“Call it what you want. Up here the Gendarmerie do a bit of everything.”

Felix shook his head. Gebhart said nothing further. He seemed to be listening for some sounds from far off. Then he took out his cigarettes, the Milde Sorte that everyone said they bought to try to cut down. He didn’t offer one to Felix. He needed only one flick of his lighter to get the cigarette going.

“So here we are,” Gebhart murmured after several moments.

“Up here in the arschloch of Styria. Excuse me the picturesque centre of Styria. And you’re on the job, what three months? You go for a walk with this fellow. Then, Jesus, you come back down to the farmhouse, with your face as white as a sheet with your news.”

“With puke on my shoes, don’t forget.”

Gebhart let his eyes wander to the hills behind Felix.

“Who cares,” he murmured.

“Can I ask you something?”

Gebhart blew out smoke and nodded.

“Did you set me up with that big lug, going for walkies, holding hands? So you could get a laugh?”

“You think I would do that to you?”

“I’m asking you. I heard stuff like that in training.”

“You want to know? I looked out the window and I thought: there’s a good day’s work being done. It was kind of nice, actually.”

“Nice?”

“You were trying to get the kid out and about again. That’s good.”

The voice on the walkie-talkie was very clear now.

“Whoa,” said Gebhart. “That was fast. They’re close.”

He waved Felix off using his walkie-talkie and began to give sparing directions.

Felix didn’t want to look back to where the bodies lay. The woods seemed to be blanketed with an extra quiet now. He heard birds only occasionally, and far off. The clouds must have come lower. Sure enough, the crest of one mountain to the south was cut off. That sick feeling had left him, as had the swarming thoughts, but he could hear his own pulse. He realized he was glad of the cigarette smoke around him. Maybe there was a smell coming from the bodies that he hadn’t noticed himself, but Gebi had. He watched as Gebhart smoked, and nodded, and said “yes” almost too often, his thumb stroking near the button on his walkie-talkie.