Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"I wish
they'd keep their cowboys off my patch," said the Chief Kripo in a grumpy
voice.
"Don't be
a spoilsport.
Anyway, it looks fairly
straightforward.
Van der Grijn had some
heroin stolen from him.
He reckoned it
had happened in the Youth House, so he came back with two heavies to try to
find the culprit.
The American DEA man
was tailing him.
Van der Grijn got out
of hand when the Irishman walked in, and then all hell broke loose."
"It never
used to be like this in
said the Chief Kripo.
"I don't care
about explanations.
I want it to
stop."
"Well,
don't hold your breath," said von Beck.
"I've only been talking about the easy bits so far.
We have an explanation for the Youth House
deaths, and I guess Hoden's heart attack is no mystery under the
circumstances."
"Poor Hoden, what a lousy way to go.
You know I served under him for a
while."
"So did
my father," said von Beck.
"We're
still left with a few questions about the Youth House," said the
Chief.
"For instance, who stole van
der Grijn's heroin in the first place — and why?
Is the thief selling it or has he some other
motive?
What was that Irishman doing
there?
Not content with flinging people
off bridges, he seems to gravitate toward trouble like..."
He paused, thinking.
"Do you
want help on this one?" said von Beck politely.
"The
Chief shot von Beck a look.
"And
lastly,
" he
continued, "is the Bear going
to be in any trouble for killing van der Grijn?"
"I don't
think so," said von Beck.
"I
don't see what else he could have done.
He had seconds in which to judge the situation, he called it right, he
put himself at risk — and he pulled it off.
What's more, he didn't shoot a local, which always raises a stink
regardless of the circumstances.
It's
all show biz in the end."
The Chief
surveyed von Beck's sartorial splendor.
The magistrate was himself no slouch when it came to show biz — and the
bow tie always photographed distinctively.
It was the kind of thing that photo editors left in when cropping a
print.
The Chief
tried to concentrate.
He looked across
at von Beck.
"What about his using
a .41 Magnum?"
"It
doesn't look tactful in the media," said von Beck, "for a policeman
to shoot a suspect six times
with a
cannon like the
Magnum.
On the other hand, the evidence
is that van der Grijn, a large, powerful man hyped on drugs, was still a threat
after being shot no less than four times."
He shrugged.
"In Heini's
place, I'd have done the same thing — and fired again."
"Heini's
talking about getting an even bigger gun," said the Chief gloomily.
"He says to have to shoot someone six
times before he goes down is ridiculous."
"If I was
being shot at, I might feel the same way," said von Beck.
"What was your first point?"
"Who
stole van der Grijn's heroin?"
"The
finger seems to point at Ivo."
"He's a
dealer?"
"On the
contrary," said von Beck.
"He
seems to hate the stuff.
The word is
that he destroys it."
The Chief
raised his eyebrows.
"Odd," he
said.
"What doest he say?"
"Therein
lies
a problem," said von Beck.
"By all accounts he was on the side of
the angels during the gunfight — and then he seems to have vanished."
"Angels
do that," said the Chief, "which brings us to the Irishman."
"Yes,
well," said von Beck, "he may be innocent, but somehow — and don't
ask me how — he's tied in with just about every phase of our little crime
wave."
"Including
Klaus Minder and the chessboard killing?"
"Yes, in
a sense.
According to the BKA, the
chessboard girl was the partner of the man Fitzduane threw off the
Fitzduane identified her from a photo sent by the German authorities in
She was also present when he was attacked but
backed off when he threatened her with a shotgun."
"And how
does Minder fit it?"
"That's
more tenuous," said von Beck, "but it's what my English police
friends would call a ‘hopeful line of inquiry.’"
He tapped the desk with a gold Waterman
fountain pen to emphasize each point.
"Point
one,
forensics thinks that Minder
and the chessboard girl were sliced up by the same person.
Point two, and I have no idea of the
significance of this, Minder and Ivo were close friends.
Point three—
"
The
Chief flinched in anticipation but
instead von Beck unzipped a leather container the size of a small briefcase and
perused the row of pipes displayed within.
"Go on,
go on," said the Chief impatiently.
"Point three?"
"Klaus
Minder was a close friend and sometime lover of the young and recently deceased
Rudi von Graffenlaub."
Von Beck
closed the pipe case with a snap and zipped it up slowly.
"And our
Irish friend is looking into the death of young Rudi with the forceful backing
of Beat von Graffenlaub," said the Chief.
"The rest
is details," said von Beck.
"It's all in the file."
He made a grandiloquent gesture.
"But you
do have a theory about all this?"
"Not a
one.
This thing is so complicated it
could go on for years."
"I
thought you were supposed to be smart."
"I am, I
am," said von Beck, "but who says the bad guys can't be smart,
too?"
The telephone
rang, and the Chief gave a sigh.
He
listened to the call, saying little,
then
turned to
von Beck.
"They
found the other half of the chessboard girl in a plastic bag inside the Russian
Embassy wall," he said.
