Games of the Hangman (51 page)

"You
can't," said Marta.
 
"Oskar is
dead."

"He's
dead?
 
But I spoke to him only
yesterday!" said Fitzduane, taken aback.
 
"I arranged to meet him this evening in the Simmenfälle, the place
beside the waterfall."

"He liked
the Simmenfälle," said Marta.
 
"He often went there for a glass of wine and a game of jass.
 
He used to meet clients there.
 
He was a guide, you know."

"I
know."

Marta was
pensive.
 
She ran a long golden finger
around the rim of her glass.
 
She stared
out at the skiers on the slopes.
 
"He taught me to ski.
 
He
taught us all.
 
He was part of our
growing up here.
 
Always while we were
here in Lenk, there was Oskar.
 
We skied
with him, we climbed with him,
in
summer we walked
with him.
 
It's almost impossible to
believe he's gone.
 
Just
gone."

Marta was
silent, and Fitzduane waited.
 
He
remembered Vreni's talking about Oskar in much the same way.
 
What had the man known?
 
Being so close the von Graffenlaub family,
what had he seem or surmised — and who might have been aware of his suspicions?
 
Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions.
 
There might be nothing irregular about the
guide's death.

"How did
he die?"

Marta gave a
slight start as Fitzduane's question broke into her reverie.
 
"I don't know the details.
 
All I know is that he had gone to meet a
client in Simmenfälle.
 
The client didn't
show up, and while he was walking home, he was knocked down by a car.
 
It was a hit and run."

"Did
anyone see the accident?"

"I don't
think so,"
said
Marta, "but you'd have to
ask the police."

Fitzduane
watched his Glühwein getting cold.
 
The
he went inside and called the Bear.
 
There was a pause at the other end before the Bear spoke.
 
"I'll check with the local police,"
he said.
 
"When are you seeing Felix
Krane?"

"Tomorrow
if I can," said Fitzduane.
 
"I
haven't managed to track him down yet."

"I'll
arrange for one of the local cops to go with you," said the Bear.
 
"It may cramp your style, but I don't
like what's going on.
 
"Where are
you staying?
 
I'll call you later."

"At the Simmenfälle."

There was
another silence at the end of the line.
 
Then the Bear sighed.
 
"Don't
go for any midnight walks," he said, "and
keep
your back to the wall."

"And
don't talk to strangers," said Fitzduane.

"That's
not so funny."

"No, it
isn't."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The canton
policeman was a good-humored sergeant named Franze, with a tanned round face
setting off an impressively red nose.
 
He
had the work-roughened hands of a farmer, which, indeed, he was in his off-duty
hours.
 
He arrived in a Volkswagen
Beetle, a near-twin of the antique that had transported Fitzduane to the Swiss
Army base at Sand.
 
It wheezed to a halt
in front of the Simmenfälle as Fitzduane was finishing breakfast.
 
The Irishman ordered an extra cup of coffee
and, upon further reflection,
a schnapps
.
 
The gesture was not unappreciated.
 
Franze talked freely.
 
Since Kilmara's visit, Fitzduane had official
status, and the sergeant treated him as a policeman.

It transpired
that Oskar Schupbach had been related to Sergeant Franze.
 
Talking about Oskar's death visibly depressed
the good sergeant, and Fitzduane ordered him
another schnapps
for purely medicinal reasons.
 
It crossed
Fitzduane's mind that breakfasts with Swiss police sergeants were beginning to
fall into a pattern.

"Oskar,"
said Sergeant Franze, his good humor resurrected by the second schnapps,
"was a fine man.
 
I wish you could
have met him."

"So do
I
," said Fitzduane.
 
He was annoyed at himself for to having come to Lenk sooner.
 
"But accidents will happen."

"It was
no accident," said Franze angrily, "unless you can be accidentally
run over twice by the same car."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

On the short
drive to Lenk and the cheese maker's where Felix Krane was working, they passed
the spot where Oskar Schupbach had been killed.
 
Sand had been sprinkled over the bloodstains, and Franze crossed himself
as he pointed out the spot where the guide had died.
 
Fitzduane felt cold and grim and had a
premonition of worse things to come.
 
Then the mood passed, and he thought about the making of cheese.

Fitzduane was
fond of good cheese and regarded the master cheese maker's business with more
than passing interest.
 
A compact but
expensively equipped shop in front — featuring a lavish array of mostly Swiss
cheeses, each one shown off by a miniature banner featuring the coat of arms of
the region of origin — led through to a miniature factory in the rear.
 
Stainless steel vats and electronic
monitoring equipment contrasted with a young apprentice's portioning butter by
hand, using wooden paddles shaped like rectangular Ping Pong paddles.
 
Each cheese was hand-stamped with the master
cheese maker's mark.

The master
cheese maker was a big, burly man with a luxuriant mustache to set off his
smile.
 
He was tieless, his shirtsleeves
were rolled up, and he wore a long, white, crisply starched apron.
 
Fitzduane thought he would do nicely in a barbershop
quartet.
 
Sergeant Franze spoke to him
briefly, and then he turned to Fitzduane.
 
"His name is Hans Müller," he said.
 
He introduced Fitzduane.
 
Müller beamed when he heard his name
mentioned and pumped Fitzduane's arm vigorously.
 
