Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Nathan Parker’s face was now a mask of stone. He sat on the leather armchair and crossed his legs, his eyes half closed, waiting. This was Frank’s moment to show his cards, one by one, and the general was curious to know what they were. Frank couldn’t wait to turn that curiosity into the certainty of defeat.

‘Locked in prison, Osmond’s only contact with the outside world was through his lawyer, a little-known attorney in New York who came out of nowhere. We suspected that this lawyer, one Hudson McCormack, was more than just a defence attorney. We started to think that he might be the outside contact for his jailed client. My partner at the FBI who was running the Larkin case e-mailed me McCormack’s picture because, by pure coincidence, he showed up in Monte Carlo. Life’s funny that way. Officially, he came here for a regatta, but you know as well as I do that official reasons can hide more important unofficial ones.’

The general raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain what I have to do with this cops-and-robbers business?’

Frank leaned over the table, opened the yellow envelope and pulled out the photograph of McCormack that Cooper had sent him, the picture taken in the New York bar. He pushed it over to Parker. It reminded him of the night of Mosse’s arrest, when he had shown him the picture of Roby Stricker.

‘May I introduce the late Hudson McCormack, legal representative of Osmond Larkin and the last victim of the serial killer Jean-Loup Verdier, better known as No One.’

‘I only recognize him because I saw his picture in the paper,’ the old man said, shooting a glance at the photo and then raising his eyes. ‘I never knew he existed before that.’

‘Really? Strange, general. See the person with his back to McCormack? You can’t see his face, but the bar is full of mirrors.’ Frank’s voice changed, as if he were musing over something. ‘You have no idea how important mirrors are in this whole story. Mirrors have a terrible tendency of reflecting what’s in front of them.’

‘I know how mirrors work. Every time I look in one, I see the person who’s going to reduce you to dust.’

Frank smiled in conciliation. ‘May I commend your sense of humour, general? It’s more than I can say for your strategic ability and choice of men, however. As I said, the bar where this photo was taken is full of mirrors. With the help of a talented, very talented young man, I managed to figure out who is the person sitting at the table with Hudson McCormack. All the young man did was enlarge the reflection in the mirrors. And just take a look at who he is.’

Frank took another picture from the envelope and threw it on the table without even looking at it. This time, Parker picked up the photo and stared at it for a long time.

‘You can’t really say that Captain Ryan Mosse was photogenic. But you didn’t need a fashion model, did you, Parker? You needed someone exactly like the captain: a borderline psychopath who was loyal to the point of fanaticism. Someone willing to kill anyone you told him to.’ He leaned in towards Nathan Parker. ‘General, does your surprised expression mean that you deny the person in that picture with Hudson McCormack is Ryan Mosse?’

‘No, of course I don’t. It’s definitely Captain Mosse. But this picture only proves that he knew the lawyer in question. What does that have to do with me?’

‘We’re getting there, general. We’re getting there.’

This time, it was Frank who looked at his watch. And without having to move it away to see it.

‘We’ll have to get there quickly. Your plane’s due to depart soon, so I’ll summarize. Here’s how things went. You and Mosse came to an agreement with Laurent Bedon, director at Radio Monte Carlo. The poor guy needed money desperately and it couldn’t have been hard to convince him. You gave him piles of money in exchange for any information he could find out about the investigation. A spy, like in any war. That’s why, when we suspected that Roby Stricker might be the next victim after the killer’s phone call, Mosse was already there, outside Stricker’s apartment building. Then Stricker was killed and I got ahead of myself and slipped up. I forgot the first rule of a cop: examine everything from every angle. Ironic, isn’t it? A reflection in the mirror helped Nicolas Hulot realize who the real killer was and the same detail helped me realize it too. Funny how simple things look, in retrospect.’

Frank rubbed his face with his hands. He was beginning to feel all his aches and scratches from his adventure on the cliff, but it wasn’t the moment to feel sorry for himself, not yet. When it was over, he would have all the time in the world to relax. And in the right company.

‘You must have felt a little lost with your stooge in jail, didn’t you? You didn’t need that at all. When we finally realized who No One was, Mosse was proven innocent and released from prison. You must have been a mite relieved. Nothing lost. You still had all the time you needed to solve your personal problems, and you even got a stroke of luck.’

Frank had to admire Nathan Parker’s self-control. After his initial furious outburst, he was now sitting impassively in front of him, not batting an eye. There must have been many people in his past who had met him and decided not to take him on as an enemy. But Frank had crossed his path and now he couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

He felt no elation, just a profound emptiness. He was surprised to realize that his real desire was not simply to beat him. What he wanted more than anything was never to see him again. He continued listing the facts.

‘Let me tell you exactly what that stroke of luck was. No One was identified but he managed to escape. You must have had a hard time believing it. Captain Mosse was back and the killer was hidden out there somewhere, outsmarting the police and free to kill again.’

He looked at the backs of his hands and remembered a time not long ago when they always trembled. Now his hands were firm, strong. He could make a fist with the knowledge that General Parker was crushed.

‘Not long after, No One called Agent Frank Ottobre again. But not the usual way. This time, he called from a mobile phone, without masking his voice. Why should he bother, after all? Everyone knew who he was: Jean-Loup Verdier, the deejay of Radio Monte Carlo. Just an anonymous phone left on a bench in Nice. We traced it through a satellite system and found it easily. No prints on the phone, except those of the boy who had found it. And that was strange.’ He shot a glance at Parker as if he didn’t know the answer to his own question.

‘Why did No One bother rubbing off the fingerprints when we knew who he was? I didn’t pay much attention to it then, partly because we were thinking about what the phone call meant. The killer told us that he was planning more murders, regardless of the fact that the police were looking for him. And that’s what he did. Hudson McCormack was found dead right in front of the Sûreté headquarters, in Jean-Loup Verdier’s car with his face skinned off. The world was horrified at this new killing. Everyone wondered the same thing. Why couldn’t the police catch this monster who went on killing unchecked and then disappeared like a ghost?’

Frank got up from the couch. He was so tired that he was surprised his joints didn’t audibly creak. His knee, though, had strangely stopped bothering him. He took a few steps around the room and went to stand behind the general who was sitting motionless in the armchair. The man didn’t even turn to follow him with his eyes.

‘I think it was Laurent Bedon’s death that aroused my suspicion. A mere accident, a man killed in an everyday, botched robbery. Suspicions are like crumbs in your bed, general. You can’t sleep until you get rid of them. That’s how it started, with the death of that poor fool Bedon. That’s why I checked out the photos my friend sent and discovered that the man sitting in the bar in New York with Hudson McCormack was Ryan Mosse. And that’s why I had the same person examine the tape of the phone call that I received from No One. You know what we discovered? Let me tell you, even though you already know. We found that it was a piece of editing work. The things you can do with technology today. It’s a great help, though, if you use it with a grain of salt, cum grano salis, if you don’t mind a little Latin.’