I Kill (38 page)

That’s not so, Claude. Not exactly. There’s stolen music in the air . . .

‘All we can do right now is keep the radio station under control. That means maximum alert, special teams ready, and so on. Agreed?’

‘Sure.’

‘There’s one favour I’d like to ask of you,’ said Frank.

‘Name it.’

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll let you monitor the situation at the radio station by yourself tonight. I don’t think anything’s going to happen. Last night’s
killing wore down his batteries and he’ll lie low until he recharges. That’s what usually happens with serial killers. I’ll be listening to the show and you can reach me on my
cell, but I need the night off. Can you handle it?’

‘Not a problem, Frank.’

Frank wondered how things were going between Morelli and Barbara. The sergeant’s interest in the girl seemed to be mutual, but then other things had happened. Morelli did not seem the type
to neglect his work for romantic reasons, even if the reason was as good-looking as Barbara.

‘They promised me my own car. Mind finding out if they kept their word?’

‘Right away.’

The sergeant left the room and Frank was alone. He took his wallet from his jacket pocket and pulled out a card folded in half. It was a piece of the letter that General Parker had left him at
the hotel after their first meeting in the main square of Eze. His phone numbers were on it. Frank stared at it for a moment, then made a decision, dialling the home number on his mobile. Helena
Parker answered after two rings.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, it’s Frank Ottobre.’

There was a brief pause. ‘I’m glad you called.’

‘Have you eaten yet?’ Frank asked, without replying.

‘No, not yet.’

‘Is that something you’ve given up, or do you think you might consider it this evening?’

‘Sounds like a reasonable idea.’

‘I could pick you up in an hour, if that’s enough time.’

‘More than enough. I’ll be waiting.’

Frank hung up and stood looking at the phone. He couldn’t help wondering what kind of trouble he was getting himself into now.

Frank parked by the dirt road that led to General Parker’s house and turned off the engine of the unmarked Mégane the police had given him. The only thing
conspicuous about it was the radio for communication with headquarters. Morelli had shown him how to use it and had given him the police frequencies.

Earlier, he’d taken Morelli to the radio station and they had both checked to make sure everything was in place. Before leaving, Frank had taken Pierrot aside in the tiny office next to
the glass doors at the entrance.

‘Pierrot, can you keep a secret?’

The boy had looked at him timidly, his eyes half closed, as if wondering whether the request was within his capacities. ‘A secret means that I can’t tell anyone?’

‘Exactly. And now that you’re a policeman, you’re taking part in a police investigation and policemen don’t want their secrets getting out. It’s
top secret.
Do you know what that means?’

Pierrot had nodded vehemently, shaking hair that badly needed a trim.

‘It means it’s so secret that we’re the only ones who can know. Okay, Agent Pierrot?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He had brought his hand to his forehead in a sort of salute, as he had probably seen on TV. Frank had pulled out the A4 print of the album sleeve that Guillaume had enlarged from the video.

‘I’m going to show you a picture of a record cover. Can you tell me if it’s in the room?’

He had held the image up to Pierrot, who had squinted the way he did when he was concentrating. When the boy raised his head and looked at him, he had shown no sign of satisfaction on his face,
the way he usually did when he knew the answer.

‘It’s not there.’

Frank had masked his disappointment so that Pierrot wouldn’t notice, treating him as if he’d given the right answer. ‘Very good, Agent Pierrot. Excellent. You can go now, but
don’t forget. Top secret!’

Pierrot had crossed his forefingers over his lips in a vow of silence and left the room, heading towards the director’s booth. Frank had put the printout back in his pocket and left the
station in Morelli’s hands. On his way out he had seen Barbara wearing a particularly attractive black dress, speaking to Morelli.

Frank was still thinking about the sergeant and his human inclinations when the gate opened and he saw Helena Parker slowly emerge from the shadows thrown by the indirect light of the
reflectors.