"The
Russians are livid and are complaining it's a CIA plot to embarrass them."
"Explain
that we're neutral and will regard both them and the Americans with equal
suspicion."
Von Beck stood up to
leave.
"Now all we've got to find
are Minder's balls."
"And
Ivo," said the Chief.
*
*
*
*
*
Kadar was
working his way through a pile of medical textbooks, and he had a splitting
headache.
The telex chattered again,
exacerbating the headache.
He rose,
washed down two Tylenol with brandy, and decoded the message.
His headache
subsided to an acceptable dull throb.
He
was knee-deep in medical tracts because the thought he might be suffering from
some kind of psychiatric condition.
In
lay terms —he had not yet stumbled on the correct medical diagnosis — it seemed
not unlikely that he was going mad.
No,
that conveyed images of Hogarthian excess, of twisted faces and dribbling idiots,
of barred windows and straightjackets and padded cells.
That was too much.
He would not accept that he was going
mad.
He revised his analysis.
As a result of sustained stress, he was
behaving irrationally.
He was doing
things that were out of character, that he had not consciously planned, and of
which he had scant recollection later.
It was
worrying.
He was glad that it would all
soon be over.
He would no longer have to
live with the strain of a double existence — if indeed his life could be summed
up in such a simple way.
His existence
was not merely divided in two.
It was
fragmented into multiple personas, and he had been sustaining this complex life
for years.
Really, a certain amount of
aberration on the margin was to be expected, and possibly was a good
thing.
It was like letting off steam, a
natural release of tensions,
a purification
through
excess.
That wasn't the real problem.
It was the
periods of amnesia that concerned him.
He was a man with an astonishing ability to manipulate and control other
beings — up to and including matters of life and death — and yet his underlying
fear, a fear that bordered on panic, was that he was losing his ability to
control himself.
It was the
incident with the girl on the chessboard that had persuaded him that he must
get himself under control.
Previous
incidents, like his killing that beautiful boy Klaus Minder, were
unpremeditated and perhaps a little excessive but could be rationalized in
context of the needs of his advanced sexuality.
Killing Esther was a matter of routine discipline.
The killing and the manner of the killing
were not the problem.
But why had he
suddenly taken the notion to draw attention to his presence by planting the
torso in such a public place as the Rose Garden's chessboard — not to mention
dumping the legs in the Russian Embassy?
Did he
subconsciously want to be caught?
Was
this some sublimated cry for help?
He
hoped not.
He'd put far too much effort
into the last couple of decades to have some programmed element of his
subconscious betray him.
That was the
trouble with the childhood phase.
In
your early years anyone and everyone has a go at programming you, from your
parents to religious nuts, from corporations that bombard you with unremitting
lies on TV to an educational system that trains you to conform to its values
and does its level best to crush your own natural talent.
But Kadar had
been lucky.
From an early age he had
sensed the realities of life, the lies, the corruption,
the
compromises.
He had learned to have only
one friend, one loyalty, one guide through life:
himself.
He had learned one key discipline:
control.
He had mastered one
vital pattern of behavior:
to live
inside himself and to reveal nothing.
Externally he appeared to conform; he knew how the game must be played.
He lay back in
his chair and started the ritual of creating Dr. Paul.
He desperately needed someone to talk
to.
But hours later, drenched in sweat,
he admitted failure:
the image of the
smiling doctor wouldn't appear.
His headache
had escalated into the full, terrible agony of a serious migraine.
Alone in his
soundproofed premises Kadar screamed.
18
The Bear sat
in a private room of
His
once-beautiful face was wrapped in bandages from crown to neck.
The Bear had seen what was left underneath
and was too appalled even to feel nauseated.
Best guess was that some kind of sharpened chain, possibly a motorcycle
chain, had been used.
His nose, teeth,
and much else had been smashed, and the face flayed to the bone.
The Monkey
muttered something unintelligible.
The
sound was picked up by a voice-actuated tape recorder whose miniature
microphone lead joined the tangle of tubes and wires that were only just keeping
the Monkey alive.
There was a harsh
rattling sound from the bed, and score was kept by the electric monitor.
The uniformed Berp sitting at the other side
of the bed held a notebook in his hands and tried to make sense of the
sounds.
He bent his ear close to the
shrouded hole that was the Monkey's mouth.
The edges of the bandages around the hole were stained with fresh blood,
and the Berp's face was pale.
He shook
his head.
He didn't write anything.
The rattling
and sucking sounds culminated in a strangled cough.
An intern and a nurse rushed into the
room.
They went through the motions
while the Bear looked out the window, seeing nothing.
"That's
it," said the intern.
He went to
wash his hands at the sink in the corner of the room.
The nurse pulled the sheet over the Monkey's
head.
The Bear untangled the tape
recorder and removed the cassette.
He
broke the tabs to make sure it could not be accidentally recorded over, marked
it, and gave it to the Berp.