Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

He went over to the man on the ground, his left hand in his pocket, pushing out his leather jacket.

‘Don’t move or you’re dead!’

Rémy got down on his knees, slipped a hand into the man’s inside pocket, and pulled out the wad of euros. The operation was clumsy and the light material of the lining ripped. Without even looking, he thrust the wad of money into his jacket. Then he stood up and held a hand out to the man.

‘Hand over the briefcase.’

Rémy looked at the guy’s sickly face and weak body. Now, with his nose all bloodied, he looked all the more ready to give out. So it was even more of a shock when the guy suddenly reacted violently. Once he understood that the biker in the leather jacket was mugging him, the guy leapt to his feet and whacked Rémy on the helmet with the briefcase.

Rémy could tell that the man was not really very tough; his reaction was more from instinct than an ability to defend himself. The guy had panicked, that’s all. If, instead of hitting him on his crash helmet, he’d shoved the briefcase between Rémy’s legs with that same force, the man would have broken his balls.

Rémy was a fit young man, in much better shape than his victim. He punched the man in the face and heard a tooth break. If he hadn’t been wearing gloves, he would have hurt his hand.

Luckily, there was still nobody else around, although a car passed on the other side, going uphill. One of the passengers turned around to look. If he realized what was happening and reached the Place du Casino, where there were always a few cops around, things might end badly. He had to hurry.

The man was still not letting go of the briefcase in spite of the second blow, but the two punches had done their job. His nose was pissing blood now, spurting it on to his jacket and shirt. He had tears of pain and rage in his eyes.

Rémy grabbed the handle of the briefcase and pulled with all his might. He managed to tear it out of the man’s hand but as he turned and headed towards the motorcycle, his victim found the strength to reach up and grab Rémy around the neck. Rémy tried unsuccessfully to shake him off. He jabbed him in the stomach with his elbow and felt the man gasp and deflate like a balloon.

He felt the man’s weight leave him, looking down to see him bent double, holding his stomach. To avoid any more surprises, he kicked him in the shoulder. The man slipped backward off the kerb on to the street, just as a large dark sedan was rounding the bend from Avenue d’Ostende at fairly high speed.

Laurent Bedon was hit straight on and the impact threw him to the other side of the street. His head struck the pavement. He died instantly.

He had no time to hear the sound of the motorcycle rushing off, a woman’s hysterical scream, the screech of brakes as another car tried to avoid hitting his inert body on the street. A pool of blood was slowly spreading on the asphalt under his head.

Frank looked at the pile of dispatches on the desk in Nicolas Hulot’s old office. He couldn’t sit in that room without feeling his friend’s presence. All he had to do was turn around and he would see Hulot standing behind him at the window. He leafed through the papers as if shuffling a deck of cards, examining them hurriedly. There was nothing important. They were still up to their ears in shit.

Once the elation of establishing No One’s identity had passed, nothing had really changed. Forty-eight hours after discovering who he was, they had yet to discover where he was.

Frank had never seen such a huge deployment of police. All the forces in the bordering countries and all their special sections for the apprehension of violent criminals, with acronyms that corresponded to ViCAP of the FBI, were on alert. There wasn’t a cop in Europe who didn’t have a series of pictures of Jean-Loup, actual photos as well as computer mock-ups showing possible changes he might have made to his appearance. Streets, ports and public and private airports were full of roadblocks. No car went unexamined, no plane took off without all passengers being searched, no vessel left port without being inspected.

Practically every inch of southern Europe had been searched by every means possible in the manhunt. A demonstration of overwhelming authority was necessary to combat a criminal who had made such a deep impression on the public. The Principality of Monaco had a lot of influence. Some still considered it a Ruritanian state, but that judgement was both hasty and misleading.

Still, however, they had found nothing.

Jean-Loup Verdier, or whoever he was, had disappeared into thin air, which actually made the Monte Carlo police appear less of a failure. If he had managed to elude everyone, if nobody had been able to handcuff him, he was obviously of much higher intelligence than the norm, which justified their failure to that point. The philosophy of ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’ could apply even to hunting criminals. Frank thought they might as well try consulting a psychic – they were that desperate.

Jean-Loup’s house in Beausoleil had been turned upside down without finding even the slightest clue. They had managed to get some information about his past by following through with Hulot’s investigation, thanks to the phone number Morelli had found for him. The caretaker at the Cassis cemetery had confirmed that he had told Nicolas the story of La Patience and what had happened there. They concluded that Hulot had most probably been caught and kidnapped by his murderer right at the cemetery.

Their inquiries about Marcel Legrand through the French police had ended up hitting a dead end. Legrand had been a member of the intelligence service at some time in the past and his file was top secret. All they managed to unearth was that at a certain point, Legrand had abandoned active duty and retired to Provence in complete isolation. There was some complicated manoeuvring of diplomatic and state secrets to try to move certain obstacles and open certain doors. Legrand was just a skeleton, but it was still very difficult to get anyone to open the closet. On the other hand, no leads could be neglected, whether they came from the past or the present. No One was dangerous and his freedom threatened the lives of anyone who crossed his path.

Until then, he had killed his prey in delirious attacks that followed scrupulous patterns. Now he was fighting to survive and everyone was the enemy. The ease with which he had disposed of the three agents showed what he was capable of doing. This was no mere radio deejay, a good-looking guy who could play music and answer phone calls. When necessary, he was a top-level fighter. The dead bodies of three highly trained policemen were proof enough.

In the midst of all that, Frank was trying unsuccessfully to push the thought of Helena to the back of his mind. He missed her so much, and knowing that she was a prisoner in the hands of her unscrupulous father was agony. His feeling of helplessness was slowly loosening all his inhibitions. The only thing that kept him from running to the house and strangling the general to death was the certainty that it would only make things worse.

Here I am. This is who I’ve become. A man at a desk who doesn’t know where to start hunting ghosts.

He opened a drawer and stuck the dispatches inside, though he was tempted to throw them in the bin. In the open drawer he saw the floppy disk that he had put there when he had first taken over the office. The label said COOPER in his own handwriting. In the chaos of the last few days, he had completely forgotten Cooper’s phone call and the lawyer, Hudson McCormack, whom Cooper had asked him to check on.

It wasn’t the moment to ask for something like that, but he had to try. He owed it to Cooper and everything they had been through to try to lock up Jeff and Osmond Larkin. He buzzed the intercom and called Morelli.