Brenner and God (15 page)

Interesting, though: the attack was good for the conversation, because as they drove off in a hurry, their conversation popped back into gear.

“I don’t know the girl’s address. I don’t keep any records of my crimes.”

“And she doesn’t have a name, either?”

“I only really know her first name. And even that she told me in an immigrant’s Viennese. How the kids talk who are born here but speak another language at home.”

“Oida! Oida! Oida! Oida! Go shit I say!” Brenner thought he could impress the Frau Doctor with how well he could imitate this throat malady. Maybe elicit a small smile in the midst of a desperate situation.

“You do that very well,” she said, but not with a smile; no, so coolly that despite the 77-degree weather, the windshield-washing fluid would’ve frozen, guaranteed, had he not just refilled the antifreeze a few days ago. Under better circumstances an even wittier reply would have come to him. But stricken as he was, he only heard hurtfulness in her remark. He only detected from it that she counted him among
them
, her staff; that he was the sort who, right from the outset, never had a chance in his life with someone like the Frau Doctor, because of education, because of age, because of manners, because of language, because of money, because of everything.

“And her first name was probably fake, too,” she continued. One thing you can’t forget: for her, the remark had been no big deal. She really did have other concerns. “Maybe it was just a nickname: Sunny.”

“Probably short for Susanna,” Brenner said, because he couldn’t help but think of the Susanna who’d once won the grand prize at the Linzer police department’s Christmas raffle, believe it or not, a ski weekend in Hintersoder for two, and no one was allowed to call her Susi—only Sunny.

“Short for Susanna,” the doctor replied, “I don’t think so. Susanna isn’t a particularly common name among immigrant girls. I think it’s more likely English.”

And Brenner, with particularly good pronunciation, “The sunny side of the street.” Not sung, of course, just spoken.

“Sunny side,” the doctor repeated pensively, as though she had to think about what it could possibly mean.

“I once paid for a young woman’s abortion, too,” Brenner began, hoping that with this story he’d get somewhere with the Frau Doctor yet. “In my police academy days. Her name was Hansi, short for Johanna.”

“Aha.”

“It was still illegal at the time, so she drove all the way to Amsterdam. I paid for all of it. Train, hotel, abortion.”

“And you went with her?”

“No, I didn’t have enough money. Two train tickets, then staying overnight, plus meals on top of that. But in hindsight I have to say, it would’ve been cheaper if I had gone. Because she changed her mind in Amsterdam.”

“She discovered herself with drugs instead.”

“Not drugs, exactly—hashish. And after a fun week she returned without the abortion.”

“So you’re a father?”

“Was.”

The doctor looked at him with utter sympathy, and Brenner saw the old Frau Doctor in her again, the one who was always personable and friendly.

“Two years she let me pay alimony, but then the finance director in Graz married her. She was the type that men chased after. Although to be honest, I have to say, I only liked her from the side. But the finance director took her nonetheless.”

“Maybe he liked her from the front, too.”

“No, I meant he married her in spite of the kid. And after the wedding she admitted that the child hadn’t been mine
at all, but another classmate’s from the police academy. He probably paid for the abortion, too. But the alimony, only me, because my classmate died on the Matterhorn before the child was born.”

Seventy-four hours after her daughter’s disappearance, the Frau Doctor began to cry because of this story. Brenner apologized for mentioning his classmate’s death. But she said it was okay, her nerves were just fried, and really she should be the one to apologize for burdening him with her story. And you see, that’s another similarity between the medical profession and the detective profession. Because just like patients will often change their minds in the waiting room,
my tooth doesn’t hurt after all
, so too did Helena’s mother lose her courage, and instead of wanting any more help from Brenner, she just wanted to be rid of him as soon as possible.

Brenner felt so sorry for her that up until the moment when he got out of the car, he’d been considering whether to betray every shred of common detective sense and tell her that Knoll was dead. And you see, that was exactly the wrong question. Because really he should have been asking himself why her voice changed so suddenly, why she revoked her trust in him when he told her the story about the police academy. If he’d just tugged on these flimsy strings, the entire solution probably would have presented itself, and five people wouldn’t have had to die.

