I Kill (29 page)

‘What does that mean? What are you saying?’

‘I asked the question. It’s up to you to answer. That’s what life is made of, my friend. Questions and answers. Every man drags his questions along behind him, starting with
the ones he has written inside him when he’s born.’

‘What questions?’

‘
I’m not fate. I’m someone and no one, but I’m easy to understand. When someone who sees me realizes who I am, his eyes ask the question in a split second: he wants to
know when and where. I am the answer. For him I mean
now.
For him, I mean
here.’

He stopped. Then the voice hissed another sentence.

‘And that is why I kill
. . .’

A metallic click ended the conversation, leaving an echo like the snap of a guillotine. In his mind, Frank saw another head roll.

For Christ’s sake no, not this time!

‘Did you get him?’ Frank asked Sergeant Gottet who’d turned his back and was already talking to his men.

His answer took all the breath from his lungs

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No signal whatsoever. Pico says that whoever’s handling the calls must be really great. He didn’t see anything. If the call came from the
Internet, the signal’s so well hidden that our equipment can’t visualize it. The bastard fooled us again.’

‘Damn him. Did anyone recognize the music?’ Silence usually means consent. But in this case the general silence was a no. ‘Shit. Barbara, get me a tape with the music as soon
as possible. Where’s Pierrot?’

Barbara was already making a copy.

‘In the conference room,’ said Morelli.

There was feverish anxiety in the room. They all knew they had to hurry, hurry, hurry. At this very moment, the caller might be going out to start his hunt. And someone else, somewhere else, did
not know that he was living out the last minutes of his life. They went to get Rain Boy, the only one who would recognize the music right away.

Pierrot was in the conference room, sitting at a table next to his mother, his head hanging down. When they got there, he looked at them with tears in his eyes, then bowed his head again.

Like the last time, Frank went over and crouched next to the chair. Pierrot raised his face a little, as if he didn’t want to be seen crying.

‘What is it, Pierrot? Something wrong?’ The boy nodded. ‘Did it frighten you? There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re here with you.’

‘No, I’m not scared,’ Pierrot sniffed. ‘I’m a policeman too, now.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘I don’t know the music,’ he cried mournfully. There was real pain in his voice. He looked around as if he had failed the great moment of his life. The tears rolled down his
cheeks.

Frank felt his last hopes vanish, but he forced himself to smile at Pierrot.

‘Hey, calm down. Don’t worry. We’ll let you listen to it again and you’ll recognize it, you’ll see. It’s hard, but you can do it. I’m sure that you
can.’

Barbara ran into the room holding a DAT. She slipped it in the recorder and turned it on.

‘Listen carefully, Pierrot.’

The electronic percussion cranked into the room. The 4/4 pulse of the dance music sounded like a heartbeat. One hundred and thirty-seven beats per minute. A heart racing with fear, a heart
somewhere that could stop at any moment.

Pierrot listened in silence, his head hanging down. When the music stopped, he looked up and a timid smile broke out on his face.

‘It’s there,’ he said softly.

‘Did you recognize it? Is it in the room? Go get it, please.’

Pierrot nodded and got up from the chair. He took off with his loping gait. Hulot nodded to Morelli who got up to go with him. They returned after what seemed like an endless wait. Pierrot held
a CD in his hands.

‘Here it is. It’s a
complication
.’

They slid the CD into the player and went through the tracks until they found it. The music was exactly what the killer had played a little while earlier. Pierrot was a hero. His mother went
over to embrace him as if he had just won the Nobel Prize. The pride in her eyes broke Hulot’s heart.

‘“Nuclear Sun”, by Roland Brant. Who’s that?’ Frank said, reading the title on the cover of the compilation.

Nobody had heard of him. They all ran to the computer. A quick search on the Internet took them to an Italian site. Roland Brant was the pseudonym of an Italian deejay, a certain Rolando
Bragante. ‘Nuclear Sun’ was a dance track that was popular a few years ago.

Meanwhile, Laurent and Jean-Loup had finished the show and joined them. They were beside themselves. Both looked as if they’d been caught in a thunderstorm and part of it had remained
inside them.

