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?”
“What about them? Over.”
“Will you be up his way today, he wants to know. Over.”
“What does that mean? A police matter?”
“He didn’t say. But you know him, his son, he said. Over.”
Gebhart hesitated.
“Look,” he said then. “I’ll phone him when we get back. Over?”
He shook his head as though bewildered, and replaced the mouthpiece. He sagged lower into the seat and looked out the side window. Felix stole a glance over. To see if there was any clue about what the message meant. There was none.
He drew into the lay-by that was in sight of a small scatter of older houses.
“Okay,” said Gebhart. He seemed to rouse himself from whatever had made him turn in on himself. He checked the laserpistole he had been holding and tugged the side of his green vest tighter.
“Let’s pinch a few hausfraus,” he said. “The little ones are in the school now, and the hubbie’s gone to work. This is the hour the entertaining starts.”
The raised eyebrow and the refusal to smile left Felix baffled.
“Entertainment?”
“And they’ll be speeding, let me tell you.”
Gebi Josef, or Seppi Gebhart wasn’t a cynic, Felix had come to conclude. He had wondered at first how a 41-year-old Gendarme had not moved up in all those years of service. He rarely mentioned his family, and it seemed that he kept work and home very distinct.
Felix had found out from Korschak who had muttered something about having smart daughters who gave him grief, a son who had some issues. “Issues?”
Out on the road now, he took up position beside Gebi, who had the pistole mounted and scanning quickly. He watched Gebi’s impassive face as the cars came by. None tripped the pistole limit.
There weren’t even any dives, those half-funny giveaways that showed the driver had been speeding. They must have been spotted.
“Don’t give up yet,” said Gebhart. “A few more minutes. You’ll see.”
Felix looked across the wet fields, his mind drifting. It was seldom lately that he’d found himself wondering whether some cynic, or maybe some old enemy of his father, had put him here in Stephansdorf, with Gebhart, as a joke. Maybe it was a test: prove you can work with anyone, Kimmel: we’ve been saving this one for you. Survive this, and you’ll do fine. Or had it been a kindly gesture in disguise, from someone in Postings who had read something into Felix’s CV, and his temperament, and engineered his posting here as a warning: this is what a stale cop looks like. Do you want to grow to be like this cop?
Then he heard the alarm go from the laserpistole.
“What did I tell you,” said Gebhart, and he raised his arm.
“Blonde, of course.”
Felix thought of the rasp of Giuliana’s skin on his knee, the way she pushed and arched, the way she muttered and even grunted at him when she was close to losing it. Parsley, he thought suddenly, and realized that he must have been thinking about this somewhere.
That was it: the scent of her was parsley.