“Come back at nine tonight and see,” said the barman. “It fairly hops.”
Felix paid and made a meal of the first two draughts of the beer. He let his eyes move around the place again, looking for the exit lights and the toilets.
“Is it working?”
Felix looked back. The barman was lighting a covert cigarette now.
“The amnesia recipe?”
“It frigging better,” said Felix. “Christ, that woman spends. You know?”
“I’m not married.”
“Wise man: sehr klug. If you do, better get a second shift to pay for it, gell?”
The bartender kept up his smile. He’d surely been doing the pub confessional for long enough. Humouring arschlochers and grumblers was surely an art in the job.
“You could win the Lotto.”
“No way, man,” Felix said and shook his head. “My middle name is unglucklich.”
“Well, you’re not alone,” said the barman, “Mr. Unlucky.” He flicked his eyes once toward the playboy, who was now speaking passionately into the mobile.
“You local?”
“Uh uh,” said Felix. “But I work nearby.”
“Gleisdorf?”
“How’d you know?”
“The car plant? Magna?”
Felix took another swallow of beer. The bartender was amused at the reception Felix gave his apparent clairvoyance.
“Tool and die?”
“I wish,” said Felix. “I’m on the line.”
The bartender nodded and took a surreptitious drag from his cigarette.
“Lots of guys here,” said the bartender and batted away the smoke. “But hey, it pays. Nicht war?”
“Geh scheissen,” said Felix. “Take a crap. Never enough.”
The bartender shrugged.
“I did it for a while,” he said. “But you’ve got to hand it to Stronach. Goes to Canada with his arse out of his pants, and now look. Billions. You know his wife’s people still live in town here, the mother and all?”
The song changed to a jittery techno that had Felix’s fillings almost moving around. This was what kids in Weiz thought was so cool, even still?
“The toilets?”
The bartender pointed at a green light in the dimness beyond the pods of seats.
Felix took his time. He couldn’t see any CCTV cameras. That meant nothing these days: you could fit them in a pinhead. He spotted two fire exits, so there must be alleys to both. There was a metal-clad double door at the end of the short passageway where the toilets were. Deliveries, he decided. To give the place its due, the klo was well done, well kept. There were two narrow barred and frosted windows high in the wall over the single cubicle.
He stood at the urinal, and felt the effect of the beer already.
But a faint chill began to settle in his chest, and his thoughts fastened on the Himmelfarbs. It was the shock maybe, this? Maybe it was pity, or remorse or something, being ratcheted up in his subconscious to anxiety, or worse. Some part of his mind, a defence mechanism, had been holding fear at bay, ever since things had fallen apart in that cable gondola yesterday. Yesterday was a decade ago.
“Some week off,” he murmured.
As though it had been waiting for this moment, an image of Speckbauer’s face came to him then. It was his expression at that moment when it had finally sunk in with Felix: they don’t know that the Himmelfarb kid hasn’t told you something, do they? Felix felt that panic not far off now: “‘They?’” he muttered. “Who”
The door rocked open behind him. A man made a short, mocking laugh, and another voice said something in a questioning voice, like a taunt. What the hell language was it? Guys from the hilltops, so drunk that you couldn’t even get beyond their accents? The vulnerable feeling overtook him. He tried to stop the flow of pee, turning a little as the two men came around the washbasins.
“Servus,” he said.
One of the men had spotted him immediately he’d come around the half-partition, and gave him a nod. End of conversation.
The quiet as they went to the urinal made the music from the pub seem even louder. Felix finished and zipped. He did not stop by the basin.
A well-turned-out man in his forties and a woman considerably younger than him were at the bar now. Felix gave them a cursory nod, and began to make up stories in his head to explain them.
Daughter: no. Friend: hardly. A randsteinpflanze, a pavement hostess?
He was able to get a quick look at her when the bartender laid down their drinks with an ostentatious flourish. Her roots were dark, that much he knew about girls and their hair anyway, and there was plenty of support applied the lashes and earrings, the makeup. Not a big-boned maiden that would top the list for desirable among farmers’ sons up in the wilds of a hill village like Brandlucken. No, a dieter; a shopper.
“Another big one?”
Felix was surprised to learn he had almost finished his beer.
“Hell no. That’d be mess in a big way. A real mess. Enough problems.”
“The weather is good. Can’t you sleep in your car a few weeks?”
At this the blonde glanced over, but she did not smile.
“Bist narrisch?” said Felix. “Are you nuts?”
The three men were installed again under the umbrellas by the door. The sunlight hit Felix hard, and he felt the effects of the beer now. Beyond a shoe shop was a restaurant with too many arches for decor. He scuffed his shoe once, misjudging the height of the step going in.
Speckbauer closed his phone when he saw him, and got up from the table.
“Come on,” he said. He slid out some coins on the table next to his cup.
“I’m ready for a snooze,” Felix said.
“You don’t get commendations for sleeping on the job, Gendarme. Let’s go. Can you drive or not?”
“Drive?”
“Car. You. Drive.”
“But I had a beer.”
“So? You’re not unconscious on one beer, are you? You know the area better than I do.”
Felix looked to meet Speckbauer’s eye, but he was already up, calling out a thanks to the waitress on his way to the door.
Felix’s beery brain registered surprise now in place of his annoyance at being asked to drive. For a middle- aged guy, a desk-cop even, this dandy moved quickly. But why did he want Felix to drive, especially after a beer? He wasn’t over the limit, but there had to be some calculation in Speckbauer’s request. Order, more like it.
Or a dare?
He noticed the newspaper curled under Speckbauer’s arm.
Unless he was drunk, it had Russian characters.
“You read Russian?”
“No.”
“What’s the newspaper?”
“Serbo-Croatian,” said Speckbauer. They walked on.
The questions kept piling up in Felix’s mind. Now he wanted to ask Speckbauer what the hell this meant, that he was reading a newspaper in that language. He also wanted Speckbauer to ask him about the bar he’d asked him to go into. It was hardly just to get rid of him so he could read the paper in peace, or catch up on phone calls. Now he had to drive?
“What do I do with the receipt from that place?”
“Give it to me,” said Speckbauer. “I’ll take care of it.”
