Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"And how does Minder fit it?"

"That's more tenuous," said von Beck, "but it's what my English police friends would call a ‘hopeful line of inquiry.’" He tapped the desk with a gold Waterman fountain pen to emphasize each point. "Point one, forensics thinks that Minder and the chessboard girl were sliced up by the same person. Point two, and I have no idea of the significance of this, Minder and Ivo were close friends. Point three-" The Chief flinched in anticipation but instead von Beck unzipped a leather container the size of a small briefcase and perused the row of pipes displayed within.

"Go on, go on," said the Chief impatiently. "Point three?"

"Klaus Minder was a close friend and sometime lover of the young and recently deceased Rudi von Graffenlaub." Von Beck closed the pipe case with a snap and zipped it up slowly.

"And our Irish friend is looking into the death of young Rudi with the forceful backing of Beat von Graffenlaub," said the Chief.

"The rest is details," said von Beck. "It's all in the file." He made a grandiloquent gesture.

"But you do have a theory about all this?"

"Not a one. This thing is so complicated it could go on for years."

"I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"I am, I am," said von Beck, "but who says the bad guys can't be smart, too?"

The telephone rang, and the Chief gave a sigh. He listened to the call, saying little, then turned to von Beck.

"They found the other half of the chessboard girl in a plastic bag inside the Russian Embassy wall," he said. "The Russians are livid and are complaining it's a CIA plot to embarrass them."

"Explain that we're neutral and will regard both them and the Americans with equal suspicion." Von Beck stood up to leave. "Now all we've got to find are Minder's balls."

"And Ivo," said the Chief.

Kadar was working his way through a pile of medical textbooks, and he had a splitting headache. The telex chattered again, exacerbating the headache. He rose, washed down two Tylenol with brandy, and decoded the message.

His headache subsided to an acceptable dull throb. He was knee-deep in medical tracts because the thought he might be suffering from some kind of psychiatric condition. In lay terms -he had not yet stumbled on the correct medical diagnosis – it seemed not unlikely that he was going mad. No, that conveyed images of Hogarthian excess, of twisted faces and dribbling idiots, of barred windows and straightjackets and padded cells. That was too much. He would not accept that he was going mad. He revised his analysis. As a result of sustained stress, he was behaving irrationally. He was doing things that were out of character, that he had not consciously planned, and of which he had scant recollection later.

It was worrying. He was glad that it would all soon be over. He would no longer have to live with the strain of a double existence – if indeed his life could be summed up in such a simple way. His existence was not merely divided in two. It was fragmented into multiple personas, and he had been sustaining this complex life for years. Really, a certain amount of aberration on the margin was to be expected, and possibly was a good thing. It was like letting off steam, a natural release of tensions, a purification through excess. That wasn't the real problem.

It was the periods of amnesia that concerned him. He was a man with an astonishing ability to manipulate and control other beings – up to and including matters of life and death – and yet his underlying fear, a fear that bordered on panic, was that he was losing his ability to control himself.

It was the incident with the girl on the chessboard that had persuaded him that he must get himself under control. Previous incidents, like his killing that beautiful boy Klaus Minder, were unpremeditated and perhaps a little excessive but could be rationalized in context of the needs of his advanced sexuality. Killing Esther was a matter of routine discipline. The killing and the manner of the killing were not the problem. But why had he suddenly taken the notion to draw attention to his presence by planting the torso in such a public place as the Rose Garden's chessboard – not to mention dumping the legs in the Russian Embassy?

Did he subconsciously want to be caught? Was this some sublimated cry for help? He hoped not. He'd put far too much effort into the last couple of decades to have some programmed element of his subconscious betray him. That was the trouble with the childhood phase. In your early years anyone and everyone has a go at programming you, from your parents to religious nuts, from corporations that bombard you with unremitting lies on TV to an educational system that trains you to conform to its values and does its level best to crush your own natural talent.

But Kadar had been lucky. From an early age he had sensed the realities of life, the lies, the corruption, the compromises. He had learned to have only one friend, one loyalty, one guide through life: himself. He had learned one key discipline: control. He had mastered one vital pattern of behavior: to live inside himself and to reveal nothing. Externally he appeared to conform; he knew how the game must be played.

He lay back in his chair and started the ritual of creating Dr. Paul. He desperately needed someone to talk to. But hours later, drenched in sweat, he admitted failure: the image of the smiling doctor wouldn't appear. His headache had escalated into the full, terrible agony of a serious migraine.

Alone in his soundproofed premises Kadar screamed.

The Bear sat in a private room of Bern's ultramodern InselHospital and waited for the Monkey to die. His once-beautiful face was wrapped in bandages from crown to neck. The Bear had seen what was left underneath and was too appalled even to feel nauseated. Best guess was that some kind of sharpened chain, possibly a motorcycle chain, had been used. His nose, teeth, and much else had been smashed, and the face flayed to the bone.

The Monkey muttered something unintelligible. The sound was picked up by a voice-actuated tape recorder whose miniature microphone lead joined the tangle of tubes and wires that were only just keeping the Monkey alive. There was a harsh rattling sound from the bed, and score was kept by the electric monitor. The uniformed Berp sitting at the other side of the bed held a notebook in his hands and tried to make sense of the sounds. He bent his ear close to the shrouded hole that was the Monkey's mouth. The edges of the bandages around the hole were stained with fresh blood, and the Berp's face was pale. He shook his head. He didn't write anything.

The rattling and sucking sounds culminated in a strangled cough. An intern and a nurse rushed into the room. They went through the motions while the Bear looked out the window, seeing nothing.

"That's it," said the intern. He went to wash his hands at the sink in the corner of the room. The nurse pulled the sheet over the Monkey's head. The Bear untangled the tape recorder and removed the cassette. He broke the tabs to make sure it could not be accidentally recorded over, marked it, and gave it to the Berp.

"Did he say anything?" asked the intern. He was drying his hands.

"Something," said the Bear. "Not a lot. He hadn't a lot left to talk with."

"But you know who did it?"

"It looks that way."

"Is it always like this?" asked the Berp. "That noise when they die?" The young policeman had an unseasoned look about him. Not a good choice, thought the Bear, but then you have to start sometime.

"Not always," he said, "but often enough. It's not called the death rattle without good reason." He gestured at the cassette in the envelope. "Take it to Examining Magistrate von Beck. The fresh air will do you good."