Free The Bone Man by Wolf Haas Page A

us, Brenner himself wasn’t entirely certain, either,
am I going for the research, per se, or is there a little, you know, too
. So I don’t see why I even need to bother. Practically speaking, Brenner’s only a man.
    And street prostitution—needless to say, another thing altogether, and there you’d be right in saying, what was Brenner looking for at the Borderline. But when everybody’s always thinking they know better, then it’s up to me to be the one who says: it was here, at the Borderline of all places, that Brenner got somewhere, one decisive millimeter farther. And without this millimeter, the Bone Man might never have been caught—might still be running around Styria on a brutal rampage—and to this day mothers might not dare let their kids play in the streets. No children’s bones were ever found among the bones at Löschenkohl’s, of course. These days, though, if you’re a mother, well, needless to say—caution, mother of all wisdom.
    And it’s only a handful of mothers today who realize that it’s Brenner they should be thanking for the fact that they can let their children back out into the open countryside. And badminton, and swimming, and bike riding, yes, my dears, what fun—and all just because Brenner went to a brothel. The way I see it: so be it if a certain something else played a part in Brenner’s decision, i.e., not one hundred percent research. Is it so terrible, if we have a few less deaths in Styria today?
    You’ll have to excuse me, but it really gets on my nerves sometimes, how sanctimonious people can be. Now, where’d I leave off.
    It was a Sunday night, two days after the bus trip to Maribor.
Because Saturday night at a brothel is just too much of a production
, Brenner thought.
Better to go on a Sunday night, when there aren’t that many customers and it’ll be easier to strike up a conversation with the girls
.
    Twenty years ago, when Brenner was still in the police academy, he went to the cathouse a few times, because that’s what you do—young man, part of a group, you go to a cathouse once. But you can’t always use a group as an excuse, because, as far as that goes, Brenner hadn’t exactly been the voice of dissent—I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. But since the academy, he hadn’t had anything to do with prostitutes—well, once, at most, in an official capacity, but not privately.
    It’d been such a long time that he was a little nervous now, buyer’s anxiety, so to speak. A moment later, though, he was already feeling right at home again, because he met an old acquaintance at the door. Turns out, Jacky wasn’t unemployed after all—he only had time to hang around Löschenkohl’s all day long because by night he worked as a bouncer.
    “Ah, so this is your business, Jacky.”
    “No, it’s my idealism,” Jacky grumbled. He was still a little sensitive, because it was only recently that he’d had to start working back at the Borderline again.
    Just a month earlier he’d been thrown out by the chief physician in Graz when, out of nowhere, two of her nurses got pregnant. Supposedly, that’s even why she wasn’t promoted to medical director, because the people down here are always a little weird about a fifty-year-old taking a thirty-year-old lover. I don’t know if there’s any truth to the rumor, but it might have a speck of a kernel of a truth.
    Jacky held the door open for Brenner, and then the heavy red curtains, then a black door with a round glass window, and then, of course, big surprise.
    And you could see how times have changed. People always say that, especially about kids, you’re supposed to see how the times change. Well, Brenner was seeing it now at the brothel. Because it was a distant echo of the brothels of twenty years ago when he’d been in the academy.
    Music, artificial fog, a spotlight—I can’t even begin to describe it. Imagine New York, or imagine Paris—or if you’re me, Moscow—but whatever you do, just don’t