Games of The Hangman f-1 Read online

The head was slightly twisted and angled to one side by the initial shock of the drop combined with the action of the noose. The hair was long, light brown, and wavy — almost curly. The face was that of a young man. The skin was bluish despite a golden tan. The tongue was swollen and thrust out sharply between grimacing teeth. There was a small amount of still-fresh but clotting blood under the mouth and dripping from the chin. A long, thick rope of spittle, phlegm, and mucus hung from the end of the protruding tongue to halfway down his torso. Combined with the stench, the overall impact was revolting.

  He approached the body, reached up, and took one of the limp hands in his. He expected it to be cold; though he knew better, he automatically associated death with cold. The hand was cool to the touch but still retained traces of warmth. He felt for the pulse; there was none.

  He looked at the hand. There were greenish black marks from the tree trunk on the palms and the insides of the fingers, and mixed in were scratches extending to the fingertips. He thought about cutting the body down but doubted that he could. The knot on the nylon rope was impacted into the dead flesh, and he had no knife. Cutting down the body wouldn't help at this stage. It would make no difference to the corpse. There was a gust of wind, and the body swayed slightly. Fitzduane started at the unexpected movement.

  He made himself react as if her were on assignment: first the story. He slid his backup camera, an Olympus XA he normally carried out of photographer's habit, from the breast pocket of his coat. His actions were automatic as he selected aperture, speed, and angle. He framed each shot, cutting it in his head before releasing the shutter and bracketing, with the old hand's innate conservatism and suspicion of built-in exposure meters.

  He was conscious of the incongruity of his actions but at the same time aware of his reasons: he was buying time so that he could adjust. He brushed sweat from his forehead and began to search the corpse. It wasn't easy. The smell of feces was overpowering, and the height of the limp figure made the search awkward. He could reach only the lower pockets.

  In an outside pocket of the green anorak he found an expensive morocco leather wallet. It contained Irish pounds, Swiss francs, and several credit cards. It also held a laminated student identity card complete with color photo. The dead youth was Rudolf von Graffenlaub, nineteen years of age, from Bern, Switzerland, and a pupil at DrakerCollege. His height was listed at one meter seventy-six. Looking at the stretched neck at the end of the rope, Fitzduane reflected sadly that he would be taller now.

  He walked back to where he had left Pooka. Her uneasiness showed, and he stroked her, speaking softly. As he did so, he realized he now faced the unpleasant task of telling the college authorities that one of their pupils had hanged himself. He wondered why he had automatically assumed that it was a suicide. Murder by hanging seemed a complicated way to go about things — but was it possible? Was it likely? If accidental death was required, throwing the victim over a cliff seemed much more practical. It did occur to him that if it was murder, the killer could still be in the wood. It was a disturbing notion.

  As they emerged from the dank atmosphere of the forest, Pooka whinnied with pleasure and made as if to break into a canter. Fitzduane let her have her head, the canter became a gallop, and they thundered along the cliff and then swung into the grounds of Draker.

  Fitzduane's head cleared with the burst of exercise. He knew that the next sequence of events would not be pleasant. It had crossed his mind to keep on riding. Home wasn't too far away.

  The trouble was, although he did not yet fully appreciate it, Rudolf von Graffenlaub's death had moved him deeply. His instincts were aroused. The tragedy had happened on his own ground at a time when he was reassessing his own direction in life. It was both a provocation and a challenge. His peaceful haven in the midst of a bloody world had been violated. He wanted to know why.

  * * * * *

  It had been years since Fitzduane had visited the college.

  He entered a heavy side door that stood ajar. Inside, there was a flagstone hall, a door, and a wide wooden stairway. He climbed the stairs. There was a door off the landing at the top, and through it he could hear the sound of voices and laughter and the clinking of spoons against china. He turned the handle.

  Inside the large paneled, book-lined room about two dozen people in the mix of casual and formal clothes beloved of academics were grouped around a blazing log fire, having their morning coffee. He felt as if he were back at school and should have knocked.

