Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"I'm not sure you should go to this meeting."

"You couldn’t keep me away if you tried," said the Bear. "Don't forget I've a very personal interest these days. I want the Hangman dead."

"What about civil rights and due process of law?" said Fitzduane, smiling.

"The Bear shook his head. "This isn't a normal case. Normal rules don't apply. This is like stamping out a plague. You destroy the source of the infection."

They walked along the Aare to the Dalmazibrucke. By crossing it and cutting up Schwellenmattstrasse, they could have made it to Project K in ten minutes, but Fitzduane took another look at the Bear and called a Berp car by radio. The Bear didn't argue. He was silent, lost in thought.

The Chief surveyed the assembled Project K team; then his gaze fixed on the Bear.

"You shouldn’t be here, Heini, as you damn well know. If you collapse, don't' expect me to hold one end of the stretcher. You're too damn heavy."

The Bear nodded. "Understood, Chief. You're not a young man anymore."

"Needs his strength for other things," said Charlie von Beck.

"Shut up, the lot of you," said the Chief, "and listen carefully. A short time ago we had our first major breakthrough. We paid a heavy price, but we identified the Hangman's base in Bern, and we now have a fair idea who he is, though I admit there are some problems in that area. On the negative side, a couple of weeks after the Muri find, the investigation is virtually at a standstill. We are at an impasse in terms of the Hangman's identity, and the man himself seems to have vanished despite the fact that we now have a photograph of him – and dental records – to work with. To add insult to injury, the death of that dentist occurred after the Muri raid, so it looks very much as if the Hangman is still in Bern. We know what he looks like, yet this psychopath seems to come and go with impunity – and not just to look at the sights. He is still killing.

"I've called you all together to suggest that we change the way we're approaching this investigation. Since Muri we've been concentrating on trying to find Lodge to the virtual exclusion of all else. We haven't been successful. Now I think we need a more creative approach, and I include in that our use of the computer." He nodded at Henssen.

Henssen stood up and then propped himself against a desktop. He looked as if he needed the support. He cleared his throat and spoke, his voice hoarse. "The Chief thinks that we may have the solution in the computer but that we're not asking the right questions. He may well be right, so let me explain a little more about what we have done – and can do.

"Our identification of Lodge was the result of a mixture of computer activity and human judgment. We tapped into a vast amount of data and then constructed a theoretical profile of the Hangman, and then, using a technique known as forward chaining, we filtered through the data. We were lucky. One of our two prime suspects was our man."

"May I interrupt here?" the Bear broke in. "I thought it was agreed that the initial profile would look for someone who wasn't Swiss. If so, why did the machine cough up Beat von Graffenlaub? His age wasn't right either."

Henssen looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, Heini, I owe you something of an apology. I second-guessed you. The program allows parameters to be graded according to the confidence rating because there wasn't a shred of hard evidence to back it up; it was outweighed by other material. The same applied to the age factor. In neither case were we dealing with hard facts, only with guesses."

"Fair enough," said the Bear, "but I would like to have been told that at the time."

"The system is totally transparent to the user," said Henssen. "Any of the parameters can be looked at whenever you wish. After this I'll show you how it's done."

"Can we get back to the original topic?" said the Chief testily.

"Certainly," said Henssen. "Where was I?"

"Forward chaining," said Kersdorf.

"Ah," said Henssen. "Well, forward chaining is essentially a way of generating conclusions by applying rules, either formal or heuristic, to a given set of facts. If the bank customer pulls a gun and demands money and there is no suggestion that this is a security test, then a reasonable deduction is that he is a bank robber."

"And who said computers couldn’t think?" Charlie von Beck rolled his eyes. He was back in his bow tie and velvet suit.

Henssen ignored the interruption. "The point is, forward chaining is only one way to go about things. You can also use backward chaining. In that situation you could assume someone was a bank robber and then work back to see what facts supported that conclusion. It's an ideal way of checking out a suspect and ties in with the less rational elements of our human makeup, like intuition."

The Bear caught Fitzduane's eye and smiled.

"What it comes down to," the Chief said, "is that we have a much more flexible tool here than we seem to realize, and we're not using it to anywhere near its full potential. For instance, it can function in the abstract. Instead of asking, ‘Who do we have on file who has a knowledge of plastique?’ you can ask it, ‘What kind of person would have a knowledge of plastique, and where might he or she be found?’ The machine will then generate a profile based upon its file of data and its knowledge base." He rose to his feet. "Well, there you have it. Take of the blinkers. Try a little creative anarchy. Hit the problem from first principles. Find the fucking Hangman." After an angry look at everyone, he left the room.

Inspired by Katia, who believed that certain foods were good for certain parts of the anatomy, over the next three days the Bear ate a great deal of fish – a luxury in landlocked Switzerland – and, so to speak, kept himself to himself.

He wasn't so much antisocial as elusive. He went places and did things without saying exactly where or what. He made and received phone calls without comment. A series of packages arrived by courier and were unwrapped and examined only when he was alone. He was moderately talkative but only on any subject except the Hangman, and he was maddeningly cheerful.

On the morning of the fourth day Fitzduane, who had been researching variations of Swiss batzi with a little too much dedication the night before, rose at the unearthly hour the Swiss set aside for breakfast only to yawn to a halt in near-terminal shock at the sight of the Bear standing on his head, arms crossed, in the living room. His eyes were closed.

"Morning," said the Bear without stirring.

"Ugh," said Fitzduane. He turned on his heel and stood under a cold shower for five minutes. Toward the end he thought it might be a good idea to remove his robe and pajamas. When he returned to the living room, the apparition had vanished.

Over breakfast the Bear expounded on the merits of fish as a brain food. "Did you know," he said, "that the brain is essentially a fatty organ and one of its key ingredients, a free fatty acid, comes from fish?"

"Ugh," said Fitzduane, and spread butter and marmalade on his toast.

The Bear chewed enthusiastically on a raw carrot and wrinkled his nose at what Fitzduane was eating. "That's no way to start the day," he said. "I must get Katia to draw you up a diet sheet."

Fitzduane poured some batzi into his orange juice. He drank half the glass. "Ugh," he said.

Later that morning, after a detour to the Der Bund office to pick up a bulky file stuffed with press clippings, notes, and photographs, Fitzduane found himself trailing behind the apparently supercharged Bear as the detective hummed his way through the portals, halls, rooms, corridors, and miscellaneous annexes of the City of Bern art museum. The corridor they were in was in semidarkness. Fitzduane wondered about the wisdom of this policy. Perhaps visitors were supposed to rent flashlights. His mind went back to Kuno Gonschior's exhibition of a series of black rectangles in the Loeb Gallery. It had been the first time he had met Erika. It seemed lightyears ago.