Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
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Across the
breakfast table she was silent and subdued.
She did not look at him as she made him coffee and placed a bowl of
muesli in front of him.
To break the
silence, he asked her who did the milking.
The milk he was pouring was still fresh and steaming.
She looked up
at him and laughed a little humorlessly.
"Peter arranged it," she said.
"We have a neighbor.
He
lives in the village, but his cow byre is close to ours.
We take turns to do the milking."
"You're
not completely alone then."
"Willi is
good with the cows," she said, "but he's over sixty, set in his ways,
and to given much to conversation."
"So you
get lonely."
"Yes,"
she said, "I do.
I really
do."
She sat without speaking for a
few moments and then stood up and began busying herself around the
kitchen.
Suddenly, leaning against the
sink, her back to Fitzduane, she started sobbing, a violent, unstoppable
outpouring.
Fitzduane
stood and went to put his hands on her shoulders to comfort her.
Her back was corded with tension.
He made as if to take her in his arms, but
she shook him off angrily.
Her hand
clenched the edge of the sink, the knuckles white with the force of her grip.
"You
don't know what you're dealing with," she said.
"I was a fool to talk to you.
It's none of your business.
You don't understand
,
this whole thing is too complicated.
It's nothing to do with you."
He started to
say something, but she turned on him, screaming.
Her face was distorted by anger and
fear.
Her voice broke as she shouted at
him.
"You idiot!
Don't you know it's too late?
It's gone too far!
I can't go back, and no one can help me.
No one!"
Vreni rushed out of the kitchen into the main
room, slamming the door behind her.
A
bag of brown rice balanced on one of the kitchen shelves thudded to the
floor.
He heard the phone ring and then
Vreni answer.
She did not seem to speak
much.
Once he heard a single word when
she raised her voice; it was repeated several times.
It sounded like
nay
, Swiss-German dialect for
no
.
He went back to the kitchen table to finish
breakfast.
Some minutes
later Vreni walked slowly back into the kitchen.
Her face was ashen.
He could scarcely hear her as she spoke.
"You'd
better go," she said.
"Now."
She
pressed a small package into his hand.
It was wrapped in paper and was about the size of a screw-top coffee
jar.
She held her lips to his cheek for
a few moments and clasped him tight.
"Thank
you for trying," she said, "but it's too late."
She turned and left the room.
She had scarcely looked at him while she was
speaking.
Her face was streaked with
tears.
Fitzduane knew that to push her
further would be worse than useless.
He walked back
down the track to Heiligenschwendi.
The
snow and slush had frozen in the night and crackled underfoot.
There was ice
on
the
mountain road, too, so he drove
slowly and with particular care.
He
checked his mirror often and several times stopped to admire the view.
Once he broke out a telephoto lens and took
some photographs of the twisting road and of a motorcyclist demonstrating his
skill gliding around a corner.
The biker
accelerated when he saw Fitzduane's camera and did not acknowledge the
Irishman's wave.
Fitzduane had
lunch in
tourists do, and drove back sedately to
When the biker turned off at the outskirts of
the city, Fitzduane was almost sorry to see him go.
Still,
It
might be a
good idea to find out who was following him.
He was beginning to be sorry he had left his Kevlar vest back in
rather different from what he had expected.
He thought he
might just buy himself a gun.
13
Fitzduane was
interested in weapons — training in them had formed part of his upbringing —
and in the isolation of his castle and grounds he interpreted the restrictive
Irish gun laws rather liberally.
In
permit was needed for something as relatively nonlethal as an air rifle, and obtaining
a license for a handgun was almost impossible.
Also, there were few gun shops in
weapons in them was limited.
He was
intrigued by the Swiss approach to firearms and had already found out that the
Swiss just loved guns, all kinds of guns from black-powder muskets to
match-precision rifles.
They also made
them and shot them with impressive skill and consistent application.
Fitzduane
found the gun shop by the simple expedient of following a respectable
middle-aged burgher in a business suit who was carrying an assault rifle with
much the same nonchalance as a Londoner might carry an umbrella.
Passersby were equally unmoved by the
sight.
It did occur to Fitzduane that
the good citizen might be returning to his office to shoot his boss or taking a
midafternoon break to perforate his wife's lover.
Both these options, on reflection, seemed to
promise a certain entertainment value.
After only a
few minutes — and it was a fine afternoon for a stroll — the burgher led him to
a shop in Aarbergasse.
The façade bore
the words
SCHWARZ
,
BÜCHSENMACHER
, ARMURIER
, and
the window was nicely decorated with a display of firepower that would have
done credit to a South American dictator's personal arsenal.
