Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘Yeah, so am I. Goodbye.’

The inspector hung up. ‘You were absolutely right, doctor. False alarm.’ He looked at them with suddenly hopeless eyes.

‘Well… I…’

‘Excellent work, doctor,’ interrupted Frank.

They headed slowly to the control room at the end of the hall. Gottet came up to them.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing. A false lead.’

‘I thought it was weird that it would be so easy. But in a case like this, how can you-’

‘It’s fine, Gottet. What I just told Dr Cluny goes for you as well. Excellent work.’

They went back into the control room where everyone was waiting to hear what had happened. They saw their disappointed faces and didn’t even need to ask. Barbara relaxed in her chair and leaned on the mixer. Laurent ran a hand through his hair in silence. Just then, the red light started flashing. The deejay looked exhausted. He took a sip of water from the glass on the table and moved closer to the mike.

‘Hello?’

At first, there was only silence. The silence they had all learned to recognize. Then the muffled sound, the unnatural echo.

And, finally, the voice. Everyone turned their heads slowly towards the speakers, as if that voice had stiffened the muscles in their necks.

‘Hello, Jean-Loup. I have the feeling that you’ve been waiting for me. ’

Cluny bent closer to Frank.

‘Hear that? Perfect grammar; correct language. That’s him.’

Jean-Loup didn’t hesitate this time. His hands gripped the table so hard that his knuckles whitened, but there was no trace of that tension in his voice.

‘Yes, we were waiting for you. You know we were waiting for you.’

‘So here I am. The bloodhounds must be worn out from chasing shadows. But the hunt must go on. Mine and theirs.’

‘Why do you say “must”? What does all this mean?’

‘The moon belongs to everyone and we all have the right to howl. ’

‘Howling at the moon means pain. But you can sing to the moon, too. You can be happy in the dark sometimes when you see the moon. For heaven’s sake, you can be happy in this world. Believe me.’

‘Poor Jean-Loup. You think that the moon is real when it’s only an illusion… Do you know what the darkness of that sky contains, my friend?’

‘No. But I think you’re going to tell me.’

The man on the phone didn’t notice Jean-Loup’s bitter sarcasm. Or perhaps he did, but felt above it.

‘No moon and no God, Jean-Loup. The correct term for it is “nothing”. There is absolutely nothing. And I’m so used to living in it that I no longer notice. Everywhere, wherever I turn, there is nothing. ’

‘You’re crazy,’ Jean-Loup blurted out, in spite of himself.

‘ I, too, have wondered about that, often. It is quite likely true, although I read somewhere that the insane do not wonder if they are or are not. I don’t know what wanting to be crazy means, which is what sometimes happens to me.’

‘Even insanity can end. It can be cured. What can we do to help you?’

The man ignored the question as if it were not a solution.

‘Ask me instead what I can do to help you. Here, I’ll throw you another bone. For the bloodhounds who keep chasing their tail in a desperate attempt to bite it. It s a loop. A loop that goes round and round and round… Like in music. When there’s a loop that goes round and round and round …’

The voice faded out. Music poured from the speakers, like the last time. No guitars tonight, no classic rock, but some contemporary dance music. A feat of electronics and sampling. The music ended as suddenly as it had begun. The silence that followed lent Jean-Loup’s question even more weight.

‘What does that mean? What are you saying?’

‘I asked the question. It’s up to you to answer. That’s what life is made of, my friend. Questions and answers. Every man drags his questions along behind him, starting with the ones he has written inside him when he’s born.’

‘What questions?’

‘ I’m not fate. I’m someone and no one, but I’m easy to understand. When someone who sees me realizes who I am, his eyes ask the question in a split second: he wants to know when and where. I am the answer. For him I mean now. For him, I mean here.’

He stopped. Then the voice hissed another sentence.

‘And that is why I kill …’

A metallic click ended the conversation, leaving an echo like the snap of a guillotine. In his mind, Frank saw another head roll.

For Christ’s sake no, not this time!

‘Did you get him?’ Frank asked Sergeant Gottet who’d turned his back and was already talking to his men.

His answer took all the breath from his lungs

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No signal whatsoever. Pico says that whoever’s handling the calls must be really great. He didn’t see anything. If the call came from the Internet, the signal’s so well hidden that our equipment can’t visualize it. The bastard fooled us again.’

‘Damn him. Did anyone recognize the music?’ Silence usually means consent. But in this case the general silence was a no. ‘Shit. Barbara, get me a tape with the music as soon as possible. Where’s Pierrot?’

Barbara was already making a copy.

‘In the conference room,’ said Morelli.

There was feverish anxiety in the room. They all knew they had to hurry, hurry, hurry. At this very moment, the caller might be going out to start his hunt. And someone else, somewhere else, did not know that he was living out the last minutes of his life. They went to get Rain Boy, the only one who would recognize the music right away.

Pierrot was in the conference room, sitting at a table next to his mother, his head hanging down. When they got there, he looked at them with tears in his eyes, then bowed his head again.

Like the last time, Frank went over and crouched next to the chair. Pierrot raised his face a little, as if he didn’t want to be seen crying.

‘What is it, Pierrot? Something wrong?’ The boy nodded. ‘Did it frighten you? There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re here with you.’

‘No, I’m not scared,’ Pierrot sniffed. ‘I’m a policeman too, now.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘I don’t know the music,’ he cried mournfully. There was real pain in his voice. He looked around as if he had failed the great moment of his life. The tears rolled down his cheeks.

Frank felt his last hopes vanish, but he forced himself to smile at Pierrot.

‘Hey, calm down. Don’t worry. We’ll let you listen to it again and you’ll recognize it, you’ll see. It’s hard, but you can do it. I’m sure that you can.’

Barbara ran into the room holding a DAT. She slipped it in the recorder and turned it on.

‘Listen carefully, Pierrot.’

The electronic percussion cranked into the room. The 4/4 pulse of the dance music sounded like a heartbeat. One hundred and thirty-seven beats per minute. A heart racing with fear, a heart somewhere that could stop at any moment.

Pierrot listened in silence, his head hanging down. When the music stopped, he looked up and a timid smile broke out on his face.

‘It’s there,’ he said softly.

‘Did you recognize it? Is it in the room? Go get it, please.’

Pierrot nodded and got up from the chair. He took off with his loping gait. Hulot nodded to Morelli who got up to go with him. They returned after what seemed like an endless wait. Pierrot held a CD in his hands.

‘Here it is. It’s a complication .’

They slid the CD into the player and went through the tracks until they found it. The music was exactly what the killer had played a little while earlier. Pierrot was a hero. His mother went over to embrace him as if he had just won the Nobel Prize. The pride in her eyes broke Hulot’s heart.