Giorgio Faletti - I Kill

No, please, Frank, don’t run away from me now. I don’t know how much time I have left. I’m dying at the thought of not being able to see you, and at least if we could speak…

She pressed another button, the one for police headquarters.

The switchboard operator answered. ‘Sûreté Publique. Bonjour .’

‘Do you speak English?’ Helena asked apprehensively.

‘Of course, madame. How may I help you?’

Helena took a deep breath. At least she was spared from stuttering in a foreign language. Hanneke had taught, or rather forced, her and Arianna to speak German. Her father’s second wife hated French, which she called the language of homosexuals.

‘I’d like to speak to Agent Frank Ottobre, please.’

‘Yes, madame . Who may I say is calling?’

‘Helena Parker, thank you.’

‘One moment please.’

The switchboard operator put her on hold and Frank’s voice came to her a few seconds later.

‘Helena, where are you?’

She felt herself blush and that was the only reason she was glad he couldn’t see her. It was as if she had gone back in time and could feel Andrés Jeffereau’s shy kiss on her cheek. She realized that Frank Ottobre had the magical power to restore her innocence. And that discovery was confirmation for Helena that she loved him.

‘I’m at home. My father went out with Ryan and Stuart and I’m alone in the house. Mosse locked up all the phones. I’m using the one you left me.’

‘Bastard. Good thing I thought of giving you a mobile…’

Helena had no idea if the police switchboard operator was listening in on Frank’s calls. He had mentioned that he suspected his mobile phone and home phone at Parc Saint-Roman were being tapped. Maybe that’s why his voice was so brusque. Helena didn’t want to say anything that could harm or embarrass him, but she could feel herself coming apart.

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

Now, she said to herself. Say it now or you never will!

‘I love you, Frank.’

It was the first time she had ever said those words. And the first time she was not afraid to be scared.

There was a pause on the other end. Only a couple of seconds, but to Helena it felt like trees could have been planted and grown high in the time she waited. Then Frank’s voice finally emerged from the phone.

‘I love you too, Helena.’

There, simple. As it should be. With that sense of peace that comes from being right. Now Helena Parker had no doubts.

‘Thank God you exist, Frank Ottobre.’

There was no time to say more. Helena could hear the sound of a door closing in the room where Frank was, muffled by the filter of the phone.

‘Just a minute,’ he said, suddenly cold.

She heard a voice that was not his say words that she could not understand. Then a shout from Frank, the sound of something hitting a wooden surface, followed by a curse, Frank’s voice shouting, ‘Christ, not again, fucking sonofabitch!’

Then his voice on the phone again.

‘I’m sorry, Helena. Only God knows how much I don’t want to leave you right now, but I have to go.’

‘What happened? Can you tell me?’

‘Sure. You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway. There’s been another killing.’

Frank’s voice was gone and Helena was left looking at the display, confused, trying to figure out how to hang up the cell phone. She was so happy that she didn’t even notice that her first declaration of love had been interrupted by the news of a murder.

Frank and Morelli flew down the stairs as if the lives of all mankind depended on them. How many times, Frank wondered, would they have to repeat this same race before waking from the nightmare? He had been on the phone with Helena, a few moments of peace in the midst of a storm, when Claude had burst in and it had all gone up in smoke. No One had struck again and in the worst way, adding insult to injury.

Christ Almighty, when is this massacre going to end? Who is this man? What can he be made ofto do what he’s doing?

They raced through the glass doors of headquarters and saw a group of policemen huddled around a car. There were already police barricades in the street to keep cars and pedestrians off Rue Suffren Raymond and, in the other direction, halfway up Rue Notari.

Frank and Morelli ran down the outside steps. The agents stood to one side to let them pass. Parked right in front of the entrance, in the last space reserved for police cars, was Jean-Loup Verdier’s Mercedes SLK with its boot open.

Inside was a man’s body. It looked like a bad imitation of the Yoshida murder, a botched attempt done earlier as a dress rehearsal. The dead man was curled up in foetal position inside the car boot. He was wearing blue trousers and a white, bloodied shirt. There was a gaping cut at his heart, which was where the blood had stained the shirt. But, as usual, the worst damage was to his face. The corpse seemed to be staring at the carpet in the boot a few inches from its wide eyes. Frank saw the horrid grimace, the flayed face, the blood clotted on the bald head where a mocking tuft of hair indicated that, this time, the work had been done in a hurry.

Frank looked around. None of the agents seemed nauseated by the sight. You can get used to anything, good or bad.

But this wasn’t something to get used to: it was a curse and there had to be some way to stop it. Frank had to do it, whatever the cost, otherwise he’d wind up once again on the bench of a mental institution, staring vacantly at a gardener planting a tree.

He remembered his conversation with Fr Kenneth. If he were with the priest now, Frank would tell him that at last his convictions had changed. He still didn’t believe in God, but he had begun to believe in the Devil.

‘What happened here?’ he asked loudly, looking at a group of police officers standing a little back from the scene.

An agent came over. Frank didn’t know his name, but remembered that he had been one of the men in charge of guarding Jean-Loup’s house, luckily for him not the day they discovered that Verdier was No One.

‘I noticed a car parked in a no-parking zone this morning. We usually have them removed immediately, but with everything going on these days…’

The agent made a gesture that covered a situation Frank knew all too well. He was aware of the overtime shifts they were all working, the constant coming and going of cars, the bursts of movement to check out the inevitable calls coming in. All kinds of lunatics turned up in cases like this. Already No One had reportedly been seen in dozens of locations, and all of them had to be checked, one by one, without results. Yes, he was aware of the situation. He nodded for the agent to continue.

‘I came out again a little later and I noticed that the car was still in the same place. I thought maybe it was a resident who had some business here. Sometimes they try just leaving their cars there. I went closer to check. I was about to call the traffic department when I thought I recognized the licence number. I was at Beausoleil, at the house-’

‘Yes, I know,’ Frank interrupted brusquely. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I went up to the car, and I noticed there was a red stain that looked like blood by the lock of the boot. I called Morelli and we forced it open. And this is what we found.’

The agent raised the boot lid all the way so that they could see inside, lifting it with a pen so as not to leave fingerprints.

‘And then there’s this…’

Frank knew what he would see. On the metal, words were traced in blood, the usual mocking phrase left as a commentary of his latest exploit.