To judge by the size of the cheese maker's
muscles, he had served his apprenticeship churning butter by hand.

"I have
told him you are a friend of Oskar's," said Franze — Müller's face went
solemn — "and that you want to see Felix Krane on a private matter."

"Is Krane
here?" asked Fitzduane, looking around.

"No,"
said Franze, "he no longer works here regularly but does odd jobs.
 
Now he is in the maturing store just outside
of town.
 
It's a cave excavated into the
mountainside.
 
Without any artificial
air-conditioning, it keeps the cheese at exactly the right temperature and
humidity.
 
Krane turns the cheeses, among
other jobs he does there."

Müller spoke
again, gesturing around the building to where half a dozen workers and
apprentices were carrying out different tasks.
 
He sounded enthusiastic and beamed at Fitzduane.
 
The sergeant turned toward Fitzduane.
 
"He has noticed your interest in his
place, and he wants to know if you would like to look around.
 
He would be happy to explain
everything."

Fitzduane
nodded.
 
"I would be most
interested."
 
Afterward Fitzduane
had good reason to recall that informative hour and to speculate on what might
have happened if they had left to find Felix Krane earlier.
 
On balance, he decided it had probably saved
his own life.

Unfortunately,
in view of what he was about to find, he never felt quite the same way about
cheese again.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

They were on
the shaded side of the valley, driving slowly up a side road set in close to
the base of the mountains.
 
Out of the
sun the air was chill.
 
Across the valley
mountain peaks loomed high, causing Fitzduane to feel vaguely claustrophobic
and to wonder what it must have been like before railways and mountain tunnels
and roadways opened up the country.
 
No
wonder there was such a strong sense of local community in
Switzerland
.
 
The terrain was such that for centuries you
had little choice but to work with your neighbors if you were to survive.

Sergeant
Franze was driving slowly.
 
"What
are you looking for?" asked Fitzduane.

"It's
easy to miss," said Franze.
 
"All you can see from the road is a gray painted iron door set into
the mountain."

They could see
a dark blue Ford panel truck parked up ahead.
 
"There it is," said Franze, "about thirty meters before
that truck."

Fitzduane
couldn't see anything at first.
 
The
entrance was recessed and had weathered into much the same texture as the
mountain.
 
Then, when he was practically
parallel and Franze was pulling in to park, he saw the iron door.
 
It looked old, from another century, and
there was a small grating set in it at eye level.

Franze walked
ahead to the truck and peered inside, then walked back to where Fitzduane stood
beside the iron door.
 
"Nobody in
it," he said.
 
"Probably
some deliveryman gone to have a pee."

An unlocked
padlock hung from the hasp.
 
Franze eased
the door open.
 
It was stiff and heavy
but not too hard to handle. It was balanced so that it closed slowly behind
them.
 
Ahead lay a corridor long enough
for the light from the door grating to get lost in the gloom.
 
Franze looked around for a light switch.
 
He flicked the switch but nothing happened.

"Shit,"
he said, "I didn't bring a flashlight.
 
Still, it's not far."

It was cool
but dry in the corridor.
 
Fitzduane felt
something crunch underfoot.
 
It sounded
like glass from a light bulb.
 
"What's the layout?" he asked.
 
The corridor curved, and the last vestiges of light from the grating
vanished.

"This
passage runs for about another forty meters and then splits into three,"
said Franze.
 
"The cheese storage is
on the right, so if you hug the right-hand wall, you can't miss it."

"What
about the other passages?"

"The
middle cavern is empty, I think," said Franze.
 
"The one on the left is used by the
army.
 
You know there are weapons dumps,
thousands of them, concealed all over the country."

Fitzduane
digested the idea of storing cheese and armaments together and decided it was a
nonrunner for
Ireland
.
 
"Why not give Krane a shout?" he
said.
 
"We could do with some
light.
 
There seems to be glass
everywhere."
 
He thought he could
hear voices but very faintly.
 
He paused
to listen.

Suddenly there
were screams, a series of screams, all the more unsettling for being
muffled.
 
The screaming abruptly
terminated in a noise that brought memories jarring back into Fitzduane's
brain.
 
There was no sound quite like the
chunk of a heavy blade biting into human flesh.

"
Mein Gott!
" said Franze in a
whisper.
 
Three was silence apart from
his breathing.
 
"Herr Fitzduane, are
you armed?"

"Yes."
 
He slid the shotgun from it s case and
extended the collapsible metal stock.
 
He
pumped an XR-18 round into the chamber and wished he had an opportunity to
test-fire a few rounds first.
 
He heard
Franze, ten paces ahead of
him,
work the slide of his
automatic.

The darkness
was absolute.
 
He tried to picture the
layout in his mind.
 
They must be close
to where the passage widened and split into three.
 
That would mean some kind of lobby first,
more room to maneuver.
 
He felt
vulnerable in the narrow passage.
 
There
was a slight breeze on his face, and he heard a door opening ahead of him.

"Krane!"
shouted Franze, who seemed to have moved forward another couple of paces.
 
He shouted again, and the noise echoed from
the stone walls.
 
"Maybe he has had
an accident," he said to Fitzduane.
 
"One of those cheese racks may have fallen on him.
 
You stay where you are.
 
I'm going ahead to see."