The Bone Man Read online

  When Nidetsky signed back over to Eduard Zimmermann, old man Löschenkohl turned off the TV. The waitresses had it even worse now than before the show. Half of Klöch wanted the check, the other half urgently needed a beer, and those who’d paid their checks were standing around in the way as they were leaving.

  All over the place, it was being staunchly debated, and needless to say, Brenner pricked up his ears. Because if you want to be a detective in this day and age, you’ve got to listen to everything, of course, even if it’s a bunch of nonsense. But the problem, of course, is when people stop spewing their own nonsense and just repeat the nonsense they hear on the news.

  The Klöch folk were all more or less in agreement now that the bones had come from down there, i.e. Yugoslavia. Well, ex-. Probably a human trafficking cartel. Refugees suffocating in the trunk of the car, they have to unload them somewhere—listen, that’s how it must’ve been.

  Then, Jacky had to go and bring up the businessman from Graz. Some time ago, when the war was still going on, he turned up here at Löschenkohl’s and was always having meetings with young men. Because he’d been recruiting young Austrians and Germans who were bored at home to become soldiers for the Yugos.

  When Löschenkohl heard Jacky’s remark, though, he interrupted: “I sent him packing so fast, he kicked up a cloud of dust. I couldn’t have known at first what kind of business he was doing on my premises.”

  Brenner was struck by how, the more his patrons wallowed in the horror stories of a war that had taken place just a few kilometers south, the grimmer old man Löschenkohl appeared. It didn’t surprise him, either, because Brenner’s first day there Jacky had told him that fifty years ago the Yugoslavs had shot Löschenkohl’s balls off. And it can’t have brought him any joy to be reminded of it again and again because of the recent war—to make matters worse, in his own chicken joint, which, over the decades, he’d built up like a fortress against his terrible past.

  “But the part about the health inspectors you didn’t tell Zimmermann about!” Jacky laughed and gave old man Löschenkohl’s shoulder a punch. You could tell right away that Jacky was already pretty drunk.

  “They already knew about it,” old man Löschenkohl said stiffly.

  “Then, why didn’t they say that part? Did you tell them they were only allowed to film here in the restaurant if they didn’t include the bit about the health inspectors? You old dog!”

  Jacky was such a typical human being, you know, the kind who starts to get belligerent when he’s drunk. An otherwise nice person—not another one like him—but drunk, a nasty guy just gunning for a fight.

  “It couldn’t happen anymore anyway, the health inspectors finding something here. With the big bone-grinder downstairs, there’s nothing there anymore.”

  “Yeah, it’s a real pity!” Jacky acted excited. “There could still be more human bones down there, and no one would know because Milo crumbles ’em right into the machine.”

  “Leave Milo out of it, Jacky.”

  “Where’s Milo even at?”

  It didn’t strike anyone as strange that Milovanovic wasn’t there. Even though he was the one who’d mainly been featured on the TV, i.e. the evening’s hero. Then again, he didn’t understand much German, and anyway—as a Yugoslav, he couldn’t have known how popular the show was.

  By the same token, the Klöchites couldn’t have known that they’d lose the next game in the Cup, seven to zero, because no trace of their mighty goalkeeper would be found.

  CHAPTER 4

  When you run through the ranks of a soccer team these days, it’s often a difficult question, who’s the most important. One person might say the coach, another person says the king of the goal. And then, you can’t forget the captain, and today’s latest theory: the collective is everything, and the star’s just a liability.

  After FC Klöch’s victory in the Cup, needless to say, some outsiders believed goalkeeper Milovanovic was the most important. But not so.

  Naturally, some of us down here think Schorsch the equipment manager is just a stuffed shirt. But I have to say, just because Schorsch hasn’t been seen without his Motorola in three years, that doesn’t make him a stuffed shirt. And Schorsch was right in saying: “As equipment manager, it’s up to me to take care of this and that. I’d be in a fix without my phone.”

  So it didn’t bother him one bit when a couple of know-it-alls made fun of him for it. Because anyone who knows his way around soccer knows that there wouldn’t be an FC Klöch without him. And anyone who doesn’t know his way around soccer wouldn’t be interested in Schorsch anyway.

  And this afternoon’s practice would prove all over again just how important Schorsch truly was.

  The players had just taken shots on goal, and there are a few of them who’ve got a powerful shot, I’ve got to admit. Because our village youth—maybe you’re apt to turn your nose up at them, and it goes without saying, not all of them have a delicate touch, technically speaking. Shooting, though, powerful.

  “And one more time!” Coach Ferdl bellowed, even though the players hadn’t given any indication of exhaustion. On the contrary. Because they’d been sitting all day at the office. Still farmers in terms of genetics, lineage—but farming’s dying out today, so the boys have to go into the office. Now, they’ve got power, hereditarily speaking, but don’t know what to do with it. They’re just happy if they’re able to at least thrash a ball into a net come evening time.

  “And one more time!”

