Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

The man goes over to the bed and removes the black shirt he is wearing. He throws it on to a stool at the foot of the iron bed. He continues removing his clothes until he is naked. He slides his athletic body between the sheets, lays his head on the pillow, and stares up at the ceiling in the same position as the body inside the shiny coffin.

The lamp goes out. The only light comes from the red and green of the electronic displays on the equipment in the next room, furtive as the eyes of a cemetery cat.

The song is over. In the tomblike silence, the living man slips into a dreamless sleep, like that of the dead.

Frank and Hulot reached the main square of the village of Eze. Passing the Fragonard perfume boutique, Frank remembered with a stab in his heart that Harriet had stocked up on perfume there during their trip to Europe. He could see her body under the fabric of her light summer dress as she held out the inside of her wrist to test the scent. He saw her rub it against her other wrist and wait for the liquid to evaporate before smelling the combined scent of skin and perfume. She had been wearing that perfume on the day…

‘Are you here, or millions of miles away?’

‘No, I’m here. A little tired, but here.’ Nicolas’s voice dispersed the images running through Frank’s mind. He realized that he had been completely absent.

Actually, Nicolas was the more tired of the two. He had dark circles under his reddened eyes and was in desperate need of a warm shower and a cool bed, in that order. Frank had gone up to Parc Saint-Roman and slept a few hours in the afternoon, but Nicolas had stayed at the office to catch up on all the paperwork that comes with every police investigation. When Frank had left him at headquarters, it was clear to Frank that the police could probably save a lot more ordinary people and maybe even the rainforests if only they didn’t have to waste half their time writing reports and filling in forms.

Now he was going for dinner at the home of Nicolas and his wife Céline. They drove past the restaurants and souvenir shops, turning left on the street leading to the upper part of the town. The Hulots lived not far from the church overlooking Eze. Their house was built right on the edge of the valley, and Frank often wondered what the architect had done to keep it from obeying gravity and sliding to the bottom.

They parked the Peugeot in the reserved spot and Frank waited as Nicolas opened the front door. They went inside and Frank stood and looked around. Nicolas closed the door behind them.

‘Céline, we’re home!’

‘Hi, darling.’ Mme Hulot’s brunette head peeked out of the kitchen door at the end of the hall. ‘Hello, Frank. I see you’re still as handsome as I remember. How are you?’

‘Exhausted. The only thing that can revive me is your cooking, judging by that delicious smell.’

Mme Hulot’s smile lit up her suntanned face. She came out of the kitchen drying her hands on a towel. ‘It’s almost ready. Nick, give Frank something to drink while you’re waiting. I’m running a little late. It took me longer than usual to clean Stéphane’s room today. I’ve told him to tidy it thousands of times but it’s useless. He leaves it in a mess every time he goes out.’

She walked back to the kitchen, her skirt swaying. Frank and Nicolas exchanged glances. Stéphane, Céline and Nicolas twenty-year-old son, had died in a car accident a few years before, after a prolonged coma. In her mind, Céline had never accepted her son’s death. She remained the woman she had always been: gentle, intelligent and sharp-witted, losing nothing of her personality. She simply behaved as if Stéphane were still somewhere in the house instead of in a grave in the cemetery. The doctors who examined her gave up after a few sessions, suggesting that Hulot simply go along with his wife’s harmless fantasy. They saw it as a relatively healthy solution that was protecting her psyche from worse damage.

Frank knew about Céline and had adjusted to her problem when he had come to Europe the first time. Harriet had done the same when they had holidayed together on the Côte d’Azur. After Harriet’s death, Frank and Nicolas had grown closer. Each of them knew the other’s suffering and it was because of this bond that Frank had accepted the invitation to come back to Monaco.

Hulot took off his jacket and hung it on a coat rack on the wall. The house was decorated in a modern style that blended pleasantly with the period in which it was built. He led Frank into the living room, which had double French doors that opened on to a terrace overlooking the coast.

Out on the terrace, the table was exquisitely set, with an arrangement of yellow and purple flowers in a vase placed at the centre of a pristine tablecloth. The Hulots’ manner was relaxed, with carefully chosen yet simple objects and a love of the peaceful life, without ostentation. Nicolas and his wife shared an indissoluble bond: pain for what they no longer had and regret for everything that could have been.

Frank could feel it in the air. It was a state of mind he knew perfectly well, that sense of loss that inevitably comes to places that are touched by the harsh hand of suffering. Yet, strangely enough, instead of being frightened, Frank found some solace here in the lively eyes of Céline Hulot, who had the courage to survive the loss of her son by escaping through innocent delusion.

Frank envied her and was sure that her husband felt the same. For her, the days were not numbers crossed off one after another, time was not an endless wait for someone who would never come. Céline had the happy smile of a woman in an empty house, who knows that her loved ones would soon be home.

‘What can I get you to drink, Frank?’

‘It feels so French here tonight. How about a French aperitif? Pastis, even.’

‘Coming up.’

Nicolas went to the bar and started taking out bottles and glasses. Frank went out on the terrace to admire the view. A long stretch of the coast was visible, with coves and inlets and cliffs that jutted into the sea like fingers pointing to the horizon. The red of the sunset was a promise that tomorrow would be another beautiful day, blue skies for everyone but them.

Frank knew they would be marked by this story for ever. He started thinking of a Neil Young record, Rust Never Sleeps. All the colours of paradise were before him. Blue water, green mountains emerging from the sea, the red gold of the sky in a sunset that could break your heart. But they were men of this earth who, just as in a hundred other places, were at war over everything and could only agree on their desperate desire to destroy it all.

We are the rust that never sleeps.

He heard Nicolas behind him. He held two glasses of opaque, milky liquid. The ice clinked as Nicolas handed him the aperitif.

‘Here, feel French for a sip or two. Then go back to being American. For now, that’s how I want you.’

Frank brought the glass to his lips, tasting it and taking in the pungent flavour of anise. They drank calmly, in silence, standing side by side, alone and resolute in the face of something that seemed endless. A day had passed since Yoshida’s body had been discovered and nothing had turned up. A useless day spent looking for a clue, a trace. Frenetic activity that felt like racing at breakneck speed along a road that stretched to infinity.

‘What do we do now, Frank?’

‘I don’t know, Nicolas. I really don’t know. We’ve got nothing. Any news from Lyons?’

‘They finished analysing the first tape, but their findings are no different from Clavert’s in Nice. So I don’t expect anything more from the second tape. Cluny, the psychiatrist, told me I’d have his report tomorrow. I sent over a copy of the video to see if they can get anything from the measurements, but if things are the way you said, we won’t find anything there either.’