Read Games of the Hangman Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"And
now?" said Günther.
Kilmara waited
a beat and grinned.
"I'm going to
go home early and bathe the twins," he said.
He put on his coat, checked his personal
weapons, and slid down the specially installed fireman's pole to the
underground garage.
He'd tell Fitzduane
about this second hanging tomorrow.
Hugo
would have to get by on one hanging this night.
He was
unmercifully splashed by the twins.
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The city of
second largest, had been sacked, burned, pillaged, looted, and destroyed so
often since its foundation in the sixth century by St. Finbar that it now
seemed laid out with the primary objective of stopping any invader in his
tracks.
Its traffic
problem was impressive in its turgid complexity, and on a dark, wet March
evening it had reached a pinnacle of congestion that was a tribute to the
ingenuity of its corporation's planning committee.
Fitzduane had
a manic private theory that the reason the city's population had expanded was
that none of the inhabitants could get out, and so they stayed and became
traders or lawyers or pregnant or both and conversed in a strange singsong that
sounded to the uninitiated like a form of Chinese but was, in fact, the Cork
accent.
Fitzduane
actually quite liked Cork, but he could never understand how a city that stood
astride only one river could have so many bridges — all, apparently, going the
wrong way.
In addition, there seemed to
be more bridges than during his last visit, and some seemed to be in different
locations.
Maybe they were designed to
move secretly in the dead of night.
Maybe the reason the British had burned the city — yet again — in 1921
was
just to find a parking space.
He was
agreeably surprised when the
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Fitzduane
transferred the slides of the hanging to the circular magazine of a Kodak
Carousel projector and switched it on.
The screen was
suddenly brilliant white in the small office.
He pressed the advance button.
There was a click and a whir and a click.
The white of the screen was replaced by a
blur of color.
He adjusted the zoom lens
and the focus, and the face of the hanged boy, much enlarged, came sharply into
view.
Buckley held
an illuminated pointer in his hand, and from time to time, as the slides
clicked and whirred and clicked, he would point out a feature with the small arrow
of light.
"Of
course," said the pathologist, "I didn't see the locus —the place it
actually happened — so these slides of yours help.
They should really have been handed in to me
before the inquest, but no matter.
"Now,
under our system, the decision as to whether the pathologist sees the deceased
at the locus depends on the police.
If
they have any reason to be suspicious, the body is not disturbed in any way
until the fullest investigations are carried out.
In this particular case the sergeant used his
judgment.
A youth was involved, and his
death occurred on the grounds of his own college.
A very fraught
situation,
and the sight of a victim of hanging can be quite traumatic, as you know.
There were no signs of foul play, and the
sergeant knew that hanging almost invariably means suicide.
There was also the matter of determining that
the lad was actually dead.
All these
factors encouraged the sergeant to take the view that he should cut down the
deceased immediately, and I have to say that it is my belief that he acted
correctly."
Fitzduane
looked at the grimacing figure on the screen.
He had an impulse to wipe away the blood and mucus that so disfigured
the face.
He tried to make his voice
sound detached as he spoke.
"He
must have been dead, surely.
I checked
his pulse when I found him, and there was nothing — and just look at him."
The
pathologist cleared his throat.
"I
must point out, Mr. Fitzduane," he said, "that given the position of
the hanging
body,
I doubt that you could have carried
out an adequate examination.
The absence
of a pulse alone, especially considering a normal layman's limited experience,
is by no means a sufficient determination of death."
"Are you
saying that he could have been alive when I found him — even without a pulse
and looking like that?"
"Yes,"
said Buckley in a matter-of-fact voice, "it's possible.
Our investigations, based upon when he was
last seen in the college, when the rain stopped and so on, plus, of course,
your own testimony, indicate that the hanging must have taken place between
half an hour and an hour of your finding him.
He could have been alive — just — in the same way that a victim of
drowning can survive a period of total immersion and can be brought around by
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."
As Buckley
spoke, Fitzduane tried to imagine giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to that
bluish face.
He could almost feel those
distorted lips stained with spittle, mucus, and blood.
Had his revulsion killed the boy?
Had it really been so impossible to cut the
body down?"
"For what
it's worth," said Buckley, "and this is not a scientific opinion,
merely common sense, he was almost certainly dead when you found him.
And anyway, I fail to see how you could have
cut him down single-handed, since the evidence stated, as I recall, that you
had no knife of similar item.
In
addition, there would have been the probability of further damage to the boy
when the body dropped.
Finally, if any
trace of life did remain, the brain would have been damaged beyond repair.
You would have saved a vegetable.
So do not harbor any feelings of guilt.
They are neither justified nor
constructive."
Fitzduane
smiled faintly at Buckley.
"No, I'm
not a mind reader," said the pathologist.
"It's just that I've been down this road many times before.
If suicides realized the trauma they inflict
on those who find their damaged remains, some might think twice."
