Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Those who knew
von Draker well had been somewhat taken aback at such sentiments from such an
unlikely source.
His actual words
were:
‘Find a way to keep that hag's
filthy paws off my money.”
The fortune of
the Von Draker Peace Foundation, derived in the main from armaments and
explosives, increased and multiplied.
In
the fullness of time the Draker World Institute opened its doors for
business.
It took a select group of
pupils aged sixteen to twenty from various corners of the globe and subjected
them to a moderately difficult academic curriculum heavily leavened with
boating, climbing, hill walking, and other physically demanding activities.
Draker was a
success primarily because it was so isolated.
It was a perfect out-of-sight, out-of-mind location for rich but
troublesome youths.
It was also
coeducational.
The children could be
dumped there during that difficult phase.
All it took to gain entrance to Draker was money and the appropriate
connections.
Draker parents had both in
commendable quantities.
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane
slowed Pooka to a walk.
He could feel
the wind off the
hint of salt on his lips.
He was
beginning to unwind.
It was good to be
home despite the unfortunate weather.
He was getting
tired of wars and of what was arguably more unpleasant:
the grinding hassle of modern travel.
The older he got, the more he thought there
was much to be said for peace and quiet, maybe even for settling down.
Fitzduane
spent two-thirds or more of each year away from
This was something he regretted, but the
action tended to be in alien climes.
For
nearly twenty years he had been either a soldier or a war photographer, a
hunter of men with either a gun or a camera.
The
wars,
countries.
His Irish island was
his haven, his place to recover, to rest his soul.
It might offer little more excitement than
watching the grass grow, but it was the one place he knew that was free of
death and violence.
Down below, he
could see the small beach, boathouse, and jetty of
The sheer cliffs had made access almost
impossible until von Draker had brought over some of his company's explosive
gardens down to the beach.
Fitzduane rode
between the walled gardens of
edge.
The gray stone of the Victorian
castle loomed in the background.
Gargoyles competed with crenellations; flying buttresses crash-landed
against half-timbering.
A structure
loosely modeled on the Parthenon topped the clock tower.
Irish history had been complex, but even
it
was not up to von Draker's
creativity.
Ahead lay a
small wood, and beyond that was the headland itself.
If the weather permitted, Fitzduane liked to
turn Pooka loose to nibble at the salty, windswept grass, and then he would lie
down near the cliff edge, look up at the sky and the wheeling sea gulls, and
think of absolutely nothing.
War and death
could be forgotten for a time.
Perhaps,
he thought, the time had come to hang up his cameras and find a more adult
occupation.
*
*
*
*
*
Von Draker had
a passion for trees.
There had
originally been only one oak tree on the spot and, nearby, a peculiarly shaped
mound.
The locals gave the vicinity a
wide berth.
They said that the oak tree
was a
bille
and special, and that no
man could remember when it was planted.
They said that in the days before St. Patrick and
conversion to Christianity, terrible things had been done under the shadow of
its twisted branches.
They said that
even after the Church was established throughout the rest of the land, bloody
sacrifice continued on the island.
Von Draker had
regarded such tales as nonsense.
Since
none of the Connemara men would help him level the mound and plant the wood, he
had brought in a crew from his estate in
He left the old oak tree, not for reasons of
superstition but because he just liked trees, even gnarled and twisted
specimens like this one.
The mound was
leveled with his explosives.
His workers
found pieces of bone in the debris and fragments of what appeared to be human
skulls.
A small wood was planted.
Trees from many parts of the world were
brought to the spot, and despite the keen wind off the
Von Draker did
not live to see the success of his project.
His death came one year to the day after the demolition of the
peculiarly shaped mound.
The wind that
day around his wood sounded like laughter — or so they said.
Such tales
were absurd, Fitzduane thought, yet there was no denying that the overgrown
wood was a dismal, depressing place.
Rain dripping from the trees made the only noise in an otherwise eerie
silence.
Obscured by the interlocking
branches, the light was dim and gloomy.
The forest
reeked of decay and corruption.
Pooka
had to be urged on, as always in the wood, despite the many times she had
walked that path before.
The sound of
her iron-shod hooves was muffled by the damp mulch of rotting leaves.
The place seemed deserted, and Fitzduane
realized that he had seen no living soul since leaving his castle nearly an
hour before.
Halfway through the wood
the undergrowth became particularly dense, and the path inclined upward and twisted
more than usual.
He could see the thick
trunk of the
bille
up ahead.
Horse and
rider came level with the tree.
