“I was trying to make a point. So do we need the irony crap? I say no. What, you thought I didn’t know irony? I respect the book stuff. I respect your, uh, poetic leanings. Just don’t be a pain in the arsch.”
“Thanks. Nothing personal. Right, Gebi?”
“Absolutely. You know that.”
“‘Nothing personal, Felix, but you’re an idiot’?”
Gebhart chortled.
“You’re good,” he said. “When you’re not being a dummy.
Come on now. We have a job here.”
There was a line of six cars behind the Opel already. None dared pass, of course. Felix began to wonder what some of them were thinking, especially the guy in the Mercedes two back.
Swearing probably.
He liked the way this was turning out.
FIVE
By nine, gendarmesKimmel and Gebhart had amassed a reasonable sum for the coffers of the Austrian state. Gebi had even nailed two drivers for flashing the oncoming traffic too. One of the flashers had played it right, however, saying he hadn’t realized it was an offence. He spoke in a respectful, resigned tone about how he had been merely hoping to slow down a couple of crazy ones; that he thought it might lower the danger, blah blah. But Gebi had shown no mercy to an elegant woman in a 7 Series BMW. Felix heard him mutter something about a boy-toy coming too early, as she accelerated away, expressionless. She had been unperturbed by the fine.
The one to remember was a large, morose man in an old Kadett. Felix had written him up. For a while he couldn’t concentrate on the form. His mind was full of the man’s sullen menace. It was as if it was being pumped across the air between them in a relentless cloud. He became preoccupied almost immediately with re-enacting the drills in his mind, the ones for pacifying a guy who had an obvious size advantage. The man hadn’t said more than two words in total. Felix wondered if the guy would do more than keep up that baleful, blank stare at him.