Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
The front door
was open.
Fitzduane called out,
then
knocked.
No one
answered.
Balancing caution and
curiosity, he went in.
The hall was dark
and cool in contrast with the glare of the sunlight.
He paused while his eyes adjusted.
A hand grabbed
his arm.
"
Polizei?
" a voice asked nervously.
Fitzduane
removed the hand.
It was dirty, as was
the person it belonged to.
The person
also smelled.
"No
, "
said Fitzduane.
"You are
English?"
The voice belonged to a
small, scruffy youth of about twenty.
He
seemed agitated.
"Irish,"
said Fitzduane.
"I'm looking for
someone called Klaus Minder.
A friend
told me he sometimes lives here."
The youth gave
a start.
He moved away from Fitzduane
and examined him carefully.
His eyes
were red-rimmed, and he was shaking.
He
removed a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket and tried to light it but was
unable to hold the match steady.
Fitzduane moved forward gently and held his wrist while flame and
marijuana made contact.
The wrist was
frail and thin.
The youth inhaled deeply
several times, and some of the tension went from his face.
He looked at Fitzduane.
"You must
help us," he said.
"First you
must help us."
Fitzduane
smiled.
"If it's
legal and quick, or at least quick.
What's the problem?"
The youth
leaned forward.
He smelled terrible and
looked worse, but there was something, some quality, curiously appealing about
him.
"There is a man upstairs, a
Dutchman — his name is Jan van der Grijn — and he is creating trouble.
If you go up, because you are an outsider, he
will stop."
"Why's he
doing this?"
The youth
shrugged.
He looked at the ground.
"He stayed here a little while
ago," he said, "and after he left he was missing some stuff.
He has come back to find it.
He says one of us robbed him, and he's
threatening everyone who was there that night."
"Why
don't you go to the police?"
The youth
shook his head.
"We don't want the
police in here," he said.
"We
have enough trouble with them."
The marijuana
smoke diffused through the corridor.
"I can't imagine why," said Fitzduane dryly.
He was thinking it might be an excellent idea
to leave.
The youth
tugged him by the arm.
"Come
on," he insisted.
"Afterward I
will tell you about Klaus."
Reluctantly
Fitzduane followed the youth up the stairs.
"What's your name?" he called up after him.
"Ivo,"
answered the youth.
He opened a door off
the second-floor landing and stood aside.
Muffled shouts came from inside, but Fitzduane went in anyway.
An extremely bad decision.
The door slammed shut behind him.
He could smell
Ivo by his side.
"The Dutchman has
two friends with him," Ivo said.
"They are the ones in the leather jackets."
"Good
information," said Fitzduane, "but lousy timing."
Before he knew what was happening, he felt an
armlock around his neck and something sharp being pressed against his
kidneys.
Someone with foul breath spoke
into his right ear.
He didn't understand
a word.
A big man in a
leather jacket stopped punching a blond youth, who was held by an equally large
companion, and came forward.
He hit
Fitzduane once very hard in the stomach.
Fitzduane sagged to his knees.
He
felt sick, and he was getting quite angry.
*
*
*
*
*
Detective Kurt
Siemann of the Bern Kriminalpolizei, not one of the Chief Kripo's favorites,
hence his rank — or rather lack of it at the mature age of forty-seven — was of
two minds about whether to follow Fitzduane into the Youth House.
His brief was
terse:
"Keep an eye on him, note
his movements, keep him out of trouble, but don't hassle him," which
seemed to Siemann to incorporate certain self-canceling elements.
Following Fitzduane into the Youth House
could well be construed as ‘hassling.’
On the other hand, since the
an eye on him’ was currently being obeyed only in the figurative sense at
best.
Another complication was that it
was current police policy to steer clear of the Youth House as much as
possible.
It was a policy with which
Detective Siemann did not agree; he was all in favor of donning riot gear and
cracking a few heads.
Detective
Siemann decided that on balance he was probably better off staying outside,
staring at the tulips and counting the flies.
He thought it wouldn't do any harm if he sat down on the grass and
rested for a few minutes.
He
lay
down and put his hands behind his head — it wasn't all
bad being a policeman in the spring.
It
might not be fair to say that he fell fast asleep, but even Detective Siemann
himself would admit that he dozed.
*
*
*
*
*
The Bear tried
to maintain an orderly wallet with everything in its place, but somehow it
didn't seem to work out that way.
Cash,
credit cards, notes, receipts, police bulletins, bills, letters, and other
impedimenta of debatable origin all seemed to gravitate of their own volition
in no logical order to an apparently endless series of pockets that he had
discovered disgorged their contents only on whim.
It was infuriating.
He worried that he would be unable to find
his police identity card at some crucial moment, but so far, at least, that
piece of documentation seemed to be a bit less independently mobile than the
others.
The Bear
hadn’t found a way to solve his problem, but he had discovered over the years
that he could keep anarchy marginally in check by a deliberate daily ritual —
weekly more like it — of emptying out his pockets on his office desk and doing
a sort.
