Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

His concentration returned as he felt the tunnel slope down. The pavement, or rather the part under his feet, had pitched steeply. It probably didn’t mean that the pipe was now unworkable. Basically, it had been built for human use and the sloping was surely accidental rather than intentional. They must have found a vein of rock during construction and had been forced to go downwards in order to continue.

He decided to shuffle forward on his backside rather than crawl and proceeded slowly, doubling his caution. Frank wasn’t particularly worried about the downward slope. His analysis before had been right, not to mention the fact that No One had gone through here many times, back and forth, although he must have done so much more easily since he knew the terrain and certainly carried a torch.

Frank, on the other hand, was in total darkness and had no idea what lay ahead. Or even what was next to him. But it was the thought of Jean-Loup that made him more careful. He knew how dangerously smart the man was, and it was not unlikely that he had set traps for a possible intruder.

He wondered again who Jean-Loup Verdier could be and, most of all, who had created him. It was now obvious that he was not just a psychopath, someone weak and frustrated who committed a series of crimes to get attention and be on TV. That superficial explanation might cover most of the cases he knew, but it was as far from No One as the earth from the sun. Most serial killers were people with lower than average intelligence who were consumed for the most part by an uncontrollable force. They usually accepted the handcuffs with a sigh of relief.

Not Jean-Loup. There was something different about him. The corpse in its transparent coffin testified to his madness. His mind undoubtedly contained thoughts that would shock even the most jaded psychiatrist. But the madness ended there: Jean-Loup was strong, highly intelligent, well prepared and trained to fight. He was a genuine combatant. With cynical ease, he had killed Jochen Welder and Roby Stricker, two trained athletes. The haste with which he had disposed of the three policemen in his own house was further confirmation of his abilities, if any more were needed. There seemed to be two people in him, in the same body, two different natures that cancelled each other out. Perhaps the best definition was the one he had given himself: I am someone and no one.

He was an extremely dangerous man and had to be treated as such. Frank did not feel that he was being unnecessarily paranoid. Sometimes caution means the difference between life and death.

Frank knew that only too well, since the only time he had been impulsive and rushed in without thinking, he had awoken in a hospital bed after an explosion and fifteen days in a coma. If he ever forgot, he had scars all over his body to remind him.

He didn’t want to take any more unnecessary risks. He owed it to himself, whether or not he decided to remain a policeman. He owed it to the woman who was waiting for him in the departure lounge of Nice airport. And he owed it to Harriet, the promise that he would never forget.

He continued to inch forward, trying to make as little noise as possible. Jean-Loup could be anywhere at that moment, but he might still be crouching at the far end of the tunnel. After all, this underground passage couldn’t go all the way to Menton. It had to open up somewhere east of the house, on the slope of the mountain.

There was probably still a lot of confusion outside: the police roadblocks, the lines of cars, people getting out and rubbernecking, asking each other what was going on. It wouldn’t be hard to lose oneself in that crowd. Yes, Jean-Loup’s pictures had been in all the papers and shown on TV news all over Europe, but Frank had lost faith in those measures long ago. Ordinary people usually only glanced superficially at the people around them. All Jean-Loup had to do was cut his hair and put on a pair of dark glasses to be fairly sure that he could mix in a crowd.

But the roads were still full of cops who were on the alert and had their eyes wide open. And that was something else. They would be suspicious if someone just appeared out of the bushes and climbed down to the side of the road. That would definitely raise the alarm and with everything that had happened, the police would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Then again, his man might have found a less congested place to come out of hiding.

Frank kept shuffling on. The sound of his trousers scraping along the bottom of the tunnel sounded like Niagara Falls. The constant abrasion started to hurt. He stopped for a moment to settle into a more comfortable position and decided to go back to crawling. As he changed position, the beep of his mobile phone coming within range of a signal sounded like a church bell in the absolute silence of a country night. That signal might have betrayed his presence, but it also assured him that the exit was near.

He squinted in the darkness, thinking that he could see points of light before him, like white chalk marks on a blackboard. He tried to speed up without abandoning his caution, and his heart raced even faster. Frank’s left hand groped along the concrete wall, his right pressed against the trigger, and his knee hurt like hell, but there was a hint of light in front of him and perhaps a presence lurking that he could not afford to underestimate. The white marks on the blackboard danced, suspended in the air as he approached, and grew slowly larger. Frank realized that the tunnel ended near a bush and that he was seeing the light filtered through the branches. There was probably a breeze swaying the leaves, which was why the points of light looked like fireflies to his eyes, tricked by the darkness.

Suddenly, from outside, he heard the echo of a desperate scream. Frank threw caution to the wind and, as quickly as possible, he reached the thicket of shrubs hiding the entrance to the tunnel. Pushing the branches to one side, he slowly put out his head. The exit was behind a large bush that completely covered the circumference of the concrete pipe.

The scream was repeated. Frank stood up tentatively, his knee protesting in pain. He looked around. The bush was on a fairly level area, a sort of natural terrace on the side of the mountain, covered with occasional trees with thin trunks. The trees were wrapped with ivy and had shrubs of Mediterranean maquis at their base. Behind him, the twin houses and their carefully tended gardens rose like touchstones. The road was fifty yards above him on his left. He was surprised not to be further from his starting point after that long, awkward, shuffling journey. Frank saw something moving halfway down the slope that separated him from the road. A figure in a green shirt and khaki-coloured trousers with a dark canvas bag slung over his shoulder was carefully climbing up through the bushes towards the guard-rail.

Frank would have recognized that man anywhere, among thousands of others and from a million miles away. He brought the Glock up to his eyeline, pointing it with both hands. He centred his target in the gunsights and finally shouted out the words he had been yearning to say for so long.

‘Stop right where you are, Jean-Loup! I’m aiming at you. Don’t make me shoot. Put your hands in the air, kneel down on the ground, and don’t move. Now!’

Jean-Loup turned his head in Frank’s direction. He gave no sign that he recognized him or understood what he had said, and didn’t seem to have any intention of giving in to his request. Despite the fact that he was close enough to see the gun in Frank’s hands, he continued to climb, moving further left. Frank’s finger contracted over the trigger of the Glock.

The scream was repeated, loud and sharp.