Brenner and God

CHAPTER 20

It happens that fast in life. Congressman Stachl had just been standing up there among the people who were trying at all costs to find out where Brenner was keeping the video, and now he was the one lying in the cesspit and Brenner was back up above. Fortunately, Brenner’s promise of information about Helena’s whereabouts proved to be of greater interest to Kressdorf than the million-euro project after all, because-paternal instincts.

And when Congressman Stachl refused to haul Brenner back out, Kressdorf got his hunting rifle from the house and struck the congressman so forcefully on the back of the head that they later determined from the autopsy that Stachl hadn’t drowned in the cesspit at all, but arrived there with his neck already broken. And so you see once again how much truth there is in the saying practice makes perfect. Say what you will about it. Because with Knoll they determined that Kressdorf had only knocked him out with the hunting rifle and it was in the cesspit that he died.

But don’t go thinking that the two musclemen blindly listened to Kressdorf and pulled Brenner back out again. The opposite. It got to be much too much for them once Kressdorf completely lost it and went for the congressman. They realized right away, of course, that they couldn’t rely on Kressdorf anymore. And not on their stake in MegaLand either, since he was putting the project at risk. Watch closely. With a shotgun pointed at them, he had to force them to pull Brenner back out and untie him there beside the cesspit.

I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I can thoroughly understand Kressdorf taking such drastic action, given that he’d learned just two days earlier that Helena wasn’t his biological daughter. Now he saw his one and only chance to take back his fatherhood with force, by doing away with the sperm donor and rescuing Helena. And one thing you can’t forget: after he’d clocked Knoll for rubbing it in his face that he wasn’t even the father of his own daughter, it would’ve been pointless for Kressdorf to stop halfway.

Brenner, of course, wasn’t waiting a moment’s thought on these things now. He wasn’t even aware at first that he was back up above. His senses hadn’t completely returned to him yet when the shot rang out. And one thing you can’t forget: a hunting rifle’s always a loud shot. But that’s not to say that Kressdorf was shooting into the air with his hunting rifle in order to return Brenner to his senses now-wake the dead, as it were. Quite the contrary. Kressdorf was helping his security boss-who didn’t want to resuscitate Brenner-to quit smoking once and for all, i.e., shot him right in the lungs. And then the foreman did it gladly, though it was no pretty task, because let’s put it this way: Brenner had more freckles on his face than the man who was respirating him. The foreman only did it because his boss was holding a shotgun to his head. But if you’re saying, that’s despicable, then I unfortunately have to tell you, this was still the nice part of the story.

And if you scare easily, think about something else now. Close your eyes and think of that vacation on the beach, reclining chair, suntan lotion, sound of the waves. And not of that patch of grass beside the cesspit. Kressdorf wasn’t leaving anything half-done there. In other words, Brenner’s first breath was also his rescuer’s last. Because directly in the head. And believe it or not, Brenner almost envied him for it.

Normally you’d say that a person who’s just come to should rest a little while and not return right away to the mob office that he’s just taken a flying leap from until after a lunch break. But here again is the advantage of being the murderer. You don’t have to go around agonizing about the little moral prescriptions. And Kressdorf wasn’t going to begrudge Brenner the chance to catch his breath now. With shotgun in hand, he forced Brenner, who was still shaky and befuddled, to push the two corpses into the cesspit to join Knoll and Congressman Stachl. And you see, that’s the beautiful thing about misfortune. That is the magnificent thing about sickness and death. That’s the wonderful thing about exhaustion and collapse. You hopelessly outmatch every weapon. Because total exhaustion, terminal illness, complete despair, nothing’s more motivating than a shotgun. But Brenner was just too exhausted still. Even with the strongest of wills, he couldn’t do it. His knees kept buckling-marionettes haven’t got anything on him.

There was nothing left for Kressdorf to do now. Shotgun or no shotgun, he had to do it himself. In the workplace, he’d heave a loud sigh at every opportunity and bemoan tearfully how he always had to do everything himself. But today, no whining, no sighing, and no stamping his feet. He was utterly focused on the matter at hand. I’d almost like to say it was one of the happiest moments in his life, when there was nothing except him and the task before him, and with a few determined kicks of his foot, he nudged the two corpses over the edge of the cesspit, where each disappeared with an indifferent splash.

My dear swan, Knoll, the congressman, and the two bully-boys in a cesspit. A party came together there, and you almost have to say, it’s no minor feat when a pool of shit is made qualitatively worse.

Standing had become so strenuous for Brenner that he sat back down in the grass, right at the edge of the cesspit. He stared into it and tried to remember something important that he’d experienced down there. He mustered all his powers of concentration, but he only knew that it was something terribly important. Something earth-shattering, it seemed to him, that explained why he was so exhausted. But it sank deeper and deeper, never to resurface in him.

Purely from a detective’s standpoint, it wasn’t so bad that he’d completely forgotten the good lord because the good lord wasn’t the perpetrator. The good lord didn’t make the South Tyrolean take Helena. He didn’t make Brenner forget to gas up the night before. He didn’t make the Frau Doctor implicate her husband in a gigantic construction contract by not reporting an abortion she’d performed on a twelve-year-old child. He didn’t make the congressman spoil Prater Park and get his contractor’s wife pregnant. And above all, he didn’t make Knoll make threats in his name.

The good lord just gazed upon all of this with a smile because-free will. The sight of the open pit, into which his memory had disappeared for all eternity, was so discomforting to Brenner that he asked Kressdorf whether he should cover the cesspit back up with the wooden boards or whether it wasn’t worth it because he was still planning to throw him in, too.

“Close it up,” Kressdorf said. “Why do you think I got you back out, Herr Simon?” Because-unbelievable, Kressdorf, still correct, addressing Brenner formally as Herr Simon. “You I still need. And those few boards can always be quickly removed again. But no innocent person should fall in.”

Then he sent Brenner to the shower and had him put on some of his clean hunting clothes. And then they drove to Vienna to get Helena.