He
glanced up into its labyrinth of interlocking branches.
It was a fine tree, he thought, impressive in
its ancient strength.
He saw the
rope first, a thin pale blue rope.
It
hung from a protruding branch of the tree.
The end of the rope had been formed into a hangman's noose, and it
contained the elongated and distorted neck of a hanged man.
The long,
still body formed a silhouette in the gloom.
Fitzduane raised his eyebrows and stared for perhaps ten interminable
seconds.
He thought he'd close his eyes
and then open them again because a hanging body on his own doorstep just
couldn't be true.
2
There was a
context to death Fitzduane was used to.
In any one of a dozen combat zones he would have reacted immediately,
reflexes operating ahead of any conscious rationalization.
On his own island, the one place he knew that
was free of violence, his brain would not accept the evidence of his own eyes.
He urged Pooka
forward.
He could smell
the body.
It wasn't damp earth or
rotting leaves or the decaying flesh of some dead animal; it was the odor of
fresh human excrement.
He could see the
source.
The body was clad in an olive
green anorak and blue jeans, and the jeans were stained around the loins.
Horse and
rider walked slowly past the body, Fitzduane staring despite himself.
After a dozen paces he found he was looking
back over his shoulder.
Ahead lay the
familiar contours of the path to the headland and a lazy tranquility; behind
him hung death and a premonition that life would never be the same if he
turned.
He
stopped.
Slowly and reluctantly he
dismounted and tied Pooka to a nearby tree.
He looked ahead along the empty path again.
It
lay
there,
tempting him to go away, to forget what he was seeing.
He hesitated;
then he turned back.
The head was
slightly twisted and angled to one side by the initial shock of the drop
combined with the action of the noose.
The hair was
long,
light brown, and wavy —
almost curly.
The face was that of a
young man.
The skin was bluish despite a
golden tan.
The tongue was swollen and
thrust out sharply between grimacing teeth.
There was a small amount of still-fresh but clotting blood under the
mouth and dripping from the chin.
A long,
thick rope of spittle, phlegm, and mucus hung from the end of the protruding
tongue to halfway down his torso.
Combined with the stench, the overall impact was revolting.
He approached
the body, reached up, and took one of the limp hands in his.
He expected it to be cold; though he knew
better, he automatically associated death with cold.
The hand was cool to the touch but still
retained traces of warmth.
He felt for
the pulse; there was none.
He looked at
the hand.
There were greenish black
marks from the tree trunk on the palms and the insides of the fingers, and
mixed in were scratches extending to the fingertips.
He thought about cutting the body down but
doubted that he could.
The knot on the
nylon rope was impacted into the dead flesh, and he had no knife.
Cutting down the body wouldn't help at this
stage.
It would make no difference to
the corpse.
There was a gust of wind,
and the body swayed slightly.
Fitzduane
started at the unexpected movement.
He made
himself react as if her were on assignment:
first the story.
He slid his
backup camera, an Olympus XA he normally carried out of photographer's habit,
from the breast pocket of his coat.
His
actions were automatic as he selected aperture, speed, and angle.
He framed each shot, cutting it in his head
before releasing the shutter and bracketing, with the old hand's innate
conservatism and suspicion of built-in exposure meters.
He was
conscious of the incongruity of his actions but at the same time aware of his
reasons:
he was buying time so that he
could adjust.
He brushed sweat from his
forehead and began to search the corpse.
It wasn't easy.
The smell of
feces was overpowering, and the height of the limp figure made the search
awkward.
He could reach only the lower
pockets.
In an outside
pocket of the green anorak he found an expensive morocco leather wallet.
It contained Irish pounds, Swiss francs, and
several credit cards.
It also held a
laminated student identity card complete with color photo.
The dead youth was Rudolf von Graffenlaub,
nineteen years of age, from
His height was listed at one meter
seventy-six.
Looking at the stretched
neck at the end of the rope, Fitzduane reflected sadly that he would be taller
now.
He walked back
to where he had left Pooka.
Her
uneasiness showed, and he stroked her, speaking softly.
As he did so, he realized he now faced the
unpleasant task of telling the college authorities that one of their pupils had
hanged himself.
He wondered why he had
automatically assumed that it was a suicide.
Murder by hanging seemed a complicated way to go about things — but was
it possible?
Was it likely?
If accidental death was required, throwing
the victim over a cliff seemed much more practical.
It did occur to him that if it was murder,
the killer could still be in the wood.
It was a disturbing notion.