  The players had gotten used to how, apart from this sentence, their coach didn’t say much. But as defenseman Dollinger shot the ball—and with it, the goalie—into the net, the coach looked a little fiercer than usual. Because he was still just a young, slender chive of a goalie. Dollinger shot at him from a distance of ten meters—needless to say, it blew him into the goal.

  “And one more time!”

  The coach rallied the goalie into getting up. But it cost him some authority not to grab the weakling with his own two hands and toss him right into the showers. The young goalie was the last person whose fault it was that Cup Hero Milovanovic still hadn’t shown up in the three days since Aktenzeichen aired.

  When the players shot two of the three training balls over the fence and into the river, though, the coach had finally had enough. He worked himself into such a fit of rage that half the players had thoughts of finding another club to play for going through their heads.

  And that was the moment when everyone could see all over again who the most important player on FC Klöch truly was. Because that was the moment when Equipment Manager Schorsch came running out onto the field. He was holding his cell phone in his left hand, but in his right hand he was carrying something far more important.

  “It’s not so bad, those two balls that went wide,” he yelled into the first seconds of silence following the thunderstorm.

  And, as a matter of fact, in the bulging burlap sack that was thrown over his right shoulder, there were exactly thirty balls, because these days even the sacks are nearly bigger than the equipment managers.

  Now, you can’t forget what it means to a soccer player, the sight of a sack like this that’s bulging full of soccer balls. Because, as a soccer player, you have a relationship to the ball. It used to be the brown leather balls, and then the black-and-white leather balls, and then the colorful leather balls, and then the completely white balls covered in synthetic leather. The balls may have changed, but there’s one thing that never will.

  If a crisis breaks out during practice, then Equipment Manager Schorsch comes running onto the field with his burlap sack of balls. Because he knows that when the players see the sack, well, the moment he sends those balls thundering onto the field they’re really going to feel it. You’ve got to imagine a pounding waterfall of leather balls. And at that moment when the players feel the waterfall—crisis averted.

  So, Equipment Manager Schorsch was surprised, of course, when he went running toward the players with that
enormous sack of balls, and yet the players’ expressions only got more sullen.

  “It’s really not that bad, two balls in the river,” the equipment manager yelled out again in encouragement, and he turned his back a little to the players so that they could see the sack full of balls better.

  The better the players saw the sack, though, the paler they turned. And not one of them said a word. Even the coach was quiet now, but the equipment manager just took that as a measure of success. That the coach didn’t lay into the players a second time, as is often the case in a thunderstorm. Nonetheless, Schorsch’s trick wasn’t quite working this time on the players—no way he could’ve failed to notice that now.

  “What’s up today?” he yells and swings the sack over his shoulder like Old St. Nick.

  “The bag,” Udo Sommerer says. He’d just moved up last season from the youth league to competition play, and why Udo of all people was the first to find his tongue again, I don’t know, either.

  “What about the bag?” Schorsch says, and sticks his cell phone into the elastic waistband of his sweat pants because he needs his other hand to untie the bag.

  “The bag!” two, three others are shouting now because the equipment manager still doesn’t see it.

  “What about the bag?” the equipment manager shouts back. He couldn’t see it, because the man doesn’t have eyes on his back.

  But then, all of the sudden, he felt something moist against his bare calf. Because, in the cold of the locker room overnight, the thirty-first ball had only made an undetectable stain. As the equipment manager dragged it through the afternoon heat, though, it began to bleed a little. And by the time the equipment manager got to the penalty box where the players were, the shape of a head was already showing through the burlap a little. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily compare Schorsch’s burlap sack with a shroud like they found down in Turin. But a little like that, just so you can picture it, how the nose and the eye sockets were imprinting themselves more and more clearly. And as the thirty-first ball started dripping down the bare calf of the equipment manager, he finally noticed it, too.

  And so, once again, you see how important it is for an equipment manager to always have a cell phone. Because fifteen minutes later, the Radkersburger Gendarmerie were already on the soccer field. And it didn’t even take an hour for the Graz police to get there, either.

  But the Graz police could’ve taken their sweet time because the Radkersburger Gendarmerie—highly competent. They didn’t leave any work left undone. The victim was clearly identified, because everybody—except for the young goalie—recognized the head. It belonged to FC Feldbach striker Ortovic, and just a few months earlier they’d lost to Feldbach, one to zero. Ironic twist of fate: it’d been a header by Ortovic of all things—off a corner kick in the seventy-sixth minute, and at the far corner of the goal, Ortovic had shot right up like a rocket. And now, a thing like this.

  By the time the Graz police showed up, the Radkersburger Gendarmerie had already searched the entire grounds, too. But no trace of Ortovic’s body. They didn’t even have to break into the locker room because the window there’s always open so that it doesn’t get too dank. And that’s usually not a problem in Klöch. Nothing goes walking off on its own here. And walking off wasn’t the problem anyway. No, the problem was that something new had shown up.

  Not a single trace, either, the Klöch Gendarmerie reported to the Graz police. Then they searched a little more for fingerprints and footprints, but nothing much came of it.