But maybe the time simply wasn’t ripe yet, seventy-four hours after the disappearance. Because one thing you can’t forget: the Zone of Transparency doesn’t tear open until the fifth day, i.e., one hundred hours, at the very earliest.

Between the seventy-fourth and the eighty-eighth hours, Brenner did some first-rate investigative work that was never fully appreciated afterward. It all got overshadowed by the next day’s madness. Obviously, with a development like this, the detail work gets lost. The carpenter can’t bid personal farewell to every wood shaving with a thank-you speech for the top-notch collaboration, and once a crime really gets escalating, when a murder is paid a visit by its little children, the subsequent murders, then a detective can’t be praised for everything that he did right.

But because everyone glossed right over it, I’d like to at least touch on it briefly. I have to say, it was brilliant how Brenner spearheaded the search for the Yugo-girl. For Sunny. He achieved peak detective form there, and there’s only one thing to be said: hats off.

I don’t get it either. It’s a sign of our times that nobody properly appreciates these things anymore. The clean detective work, the police procedural, the craftsman’s skill, none of it has any worth today. Even Brenner himself didn’t think anything of it, or didn’t look back proudly on it later. Because it is what it is, and what it is is his job. And I can understand it somehow, too, how he didn’t pat himself on the back; how,
even though he was exhausted from his encounter with the Frau Doctor, he still managed to drum up the only people who could get him in the door of the Yugo-scene. And how he tracked down Milan, freshly fired from the gas station, home in front of the TV, and sent him through the Yugo-disco circuit with Sunny’s photo. Milan was thrilled about his new assignment. The only touchy subject was when Brenner asked whether he could maybe get hold of a gun. Brenner hadn’t meant any offense, along the lines of, anyone who sells beer out the backdoor can get hold of a gun, too. He just didn’t feel completely at ease anymore since he’d discovered Knoll. But that was also the only mistake he made that day, everything else first-rate.

For Brenner, things were going exactly like they would for everyone else afterward, which is a way of saying, what happened to him would radiate out to everyone else that night. But we haven’t gotten nearly that far yet. Because seventy-seven hours after Helena’s disappearance he hired Milan, and seventy-eight hours after Helena’s disappearance he already had two liters of weak Schrebergarten coffee in his stomach, half a kilo of powdered sugar in his blood, and twenty Schrebergarten scandals in his thick skull. Among them, though, was the explanation for why Knoll had bought the cottage. Believe it or not, his attorney had filed a neighbor’s injunction against the MegaLand project—in other words, immediate halt to the construction.

Eighty hours after Helena’s disappearance, Brenner picked up pills for his headache at the drugstore, and as soon as they started working a little, not quite eighty-one hours after Helena’s disappearance, he called Kressdorf and
disguised his voice, posing as a journalist who was hoping to find something out about MegaLand’s halted construction. Interesting, though: Kressdorf wasn’t impressed one bit and was even quite confident that the injunction wouldn’t hold for long.

He didn’t get anything more out of Kressdorf, and I have to say, it’s for the best. Because otherwise maybe Brenner wouldn’t have wrung from his frustration the courage to call Natalie, too. And he really did learn something from Natalie. Or better put, from the truth written in flames. But for now, pay attention.

Eighty-three hours after Helena’s disappearance, Brenner persuaded Natalie to meet him. At first she was rather rigid and resolute in her claim that she couldn’t explain why the Frau Doctor would have Congressman Stachl’s telephone number, either. Of course, there was no reason why she should be able to explain it, that’s true enough. But why would Natalie get so red in the face while saying so, like a shy girl who was telling a lie for the first time in her life?

“The Frau Doctor came to me today,” Brenner said, “even though she shouldn’t have, if it’s a police matter.”

As he spoke, her rosiness faded again but only from her face. Because the red spots on her neck darkened all the more. It looked to Brenner as if the truth which hadn’t escaped Natalie’s lips was searching her neck for an emergency exit.