He turned back to the business at hand.
"Our
friend here," he said, "is a classic example of a victim of asphyxial
death resulting from suspension by a ligature.
You will note the cyanosed complexion and the petechiae — those tiny red
dots.
The petechiae are more pronounced
where the capillaries are least firmly supported.
Externally they show here as a fine shower in
the scalp, brow, and face above the level of compression.
You will observe the tongue, lifted up at the
base and made turgid and protruding.
You
will observe the prominent eyeballs.
You
will observe that the level of the tightening of the ligature — the blue nylon
rope in this case — does not circle the neck horizontally as would tend to be
the case in manual strangulation.
Instead, it is set at the thyrohyoid level in front and rises to a
suspension point just behind the ear.
The impression on the body tissues, incidentally, conforms exactly to
what you see here.
Such would not be the
case if he had been manually strangled beforehand or indeed hanged
elsewhere.
There are invariably
discrepancies.
"Now,
hanging normally causes death in one of three possible ways:
vagal inhibition, cerebral anoxia, or
asphyxia."
Fitzduane made
a gesture, and Buckley paused.
"Forgive
me," said Fitzduane.
"I'm
familiar with some of these terms, but I think it would be wiser to consider me
an ignorant layman."
Buckley
chuckled apologetically.
He selected a
pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it with tobacco.
There was the flare of a match followed by
the sounds of heavy puffing.
"Rudolf died from asphyxia," continued Buckley.
"He strangled himself to death, thought
I doubt that was his intention.
The tree
he chose and the branch he jumped from gave him a drop of about one meter
eighty.
We can't be quite sure because
he may have jumped up and off the branch, thus increasing the drop.
"To use
layman's terminology, I expect he intended to break his neck.
He would have wanted the cervical segments to
fracture, as happens, or is supposed to happen, in a judicial hanging.
In reality, outside official executions,
where the hangman has the advantage of training and practice, the neck rarely
breaks.
Rudolf was a strong, fit young
man.
His neck did not break.
"You will
recall, of course, that I stated during the inquest that death was
instantaneous.
That was not the truth,
merely a convention we tend to adhere to for the relatives' sake.
The true facts are always in the written
report given to the coroner."
"What
about the marks on his hands?" asked
Fitzduane.
"There are scratches on the fingertips
as well.
They look like the signs of a
struggle."
"Perhaps
they do,"
said
Buckley, "but if there was a
struggle that resulted in the victim being hanged by another, it's virtually
certain there would be some sign on the victim's body.
In this case I examined the body with
particular care for the very good reason that I was working in another man's
territory and didn't want to leave any possibilities unchecked — and I had
rather more time than I tend to have with the work load here.
Be that as it may, there were no signs of the
bruising you might expect if another party were involved.
The marks on the hands and fingers are
entirely consistent with two things:
first, the victim's ascent of the tree, which marked the palms of his
hands and the insides of his fingers."
He paused to puff at his pipe.
"And
second?" prompted Fitzduane.
"Second,
the convulsing of the victim as he hung there and slowly asphyxiated.
The distance between the trunk of the tree
and the body, based now upon my observation of these slides, but originally on
the sergeant's measurements, indicates that the body would indeed have brushed
against the tree as it spasmed or, more specifically, that the fingertips would
have rubbed against the bark of the trunk.
Such convulsions can be quite violent."
"I'm
sorry I asked," said Fitzduane.
Buckley smiled
slightly.
"In addition, I took samples
from under the deceased's fingernails and subjected them to various tests and microscopic
examinations.
The findings were
consistent with what I have just said.
Also, I should point out that in the event of a struggle it is not
uncommon to find traces of the assailant's skin, tissue, and blood in the nail
scrapings.
No such traces were found in
this case."
He looked toward
Fitzduane.
Half glasses glinted through
the smoke.
Fitzduane
marshaled his thoughts.
"Very well.
If
we accept that there is no evidence of strangulation, forcible hanging, or
indeed any sort of physical pressure, how about the possibility that he killed
himself while drugged or even while under hypnosis?"
Buckley
grinned.
"Great stuff," he
said.
"I mentioned earlier that I
had taken particular care with this fellow.
The fact is that I did a number of things I wouldn't normally do on the
basis of the evidence available, and it wasn't only because I was off my
patch.
It was also because the fellow was
a foreigner and, as like as not, there would be another autopsy when the body
arrived home.
There would be hell to pay
if our verdicts differed, as has happened before — to a colleague, in fact.
Very embarrassing."
"So in
this case," continued Buckley, "although there was no evidence of
foul play and on suspicious circumstances, I took extensive samples of blood,
hair, urine, stomach contents, and so on, and sent them for examination in
I thought there was some possibility that he
might have been under the influence of some self-administered drug, and I
requested the toxicological tests as an extra precaution."