Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"I'm
afraid that is not all there is to it," said Paulus.
"You see, Balac is a strong personality
with what one might call varied... exotic tastes.
He has a strong sexual drive, and he likes
diversions.
In his company one finds
oneself swept along, eager to please, willing to try things, to do things that
normally one would not contemplate.
He
is a brilliant artist, and the foibles of such men must be tolerated, or at
least that is what I used to tell myself.
If I am to be truthful, I was swept up in the sheer sexual excitement of
it all, the tasting of forbidden fruit.
"Balac
enjoys women sexually as well as men.
He
enjoys group sex in all its variations.
He likes children, sexually mature children but still way below the age
of consent.
He likes to initiate, to
corrupt.
He makes it incredibly
exciting.
He uses stimulants — alcohol,
various drugs — and above all his own extraordinary energy and charisma."
"The von
Graffenlaub twins, Rudi and Vreni?" asked Fitzduane.
"And
Erika?" added the Bear.
"Yes,
yes," said Paulus.
"Hmm,"
said the Bear.
"You'd better tell
us all of it.
Does Charlie know any of
this?"
Paulus shook
his head firmly.
"He knows I'm gay,
of course, but nothing else.
He's a good
friend and a kind man.
I wanted to tell
him, but I couldn’t."
"I'm
afraid he'll have to know now," said the Bear.
"You do understand that, don't you?"
Paulus nodded.
It was
midafternoon before they emerged from the museum.
While the Bear debated whether to go to
satisfy his audibly growling stomach — he had decided he was sick of fish —
Fitzduane asked the one question that had been bothering him since von Beck had
shown he could walk through walls.
"Is it normal in
expression?"
The Bear
laughed.
"Living art," he
said.
"Actually there is an
explanation.
They were knocking down
that section of the museum anyway to make way for a new extension, and they
thought it might be fun to let artists take part in the process."
"Ah,"
said Fitzduane.
"No
matter how bizarre the event, there is almost always a straightforward explanation.
Don't you agree?"
"No,"
said Fitzduane.
*
*
*
*
*
The Chief
Kripo had learned to regard the Project K headquarters as a haven.
Only there did he have any thinking time;
only there was he relatively free of interference from his political masters
wanting progress reports; only there could he escape the profusion of foreign
antiterrorist agencies that all wanted a piece of the Hangman, doubtless to
skin and stuff and hang on their respective bureaucratic walls; only there did
any serious progress seem to be made on the case itself, as opposed to the
international hunt, which appeared to have become an enterprise in its own
right with the objective almost incidental; only there could he avoid his wife
and two mistresses, each of whom blamed his now excessively long absences on
some relative advance in his affections for one of the others.
It was no picnic being Chief of the Criminal
Police in
As luck would
have it, the Chief was in the main computer room when Henssen finished the computer
runs the Bear had requested.
He stared
at Henssen's screen.
Could this be
it?
Had they got a real answer at
last?
Could they ship that albatross of
an Irishman back to his bogs?
Could they
think in terms of no Hangman and
a nice steady traditional
Bernese two corpses
a year?
Hell,
it was going to be champagne time.
The Chief
tried to rein in on his hopes.
"Are
you sure?
Absolutely
sure?"
"Nothing
is sure in this life, Chief," said the Bear, "except death, a strong
Swiss franc, and that the rich get richer."
"Convince
me, convince us."
The Chief
included the rest of the Project K team with a sweep of his arm.
*
*
*
*
*
Kadar hadn't
expected Lodge to be discovered, and he had absolutely no idea how it could
have happened.
He had been so careful
with this personality.
He hadn't taken
the risks that had characterized his behavior in other guises.
How then could it have occurred?
Losing Lodge
was worse than the death of a friend.
Of
course, that was only natural.
After
all, he
was
Lodge, wasn't he?
There were times he wasn't sure.
His Lodge identity represented his one true
link with the past, but now he could never use it again.
He felt — he searched for a word — orphaned.
Perhaps he was
being too negative.
His use of a
stand-in during the immigration proceedings — a minor actor, now resting
permanently under half a meter of concrete in the house in Muri — could give
him a way out.
The man whose description
and photograph they had wasn't Kadar.
He
could reappear as Lodge and indignantly protest this usurpation of his
name.
He'd have to do it from another
country, or things would get confusing.
Still, it could be done.
It might
work.
No, it was too
risky.
Well, he'd think about it.
Only two days
were left before he was due to leave
It might be wiser to leave immediately.
Then again his plans were made, and he had
taken precautions against discovery.
It
could even work to his advantage.
He checked the
temperature probe set into Paul Straub's body.
The corpse was defrosting, but too slowly.
It would have been handier to have used not
water to thaw out Herr Straub, but he wasn't too sure what effect that would
have.
