Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘Lovely, isn’t it? Robert Fulton, one of the greats. Maybe the greatest of them all. And misunderstood, like all the great ones were.’ He goes and looks curiously at the controls of the video system. ‘I hope I can understand this. I wouldn’t want your equipment to be beyond my meagre abilities, Mr Yoshida. No, it looks fairly simple.’

He presses some buttons and the monitors light up, with the snow-like effect they have when there is no signal. He busies himself with the buttons and the video cameras finally go into action. The screen shows Yoshida, immobilized in the armchair in the middle of the room, sitting before an empty chair.

The man seems pleased with himself.

‘Excellent. This system is excellent. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less of you.’

The man comes back in front of his prisoner, turns the chair around, and sits astride it. He leans his deformed arms on the back of the chair. The extensions on his elbows hold the canvas of his shirt.

‘You’re wondering what I want, aren’t you?’

Yoshida gives a lengthy moan.

‘I know, I know. If you think it’s your money I want, don’t worry. I’m not interested in money. Not yours or anyone else’s. I want a trade.’

Yoshida exhales through his nose. Thank God. Whoever the man is, whatever his price, there might be some way of reaching an agreement. If it isn’t money he wants, it is certainly something that money can buy. There is nothing that money can’t buy, he repeats to himself. Nothing.

He relaxes in the chair. The wire seems a little bit looser now that he sees a glimmer of hope, a chance to negotiate.

‘I took a look at your videos while you were asleep, Mr Yoshida. I think we have a great deal in common. Both of us, in some way, are interested in the death of people we don’t know. You for your own pleasure; me, because I have to.’

The man bows his head as if he is studying the shiny wood of the chair. Yoshida has the impression that he is thinking about something that for a moment takes him far away. There is a sense of inevitability in his voice that is the very essence of death.

‘And that is all we have in common. You do it through a third party. I’m forced to do it myself. You’re someone who watches killing, Mr Yoshida, while I…’

The man puts his faceless head next to Yoshida’s.

‘I kill …’

Suddenly, Yoshida knows there is no hope. The front pages of all the newspapers flash through his mind with their headlines of the murders of Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker, the woman who was with him. For days now, the TV news has been full of the horrifying details of those two crimes, including the signature in blood that the murderer left on the table on a yacht. The same words now spoken by the man sitting before him. He is distraught. Nobody can come to his rescue because nobody knows of the existence of his secret room. Even if his bodyguards looked for him, they would search outside when they did not find him at home. He starts to moan again, struggling, panic-stricken, in the chair.

‘You have something that interests me, Mr Yoshida. Something that interests me very much. That is why I feel obliged to propose a trade.’

He gets up from the chair and goes to open the glass door of the cabinet holding the video cassettes. He takes out a new tape, removes the cellophane wrapping and inserts it in the VCR. He presses the RECORD button and the spindles begin to turn.

‘Something for my pleasure in exchange for yours.’

With a graceful gesture, he puts his hand in his shirt pocket and removes a dagger that gives out a sinister gleam. He goes up to Yoshida, who thrashes violently, ignoring the wire cutting into his flesh. With the same fluid movement, the man sticks the dagger into his thigh. The prisoner’s hysterical moaning becomes a scream of muffled pain from behind the tape over his mouth. ‘There. This is what it feels like, Mr Yoshida.’

That last ‘Mr Yoshida’, said in a smothered voice, rings through the room like a funeral eulogy. He stabs the bloodstained dagger again, now in the victim’s other thigh. The movement is so swift that this time Yoshida does not even feel any pain, only a cool sensation in his leg. Immediately afterwards, he feels the tepid dampness of blood dripping down his calf.

‘Funny, isn’t it? Things change when you see them from a different point of view. But you’ll see. You’ll be pleased with the result anyway. You’ll have your pleasure this time, too.’

With cold determination, the man continues stabbing his victim, as his gestures are projected on the screens by the cameras. Yoshida watches himself being stabbed over and over again. He sees the blood rush out in large red streams on his white shirt and the man who raises and lowers, in the room and on the screen, the blade of his knife, again and again. He sees his eyes widen with terror, and pain fills the indifferent space of the monitors.

Meanwhile, the music in the background has changed. The trumpet cuts through the air with high notes sustained by a rhythmic accentuation, a sound of ethnic percussion that evokes tribal rituals and human sacrifice. The man and his dagger continue their agile dance around Yoshida’s body, opening wounds everywhere, with the blood rushing out in evidence, on the fabric of his clothes and on the marble floor. The music and the man stop at exactly the same time, like a ballet rehearsed an infinite number of times.

Yoshida is still alive and conscious. He feels his blood and his life ebbing from the wounds opened everywhere on his body, which is now sending a lone signal of pain. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead and drops burning into his left eye. The man wipes Yoshida’s soaked face with the sleeve of his bloodstained shirt. A reddish smudge remains on his forehead.

Blood and sweat. Blood and sweat, like so many other times. And through it all, the gaze of the cameras, surprised by nothing.

The man is panting under his ski mask. He goes over to stop the VCR and rewinds the cassette. When the tape is back at the beginning, he presses PLAY.

On the screen, in front of Yoshida’s half-closed eyes and slowly bleeding body, it all begins again. The first stab, the one that went through his thigh like a searing iron. Then the second, with its cool breeze. And then the others…

The man’s voice is that of fate now, soft and thickened by desire. ‘Here’s what I offer you. My pleasure for yours. Relax, Mr Yoshida. Relax and watch yourself die …’

Yoshida hears the voice through space as if from the next room. His eyes are staring at the screen. As his life blood slowly evacuates his body, as the cold slowly rises to occupy every cell, he cannot help but feel that same damnable pleasure.

When the light abandons his eyes, he cannot decide whether it is heaven or hell that he sees before him.

Margherita Vizzini drove into the underground garage at the Place du Casino. There weren’t many people around at that time of morning. The residents of Monte Carlo who took part in its nightlife, the rich and the desperate, were still asleep. And it was too early for tourists. Everyone on the street, like her, was going to work. She left the sunshine, the colourful, meticulously maintained flower beds, and the people having breakfast at the Café de Paris for the warm, damp shadows of the garage. She pulled up her Fiat Stilo at the entrance and stuck her card in the machine. The barrier rose and she drove slowly inside.

Margherita came in every day from Ventimiglia, in Italy, where she lived. She worked at the Securities Office of ABC, Banque Internationale de Monaco, located in the Place du Casino right next to the Chanel boutique.

She had been very lucky to find a job like that in Monaco, especially without any contacts or referrals. Like all good students she’d had a number of job offers after getting her degree in business and economics with honors. Surprisingly, one of the offers had been from ABC.