  An elderly gray-haired lady turned around at his entrance and looked him up and down. "Your boots," she said with a thin smile.

  Fitzduane looked at her blankly.

  "Your boots," she repeated.

  He looked down at his muddy boots. The floor was inlaid with brass in runic patterns. Shades of Anglo-Irish literary revival and a Celtic Ireland that never was.

  "Would you mind removing your boots, sir?" said the gray-haired lady more sharply, the smile now distinctly chilly. "Everybody does. It's the floor," she added in a mollifying tone.

  Fitzduane noticed a neat row of outdoor footwear by the umbrella stand at the entrance. Too taken aback to argue, he removed his muddy riding boots and stood there in his wool socks.

  "Hi," said a fresh voice. He turned toward a lived-in but still attractive brunette in her mid-thirties. She was tall and slim and wore round granny glasses and had an aura of flower child of the sixties gone more or less straight. She had a delicious smile. He wondered if she had a little marijuana crop in her window box and how it — and she — endured Irish weather.

  "Hi yourself," he answered. He didn't smile back. Suddenly he felt tired. "I'm afraid this isn't going to make your day," he said quietly. As he was telling her his story, he handed her Rudolf's identity card. She stared at him for what seemed to be an age, uncomprehending, and then her coffee cup crashed to the floor.

  Conversation stopped, and all heads swiveled in their direction. In the silence that had fallen over the room, it took Fitzduane a moment to realize that the pool of hot coffee was slowly soaking into his socks.

  * * * * *

  It was not necessary for Fitzduane to return to the scene of the hanging, and he knew it, yet back he went. He felt proprietorial toward Rudolf. He had found the body, so in some strange way he was now responsible for it.

  Perhaps a half dozen of the faculty went with Fitzduane to the old oak tree. Rudolf still hung there. Fortunately for the nervous onlookers, the body had stopped swaying in the wind and now hung motionless.

  Fitzduane was aware that in all probability some of the people present had some previous experience with death, even violent death. Yet the hanging, with all its macabre history and connotations of ritual punishment, had a very particular impact. It showed on their faces. One teacher who could not contain himself could be heard retching behind the trunk of a sycamore tree. The sound seemed to go on and on. Several others looked about ready to join him.

  A long aluminum ladder was brought up at a run by two fit-looking young men. The sight of them reminded Fitzduane that pupils at Drake spent a great deal of their time in outdoor activities. In a casual conversation some years earlier, one of the lecturers, since departed, had remarked, “We try to exhaust the buggers. It's the only way we can keep them under control.”

  Many of the students, Fitzduane recalled, came from troubled, albeit rich backgrounds, and a good number were old enough to vote, to be conscripted, or to start a family. Doubtless some had. All in all, it seemed a thoroughly sensible precaution to keep them busy rushing up and down cliff faces and being blown around the cold waters of the Atlantic.

  They waited in the gloom of the forest to one side of the old oak tree until the police and ambulance arrived. It took some time. There was no police station on the island. The nearest was at Ballyvonane on the mainland, some fifteen kilometers of potholed road away. There were attempts at conversation governed by some unspoken rule that the hanging itself should not be discussed. Fitzduane, standing slig
htly apart from the group as befitted the bearer of bad news, chewed on a piece of long grass and made himself comfortable against the supporting contours of a not-too-damp outcrop of rock.

  He was curious to see what the police would do. A man was dead, and dead from violence. There had to be an investigation. There wouldn't be one in El Salvador, here bodies were dumped unceremoniously on rubbish dumps by death squads, or in Cambodia, where so many millions had been slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge that one extra body was of no significance. But this was home, where violence was rare and different, more caring standards prevailed.

  Two guards arrived: the local sergeant — well known to Fitzduane — and a fresh-faced youngster not long from the training barracks in Templemore by the look of him. Their heavy blue uniform trousers were tucked into farmers' rubber boots, and their faces were shaded and impassive under dark blue uniform hats. The sergeant, Tommy Keane, had his chin strap in position and was puffing slightly.