First, he saw her graceful figure and heard her steps on the gravel, her movements fluid despite the uneven ground. Then he saw her face under the mass of blonde hair, streaked with copper and
lighter shaders, and then those sorrowful eyes. Frank wondered what lay behind them: what kind of suffering, how many moments of unwanted solitude or uninvited company, how much bare survival
instead of real life.

He would probably find out soon enough, and he asked himself just how much he really wanted to know. He suddenly realized what this woman represented for him and he had trouble admitting, even
to himself, that he was afraid her story would make him act like a coward. If it did, then however many arrests he made or men he killed, however far he could run, he would never be able to reach
himself. But if he did nothing, that fear would have no end.

He got out of the car and walked around to the other side to open the door. Helena Parker was wearing a dark trouser suit with a mandarin collar, an Asian style reinterpreted by some famous
designer. Still, her clothes were not a conspicuous display of wealth but rather of good taste. Frank noticed that she wore almost no jewellery and, as on the other occasions he had seen her,
makeup so light that it was almost invisible. She walked up to him and he got a whiff of her perfume, as fresh as the night itself.

‘Hello, Frank. Don’t feel you have to open the door for me.’ Helena got into the car and raised her face to Frank, still standing at the open door.

‘I’m not just being polite.’ Frank nodded towards the front of the Mégane. ‘This is a French car. Without a certain savoir faire, it refuses to start.’

Helena seemed to appreciate his attempt at levity and laughed. ‘You surprise me, Mr Ottobre. Men with a sense of humour are an endangered species.’ Frank thought her smile more
precious than any jewel. So close to it, he suddenly felt alone and disarmed.

As he started the engine, he wondered how long that kind of banter would last before they came to the real reason for their meeting. He also wondered which of them would have the courage to
bring it up first.

He glanced at Helena’s profile, a blend of light and darkness in the early evening. She turned and they exchanged a look. The attempt at cheerfulness disappeared from her eyes and the
sadness returned. And Frank realized that she would be the one to press the START button.

‘I know your story, Frank. My father forced it on me. I have to know everything he knows, just like I have to be everything he is. I’m sorry. I feel like an intruder in your life and
it’s not a pleasant feeling.’ Frank thought of the popular belief that men are hunters and woman their prey. With Helena Parker, the roles were somehow reversed.

‘The only thing I can give you in exchange is my own story. There is no other justification for the fact that I am with you and that I represent a series of questions for which you cannot
find the answers.’

Frank listened to Helena’s voice and drove slowly, following the flow of traffic as they rode down from Roquebrune towards Menton. Life buzzed all around them. Bright lights. Normal people
walking along the bright stretch of coast in search of frivolous amusement, whose only motivation was the perhaps futile pleasure of the search itself.

There are no treasures, no islands, no maps. Only their illusion, so long as it lasts. And sometimes the end of the illusion is a voice that murmurs two simple words: I kill . . .

Without realizing what he was doing, Frank put out his hand to turn off the radio, as though he feared an unnatural voice would call him back to reality. The light music in the background fell
silent.

‘The fact that you know my story doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the story itself. I hope yours is better.’

‘How can you compare the misery of two people?’ Helena’s voice was suddenly very gentle. It was the voice of a woman in the midst of turmoil who sought peace and offered it in
return. ‘What was your wife like?’

Frank was surprised at the spontaneity of her question. And by his own straightforward answer.

‘I don’t know what she was like. She was two people at the same time, like all of us. I could tell you how I saw her, but that’s useless now.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Harriet.’

Helena absorbed it like an old friend. ‘Harriet. I feel like I know a great deal about her, although I never met her. You’re probably wondering why I’m so presumptuous.’
There was a short pause, and then Helena’s voice again, full of bitterness. ‘A fragile woman can always recognize another.’

Helena looked out of the window. Her words were a journey that was coming to its destination.

‘My sister, Arianna, was the stronger one. She understood it all and she left – she fled our father’s madness. Or maybe she just wasn’t interested enough to lock herself
in the same prison. I couldn’t escape.’

