Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"So you get lonely."

"Yes," she said, "I do. I really do." She sat without speaking for a few moments and then stood up and began busying herself around the kitchen. Suddenly, leaning against the sink, her back to Fitzduane, she started sobbing, a violent, unstoppable outpouring.

Fitzduane stood and went to put his hands on her shoulders to comfort her. Her back was corded with tension. He made as if to take her in his arms, but she shook him off angrily. Her hand clenched the edge of the sink, the knuckles white with the force of her grip.

"You don't know what you're dealing with," she said. "I was a fool to talk to you. It's none of your business. You don't understand, this whole thing is too complicated. It's nothing to do with you."

He started to say something, but she turned on him, screaming. Her face was distorted by anger and fear. Her voice broke as she shouted at him. "You idiot! Don't you know it's too late? It's gone too far! I can't go back, and no one can help me. No one!" Vreni rushed out of the kitchen into the main room, slamming the door behind her. A bag of brown rice balanced on one of the kitchen shelves thudded to the floor. He heard the phone ring and then Vreni answer. She did not seem to speak much. Once he heard a single word when she raised her voice; it was repeated several times. It sounded like nay , Swiss-German dialect for no. He went back to the kitchen table to finish breakfast.

Some minutes later Vreni walked slowly back into the kitchen. Her face was ashen. He could scarcely hear her as she spoke.

"You'd better go," she said. "Now." She pressed a small package into his hand. It was wrapped in paper and was about the size of a screw-top coffee jar. She held her lips to his cheek for a few moments and clasped him tight.

"Thank you for trying," she said, "but it's too late." She turned and left the room. She had scarcely looked at him while she was speaking. Her face was streaked with tears. Fitzduane knew that to push her further would be worse than useless.

He walked back down the track to Heiligenschwendi. The snow and slush had frozen in the night and crackled underfoot. There was ice on the mountain road, too, so he drove slowly and with particular care. He checked his mirror often and several times stopped to admire the view. Once he broke out a telephoto lens and took some photographs of the twisting road and of a motorcyclist demonstrating his skill gliding around a corner. The biker accelerated when he saw Fitzduane's camera and did not acknowledge the Irishman's wave.

Fitzduane had lunch in Interlaken, did the things that tourists do, and drove back sedately to Bern. When the biker turned off at the outskirts of the city, Fitzduane was almost sorry to see him go. Still, It might be a good idea to find out who was following him. He was beginning to be sorry he had left his Kevlar vest back in Ireland. Switzerland was turning out to be rather different from what he had expected.

He thought he might just buy himself a gun.

Fitzduane was interested in weapons – training in them had formed part of his upbringing – and in the isolation of his castle and grounds he interpreted the restrictive Irish gun laws rather liberally. In Ireland a permit was needed for something as relatively nonlethal as an air rifle, and obtaining a license for a handgun was almost impossible. Also, there were few gun shops in Ireland, and the selection of weapons in them was limited.

He was intrigued by the Swiss approach to firearms and had already found out that the Swiss just loved guns, all kinds of guns from black-powder muskets to match-precision rifles. They also made them and shot them with impressive skill and consistent application.

Fitzduane found the gun shop by the simple expedient of following a respectable middle-aged burgher in a business suit who was carrying an assault rifle with much the same nonchalance as a Londoner might carry an umbrella. Passersby were equally unmoved by the sight. It did occur to Fitzduane that the good citizen might be returning to his office to shoot his boss or taking a midafternoon break to perforate his wife's lover. Both these options, on reflection, seemed to promise a certain entertainment value.

After only a few minutes – and it was a fine afternoon for a stroll – the burgher led him to a shop in Aarbergasse. The facade bore the words SCHWARZ, BUCHSENMACHER, ARMURIER, and the window was nicely decorated with a display of firepower that would have done credit to a South American dictator's personal arsenal.

"I'd like to buy a gun," said Fitzduane.

The man behind the counter nodded in agreement. Nothing could be more sensible. Fitzduane looked around the shop. There were guns everywhere, a quite astonishing variety: revolvers, automatics, muskets, shotguns, army rifles, carbines. They hung from racks, stared at him from display cabinets, leaned casually against the walls. Any unoccupied space was filled with ammunition boxes, crossbows, books on guns, even catapults. It was terrific. He wished he had come there when he was fourteen. Still, he wasn't quite sure of the ground rules for this sort of thing.

"What are the gun laws in Switzerland?"

The man behind the counter was unfazed. It was clear that the Swiss legal system was not going to stop him from making a sale.

"For a foreigner?"

Fitzduane thought that speaking in English must be a dead giveaway. "It depends where I am," he said. "I feel quite at home in Bern."

The shopkeeper seemed to have scant interest in repartee. His business was guns. He picked a Finnish Valmet assault rifle off a rack behind him and idly mowed down half a dozen passersby through the plate glass shopfront. He made a “tac-tac-tac” sound: three-round bursts, good fire control.

The Valmet was replaced. A Colt Peacemaker appeared in the man's hand. He held it, arm outstretched, in the single-handed shooting position that was all the rage for handguns before a California sheriff called Weaver started winning all the shooting competitions in the 1950s by shooting with two hands like a woman.

"The laws vary from canton to canton," he said. "In Bern, for instance, you can carry a pistol without a permit. In Zurich it is not so."

There were twenty-six cantons and half cantons in Switzerland, Fitzduane recalled. He wasn't quite sure of the difference between a canton and a half canton, but considering the gun law variations, it sounded as if it might be a good idea to carry something a little less vulnerable to local complications than a handgun.

"But it is not difficult to buy a gun," the shopkeeper continued. "It depends on what you want. There are some restrictions on automatic weapons and pistols. Otherwise it is easy."

"Without a permit?"

"Except for the restrictions I have mentioned, no permit is required," said the man. He twirled the Peacemaker expertly and returned it to the showcase. He selected a small. 32 Smith amp; Wesson, looked at Fitzduane, and then put it back. Somehow the Irishman didn't seem the. 32-caliber type.

Fitzduane reluctantly abandoned the idea of buying an M-60 machine gun and towing it around Bern on roller skates. He looked at his camera tripod case, which was resting on the counter while he talked, and little wheels started turning in his brain.

He pointed at a Remington folding shotgun in a rack behind the man. It was a short-barreled riot gun and was stamped, in large, clear letters: FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY.

"But of course," said the shopkeeper, offering the gun to Fitzduane. The weapon was a folding pump-action shotgun equipped with a pistol grip. Fitzduane had used a similar weapon on special operations in the Congo. With the appropriate ammunition, up to a maximum of forty meters, though preferably at half that distance, it was an effective killing machine with brutal stopping power. With the metal stock collapsed, the gun fit neatly into the tripod case, leaving room for spare ammunition in the zippered accessory pocket where Fitzduane normally kept his long remote extension cord.