Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

When he had finally been able to tear his eyes away from that sight, he had gone out to allow each of the men to enter in turn.

The noise of the ambulance doors slamming shut brought Frank back to the present, and he saw Roberts’s lanky figure coming towards him. There was a police car waiting with its engine running and the door open. Roberts did not look like he wanted to linger there.

‘Okay. We’re done here,’ Frank said in an expressionless voice.

Frank and Morelli shook Roberts’s hand and said goodbye in the same monotone voice. The inspector found it hard to look them in the eye. Although he had lived through the affair on a more marginal level, and although he was not as deeply involved from the beginning, Roberts now had the same look of profound weariness. He too, probably, couldn’t wait to go back to his routine, to the stories of everyday poverty and greed, to men and women who killed out of jealousy or desire for money or by accident. Madness that was momentary and not for ever, madness that he would not be forced to carry around in his memory for the rest of his life. Like everyone else there, all he wanted was to get away from that house as quickly as possible and try to forget that it ever existed.

Frank heard the thud of the door closing and the sound of the engine, and then the car disappeared up the ramp that led to the street. Gavin and his men had already gone, as had Gachot with his team. They had driven away down the road descending to the city, their blue vans loaded with men, weapons, sophisticated equipment, and the prosaic sense of loss that always assails armies, large and small, after a defeat.

Even Morelli had sent most of his men back to headquarters. A couple of them were still there checking on final operations, after which they would escort the ambulance back to the morgue.

The roadblocks had been removed and the long line of cars waiting at either end was slowly clearing, thanks to a couple of policemen who were directing traffic and keeping curious onlookers away. The traffic jam had kept the professional busybodies – the reporters – from reaching the house. When they had arrived, it was all over and, most importantly, there was no news: the only thing the media could share with the police this time was disappointment. Frank had delegated Morelli to speak to them and the sergeant had got rid of them quickly and efficiently. Actually, it hadn’t been too hard.

‘I’m going back, Frank. How about you?’

Frank looked at his watch and thought about General Nathan Parker waiting furiously at the airport. He’d convinced himself that he would appear before him wearing the relief of the finished nightmare like a new suit. He had so wanted it to be all over, and instead it was endless.

‘Go on, Claude. I’m leaving now too.’

They looked at each other and the sergeant simply raised his hand. They said as few words as possible, because both seemed to have used them all up. Morelli walked away, up the ramp to his car. Frank saw him disappear around the curve hidden by the trees.

The ambulance backed up and turned to leave the courtyard, and the man next to the driver gazed at him blankly through the window. He didn’t seem the least bit shocked by what they were carrying in the back. They were just transporting corpses, whether they had been dead an hour, a year or a century. It was a job like any other. There was a folded sports page on the dashboard. As the white van drove away, Frank could see the man’s hand reach for the paper.

He stood alone in the middle of the courtyard under the summer afternoon sun, unable to feel the heat. The air was filled with the listless melancholy of a dismantled circus, when the show must move on. There were no more acrobats or women in colourful costumes, no more lights or music or applause. All that was left was a pile of sawdust strewn with sequins and excrement. And a clown with streaked facepaint standing in the sun. The vision is gone and nothing is left now but reality.

Despite the thought of Helena waiting for him to come, Frank could not bring himself to leave the house. He felt that there was something he had mistakenly taken for granted. Like everything that had happened up to then, it was a question of details. Tiny details. The detail of the record cover in the video, the reflection of Stricker’s message in the mirror, words turned upside down that had turned out to have an entirely different meaning…

Frank forced himself to think rationally.

The entire time that Jean-Loup had been under police protection, there were men at the house day and night. How had he managed to evade them? How had he slipped away at night to stalk and slaughter his next victim, then return unseen bearing his vile trophy?

On the left side of the property, by the gate, there was a sort of embankment that fell steeply away. It was too dangerous to negotiate, considering that he would have had to travel the road at night and without a torch. Maybe he’d left through the garden. In that case, in order to reach the street he would have had to go out through the living room at the front of the house near the swimming pool, climb over the fence, and cross through the garden of the twin house where the Parkers were staying.

If that were the case, someone would have noticed him eventually. On one side he’d had several well-trained policemen. On the other side had been Ryan Mosse and Nathan Parker, two men who most certainly always slept with one eye open. He could have got away with it once, but sooner or later all that nocturnal movement would have been discovered. So that theory didn’t hold water either.

Everyone had assumed that there was a second exit and the logic of construction said that there had to be one. In the event of a nuclear explosion, the house would cave in and the rubble would close off every avenue of escape. Still, the meticulous search of the underground shelter had revealed nothing, not a trace.

And yet…

Frank checked his watch again, for the umpteenth time. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, feeling the car keys in one and the hard shape of his mobile phone in the other. It made him think of Helena, sitting in the airport with her legs crossed, gazing around and hoping to see him in the crowd.

He thought of phoning her, in spite of Nathan Parker. He nearly gave in to the urge, but then thought better of it. He didn’t want to betray Helena and alert the general. Instead, he wanted him to sit there, furious with the entire world but unsuspecting, and wait.

Frank took his hands from his pockets and opened and closed his fists until he felt the tension ease. Then he turned and went back inside the shelter, stopping at the door and studying the underground lair of No One. In the shadows he could see red and green lights and the displays of the electronic equipment. He suddenly remembered all the stories his father had told him when he was a boy. Stories of fairies and gnomes and ogres who lived in terrifying subterranean worlds that they left to steal babies from their cradles and take them into their dens for ever. Except that he was no child and this was not a fable. This was a story with no happy ending.

He stepped forward and turned on the light. Despite its confines, the shelter was rather spacious. That woman’s paranoia and fears for the future must have cost her husband a pretty penny all those years ago. The construction was square and divided into three rooms. On the right was a small space that served both as a bathroom and storeroom. It contained every kind of tinned food imaginable, stacked in an orderly manner on shelves facing the toilet and sink, along with enough reserves of water to outlast any siege. The room that had held the corpse in its crystal coffin also contained a spare single bed, off to one side. The thought of Jean-Loup sleeping next to the dead body gave him a chill, as if an evil breath had touched his back, as if a stranger were standing behind him.