Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

As her father spoke to her through the door that opened on to the garden, she could see Stuart and Mosse waiting for him by the gate.

‘We’ll be leaving here as soon as I finish what I have to do. We have to take your sister’s body home, although that doesn’t seem to matter much to you. When we’re back in the States, your attitude will change, you’ll see. This is just a stupid infatuation.’

When he had returned from Paris and she’d found the courage to throw her affair with Frank Ottobre in his face, Nathan Parker had gone crazy. He certainly wasn’t jealous, at least not the traditional jealousy of a father for his daughter. Nor was it the attachment of a man towards his lover since, as she had told Frank, it had been years since he had forced her to have sexual relations with him.

That seemed to be over for ever, thank God. The mere thought of his hands on her brought back a revulsion that she could still feel years later, which gave her an urgent need to wash. His attentions had stopped as soon as the baby had been born. Even earlier, when she had told him in tears that she was pregnant.

She remembered her father’s eyes when she had told him that she was going to have an abortion.

‘You’re going to do what?’ Nathan Parker had asked, incredulous, as if it were that idea and not the pregnancy that was an abomination.

‘I don’t want this child. You can’t force me to keep it.’

‘And you can’t tell me what I can and cannot do. I am the one who tells you. And you will do nothing, do you understand? N-o-t-h-i-n-g,’ he had enunciated slowly, inches from her face.

‘You will have this child.’ He had handed down his sentence.

Helena would have liked to slash open her womb and pull out what she carried inside with her own bloody hands. Her father had read her mind, which was written on her face. In any case, she had not been left alone for a single moment after that.

To justify her pregnancy and Stuart’s birth in the eyes of the world, Nathan Parker had invented that ridiculous story of the marriage. Parker was a powerful man. As long as national security was not at stake, he was permitted to do almost anything he wanted.

She often wondered why none of the people who associated with her father ever realized how deranged he was. They were important people: congressmen, senators, high-ranking officers, even presidents. Was it really possible that none of them, listening to the words of General Nathan Parker the war hero, suspected that those words came from the mouth and brain of a madman? Perhaps there was a simple explanation. Even if the Pentagon or the White House were aware of the unwholesome aspects of the general’s personality, as long as the consequences were confined to his domestic arrangements, they could be tolerated in exchange for his service to the nation.

After Stuart was born, Parker’s father became possessive of them both in a way that went well beyond his obsessive habits, his unnatural way of loving. Mother and son were not two human beings, but personal property. They were his possessions. He would have destroyed anyone who threatened this situation, which, in his totally lucid but unbalanced mind, he believed to be completely legitimate.

That is why he detested Frank. The agent was standing in his way, opposing him with a personality that was just as strong as his. Despite Frank’s past, Parker realized that his strength was not sickly, but healthy. It didn’t come from hell, it came from the world of men. It was in that guise that Frank had firmly opposed him, refusing to help Parker when the general sought him out – and striking at him when he should have stayed away.

Above all, Frank was not afraid of him.

Nathan Parker considered Mosse’s release from jail – and the fact that FBI agent Frank Ottobre had been forced to admit he was wrong – as a personal triumph. Now, all he needed for absolute victory was to catch Arianna Parker’s killer. And Helena had no doubt that he would succeed. In any case, he would try.

Helena thought of poor Arianna. Her stepsister’s life hadn’t been much better than hers. They didn’t have the same mother. Helena hardly knew her own mother, who had died of leukemia when she was three. Treatment for the disease was not very developed at the time, and she had passed away quickly, despite the family’s wealth. All that was left of her were some photographs and a super-8 movie, a few images of the slightly awkward movements of a thin blonde woman with a gentle face, smiling into the camera. She was holding a little girl in her arms and standing next to her husband, and master, in uniform.

Nathan Parker still spoke of his wife’s death as a personal affront. If he could express his feelings about it in one word, he would say it was intolerable.

Helena had grown up by herself, in the care of a series of governesses who had been replaced with growing frequency as she got older. She had been just a child and hadn’t realized that the women left of their own accord, despite the excellent salary. As soon as they’d breathed the air of that house and discovered what sort of man General Parker really was, they would close the door behind them with a sigh of relief.

Then, without warning, Nathan Parker had come back from a long tour of duty in Europe, something involving NATO, with a new wife, Hanneke, as a souvenir. Hanneke was German, a brunette with a statuesque body and eyes like chips of ice. The general had treated the whole affair in his usual hasty manner. He had introduced Helena to the woman with the smooth, pale skin. A perfect stranger, her new mother. And that’s the way Hanneke remained, not a mother but a perfect stranger.

Arianna was born soon after.

Engrossed in his flourishing career, Parker had left Hanneke to care for the house, which she did with the same icy coldness that seemed to flow through her veins. Their relationship was strictly formal. Helena was never allowed to see her sister as a child. Arianna was another stranger who shared the same house, not a companion who could help her grow up and whom she could help in return. There were governesses, nannies, teachers and private tutors for that.

And when Helena turned into a beautiful adolescent, there was the boy, Andrés. He was the son of Bryan Jeffereau, the landscaper who supervised care of the park around their mansion. In the summer, during school vacations, Andrés worked with the men to ‘gain experience’, as his father had proudly told Nathan Parker. The general was in agreement and often called Andrés a ‘good boy’.

Andrés himself was shy and sneaked furtive glances at Helena from under his baseball cap as he dragged lopped-off branches to the pickup truck to be towed away. Helena had noticed his awkwardness; his embarrassed looks and smiles. She had accepted them without giving anything in exchange, but inside she was aflame. Andrés was not exactly handsome. There were lots of boys like him, not good-looking but not bad-looking either, with manners that suddenly turned clumsy when she was present.

Andrés was the only boy Helena knew. He was her first crush. Andrés smiled at her, blushing, and she smiled back, blushing too. And that was it. One day, Andrés had found the courage to leave her a note hidden in the leaves of a magnolia tree, tied to a branch with green plastic-coated wire. She had found it and stuck it in the pocket of her jodhpurs. Later, in bed, she had taken out the paper and read it, her heart racing.

Now, so many years later, she could not remember the exact words of Andrés Jeffereau’s declaration of love, just the warmth she had felt at the sight of his shaky handwriting. They were the innocuous words of a seventeen-year-old boy with a teenage crush on the girl he saw as the princess of the manor.