gravel pit had last been worked in the fifties and early sixties and had been almost completely reclaimed by nature. Only the forlorn, rusty jib of a crane had been left behind to remind of earlier commercial exploitation. The northern lip of the depression was shaded by large oaks and a flat shelf just below was a popular picnic spot. Charred bricks were scattered around begging for re-assembly as an improvised barbecue grill.
At the far end of the excavation there were still traces of where motocross bikes had disturbed the tranquillity of the clearing. But this activity had been more strictly dealt with than the transgressions of shameless unclothed bathers.
Dirk had our attention. After his abject failure to extract from Aunt Ursel any answers to his questions he now sought to cover himself with glory by reciting some highlights of his still young journalistic career. He could not cover himself with much else, nor did he seem much inclined to. Nor would we have wanted him to. He also had a very well formed arse.
He had in truth shown precocious investigative promise by ignoring the maxim which adjured that one was ill-advised to shit on one’s own front doorstep. The door in question was that of the posh boarding school (even more snobbish than my own) where Dirk had been in his final year.
That for sons of Gulf state princelings passing grades could be had for a pecuniary recognizance was to be deplored. Dirk did so with a couple of thousand well chosen words in a malicious and snarky exposé.
Thus it was that (together with sundry carefree sons of Araby) he failed to pass his Matura, the Austrian equivalent of the Abitur, the German certification that secondary schooling had been satisfactorily completed.
There followed Dirk’s first success as a junior reporter, the dismantling of a Munich edifice, that of a very wealthy club owner who was as much part of the Bavarian jet-set Schickeria as his clientele. Sepp was outed as a supplier of recreational drugs on a grand scale, looking after the needs of the rich and infamous. The three-part story was praised by the Polizeidirektion München although thereafter Dirk himself was obliged to find a new dealer.
That the marriage of two socialites served only to mask the fact that both husband and wife also had long-standing and ongoing same-sex liaisons was story the tabloids took up and ran with for weeks. I forget which of the protagonists was a cousin Dirk loathed.
Then there was the well researched investigation of the manicure salons proliferating like rabbits all over Germany. Hot button issues like human trafficking and illegal immigration were touched upon. That story had occasioned Dirk’s first experience of being ‘warned off’. It had cost him the painful extraction of a toe-nail.
My old friend Hans-Peter had come to be the proprietor of La Belle, the single cosmetic salon in Weinfelden. He had girls from Laos and Vietnam to do our nails although he was quite happy to handle intimate waxes himself. He also owned Cherie-Bar just outside the town limits where the girls hailed from Central Europe, served drinks and fulfilled the erotic fantasies of relatively undemanding Swiss men of little sophistication. An enterprising rogue, Hans-Peter Danner.
But back to Dirk. The water in the gravel pit had been neither as deep nor as cold as might have been anticipated. Splashing around in it had been invigorating but it had done nothing to diminish the distinctive dimensions of Dirk.
“Oh, my goodness!” Aunt Ursel had exclaimed. She might have protested that her reaction was to the sight of Dirk’s mangled left big toe.
Bea Schell looked self-satisfied and proprietorial. But she thanked me for my tip that Hans-Peter’s ministrations could help her to complete her transformation to her two-point-zero iteration. She had had no hesitation about stripping off. It came as something of a surprise to me that she had two neat and presentable tits. I suspected that artificially enhanced cleavage belonged now to the past.. As ‘ghost’ she had tended to present what I would call a mono-mammary bosom, like a transverse bolster across her chest, a rounded presence beneath grey or beige blouses, shirts or twin-sets, a pillow for a weary head.
Nice breasts and a full Brazilian to come.
“You took your prissy good girl cover to extremes, did you not? I mean… who was to notice whether or not you were clean shaven?”
The look she shot me was large calibre, for elephant, for bear, for a Gelernte Buchhandelskauffrau prone to spontaneous articulation of any passing thought. The cellphone in one of the many pockets of her shorts chirped. I found it odd that such a geek would not have the latest iPhone but instead a much bulkier, older looking device. She read text on the display and gave a quick nod.
“We are, I think, of interest to a snooper, Thea.”
Bea’s cellphone was not a smartphone. It was a super-duper smart cellphone.
“Side-burst pattern encryption, among other features.”
Okay. Another feature I understood better. The cellphone could scan wireless frequencies being used in the immediate vicinity. Bea’s guess was that there was a transmitter installed on top of the abandoned jib arm, and that the data stream was originated from a video camera with a perfect view of any illicit nude bathers.
“Law enforcement?”
“I doubt if they would go to the trouble. More likely a local electronics buff with voyeuristic bent. If he’s gay then he must be enjoying the sight of Dirk a whole lot.”
Dirk Seehof rose in my estimation, remaining steadfast and unwavering as he unpacked our Brotzyt from the heavy rucksack he had carried without complaint. Frau Steinemann had included Cervelat sausages which seemed quite puny. Comparisons are odious. Ursel Lange amazed me by throwing me a surreptitious wink.
My aunt had the beginnings of a very slight stoop but could best be called sinewy. And leathery, but in the sense of fine old gloves, cherished, still serviceable and with a distinguished patina. Her grey hair was thinning, I noticed. A vanity undiminished had moved Ursel to install a solarium couch in the lower floor of Säntisblick. I think I used it more than she did. Gravity had not spared the old lady’s breasts and buttocks but on the whole I hoped I might look as good if permitted to live to such an age.
We lit no fire. The rucksack Dirk had carried contained a one-time grill contraption which sufficed to get the Cervelat sausages spluttering. Bünderfleisch, big crispy radishes and Appenzeller cheese and whole-wheat bread, all washed down with a single bottle of local beer for each of us. More would have made Dirk’s burden much heavier and us more sleepy than we should be with the rest of the hike to be completed.
Three pairs of eyes (and maybe the camera on the jib) watched Dirk get back into his trousers. Which I found horrible; not the observation, which was quite diverting, but the trousers themselves. Such as terminate below the knee but well above the ankle I simply find hideous and emasculating, even when they contain redeeming grandeur.
I expected Aunt Ursel to be more forthcoming on the way back. She often was, sharing her knowledge of flora and fauna, of the history of the region going back to the Romans and beyond, of the predilections of the local foresters. One whose cabins we passed had the reputation of being odd.
Bea confirmed as we went by that the video signals from the gravel pit were in fact being received by the cabin’s high-tech Peeping Tom occupant.
Then Ursel Lange was minded to touch on the subject which had brought three of us to Weinfelden.
“What do you know of your grandfather, Theodora?” she asked.
Not much, to be honest. Omi had mostly avoided mention of the husband born in 1910 who died in 1968. Who else had there been to tell me anything more than my aunt herself had divulged in dribs and drabs over the years? I knew that old Heinrich, although German, had settled in Switzerland when his father bought the town’s bookshop in the late twenties, that Heinrich had been married to Ursel in 1937 when she was nineteen and he was two years younger. The divorce was in 1942 and then Heinrich then wed my Omi, whom I remember with affection for her kindness and understanding of a difficult girl growing up. I had been thirteen when Erika Lange died.
My