Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Laurent gestured to Jacques, the console operator. Fade-out. They played a classic by Vangelis. A red light went on in Jean-Loup’s cubicle. His voice again spread through the room and over the airwaves.

‘It’s eleven forty-five here at Radio Monte Carlo. The night is young. We’ve got the music you want to hear and the words you want to listen to. Nobody’s judging but everybody’s listening. This is Voices. Give us a call.’

The music swelled again in the director’s booth, slowly and rhythmically, like the waves of the sea. Behind the glass, Jean-Loup moved easily – he was on his own turf. In the control room the phone display started to flash. Frank felt a strange tremor. Laurent gestured to Jean-Loup. The deejay nodded in response.

‘Someone’s on line one. Hello?’

A moment of silence, then unnatural noise. The music in the background suddenly sounded like a funeral march. Everyone recognized the voice that emerged from the amplifier: it was seared permanently in their brains.

‘Hello, Jean-Loup. ’

Frank straightened up in his chair as if shocked by an electric current. He snapped his fingers in Morelli’s direction. The sergeant roused himself immediately. He stood up and took the mike from the walkie-talkie hanging on his belt.

‘Okay, guys. This is it. Contact. Keep your wits about you.’

‘Hi. Who is this?’ asked Jean-Loup.

‘You know who I am, Jean-Loup. I’m someone and no one. ’ There was a hint of a smile in the muffled voice.

‘You’re the one who called once before?’

Morelli rushed out of the room. He came back a moment later with Dr Cluny, the criminal psychiatrist who was in the corridor, waiting like everyone else. The doctor sat down next to Frank. Laurent turned on the intercom that allowed him to speak directly into Jean-Loup’s headphones without broadcasting his voice.

‘Yes, my friend. I called once before and I will call again. Are the bloodhounds there?’

The electronic voice contained both fire and ice. The room felt stuffy, as though the air-conditioning was sucking air in instead of blowing it out.

‘What bloodhounds?’

A pause. Then the voice again.

‘The ones hunting me. Are they there with you? ’

Jean-Loup raised his eyes, lost. Dr Cluny moved a little closer to the mike. ‘Agree with him. Tell him whatever he wants to hear, but get him talking.’

‘Why do you ask?’ Jean-Loup resumed, with a leaden voice. ‘You knew they’d be here.’

‘ I don’t care about them. They don’t matter. You’re the one I care about. ’

Another pause.

‘Why me? Why are you calling me?’

Another pause.

‘ I told you. Because you’re like me, a voice without a face. But you’re lucky. Of the two of us, you’re the one who can get up in the morning and go out in the sun.’

‘And you can’t?’

‘No.’

That sharp syllable was utter negation, a denial that allowed no contradiction.

‘Why is that?’ asked Jean-Loup.

‘Because someone decided it that way. There’s very little I can do.’ The voice changed. It became suspended, softer, as if crossed by gusts of wind.

Silence. Cluny turned to Frank and whispered, surprised: ‘He’s crying.’

‘There’s very little I can do. But there is one way to repair the evil, and that is to fight it with the same evil. ’

‘Why do evil when there are people all around you who can help?’

Another pause. A silence like a thought, then the voice again, and the fury of blame.

‘ I asked for help, but the only help I had killed me. Tell that to the bloodhounds. Tell everyone. There will be no pity because there is no pity. There will be no forgiveness because there is no forgiveness. There will be no peace because there is no peace. Just a bone for your bloodhounds. ..’

‘What does that mean?’

A longer pause. The man on the phone had mastered his emotions. The voice was once again a breath of wind from nowhere.

‘You like music, don’t you, Jean-Loup?’

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘Music doesn’t let you down. Music is the end of the journey. Music is the journey. ’

Suddenly, just like the time before, the sound of an electric guitar, slow and seductive, was heard through the phone. A few notes, suspended and isolated, of a musician communicating with his instrument. Frank recognized the notes of ‘Samba Pa Ti’, in the mastery of the fingers and imagination of whoever was playing. It was just guitar in a furious introduction, an explosion ending in thunderous applause. And as suddenly as it had come, the music was turned off.

‘Here’s the bone your bloodhounds want. I have to go now, Jean-Loup. I have things to do tonight .’

‘What do you have to do tonight?’ the deejay asked in a shaking voice.

‘You know what I’m doing tonight, my friend. You know very well. ’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

Silence.

‘It wasn’t my hand that wrote it, but now everyone knows what I do at night …’

Another pause that felt like a drum roll.

‘ I kill …’

The voice clicked off the line but its tone reverberated in their ears. His last words were like the flash of a camera: for an instant, they all felt disorientated, as if momentarily blinded in white light. Frank was the first to come to his senses.

‘Morelli, call the guys and see if they found out anything. Laurent, did you get all that on tape?’

The director was leaning on the table with his face in his hands. Barbara answered for him. ‘Yes. Can I faint now?’

Frank looked at her. Her face was deathly pale under that mass of red hair. Her hands were shaking.

‘No, Barbara. I still need you. Make a tape of that phone call right away. I need it in five minutes.’

‘I already have it. I had a second recorder ready on pause and I started it right after the phone call came in. All I have to do is rewind.’

Morelli shot an admiring glance at the girl and made sure she noticed.

‘That’s great. Morelli?’

‘One of the guys is coming,’ Morelli said. He stopped staring at Barbara and blushed, as if caught in the act. ‘I doubt there’s any good news.’

‘Well?’ Frank said to a swarthy young man who had just entered.

‘Nothing.’ The technician shrugged. He looked disappointed. ‘We couldn’t trace the call. That bastard must have some pretty good equipment.’

‘Mobile or land line?’

‘We don’t know. We even have a satellite unit, but we found nothing.’

‘Dr Cluny?’ Frank asked, turning to the psychiatrist, still sitting in his chair. The doctor was pensive, biting the inside of his cheek.

‘I don’t know. I have to listen to the tape again. The only thing I can say is that I have never heard anything like this in my entire life.’

Frank pulled out his phone and dialled Hulot’s number. The inspector answered right away. He obviously was not asleep.

‘Nicolas, this is it. Our friend had shown up again.’

‘I know. I heard the programme. I’m getting dressed and I’ll be right there.’

‘Good.’

‘Are you still at the radio station?’

‘Yes. We’ll wait for you.’ Frank hung up. ‘Morelli, as soon as the inspector gets here, I want a meeting. Laurent, I need your help, too. I think I saw a conference room near the manager’s office. Can we use it?’

‘Sure. There’s a DAT machine and anything else you need.’

‘Great. We don’t have much time and we have to fly.’

In the confusion, they had completely forgotten about Jean-Loup. His voice reached them through the intercom.