Gebhart’s tongue had been flicking from side to side as the car wallowed gently and then rose out of the puddles.

“God’s country,” he said. “Die Heimat. Can you imagine Polizei coming up here? They’d be wiping their shoes every ten metres. Phoning for a translator.”

“Is it a criminal matter here, Gebi?”

Gebhart flicked him a glance, and made himself unnecessarily busy with the gears. The Opel bottomed out and shook itself up from a puddle.

There were reeds growing in the damp spots all about. A lone, thin wire that brought hydro from the road. Someone had taken great care with putting together stone walls near where the lane approached the farmyard. His mind rebelled at thinking how long it had taken to gather these rocks from the fields. By hand? And what could you grow up here anyway? A couple of the cattle looked up and toward the gently bouncing and now muddy police car. A sheepdog came trotting out to the laneway.

“Here’s the story,” Gebhart said. “Listen.”

Felix looked over.

“There’s a kid. But he’s not a kid, that’s the first thing. Just pretend he is.”

“Do you mean handicapped?”

The farmhouse came in sight beyond one of the walls. The wood had weathered into a grey but the whitewash on the bumpy stone walls was fresh. A collection of smaller buildings, some with fresh wooden shingles, took up a different side of the near rectangle that was the yard proper.

“Our job here is to humour this boy,” said Gebhart then. “Got that?”

A woman was walking slowly from the door of the farmhouse, her headscarf and floral housecoat reminding Felix of somewhere in Yugoslavia, or somewhere east.

“So he’s not going to make a ton of sense, this boy.”

“You want to interview him?”

“Interview? I want you to just, what do your bunch say now?

‘Hang with him’? Just listen. Let him relax.”