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team?”
    “Yeah. Your bunch knows all about that, of course. Who am I to talk?”
    “Do you mean people who live in Graz? People my age, or other gay men like me?”
    “Very funny, Professor. I meant your generation. As if I cared whether a man is gay or not. Macht nichst.”
    “It makes no odds to you at all?”
    “You seem surprised. My generation is not allowed to be tolerant?”
    The sky behind the hills was still glowing now, but a tiny sliver of moon remained over the last of the lights on the houses. It might be shirtsleeves by midday today yet.
    “Morning drivers are quite polite when you nail them,” said Gebhart then. “Did you know that?”
    “I’ve only done one trap. It was in the afternoon.”
    “You’re going to track a couple of real fliers at least, though.”
    Now wasn’t the time to tell the same Gebhart that last October he’d gotten to Vienna in 90 minutes on the autobahn. There was a separate corps in the Gendarmerie for the autobahn patrols and traffic. Quite a serious bunch too. They could take your car for that kind of a stunt.
    “The real damage gets done on the local roads, doesn’t it,” he said to Gebhart.
    “Stimmt. Those are stats you can’t argue with. They’re speeding just to get to the autobahn, just to save what, two minutes? What does that say about human nature?”
    “That people are predictable, maybe?”
    “Did you make that up just now? Or is it some fancy logic thing, some philosophy thing?”
    “Who says people aren’t cranky this time of day?”
    Gebhart gave him a considered look. Felix had learned to grade them. This one was minor not quite glare, more curiosity and skepticism together.
    “I was trying to make a point. So do we need the irony crap? I say no. What, you thought I didn’t know irony? I respect the book stuff. I respect your, uh, poetic leanings. Just don’t be a pain in the arsch.”
    “Thanks. Nothing personal. Right, Gebi?”
    “Absolutely.You know that.”
    “‘Nothing personal, Felix, but you’re an idiot’?”
    Gebhart chortled.
    “You’re good,” he said. “When you’re not being a dummy.
    Come on now. We have a job here.”
    There was a line of six cars behind the Opel already. None dared pass, of course. Felix began to wonder what some of them were thinking, especially the guy in the Mercedes two back.
    Swearing probably.
    He liked the way this was turning out.

FIVE
    B Y NINE , G ENDARMES K IMMEL AND G EBHART HAD AMASSED A reasonable sum for the coffers of the Austrian state. Gebi had even nailed two drivers for flashing the oncoming traffic too. One of the flashers had played it right, however, saying he hadn’t realized it was an offence. He spoke in a respectful, resigned tone about how he had been merely hoping to slow down a couple of crazy ones; that he thought it might lower the danger, blah blah. But Gebi had shown no mercy to an elegant woman in a 7 Series BMW. Felix heard him mutter something about a boy-toy coming too early, as she accelerated away, expressionless. She had been unperturbed by the fine.
    The one to remember was a large, morose man in an old Kadett. Felix had written him up. For a while he couldn’t concentrate on the form. His mind was full of the man’s sullen menace. It was as if it was being pumped across the air between them in a relentless cloud. He became preoccupied almost immediately with re-enacting the drills in his mind, the ones for pacifying a guy who had an obvious size advantage. The man hadn’t said more than two words in total. Felix wondered if the guy would do more than keep up that baleful, blank stare at him.
    Gebi was good, better than he let on, at picking up on things like this. He must have noticed the guy’s expression. When Felix looked up from the clipboard again, Gebhart had left the lazerpistole and taken up a position behind the driver’s side of the Kadett, his hand in his belt. The move wasn’t lost on the driver. His eye strayed from Felix to his mirror