Games of The Hangman f-1

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  "What — what do you mean?" The words came out in a jerky whisper so quiet they were almost drowned out by the sound of buzzing insects. Shafts of sunlight penetrated the treetops and flooded the clearing. "Why?" he said. "Why, why?"

  "I pay well, as you know," said Kadar, "but I do demand obedience. Absolute obedience." He stressed every syllable.

  "I haven't disobeyed you," said Siegfried.

  "I'm afraid you have," said Kadar. "You were questioned two days ago by the Kripos. You were held for twenty-four hours and then released. Under those circumstances you should not have come to this meeting. You might have led the police to us."

  "It was only a routine investigation. I told them nothing. They know nothing."

  "You should have reported being held. You did not. A sin of omission, as Catholics would say."

  "I wanted to work for you," said Siegfried. "Geranium is so close."

  "Well, we can't have everything we want. Didn't they teach you that in nursery school?" Kadar looked at Sylvie. "In about thirty seconds." He looked back at Siegfried. "I thought you'd have recognized it," he said, indicating the polished stone. "It's a piece of gravestone. There wasn't time to have it properly inscribed."

  The Ingram fires at the rate of twelve hundred rounds a minute — roughly twice the speed of the average hand-held automatic weapon. Sylvie blew her victim's head off with half of the thirty-two-round magazine in a fraction of a second.

  Kadar was already on his feet. He pointed at the envelopes and wrapping paper that littered the ground in front of the four remaining terrorists. "As you know, I am concerned about the environment. I would take it kindly if you would remove this litter when you go."

  "What about him?" asked the Lebanese, looking at Siegfried's splayed body.

  "Not to worry," said Kadar, "he's biodegradable." With that Kadar vanished into the wood.

  * * * * *

  Ivo was still in Bern, no great distance from police headquarters, in fact, but the Kripos and Berps of the City of Bern could scarcely have been blamed for failing to recognize him: plain Ivo no longer existed. He had been replaced by someone much better suited to the task at hand, a figure of legendary courage and valor who would pursue his quest to the ends of the earth. What had started as a pleasing notion while waiting for the Monkey in the Hauptbahnhof had metamorphosed, in Ivo's drug-blasted mind, into fact. He was Sir Ivo, noble knight and hero.

  In keeping with his new status, Sir Ivo had adopted a new mode of dress. Since armor and other knightly accoutrements were not readily available in downtown Bern, he had to improvise with a little judicious pillaging. In place of chain mail, he wore a one-piece scarlet leather motorcycle suit festooned with enough zippers and chains to clink and clank appropriately. Over it he wore a surcoat made from a designer sheet featuring hundreds of miniature Swiss flags and a cloak fashioned from brocade curtain material. Roller skates served as his horse, and a motorcycle helmet fitted with a tinted visor did service as his helm.

  Sir Ivo knew that he had enemies, so he decided to disguise himself as a harmless troubadour. He slung a Spanish guitar around his neck. It was missing most of its strings, but that was somewhat irrelevant since the sound box had been cut away to serve as a combined scabbard, arms store, and commissary. The guitar itself contained a bloodstained sharpened motorcycle chain — referred to by Sir Ivo as his mace and chain — and half a dozen painted hard-boiled eggs.

  In his new outfit Sir Ivo was bulkier, taller, and — with his helmet visor down — faceless. The valiant knight raised his visor and lit up a joint. He was giving serious thought to his next move. He was getting closer to the man who had killed Klaus, but the question was what he should do with the information he had already acquired. He thought it would be nice to have some help. He missed having Klaus to talk to. Working out what one should do next was a difficult business by oneself. He liked the idea of a band of knights, the Knights of the Round Table.

  He now knew quite a lot about the killer, thanks to the Monkey, and he might have found out more if the knave hadn't tried to knife him. The Monkey had thought that Ivo wouldn't know how to fight. He might have been right about mere Ivo — but Sir Ivo was a different story. He had blocked the knife thrust effortlessly with his shield (the much-abused guitar, whose remaining strings were lost in the encounter) and then had cut the varlet down with a few strokes of his mace and chain. He had been somewhat aghast at the effects of his weapon but had suppressed his squeamishness with the thought that a knight must be used to the sight of blood.

