The Camera Killer (8 page)

Heinrich offered me some chips. I helped myself. He poured himself some red wine from a dark-green, opaque bottle, sighed, and read some more news.

I was so tired I stretched out in my armchair and briefly closed my eyes. When I awoke, the sun was shining outside. The time by the video recorder was 8:18. Heinrich was lying asleep on the sofa with his mouth open.

I heard Eva’s voice outside the door. Those two idiots spent the night in the living room, she was saying. Then my partner made herself heard. She indignantly conjectured that the two “weary warriors” wouldn’t be much use to anyone today.

I raised my head and looked at the door.

Aha, said Eva, one of them is awake.

My partner tapped her forehead at me. I wished her good morning. In consequence of our brief ensuing conversation, Heinrich woke up too. He jumped to his feet as though someone had tipped a bucket of cold water over him. He just took the time to give his wife a good-morning kiss as he brushed past her.

I rubbed my eyes and plodded out into the hall to join the others.

Heinrich slipped into his brown sandals and asked where the car keys were. Hanging on their hook as usual, said Eva, but what did he need the car for? Heinrich replied that he had to buy some newspapers. Eva said he was mad; he ought to have some breakfast first, and besides, there probably weren’t any papers on Easter Sunday. Heinrich recalled the
Kronen Zeitung
’s advertisement of last night, which had promised to bring out an edition containing an illustrated sixteen-page report on the killings.

He was almost out the door when, with his sunglasses on his nose, he hurried back into the living room and turned on the television, exclaiming that they might have caught him.

The news reported that a hectic manhunt was in progress. The killer’s trail had been picked up. Having feverishly zapped from channel to channel, Heinrich tossed the remote control onto the sofa and stormed out. Soon afterward, we heard the car start up. The sound of the engine receded.

Eva and my partner set about making breakfast. My help was not, in their opinion, necessary, so I returned to the living room and sat down in the armchair in which I had involuntarily spent the night. I thoroughly perused the news online, which I had only been able to skim, thanks to Heinrich’s hurried mode of procedure.

Under “Riots outside TV station”: The station that transmitted the so-called murder video was besieged during the night by demonstrators, of whom some unidentified late-stayers attacked the building with paint bombs at around 4:30 a.m.

Under “Vigil in West Styrian town”: In Frauenkirchen, even on such a stormy, rainy night, hundreds of people kept a vigil in the street. Indignation was aroused by a report that the perpetrator might be a local inhabitant. This was inconceivable, said the mayor. The killer was a person of unprecedented brutality, and no such individual lived in this district.

Under “Criticism of Referendum Plan”: Violent reactions have been provoked by the Freedom Party’s consideration of whether to petition for a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty. The parliamentary speaker declares that this would place Austria outside the European community of values.

I returned to the kitchen. Eva was humming a tune as she poured boiling water into a pot, disseminating an aroma of coffee. My partner handed me a tablecloth.

I went out into the paved drive in the front yard. It was exceptionally warm for the time of day. I had to shoo four cats off the table before I could spread the cloth, though my approach and
my gesticulations proved sufficient for the purpose. That done, I noticed there were some bird droppings adhering to the table. Although my intention had been to spread the cloth over the table, I fetched a swab from the house to wipe it first. Only then did I complete my task.

I sat down on one of the wooden benches that had been placed on either side of the massive table. For around ten minutes, I watched the activities of the cats, approximately twenty of which had reappeared. Some frolicked with each other, others lay around in idleness. I also saw the fancy-dress cat I had encountered in the loft during the night. I wondered whether it was sweating inside its garments or suffering in some other manner.

Meanwhile, my partner and Eva brought out plates, cutlery, glasses, bottles, napkins, bread baskets, bottled preserves, saltcellar and pepper pot, butter, jam, plates of cheese, sausage, milk, sugar, and last of all, the coffeepot. When my partner caught sight of the dressed-up cat, she burst out laughing and said she’d never seen anything so absurd.

We decided not to wait for Heinrich any longer. Eva said it was silly of him to go gallivanting around in the car, and it was his own fault if he turned up too late for breakfast.