"I'd like
to buy a gun," said Fitzduane.
The man behind
the counter nodded in agreement.
Nothing
could be more sensible.
Fitzduane looked
around the shop.
There were guns everywhere,
a quite astonishing variety:
revolvers,
automatics, muskets, shotguns, army rifles, carbines.
They hung from racks, stared at him from
display cabinets, leaned casually against the walls.
Any unoccupied space was filled with
ammunition boxes, crossbows, books on guns, even catapults.
It was terrific.
He wished he had come there when he was
fourteen.
Still, he wasn't quite sure of
the ground rules for this sort of thing.
"What are
the gun laws in
The man behind
the counter was unfazed.
It was clear
that the Swiss legal system was not going to stop him from making a sale.
"For a foreigner?"
Fitzduane
thought that speaking in English must be a dead giveaway.
"It depends where I am," he
said.
"I feel quite at home in
The shopkeeper
seemed to have scant interest in repartee.
His business was guns.
He picked
a Finnish Valmet assault rifle off a rack behind him and idly mowed down half a
dozen passersby through the plate glass shopfront.
He made a “tac-tac-tac” sound:
three-round
bursts,
good fire control.
The Valmet was
replaced.
A Colt Peacemaker appeared in
the man's hand.
He held it, arm
outstretched, in the single-handed shooting position that was all the rage for
handguns before a California sheriff called Weaver started winning all the
shooting competitions in the 1950s by shooting with two hands like a woman.
"The laws
vary from canton to canton," he said.
"In
for instance, you can carry a pistol without a permit.
In
There were
twenty-six cantons and half cantons in
recalled.
He wasn't quite sure of the
difference between a canton and a half canton, but considering the gun law
variations, it sounded as if it might be a good idea to carry something a
little less vulnerable to local complications than a handgun.
"But it
is not difficult to buy a gun," the shopkeeper continued.
"It depends on what you want.
There are some restrictions on automatic
weapons and pistols.
Otherwise it is
easy."
"Without a permit?"
"Except
for the restrictions I have mentioned, no permit is required," said the
man.
He twirled the Peacemaker expertly
and returned it to the showcase.
He
selected a small .32 Smith & Wesson, looked at Fitzduane, and then put it
back.
Somehow the Irishman didn't seem
the .32-caliber type.
Fitzduane
reluctantly abandoned the idea of buying an M-60 machine gun and towing it
around
roller skates.
He looked at his camera
tripod case, which was resting on the counter while he talked, and little
wheels started turning in his brain.
He pointed at
a Remington folding shotgun in a rack behind the man.
It was a short-barreled riot gun and was
stamped, in large, clear letters:
FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY
.
"But of
course," said the shopkeeper, offering the gun to Fitzduane.
The weapon was a folding pump-action shotgun
equipped with a pistol grip.
Fitzduane
had used a similar weapon on special operations in the
With the appropriate ammunition, up to a
maximum of forty meters, though preferably at half that distance, it was an
effective killing machine with brutal stopping power.
With the metal stock collapsed, the gun fit
neatly into the tripod case, leaving room for spare ammunition in the zippered
accessory pocket where Fitzduane normally kept his long remote extension cord.
The man behind
the counter placed a box of twelve-gauge 00 shells beside the holstered
gun.
Each shell contained nine lead
balls, any one of which could be fatal at close range.
It was clear he didn't think Fitzduane might
need birdshot.
As an afterthought the
man added a tubular magazine extension.
"We take credit cards," he said.
Fitzduane smiled and paid cash.
The bill came to 918 francs 40.
He left the
gun shop and went looking for a photography store where he could have some film
developed and some enlargements made in a hurry.
He was successful and arranged to make the
pickup the following morning.
There was a
café called the High Noon off the Bärenplatz, just next door to the prison
tower.
It seemed like the right place
for a beer after buying a gun.
Afterward
Fitzduane strolled back to his hotel.
As
far as he could tell, he was no longer being followed, though it was difficult
to be sure.
The streets were crowded
with evening shoppers and the arcades made concealment by a tail easy.
As he neared the Hospiz, the crowds thinned,
and he noticed a keffiyeh-shrouded skater detach himself from an arcade pillar
and glide after him.
He changed
direction and entered a small bar called the Arlequin.
He had another beer and wondered what had
happened to the “H.”
Outside, the
skater glided, twirled, and, finally fatigued, adopted a storklike position,
supported on one leg with the other drawn up and looped behind the knee.
So positioned, the skater watched the
Arlequin door.
He was gone, apparently,
by the time Fitzduane left.
This is all
very fucking weird, thought Fitzduane.
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