Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Frank could see two dark patches of sweat under the boy’s arms that hadn’t been there before. He was sweating despite the cold in the room, a physical reaction to what he had just seen.

Death is hot and cold, both at the same time. Death is sweat and blood. Death is unfortunately our only true reminder that life really exists. Come on, kid. Don’t let us down.

As if he could hear Frank’s thoughts, Guillaume leaned back his chair with a little squeak, as if to get further away from the images he was seeing. He pressed the button and the figures resumed their dance, up to the mocking final bow and the ending static. Guillaume stopped the tape.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

Frank could tell from his voice that he wished he were elsewhere; he wished he had not just seen that figure of death and his surreal bow, soliciting the applause of an audience of the damned. Frank went over and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

‘Rewind it, but slowly so we can see.’

Guillaume turned a wheel and the images started flowing swiftly in reverse. In spite of the rapid backward motion, usually an entertaining caricature of human movement, the vision lost none of its horror.

‘Here, slow down. Now stop.’

At Guillaume’s careful touch, the image stopped a few frames too soon. ‘Go forward, just a little bit. Very slowly now.’

Guillaume moved the handle gently and the film advanced frame by frame like a series of overlapping photographs.

‘Stop!’ Frank stood next to Guillaume and pointed at the screen, touching it with his finger. ‘There, right there, on the cabinet. There’s something leaning there that looks like a record sleeve. We can’t see that. Can you isolate it and enlarge it so we can read what it says?’

Guillaume moved over to the computer on his desk, still looking where Frank was pointing.

‘I can try. Is this the original or a copy?’

‘It’s the original.’

‘Good. VHS isn’t the greatest support, unless it’s the original. First I’ll have to make a digital image. We’ll lose a little quality, but I can work better that way.’

His voice was steady and calm. Now that he was in his element, Guillaume seemed to have overcome his shock. He started clicking the mouse at the computer screen. The same image that was in front of Frank appeared on the monitor. Guillaume typed for a second and the image grew clearer.

‘Okay. Now, let’s see what happens if we highlight that part.’

He used his mouse to draw a square with a broken line around the part of the frame that Frank had indicated. Guillaume pressed a button on his keyboard and the screen was filled with an electronic mosaic of coloured pixels.

‘You can’t see anything.’ The words escaped Frank’s lips and he immediately regretted them.

Guillaume turned to him and raised his eyebrows. ‘Keep calm, ye of little faith. We’ve only just begun.’

He typed a flurry of commands and an image appeared on the monitor, sharp enough to make out a dark record sleeve. In the centre of the picture was the silhouette of a man playing a trumpet. He was bending backwards in the stance of a musician reaching an impossibly high note, to his own and the audience’s amazement. It was the supreme moment, when an artist forgets time and place and is possessed by music itself, as both its victim and executioner. The white letters below the picture read:

Robert Fulton-Stolen Music.

Frank said the words on the screen aloud, as if he were the only one in the room who knew how to read. ‘Robert Fulton – Stolen Music. What does that mean?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Nicolas, standing behind them now. ‘Have you heard of it, Guillaume?’

The boy continued to stare at the picture on the monitor.

‘Never seen it before. Never heard of Robert Fulton. But I would guess it’s an old jazz record. It’s not really the kind of music I listen to.’

Nicolas went back to the couch and Frank scratched his chin. He paced back and forth with his eyes half closed. Then he started to talk, but he was obviously thinking out loud: the monologue of a man with a heavy burden on his shoulders.

‘Stolen Music. Robert Fulton. Why did No One need to listen to that music during the murder? Why did he take it with him? What’s so special about it?’

The room was filled with the silence of unanswered questions, the silence on which the mind feeds as it devours infinite distances searching for a sign, a trace, a clue. Chasing an answer that keeps receding to the horizon.

The clatter of Guillaume’s fingers running over the keyboard marked the end of that momentary pause, during which the only sound had been the hum of the air-conditioning.

‘There’s something here, maybe.’

‘What?’ Frank spun back towards him as if he had just been released from a hypnotic trance.

‘Just a minute. Let me check.’

Guillaume rewound the tape to the beginning and started watching it very slowly, stopping the images occasionally and using the zoom to make out a particular detail that interested him. It was cold in the room, but Frank could feel his temples throbbing. He didn’t know what Guillaume was doing, but whatever it was, he wished he could do it faster.

The boy stopped the image at the point where the killer was bending over Yoshida in a position that could be interpreted as confiding. He was probably whispering something into his ear and Frank was sorry there was no soundtrack. No One was far too smart to give them a sample of his natural voice, even through a ski mask.

Guillaume returned to the computer and transferred the fragment he had captured from the video to the LED monitor. He used the arrow of the mouse to select a portion of the image and typed something on the keyboard. There was another blotch, as the first time, that seemed to be made of coloured pieces placed haphazardly by a drunken artist.

‘What you see here are the pixels. They’re like the tiny mosaic tiles that make up the image, the pieces of a puzzle, basically. If you enlarge them a great deal, the picture is very confused and illegible. But I -’ his fingers flew over the keyboard, alternating with the mouse – ‘I have a program that examines the pixels damaged by enlargement and reconstructs them. There was a reason that I paid a fortune for this junk. Come on baby, don’t let me down.’

He hit the RETURN key. The image resolved a little but was still confused and indecipherable.

‘Shit, no. Let’s see who’s smarter now, you or me!’

Guillaume leapt over to the monitor, threateningly. He ran his hand through his hair and then his fingers went back to the keyboard. He typed furiously for a few seconds and then stood up and started fiddling with the equipment on the shelves in front of him, pressing buttons and turning levers. Red and green lights started flashing.

‘Here we are. I was right.’

He went back to his chair and moved it in front of the screen where he had stopped the image. A couple of buttons were pressed and suddenly there were two images side by side, the picture of the LP cover and the one he was examining now. He touched the first with his finger.

‘Here, see this? I checked, and this is the only place where you can see the entire album cover. Not completely though, because, if you look here, the top left corner is covered by the sleeve of the man with the knife. We didn’t notice it in the enlargement because the sleeve is dark, like the cover. But there are mirrors on the opposite sides of the room and the record’s reflection is bounced from one to another. I thought I saw a slight difference in colour compared to the picture I got from the video.’ Guillaume’s fingers again flew over the keyboard. ‘I thought that, in the image reflected in the mirror, the complete one here in the centre, we might see the label on the cover.’