Franzi, gnome-like, sitting on the bank watching him from behind the two dark insect-eye lenses that protected his eyes from the light of day.
He turned off the engine for 10 seconds, and listened, but heard only the birds, and his own heart beating faster now.
FORTY
Gebhart said nothing, but merely waited for Felix to finish. He wore that look of vague interest that Felix had learned was a screen for something else.
“So there,” he said to Gebhart when he had finished. “That’s about the only way I can describe it.”
Gebhart nodded his head slowly, as though something had happened as he had predicted, or didn’t understand and didn’t want to try. He looked out through the gap in the trees over the forestry road into where they had driven after leaving from the village. Felix had backed the Polo in at speed. It sank to the rims almost immediately. Gebhart, standing by his own car, made no comment.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Felix.
“I don’t. Just some days. And today is such a day.”
Felix looked down at the tracks his shoes had made in the carpet of brown pine needles.
“Well I think you’re stuck,” said Gebhart.
“That’s why I phoned you. I swear to God I’m not making this up.”
Gebhart drew on the cigarette and grimaced before exhaling.
He nodded toward the Polo.
“The car, I was referring to,” he said. He held out his cigarette and looked at it as though it had appeared from nowhere, and he frowned. Then he stubbed it out on the edge of his heel, before grinding it into the mushy ground underfoot.
“But it’s your own doing,” he said. “You look like you want to dump the car.”
“I’m a bit whacked. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Neither man spoke for several moments. The smoke from Gebhart’s cigarette was whipped away immediately by soft gusts of wind. The breeze was inconstant here amongst the trees, but it still had the trunks groaning faintly behind the louder hush of the conifers’ branches high up.
“As odd a request as I’ve ever had,” Gebhart said then. “Tell me again you’re not on drugs. Or going nuts?”
“Look, I really appreciate this. Gebi?”
“What?”
“I can’t believe anything from Speckbauer.”
“Well I can see that. The minute I saw that guy, well, that was clear enough.”
“I thought he just wanted a local guy to drive him around, maybe introduce him to the locality. But he has a different movie going on in his head.”
“But of course he would,” said Gebhart. “‘The Big Picture’ fellows.”
“He must have a lot of clout to get Schroek to put me working for him.”
Gebhart nodded.
“Has Schroek talked to you about him, maybe?”
Gebhart eyed him.
“Only to say that cooperating with him and his group is a priority.”
“Group?”
“Well naturally I looked him up,” said Gebhart. “As far as I could, before I’d get noticed. But I kept banging into unknowns.
Not something that inspires confidence. All I can find out is that his section is some kind of floater, a ‘task- force.’ No details.”
“In the BP, even?”
Gebhart flicked away the suggestion with his hand.
“Our glorious Polizei? The minute I’d try to weasel anything out of them, an old friend of mine even, they’d be looking in my keyhole.”
He heard Gebhart breathe out heavily through his nose once.
He took it to be exasperation more than humour.
“Okay,” Gebhart said. “If this is true, half of it some of it even you have to report it.”
He gave Felix a hard look.
“That’s my advice. And furthermore, if I was you, starting out my career, and I had an eye on getting places… ”
“Go on, Gebi. Say it.”
“I’d be telling Speckbauer too. That’s the real world these days.
Okay?”
“About my grandfather? I can’t screw over my own family.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gebhart and took a step away. “Don’t forget what you told me on the phone. We’re sticking to that. Or else, I walk.”
“Of course we are.”
“So we are on a timer, right? I give you two hours of my time, two hours I have manufactured as ‘police work’ which is true, even if I have gone along with your fashion request here.”
He paused and indicated his street clothes with a small wave of his hand.
“But if this stuff pertains to a murder investigation, or criminal activity…?”
Felix nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I know. We move it upstairs right away.”
“No family favours,” said Gebhart. “None.”
“No favours,” Felix repeated.
Gebhart seemed to linger on Felix’s words. Then he relaxed.
Felix followed him to his car and they both got in.
“And you’re supposed to be on a beach somewhere,” said Gebhart and turned the key. The diesel caught right away and its first wrenching revs rattled loud in the woods.
“With that nice girl?”
“That’s another story,” said Felix. “But not now.”
“Ah,” said Gebhart, and let it into reverse. He turned to see out the back window.
“Or starting out your new career, maybe looking forward to the heavenly union between us and our betters in the Bundespolizei not running about in off-hours with those two.”
Gebhart checked his mirrors, and then put it in first before the car had even stopped reversing. There was a moment’s hesitation before the car changed direction when Felix thought he too had bogged down. He had not imagined Gebhart capable of blue jeans, or looking like anything but the Gendarme who showed up for work in his uniform each day.
“Those two hounds,” said Gebhart. “They won’t rest long.”
“Speckbauer?”
“They’re not idiots. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all part of their plan.”
“What, us here?”
“Sure. And who is the bigger dummy here, you or me? I should know better.”
Gebhart cleared his throat, and then rolled down his window full. He spat with a peculiar delicacy into the undergrowth slowly drifting by. Felix heard a truck labouring on the road outside, a clash of gears as the driver launched it at the hill with a full load.
“I may be pissing on my pension here,” Gebhart murmured.
“That’s why I had a cigarette. Yes, two and a bit years to go, and I’m starting over. I’ll be the best goddamned house painter you’ll ever see.”