‘Because of your son?’

Helena hid her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled by her fingers, covering her face in a tiny prison of grief.

‘He’s not my son.’

‘He’s not your son?’

‘No, he’s my brother.’

‘Your brother? But you said—’

‘I told you that Stuart was my son,’ Helena said, looking up. Nobody could bear all that pain without dying, without having died long ago. ‘He is. But he’s also my
brother.’

As Frank held his breath and tried to understand, Helena burst into tears. Her voice was a whisper, but in the tiny space of the car it sounded like a scream of liberation held in for far too
long.

‘Damn you. Damn you to hell, Nathan Parker. May you burn for a million years!’

Frank pulled in to a parking spot beside the road. He turned off the engine, leaving the lights on.

He turned to Helena. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the woman slid into his embrace to find protection: the fabric of his jacket for her tear-streaked face, his hand to
stroke the hair that had hidden a face full of shame for so long. They stayed that way for what seemed an eternity.

A thousand images flew through his mind. A thousand stories of a thousand lives, mixing real with imaginary, the present with the past, the true with the plausible, light with dark, the sweet
scent of flowers with the stench of rotting earth.

He saw himself in his parents’ home. He saw Nathan Parker’s hand as it stretched out to his daughter. Harriet’s tears with a dagger raised over a man tied to a chair. The flash
of a blade in his nostril and the blue-eyed gaze of an innocent ten-year-old boy living among depraved beasts.

The blinding light of hate in Frank’s mind slowly became a silent scream that smashed to pieces all the mirrors where human evil could be reflected, all the walls that could hide it, all
the closed doors where the fists of those seeking desperately to escape their torture pounded in vain.

Helena wanted only to forget. And that was exactly what Frank needed. Right there in that car parked next to the empty road. In that embrace. In the meaning of that encounter, which he had
needed for so long and which had come, finally.

Frank couldn’t tell who withdrew first. When their eyes met again, they both knew with the same incredulity that something important had happened. They kissed, and in that first kiss their
lips joined in trepidation, not love. The fear that it was only desperation disguised as love, that loneliness had led to these words, that nothing was as it seemed.

They had to kiss again and keep kissing before they could believe it. And the suspicion became a tiny hope, for neither of them could yet afford the luxury of certainty.

Afterwards, they looked at each other, breathless. Helena recovered first, caressing his face.

‘Say something silly. Something silly and alive.’

‘I think we lost our table reservation.’

Helena embraced him again and Frank listened as her giggles of relief were lost in tiny tremors against his neck.

‘I’m ashamed of myself, Frank Ottobre, but I can only think well of you. Turn this car around and go back to my house. There’s food and wine in the fridge. I can’t share
you with the rest of the world. Not tonight.’

Frank started the car and drove back along the same road. When had this happened? Maybe an hour or maybe a lifetime ago. He had lost his sense of time. But there was one thing he was sure of. If
he had seen General Nathan Parker at that moment, he would have killed him.

Hidden in his secret place, the man is lying on the bed. He has drifted off to sleep with the gratifying sensation of a boat going back out to sea. His breath is calm and
peaceful, barely audible, the sheet rising only enough to show that he is alive, that the white fabric thrown over him is a blanket and not a shroud.

Beside him, equally motionless, the wizened corpse lies in its glass coffin. He is wearing Gregor Yatzimin’s face with what seems like pride. This time the removal was a masterpiece.
Instead of a mask, it looks like the mummified skull’s real face.

The man lying on the bed is asleep and dreaming. Indecipherable images agitate his sleep, although the figures that his mind attempts to disentangle never manage to disturb the perfect
immobility of his body.

First, there is darkness. Now a dirt road with a construction site at its end appears in the soft light of a full moon. It is a hot summer night. Step by step, the man approaches the outline of
a large house barely visible in the shadows, calling to him with the familiar scent of lavender. The man feels the crunch of gravel beneath his bare feet. He wants to move forward but at the same
time he is afraid.