Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know, Frank. A strange feeling. Like a blindfold has just been taken off.’

‘What do you mean?’ Frank knew what he meant, but he asked the question anyway.

‘All of this. It’s like suddenly discovering that there’s another world, something beyond. A world where bad things don’t only happen to others, but to us. People aren’t just killed on TV but on the pavements that you’re walking down…’

Frank had listened to his epiphany in silence. He knew where it was going.

‘Frank, I want to ask you something and I want you to answer honestly. I don’t need the details. Just clear something up for me. What I did for you the other time, and today, will that help you catch the guy who killed Nicolas?’

Frank looked at him and smiled. ‘Sooner or later, when this is all over, you and I will have a talk. I don’t know when that will be, but when we talk I’ll explain exactly how important you’ve been in all this, especially forme.’

Guillaume had nodded and moved to one side, waving uncertainly as the Mégane pulled away.

You were great, Guillaume.

With that thought in mind, Frank walked through the gate and into Helena’s yard. He was taken aback by what he saw. All the windows on the upper floor and all the French doors overlooking the garden were wide open. Inside, a woman with a blue apron was plugging something into the wall. She moved out of his line of vision but he could hear a vacuum cleaner. He saw her approach the French doors, moving the appliance back and forth. On the upper floor, in Helena’s room, another woman in a similar apron came out on the balcony holding a kilim rug. She hung it over the railing and started hitting it with a bamboo carpet beater.

Frank went up to the house. He wasn’t happy. A man walked out the front door. He was elderly and wearing an elegant, light-coloured suit. His Panama hat was in perfect keeping with the house. The man saw him and came over. Despite his youthful air, Frank could tell by looking at his hands that he had to be pushing seventy.

‘Hello, may I help you?’

‘Good morning. I’m Frank Ottobre, a friend of the Parkers, the people who live here…’

The man smiled, showing off a row of white teeth that must have cost him a fortune. ‘Ah, another American. Nice to meet you.’ He held out a firm hand covered with spots. It was more than his age, Frank thought. There was probably something wrong with his liver. ‘The name’s Rouget, André Rouget. I’m the owner of this little place.’ He waved towards the villa with nonchalance. ‘And I’m afraid your friends have left, young man.’

‘Left?’

He seemed genuinely sorry to have to corroborate the bad news.

‘That’s right. Left. I negotiated their lease through an agency, though I usually do it in person. This morning, I came with the cleaning ladies to meet my tenants and I found them in the courtyard with their suitcases ready, waiting for a taxi. The general – you know who I mean – told me that something urgent had come up and they had to leave immediately. A shame, because they had already paid another month’s rent. To be fair, I said I would reimburse them for the amount he overpaid, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Fine man.’

I could tell you exactly how fine he is, you mummified ladies’ man.

‘Do you know where they were headed?’ asked Frank, trying hard to sound only mildly surprised.

Monsieur Rouget had a sudden coughing fit, with enough phlegm to indicate a few cigarettes too many. Frank had to wait for him to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his mouth before he continued.

‘They were going to Nice. To the airport, I think. They had a direct flight back to the States.’

‘Shit.’ The word escaped Frank before he could stop himself. ‘Pardon me, monsieur.’

‘Don’t worry. It can be liberating to let yourself go.’

‘You don’t happen to know what time their flight was leaving?’

‘No, I’m sorry. Can’t help you there.’

Frank’s expression was not one of joy and Monsieur Rouget, a man of the world, noticed. ‘Cherchez la femme, eh, young man?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I understand your dilemma. The woman, I mean. You’re thinking of the general’s delectable daughter, if I’m not very much mistaken? If I had been expecting to meet a woman like that and found an empty house instead, I’d be disappointed, too. I could write several books about the adventures that went on in this house when I was a young man.’

Frank was extremely agitated. All he wanted to do was leave old Rouget to his Don Juan memories and race to Nice airport. The man grasped his arm and Frank would gladly have broken it. He didn’t like people to touch him under normal circumstances, never mind at a moment like this when he could feel the passing of each second like a bell pealing in his head.

Rouget escaped Frank’s wrath only through what he was saying. ‘I lived a good life, that’s for sure. Completely different from my brother, who lived in the house next door, over there. You can see the roof through the cypresses.’

He took the attitude of someone about to tell a secret that only he knew, which was hard to believe. ‘It’s the home of that crazy sister-in-law of mine who left the house to a young man just because he’d saved her dog. A mutt not even worth the tree he peed on, if you like. I don’t know if you heard about that crazy business. And you know who the young man turned out to be?’

Frank knew exactly who he was, in the greatest detail. And he had no desire to hear it again.

Rouget grabbed Frank’s arm once more. ‘He’s a murderer, a serial killer, the one who killed all those people in Monte Carlo and skinned them like rabbits. Just think: my sister-in-law left a house of that value to a…’

And you rented yours to a real humanitarian. If there was a Nobel Prize for stupidity, this old fart would win.

Oblivious to what Frank was thinking, Rouget let out a deep sigh. A wave of memories was coming.

‘That woman really pulled the wool over my brother’s eyes. Not that she wasn’t beautiful. She was attractive as an en plein in roulette, if you’ll allow me the comparison, but just as dangerous. She made a man want to play again and again, if you know what I mean. We built these houses together, in the mid-sixties. Twin houses standing side by side, but that’s where it ended. I was over here and they were over there. We led separate lives. I considered my brother a prisoner of his wife’s every demand, every little whim. And boy did she have them, bon Dieu. To think that she even…’

Frank wondered why he was still listening to the boasts of an old playboy who could no longer get it up, rather than jumping into his car to get to Nice. For some strange reason, Frank had a hunch that the man was about to say something of significance. And that was exactly what happened. In the middle of his pointless rambling, he said something so important that it threw Frank into a state of both excitement and deep dejection, as he imagined a jet plane taking off with Helena’s sad face at the window, watching France disappear below her.

He closed his eyes. He had grown so pale that the old gentleman was concerned.

‘Is something wrong? Don’t you feel well?’

Frank looked at him. ‘No, I’m fine. Really.’

Rouget expressed his doubt with an appropriately worried look. Frank flashed him a grin that the man misunderstood. The old idiot didn’t realize that he had just revealed where Jean-Loup Verdier was hiding.

‘Thank you, Monsieur Rouget. Goodbye.’

‘Good luck, young man. I hope you find her… but if you don’t, remember, the world is full of women.’