Brenner and God

CHAPTER 21

One thing I’ve never liked about the human brain: that in the most dangerous situations, it often attaches importance to the silliest little things. So it bothers you that the executioner uses a bad aftershave, it bothers you that the doctor pronounces your throat cancer with a rolled R, and it bothers you that you can’t claim your wedding ring as a tax deduction. And believe it or not, it was bothering Brenner now that he should have to slip into a hunting ensemble while Kressdorf nagged him.

But I have to defend Kressdorf here. What was he supposed to do? There simply wasn’t any other clothing in the cabin. And was he supposed to let Brenner sit on his leather upholstery in his cesspit-soaked clothes? He didn’t have to rush him, either, though. As if it were all riding on these few seconds now. Brenner only had two buckhorn buttons fastened when Kressdorf got impatient and pushed him into the car.

So that Kressdorf wouldn’t notice how bad he was feeling, Brenner said in the car, “Today we’re really contributing something to the rejuvenation of society.” But Kressdorf didn’t react, just kept his sights trained on Brenner so he wouldn’t make a wrong turn on the way out of Kitzbuhel. As if the joke-explaining soul of the newly deceased security guard were inside him, Brenner went on, “Because swapping four imbeciles for one child, society can’t have anything against that.”

But Kressdorf told him he should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on the driving. Whether or not he meant to address Brenner formally as Herr Simon was left open-ended this time because short and succinct: “Shut up.”

As Brenner told him the story of the accidental kidnapping by the South Tyrolean, it seemed like he might actually be halfway reaching Kressdorf again, but no sooner had he begun to hope that his disclosure might turn Kressdorf around and pull him back over to his side, when Kressdorf interrupted him again with a perfectly devoid of emotion “Shut up.”

At least this gave Brenner plenty of time to think about what his best course of action was in order to keep Kressdorf from shooting him as soon as he got the kid. Or if he did shoot him, how he could prevent him from shooting the South Tyrolean, too. Because one thing’s clear: when you’ve come as far as Kressdorf has, you don’t waste any time coddling your witnesses, no, you mop them up like fly droppings because-no sentimentality.

But the longer he thought about it, the more hopeless the situation seemed to him. Between Amstetten and St. Polten, he tried to ensnare Kressdorf in conversation again. “What was it about your wife that Knoll caught on tape and you killed him for?”

“Nothing at all.”

Interesting, though: because Brenner thought “Nothing at all” meant about as much as “Shut up,” he didn’t even entertain the possibility that Kressdorf had just begun to tell him the truth. But maybe Brenner’s silence was good just now, because twenty kilometers outside St. Polten, Kressdorf started talking again. “It wasn’t my wife who Knoll found something out about. It was me. You know how my office is in Munich.”

Kressdorf thought about this sentence for another five minutes, as if he’d discovered an explanation for all the world’s misfortunes in the words “Munich” and “office.”

“That’s why I’d sometimes use my wife’s office in Vienna and keep the bribe money in the clinic’s safe. Once, Congressman Stachl met me there to deliver a kickback. And Knoll got it on his surveillance camera.”

“How much was he demanding for it?” Brenner asked, because now that Kressdorf had gotten to talking, a question in between wasn’t a problem anymore.

“Nothing at all. Knoll was an idealist. His suggestion was: he erases the tape, and I get my wife to close the clinic once and for all. If he’d gone public with his evidence, not only would MegaLand have been history, Congressman Stachl and I would’ve gone to prison, KREBA would’ve gone bankrupt. And so on. I’m not just talking about a few million euros.”

That Kressdorf was telling him all this-ninety-nine hours after Helena’s kidnapping-was not a good sign for Brenner.

“You know what I think?” Kressdorf asked him. But then he just thought it over for a while and kept it to himself. Whether he just wasn’t certain, or he just didn’t want to divulge it to Brenner, I don’t know.

He said, “Knoll was always grinning with that air of superiority. Especially when I explained to him that I’d rather go to prison than cause my wife any harm. He just said, with that smug smile of his, that he didn’t understand where Helena-”

Kressdorf sank so low now, it was as if he’d never speak another word again. Brenner almost finished the sentence for him, just to get it out there. He almost said, this kind of thing has happened to other men before, too. Almost said, the main thing is that nothing’s happened to Helena. But Kressdorf didn’t give the impression of wanting to hear anything more, so Brenner didn’t say anything at all.

