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something like that, but the people down here aren’t real political.
    The police only came up with the idea because of the ski tourism, I mean, on account of the demand that it be shut down. Because the dead bodies. In the ski lift of all places. Because that’s deliberate. Practically a final warning. But there was no letter accompanying it, no phone calls, either, and so what kind of a warning’s that, really.
    And then it got pointed out that this kind of threat is as old as the reservoir itself. Somehow the reservoir just stirs people’s imaginations. Maybe some anxiety, unconscious, I don’t know. The mayor of Zell had a whole collection of these letters. But the cops were here three weeks already before they found out about them. Because you’ve got to see to it that something like this doesn’t make its way into the public. Imagine if the tourists stayed away, possibly on account of some nonsense like this.
    And the mayor always said: “Blow up a wall ten meters thick? It would be easier to blow away the mountains all around it.”
    But in the council meeting minutes, well, sentences like these never made their way in. Because someone saw to it that it didn’t become official, let’s say, more like dead silent. And for the best. Because the reservoir’s still up there.
    Brenner was thinking that, too, now, as he looked out at it from his balcony. The reservoir’s still up there, and nothing else has changed, either. Because if he was going to be honest, then he, too, a full half a year later now, still didn’t havea lead. And Brenner was in exactly the kind of mood where a person’s bound to get honest with himself.
    The sun was slowly going down, and the lake was gleaming. Now there’s nature putting on a show, enough to make you say: unreal, nothing like it.
    And it occurred to him that he was being about as thick as the Precinct Music Director’s daughter when, silently, he says to himself now:
    “Frankly, it wasn’t the Heidnische Kirche, and it wasn’t Vergolder Antretter, either, and it wasn’t anybody else, either. But it must’ve been somebody.”

CHAPTER 4
    No, no, now look here. Zell’s not so small that everybody knows everybody else. But everybody does know Goggenberger, the taxi driver, Johnny. He’s an original, alright—you can say that again. Because he’s 120 kilos and got a pink Chevrolet that he’s been driving around Zell for twenty years. He’s never done anything else, because, Johnny’s not quite as old as he looks. But where he got the Chevrolet from, that’s what I’d be interested to know.
    Now, on the seventh of September, Brenner had Johnny drive him to Kaprun. It was more, let’s say, not because Brenner absolutely had to go to Kaprun. But because taxi drivers, often times they hear a lot. And if he has Johnny take him somewhere, then maybe I’ll learn something, Brenner thought, but then it backfired on him.
    Because, Johnny, he don’t say moo or baa. And even if you drove all the way up to Sweden with him. Because once a Swede broke his foot skiing, and he had Johnny chauffeur him all the way home to Sweden. And I have to say, enjoyable, that cannot have been, because Johnny smokes Virginias, and the stench in that Chevrolet of his—you can barely put up with it from Zell to Schüttdorf. And needless to say,he didn’t do much in the way of talking with the Swede, either, because the Swede didn’t know any German, and Johnny, well, I have yet to hear him say anything in Swedish.
    “I’ll be damned!” Johnny’s saying now, as the weatherman reports on the radio that it’s going to be even hotter today than yesterday.
    Otherwise, Brenner didn’t get anything out of him. When he’s drunk, Johnny talks nonstop, so when he’s quiet, it’s nonstop too. He’s rarely drunk, though, because, as a cabbie, he can’t afford it, of course, not one bit.
    But there was something else bothering Brenner even more. Not the Virginia stench, though, because