Come, Sweet Death Read online

  And believe it or not: a girlfriend once ran out on him because of it. Well, not on account of any performance glitches, but because she couldn’t stand his inveterate whistling. So he’d only whistle very softly by sucking in the air. Because, after all, she was no redhead.

  And what was it that Brenner was completely unaware he was whistling tonight? Well, it was very telling once again. Because it was a song that Klara had once put on a mix tape for him.

  Brenner’s apartment was seventy square meters split between two and a half rooms. So if it’s a twenty-eight-year-old cassette you’re looking for, you’ll be searching a long time. Brenner was certain that he still had it somewhere, though. But you know what they say: moving house three times is as good as your house burning down. And over the last few years, Brenner had moved more than just three times. Needless to say, he didn’t have half the things that had been lying around his civil service apartment two years ago.

  Then again, most things turn back up at some point. But no, that one thing you’re looking for, not there. I think it’s some kind of law.

  And here’s another law: nowadays when you move, anything you haven’t reached for in years you throw away so that you have less to transport and put away. But Day One in your new apartment, guaranteed, whatever it is, you’ll need it desperately and will end up having to buy yourself a new one.

  And another law: If there was a detour somewhere, then, guaranteed, Brenner took it. That always made his superiors on the force livid. And sometimes I suspect he did it on purpose. But then I always have to remind myself, he simply cannot concentrate on the essentials. So Brenner, instead of finally searching for Lil’ Berti, who was possibly in mortal danger, was now spending hours searching for an old mix tape.

  He had a box full of cassettes that were more than twenty years old for the most part. Some even from his school days. And he hadn’t opened this box in years.

  Because ever since the advent of CDs and all that, nobody listens to cassettes anymore. At most in the car, and a car, well, nobody’s even got his own car anymore. And in the ambulance, well, arguing with his co-workers over whose music, no, thank you. The radio is just the right antidote, all day long, for everyone.

  He found the box in just a few minutes, and I’ve got to admit, this is actually a bad example to prove my law now, because, as a matter of fact, everything worked out: He moved it, and he needed it. Wait’ll you get a load of this, though.

  In the box were fifty if not a hundred cassettes. Nearly two hours in that mess he spent searching around. Then, you put another cassette in and listen to what’s on that one, because ancient labeling, and then you flip it over to the B side, and then you spend half an hour winding it—there goes the night.

  And this whole time he didn’t spend one second thinking about Berti. Some things I just have to shake my head about. You’re supposed to be looking for a person, and what do you look for instead, a cassette. And don’t you go thinking that if he’d just found the cassette, it would’ve revealed Berti’s whereabouts to him, either.

  Because after he’d finally gone through all the tapes in the box, he had to have realized: they were all there, except the one that Klara had made him back in high school. And you see, that’s where the law comes back in again.

  CHAPTER 10

  “I’ve been cured of men once and for all,” Nicole the blood-bank secretary declared, slinging her arm around Brenner.

  “I can understand that.”

  “Why would you be able to understand that?”

  “Because you speak so clearly.”

  “You really think I speak clearly?” she whispered into his ear. I can’t be completely sure if sound waves were even involved, or if it was just a direct transmission from her lips to his eardrum.

  Now, I don’t want to act like this was somehow unpleasant for Brenner. Or like he was one of those types, i.e. the English gentleman, who as a matter of principle doesn’t take advantage of a woman who’s had five or six frilly umbrella drinks. Certainly not.

  Although Brenner was generally open-minded about taking detours, Nicole was just too much for him right now.

  Brenner had spent hours that night at home, looking for the cassette instead of for Berti, when, at a quarter past ten, he decided to head to Floridsdorf and prowl around the Watzek Cement Works a little.

  When four men came out, it wasn’t exactly hard for Brenner to spot the Pro Med chief. Because he was only half as wide as the three cement workers, and needless to say, the resemblance to his dead brother, uncanny.

  Then Stenzl and the fattest of the three cement workers drove off in a white Mercedes, and the other two in a small pickup truck with one of those blue construction tarps. It goes without saying, Brenner would’ve preferred to ride in the Mercedes, but it was simply less conspicuous in the back of the flatbed under the tarp. The young morgue worker had been annoyed earlier that afternoon when the trailer had obstructed his view, but needless to say, Brenner was grateful for it now.

  When the Mercedes and the truck pulled up in front of the Golden Heart and parked, Brenner waited beneath the tarp for five minutes before he, too, went into the Golden Heart. The two workers he spotted right away, but the two from the Mercedes, gone.

  Nicole was there, though, and beckoning him to her table. That was at a quarter after eleven, and now it was already twelve-thirty and still bustling at the Golden Heart. And Brenner, still at Nicole’s table.

  “And why is it that you’re through with men, exactly?” he asked her.

  “I can understand you asking that,” Nicole whispered in his ear. “Because you speak so clearly!”

  Even without Nicole there, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get a word in with Angelika Lanz—there was still so much commotion at the Golden Heart, what with the Pro Meddlers pokering away their measly lumps of pay. Over the course of just this one night, Brenner would watch as one of them lost 20,000 schillings only to win it all back in a single game. He could actually see the sweat soaking through the man’s shirt during that last round.

