Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘Mr Shatz, my name is Hulot and it probably means much less than yours, but I’m a police inspector, which means, that until otherwise informed, I am the person who asks the questions and demands the answers on this boat.’

Hulot clearly saw the anger rise in Shatz’s eyes. The man took a step closer and lowered his voice slightly.

‘Inspector,’ he whispered, just a few inches from the other man’s face. There was infinite contempt in his voice. ‘This boat belongs to Jochen Welder, twice Formula 1 world champion, and I’m his manager and personal friend. I am also a personal friend of His Highness, Prince Albert. So will you please tell me in detail exactly what has happened on this boat and to the people on it?’

Hulot left those words suspended between them for a moment. Then, his hand shot out with lightning speed and he grabbed Shatz by the knot of his tie, pulling it until he couldn’t breathe. The man’s face turned purple.

‘You want to know? Okay, I’ll make you happy. Come with me and I’ll show you what happened on this boat.’

He was furious. He pulled violently at the manager and practically dragged him below deck.

‘All right, my personal friend of Prince Albert. Come and see with your own eyes what happened.’

He stopped at the door of the cabin and finally let Shatz go. He waved his hand at the two bodies on the bed.

‘Look!’

Roland Shatz regained his breath, and then lost it again. As the reality of the scene before him began to sink in, his face grew deathly pale. The whites of his eyes flashed in the dim light and then he fainted.

As he walked towards the port, Frank saw a group of people watching police cars and uniformed men work their way among the boats moored along the quay. He heard a siren approaching behind him and he slowed his step. All those police meant that something more than a mere boating accident had occurred.

And then there were the reporters. Frank had too much experience not to recognize them at first sight. They were wandering around, sniffing out news with a frenzy only caused by something big. The siren, far away at first like a premonition, now wailed ever closer.

Two police cars raced along the coast from the Rascasse, pulling up in front of the barricades. A policeman hurried over to let them through. The cars stopped behind the ambulance, its back doors open like the jaws of a beast ready to swallow its prey.

Several uniformed and plainclothes policemen got out of the cars and headed towards the stern of a yacht anchored not far away. Frank saw Inspector Hulot standing in front of the gangway. The newcomers stopped to talk to him and then they all boarded the vessel and crossed the deck on to the boat wedged, listing, between the two either side of it.

Frank wandered slowly through the crowd and ended up at the wall to the right of the cafe. He found a position from which he could watch the scene comfortably. From the hold of the twin-masted vessel, several men emerged, carrying two plastic body bags. Frank observed with indifference the transfer of the bodies to the ambulance. Years ago, crime scenes had been his natural habitat. Now the spectacle was foreign to him, neither a professional challenge for a policeman, nor a scene of horror that offends his sense of humanity.

As the ambulance doors closed on their cargo, Inspector Hulot and the people with him walked single file down the Baglietto gangway. Hulot went directly towards the small crowd of newspaper, radio and TV reporters, which two policemen were now trying to hold back. Before he even reached them, Frank could hear the clamour of overlapping questions and see the microphones thrust up Hulot’s nose to force some scrap of information out of him, even a fragment that they could manipulate to arouse interest. When reporters couldn’t offer the truth, they were content to stir up speculation.

As Hulot dealt with the press with a robotic repetition of ‘no comment’, he turned to look in Frank’s direction. Frank realized that Hulot had seen him. The inspector abandoned the group of reporters with their unanswerable questions and waved Frank over to the barricade. Reluctantly, Frank detached himself from his vantage point and made his way through the crowd towards Hulot. The two men looked at each other. The inspector had probably only been up for a little while, but he already looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

‘Hi, Frank. Come inside.’

He motioned to a policeman nearby to move the barricade so Frank could pass through. They sat down at one of the cafe’s outdoor tables, under a parasol. Hulot’s eyes wandered as if he couldn’t explain to himself what had just happened. Frank removed his Ray-Bans and waited to make eye contact.

‘What’s up?’

‘Two dead, Frank. Murdered,’ he said, without looking at him. Hulot paused. Then he finally turned and looked at Frank. ‘And not just any two. Jochen Welder, the Formula 1 racing driver. And his girlfriend, Arianna Parker, a famous chess champion.’ Frank said nothing. He knew, instictively, that it wasn’t over. ‘They have no faces left. The killer flayed them like animals. It’s horrible. I have never in my life seen so much blood.’

In the distance, the plaintive siren of the ambulance and the forensics van receded into the city. The curiosity seekers gradually straggled off, overcome by the heat and bored by the dwindling activity on the quay. The reporters had gleaned all they could possibly get and they, too, were starting to pack up.

Hulot paused again. He stared at Frank, saying a great deal with his silence. ‘Want to take a look?’

Frank wanted to say no. Everything inside him said no. He would never again look at a trace of blood or overturned furniture, or touch the throat of a man lying on the ground to see if he was dead. He was no longer a policeman. He was no longer even a man. He was nothing.

‘No, Nicolas. I don’t feel like it.’

‘I’m not asking for you. I’m asking for me.’

Although Frank Ottobre had known Nicolas Hulot for years, he felt as though he were seeing him for the first time. They had once collaborated on an investigation that had involved the Bureau and the Sûreté Publique – some international money-laundering story tied to drugs and terrorism. The Monaco police, given their nature and efficiency, were in constant contact with police forces all over the world, including the FBI. Because of his perfect French and Italian, Frank had been sent to follow the investigation on the ground. He had got on well with Hulot and they had quickly become friends. They had stayed in touch, and he and Harriet had come to Europe once as guests of Hulot and his wife.

The Hulots had been planning a return visit to the States when the business with Harriet had happened. Frank still couldn’t give the events their proper name, as though not saying the actual words, Harriet’s suicide, kept the darkness at bay. In his mind, what had happened was still ‘the business with Harriet’.

When he had heard, Hulot had called almost every day for months. He had finally convinced Frank to end his isolation and come to Monte Carlo to visit him. With the discretion of a true friend, he had found him the apartment where he was staying. It belonged to André Ferrand, a company executive who was spending several months in Japan.

At that moment, Hulot was looking at him like a drowning man in need of a lifeboat. Frank couldn’t help but ask himself which of them was drowning and which was the lifeboat. They were two people alone against the cruelty of death.

‘Let’s go,’ said Frank, replacing his sunglasses and getting up suddenly, before he could give in to the impulse to turn and flee.