The Bone Man (2 page)

“So, almost a ton a day.”

“In a good week.”

“And so the bones got out of hand?”

“Back then they did. The business grew too quickly—each year we had to expand to keep from getting devoured by taxes. Needless to say, the bones got out of hand.”

“And now?”

“We’ve had a new bone-grinder in the basement for some time now. It’s not a problem anymore.”

“But you had a bone-grinder back then, too?”

“Yes, but it was much too small. Because while the business might’ve grown and grown, the bone-grinder didn’t grow with it.”

Brenner was having a tougher time with his breaded chicken breast now, because the fat had started to run—not for vegetarians, let it be said.

“And who was working the bone-grinder back then?”

“The Yugo.”

“And it was the Yugo who noticed the bigger bones mixed in with the chicken bones?”

“No, no, the Yugo didn’t notice anything. Because we don’t
just do chicken. We have all sorts of things. A ham hock’s just as big, so the Yugo didn’t notice anything.”

“So who noticed it, then?”

“Well, the health inspectors came. Because we couldn’t keep up with the bones anymore. Every day we were getting more and more customers, and every day more bones, of course, and every day the Yugo fell farther behind on the bone-grinding. Now, of course, so that it doesn’t stink as much, we keep the bones in the walk-in freezer. Needless to say, the health inspectors went into the freezer.”

“So they were the ones who made the discovery?”

“What do you mean, ‘discovery’? Once you let the health inspectors in, they’re always going to find something. They make you think you’re some kind of criminal just because you own a chicken joint.”

Brenner launched into the breaded drumstick, because when the owner’s sitting at your table, you can’t very well leave half a chicken on your plate.

“Grill,” the old man corrected himself. “We’ve got everything, pork and so on. Ninety percent chicken, of course. But all that about the chicken bones didn’t have to become such a big deal. We went and bought the Yugo a new bone-grinder—a modern one, ten times the capacity, and the Yugo only has to push a button, that’s it. Pick it up with your hand.”

Now, that would be referring to Brenner’s chicken. Because Löschenkohl saw that he was cutting painstakingly around the chicken bones.

“A real poultry eater uses his hands,” old man Löschenkohl said. But Brenner wasn’t much of a poultry eater, per se, and he would have preferred to eat the greasy chicken leg off the plate.
His host wasn’t having it, though: “Even in the finest establishments you’re allowed to eat a chicken with your hands.”

Before the old man could go any further, Brenner picked up the chicken and said: “And then what?”

“Then, the matter with the human bones, of course.”

“That’s what the health inspectors filed a complaint about?”

“What do you mean, ‘health inspectors’? The police were called in immediately.”

“Mhm.”

“Whoever did it wasn’t stupid, mixing the body in with our bone pile. Because, just between the two of us, it was more like Bone Mountain back then, what with the Yugo only having the small grinder.”

“But it was found out nonetheless.”

“Nothing’s been found out, nothing at all. To this day, the police haven’t found anything. Not even who the bones belonged to. The health inspectors, they’re competent, they’ll always find something. But the police, they didn’t find half of what the health inspectors did.”

With every bite now the chicken was tasting better and better to Brenner. Required some getting used to at first, but then, nice and crispy, that’s the main thing. Because Brenner wasn’t exactly a gourmand, either. But then, in the middle of the drumstick, he simply had to give up. And the third and fourth pieces—don’t even think about it.

“What, you don’t like it?” the old man asked, hurt. But you could tell right away that it was only mock-hurt. Because, these days, when a restaurateur has portions so big that his guests can’t finish them, needless to say, he’s proud.

“Too much,” Brenner gasped.

“I won’t bring you any aluminum foil. You’ll get a fresh one this evening,” old man Löschenkohl said. “You’re staying with us, of course.”

Now, this was going a little too fast for Brenner. He hadn’t even met the manager yet, who’d called him so desperately the day before.

“I’ll need to speak with the manager first.”

“With the manager?” Löschenkohl asked, as if he’d never heard of a manager before.

“She’s the one who called me.”

“Ah, my daughter-in-law, you mean. Yes, you’ll be needing to talk with her, too. I’ll go get her for you.”