  It would be untrue to say that there was no examination of the scene of the incident; there was. It lasted perhaps sixty seconds and consisted of the sergeant's padding around the tree a couple of times, staring up at the hanging body as he did so, his boots leaving a perfect trail of cleated prints in the soft ground, obscuring with official finality any previous marks.

  Fitzduane's gaze drifted back to the body. It's feet, limp and slightly parted, were shod in surprisingly formal dark brown shoes polished to a military gloss. He wondered if Rudolf had spit-shined his shoes that morning — and if so, why?

  The ladder was placed against the tree. The sergeant tested it a couple of times, placed the young guard at the foot to hold it securely, and climbed. He removed a bone-handled folding knife from the pocket of his uniform raincoat and opened the blade.

  Knife in hand, he surveyed the gathering. Silhouetted in that way above the body, he reminded Fitzduane of a print he had seen of an eighteenth-century execution.

  "Hugo, give us a hand," said the sergeant. "Let's cut the lad down."

  Automatically Fitzduane moved forward and stood just under the corpse. There was the brief sawing sound of the blade against taut rope, and the body fell into his waiting arms.

  He clasped it to him, suddenly more disturbed than he would have thought possible at the absolute waste of it. The torso was still warm. He held the broken body, the head disfigured and hideous, flopping from the extended neck. He would often think of that moment afterward. It seemed to him that it was the physical contact with that once-so-promising young body that forced him into the resolve not to be a bystander, not to treat this death as one more item in a long catalog of observed violence, but to find out, if at all possible, why.

  Other hands joined him, and the moment when he had the dead boy in his arms alone was over. They prepared to set the body on the ground; a thick plastic bag had already been laid out. As Fitzduane lowered the shoulders onto the protecting surface, a long moan emerged from the hanged boy's bloodstained mouth.

  They all froze, shocked, unwilling to contemplate the same unpalatable thought: Had Rudolf von Graffenlaub been quietly strangling while they all stood around making awkward conversation and waiting for the police?

  The long, low moan died away. It was a sound that Fitzduane had heard before, thought it was nonetheless unsettling for that. "It's the air," he said quickly. "It's only the air being squeezed out of his lungs as we move him." He looked around at the circle of greenish white faces and hoped he was right.

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later he sat in front of the sergeant in the library of DrakerCollege, which had been commandeered as an interview room for the occasion, and made his statement. He looked at the mud drying on the guard's heavy boots and the crisscrossing of muddy footprints on the inlaid floor. Standards were dropping.

  "You don't look great, Hugo," said the sergeant. "I'd have thought you'd be used to this kind of thing."

  Fitzduane shrugged. "So would I." He smiled slightly. "It seems that it's different on your own doorstep."

  The sergeant nodded. "Or the last straw." He puffed at an old black briar pipe with a silver top over the bowl to protect it from the wind, and from it emanated the rich aroma of pipe tobacco. He was a big, heavyset man, not many years from retirement.

  "Tommy," said Fitzduane, "somehow I expected more of an investigation before the body was cut down. The immediate area being roped off. An examination by the forensic people. That sort of thing."

  The sergeant raised a grizzled eyebrow. His reply was measured. "Hugo, if I didn't know you so well, I might be thinking there was just the faintest tincture of criticism in that remark."

  Fitzduane spread his hands in a gesture of apology. "Perish the thought," he said, and fell silent. The look of inquiry remained on his face.

  The sergeant knew Fitzduane well. He chuckled, but then remembered the circumstances and reverted to his professional manner. "Don't go having any strange thoughts, Hugo. The site round the tree had been well trampled by you lot before we ever showed up. Anyway, I've had thirty-four years in the Guards, and I've seen my share of hangings. They've always been suicide. It's just about impossible to kill someone by hanging without leaving signs, and there are easier ways of committing murder."

  "Was there a note?"

  "No," said the sergeant, "or at least we haven't found one yet, but the absence of a note means nothing. Indeed, a note is an exception rather than the rule."