  Unlike for the gambler, though, for Brenner it was quite enjoyable. Because for the first time all evening, the Golden Heart’s patrons stared at somebody else. The sweaty poker player from their own ranks instead of the Rapid Responder who had the nerve to set foot back in the Golden Heart before his eye had even healed.

  When you look at it that way, Brenner could be grateful that Nicole, who was ordering one florid umbrella drink after another, had latched onto him tonight. And each time one of those drinks got set down in front of her, Brenner would softly whistle this melody to himself. You know, his old malady.

  “What’re you whistling every time I get a drink?” Nicole asked, annoyed all the sudden. Because when you’re drunk, the emotions often run a little high.

  “Was I whistling?”

  The music at the bar was loud enough that he himself hadn’t heard himself whistling, even though he was doing the kind of whistling where you suck the air in. So he was surprised that Nicole had heard him just now.

  “Or were you just puckering up like that because you’re trying to spit suggestively in my glass?” Nicole said, laughing, practically: best joke I’ve ever cracked.

  But Brenner was curious to know what he was whistling now, and he didn’t have to wait for long, because the melody was right back on his lips again. The melody from the cassette that he’d spent hours looking for, for nothing.

  “A churchy song.”

  “A cherry song? What’re you whistling a cherry song for when I’m drinking a strawberry daiquiri? You oughta be whistling a strawberry song!” Nicole said, laughing. No physical therapist in the world would’ve recommended the unnatural maneuver that she contorted herself in just then. She laid her cheek on Brenner’s collarbone so that her face was looking down, but those Martian eyes of hers were rolled all the way up so she could look into Brenner’s eyes. And only her head seemed to follow suit a little; the rest of her drunken body
remained fixed in place, and Brenner was waiting for the sound of her neck snapping at any moment now. But instead what he heard was the sound of her voice pleading with him: “Please! Whistle a strawberry song for me.”

  “I didn’t say cherry song.”

  “You didn’t? Well, you sure didn’t say strawberry song, either.”

  “I said: churchy song. Church. You know, where you drink wine. And not shakes with umbrellas in them.”

  Okay, I do have to correct Brenner on that. I’ve been told that there are parishes today that, in an effort to keep up with the trends, are putting umbrellas in their chalices, too.

  “So you’re into whistling church hymns, huh? Kinky!”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was.”

  “So, what kind of church hymns are you into?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Pleeease! Whistle your church song again for me. To see if I can recognize it.”

  “ ‘Come, Sweet Death.’ ”

  “Pardon me?”

  “ ‘Come, Sweet Death’ is the name of the hymn.”

  Surely you still remember the first time you got a compass to sketch with in geometry class at school. There’s nothing funnier in the middle of class than ramming the compass into the ass of the student sitting in front of you. Well, that’s exactly how Nicole jumped now. The last time Brenner had seen anything like it was at Puntigam High after he’d given Walter Neuhold a good compass-tweaking. Practically did the tarantella.

  Needless to say, Nicole bolted. One second she’s draped along Brenner’s collarbone, the next she’s sitting about as upright as a candlestick. “Let me get this straight: you watched me order one strawberry daiquiri after another, and each time I did, you whistled ‘Come, Sweet Death’? Did you think I would like that?”

  “I didn’t even notice I was doing it.”

  “You know, you were sucking down one beer after another, too. So now I’m wondering—between the two of us, who will be the first to meet that sweet death you’ve been whistling about?”

  “Definitely me.”

  “How can you be so sure about that?”

  “C’mon, how could you tell, anyway?”

  “Very funny. You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

  Brenner noticed that, little by little, Nicole was getting explosive. Which is why he tried to say something calming now, by telling Nicole that, in all honesty, he simply couldn’t get the song out of his head since he’d met Klara.

  The In All Honesty method, though, often not the best recipe if you’re trying to head off an explosion.

  And by the time he noticed that the moment he’d said “Klara,” Nicole’s eyes actually changed color, it was already too late. “I think you’re the one who killed Stenzl,” was all she said. “And now I’m going to call the police.”

  And—cut. Brenner was relieved to have Nicole out the door at last. The snide grins of the Pro Meddlers didn’t faze him much, either. Better that than the stony faces of the two cement workers. He briefly debated asking them where their bosses had disappeared off to. But then he got lost in thought again.

  It wasn’t actually a church song that Klara had taped for him way back then. No, a Passion is what it was called, or so Brenner recalled now. And he imagined what Nicole probably would’ve said if, instead of saying “church song,” he’d said “Passion.” The nonsense she would’ve come up with.

  Back in high school, when Klara had taped the song for him, he’d even liked it. Even though his taste at the time: Hendrix Only. And you’re going to laugh, but Bach and Jimi Hendrix, not all that different. Jimi Hendrix, a lot of repetition in his music, and Bach, too, always repeating himself. It just keeps going and going, and if you happen to be seventeen, you just float, like you’re on a cloud.