  Still, it was unfortunate that he had been forced to cut down the Monkey so soon. He now had a jumble of facts and impressions of the killer — possibly enough to identify him — but these were mixed up with the Monkey's lies and with information on other clients. In his panic the Monkey had spewed out everything that came to mind, and sifting the useful from the irrelevant wasn't easy.

  Sir Ivo knew that thoroughness was part of knightliness, so he had written everything down and had even attempted various rough sketches based on the Monkey's descriptions. He knew what the inside of the room was like where the blindfolded Klaus and the Monkey — sometimes separately, sometimes together — had been taken. He knew what the man with the golden hair wanted sexually and, in detail, what they did. He knew that the golden hair was not real, but a wig that was not only a disguise but a representation of someone called Reston. He knew that the man spoke perfect Berndeutsch but was probably not Swiss. He knew many other things. He had a list of license plates, but the Monkey had made his ill-fated move before he had explained them.

  Sir Ivo reached into his guitar and removed a hard-boiled egg. This one was painted bright red, the color of blood. It reminded him of the Monkey's face after the chain had hit, but he suppressed this faintheartedness and decided instead to regard it as an omen, a good omen. He was going to get his man — but he needed help.

  He thought of the Bear, one policeman who had treated him like a human being. But no, the Bear wouldn’t do. A policeman might not understand about the Monkey. Questions would be asked. He couldn’t waste time with the police until this was all over.

  He thought about the last person who had helped him, the Irishman. That was a good idea. He'd find the Irishman again and sound him out. If he reacted as expected, he'd show him his notes on what the Monkey had said, and they could find the killer together. Two knights weren't a round tableful, but it was a start. The Irishman would be easy to find. He had seen him around before, and Bern was a small town. His Swiss upbringing coming to the fore, Sir Ivo carefully placed the handful of scarlet pieces in a nearby litter bin and skated away on his mission.

  * * * * *

  The Kripos had questioned the old man, but he told them nothing. He had known Ivo for some time and had helped him and other dropouts with food and, occasionally, small sums of money. He had prospered in Bern, and since his wife had died and his children left, he had decided the time had come to put something back into the city that had been good to him. Quietly he had pursued a one-man campaign to help the less fortunate.

  The Kripos knew what he did and respected him for it. They also knew, the way you do when you have been a policeman for some time, that he was lying when he said he hadn't seen Ivo, but there was little they could do except thank him for his time and leave, noting their reservations in their reports and resolving to try again in a week or two if nothing else turned up.

  Kadar's two-strong team did not suffer from the same scruples. With the lessons of Siegfried's death still clear in their minds, they didn't fold their notebooks and depart when they saw that the old man was lying. The bound him and gagged him, and for the next ten minutes of his life they inflicted more pain on him than he had experienced in all his seventy-three years.

  When he wanted to talk, they wouldn’t let him. The made him write out what he knew in a shaking hand, the gag still in his mouth. The apartment was small, and they wanted to make sure that he'd have no chance to cry for help. Then
they tortured him again to confirm his story. It didn't change. His physique, despite his age, was strong. He endured the second bout of agony with his heart sill beating but with his guilt at having betrayed Ivo almost a greater pain.

  Satisfied that at least they now had a description of Ivo in his newer image and that the old many had told them all he knew, they hanged him. They didn’t think it would take too long to find Ivo. Bern, after all, was a small town.

  * * * * *

  The Chief Kripo had been daydreaming. It was an understandable lapse given the hours he had been working recently, combined with the glow of sexual satisfaction resulting from a quick twenty minutes with Mathilde in her Brunnengasse apartment. He was still in a good mood when he picked up the phone. He recognized the pathologist's voice, which, he had to admit, he did not associate with good news. Cutting up corpses wasn't a very upbeat line of work.

  "Ernst Kunzler," said the pathologist.

