The Dark Meadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

own blood, it would break my heart. I’d be pacing around the room mad with grief and pain, accusing God of making the world such a bad place and not stopping what I loved best being taken from me. But the old man just sat there as if it were nothing to do with him.
    We didn’t see the little boy until later. He was lying under a shawl beside the sofa, crying quietly.
    I knew there was no helping Afra now. But when we found the child under the woollen shawl and he was still breathing, I hoped if I got him to the doctor right away thenthe little mite could be saved. So I lost no time, I put him in a basket, and I cycled off to Dr Heunisch with it as fast as I could go.
    I told young Weinzierl to watch the suspect and never take his eyes off him, not for a moment, until I got back with the doctor and the murder squad.
    Because when someone is murdered it’s not a case for a little village policeman anymore: that’s when the specialists come in.
    I got in touch with our colleagues in the criminal investigation department, and about three in the afternoon I was back on the scene of the crime with the murder squad, and at four the forensics people arrived with someone from the public prosecutor’s office.
    The little boy died later in hospital.

Johann
    He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in this room. They had taken him away with them and brought him here. When they were driving away from the house he had turned and looked out of the small rear window of the car. The washing was still hanging on the line, like an impenetrable white wall. The wind had dropped, the storm had never broken.
    It must be late afternoon by now, but he had lost all sense of time. The air in the room was stuffy: in spite of the heat the window was closed and had bars outside. As far as he could tell, it looked out on a small inner courtyard. There was nothing green in sight, not a ray of sun, the view was cut off by the wall at the other side of the yard. It was greyish-brown, the plaster was coming off inmany places and showing the bricks underneath. There was a small square table in the room and two chairs, nothing else. The police officers had told him that he had to wait here, so he waited patiently, still clad only in his undershirt and his work trousers.
    The door opened, and a man much larger and stronger than Johann himself came in. That made him uncomfortable; he felt as if the stranger were filling the whole room, every corner of it. The man sat down on the chair opposite him and spoke calmly to Johann Zauner. He briefly introduced himself, but the old man couldn’t remember the name. Then he asked Johann for his own full name, his address, the names of his wife and his daughter. But he spoke so softly that Johann had difficulty in following what he said. The stranger was trying to inject a note of familiarity into his voice, just as if they had known each other for years. Johann Zauner distrusted that kind of familiarity; he had encountered it often enough to know that it boded no good. The man opposite him noticed the old man’s wariness.
    Johann thought how he had come home from mowing that day; he thought of the washing blowing in the wind. Large sheets, as white as blossom. The door was open, and there was no one to be seen in the yard. The morning had been oppressively sultry, and there was an approachingthunderstorm in the air. He had hurried to get the mowing done before it began raining. On the way home from the railway embankment, dark clouds had come up in the sky. He was sweating, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He went into the shed, hung the scythe up in its place, and then he went over to the house. The enamel bucket stood by the door with the big ladle in it. He mopped the sweat from his face with his handkerchief, scooped up water in the ladle and drank it greedily. Only then did he go into the house.
    *
    A loud noise. The stranger pushed his chair aside and leaned forward.