CHAPTER 22
The first body to be released for burial was the nanny’s husband, probably because when you’re the police, there’s no lack of certainty over a death that you pulled the trigger on. There weren’t many people there, but