He swore
violently in Berndeutsch, and then in Romansh for good measure, when he
discovered in the debris the photograph of the motorcyclist the Irishman had
asked him to check.
He reached for the
phone.
The answer
from the vehicle registration computer came through almost immediately.
The motorcycle was registered to Felix Krane
with an address in Lenk.
He checked with
the Operations Room and discovered that Fitzduane's tail had reported in by
personal radio some eight minutes earlier.
The Irishman was in the Youth House.
The Bear
decided it might be a good idea to make up for his absentmindedness by
delivering his information immediately.
He looked at the chaos on his desk, swore again, extracted the minimum
necessary for survival, and swept the balance into a drawer.
He headed
toward the Youth House, which
was
only a few minutes
away on foot.
Most places were, in
*
*
*
*
*
Fitzduane felt
a hand cup his chin, and his head was jerked painfully backward.
Van der Grijn
stared down at him for a few seconds and then withdrew his hand with a
grunt.
"No, I don't think so."
He spoke a
quick command in Dutch, and Fitzduane felt himself hauled to his feet and
quickly but thoroughly frisked.
The
shoulder bag containing his camera equipment and the tripod case lay on the
floor, ignored in the confusion.
Out of the
corner of his eyes Fitzduane could see Ivo on his right but slightly behind
him.
Fitzduane had the strong feeling
that Ivo knew more than he was saying.
Still, comparing the slight figure of Ivo with the three burly Dutchmen,
he began to appreciate the youth's courage.
He'd known what he was up against, and he could have gotten away.
Instead, he had deliberately put himself in
danger to try to do something about the situation.
Van der Grijn
stepped back a couple of paces and stood to one side so that he could keep
Fitzduane in full view while the Dutchman who had been doing the frisking came
around in front of Fitzduane and started going through his pockets.
He was carrying a Bundeswehrmesser, the
standard West German Army fighting knife.
He held it in his right hand as he emptied Fitzduane's pockets with his
left.
At all times he kept the point of
the blade, which bore the signs of many loving encounters with a sharpening
stone and glistened under a light film of oil, either under Fitzduane's neck or
angled slightly upward for an easy thrust into his heart or stomach.
Fitzduane kept
quite still.
His wallet was removed from
his inside pocket and handed to van der Grijn.
The searcher stepped back and then returned to his position behind
Fitzduane, by the door.
Fitzduane
mentally christened him Knife.
He
thought that Knife was about two meters behind him.
He was beginning to have some potential room
to maneuver.
Van der Grijn
flipped open Fitzduane's wallet.
He
pocketed cash and credit cards and examined Fitzduane's press card and other
credentials.
The short pause gave
Fitzduane time to get his bearings.
The
rectangular room was spacious but furnished only with a large, plain wooden
table, two stuffed armchairs not in the prime of life, and two straight-back
chairs.
Every square millimeter of wall
space was covered with drawings, slogans, and other graffiti.
Light came from one large and two small
windows at one end of the room.
There were
roughly a dozen people of both sexes lined up in two irregular groups on either
side of the room.
They were mostly in
their late teens and early twenties, but several were older.
All of the smaller group — four in number —
had been badly beaten.
One lay on the
floor, his bloody hand over his eyes and a pool of blood leaching from his
head.
"So,"
said van der Grijn, holding up Fitzduane's press card, "you are a
photographer."
Like many Dutchmen,
he spoke good English though the accent lingered.
Each syllable was enunciated, and the voice
was hard and uncompromising.
Fitzduane
noted that the second of van der Grijn's sidekicks was about five meters ahead
and to his left, near the windows at the end of the room, and was able to monitor
the whole room.
He could see the butt of
a large-caliber revolver protruding from a shoulder holster as the man shifted
position.
He seemed entertained by the
situation.
He was shorter than van der
Grijn and Knife but had the physique of a body builder.
The prospects
for doing something did not look good.
Van der Grijn and Knife aside, there was no chance of getting near the
third man before he had a chance to fire.
He designated the third man Gun.
The others in the room looked as if they had been persuaded out of
heroism.
That left Ivo.
Something less than a
balance of power.
Van der Grijn
put Fitzduane's credentials into his pocket.
"All you people have to do is flash your ID and doors open,"
he said.
"Very
useful."
Fitzduane had
the strong feeling that whatever he said would be pointless, but he thought he
ought to go through the motions.
"Give
them back," he said quietly.
Van der Grijn
didn’t reply immediately.
His face
slowly flushed with anger.
It began to
be clear that he was high on something and that rationality had little to do
with his behavior.
He rocked slightly to
and fro on his feet, and Fitzduane braced himself for a blow.
The Dutchman at the window grinned.
Van der Grijn
reached inside his leather jacket and pulled a long-barreled 9 mm Browning
automatic out of his shoulder holster.
He checked the clip, cocked the weapon, and deactivated the safety
catch.
Suddenly he whipped up the gun
and held it in a two-handed combat grip a hair's breadth from Fitzduane's nose.