Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Fitzduane had
found it hard to imagine Erika sweating over a hot stove.
He was not disappointed.
She removed a Wedgwood casserole dish from
the refrigerator and inserted it in a microwave.
A scarlet-tipped finger pressed buttons.
Fitzduane was asked to open the already
chilled champagne and light the candles.
They sat
facing each other over a small round dining table.
It had already been laid for two on their
arrival.
It occurred to Fitzduane that
he was spoiling someone else's fun and games — or had he been expected?
Perhaps Erika had been a Girl Scout and just
liked to be prepared.
"I can
call you Hugo, yes?" said Erika, looking straight into his eyes.
The casserole had something to do with
rabbit.
Fitzduane had had a series of
pet rabbits as a child and found the juxtaposition of associations
confusing.
Erika ate with gusto.
Fitzduane
nodded.
Erika licked her lips in a
manner that even a blind man would have noted as sexual.
"I like this name," she said.
"You want to talk about Rudi?"
"It's why
I'm here," he said.
Erika gave a
long, slow, knowing smile and reached over the table to brush the back of his
hand with her fingers.
The sexual
electricity was palpable.
"There is
little to say," she said.
"Rudi was a very troubled young man.
Nobody is surprised at his suicide."
"What
troubled him?" said Fitzduane.
Erika shrugged
dismissively.
"
Boeuf!
" she said, her arms
raised
in
a gesture.
"Everything.
He hated his father, he quarreled with his
family, he disapproved of our government,
he
was mixed
up about sex."
She smiled.
"But is all that so unusual in a
teenager?"
Fitzduane
endeavored to pursue the matter of Erika's recently hanged stepson but to virtually
no avail.
The conversation turned to
other members of the family.
Here Erika
was marginally more forthcoming.
After
coffee and liqueurs she excused herself.
Fitzduane sat back on a sofa and sipped a Cointreau.
Regarding Rudi, anyway, he wasn't getting
very far with the von Graffenlaubs.
Erika had
turned out most of the lights.
The two
candles on the dinner table cast a golden flickering light.
Erika came back into the room.
He could hear faint footfalls on the carpeted
floor, and he could smell her musky perfume.
She was standing behind him.
He turned his
head to see her and started to speak.
"It's getting late," he said.
"I think I'd better..."
The words died on his lips.
She reached
down and pressed him to her and then kissed him.
He could feel her nipples against his mouth
and cheeks, and then her tongue was snaking to find his and she was in his lap,
naked.
She licked his
face and neck, and one hand moved to the bulge in his pants and unzipped
him.
He felt an overwhelming sexual
desire.
She unbuttoned his shirt and ran
her tongue across his chest and down his body until he engulfed him.
Fitzduane
spasmed at her touch and then stared at her bobbing head with disbelief.
Her hair — though she was no blood relation —
was the color of Rudi's.
Desire died
inside him.
He tried to pull away.
Her hand grasped him, and she wouldn't
stop.
He pulled her up forcibly.
"My God, woman, what are you
doing?" he said.
He thought his
choice of words might have been better.
"You are
a very physical man, Hugo," she said.
Her lips were wet, her lipstick smeared.
"I want to fuck you."
Fitzduane rose
to his feet unsteadily.
He shook his
head.
There was nothing to say.
He looked at her.
She had risen to her feet.
She looked magnificent.
He
odor was viscerally
sexual.
She laughed.
"Welcome to
He hurriedly
zipped himself up, said good-bye, and made his way to the street.
The cool night air was refreshing.
He thought it quite likely that steam was
coming out of his ears.
He walked back
toward his hotel, on the way splashing some water from the Fountain of Justice
on his face.
The painted carving of the
blindfolded damsel looming above him, showing a surprising amount of leg,
reminded him somewhat of Erika.
*
*
*
*
*
Detective Sergeant
First Class Heinz Raufman, better known as the Bear, took the number three tram
home to his new and very comfortable apartment in Saali, a suburb of
minutes from the city center.
If he was
honest with himself, and he often was, he thought that all things considered,
he had gotten off quite lightly.
He had
really deserved suspension.
Instead, he
had been given what amounted to a slap on the wrist and a sinecure.
Played right, minor crimes could be turned
into something very interesting indeed, a chance to do a little quiet exploring
of the highways and byways of
underworld, without the time constraints of a heavy caseload.
"Tilly,
my love," he said as he fed Gustavus and Adolfus, his pet goldfish,
"thumping the odd German can have its good side."
He often talked to Tilly when he was alone in
his apartment.
They had bought it less
than a year before her death.
She had
been at her happiest when cleaning and decorating it and making it ever more
comfortable.
"It must be snug,
Heini," she used to say, "not just comfortable, but snug."
