"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 to notice when you stick needles in them."
The Bear grinned. "I had all kinds of elaborate ideas for this one. In the end I checked with the blood bank. He's a donor."
"He's what?" exclaimed the Chief.
"A blood donor," said the Bear. "Actually Simon Balac is quite a public-spirited citizen. He is a member of a number of worthy organizations, seems to have a particular interest in the preservations of Bern, and he's a supporter of various ecology groups. He is known to be deeply concerned about the environment. He is also an avid walker and a member of the Berner Wanderwege."
"What is the Wanderwege?" asked Fitzduane.
"Hiking association," explained von Beck. "Wandering through the woods, rucksack on back, following little yellow signs. Very healthy."
"Most of the time," said the Bear, "but you may recall Siegfried, our tattooist friend."
"And not found where a body could be dumped from a car," added the Chief. "Go on, Heini. This is getting interesting."
"We have other circumstantial evidence, but you can get that off the printout. None of it is conclusive, but you'll see it all helps corroborate by thinking. I'd now like to turn to the few clues that Ivo left us, then the matter of alibis, and finally the evidence that I believe is conclusive. First of all, Ivo. He was killed before he had a chance to say much, and most of what he brought was destroyed in the gunfight, but we salvaged some intriguing scraps. There was a reference to purple rooms — not the plural. Well, both Erika's place and Lodge's house in Muri had purple rooms with black candles and sexual aids and other items that point to ritual and dabbling in black magic. In both cases we found traces of blood and semen of a number of different blood groups. They would fit the bill, but there is an additional line: ‘A smell of snow — a rush of wet — a thrusting river — there it's set.’"
"Did he always write that way?" asked Henssen.
"All the time I dealt with him," said the Bear. "He like rhymes and puzzles. I think they gave him a certain self-respect. He didn't feel he was informing when he gave us a tip in the form of a poem."
"How do you read this one?" asked the Chief.
"I'm biased," said the Bear. "I think it's another reference to the river and the location of Balac's studio, which supports what we've learned from our deceased Italian friend."
"But that's an opinion, not proof," said von Beck.
The Bear shrugged. "I'm not going to argue that point. It might be clearer if we had all of Ivo's book, but we don't. Of more interest is what it was wrapped in."
"I'm not sure I follow you," said Kersdorf.
"Ivo went to meet Hugo to see if he could enlist his support to find Klaus Minder's killer. He brought a package that outlined in his inimitable manner what he had learned to date. The package was wrapped in a piece of cloth. Clear so far?"
Kersdorf nodded his head. The rest of the team looked at the Bear expectantly. "The cloth turned out to be canvas, not the kind you camp under in the summer or sit on watching the talent in the Marzili, but the kind you use for painting. The piece that Ivo was using had already been sized and bore faint traces of paint. I'd guess it had been made up, but the stretching wasn't right, so it had been torn up and discarded."