Gebi helped load the gear into the boot of the Opel, the second of the two patrol cars at the post. Felix had noticed the care Gebi showed in how he warmed the engine, and how he coaxed it up to 100 before backing off and muttering about “strain” and “transmission” and “clear the injectors.”
“Start over by Semmarach,” he said to Felix. “There’s a spot near a farmhouse there. You know it? You get the real headers tearing up there. They know they’re close to the autobahn.”
Felix checked the car radio with Korschak and gave him their destination.
“That Korschak,” said Gebhart, straining to look back at a bread van unloading.
“What about him?”
“I used to think he was one of those. You know? Don’t tell him.”
“Playing for the other team?”
“Yeah. Your bunch knows all about that, of course. Who am I to talk?”
“Do you mean people who live in Graz? People my age, or other gay men like me?”
“Very funny, Professor. I meant your generation. As if I cared whether a man is gay or not. Macht nichst.”
“It makes no odds to you at all?”
“You seem surprised. My generation is not allowed to be tolerant?”
The sky behind the hills was still glowing now, but a tiny sliver of moon remained over the last of the lights on the houses. It might be shirtsleeves by midday today yet.
“Morning drivers are quite polite when you nail them,” said Gebhart then. “Did you know that?”
“I’ve only done one trap. It was in the afternoon.”
“You’re going to track a couple of real fliers at least, though.”
Now wasn’t the time to tell the same Gebhart that last October he’d gotten to Vienna in 90 minutes on the autobahn. There was a separate corps in the Gendarmerie for the autobahn patrols and traffic. Quite a serious bunch too. They could take your car for that kind of a stunt.
“The real damage gets done on the local roads, doesn’t it,” he said to Gebhart.
“Stimmt. Those are stats you can’t argue with. They’re speeding just to get to the autobahn, just to save what, two minutes? What does that say about human nature?”
“That people are predictable, maybe?”
“Did you make that up just now? Or is it some fancy logic thing, some philosophy thing?”
“Who says people aren’t cranky this time of day?”
Gebhart gave him a considered look. Felix had learned to grade them. This one was minor not quite glare, more curiosity and skepticism together.
“I was trying to make a point. So do we need the irony crap? I say no. What, you thought I didn’t know irony? I respect the book stuff. I respect your, uh, poetic leanings. Just don’t be a pain in the arsch.”
“Thanks. Nothing personal. Right, Gebi?”
“Absolutely. You know that.”
“‘Nothing personal, Felix, but you’re an idiot’?”
Gebhart chortled.
“You’re good,” he said. “When you’re not being a dummy.
Come on now. We have a job here.”
There was a line of six cars behind the Opel already. None dared pass, of course. Felix began to wonder what some of them were thinking, especially the guy in the Mercedes two back.
Swearing probably.
He liked the way this was turning out.
FIVE
By nine, gendarmesKimmel and Gebhart had amassed a reasonable sum for the coffers of the Austrian state. Gebi had even nailed two drivers for flashing the oncoming traffic too. One of the flashers had played it right, however, saying he hadn’t realized it was an offence. He spoke in a respectful, resigned tone about how he had been merely hoping to slow down a couple of crazy ones; that he thought it might lower the danger, blah blah. But Gebi had shown no mercy to an elegant woman in a 7 Series BMW. Felix heard him mutter something about a boy- toy coming too early, as she accelerated away, expressionless. She had been unperturbed by the fine.
The one to remember was a large, morose man in an old Kadett. Felix had written him up. For a while he couldn’t concentrate on the form. His mind was full of the man’s sullen menace. It was as if it was being pumped across the air between them in a relentless cloud. He became preoccupied almost immediately with re-enacting the drills in his mind, the ones for pacifying a guy who had an obvious size advantage. The man hadn’t said more than two words in total. Felix wondered if the guy would do more than keep up that baleful, blank stare at him.
Gebi was good, better than he let on, at picking up on things like this. He must have noticed the guy’s expression. When Felix looked up from the clipboard again, Gebhart had left the lazerpistole and taken up a position behind the driver’s side of the Kadett, his hand in his belt. The move wasn’t lost on the driver. His eye strayed from Felix to his mirror more often. Gebi shifted to see better when Felix handed the driver the ticket. After a count of 10 he barked at the driver.
“Get moving there, Citizen. You’re a hazard here. Read your ticket at home.”
The sun broke through the mist at last, and the greens and blues took on depth. They moved three klicks down to the next exit and set up on the Birkfeld Road. Gebhart hung back awhile in the Opel listening to the traffic on the radio. There had been an accident near Birkfeld.
Felix set up and checked the charge in the laserpistole. He half enjoyed the effect their car was having on the traffic, the glances, the brake lights, the frequent embarrassed smiles. Prevention was part of the job too. The sun grew warmer on the back of his neck and he heard a tractor’s diesel clanking from somewhere. Behind the hill the constant hush of the autobahn spread across the fields and hedges.
Gebi closed the door and made his way over.
“We’ll get a few of the grocery and school mob now,” he said.
“Some of those characters you pinch on their way to the autobahn, boy, they give me the creeps. Like that gypsy in the crapmobile, that Kadett.”
“How do you know gypsy? ‘Strozek.’ That’s Hungarian back somewhere.”
“You think I turn my safety off and loosen the button on my shooter for a guy just because he has a Hungarian-sounding family name? Grow up.”
“Fake papers? Wouldn’t that have popped up when I radioed in the licence?”
“Gypsy. Albanian. Chechen? Who knows. Who knows where the Balkan Route begins or where it ends. These days.”
Felix looked at his partner, and for the first time that he could remember, he couldn’t tell if Gebi was putting out some sly humour, or not. At least he hadn’t come up with the real slur, Die Tschuchen. If “nigger” was brought to Europe, and slapped on anyone from the Balkans, this would be it.
“Maybe I should have done him an emissions test?” Felix tried.
“See the smoke when he took off?”
“Now there’s a thought,” Gebhart murmured.
He turned to let his glare stay on a Mercedes that had braked hard. The radio came to life.
“Zentrale to Stefansdorf Ein.”
Korschak. By the book, always: never just Car One. Stefansdorf One, never Stefansdorf Two. It didn’t matter there was only one patrol car out at a time from the post, ever.
“Go ahead Zentrale.”
“Telephone call for you Gebi, you might want to consider it after your assignment. Local, not urgent. You want it, over?”
Gebhart frowned.
“Might as well, Zentrale. Over wait, give me a name first, and I’ll know.”
“Family Himmelfarb?”