Laurent gave them the lowdown on dance music, a genre all to itself in the music market.

‘Sometimes the deejays take on assumed names. Sometimes it’s a made-up word but most of the time it’s in English. There are a few of them in France, too. They’re usually
musicians who specialize in club music.’

‘What does the term “loop” mean?’ asked Hulot.

‘It’s a way of saying that you’re using sampled music on the computer. A loop is the base, the heart of the track. You take a beat and you let it turn around itself so that
it’s always exactly the same.’

‘Just like the bastard said. A dog chasing its tail.’

Frank cut those thoughts short and brought them immediately back to the present. There was something much more important to figure out.

‘Okay, we’ve got a job to do. Come on, can you think of something? Think of a famous person, about thirty, forty, fifty who has something in common with all the elements we have.
Here, in Monte Carlo.’

Frank sounded possessed. He walked around to each of them, repeating himself. His voice seemed to be hunting an idea like a howling pack of hounds after a fox.

‘A youngish, attractive, famous man. Who hangs out around here, in the area. Who lives here or is here now. CDs, compilations, “Nuclear Sun”, discotheques, dance music, an
Italian deejay with an English name, a pseudonym. Think about the papers, society news, the jet set . . .’

Frank’s voice was like the whip of a jockey urging his horse to go faster and faster. Their minds were all racing.

‘Come on. Jean-Loup?’ The deejay shook his head. Jean-Loup was worn out and it was clear that they could expect nothing more from him. ‘Laurent?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything.’

Barbara started and raised her head, moving her copper hair like a wave. Frank saw her face light up. He went over to her. ‘What is it, Barbara?’

‘I don’t know . . . Maybe . . .’

Frank pounced upon her uncertainty. ‘Barbara, there are no maybes. Say a name if you’re thinking of one. Whether it’s right or wrong.’

The girl turned to all those present for an instant, as if apologizing for saying something ridiculous.

‘Well, I think it might be Roby Stricker.’

René Coletti really needed to piss. He breathed deeply through his nose. His full bladder was causing stabs of pain in his stomach and he felt like he was in one of
those science-fiction movies where the spaceship starts to fail and the red danger light comes on with a robotic voice repeating, ‘Attention, please. This ship will self-destruct in three
minutes. Attention, please . . .’

It was only normal for a biological need to assert itself at the worst possible moment, in keeping with the logic of cause and effect designed to break the balls of human beings whenever
possible. He was tempted to get out of his car and take a leak on the side of the road, regardless of the people hanging around the dock and on the other side of the road. He looked longingly at
the wall on his right.

He lit a cigarette as a distraction and blew the smoke from his Gitane out of the car window. The overflowing ashtray showed that he had already been waiting a long time. He reached out to turn
off the radio, tuned to Radio Monte Carlo, since the part he had wanted to hear was over now.

He had parked his Mazda MX-5 at the harbour near the Piscine, pointed towards the building where the station was located. It had to be swarming with cops. He had listened to the show and the
killer’s phone call as he sat in his car, waiting. At his newspaper,
France Soir,
a number of colleagues had done the same thing, and now they were probably digging all over the Web or
God knows where else, hunting for information. Quite a few brains were working overtime to decipher the new message broadcast over the radio by ‘No One’, as the press had dubbed him.
Everyone called him that now. The power of the media. Who knew what the police might have been calling him before some reporter thought up a name that had stuck.

Investigators used logic. Journalists used imagination. But one didn’t necessarily preclude the other. Coletti was a prime example in that sense. Or so he hoped.

The mobile on the seat next to him started to ring. The ringtone was a Ricky Martin song that his niece had downloaded and foisted upon him. He detested it but was too ignorant about how mobile
phones worked to be able to change it. Imagination and logic, yes, but with an aversion to technology. He snatched up the phone and answered.

‘Hello?’

‘Coletti, it’s Barthélemy.’

‘What’s up?’

‘We’ve got a tip. A fantastic piece of luck. Giorgio Cassani, our Milan correspondent, is a friend of the guy who wrote the music that No One played on the radio. He called us from
Italy a couple of minutes ago. They’ll give us a few more minutes before they call the police.’

