This was a semi-cruel fate for a man who took good care of himself. He was an assiduous, if slowing, sportsman still. He managed a kid’s soccer team in Voitsberg, the town where he worked. He was clearly a man born to be a caretaker. Edelbacher waved, yanked open his door of the unmarked police VW, and flung himself out from behind the wheel in one fluid motion. He even had his hat, Felix saw.

“No need, Felix,” Edelbacher called out. “No rank today, uniform or not. Oh no.”

Felix wondered yet again how, or when, he would ever tell Edelbacher that he never felt obliged or inclined to salute him. Unlike the anal Bundespolizei who would soon be the equally unwilling partner in this shotgun wedding that the Interior Ministry had decided just had to happen, Gendarmes had always been firstname people. That was all the way up the ranks. Why would a veteran Gendarme like Edelbacher suggest otherwise?

Well, it was simple enough, Felix had glumly concluded long ago. It was not so much that Edelbacher was just a moron who pushed his rank, his office, his uniform a bit too much. It was that Edelbacher was trying to insinuate some authority over Felix Kimmel, or subtly insist on some respect from him, this son of the attractive, and well-provided-for, widow of his boyhood friend.

In an emotional speech after the funeral, Edelbacher had pledged to take care of the bereaved Kimmels. It had been so out there that Felix could remember what he’d said almost word-forword for days afterwards:

“Felix told me, if anything ever happened, to take care of you and, by God, I will do my duty, and my privilege, yes I will!”

And now he was upon them, all big teeth and high forehead, towering.

“You look good, Felix,” Edelbacher said. “So good.”

This much cologne would have appalled Felix, hangover or not.

He held his breath while his foggy brain, still crippled from the drinking that he hadn’t planned last night, curdled again at the sight of Edelbacher’s expression: this idiot thinks that one day soon their mother will marry him. It didn’t improve his mood much to see then that he’d gotten off easy here, when he saw Lisi accept an airkiss from Edelbacher.