Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

Fitzduane put down his glass. "Let's get back to Rudi. Is there anything – anything at all – that you noticed about him or the circumstances of his death?"

"Anything?" said Buckley.

Fitzduane nodded.

The port decanter was finished. They left the now-empty dining room and retired to have a final brandy by the log fire in the annex to the bar. Fitzduane was glad that he was staying the night. How Buckley remained upright with so much alcohol inside him was a minor mystery. The pathologist's face was more flushed, and he was in high good humor; otherwise there was little overt sign that he had been drinking. His diction was still perfect. "Anything at all?" he repeated.

"Think of it as the classic piece in the jigsaw," said Fitzduane.

Buckley picked up a fire iron and began poking the fire. Fitzduane removed his jacket, rolled up his left sleeve, and thrust out his arm. For a moment, Fitzduane thought that the pathologist was going to hit him and that he was unlucky enough to be spending an evening with someone whom drink turns violent.

"Look at this," said Buckley.

Fitzduane looked at the proffered arm. A snarling bulldog's head wearing a crushed military cap was tattooed on the forearm; under it were the words “USMC 1945.”

"The Marine mascot," said Fitzduane. "I saw it often enough in Vietnam."

"You don't have any tattoos?"

"Not that I've noticed," said Fitzduane.

"Do you know the significance of the bulldog to the Marines?"

"Never gave it much thought," said Fitzduane.

Buckley smiled. "The choice of a bulldog as their mascot goes back to the name the Germans gave the Marines in France in 1918. They were called Teufelhunden, devil dogs. It was a tribute to their fighting qualities. Well, jobs were scarce in Ireland when I was a young lad, so I ended up serving a hitch in the U.S. Navy as a medic and being attached to the Marines. The tattoo was a present from my unit. It means more to me than a Navy Cross."

"Rudolf had a tattoo?" asked Fitzduane.

Buckley rebuttoned his shirtsleeve. "If you've ever been tattooed yourself, you tend to be more interested in such things. They often have great significance. For a time I used to collect photos of unusual tattoos off the cadavers as they paraded through. I built up quite a collection. Gave it up years ago, though. Well, Rudolf had a tattoo, a very small one but unlike any I've seen before. It was more like a love token or a unit badge or some such thing, and it was positioned where it couldn't be seen unless the wearer wished."

"The mind boggles," said Fitzduane.

Buckley smiled. "Not that dramatic but clever all the same. It was on his outer wrist, just under where you would wear a watch. It was very small, about a centimeter and a half across, and it showed a capital ‘A’ with a circle of what looked like flowers around it."

"So maybe Rudi had a girlfriend whose name or nickname began with 'A,' said Fitzduane.

"Could be," said Buckley, "but you had better widen your horizon to include boyfriend in your search. Rudolf may have swung both ways, but he had the unmistakable physical characteristics of someone who engaged regularly in homosexual activities."

"You'd better explain," said Fitzduane.

Buckley drained his brandy and replaced his jacket. He remained standing. "The small matter of a somewhat dilated and keratinized anal orifice. There isn't much privacy on a pathologist's slab."

Fitzduane raised his eyebrows. "I'll keep that in mind."

"By the way," said Buckley, "there was a second postmortem in Bern, and the Bernese agreed with my findings. Suicide, no question."

"Looks like it," said Fitzduane, "but if I run across something, would It be practicable to exhume the body and run more tests? How long has one got in this kind of situation?"

Buckley laughed. "You're back to witch doctors," he said, "because conventional pathologists won't be much use to you. The remains were cremated."

Fitzduane's Land Rover splashed through the town of Portlaoise. A few miles further on he stopped at a hotel to stretch his legs and phone Murrough on the island. He heard the news about the second hanging with a sense of shock and forboding. He remembered Toni Hoffman from the inquest. She had been a close friend of Rudi's and had been summoned to give evidence about his state of mind. When she had been called by the coroner, she hadn't been able to speak. She had just stood there, ashen-faced, shaking her head, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

The coroner had been sympathetic and had dismissed her after a brief, abortive effort at questioning. Fitzduane had thought at the time that she looked as much petrified with fear as grief-struck, but then they had moved on to another witness with more to say, and he had put the incident out of his mind.

He tried to avoid thinking what she must have looked like at the end of a rope with her head half off. He wasn't successful.

Pierre Danelle, principal of DrakerCollege, was not pleased. It was a not uncommon state with him, since he could not, even charitably, be described as a happy man. The word misanthrope would be closer to the mark. He was, in the view of most of his students, a miserable son of a bitch.

On this particular day Danelle was even more miserable than normal, and he was also annoyed. He read the school charter again. It incorporated various clauses taken from von Draker's will, and unfortunately the founder had been quite specific in his instructions, which for greater clarity were expressed in French, German, and English.

The trouble lay with the tree. Common sense dictated that it should be cut down. A tree from which one of your students had hanged himself was not the sort of thing one wanted to keep on the school grounds. It would provoke memories and impinge on school activities, and it would be a no-no on parents' day. And it might tempt someone else to experiment with the blue rope and a short jump. Danelle shuddered at the thought. One hanging was a tragedy. Two hangings would knock hell out of his budget. The Draker tuition was not small. Three sets of fees would be missed.

The hanging tree had to go – but then again it couldn't. Von Draker had gone to the most elaborate lengths to establish his little forest in the first place, and he had clearly stated in his will that under no circumstances whatsoever were any trees on the estate to be cut down. The whole clause was then repeated in more extreme language to make sure that the trustees of the Von Draker Peace Foundation got the point, and to demonstrate the founder's faith in human nature, a relationship with their remuneration was referred to. Danelle got the point. Even in his grave, von Draker liked trees. It was infuriating. He was being dictated to by a dead man.

Danelle decided that he would write to the trustees in Basel. Surely they would understand that you cant have a freshly used gallows hanging – growing – on campus.

Like fuck they'd understand. Those hollowheads in Switzerland weren't going to put their stipends at risk to save a not madly popular principal from embarrassment. He racked his brains, and then an idea blossomed, an idea that was dazzling in its scope and simplicity. An accident. Lightning, a forest fire; a maverick what a chain saw; a pyromaniac Boy Scout. The mind boggled. The possibilities were endless.

He decided he would take a walk over to the old oak tree to see what could be arranged. He pulled on his Wellington boots and waterproofs. It was raining.

"St Patrick's Day apart," said Kilmara idly, "people tend to forget about March in this country. I mean, everyone knows about January. It's the month when the first bank statement arrives after Christmas and bank managers decide to cut off your overdraft. Everyone remembers February. It's the Toulouse-Lautrec of months, and all the tennis club set go skiing with each other's wives. Everyone likes April. People skip around and procreate like mad and pick daffodils and eat chocolate Easter eggs. But March – March sort of sneaks in and hangs around and confuses the issue. I'm not sure I approve of March. It's a month with a lot of cold puddles – and it's too bloody long."