“She talked to me for hours”—he wasn’t cutting Natalie any slack—“but I sensed that, at the last second, she didn’t trust me with the secret she’d actually come to me with.”

The red flames spread from her collarbone to her jaw
now, as if the intrepidly silent Natalie were hastening her body to write the truth in flames on her neck so that she wouldn’t be forced to say it aloud. But I always say, a truth written in flames is written in haste. But you’ve got to be able to read it right. And just between us, Brenner had no grand gift for language. You could write something out for him in flames, and he wouldn’t understand it. He just stared at it long enough until Natalie took it upon herself to spell it out for him. Because, “written in flames,” what’s that mean? Written in blood, you’d have to say. After all, it was the blood that pushed itself to the surface of her neck, and blood was exactly what this story was about, when she finally came out with it. But pay attention now, because this gets interesting.

Natalie told him that Kressdorf’s and his daughter’s blood types don’t match. My dear swan, the heat was even rising to Brenner’s head now. Adrenaline surge: understatement.

“I don’t understand why she hasn’t told the police,” Natalie erupted. “If it were a matter of my daughter’s life and death, I’d tell them everything! They tried artificial insemination for years because Kressdorf’s sperm quality wasn’t good. We learned about it at the clinic. And then all of a sudden she was pregnant!”

“Right around the time Congressman Stachl started showing up around the clinic?”

“Why are you asking me, if you already know?”

“And Kressdorf? Does he know?”

Natalie shook her head. “The Frau Doctor would often cry on my shoulder back then because she was so done in by the hormone treatments. She had eight failed attempts
altogether. Do you know what that means for a woman? And then suddenly she was pregnant.”

“And you suspected the truth from the start.”

“No, mostly it just surprised me. I didn’t suspect anything at all. I was honestly happy for her. And the thought never even would’ve occurred to me, if our receptionist wasn’t always coming up with a new diet every few months.”

“The blood-type diet.”

You’re surprised that Brenner knew about this fad. Simple explanation: the receptionist had tried to convert him to the blood-type diet his very first week on the job. He didn’t tell Natalie this now, though, because he didn’t want to interrupt her explanation.

“Our receptionist asked each of us what blood type we were. For a few weeks there, until she came up with the next diet, everyone knew each other’s blood types. The Frau Doctor was A, and her husband A, too. But, no one asked which blood type Helena was. I’d noticed back when she was born, though, that she was the same as me. But a child can’t be type B if both parents are A.”

“I don’t know offhand which blood type I am,” Brenner said, and maybe you can tell from his pointless comment that the story was starting to get on his nerves.

And maybe, too, he wanted to spare Natalie from having to say, “I can never forgive myself for letting it slip to the receptionist. I impressed upon her that she could not, under any circumstances, tell anyone else, but you know how that is. I have no idea how many people know about it now.”

“Knoll, anyway.”

Interesting, though: Natalie turned an entirely different
shade of red now than before. And that’s why I say the red spots on her neck were really meant as a message from Natalie’s unconscious. What else are you supposed to do when you’re the unconscious? You can’t talk out loud, as Natalie now did when she asked Brenner, “Do you think it has something to do with the kidnapping?”

“No clue.”

And I’ve got to say, Brenner had seldom been so right. Within just a few hours he would become all too conscious of just what little clue he truly had at that moment.

But for now, pay attention.

These days, everybody knows the standard links between sex life and human life, where it’s typically thought that the one arises from having done the other—causal relationship, as it were. Not just causal, but a temporal relationship, too, because the one’s always nine months before the other, or maybe even eight or seven months. A pro-lifer would even say, a single day after the former and you’ve already got the latter. But nobody would dispute that, strictly speaking, the one’s always got to come before the other. No one would claim that a special exception can be made and it can happen the other way around—credit at the sperm bank, as it were—and you’ve had your kid two, three years already before you find a five-minute window in your planner to quickly do the sex part for your progeny who’s already making prettier drawings than the other children in kindergarten.