Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

‘What a terrible loss. I still can’t believe it.’

Frank spun around. His expression brought a hint of darkness to the police chief s face.

‘You still can’t believe it? You, who sacrificed Nicolas Hulot to official obligations and forced him to die a defeated man, you still can’t believe it?’ Frank’s pause was cold and heavy like the slabs of marble around them. ‘If you feel the need to be ashamed, if the two of you are capable of it, you have every right.’

Durand looked up sharply.

‘Mr Ottobre, I’ll justify your resentment solely on the grounds of your grief, but I will not allow you to-’

Frank interrupted him harshly. His voice was as dry as the sound of a branch breaking under his feet.

‘Dr Durand, I am perfectly aware that you find it hard to accept my presence here. But I want to get that killer more than anything else in the world, for a thousand different reasons. And one of them is that I owe it to my friend Nicolas Hulot. I am not concerned by whatever it is that you allow or don’t allow. If circumstances were different, I assure you that I would gladly take all your authority and shove it down your throat.’

Durand’s face turned red. Roncaille intervened and tried to smooth things over. Frank was surprised to hear him take a stand, even if his motivation was questionable.

‘Frank, our nerves are all shot because of what happened. Let’s not let our emotions get the better of us. The job we have to do is difficult enough without creating more problems. Whatever our personal disagreements, they must take a back seat for now.’

Roncaille took Durand’s arm and pulled him away. The attorney general only pretended to resist for a moment. They walked off beneath their umbrellas, leaving Frank alone. He stepped forward in front of the mound where Nicolas Hulot lay buried. He watched the rain begin its work of levelling the earth, and the rage boiled up inside him like burning lava in the mouth of a volcano.

A gust of wind swept through the branches of a nearby tree. The rustle of the leaves brought a voice to his ears that he had already heard far too many times.

I kill…

His best friend lay there, under that freshly dug mound of earth. Without realizing it, Frank started talking to someone who could not answer.

‘It was him, wasn’t it, Nicolas? You weren’t a chosen victim; you weren’t part of his plan. You were just an accident in his way. You discovered who he was before you died, didn’t you? How can I find out too, Nicolas? How?’

Frank Ottobre stood for a long time beside the mound under the pouring rain, obsessively repeating that question to himself. There was no answer, not even a whisper. No clue to decipher in the movement of the air through the treetops.

Umbrellas in cemeteries are always black. On this sunless day, they look like upside-down shadows, projections of the earth, funerary thoughts dancing over the heads of the fools, the people of no importance who, now that the ceremony is over, walk slowly away, trying with each step to put distance between them and the thought of death.

The man has watched the coffin lowered into the ground without any expression on his face. It is the first time he has attended the funeral of someone he has killed. He is sorry for the effortful composure of his wife as she watches him disappear into the damp earth. The grave that welcomes him, next to that of his son, reminds him of another cemetery, another row of graves. Other tears, other grief.

The man thinks about how stories are repeated infinitely. Sometimes they seem to end, but it is only the characters that change. The actors are different but their roles are always the same. The man who kills, the man who dies, the man who does not know, the man who finally understands and is willing to pay with his life.

The man closes his umbrella and lets the rain fall on his head. He walks towards the cemetery entrance and his footprints blend in among the others on the ground. They, too, will be rubbed out, like all memory.

He envies the peace and quiet that will remain there after everyone has gone. He thinks of all those dead people, motionless in their underground coffins. Their eyes closed, their arms crossed over their chests; lips silenced without voices to question the world of the living. He thinks about the consolation of silence and darkness. Eternity. Of sleep without dreams or sudden awakenings.

Pity for himself and for the whole world comes to him like a gust of wind, as a few tears finally fall from his eyes and mingle with the rain. They are not tears for the death of another man. They are the salty tears of longing for the sun of a time past, for the brief flashes of summer that disappeared in the blink of an eye. For the few happy moments that he can recall, so deep in his memory that they seem never to have existed.

The man leaves the graveyard as if at any moment he is afraid to hear a voice, many voices, calling him back. As if beyond that wall there is a world of the living to which he does not belong.

Struck by a sudden thought, he turns to look behind him. At the end of the cemetery, framed in the gate like a picture, alone before a freshly dug grave, is a man dressed in black.

He recognizes him. He is one of the men hunting him, one of the bloodhounds with the dripping jaws, running and barking their challenge. He imagines that he will now be even more determined, more ferocious. He would like to go back, to stand beside him and explain everything. To tell him that it is not anger or revenge he seeks, but only justice. That he has a sense of absolute certainty, which can only come from death.

As he gets into the car that will take him away, he runs a hand through his hair, wet with rain.

He would like to explain but he cannot. His task is not yet finished. He is someone and no one and his task will never be finished.

By the time Frank left the cemetery, everyone had gone. Even the rain had stopped. There was no merciful God in the sky, just the movement of grey and white clouds where the wind was carving out a small patch of blue.

His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked to his car. He got in and started the engine. The windscreen wipers swept away the excess rain with a swishing noise. In tribute to the memory of Nicolas Hulot, Frank buckled his seat belt. A copy of the newspaper Nice Matin lay on the seat beside him with the headline ‘US Government Seeks Extradition of Captain Ryan Mosse’ on the front page. Nicolas’s obituary was on page three. The death of a police inspector was not headline news.

He picked up the paper and threw it disparagingly on to the back seat. Then Frank put the car in gear and glanced instinctively in the rearview mirror before stepping on the gas. He could see the newspaper upright against the back of the seat.

Frank sat still for a second, breathless. He felt like one of those crazy bungee jumpers, flying over empty space at a wild speed without the mathematical certainty that his cord was the right length. A silent prayer rose up inside him, in the hope that his sudden flash of intuition was not yet another illusion.

As he sat thinking, a floodgate opened. A waterfall of unconfirmed theories started flowing through his mind, strengthening like the force of water widening a small hole in a dam until it becomes a powerful gush. In light of what had just occurred to him, numerous tiny discrepancies were suddenly explained, and many details that they had ignored suddenly slotted into place.

He picked up his mobile and dialled Morelli’s number. As soon as Claude answered, Frank assailed him.

‘Claude, it’s Frank. Can you talk?’