The Cure is Murder – Chapter 12

I’m worried about Oskar, Sabrina said

Why? Trude said. He’s a big boy. He told me where he was coming from. He’s scared a bit, too. Scared? Him? Ha! So tell me all the gory details. Well, here goes. This is what I remember.

Oskar Muller Senior took his small family to Australia for a university appointment. The timing was good. Oskar at 13 was doing well at his school, Vienna’s elite Theresianum. The sojourn of five years would get the boy away from the fooling around that had already scarred his face when the youngsters removed their fencing masks in a gesture of bravado to their burgeoning manliness. It was good to get Oskar away from a thinking that still had roots in the former Napola tradition of the private school under the National Socialists.

In Australia, Oskar´s parents fell into university life teaching at the University of New South Wales, a university that looked outward and was comfortable in its location in an intrinsically Asian part of the world. Oskar´s father taught mathematics and his mother history of science. Both gave coaching in German conversation on the side. Oskar went to Sydney Boys’ High School, wore a school uniform and did well in his final school exams. He was also proud of his nickname “Scarface” although the fencing scar on his right cheek was more attractive than not at a time when tattoos were beginning to become mainstream.

When the five years were up, Oskar´s family moved back to Vienna and to positions at Vienna University. Oskar did an IT course at the technical University and set up his own company, integrating his love of aviation photography and design in troubleshooting for websites. At an aviation outing he met up with a group of flyers who asked him to take some photographs of hang gliders. When asked about his scar, he just said from his time at the Theresianum and left it at that, not realising that he had unwittingly been accepted in what, to all intents and purposes, was a very secretive society whose members met in Bad Tatzmannsdorf, a spa town in Burgenland.

Trude

Something´s going on, but I don´t know what. I quite fancy Oskar, for a dance – I haven´t danced in ages. I saw a dress in the window of a shop in Waidhofen when I saw Ellie and that man and the gift he gave her. All wrapped up it was. It wasn´t her birthday. Maybe he was just after her. But who would be after a Marilyn Manson clone? Stop it. Don´t be nasty. The dress. One with a twirly skirt like in the 50s, like in Grease. Oskar will be my Travolta. I can dream, can´t I? Now where was that shop? I´ll try and go in tomorrow.