The old man stood up and took Brenner’s half-finished plate with him to the kitchen.

But the manager wasn’t there just then.

You can wake Brenner up in the middle of the night and ask him who won the 1976 Olympic Downhill, and he’ll know. Because that was his first year on the police force, and on the day of the Olympic Downhill, he had to break into a hotel staffer’s room. There was a street-level lobby that took you from the main road that runs through the town of Hallein directly to the staffer’s room. More like a laundry room, where the waiter from the Kino Bar had been put up.

A few people were standing in front of an electronics store on the other side of the street because the Olympic Downhill event was being broadcast on the color TV screens in the window display. And maybe that’s why Brenner and his colleague didn’t get the door open for so long, because they kept looking over at the Olympic coverage.

Even now, Brenner could still remember how his colleague had once torn his uniform jacket on a piece of sheet metal. Then, a few years later, he ordered a Filipina from a catalog who only weighed forty kilos. Brenner didn’t know his name anymore. But the stench that they were met with when they finally got the door open—never in his life would he forget that. Even though the waiter from the Kino Bar had only been
dead two days. And outside, people were celebrating, because the Austrian had finished with the best time, unbelievable, how a couple of people can make that kind of commotion.

But as old man Löschenkohl held the door open to Brenner’s room in the staff’s quarters above the restaurant, believe it or not, Brenner was struck by the exact same bestial stench.
Maybe it’d been the musty socks and sweaty waiter’s shirts back in Hallein, and less so the decomposing
, Brenner thought, and threw open the window.

As he craned his neck out the window, he heard a squealing sound like a cement mixer, so loud that he whipped right back around and said to old man Löschenkohl: “That walk-in freezer of yours makes quite a racket.”

“The freezer’s on the other side of the house, in the addition. The most state-of-the-art walk-in freezer in all of Styria. Million-dollar investment. The interest on it just about eats me up. But you won’t hear a peep out of it, because the whole thing’s a computer, amazing.”

Brenner didn’t say anything to this, which made it all the easier to hear the squealing.

“What you’re hearing is the bone-grinder. You’re apt to hear it a bit. But what’s worse are the birds in the morning.”

“I believe it.”

“Now that it’s spring they’re making an awful racket. That’s something I can’t do anything about. But if you’ll be needing anything else,” Löschenkohl said.

“No, I don’t need anything.”

Brenner was glad when the old man finally disappeared. He positioned himself at the window and took a moment to think in peace. He had two options. Either window closed and
the stench. Or window open and the piercing squeal of the bone-grinder.

Or a third possibility, of course—up and out of there.

These days, though, if you want to skip out, you’ve got to do it right away. On the spot immediately. Because habit is a dog, and the next day something will come up, and the day after that you’ve already gotten a little used to it. And Brenner knew all about that. But the chicken had settled so heavily in his stomach that he decided:
I’ll take a walk to digest
. And, of course, the walk calmed him right back down.

Maybe it was the warmth of the springtime sun, or maybe the idyllic country road, where a car would only drive by every five minutes. Or maybe it was just the green hills, because green’s supposed to soothe the nerves, or so it’s said. Maybe in the precincts where the police have green uniforms, the officers are less aggressive than in the places where they have other uniforms. And the people are more peaceable when they have green police officers. Whether the police suffer less abuse, you see—now, that’d be interesting.

Brenner couldn’t have cared less. He hadn’t worn a uniform in fifteen years. And it’d been a year since he’d even been a cop at all. So, he’s walking through the Styrian vineyards now and thinking to himself:
here’s a place where you can really walk, and what would be the harm if I were to stay a few days
.

It wasn’t quite as isolated as it had first seemed. Because he’d been hearing some kind of din for the longest time now. At first he thought:
imagination
. Because it sounded almost like there was a soccer stadium just beyond the hills of the vineyard, like a hurricane of thousands of sports fans. And what can I say, beyond the hills there truly was a soccer stadium, and indeed, a
few thousand spectators on wooden bleachers—so many that you might think they’d collapse any second now, and the entire town of Klöch, wiped out in an instant.

It was only when Brenner read the poster by the ticket stand that he understood how a team from a backwater like Klöch could have so many fans.

