Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

Helena placed her hand on the scar that ran across the left side of his chest, a pink area of skin that stood out against his tan. Helena could feel that it was different, skin that had grown afterwards, part of a suit of armour. It was meant to protect against harm, like all armour, but inevitably it had also prevented the gentle touch of a caress.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, running her fingers over it gently, tracing the outline.

‘Not any more.’

There was a moment of silence and Frank felt that Helena was touching their scars and not just his.

We’re alive, Helena. Beaten and imprisoned, but alive. And outside there’s someone shouting who is trying to dig us out of the rubble. Hurry, I’m begging you. Please hurry.

Helena smiled and the light in the room grew brighter. She turned and climbed on top of him as if to declare a personal conquest. She bit his nose gently.

‘What if I bit it off? George Clooney would win by a nose.’

Frank pushed her face away with his hands. Helena tried to resist, and her mouth left his nose with a sucking noise. ‘With or without a nose, I’m going to have a lot of trouble imagining my life without you.’

A shadow passed over Helena’s face and her grey eyes turned the colour of a knife blade. She took his hands from her face. Frank tried to imagine the thoughts behind that shadow.

‘What’s wrong? I didn’t say anything so bad. I didn’t ask you to marry me, you know.’

Helena buried her face in his shoulder. Her tone declared their brief, light-hearted moment over.

‘I’m already married. Or at least I was.’

‘What do you mean, you were?’

‘You know what the world of politics is like, Frank. It’s show business. Everything’s fake, it’s all fiction. And like in Hollywood, anything’s possible in Washington, as long as it isn’t made public. A man with a career can’t have the scandal of an unmarried daughter with a baby.’

Frank kept silent, waiting. He felt Helena’s warm, damp breath caress him as she spoke. Her voice came from somewhere on his shoulder, but it sounded like it was coming from the depths of a well.

‘All the moreso if the man is General Nathan Parker. So officially, I’m the widow of Captain Randall Keegan, killed during the Gulf War with a wife in America expecting a child that wasn’t his.’

She raised herself to the position she had been in before, her face against his. There was a smile on her lips but she looked into Frank’s eyes as if a pardon could only come from him. Frank never knew that a smile could hold so much bitterness. As Helena described her situation, it was almost as if she were speaking about someone else, someone she both pitied and despised.

‘I’m the widow of a man I saw for the first time on our wedding day and never saw again, except in a flag-draped coffin. Don’t ask me how my father got him to marry me. I don’t know what he promised in exchange, but I can imagine. It was to be a marriage by proxy, long enough to create a smokescreen, followed by a simple divorce. Meanwhile, an uncomplicated career, an endless red carpet. And you know the funny thing?’ Frank waited, silently. He knew very well that the funny thing would not be at all funny. ‘Captain Randall Keegan died in the Gulf War without firing a single shot. He fell heroically during unloading operations, hit by a Hummer with failed brakes. One of the shortest marriages in history.’

Frank did not have time to answer. He was still absorbing this further demonstration of Nathan Parker’s treachery and power when his mobile phone on the table started to vibrate. Frank managed to grab it before the ringer went on. He looked at the time. Time for trouble.

‘Hello?’

‘Frank? It’s Morelli.’

Helena, lying next to him, saw his face contract.

‘What is it, Claude? Something bad?’

‘Yes, Frank, but not what you think. Inspector Hulot was in a car accident.’

‘When?’

‘We don’t really know yet. The French traffic police just informed us. A hunter who went out to train his dogs found his car at the bottom of a ditch off a side road near Auriol, in Provence.’

‘How is he?’

Morelli’s brief silence was eloquent. Frank felt anguish tear at his heart.

No, Nicolas. Not you, not now. Not in this God-awful way when your life seemed like a pile of shit. Not like this, bad boy.

‘He’s dead, Frank.’

Frank gnashed his jaws so hard that he could hear his teeth crunch. His knuckles turned white on the phone. For a moment, Helena thought he might crush it in his hand.

‘Does his wife know?’

‘No. I haven’t told her. I thought you’d want to.’

‘Thanks, Claude. Good thinking.’

‘I would have preferred not to get that compliment.’

‘I know, and I thank you, on Céline Hulot’s behalf as well.’

Helena watched him go over to the armchair where his clothes were scattered. He pulled on his trousers. She got out of bed, covering her breasts with the sheet. Frank didn’t notice that instinctive gesture of modesty – nudity was still not natural for her.

‘What happened, Frank? Where are you going?’

Frank looked at her and Helena could read the bitter pain on his face. She watched him sit on the bed to put on his socks. His voice came to her from behind the shield of his scarred shoulder.

‘I’m going to the worst place on earth, Helena. I’m going to wake a woman in the middle of the night to tell her that her husband is never coming home.’

It rained during Nicolas Hulot’s funeral. The sky had apparently decided to interrupt the beautiful summer weather and pour down the same tears that were being cried below. It was a steady, uncompromising rain, as steady and uncompromising as the life of an ordinary police inspector. Now, unwittingly perhaps, he was collecting the only reward he might have desired while he was still alive: to be lowered into the same earth that held his son, to the accompaniment of words written only to console the living.

Céline was standing by the grave next to the priest, her face frozen in a mask of pain as she witnessed the reuniting of her husband and son. Her sister and brother-in-law, who had rushed in from Carcassonne at the news, were beside her.

The funeral was private, in accordance with Nicolas’s wishes. Nonetheless, a small crowd had gathered at the Eze cemetery. From where Frank was standing, on the side at a slightly higher elevation, he could observe the people surrounding the young priest conducting the burial service, his head uncovered despite the rain. They were friends and acquaintances and inhabitants of Eze, and all of them knew and appreciated the character of the man to whom they were bidding a final farewell. There were also some who had come just out of curiosity.

Morelli was there, and Frank was moved by his profound expression of grief. Roncaille and Durand had come, representing the Principality authorities, as well as all the Sûreté personnel who were not on duty. Frank saw Froben opposite him, his head also uncovered. In addition, Bikjalo, Laurent, Jean-Loup and Barbara, along with many of the staff of Radio Monte Carlo, were there. Even Pierrot and his mother, off to one side.

The few reporters present were kept outside by security guards, although they were not really necessary. The death of a man in a car accident was far too commonplace to be of real interest, even if it was the inspector of the No One case who had recently been removed from the investigation.

Frank looked at Nicolas Hulot’s coffin. It was being slowly lowered into the grave, dug into the earth like a wound, accompanied by a mixture of rain and holy water like a joint blessing from heaven and earth. Two attendants wearing green raincoats and holding shovels started to fill the grave with earth.