The farmer emerged from the house next door. This morning too he was wearing his undersized hat and a jacket unsuited to the high prevailing temperature. Eva expressed the hope that he wouldn’t join us; he would be bound to talk about the killings and make her feel uneasy. The farmer waved. In his wontedly stolid manner, he plodded over to the stables, in which sundry animals were making themselves heard.

My partner poured some coffee. She bit into an open sausage sandwich and looked up at the sun. Masticating, she said it was a glorious day and it mustn’t be spoiled by talk of murder and so
on; Eva should bring influence to bear on Heinrich in that regard. She wouldn’t forgive me either if I dared to disturb this idyllic day of rest.

While conversing about the length of time the Stubenrauchs had lived there, what the infrastructure was like (doctors, shops, gas stations), and how much of every day Eva and Heinrich devoted to driving to their respective places of work, we tucked into our breakfast. After a while, we were obliged to put up the sun umbrella. The butter on the table had nearly melted and the milk was threatening to turn sour. Because I was seated nearest the jam jar, it fell to me to shoo away ten wasps or so.

Just as the farmer emerged from the stables, the Stubenrauchs’ car drove into the yard. Heinrich got out with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. The farmer came over to us. He said good morning, more to Heinrich than the rest of us. Heinrich only just had time to nod to us before the farmer, in his usual, overly loud way of speaking, launched into a conversation about the murders. Eva and my partner reacted with unconcealed displeasure, but Heinrich promptly seized on the farmer’s assertion that the killer couldn’t be a local and that such a thing was out of the question.

While driving, said Heinrich, he had read in the paper that the police were looking for a red sedan of Japanese manufacture with old Styrian license plates. Eva took him to task. He was mad to read while driving, she told him. With a grin, Heinrich pointed out that nothing untoward had happened.

The farmer said that, although he might believe the bit about the Styrian license plates, the murderer certainly wasn’t from the neighborhood; there were no such persons anywhere in the locality.

Depositing the newspapers on the table, Heinrich retorted that one couldn’t see inside people’s heads.

I opened one of the papers. It featured a big picture of a boy pointing with an outstretched arm to a spot at the top of a tree. A black, downward-pointing arrow had been drawn from that spot to indicate the jumping-off point, the victim’s trajectory, and his point of impact. My partner, who had initially averted her gaze, leaned over and asked if that was the surviving child.

No, I said, it was a faked photograph; the tree was authentic but not the boy.

Incredible, that tree, said the farmer. He knew the forest, it was a good place for picking mushrooms, he’d been there more than once but had never guessed that something so terrible would happen there someday—how could he? The killer must be found at all costs and made short work of. So saying, he turned and ambled back to his house.

Heinrich sat down at the table at last. Hurriedly, he poured himself a cup of coffee, then took a bite out of a dry roll and immersed himself in a newspaper. Wouldn’t he at least put some butter on it? Eva demanded. Heinrich merely grunted, said Hmm, and remained totally incommunicado.

She said he should restrain himself. He mustn’t forget that their guests hadn’t made the long journey to Styria just to watch television and read newspapers. This was a day for relaxation and amicable conversation, she said, so put the paper away.

Heinrich laughed and did as he was told, but he said he couldn’t detach himself from the tragedy completely. He had at least to keep abreast of events during the day or his curiosity would choke him. Eva and my partner rolled their eyes but conceded this, whereupon he jumped up and hurried into the house. She hadn’t meant it that way, Eva called after him, but he had disappeared.

Pretexting a visit to the bathroom, I likewise went inside, pursued by the women’s cries of disapproval. Heinrich, with a
newspaper open on his knees, was seated in front of the television perusing the news. In a conspiratorial tone of voice, he said he was acquainted with a policeman who performed his duties in Frauenkirchen. He felt strongly tempted to call him, or even to pay him a visit; we might be able to glean some information that hadn’t been publicized by the newspapers or on television.

I reminded him that such a course of action would inevitably result in protests from the female members of our foursome. Shaking his head, Heinrich said they must be given some incentive for taking an equal interest in the progress of the case. When I inquired about the nature of this incentive, he replied in one word: Fear.