Because, needless to say, a Cup’s a Cup. And the team from Klöch had drawn a Division II team from Oberwart—and Klöch usually plays five classes lower. So the Cup’s the big chance for the little ones, every minor-league team believes it—today we’re going to toss Goliath right out of that Cup. Practically biblical wrath.

Now, these games tend to be a little on the brutal side, of course. Because when the little ones catch a whiff of a chance, well, no telling what they’ll do. This applies not just to soccer. It’s often true for small countries, too, that they enjoy getting a little bloodthirsty if the opportunity’s convenient. Now, I don’t mean Austrians specifically—more of a general consideration.

And the Klöch soccer field was a bit of a madhouse now, because, right before the end of the game—and just as Brenner got there—still zero to zero. Two, three Klöch players were lying on the grass with leg cramps because—way out of their league, of course. Up, up and the game’s back on! And the stars of the Oberwart team, one shot after another at Klöch’s goal. But the goalkeeper—you wouldn’t believe it. I’ll just say: magician. And even that’s an understatement.

Then, a foul called on a Klöch defender—and you could just hear the bones cracking. When the referee suspended the Klöch defender, the crowd was about ready to hang the ref. But police on the ground—thank god, you’ve got to admit—and
the dog handlers were immediately deployed. The crowd was scared shitless by the sight of the German shepherds—and so the referee wouldn’t be hanged after all.

After the extra time, the score still stood at zero to zero. So, needless to say, penalty kicks. The Oberwart team had a former striker from the national team playing for them, so he took the first penalty kick, of course. Right at the crossbar. Doesn’t get more beautiful than that. But Klöch’s goalkeeper—even more beautiful—he swatted the ball right out.

Why should I draw it out? The Klöch underdogs converted every penalty kick and threw Oberwart out of the Cup. Needless to say, a euphoria like that is infectious. And so it was that Brenner found himself in a completely different mood on the way home than he’d been on the way there. And you’d like to think that a person digests better under euphoric conditions. But when he arrived back at Löschenkohl’s around seven, the chicken was still lodged in Brenner’s stomach and he didn’t have an appetite.

Nevertheless, Brenner went into the bar. Not because he wanted something to eat but because he thought,
it’s about time I met the manager
. On the phone yesterday she’d been in such a hurry—she’d nearly started crying before Brenner promised her he’d come. And now she was making herself scarce.
But that’s how managers are
, Brenner thought,
it’s the same the world over
.

It was peak business in the dining room just now—Friday night, a dreadful horde of people dining out.
I don’t want to bother the manager if she’s working
, Brenner thought, and he took a seat at a table with a few drunken soccer fans because there was nowhere else to sit.

“Fried chicken?”

It was the same waitress as earlier that afternoon. She recognized Brenner right away and took his order ahead of the others who’d been waiting much longer.

“No, thanks,” Brenner said.

“Or a pork knuckle? We’ve got good pork knuckles.”

“For god’s sake, no.”

“Or spare ribs with french fries?”

“Just a beer,” Brenner said, and he must have looked pitiful because the waitress gave him an encouraging look and then brought him his beer right away—before she even took the others’ orders. She was wearing a red leather skirt, tight as a sausage casing. But,
the epitome of friendliness
, Brenner thought, and downed half his beer on the spot.

By about nine, business had slowed down, and as the waitress placed his third beer in front of him, Brenner asked her, “Is the manager around?”

“I haven’t seen the manager at all today.”

“When does she come in, then?”

“She must’ve already been in.”

But the manager didn’t show up after his third beer, either, so he ended up eating a schnitzel. No appetite at all, but Brenner’s the kind of person who can’t go to sleep unless he’s had dinner. Sheer force of habit, but that’s people for you. For every person who can’t sleep on a full stomach, there’s another who can’t sleep unless it’s on a full stomach.

So, down the hatch with the schnitzel, and another beer, too, and by ten Brenner was already back upstairs in the staff’s quarters, lying in his bed. Or maybe hammock would be a better word for it. But he was so tired now that nothing could’ve
disturbed him, not even the incessant squeal of the bone-grinder.