Free Girl in the Cellar by Allan Hall Page A

companies and discount DIY markets and just across the road from an enormous garbage processing facility, a pyramid-like metal building that towers over the grim area.
    The bar’s clientele consists mostly of workers from the nearby companies and drinkers from the neighbourhood, many of them from the Rennbahnweg estate. The bar itself is a run-down wooden shed with six bench-tables. With a mental measuring tape the casual observer can calculate it to be about eight times the size of Priklopil’s underground cell.
    The owner, Christine Palfrader, is a bulky woman in her early fifties who is fed up with the glare of publicity, the TV cameras that come barging through the door, the Klieg lights and the swarms of irrepressible reporters. But she remembered Wolfgang Priklopil.
    It is a miracle, a miracle that she is alive and well. But we all know there is more to that story. God only knows what has really been happening. As for Priklopil, he was sometimes here several times a week, but we did not know his name until we saw him on TV. He was a quiet man, always very friendly and polite with everyone. He used to stand at the same place at the counter each time. I cannot remember precisely what he ate or drank, but I think it was usually a sausage and it was never alcohol—maybe an apple juice mixed with sparkling water, something like that. I don’t remember when he first started coming here. He was not someone you would notice or talk about.
    He only talked to two other technicians, some stuff about their job. They both admired him and said he knew a lot about his work and was a really clever man. We all had the impression he was educated and smart, and he always dressed smartly too.
    He was handsome, good-looking, but somehowunnoticeable. He just did not stick out. You could say he was invisible. The only thing people noticed him for was his flashy car. He had this big sporty BMW that he would park in front of the bar. The engine used to make a lot of noise, so people would turn and look.
    I last saw him in July 2006 before closing down for three weeks for the August holidays.
    Also a regular at the bar is Natascha’s father Ludwig, known here by his nickname ‘Luki’. He stops here after knocking off the night shift at the bakery where he is now employed, to eat breakfast and drink a beer or wine spritzer at seven in the morning in his back-to-front, nocturnal life. The question has still not been answered: did he meet ‘Wolfi’ without knowing who he was? Did he engage him in conversation one day, ask him about the weather?
    Did he even buy him a glass of apple juice without knowing that, some seven to ten minutes’ drive away, depending on the traffic, his little girl was captive in this man’s specially constructed gaol? Christine cannot recall ever seeing the two men together. But there is yet a further twist in this bizarre Bermuda triangle of intertwining acquaintances and happenstance meetings.
    A former ‘good friend’ of Ludwig’s, who was also a boyfriend of Natascha’s mother, Brigitta Sirny, has also been named as knowing Priklopil. Ronnie Husek owns a haulage business in the industrial estate around the corner from the snack bar. ‘I know Huseka bit. Frau Sirny knows him very well,’ says Herr Koch. ‘He used to be a friend of mine, but no longer.’ That is because Herr Husek began an affair with Frau Sirny when she and Ludwig were still together, claim neighbours.
    In this poor part of Vienna, witnesses have reported seeing Herr Husek with Priklopil at a grocer’s shop that Frau Sirny used to run: Husek bringing him around so that the technically gifted loner could fix a faulty fuse box.
    Among the witnesses is the strictly anti-Sirny Anneliese Glaser, who had a clear memory of the visit: ‘And I am sure she knew Priklopil, the kidnapper. I remember him very well, he came to the shop with this Husek, Ronnie Husek, and was fixing the