  The Chief racked his brains. Then he remembered. Bern averaged about two suicides a week. This was the most recent. "The old man who hanged himself. Yes, I remember. What about him?"

  "He didn't hang himself," said the pathologist. "He was helped on his way, but it's much worse than that."

  His good mood suddenly vanished, the Chief Kripo began to feel sick.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane had three people to see in Lenk, and besides, he had never actually been to a real live ski resort. Lenk wasn't a jet set sort of place where you got crowded off the ski slopes by ex-kings, movie stars, Arab sheikhs, and rumbles of bodyguards; it was more of a family place for the Swiss and certain cognoscenti. It was also off season and felt like it. Fitzduane was mildly shocked when he arrived in the valley where Lenk nestled. Something normally associated with ski resorts was missing. There were cows, there was brownish grass that looked as if it still had not decided that winter was quite over, there were chalets nestling into the hillside the way chalets should, and there were alpine flowers in profusion — but no snow.

  The sun blazed down. He shaded his eyes, looked around and then upward, and instantly felt reassured. All those picture postcards hadn't lied. The village might be two-thirds asleep, but as his gaze rose, he could see ski lifts still in action. Farther up, the thin lines of the cables, the grass, and the tree line blended into the white glare of snow, and higher up still, multicolored dots zigged and zagged.

  He thought he'd better get some sunglasses. As he paid, he remembered that inflation came with the snow line. Or, as Erika had put it, "Why should we have to pay twenty percent more for a few thousand meters of altitude?" The air was clear, the day warm, and the thin air invigorating. On balance Fitzduane thought it was a silly question.

  * * * * *

  Marta von Graffenlaub looked the part of the firstborn. In contrast with Andreas, Vreni, and Rudi, who were still in the transition stage into full maturity, Marta had arrived. She was no longer a girl but very much a woman: poised, assured, and cautiously friendly.

  It was hot two levels up, where they met by arrangement, and they sat on the veranda of the chalet-style restaurant, watching the skiing and listening to the distinctive swish and hiss of wax against snow.

  The bottom half of Marta wore padded ski trousers and bright red composite material ski boots. The top half wore a designer T-shirt that consisted mainly of holes. Fitzduane wondered if one or the other half wasn't too hot or too cold. She had a creamy gold tan and an almost perfect complexion. She radiated good health and energy, and her nipples were nearly as prominent as Erika's. Funny, he'd never thought of the Swiss as sexy before.

  He suppressed an impulse to nibble a nipple and looked across the snow to where a cluster of tiny skiers was making him feel inadequate. He thought they were probably still in diapers. They all wore mirrored sunglasses and skied as if they had learned how inside the womb. He cheered up when one of the supertots suddenly sat down and started to cry like a normal child. The little monster was probably a part-time major in the Swiss Army.

  "You're very quiet," said Marta with a smile. She had the disconcerting ability to keep her distance while sounding intimate. "You drive from Bern and then climb a mountain to see me, and then you don't speak."

  "I'm in shock," said Fitzduane. He was drinking hot Glühwein, which seemed like the right thing to do when you were surrounded by snow but unwise when sweat was dripping off your Polaroids. "Those things remind me of helicopters" — he pointed at the ski lifts clanking past quietly about a hundred meters away — "and I don't like helicopters."

  "Oh, they're quite safe," said Marta. "We are very experienced in these things here." She saw the Fitzduane's Polaroids had angled to nipple height, and she blushed faintly.

  "Mmm," said Fitzduane. Apparently it was true that alcohol hit harder the higher the altitude. He went into the bar to get another Glühwein and a scotch for Marta. Everybody was clumping along the wooden floor with the rolling gait of B-movie gunslingers. He seemed to be the only person not wearing ski boots. The five-year-old in front of him selected what looked like a beer. He shook his head. Sometimes he missed Ireland. He squeezed his way back through the gunslingers and gave Marta her drink. "Do you yodel?" he said.

  "Oskar used to yodel," she said very quietly.