“What blood type are you, Herr Simon?”

“I don’t know. They measured it once when I was on the force.”

“Measured!” Kressdorf laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh that eased Brenner’s mind. Because it was the clipped, dry laugh of a ghost. “You mean tested.”

“I don’t remember, though.”

“Why didn’t you stay on the police force?”

Brenner didn’t reply, because on the cue of “police,” Kressdorf kept right on talking.

“I’ve done plenty of half-legal things in my life. Or illegal, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows that nothing happens in the construction business without bribes. And MegaLand is far and away the biggest contract KREBA’s ever gotten. But real crimes, kidnapping and blackmail, I’ve never had anything to do with them. Not to mention murder. Or manslaughter. And when I pressured my wife to perform the abortion on that underage girl of Reinhard’s, it was already too much for me. Not because of the abortion, but because of her. I told her that, what with the bank loan, Reinhard had Knoll right in the palm of his hand. That’s why she did it. And to finally be left in peace by Knoll. But not even the bank director managed to subdue Knoll.”

“Or he didn’t want to,” Brenner said.

“Or he didn’t want to, exactly.”

“But, all the same, you got into the MegaLand business because you smoothed the way with the abortion.”

“That’s correct, Herr Simon.”

Brenner opted not to say anything more now, because he noticed that Kressdorf was in an overly sensitive mood where he was interpreting everything as a reproach.

“And then the congressman went into business with my wife.” Kressdorf laughed so bitterly at that, you would’ve thought it was a worse crime than the four people dead in the cesspit.

“Stachl and I met at a charity golf game. I’d been after him for years. Like every other contractor. Before, he’d always brushed me off like I was just some do-it-yourself builder and he was Donald Trump. But then all of the sudden he was sweet as pie. He whispers to me that Bank Director Reinhard has a problem that my wife can remedy. And in turn, Reinhard might have an opportunity to subdue Knoll.”

“And to let you build MegaLand.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that easy to build in Prater Park. It started with the golf course, and then it grew from there. For a banker who was in the black, it was a matter close to his heart for half of the Prater to come under his control, and right in the middle of Vienna when the whole city’s in the red. With Stachl he had the right man at his side. People’s protests did in fact hold us up, but we just about had them all cleared out of our way. Then suddenly Helena was kidnapped. We thought Knoll was behind it. And Knoll thought we were behind it. And now you’re telling me it wasn’t even an actual kidnapping. But in the meantime, four people are dead.”

“Six,” Brenner said, “if you count Milan and the nanny’s husband.”

“Stachl tried to keep me from pulling you back out. He said, ‘Too much has happened already.’ It didn’t matter to him one bit that Helena was his kid, too.”

“Maybe he didn’t know?”

Kressdorf had nothing to say to that. I almost think it didn’t matter to him either at this point.

When they arrived in front of the South Tyrolean’s house, across the street from the gas station, Brenner still didn’t know how he was supposed to keep the humiliated non-father from killing both him and the South Tyrolean in order to undo history and get his daughter back, not just Helena, but hair, skin, all of her-genetically speaking, as it were.

Now, for your reassurance. At least the South Tyrolean wasn’t there.

Now, for your disassurance. The child wasn’t there, either.

After they’d searched the last room, Brenner tried to convince Kressdorf that he hadn’t lied to him. He explained to him that the South Tyrolean had probably gone to the police after he didn’t come back as promised. Even Brenner didn’t really believe that, although it later turned out to be true. But then Kressdorf did something that filled Brenner with such fright that being dangled from a balcony seemed like a MegaLand attraction by comparison.

You should know, Kressdorf’s angry outbursts had caused him so much damage both professionally and personally over the years that at some point, as a matter of principle, he’d taken to the age-old trick of silently counting down from ten in hairy situations. But Kressdorf was so far outside himself now that-one hundred hours after his daughter’s disappearance-he forgot about the “silently” part, and although he was indeed counting down, he was doing it out loud.

“Ten.”

When a grown man just starts doing this, it’s a little creepy maybe, but when he’s already deposited four people in a cesspit, and when you can only hear him counting with your right ear because the barrel of his rifle is in your left ear, then you’ve got Brenner’s situation exactly.

“Nine.”

Kressdorf took a deep breath, exhaled deeply, inhaled deeply.

“Eight.”

Brenner didn’t breathe at all.

“Seven.”

