Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"Fingerprints?"

"None," said Fitzduane. "None on file in the States anyway. The Fremdenpolizei apparently don't taken them if you're a well-behaved affluent foreigner, and the jury is still out on the house in Muri. The forensics people have picked up some unidentified prints, but without a match they're not much use. I wouldn’t bet on the Hangman's prints being among them. He seems to skate near the edge, but in fundamental things he's damn cautious."

"So Lodge is the Hangman," said the Bear, "but maybe Lodge isn't Lodge – and the Lodge that isn't Lodge isn’t to be found."

"Hole in one," said Fitzduane.

The Bear looked out the full-length window. Despite protestations about security, he had insisted on being on the ground floor and on having direct access to the garden. The window was slightly open, and he could smell freshly cut grass. He could hear the mower in the distance. "I hate hospitals. But I'm developing a certain affection for this one. Dental records?" he added.

"Like the marriage feast at Cana, I'm saving the best for last."

"So?" the Bear said impatiently.

"The Nose has been set up to monitor any incident in Bern that might conceivably relate to the activities of the Hangman. A couple of days ago a dentist's surgery was completely destroyed by fire – as was the dentist, who had been bound into his own chair with wire."

"That sounds like the Hangman's sense of humor," said the Bear. "Though I guess there might be a few other candidates among the patients."

"Needless to say, all of the dentist's records were destroyed, and that would have been that except it turns out he kept a backup set in his bank."

"I'm sure his widow will enjoy looking through them. And I presume Mr. Lodge's full frontals are among them?"

"Exactly."

"Matrushka," said the Bear, "if I can quote Henssen's latest obsession."

"Gesundheit," said Fitzduane.

The Chief Kripo was contemplating the computer screen. His face had been gashed unpleasantly, if not severely, during the Muri raid, and the scars itched. The stitches had been taken out several days before, and he had been told he was healing well. He had also been told the scars would be permanent unless he had plastic surgery. He was unenthusiastic about the idea; he thought he'd prefer to remain scarred and dangerous-looking than have some quack peel skin off his bottom and try to stick it on his face. He didn’t like strangers attempting to rearrange his bit – which brought him right back to the Hangman, who had damn nearly succeeded in disassembling him into his component parts.

He tapped the computer keyboard a couple of times with his forefinger. "It works," he said. "You've proved that it does. Why is it that now, when we're so close, it's of no help anymore?"

Henssen shrugged helplessly. "It has to be asked the right questions."

The Chief glared at the VDU. He had a totally irrational desire to climb inside the machine with a screwdriver and wrench and force the dumb beast to cough up some answers. Somewhere inside that electronic monster lay the solution. He was convinced of that. But what to do about it? He had no idea. He was certain he was missing something – something obvious. He walked back and forth across the room, glancing frequently at the computer. After ten minutes of this, to Henssen's great relief, he stopped and sat down.

"Tell me more," he said, "about how this machine thinks."

Fitzduane found walking in the Marzili pleasant but distracting. The Marzili was a long, thin park sandwiched between the River Aare and a well-to-do residential area of Bern, both of which were overlooked by the Bundeshaus bad a plethora of government buildings, including the Interpol building and the headquarters of the Federal Police.

The Marzili's proximity to the center of things meant that even this early in the year, as the day was warm and sunny, a generous sprinkling of nearly naked women was scattered across the lawn. Topless sunbathing was the norm in the Marzili, and hundreds of secretaries and computer operators and other government workers were busy making up for a long, cold winter. Serried ranks of nipples were pointed at the sun like solar cells on an energy farm.

Fitzduane, encased in a bulletproof vest under a light cotton blouson jacket, felt overdressed. He glanced across at the Bear, who was humming. Externally the detective seemed little the worse for wear after his two weeks in the hospital, and his cheeks had the ruddy glow of good living. On second thought Fitzduane decided that more than good food and wine were reflected in the Bear's demeanor. Love and the Bear? Well, good for Frau Maurer. Her first name, he had learned, was Katia.

"Don't you find all this distracting?" he asked. Fitzduane's eyes followed a spectacular redhead as she loped across the grass in front of them and then lay down on a towel, eyes closed, face and body toward the sun, knees drawn up and slightly apart. Tendrils of pubic hair escaping from the monokini confirmed that she was the genuine article. She looked edible.

"On the contrary," said the Bear, "I find it riveting."

Fitzduane smiled. They walked toward the path that ran along the bank of the river. Downstream, minutes away, was the KirchenfeldBridge, and just below that was the spot where Klaus Minder's body had been fished out.

The Bear sat down on a bench. Suddenly he looked tired. He threw a small branch into the water, and his eyes followed it until it bobbed out of sight. He extracted a creased envelope from his pocket and smoothed it on his knee.

"Your guess as to the Hangman's identity," he said. "I found it in my pocket when I was getting dressed in the hospital this morning."

"It seems I was wrong," said Fitzduane dryly. "There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Lodge is our man, and God knows where he is now. Your people have checked every square millimeter of Bern over the last couple of weeks."

"Why did you think it was Balac?"

Fitzduane picked up a handful of pebbles and slowly tossed them one by one into the river. He liked the faint plop each stone made. He wondered how many people had sat on the riverbank over the years and done the same thing. Had a vast bed of pebbles built up in the river as a result? Would the river eventually be choked up by ruminating the river watchers?

"A number of reasons. For starters, just sheer gut feeling that he is a person who is not what he seems. Next, a number of small things. He is the right age. He was an intimate of Erika's. He has the right kind of charming but dominant personality. His artist's training would give him an excellent knowledge of anatomy. His work habits allow him to travel extensively without suspicion, to have unexplained absences, and so on. He's paranoid about security. His studio is near where Klaus Minder's body was found. There are other pointers, but none conclusive, and in any case it all appears a little academic at this stage. We've identified our man, and he isn’t Balac."

"Hmm," mused the Bear. He was no longer looking so tired.

"Anyway, I can't see him doing something as provocative as the chessboard girl."

"We're dealing with a player of games," said the Bear. "The Hangman isn't rational by normal standards. He has his own logic. Tweaking our collective official nose appeals to him. Actually it’s not so uncommon. I once picked up a car thief who had operated freely for years until he stole a police car – and to an unmarked one, but the full painted-up job with radio and flashing lights and all the trimmings. When I asked him why he'd done such a stupid thing, he said he couldn’t resist it."

Fitzduane laughed. "How are you feeling?"

"Good considering this is my first day out of the hospital, but I do get a little wobbly now and then. I'll take a good long rest when this is over."