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.'
'Maybe he likes to pay cash to avoid taxes,' said Kersdorf. 'That's not exactly uncommon. Maybe he just hates credit cards.'
The Bear shook his head. 'He has all the major credit cards, from American Express to Diners Club, from Access to Visa. He used them freely in Bern and to some extent when he travels. Superficially it looks all right, but a statistical analysis of how he spends indicates that his pattern is out of sync with the norm. That's not significant in itself except to suggest that he is hiding something.
'The next factor has to do with his travel arrangements. Even if he is paying cash, his name should show up on the airplane reservation computer. The point is, it doesn't. Balac disappears from Bern and then reappears at some known destination without leaving a trace as to how he got there. That isn't normal. Maybe he has a policy of traveling under an assumed name, but that isn't kosher either because it suggests strongly that he must be using a false passport. You have to remember that security arrangement on the airlines are now fairly thorough, and bookings are regularly cross-checked with passport holders. Balac doesn't show up.'
'These are details,' said the Chief. 'He might be guilty of a passport offense. That doesn't mean he's the Hangman.'
'Let me continue. So far we've got someone who, when dovetailed with Lodge, fits our computer profile exactly. Next, analysis shows his spending and travel patterns to be suspicious. Then, comparison of his known travel destinations and criminal incidents in which the Hangman is known or suspected to be involved correlate to a significant extent. That doesn't mean he was in the same city or even in the same country – but he was frequently within communication distance whether by plane, train, ship, or road. Next, we've had two positive identifications from Lenk that he was there when the incident with young Rudi von Graffenlaub and Erika took place. We struck out on that one at first when we just looked for a description, but when we went back with photographs of Balac, our luck improved.'
'Photographs?' said Henssen. 'Any chance our people could have been seen? He seems to have a highly developed sense of self-preservation.'
' Der Bund,' said the Bear. 'Thank God for a newspaper of record. It may be stuffy, but it's certainly thorough. It has a file on every celebrity in town, and Balac has been here long enough and run enough exhibitions to justify a nice fat folder. We have numerous pictures of him and even more of his paintings. I'll come back to that.
'The next point is interesting. It occurred to us that given the Hangman's habit of making significant structural alterations to the buildings he uses, there might be a lead there. Some of his work may well have been carried out openly, as is the case with his reinforced door, but other work suggested a clandestine operation and a high level of skill. That indicated the possibility that he brings in small teams of experts, keeps them under wraps for the duration of the job, and then, given his penchant for tidying, disposes of them.
'To that end, using the Nose, we burrowed away and uncovered four incidents that fit our profile. In every case a highly skilled group of workmen had been killed I what looked like an accident. In one case, about eighteen months ago, a minibus of Italian workmen from Milan went over a cliff in Northern Italy after a tire blew. The carabinieri suspected the Mafia, since it is heavily into construction and related activities, and the tire had blown because of a small explosive charge, which is its style. Anyway, what made this case different was that there was one survivor of the eight in the bus. He was badly burned, but he rambled on about a special job and the sound of a river and never getting any fresh air and the smell of turpentine making his sick.'
Lodge's home in Muri?' said the Chief. 'It backs on the Aare.'
'I don't think so,' said the Bear. 'There's a wood between the house and the river that blankets out all sound of the water. I checked it out.'
'So you think it was Balac's studio complex down by the Wasserwerk?' said von Beck.
'Near where Minder was found,' added the Chief.
'That's my best guess,' said the Bear.
'Can we talk to this workman?' said the Chief.
'Through a Ouija board maybe,' replied the Bear. 'He recovered, went home, and someone put two barrels of a lupara into him. Terminal relapse.'
'Keep going,' said the Chief with a sigh. 'I'm sure you've got something even better up your sleeve.'
'Hang in there, Chief,' said the Bear. 'It's coming.'
'Before I forget,' said Kersdorf, 'have you any idea what those workmen were working on? Did the survivor say? Who recruited them?'
'They were recruited through an intermediary using a cover story – something about an eccentric Iranian general who had fled to Switzerland after Khomeini took over and now was afraid of assassination by a hit team of Revolutionary Guards.'
'Good story,' said von Beck. 'It's happened.'
'What exactly were they to do?' asked the Chief.
'Something about a sophisticated personal security system. We don't know much else except that the survivor was a hydraulics mechanic.'
'I don't like the sound of this at all,' said the Chief.
'Let me move on. The next point concern blood types. We know the Hangman's blood type from the semen left in the chessboard girl. It would have embarrassed my line of reasoning if Balac hadn't matched. Well, he does.'
'How in heaven's name did you find out Balac's blood type without alerting him?' said the Chief. 'People tend