  Needless to say, though, that was just Brenner, his way of looking at things. Klara had always been more of the Bach expert, what with his fugues and all.

  “Come, Sweet Death,” though, even in Klara’s case, had more to do with puberty than expertise, i.e. everything always being about death or what have you. Because when you’re seventeen nowadays, death’s got a certain sweetness to it. You’re still immortal at seventeen, but because life at seventeen is often bitter, too, you tend to think: death, sweet by comparison. And when you’re from a certain Puntigam milieu, death doesn’t just mean death but dying a great death. But when you’re fifty and going to radiation therapy, death: just sucks.

  I can’t tell now, is Brenner just lost deep in thought, or is he actually falling asleep a little. And it wouldn’t be any wonder if he was. After three weeks straight of work, those two beers were making him sleepy. Anyway, all of the sudden the poker-playing Pro Meddlers and the cement workers were gone, and he found himself alone with Angelika Lanz.

  “Back again, eh?” Angelika said.

  “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for a few days.”

  “I haven’t been home much lately.”

  “I gathered.”

  “My father’s sentencing was the day before yesterday.”

  Angelika had on a silver Lycra top and shiny black Lycra pants. And emblazoned across her belt buckle in gold letters: “ESCAPADE,” a little excessive, if you ask me.

  “That’s what I heard,” Brenner said.

  “That’s the best you can do?” Angelika still thought she was the one who could be bold here.

  “I don’t think you’d like to hear the other thing.”

  Angelika lit a cigarette: “And what would that be?”

  “That would be: Why didn’t you tell me anything about your father’s gambling debts?”

  “So?”

  “So where were you really on the afternoon that Bimbo got strangled with his own gold chain?”

  Angelika exhaled her cigarette so violently, you could’ve swatted a fly with the smoke. So Brenner wasn’t surprised when the recoil flung her head back on her neck. “Don’t make me laugh,” she said, exhaling the rest.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time that a father stuck out his neck for his daughter.”

  “You’re right about that. My father really didn’t do it.”

  “I don’t think your father did it, either. He’s much too weak to have strangled Bimbo.”

  “But you think that I’m capable of doing it?” she said with a laugh.

  “Not capable of doing it, but of knowing something about it.”

  Angelika emptied the ashtrays into a trash can and the trash can into a massive trash bag. Then she placed the trash bag into a dumbwaiter. There’s no food at the Golden Heart, but it used to be a restaurant upstairs here where the Golden Heart is today, and down in the basement was the kitchen. Then, renovated ten times, and these days the dumbwaiter’s a trash waiter.

  “Up until two days ago my father’s account had negative eight hundred thousand schillings in it. And seven hundred thousand of them he still owed to Bimbo.”

  Meanwhile Angelika turned on the dishwasher and sealed the open wine bottles with those ghastly rubber stoppers. It struck Brenner that she’d had to develop very deft finger movements so as not to break her five-centimeter-long nails.

  “As of two days ago, his account’s settled. And Bimbo’s ex-wife withdrew her complaint.”

  Brenner was just having a musical day today, I guess, because he nearly broke out into song now—“Who’s gonna pay for the next round? Who called the waitress, yo-ho! Which of you’s got enough cabbage? Which of you’s got enough dough?”—but, thankfully, he just recited the lyrics.

  “I wondered about that, too,” Angelika said, dismally. But I don’t know: dismal because of the matter at hand or dismal because of the dopey song he’d just recited.

  “That means,” Brenner said like a normal person again, “your father will get eight years—four on the grounds that Bimbo tyrannized and provoked him. And after two he’ll be out on good behavior and free of debt.”

  Angelika rinsed out the ice-cube trays, filled them with fresh water, a
nd put them back in the freezer.

  “Million and a half in two years. Your father never earned that much.”

  “Me neither.”

  “And you don’t happen to know who paid off his debt for him?”

  “How should I know that?”

  “You live with us, and you work for Pro Med. You must’ve heard something.”

  “Whoever paid’s probably the person who’s got Bimbo’s murder on his conscience.”

  There are some people who you just don’t know about: do they just act dumb or are they just really that naïve? What are you supposed to do, step on their toes a little or meekly carry on the conversation?

  “Have you ever heard anything about Rupprechter?” Brenner said, venturing a change of topic.

  “For as long as I can remember, my father cursed her name.”

  “That sounds about right.” Brenner took a cigarette from Angelika’s pack, even though he hadn’t smoked a single one since he’d started working as an EMT. “Irmi was Rupprechter’s in-home nurse.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Angelika said and gave him a light.

  “You know everything.”

  “I live with you guys, I work here. A person hears a thing or two.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you that Irmi was Rupprechter’s in-home nurse? What’s so important about that?”

  Brenner took just two drags and put his cigarette out.

  “She worked for twenty other old bags, too,” Angelika said with a shrug.

  She put a couple of empty beer bottles in a case, then put that case on top of another case of beer, and then shoved both cases with her foot across the stone floor. As she did, they emitted that shrieking chalkboard sound.