  By five-thirty the whole nightmare was already over. The Radkersburger Gendarmerie returned to their posts down at the speed-trap by the north off-ramp. The police pathologist took Ortovic’s head with him for further examination. And Dreher, the criminologist’s assistant, was more than happy to be sent home by his boss, Kaspar Krennek. Because it was his last day of work before a four-week vacation, and he’d already been sweating blood all afternoon that he might have to postpone his trip to Thailand on account of some damned soccer player’s head.

  Kaspar Krennek was an unusual boss in this regard, though. He enjoyed playing the deputy to his subordinates. Because all that office and politics and eating asparagus all the time—in the long run, that’s a small death sentence, too.

  When Kaspar Krennek turned up at Löschenkohl’s, needless to say, people recognized him right away. And not just because half the soccer team had gotten there before him and had already given everybody the blow-by-blow about the incident in question. No, Kaspar Krennek was known throughout the country. Because ever since he’d joined the Graz police force—and it’s going on nearly ten years now—he’s been coddled by the newspapers.

  You should know, his father was August Krennek, the famous post-War Hamlet. Now, the son becoming a cop, that was a certain kind of rebellion against the father. But when he made a career of it as a detective, well, father and son finally reconciled on the father’s deathbed.

  And, these days, when your father’s an actor, then you’ve got a bit of the theater bug in you, too. Even though, with Kaspar Krennek, you have to look pretty closely to discover the actor within. Because you don’t notice his vanity right away. First glance: a quiet, modest man. And only on the second glance: I am the Prince of the Murder Department.

  When, at a quarter after six, he came walking into the dining room at Löschenkohl’s in his twenty-thousand-schilling leather jacket, he didn’t act coy for long.

  “Where’s the junior manager?” he asked the first server he saw.

  “What junior manager?”

  Because Gudrun had only been working at Löschenkohl’s for a few weeks, and she’d only caught sight of the junior manager maybe once. Just then, though, the head waitress came to her aid.

  “Is it Paul you’re looking for?”

  “It’s Paul whom I’d like to speak with.”

  Kaspar Krennek had learned from his father that a man must express himself with precision. And that “speaking with” hasn’t meant “looking” for some time now.

  “To speak,” the head waitress said in a tone as if to say: don’t get clever with me, you Schlaumeier. “Paul doesn’t live here.”

  “Where does he live, then?”

  “You’ll have to ask his father that.”

  “So, he can be spoken with.”

  “Not until I find him,” the waitress smirked and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Krennek was a little surprised by the cheery mood of the place. On the other hand, there’s just a certain cheerfulness about people after a glimpse at death has sent them filling their pants.

  Two minutes later the waitress returned. But not with old man Löschenkohl. With a man roughly Kaspar Krennek’s age. But a head shorter and a foot and a half wider. And with skin like sandpaper.

  “Brenner.”

  Krennek was a little annoyed at first that the headstrong waitress had been able to lure him out of his reserve so quickly. Now he was glad to have won back his modesty again. He put out his hand to Brenner, and out of sheer reservation, didn’t quite get to introducing himself before Brenner said, “You’re looking for Herr Löschenkohl.”

  This time, though, Krennek didn’t correct him—even if his father was rolling over in his grave.

  “Unfortunately, Herr Löschenkohl isn’t here today,” Brenner said.

  “Which one, junior or senior?”

  “Neither one’s here. Junior’s never here anyway. And the old man drove to Graz today for a doctor’s appointment. He’ll be back first thing tomorrow.”

  Doctor’s appointment. Brenner couldn’t have known what a scare he gave Krennek with that one. Because ever since Krennek was a kid, he’d had the idée fixe, if you will, that on his fortieth birthday, he would die of cancer. And he was already pushing thirty-nine now. Needless to say, he didn’t dare go to the doctor for a checkup.

  The two of them took a seat at a table, and after two beers they didn’t even notice anymore that everyone in the dining room was staring at them
. And about that I’ve really got to say: rarely have a police inspector and a private detective worked so well together.

  Brenner told the inspector about the Löschenkohl manager who’d disappeared, and Krennek told Brenner why it was so urgent for him to speak with the old man. Because of the bribery scandal that shook up the province’s minor leagues six months earlier. In which Löschenkohl junior bribed a Feldbach striker. Namely, Ortovic, whose head someone had cut off and put in FC Klöch’s ball sack.

  At ten, the inspector set about making his way home. “If you see old man Löschenkohl, tell him I’ll be paying him a visit in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll meet him for sure,” Brenner said in farewell.

  Brenner didn’t move from the table while the waitress locked up the restaurant behind Kaspar Krennek. She had a coarse face—not from age, because she wasn’t that old yet. Just not a delicate face, a coarse one. But a fine human being. A thickset body, though, just like professional soccer players at the end of their careers. They’re training less, but eating the same amount—naturally, they let themselves go a little. Needless to say, that red leather skirt of hers was a risky affair now.

  But that only proves yet again that you can’t judge a person by appearances alone. The only thing that Brenner didn’t understand was: where did this woman find her lovers night after night? Because what he overheard coming from her room—I don’t wish to describe it, but G-rated it was not.