Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

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.