Lisi said something under her breath, but she managed a smile and a half-hearted wave to Maier. She let go of the handbrake, revved as she let the clutch in, and resumed the slow, winding climb up toward the village. There awaiting them would be their extended family, neighbours from the old house, and friends of their father.

Felix kept his window open. His eyes still hurt when he moved them. He rubbed at them but stopped when he heard a strange ticking from them.

“Ironic anyway,” Lisi said.

He looked over at her. She was seven years older, but to Felix she seemed middle-aged already, this 29-year-old teacher. The famous 29.

“The lumber truck,” he repeated. “I get it. Ironic, yes.”

Could she just not talk, for a minute anyway? He turned back toward the patches of view across the valley that were beginning to appear more and more between the trees. He wanted to believe it was the altitude making this hangover worse. He stared at a gap, and hoped that would beat back the images that were now coming to his mind.

It was the second year now since Felix Kimmel Senior had been killed in a collision with a lumber truck on the Weizklamm. His duties had been those of Abteilungsinspektor, department chief inspector, in the Judenburg district. In the tribute speech at his funeral it was pointed out that he had been looking in on his aged father, Peter, a widower who lived alone up here. Speed had been a factor, as the phrase went.

But Felix had had a glimpse of a Scene photo of his father’s Audi. It had been during a class exercise at the Gendarmerieschule on how to use EKIS, the police database. Felix Senior’s car had been accordioned and pulverized by its long fall down off the road. Felix had also learned about the booze in the car.