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 Bern to commence what he thought of as the ‘active’ phase of the operation. 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."
"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."