It was the kind of thing some
forensic scientist might pick up.
A body
destroyed by fire shouldn't really be waterlogged.
It shouldn't start off as a block of ice
either; it wouldn't burn properly.
A
scorched outside and entrails cold enough to chill a martini might cause some
head scratching.
He turned up
the heat.
He thought it was rather neat
to be using his sauna for the purpose.
He could tone up and sweat off some weight while keeping an eye on
things.
If his experiment with the
frozen pig was anything to go by, Straub should be adequately thawed out in
about another six to eight hours.
That
would be just about right.
Then he'd be
kept in the large Bosch refrigerator, nicely chilled but on call if required.
If he wasn't needed, he could be refrozen and
kept on hand for a rainy day.
*
*
*
*
*
"It's
ironic," said the Bear, "but what pointed me in the right direction
wasn't the computerized power of the Nose or old-fashioned police work; it was
our Irishman's intuition."
He
looked across at Fitzduane.
"You
should have more faith, Hugo.
"Hugo
suspected the painter Simon Balac was our man.
There was some circumstantial evidence, but it was far from
conclusive.
Then the computer identified
Lodge, and the raid confirmed him, and naturally all our efforts were
concentrated in that direction.
I had
plenty of time on my hands in the hospital, and I wasn't distracted by the
details of the hunt."
He glowered
around him.
"You people kept me
starved of information."
"For your
own good, Heini," said Charlie von Beck, "and on doctor's
orders."
"What do
doctors know?" growled the Bear.
"Anyway, sparked by Hugo's candidate, I got to thinking about the
nature of the Hangman and how he operates, and that led me to an intriguing
hypothesis:
Could Lodge and Balac
be
one and the same man?"
"Proof?"
said the Chief.
"But why be
greedy?
At this stage I'll settle for
reasons and an hour alone with him in a police cell."
"Patience.
Rubber hoses are un-Swiss.
We're
supposed to be a logical people.
Follow
my reasoning, and you'll see how it all fits together.
First, let's remember the Hangman's habit of
always having a way out.
If the
authorities hit one of his bases, to things can be virtually guaranteed:
the place will be extensively booby-trapped,
and an elaborate escape route will already have been planned.
The Hangman doesn't fling himself through the
fourth-floor window as the police come rushing through the front door and hope
to work things out on the way down.
No,
this guy is prepared for the down side in detail.
It's the way he operates.
He's a compulsive planner, and he likes to
think he has every contingency covered."
"He
normally has," grumbled the Chief.
"Now,
combine this behavior with his habit of operating in a compartmentalized way
through a series of apparently autonomous gangs, and you have someone who
almost certainly works through two or more meticulously prepared
identities.
The Hangman is a
perfectionist.
His won't be just paper
identities that will fold under investigation.
No, he will have created what appear to be real living people.
If one cover gets blown, he migrates to
identity number two and continues on.
Also, we know he likes to take risks — strictly speaking, unnecessary
risks — so it is my hunch that he doesn't go away and hide under a stone when
he switches identities.
His new persona
is right out there, most likely an upstanding member of the community, the last
person you'd suspect.
"My next
step was to go back to the computer and reevaluate our suspect list in a
different way.
Up till then we had
concentrated on two prime targets, von Graffenlaub and Lodge, and had ignored
the rest when we got lucky with Lodge.
However, there were, in fact, several hundred other names on the
‘possible’ list.
"We could
have slogged through the names in order of probability rating, but the banks
would have given up secrecy by the time we had any results.
Then it occurred to me that we should tackle
things another way.
Given that Lodge is
part of the
puzzle,
we should evaluate the suspect
list with him as part of the equation.
His known activities should be matched with those of each of the other
suspects to see who fits the best.
Now
remember that although few people ever saw Lodge, were still managed to
accumulate masses of data on the man.
We
have travel details, credit card usage, financial data, magazine subscriptions,
and so on.
That's the kind of stuff that
led us to take a look at him in the first place.
We had no hard evidence that he was the Hangman.
It was merely that his profile hit.
"The
results of our exercise under the amended program were intriguing.
Simon Balac rocketed to the top of the list,
and all sorts of other hot candidates dropped to the bottom.
One and one started to make three."
"I take
it Heini wasn't programming the computer," said the Chief to Henssen.
"Next we
were able to fit a few more pieces of the—"
"Puzzle?"
said Charlie von Beck.
The Bear shook
his head pityingly.
"Of
the foundation of guilt."
He
raised his eyebrows.
"One of the
interesting things about the computer checks we ran on Balac is not so much
what showed up as what didn't show up.
Let me give you a few examples.
First, Balac travels a great deal.
His various showings and exhibitions are a matter of public record, yet
his credit card records and travel arrangements don't adequately back that
up."