Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

After putting on his own helmet, he waved to one of his men. The soldier leaned his rifle against the wall and inched his way along the door until he was next to the wheel, still attached to the door despite the explosion.

When he grabbed the handle and pulled, the door opened softly without a squeak, as they had all expected. The mechanism was obviously a simple one with perfectly working hinges. He opened the door just enough to allow another soldier to throw in a tear-gas grenade.

Yellow smoke wafted out a few seconds later. Frank was familiar with tear gas. When it got in your eyes and throat, it was unbearable. If there was anyone inside the shelter, it would be impossible to resist the effects. They waited a few endless seconds, but no one came out. Only the blasting music and the clouds of smoke that now seemed to be mocking them.

Frank didn’t like that. Not at all. He turned to Gavin and their eyes met through the gas masks. From his expression, Frank saw that Gavin was thinking the same thing.

Either there was nobody inside or else their man, knowing it was all over, had killed himself rather than letting them take him alive.

Or a third possibility: the bastard had a gas mask, too. This wasn’t science fiction – they had learned to expect anything from him. In that case, since only one man could get through the door at a time, all the killer had to do was get under cover and he’d take more victims before they could shoot him. He was armed and everyone knew what he could do.

Gavin made a decision. ‘Throw in a stun grenade. Then we’ll take our chances and enter.’

Frank could understand the lieutenant’s point of view. On the one hand, he felt ridiculous in that situation, commanding a group of men in combat gear assaulting a door that might lead to an empty room. On the other hand, he had no intention of losing any of his men in an unpleasant surprise. He knew each of them well and did not want to risk their lives.

Frank decided to allay his doubts. ‘After the grenade, I’m going in.’

‘Negative,’ responded Gavin sharply.

‘There’s no reason to risk any of your men uselessly.’

Gavin’s silence and look spoke volumes. ‘I can’t accept your offer.’

‘I have no intention of playing the hero, lieutenant.’ Frank’s answer was final. ‘But this is a personal affair between that man and me. I remind you that I am directing this operation and you’re here in support. I’m not offering. That’s an order.’ Then he changed his tone of voice, hoping that, even through the gas mask and their limited means of communication, the other man understood his intentions ‘If he had killed one of your best friends along with all the others, you’d do the same.’

Gavin nodded to show he understood. Frank walked over to the wall, pulled out his Glock and stood by the door. He waved when he was ready.

‘Grenade,’ Gavin ordered.

The soldier who had thrown the tear gas earlier pulled the tab of the grenade and tossed it in through the door. It was a device designed especially for that kind of assault. It was meant to stun the occupants of a room without killing them.

There was a blinding light and the sound of an explosion, much louder than the one produced by the previous explosives. The blaring music pouring out of the shelter was suddenly in its element, with coloured smoke and flashing lights. Not losing any time, the man on Frank’s right moved and open the door just enough to let him in. A puff of tear gas mixed with the smoke from the grenade came out. It was still impossible to see what lay inside. Frank moved at lightning speed and slipped in with his gun aimed.

The others waited expectantly.

A couple of minutes went by, an eternity to each and every one of them. Then the music stopped, followed by an even more deafening silence. Finally, the door opened completely and Frank reappeared, followed by a last wisp of smoke fluttering around his shoulders like a ghost risen from a tomb to show him out.

He was still wearing the gas mask and it was impossible to see his face. His arms were hanging down as if he had no energy left. He was still holding the gun. Without speaking, he crossed the laundry room like someone who has fought a lifelong war and known only defeat. The men stepped aside to let him pass.

Frank went to the door in front of him and down the hallway. Gavin followed and they reached the garage where Morelli and Roberts were waiting, their faces flushed with adrenalin under their masks. They went to stand in the square patch of sunlight that was coming through the raised garage door. Gavin removed his helmet and gas mask first. His hair was wet and his face dripping with sweat. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his blue uniform.

Frank stood for a moment in the middle of the garage, between sunlight and shade, and then he, too, removed his gas mask. His face was deathly tired.

Morelli went up to him. ‘Frank, what happened? You look like you’ve been to hell and back.’

Frank turned to him and answered with the voice of an old man and the eyes of someone who could see no more reason in life.

‘Worse, Claude, much worse. All the devils in hell would cross themselves before going in there.’

Frank and Morelli watched the stretcher being carried out of the garage and their eyes followed the men sliding it into the ambulance. Lying there, covered with a dark canvas, was the body they had found in the shelter – the wizened, faceless corpse wearing, like a mask, the face of a murdered man.

After Frank had come out of the shelter in shock, all the men, one by one, had entered the bunker, emerging with the same expression of horror. The sight of that mummified body lying in its crystal case wearing the stiffened mask of No One’s latest victim was a sight that could stagger the soundest mind, a vision they would carry with them day and night.

Frank still found what he had seen hard to believe. He felt unclean and wanted to wash himself again and again as if to cleanse his body would disinfect his mind from the evil that hovered in that place. He felt ill at the mere thought that he had breathed that air, as if it were saturated by a virus so contagious that it could infect anyone with criminal madness.

There was one thing Frank could not stop asking himself. Why? He realized that the answer was unimportant, at least for now, but the question continued to bounce around in his head.

He had gone into the bunker through the reinforced door, scanning the room from top to bottom as he advanced through the smoke, his gun in hand and his heart beating so fast that it kept him from hearing the deafening music. When he turned it off, all that was left was the rasp of his breath inside the gas mask. Apart from the motionless presence of the body – displayed in its monstrous vanity in a transparent coffin – all that he had found were empty rooms.

He had stood there looking at the corpse, mesmerized, staring at its pitiful nudity, unable to remove his eyes from that horrible spectacle. He had stared for a long time at the face covered with its death mask, which with the passing of time was beginning to resemble the rest of the body. There were some clots of blood on the neck of the corpse that peeked out from beneath the torn edges of the mask, proof of the difficult nature of that unnatural attempted transplant.

What was the point of the murders? All those people killed just to persuade a dead man that he was still alive? What kind of morbid pagan idolatry could inspire that kind of monstrosity? What was the explanation, if ever there could be any logic to that funeral rite that had required the sacrifice of so many innocent people?

This is true insanity, he had thought. The ability to feed off oneself only to generate more insanity.