Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

From his position, the man sees her profile and admires her toned body, the perfect form of her small, firm breasts. His gaze follows the line of her buttocks that melts into her long, nervous legs.

With quicksilver movements, the young woman reaches the ladder and sticks out a foot to test the water.

The man smiles, a tapered smile like that of a shark. A stroke of luck! He stealthily puts his scuba equipment back on and waits for her next move.

He hopes the girl won’t mind the cold and will give in to the temptation of a moonlit dip in the sea. As if reading his mind, she turns and starts climbing down the ladder, gently slipping into the waves, shaking as the cold water gives her goose bumps and firms her nipples.

She swims away from the boat, out towards the open sea in the opposite direction from where he is waiting in his black wetsuit. The man’s silent movement below the water has the sinister fluidity of a hunter starting to close in on his unwitting prey. The game is cruel and its stakes are life and death.

He slips noiselessly below the surface and descends easily to the bottom of the sea, where he starts swimming towards the girl, reaching her in moments. He looks up and sees her above him, a dark stain against the light on the surface of the water. He rises unhurriedly, breathing very slowly so that the air bubbles do not betray his presence. When the girl is within arm’s reach, he grabs her by the ankles and pulls her brutally down.

Arianna is stunned by the violent thrust underwater. She has no time to fill her lungs with air. Almost immediately, the grasp on her ankle is loosened. She instinctively kicks to push herself upwards but two hands are placed on her shoulders and their weight pushes her further down towards the bottom, far from the film of water shining above her head like a mocking promise of air and light. She feels the slimy contact of the wetsuit, two predatory arms gripping her like a belt above her breasts, and an unknown body attached to hers as her assailant pinions her pelvis with his legs.

Terror encloses reason within a wall of ice.

Wildly, she tries to free herself, whimpering, but her lungs, already lacking oxygen, quickly burn out all her reserves. As her need for air intensifies, Arianna feels her strength fade, still at the mercy of the body clutching hers, pulling her down towards the moonless night at the bottom of the sea.

She senses that she is about to die, that someone is killing her and she doesn’t know why. Salty tears of regret intermingle with the millions of drops of indifferent water around her. She feels the darkness of that embrace expand and become part of her like a bottle of black ink pouring into the clean water. A cold, pitiless hand starts exploring every part of her, inside and out, trying to extinguish any tiny flame of life, until it reaches her young woman’s heart and stops it forever.

The man feels the body suddenly slacken at the moment that it is abandoned by life. He waits a second, then turns the girl so that her face is towards him, puts his hands under her armpits, and starts kicking with his fins to rise to the surface. As he heads upwards, the young woman’s face is no longer a dark blotch outside his goggles. He sees her delicate features, small nose and half-opened mouth from which a few last air bubbles escape. Her magnificent green eyes are immobile as they approach the light that they can no longer see. He looks at the face of the woman he has killed like a photographer developing a particularly important negative. When he is completely sure of the beauty of her face, he smiles.

The man’s head finally emerges from the water. Still holding the body, he swims to the ladder. He takes the line that he had attached to the metal box and winds it around the woman’s neck so that it holds her as he removes his tank and mouthpiece. The body slips underwater, rippling slightly; the girl’s hair remains afloat, lapping like the waves against the hull, moving softly in the moonlight like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

He removes his fins and mask and puts them down carefully, silently. When he is free, he grabs hold of the ladder with his left hand and loosens the rope holding the body, grasping it with his right arm. Without any apparent effort, he climbs the wooden steps, carrying his victim. He observes her for a while and then leans down to pick up the bathrobe she was wearing before her night swim.

In a belated gesture of pity, he spreads the robe over the woman lying on the deck, as if he wanted to protect the cold body from the chill of a night, which, for her, would never end.

‘Arianna?’

The voice is suddenly heard from below. The man turns instinctively towards it. The girl’s companion might have been awakened by the sense that he was alone in the whitish moonlight flooding the cabin. Perhaps he had stretched his leg to seek contact with her skin and felt only emptiness. Perhaps he had called and there had been no answer, so now he was coming to look for her.

Covered by the black wetsuit that turns him into a shadow even darker than those thrown by the moon, the man finds a hiding place, where the mast and the boom meet.

From where he stands, he sees the woman’s companion emerge from below deck. He is naked. Turning his head as he climbs on deck, he sees her and stops. She is lying at the stern, near the rudder and the ladder. Her face is turned away and she appears to be sleeping, covered haphazardly by the white bathrobe. He takes a step towards her. His bare feet sense puddles of cold water on the wooden deck. Maybe he thinks she went for a swim and he feels a surge of tenderness for the body that seems to be asleep in the moonlight. Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he sees her swimming gracefully in the quiet sea, her wet body shining as she leaves the water and carefully dries herself. He goes over to her as if perhaps to wake her with a kiss, to bring her down to the cabin and make love to her. He kneels down and puts a hand on her bare shoulder above her robe. The man with the black wetsuit can hear every word he says.

‘Darling.’ The woman does not show the slightest sign of having heard. Her skin is like ice. ‘Darling, you can’t stay out here in the cold.’

Still no answer. Jochen feels a strange terror carve its way into the pit of his stomach.

Cautiously, he takes her head in his hands and turns Arianna towards him. His eyes meet a lifeless stare. The movement causes a stream of water to trickle from her mouth. He knows immediately that she is dead and a silent scream possesses him. He jumps up and in that very instant, feels a damp arm around his neck. The sudden pressure makes him arch backward.

Jochen is taller than average and he has the body of an athlete, perfectly trained during long hours at the gym so that he can endure the extraordinary physical stress of the Grand Prix. Still, his aggressor is taller and just as strong. He also has the advantage of surprise and of Jochen’s shock at the girl’s death. The driver instinctively raises his hands and grabs the arm covered by the wetsuit, which is pressed tight against his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a reflection sparkle on his right. A fraction of a second later, the assailant’s knife, sharp as a razor, cuts through the air with a hiss, drawing a swift circle downward.

The victim’s body shudders and contracts in the agony of death as the blade penetrates his ribs and splits open his heart. He feels the unnatural taste of blood in his mouth, and he dies with the moon’s cold smile in his eyes.

The man continues to press with the knife until the body is completely limp in his arms. Only then does he let go of the knife, supporting the body with his own. He eases it down to the deck and, breathing slowly to calm his panting, stands there a moment, looking at the two corpses. Then he grabs the man’s body and starts dragging it below.