A stroke of luck indeed. Let’s hope nobody gets killed by it. And let’s hope I don’t piss my pants.

‘Well?’

‘It’s called “Nuclear Sun”. The guy who wrote it is an Italian deejay named Rolando Bragante, a.k.a. Roland Brant. Got it?’

‘Sure, I got it. I’m not stupid. Text me with the details, though. You never know.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Just outside the station. Everything’s under control. Nothing’s happened yet.’

‘Be careful. If the cops get on to you, we’ll be in fucking hot water.’

‘I know what they’re like.’

‘Be good,’ was Barthélemy’s laconic farewell.

‘You, too. Let me know if there’s any news.’

He clicked off. An Italian deejay with an English pseudonym. Some disco music called ‘Nuclear Sun’. What the hell did that mean?

He felt another stab in his abdomen and made a decision. Throwing the cigarette out the window, he opened the door and got out. He went down a few steps on the other side of the road and hid
himself in the semi-darkness, away from the silhouette of the car. He took advantage of a recess in the wall next to the shuttered windows of a store and, with a heavy sigh, unzipped his trousers
and relieved himself. He felt like he was flying. He watched the yellow stream of urine splash like a torrent on the downhill slope. Letting yourself go in a case like that was an almost sensual
pleasure. The satisfaction was at once physical and something deeper on the human level. Like when he was a child and he and his brother used to pee in the snow, making patterns.

Wait a sec. He had a thought. The snow. What did the snow have to do with it? He could see a magazine photo, a male figure in a ski suit standing next to a ski lift, ready to go, with a pretty
girl at his side. There was snow. Lots of snow. He had a sudden flash of intuition and held his breath.

Fuck. Roby Stricker. That’s who it was. And if it was him, he had figured it out.

His physiological needs gave no sign of relenting. The excitement made him nervous. He interrupted the flow and almost peed on his hands. He had covered stories where the risk of getting
one’s hands dirty was almost certain. This wouldn’t be any more disgusting. But where was Roby Stricker now?

He shook himself vigorously and tucked his shirt back in his trousers. Running back to the car, he paid no attention to the fact that his zip was undone.
There’s a murderer in this
city, René,
he told himself.
Who gives a damn if your flies are open?

He got in the car and picked up his phone, calling back Barthélemy at the paper.

‘It’s Coletti again. Find me an address.’

‘Out with it.’

‘Roby Stricker. That’s S-t-r-i-c-k-e-r with a
c
and a
k.
Roby might be short for Robert. He lives here in Monte Carlo. And if we’re really, really lucky, he might
even be in the phone book. If not, get it some other way, but fast.’

‘Hold on a minute.’ The newspaper wasn’t the police, but they had their methods.

That minute felt endless, even longer than when his bladder had been full. Barthélemy came back on the line.

‘Bingo. He lives in a condo called Les Caravelles, Boulevard Albert Premier.’

Coletti held his breath. He could not believe his luck. It was just 200 yards from where he was parked.

‘Great. I know where it is. I’ll be in touch.’

‘René, I’m telling you again. Watch out. Not just for the cops. This No One guy’s dangerous. He’s already killed three people.’

‘Touch wood, cross your fingers. I don’t want to lose my skin, but if things end up the way I think they will, it’ll be a sensation.’ He hung up.

For a moment, he heard the voice on the radio again.

I kill . . .

He shivered in spite of himself. But the excitement and the adrenalin were already flowing and dispelling any normal sense of caution. As a man, Coletti had his limitations, but as a reporter,
he knew his job and was willing to risk anything to do it. He could recognize something big. A piece of news to hunt down, open like an oyster and let the world see whether there was a pearl inside
or not. And this time, there was a gorgeous pearl, as big as an ostrich egg.

Everyone had a drug, and this was his.

He looked at the brightly lit windows of Radio Monte Carlo. There were several police cars parked outside the entry. The blue flashing light on one of them went on and the car pulled out.
Coletti relaxed. That must be the police escort that took Jean-Loup Verdier home every night. He had followed them a number of times and knew what they would do. They drove up to the deejay’s
house, slipped inside the gate, and that was it. With the police standing guard, any contact was impossible.