Now, while Kressdorf’s slowly counting down so as not to make a mistake because of his temper, I’ll tell you something else real quick now. Pay attention. How did they even get into the apartment? The South Tyrolean hadn’t given Brenner a key. And Kressdorf’s not one to break down a door. He’s not that type of full-service criminal, who you might say, learned the trade from the bottom up, who can do everything from a bike lock to a clean kidney stitch. Kressdorf had only the brutality, the buttoned-up uncompromisingness that you learn in the Business School of Life, but craft and skill, zero. He stood before that locked door like a cow before a gate.

Brenner, on the other hand. He could have forced him, i.e., gun to the head, to break down the door. First of all, though, Brenner had never been particularly good at breaking down doors, he’d gotten a D in breaking down doors at the police academy. And above all, why should Brenner break down the door when he’d seen where the South Tyrolean hides her keys a few times now? Because she said she’d locked herself out with the damn spring lock three times already, and burglars are going to find a way in anyway, so she might as well leave a key for herself, too. Whether you believe it or not, in a ficus benjamina.

“Four.”

You’ll have to excuse me for going into such detail, but it just never fails to amaze me how between a perfectly normal ficus benjamina, between perfectly normally unlocking the door, between a perfectly normal look in the bedroom, look in the kitchen, look in the bathroom, look in the twenty-five rooms filled with plants, look in the closet, between the perfectly normal disappointment of not finding what you’re looking for, and a disappointed perp shooting you in the head-often a matter of just a few seconds.

“Three.”

And the earth turns quietly on. Purely from the universe’s point of view, it makes no difference whether Kressdorf squeezed the trigger or not-as far as I’m concerned, it’s no greater difference than whether the key’s hidden in a ficus tree or a rubber plant. No greater difference than the question, was the key made by Mr. Minute or Key Central? To the universe all of it means absolutely nothing, and does Brenner or does he not have a hole in his head, will he die now or in twenty years, will he die quickly or slowly, will he die in despair or at peace with himself and the world, will he die excruciatingly or painlessly-to the universe it’s all the same, you can’t even imagine. Was Brenner even born or was he aborted in maybe the third or fifth month-either way it’s the same to the universe-as if his mother were in her six-hundred and eighty-ninth month, but still no cash on delivery.

“Two.”

Brenner was on the exact same page as the universe now. He didn’t care whether Kressdorf pulled the trigger or not, either. And from that you can tell just how afraid he really was. How convinced he was that Kressdorf would snuff him out in an instant. How far into the hereafter he was already projecting himself. How he was basically looking forward to flying with the gnats-because he didn’t remember the good lord anymore, but flying’s a classic human dream.

“One.”

Interesting, though-Kressdorf lowered the gun barrel now and pointed it at Brenner’s heart. But the blood, oh the blood, my god all the blood-one hundred hours after the girl’s disappearance-ran down Brenner’s forehead and through his hair and across his cheeks and over his whole face.

The world just about flipped on its head, like with Herr Jesus, how you always see him hanging naked on the cross, because they nailed him to it so he wouldn’t fall down, but then on top of that, he’s got this wound in his emaciated ribcage because he hadn’t been able to nab much at the last supper. And so that always means the soldiers had to stick him in the heart to hedge their bets, because you never know exactly when it’s just the cross-maybe he’s just playing dead, and then will walk away from it. The pierced heart is on every Jesus’s right, though, which is the wrong side. I think they stuck it in below the ribs and then up heartward, well thought out by the soldiers. But why was Brenner’s blood shooting an undammed river over his face when the shotgun had been pointed at his heart?

Simple explanation. It wasn’t Brenner’s blood. It was Kressdorf’s blood. After one hundred hours, in the middle of the fifth day, Kressdorf’s head burst into pieces, because a bullet from Detective Peinhaupt’s gun had hit him so precisely that it probably would’ve wrecked the whole splendid old room-the philodendron and the rubber plant and the cyclamen and the asparagus fern and the avocado and the Busy Lizzie and the orchids and the bamboo and the ivy and the Christmas cactus and the azalea all would have been full of blood-if Brenner hadn’t absorbed most of it, that is.

Maybe that doesn’t sound so pretty, but in all honesty, Brenner hadn’t felt this good in a long time. In spite of having missed his last two pills. But, old saying, nothing helps a depressive mood more than a bullet that misses you by a hair.