Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Brigadier Gachot had got there quickly, as Gavin had instructed, in a blue van just like the others with his team of two men plus the driver. When they had told him the situation, his dark face had turned even darker at the words bomb shelter. The men had unloaded their gear and gone down to the laundry room. Frank was well aware that one of those hard black-plastic briefcases with aluminium edges resembling a flight case contained explosives. While he knew that it was completely harmless without special conditions and a detonator, he was still a little uneasy. The case probably held enough explosives to reduce the house and everyone inside to shreds.

When he had come to the armoured door, Gachot had studied it for a long time in silence. He had run his hand across the surface as if touching it could tell him something that the metal did not want to reveal. Then he had done something that seemed absurd to Frank. He had pulled a stethoscope from his bag and listened with it to the gears of the mechanism, turning the wheel from one side to another to see which way it rotated.

Frank had been standing with the others, quivering like eggs in a frying pan. They resembled the family of a sick man, waiting for the doctor to tell them how serious the illness was. Gachot had turned around and, luckily for them, cut Gavin’s pessimistic predictions down to size. ‘We might be able to do it.’

The general sigh of relief had seemed to raise the floor two or three inches higher. ‘The door is armoured to protect against radiation and structural damage, but it’s not a safe. I mean, it wasn’t built to protect valuables, just the physical safety of the occupants. So the lock is fairly simple, partly because it’s pretty old. The only risk is that it might block completely instead of opening.’

‘What if that happens?’ Gavin had asked.

‘Then we’re fucked. We’d really have to open it with an atomic bomb, and I didn’t bring one along.’

With that joke, pronounced in all seriousness, Gachot had put a damper on the general enthusiasm. He had gone over to check the briefcases that his men had put near the door with the other equipment, and he had pulled out a drill that looked like something out of a sci-fi film. One of the men had fixed a drill-bit made of a kind of metal with an unpronounceable name, but which Gachot had described as hard enough to drill a hole through the armour of Fort Knox.

In fact the drill-bit had penetrated the door with relative ease, at least to a certain depth, producing thin spirals of metal that had fallen at the feet of the man holding the drill. Finally he had raised his goggles and moved over to make room for Gachot. The brigadier had knelt down in front of the hole and slipped in a fibre optic cable with a micro camera on one end and a visor that looked like a scuba mask on the other. He had put it on in order to guide the camera inside the lock.

Finally, he had opened the briefcase with the goods, revealing bricks of plastic explosive wrapped in silver foil. Gachot had opened one of them and cut off a sliver of explosive that looked like greyish clay. The bomb specialist had handled it offhandedly, but from the looks on everyone’s faces, Frank suspected that they were feeling the same knot in the stomach that he had felt earlier.

Using a wooden stick, Gachot had pushed a bit of C4 into the hole and then linked the wires that led to the detonator hanging next to the wheel.

Now they were ready. Still, Frank could not decide to give the order. He was afraid that something would go wrong and that they would, for some reason, find a corpse on the other side. That, too, might be an answer, but Frank wanted to catch No One alive, if only to see the psychopath handcuffed and taken away.

‘Just a second.’

He went up to the door, practically leaning his cheek on the surface of the lead. He wanted to try one last time to talk to the man inside and, if he was listening, ask him once more to come out unarmed with his hands up. He had tried before the bomb unit had arrived, but to no avail.

Frank banged his fist on the metal door, hoping that the deep thudding echo could be heard inside.

‘Jean-Loup, can you hear me? We’re going to blow the door open. Don’t force us, it might be dangerous. You’d be better off coming out. You won’t be hurt, I promise. I’ll give you a minute to decide and then we’re going to blow open this door.’

Frank stepped back, bent his right arm, and showed everyone his watch. He pressed the button of the chronograph. It marked the seconds one after another, like bad memories.

… 8, 9, 10

Arianna Parker and Jochen Welder, mutilated bodies in the boat wedged between the others at the pier…

… 20

… Allen Yoshida, his bleeding face with the skull-like grimace and blank eyes in the Bentley…

… 30

… Gregor Yatzimin, his composed grace on the bed, the red flower on his white shir, against the horrible mutilation of his face…

… 40

… Roby Stricker lying on the floor, his finger contracted in the desperate attempt to leave a message before he died, with the anguish of someone who knows everything and understands that he can say no more…

… 50

… Nicolas Hulot, slumped in his car with his bleeding face on the steering wheel, dead for the crime of being the first to know the killer’s name…

… 60

The bodies of the three policemen in the house…

‘Time’s up!’

Frank stopped the watch. Those sixty seconds, the last chance he had given the killer, had felt like a moment of silence owed to the victims out of respect.

‘Let’s open this fucking door.’

The three men went through the laundry room, reached the hallway, and turned left to join the others waiting in the garage. They were kneeling against the wall furthest from where the explosion would take place. Morelli and Roberts were standing in the courtyard. Frank motioned to them and they stepped away from the garage door for safety.

Gavin adjusted the microphone with the earpiece connecting him to his men via radio.

‘Okay boys, here we go.’

He joined the others against the wall. Lieutenant Gavin nodded to Gachot and, without any emotion, the bomb specialist raised the remote in his hand and pressed the button.

The explosion, perfectly positioned, was contained. They felt it more as a vibration than a blow. The rush of air, if there was any, was limited to the laundry room. The echo was still reverberating when the soldiers leapt towards the door, immediately followed by Frank and Gavin.

They found the men who entered from the garage and from upstairs standing in formation with their rifles pointed. There was no significant damage. Only the wooden bookcase that hid the entrance to the shelter was ripped off one of the upper hinges and leaning to one side. The little bit of smoke from the explosion was drifting out the windows, pushed open by the force of the blow.

The massive shelter door was ajar. The explosion had only knocked it open a few inches, as if someone had gone inside without closing it behind him. Incredibly loud music was pouring through the open door.

They waited a few seconds. Nothing happened. Nobody came out. The explosives had left an acrid smell in the air. Gavin barked an order into his two-way radio.

‘Tear gas.’

The commandos immediately pulled their gas masks out of their bags. They removed their Kevlar helmets, put on the masks, and replaced the helmets. Frank felt a pat on his shoulder and found Gavin handing him one.

‘You’d better put this on if you want to stay here. Know how to use it?’ In answer, Frank had the mask on in an instant. ‘Good,’ said Gavin, pleased. ‘I see they taught you something useful in the FBI.’