exciting.'
'Don't talk like that,' said the Chief Kripo. 'We haven't had this many violent deaths in Bern in such a short period since the French invasion nearly two hundred years ago – and all you can say is ‘exciting.’ I can see the headlines in Blick or some other scandal sheet: CHAIN OF KILLINGS EXCITING, QUIP BERN AUTHORITIES.'
'Relax,' said von Beck. ' Der Bund, in its usual discreet way, will come out with something to balance the scales, like EXAMINING MAGISTRATE COMMENTS ON STATISTICAL ABNORMALITY IN CRIME FIGURES.'
'They don't write headlines that sensational,' said the Chief. 'So far, including Hoden, we have seven dead, two seriously injured, and eight or so slightly injured.'
'At least there's an explanation for the fracas in the Youth House,' said von Beck. 'I'm still poking around, but we've interviewed most of the parties involved and had some feedback from the Amsterdam cops and the DEA.'
'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 Bern,' 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 KirchenfeldBridge. Fitzduane identified her from a photo sent by the German authorities in Wiesbaden. 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
