Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

That whole business came to mind. The voice at the radio was a godsend for Jean-Loup. He was becoming more well-known than the Beatles. It made him miserable, but in the end, once they caught the guy, he would come out a winner. Jean-Loup would take off and he, Laurent, would stand there on the ground with his nose in the air, watching him soar. And to think that he was the one who had introduced Jean-Loup to the station after first meeting him a few years ago in front of the Café de Paris. He had witnessed the episode that got that arsehole his amazing house in Beausoleil. He had only found out a few years later that saving that mutt for the old biddy had been like finding a winning lottery ticket.

Laurent’s fate was always the same: to observe the luck of others. He never failed to be there to see someone hit by a golden ray of sunshine, which might have hit him if its trajectory had deviated by just a foot.

He had started talking to the guy with the dark hair and green eyes after he had saved the dog. He was looking around, a little embarrassed at suddenly becoming the centre of attention. One thing had led to another. Laurent had been struck by what Jean-Loup exuded, a sense of serenity and involvement at the same time. It was something that he couldn’t exactly describe, but it was strong enough to make an impression on anyone who came in contact with him. Especially someone like Laurent.

Bikjalo, who was no fool, had sensed it as soon as Laurent had introduced him as a possible host for Voices, the programme Laurent had been thinking about for some time. For Bikjalo, Jean-Loup had the undeniable advantage of being a good candidate and of being dirt cheap, since he knew absolutely nothing about radio.

A total beginner. Two birds with one stone. A new hit and a new host at almost zero cost. After two weeks of recorded rehearsals, with Jean-Loup proving the assumptions about him and his talent correct, Voices had finally gone on air. It had started well and carried on improving. People liked the guy. They liked his way of talking and communicating: fanciful, imaginative, with bold metaphors understood by all.

Even killers, thought Laurent, bitterly.

Inadvertently, the watershed episode – when two boys thought lost at sea were saved – had transformed the show into the socially conscious programme it now was. The pride and joy of the radio and the Principality. And honey for the buzzing flies: its sponsors.

And the deejay became the star of a show that Laurent had conceived, a show in which Laurent now had less and less to say and which was pushing him aside, a little more each day.

‘Fuck all of them. It’ll change. It has to change,’ he muttered to himself.

He finalized his notes for that evening’s show and the printer started spitting freshly inked sheets of paper on to the tray. They would change their minds about him. All of them, one by one. Barbara especially.

He thought back to her copper hair spread on the pillow. They had had an affair. It was intense, and he had fallen for her deeply, physically and emotionally, before he had let everything go to hell. She had tried to stand by him, but it was like living with a drug addict. After a lot of back and forth, she had left him, turning her back on him when she had realized that she would never be able to compete with the four other women in his life: spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs.

He got up from the unsteady chair and slipped the printed sheets into a folder. He took his jacket from the armchair that he used as a coat rack and went out. The landing was no less a picture of gloom than the apartment. He pulled the door closed and sighed. The lift wasn’t working: a new notch on the building-manager’s belt. He walked downstairs in the dim, yellow light, brushing his hand against the beige wallpaper of the stairwell. Like him, it had seen better days.

He went into the lobby and pushed open the front door, made of glass in a rusted metal frame with chipped paint. Entirely different from the elegant buildings of Monte Carlo or Jean-Loup’s lovely villa. The street outside was submerged in the shadows of evening, that intense blue that only summer sunsets leave behind. It even lent a semblance of humanity to that desolate neighbourhood. Ariane was not the Promenade des Anglais or the Acropolis. The smell of the sea never reached that area. Or, if it did, it was overpowered by the stench of garbage.

Laurent had to walk three blocks to reach the bus that would take him into the Principality. So much the better. A walk would do him good and clear his head, and to hell with Plombier and his shitty bank.

Valentin emerged from the shadows at the corner of the building. He was so fast that Laurent didn’t see him coming. Before he even knew what was happening, he felt himself being raised off the ground and a moment later he was pushed against the wall with an arm pressing against his throat and the man’s breath, stinking of garlic and gum disease, in his face.

‘Well, Laurent? Why don’t you remember your friends when you’ve got a little cash?’

‘What do you mean? You know… that I…’

A thrust against his neck interrupted his protests and he gasped.

‘Stop bullshitting, you wanker. You laid down a whole bunch of dough last night in Menton. You forgot that the money you were playing with belongs to Maurice, didn’t you?’

Valentin Rohmer was Maurice’s bully, his troublemaker, his tax collector. Fat and flabby as he was, Maurice could not pin people’s arms behind their backs until they cried. Or push them against a wall until they felt the rough plaster rip their skin. But Valentin could, the bastard. And that other bastard who had cashed his cheque last night in the bar in front of the casino – he was the one who had ratted on him. Laurent hoped that piece of shit would get the Valentin treatment one day.

‘I…’

‘Shut the fuck up. There are a few things about me and Maurice you just don’t get. Like how he loses patience and so do I. It’s about time I refresh your memory.’

The punch in his stomach left him breathless. He retched, bringing the acid taste of vomit up to his dry mouth. His legs buckled. Valentin held him up effortlessly, grabbing him by the shirt collar with an iron grip. He saw the thug’s right fist and realized that his face was the target and that the blow would be so powerful that his head would smash into the wall behind him. He closed his eyes and stiffened, waiting for the fist to strike.

It never did.

He opened his eyes again as he felt the grip on his neck relax. A tall, strong man with light brown hair in a crew cut had come up behind Valentin and grabbed him by his sideburns, pulling violently upwards.

The pain and surprise made Valentin release his grasp.

‘What the hell…’

The man let go of Valentin’s hair and the thug stepped back to face the newcomer. He looked him up and down. He was all muscle and there was absolutely no sign of fear on his face. He was much less reassuring than Laurent’s harmless, sickly figure. Especially the eyes that were watching him without expression, as if he were simply asking directions.

‘Great. I see help has arrived,’ said Valentin in a voice that sounded less secure than he would have liked.

He tried to use the fist intended for Laurent on the man standing in front of him. The reaction came in a flash. His adversary dodged the punch with a duck of his head and then he stepped forward and wedged his shoulder under Valentin’s. After clutching it with his arms, he pressed down with all his weight.

Laurent could clearly hear the sound of bones breaking with a crack loud enough to make him jump. Valentin screamed and bent down, holding his broken arm. The man stepped back and spun around gracefully, a pirouette to give force to the blow. His foot crashed on Valentin’s face, and blood spurted from his mouth. Valentin fell to the ground without a whimper and lay there motionless.