He remembered being given soup, and bread, by Frau Himmelfarb, and eyeing Hansi holding hands with his father at the door out to the yard. Felix had stayed at the post to get his notes word-processed and filed into the database. Had to be done, Gebi had said, not without sighing a few curses. It was all too likely one or more of those detectives would go straight to GENDIS this evening for some detail or other. They worked whatever hours they had to, he’d explained.

Then Felix thought again about Speckbauer, and the slow lumbering way he moved about. His handshake, the “We’ll be in touch, Inspektor Kimmel” that had no real irony he could be sure of, had been delivered under his still, flat eyes. Kuhaugen, Felix’s Oma Nagl might call that look, cow’s eyes, resting on his for longer than felt normal.

He had phoned the garage and gotten his car back finally late in the evening, with a call to the guy’s home to get the key. His head was still spinning when he got to the apartment finally, and he felt some vague cloud of something had followed him in. At first he did not intend to tell Giuliana, but it didn’t take long. He remembered her not-impressed face as he downed three Gosser from the fridge as he talked.

Later he had wanted her ferociously. She was puzzled and slow and quiet, and he said he was sorry later, but she shushed him. He remembered her drowsy later on, her skin hot and damp everywhere and his own body dissolving into the sheets.

He rested his eyes on the drapes that mostly had the yellow glow from the platz below. A car no, a small truck or van to judge by how its diesel clattered went by. In a few hours he’d be sitting into his car and heading over to the post. They had to get the traffic safety thing started at the schools this week. It was to be his pleasure alone, Gebi had told him.

“Are you okay?”

She had been so quiet.

“Yes. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”