Giorgio Faletti: I Kill

He has very little time and a great deal of work to do before the sun comes up.

The only thing lacking is a little music.

Roger came out on the deck of the Baglietto and breathed the fresh morning air. It was seven thirty and promised to be a beautiful day. After Grand Prix week, the owners of the yacht that he commanded had gone, leaving the boat in his care until the summer cruise, which usually lasted a couple of months. He had at least another six weeks of peace in the harbour of Monte Carlo, without the ship’s owner and his wife, a huge pain in the ass who had every type of plastic surgery imaginable and was so covered in jewellery that you needed dark glasses to look at her in the sun.

Donatella, the Italian waitress at the Restaurant du Port, was just setting the outdoor tables. The people who worked in the offices and stores around the harbour would soon be coming in for breakfast. Roger stood watching her in silence until she noticed. She smiled and pushed her chest out just a little more.

‘Life’s good, huh?’

‘Could be a lot better,’ said Roger, continuing the banter that had been going on between them for a while. He pretended to look sad.

Donatella moved the few feet that separated the tables from the stern of the boat and stopped right below him. Her open blouse revealed an intriguing furrow between her breasts and Roger plunged his gaze down like a fishing line. The girl noticed but gave no sign that it bothered her.

‘You know, if you used your words as well as your eyes… Hey, what’s that nutter doing?’

Roger turned his head to follow the girl’s look and saw the twin-engine Beneteau yacht heading straight towards the line of anchored boats at full speed. There was nobody on the bridge.

‘Stupid idiots.’

He left Donatella and ran to the prow of the Baglietto. He started waving his arms frantically, shouting, ‘Hey, you with the twin engine! Watch out!’

There was no sign of life from the yacht. It was heading straight towards the quay without slowing down. Now it was just a few yards away and a collision seemed inevitable.

‘Hey!’

Roger cried out, then grabbed the handrail and waited for the impact. With a violent crash, the Beneteau’s prow rammed into the Baglietto s port side, wedging itself between its hull and that of the boat anchored next to it. Luckily, there was not too much damage; the fenders had helped to soften the blow. Still, there was an ugly grey scratch in the paintwork. Roger was furious.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!’ he shouted.

There was no answer from the other boat. Roger climbed from the bridge of the Baglietto on to the prow of the Beneteau as a group of curious onlookers gathered around the pier. When he reached the stern, he noticed something strange. The rudder was blocked. Someone had slipped in the pole hook, tying it with a rope. A red trail started on deck and continued over to the steps leading to the cabins below. It seemed bizarre and Roger got a cold knot in his stomach. As he approached, his legs started to shake. Two words were written on the table in the same red liquid.

I kill…

The threat of the words and the ellipsis following them made him sick. Roger was twenty-eight years old and no hero, but something pushed him towards the door of what was probably the main cabin. He stopped for a second, his mouth dry with dread, and then he opened the door.

He was overcome by a sweetish odour that took hold of his throat and made him gag. He didn’t even have the strength to cry out. For all the years he had left to live, the scene before him would return to his dreams every night.

The policeman about to come on board and the people on the pier saw him rush out on deck, bend over the edge of the boat, and vomit into the sea, his body retching convulsively.

Frank Ottobre awoke with the feeling that he was lying between strange sheets in a strange bed, in an unknown house, in a foreign city.

Then memory seeped into his brain like sunlight through the shutters and the pain was still there, just as he’d left it the night before. If there was still a world outside, and if there was a way to forget that world, his mind had rejected both. Just then, the cordless phone on the bedside table rang. He turned over and extended his hand to the phone’s flashing display.

‘Hello?’

‘Hey, Frank.’

He closed his eyes and the face called forth by the voice in the receiver came immediately to mind. The pug nose, the sandy hair, the eyes, the smell of aftershave, the pained walk, the dark glasses and grey suit that was like a uniform.

‘Hey, Cooper.’

‘It’s early for you, but I knew you’d be up.’

‘Yeah. What’s up?’

‘What’s up? Total pandemonium. We’re on duty 24/7. If there were twice as many of us, we’d need twice as many as that to keep up with everything. Everyone’s trying to pretend that nothing’s happened, but everyone’s afraid. And we can’t blame them: we’re scared too.’

There was a brief pause.

‘How are you doing, by the way?’

Yeah, how am I doing?

Frank asked himself the question as if just reminded that he was alive.

‘Okay, I guess. I’m here in Monte Carlo hobnobbing with the jet set. Only problem is, with all these billionaires I’m in danger of feeling like one myself. I’ll leave when I no longer think that buying a mile-long yacht is a crazy idea.’

He got out of bed, still holding the phone to his ear, and headed to the bathroom in the nude. In the semi-darkness, he sat down on the toilet and urinated.

‘If you buy one, let me know so I can come try it out.’

Cooper wasn’t fooled by Frank’s bitter humour, but he decided to play along. Frank imagined him on the phone in his office, with a strained smile and a distressed look on his face. Cooper was the same as ever. He, however, was in a tailspin and they both knew it.

There was a moment of silence and then Frank distinctly heard the sigh that Cooper often used. His voice was harsher now and more anxious.

Frank, don’t you think-’

‘No, Cooper,’ said Frank, knowing what he was going to say and cutting him off. ‘Not yet. I don’t feel up to coming back. It’s too soon.’

Frank. Frank. Frank! It’s been almost a year. How much time do you need to…’

In Frank’s mind, Cooper’s words were lost in the huge space between where he was, America, and the void of the galaxies. All he could hear was the voice of his own thoughts.

Yeah, how much time, Cooper? A year, a hundred years, a million years? How much time does it take for a man to forget that he destroyed two lives?

‘Homer said you can come back on duty whenever you like, if that helps. You’d be a help anyway. We need people like you right now, for Christ sake. Don’t you think that being here and feeling like you’re part of something, after all this-’

Frank interrupted and destroyed any false idea of closeness.

‘There’s only one thing left after all this, Cooper.’

Cooper was silent, with a burning question that he was afraid even to whisper. Then he spoke, and the thousands of miles separating Monte Carlo from America were nothing compared to the distance between the two men.

‘What, Frank, for the love of God?’

‘God has nothing to do with it. It’s me; it’s between me and myself. A fight to the death, and you know it.’

Frank removed the phone from his ear and watched his finger in the dark as he pressed the button and ended the call. He raised his eyes towards his naked body reflected in the large bathroom mirror. Bare feet on the cold marble floor, muscular legs, then all the way up to the dull eyes and back down to examine his chest and the red scars crisscrossing it. Almost of its own accord, his right hand rose slowly to brush over them. He sat there, freely allowing the little piece of death he constantly carried inside to wash over him.