It would be reprehensible of us, he said with a grin, but we could at least inspire a certain uneasiness, for instance by reporting rumors that the killer was on the loose somewhere nearby; I need only remember the fuss they had made last night. No, he added, it really wasn’t necessary to scare our womenfolk stiff. If we were clever, we could use pure conjecture to persuade them not to put too much of a brake on our research.

We re-devoted ourselves to the news and the newspaper, respectively. The paper described the killer as an inhuman, bestial, camera-wielding devil, a criminal from another planet. His atrocities were the focus of every columnist and commentator. Even a picture of the victims’ mother had been printed. The article informed us that this photograph was considered scandalous. The photographer had sneaked into the Am Feldhof psychiatric institute disguised as a nurse and photographed the murdered boys’ mother, who was strapped to a bed and internally suffused with medication. According to the article, the chairman of the Press Council and the leader of the Liberal Party had stated that this conflicted with their ethical principles.

After Heinrich and I had read each other some interesting excerpts from various newspaper columns, we went outside again. The women greeted us with sullen faces and reproachful expressions. Heinrich ignored them.

Excitedly, he announced that the killer had been identified but the police were still unwilling to reveal who he was. Did that mean they had caught him? Eva demanded. Heinrich said no, but they thought they knew roughly where he was—namely, in this area. He had been sighted on Rössel Road between Frauenkirchen and Kaibing.

My partner agitatedly inquired the source of this information. Heinrich said we had heard it on the radio. My partner sprang to her feet, as did Eva, and hurried into the house. She turned on the radio and asked which station had broadcast the news. Austria 2, the local Styrian station, Heinrich replied. My partner tuned the radio on, but in order to receive the station she had to change frequencies. This aroused her suspicions.

Heinrich hastened to reassure her; in search of further information, he had gone looking for another station. Then my partner found Austria 2. Blaring folk music could be heard. Startled, she turned the sound down. Eva had joined us by now.

Heinrich urged the two of them not to be concerned—nor to make such a spectacle of themselves as they had last night after the din in the loft. My partner irritably retorted that they hadn’t made a spectacle of themselves and that the camera killer’s potential proximity genuinely alarmed her. Heinrich replied that the killer had every reason to be more frightened of us and everyone else than we were of him. Yes, Eva added, and it was broad daylight now too.

So no one need be frightened, said Heinrich, and a good thing too.

Eva said she must nip over to the farmer to fetch some milk fresh from the cow. My partner volunteered to accompany her,
saying that it was a long time since she’d seen such a thing. Eva said she wouldn’t actually be milking the cow—the milk came from a churn—but my partner insisted that this, combined with the smell of stables, would give her equal pleasure.

Once the two of them had left the house, Heinrich beckoned to me and hurried into the living room. He wanted to watch the end of the video, he said; he was feeling full of beans and less squeamish today, and he hoped the killer would soon be caught. So saying, he turned on the television and the video recorder.

3:59. The cameraman was interviewing the hog-tied brother about the emotions that had beset him since his brother’s death. When he received no satisfactory answers, he reminded the boy that he could have saved his brother’s life. Tears were the sole response.

The cameraman then told him that he at least had an opportunity to save his mother from being boiled alive and his father from being dismembered. He, the cameraman, would shut his eyes and count to a hundred. It was up to the boy whether he remained where he was or ran off. If he stayed, he would be put to death in the most painless manner possible and his entire family, grandmother included, would be spared. If he ran away, he would be pursued. If the cameraman failed to catch him at once or within the next few hours, he would pay the family a visit on October 31st and Halloween them all to death. The police would be powerless to help. If he caught the boy at once, however, he would kill him after salting his abdominal cavity, making a necktie out of his tongue, and scrambling his innards from behind, etc. He would also murder one other member of the family—either mother, father, or grandmother—with the aid of various implements such as pliers and scissors, etc., but spare the rest and leave the choice of the victim to the boy. He was telling him this to give him a chance to come to his senses; in the event that
he ran away, he could turn around and at least save two members of his family.