  "I thought it was like riding a bicycle," said Fitzduane, "once learned, never forgotten." He had been looking at a particularly spectacular demonstration of skiing prowess by an adult of indeterminate sex. For a moment he had missed the change in Marta's tone of voice. The skier misjudged his approach to the chalet and slammed into the wooden railings.

  "Olé!" exclaimed Fitzduane. He started to clap, and others on the veranda followed. A furious-looking mid-European face, dignity severely dented, surfaced from the snow. He shouldered his skis and clomped off toward the ski lift.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Oskar Schupbach, you mean."

  "Yes." There were tears in her eyes. "Damn," she said, and wiped them away. A little troop of ski boppers went past, chattering like sparrows.

  "‘The man with the face that looked as if it were carved out of solid mahogany,’" quoted Fitzduane. "Vreni told me about him, and so did Andreas. I'm going to see him while I'm here."

  "You can't," said Marta. "Oskar is dead."

  "He's dead? But I spoke to him only yesterday!" said Fitzduane, taken aback. "I arranged to meet him this evening in the Simmenfälle, the place beside the waterfall."

  "He liked the Simmenfälle," said Marta. "He often went there for a glass of wine and a game of jass. He used to meet clients there. He was a guide, you know."

  "I know."

  Marta was pensive. She ran a long golden finger around the rim of her glass. She stared out at the skiers on the slopes. "He taught me to ski. He taught us all. He was part of our growing up here. Always while we were here in Lenk, there was Oskar. We skied with him, we climbed with him, in summer we walked with him. It's almost impossible to believe he's gone. Just gone."

  Marta was silent, and Fitzduane waited. He remembered Vreni's talking about Oskar in much the same way. What had the man known? Being so close the von Graffenlaub family, what had he seem or surmised — and who might have been aware of his suspicions? Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions. There might be nothing irregular about the guide's death.

  "How did he die?"

  Marta gave a slight start as Fitzduane's question broke into her reverie. "I don't know the details. All I know is that he had gone to meet a client in Simmenfälle. The client didn't show up, and while he was walking home, he was knocked down by a car. It was a hit and run."

  "Did anyone see the accident?"

  "I don't think so," said Marta, "but you'd have to ask the police."

  Fitzduane watched his Glühwein getting cold. The he went inside and called the Bear. There was a pause at the other end before the Bear spoke. "I'll check with the local police," he said. "When are you seeing Felix Krane?"

  "Tomorrow if I can," said Fitzduane. "I haven't managed to track him dow
n yet."

  "I'll arrange for one of the local cops to go with you," said the Bear. "It may cramp your style, but I don't like what's going on. "Where are you staying? I'll call you later."

  "At the Simmenfälle."

  There was another silence at the end of the line. Then the Bear sighed. "Don't go for any midnight walks," he said, "and keep your back to the wall."

  "And don't talk to strangers," said Fitzduane.

  "That's not so funny."

  "No, it isn't."

  * * * * *

  The canton policeman was a good-humored sergeant named Franze, with a tanned round face setting off an impressively red nose. He had the work-roughened hands of a farmer, which, indeed, he was in his off-duty hours. He arrived in a Volkswagen Beetle, a near-twin of the antique that had transported Fitzduane to the Swiss Army base at Sand. It wheezed to a halt in front of the Simmenfälle as Fitzduane was finishing breakfast. The Irishman ordered an extra cup of coffee and, upon further reflection, a schnapps. The gesture was not unappreciated. Franze talked freely. Since Kilmara's visit, Fitzduane had official status, and the sergeant treated him as a policeman.

  It transpired that Oskar Schupbach had been related to Sergeant Franze. Talking about Oskar's death visibly depressed the good sergeant, and Fitzduane ordered him another schnapps for purely medicinal reasons. It crossed Fitzduane's mind that breakfasts with Swiss police sergeants were beginning to fall into a pattern.

  "Oskar," said Sergeant Franze, his good humor resurrected by the second schnapps, "was a fine man. I wish you could have met him."

  "So do I," said Fitzduane. He was annoyed at himself for to having come to Lenk sooner. "But accidents will happen."

  "It was no accident," said Franze angrily, "unless you can be accidentally run over twice by the same car."