  "Any idea why he might have killed himself, then?"

  "Not specifically," said the sergeant. "I've quite a few people to see yet. But the ones I've spoken to so far said he was very intense, very moody. Apparently there were some difficulties with his family in Switzerland. He's from a place called Bern."

  "It's the Swiss capital," said Fitzduane.

  "Ever been there?" asked the sergeant.

  "No, although I've changed planes in Zurich God knows how many times. My business is photographing wars, and the Swiss have this strange affection for peace."

  "Well, the pathologist will conduct his examination tomorrow, I should think," declared the sergeant. "The inquest will be a day or two after that. You'll have to attend. I'll give you as much warning as I can."

  "Thanks, Tommy."

  They rose to their feet and shook hands briskly. It was cold in the library, and the fire had gone out. As he was about to open the door, the sergeant turned to Fitzduane. "It doesn’t do to make too much fuss about these things. Best soon forgotten."

  Fitzduane smiled thinly and didn't answer.

  As he rode back to Duncleeve, Fitzduane realized that he had forgotten to raise the small matter of his missing goat with the policeman. A goat gone astray wasn't exactly a police matter in itself, but the discovery a few days earlier of its decapitated and eviscerated carcass at the site of an old sacrificial mound up in the hills raised a few questions.

  He wondered what had happened to the animal's magnificent horned head.

  3

  She looked down at him. She could feel him move inside her — the faintest caress of love. Her thighs tightened in spontaneous response. His hands stroked her breasts and then moved around to her back. She could feel a tingling along her spine as he touched her. Her head fell back, and she thrust against him, feeling go deeper inside her.

  Their bodies were damp with sweat. She licked her thumb and forefinger and then reached down to her loins and felt through their intertwined pubic hair for where his penis entered her body. She encircled the engorged organ and rotated her fingers gently.

  His whole body quivered, and then he controlled himself. She removed her fingers slowly. "That's cheating," he murmured. He smiled, and there was laughter and love in his eyes as he looked at her. "That is a game two can play." She laughed, and then her laughter turned to gasps as his finger found her clitoris and stroked her in the exact same place and with the rhythm and pressure she liked. She came in less than a minute, her upper body arched back and supported by her arms, her loins thrust
against her lover.

  He pulled her down to him, and they kissed deeply and slowly. She ran her fingers across his face and kissed his eyelids. They stayed interlocked, kissing and caressing. He remained hard inside her. He had already climaxed twice in the last hour and a half, and now it was easier.

  They separated and lay side by side, looking at each other, still joined together at their loins. She felt him move again. Her juices began to flow once more. She felt sensual and sore, and she wanted him. He is, she thought, the most beautiful and sexy man.

  He was a big man. He didn't look it at first glance because his face was finely chiseled and sensitive and his green eyes were gentle, but as he rolled on top of her, she could feel the power and weight of his physique. She drew up her knees and wrapped her legs around him. He kissed and sucked each of her nipples in turn. He was still holding back, but she could sense his control going. Her hands dug into his back as his thrusts increased. She bit the lobe of his ear and reached down to his buttocks and pulled him into her. He raised himself slightly to increase further the friction of his penis against her clitoris. She gasped as he did so and thrust her forefinger into him. She could feel herself coming and began to moan. He lost all semblance of control and came with frantic bursts into her body. He stayed on top of her and in her when it was over, his face nuzzled against her neck. She hugged him tightly and then stroked him like a child. Now and then she could feel the contours of the scars on his body.

  They slept entwined for several hours.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane was entertained by the contrast between a naked woman in the throes of lovemaking and the same woman in the cool, clothed image she presented to the rest of the world. The thought was not without erotic content. He wondered if women have similar thoughts. He thought it likely.

  In the morning Etan was the armored career woman once again: ash blonde hair swept back and tied in a chignon; silk blouse with Russian collar, tailored suit from Wolfangel, accessories perfectly coordinated; the glint of gold on ears, neck, and wrists; a hint of Ricci.