Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Then he got up slowly and headed over to police headquarters.

‘ I kill …’

The voice hung in the air and seemed to feed off the faint drone of the car engine, reverberating like an echo. Inspector Hulot pressed a button on the car radio and the cassette stopped on the voice of Jean-Loup Verdier as he’d struggled to end the programme. After Hulot’s conversation with the deejay and Robert Bikjalo, the manager of Radio Monte Carlo, a small, cruel wisp of hope had peeped out from behind the mountain that the investigators were trying desperately to climb.

There was a slight chance that it could have been a crank call, a bizarre accident, a coincidence caused by some one-in-a-million conjunction of the stars. But those two words, ‘ I kill ,’ hurled like a threat at the end of the show, were the same as those left on the table on the yacht, written in blood.

Hulot stopped his car at a red light. A woman pushing a pram crossed the street in front of him. To his right, a cyclist in a blue tracksuit was leaning against the traffic light, balancing against the pole so he wouldn’t have to take his feet off the pedals. There was colour and warmth everywhere. The city was full of the promise of summer. Outdoor cafes, the streets full of people, the lively boardwalk along the beach where men, women and children asked only that promises be kept. Everything was as it should be, but not for the two men sitting in the car held at the red light. A presence hovered between them, dark and opaque.

‘Any news from forensics?’ Frank asked.

The red light turned to green. Hulot edged the car forward, suddenly aware that the traffic was backed up right along the coastal road. It would be faster on a bike than in a car.

‘We’ve got the pathologist’s report. They did the autopsy in record time. Some big shot must have put a bomb under them. It’s all confirmed. The girl died by drowning, but there was no seawater in her lungs. That means she died without being able to come up for air. The killer must have surprised her in the water, pulled her down, and drowned her before she could take a breath. They went over the body with a fine-tooth comb. No sign, no trace. They examined it every way they could with all the equipment they’ve got.’

‘What about the guy?’

‘That was different.’ Hulot’s face darkened. ‘He was stabbed with a very sharp-pointed instrument. The wound was made from above. The blade penetrated between the fifth and sixth rib and went straight to the heart, rupturing it. Death was almost instantaneous. The killer must have attacked him outside, on deck where the bloodstains were found. He was taken by surprise, but Jochen Welder was a well-built man. He wasn’t that tall, but taller than most racing drivers. And he was in good shape. Spent a lot of time in the gym. So the attacker must have been in even better shape than he was.’

‘Were the bodies raped?’

‘No,’ said Hulot shaking his head. ‘At least he definitely wasn’t. She had just had intercourse. There were traces of semen in her vagina, but it was probably Welder’s. The DNA test confirmed that at ninety per cent.’

‘That would exclude a sexual motive. At least the usual type.’ Frank’s tone was dry, as if he were talking about a napkin that had survived a fire.

‘As far as prints and other organic traces, they found plenty. We’ll send it all for DNA testing, but I doubt it will lead anywhere.’

They passed Beaulieu and the luxury hotels along the beach. The parking lots were full of shiny cars, left in the peaceful shade of the trees. There were flowering bushes everywhere; a thousand colours in the light of such a beautiful day. Frank let himself be distracted by the red hibiscus blossoms in the garden of a villa. Red. Like blood.

‘So we have nothing,’ he said, bringing his mind back to the car. He moved the air-conditioning vent so that the cold air blew on his face.

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Body-type measurements on the prints?’

‘Nothing there either. He’s probably about six feet tall, give or take an inch. Weight about 12st. Like millions of other people.’

‘Athletic, in other words.’

‘Yeah, athletic. And very good with his hands.’

Frank had more questions, but his friend seemed to be reflecting and drawing his own conclusions as he described the facts and Frank did not want to interrupt him.

‘The job he did on the bodies is nothing to sniff at. He’s certainly skilled. It definitely wasn’t his first time. Maybe someone with a medical background?’

‘It’s worth a try. You never know.’ Frank didn’t want to dampen his friend’s hopes. ‘But it would be too obvious. Predictable, I’d say. Unfortunately, in some ways, human anatomy is no different from that of animals. All the guy needed to do was practice on a couple of rabbits and he could do the same thing to a person.’

‘Rabbits, huh? People are like rabbits.’

‘He’s smart, Nicolas. A raving lunatic, but smart and cold-blooded. You need a guy with Freon in his veins to do what he did, send the boat ramming into the harbour and go home whistling a merry tune. He’s taunting us, laughing at us, too.’

‘You mean the music?’

‘Yeah. He hung up with the theme song from A Man and a Woman. ’

Hulot remembered seeing the Lelouch movie years ago, just after he and his wife Céline had started dating. He remembered the love story perfectly and had taken it as a good omen for their future. Frank reminded him of a detail he had not focused on until then.

‘The man in the movie was a racing driver.’

‘Now that you mention it… And so was Jochen Welder. But-’

‘Exactly. Not only did he announce on the radio the fact that he was planning to kill, he also hinted who the victim would be! And I don’t think it’s over. He killed and he wants to kill again. We have to stop him – I don’t know how, but we have to. Whatever the cost.’

The car stopped for another red light at the brief descent at the end of Boulevard Carnot. The city of Nice lay before them. Faded and less glamorous, far from the glossy shine of Monte Carlo and its population of wealthy retired people and playboys at a loose end. As he drove towards Place Masséna, Hulot turned to look at Frank in the seat next to him. Frank was staring straight ahead with the rapt expression of Ulysses awaiting the song of the Sirens.

Nicolas Hulot parked up at the gate of the Auvare Police Department on Rue de Roquebillière. A uniformed policeman standing next to the guardhouse came over to tell them to move from the entrance reserved for police personnel. The inspector showed his badge from the window.

‘Inspector Hulot, Sûreté Publique, Monaco. I have an appointment with Inspector Froben.’

‘Sorry, inspector, I didn’t recognize you.’

‘Could you let him know I’m here?’

‘Right away, sir. Come on in.’

Hulot drove up a few yards and parked on the shady side of the street. Frank got out and looked around. The rectangular buildings were arranged in a checkerboard layout. There was an outdoor stairway at the shorter end of each building, facing out on to the street.

The inspector wondered what all this looked like to an American. Nice was not just a different city but a different world. To Frank, it might as well be another planet, where he understood the language but not the way of thinking. Small houses, small cafes, small people. No American dream, no skyscrapers to destroy. Just small dreams, often faded by the sea air, like the exteriors of the houses. Small dreams, perhaps, but when they were crushed they, too, brought deep despair.

Someone had pasted an anti-globalization poster right in front of the police department. Men fighting so that everyone could be the same, while others fought to keep from losing their identity. Europe, America, China, Asia. They were only coloured shapes on the map, abbreviations on the list of exchange rates, names in dictionaries in libraries. Now there was the Internet, the media, 24-hour news. These were signs of a world that was expanding, or contracting, depending on your point of view. But the only thing that really erased distances was evil. It was present everywhere; it spoke only one language and it always wrote its messages in the same ink.