The Bear ate a
light meal — for him — of veal in cream sauce with mushrooms,
rösti
, a side salad, just a little
French bread with unsalted butter, and Camembert, all washed down with a modest
liter of Viti, a Merlot of a most agreeable quality from Ticino.
He debated having fruit and compromised with
a pear, or two, or three.
He had an
espresso to fill in the cracks, and just a small Strega.
All in all, quite an
acceptable snack.
He watched the
YBs on television; they lost.
The Bear
had strong doubts about the blending of the Bernese character and soccer.
Later he watched the news.
In
a hunger strike and things did not look good.
*
*
*
*
*
The mention of
reminded the Bear that tomorrow he had better do something about the
Irishman.
He switched off the television
and listened to the radio.
Gustavus and
Adolfus had a weakness for classical; they seemed to swim to tempo.
The Bear cleaned his guns.
He might be a little grumpy and a little
heavy, but his paws worked just fine.
Marksmanship trophies lined his sideboard.
The Bear liked to shoot.
Tucked up in
the large double bed, the electric blanket radiating just the right amount of
warmth, his hot chocolate at hand on the bedside table, the Bear leafed through
some paperwork he had picked up on the Irishman.
"Good
night, little love," he murmured, as he always had to Tilly, before
turning over and falling asleep.
12
Fitzduane was
the kind of man who examined credentials — something unusual in the Bear's
experience.
Most people tended to fold
when an ID was waved about.
In this case
— Fitzduane was a connoisseur of such arcane documentation — the laminated
identity card read:
SICHERHEITS UND KRIMINALPOLIZEI DER STADT BERN
.
He handed back the identity card.
"There is something unsettling about the
word ‘Kriminalpolizei’ before breakfast," he said.
"The Bear
looked puzzled.
I certainly did not mean
to disturb you.
In
get up early.
I finished breakfast over
two hours ago."
Fitzduane
looked sympathetic.
"We all have
our idiosyncrasies," he said.
"You must be starving again by now.
Come and join me."
The Bear did
not need a second invitation.
In truth
he had been on the way to the Bärengraben for a small snack of coffee and
pastries — the Bärengraben was famous for its pastries — when he realized that
the Irishman was on his route.
"How did
you find me?" asked Fitzduane.
"Your
visitor's registration card," said the Bear.
"That card you fill out when you check
in.
They are collected from every hotel
and pension every day and are filed at headquarters."
"And if
I'd stayed with a friend?"
"If you
were in
I'd have found you," said the Bear, "but maybe not so
fast."
He was a little
distracted.
He was busy putting butter
and honey on his roll.
Fitzduane was
impressed.
The Bear was demonstrating a
certain mastery of construction, not to say balance.
He gave the result a critical look, appeared
satisfied, and began to munch.
"To what
do I owe this honor?
"
Fitzduane beckoned for a
second basket of rolls.
"Your
friend Colonel Kilmara knows my chief," said the Bear.
"He said you were coming to
little help getting to know your way around.
Didn't your Colonel Kilmara tell you?"
"I guess
he did," said Fitzduane, "but it was fairly casual.
He gave me the name and number of a Major Max
Buisard.
He's the Chief Kripo — that's
the Chief of the Criminal Police — and my superior.
Not a bad sort but a busy man, so he asked me
to look after you.
He sends his regards
and hopes he will have a chance to meet you before you leave."
He smiled.
"Socially, of course."
Fitzduane
smiled back politely.
"Of
course," he said.
"Thank him
for me — will you
?
— but tell him I don't expect to be
in
long."
The Bear
nodded.
"A pity," he
said.
He wrapped his paws around his
steaming coffee cup as if warming them.
He raised the cup to his lips and then blew on it without drinking.
His eyes over the rim were shrewd and
intelligent.
His tone was casual.
"Tell me,
Mr. Fitzduane," he said.
"What
exactly are you doing in
The Irishman
smiled broadly.
"Sergeant Raufman,
why do I think you already know the answer to that?"
The Bear was
silent.
He looked guilty.
"Harrumph," he said, or at least it
sounded like that.
It was hard to tell;
he was munching a croissant.
"You
know I once arrested you Rudi von Graffenlaub," he said.
"Tell me
about it," said Fitzduane.
The Bear
licked a little bit of honey off his right thumb.
His normally glum expression was replaced by
the most charming smile.
"Only if
we trade," he said.
He hummed a few
notes of an old Bernese march:
“Pom Pom,
tra-ri-di-ri, Al-li Ma-nne, stan-deni!”
Fitzduane
thought for a while, and the Bear did not interrupt him but just sat there
humming a little and looking content.
Then Fitzduane spoke.
"Why
not?" he said, and following intuition rather than direct need, he told
Bear everything right from the beginning.
He was surprised at himself when he had finished.