I Kill (44 page)

‘No, I’m awake.’

They moved closer and Helena’s body slipped into the hollow of his arms with delicious ease. Frank again felt the miracle of Helena’s skin against his. She put her face on his chest
and breathed in.

‘You smell good, Frank Ottobre. And you’re handsome.’

‘Of course I’m handsome. I’m the average man’s answer to George Clooney. But what was the question?’

Helena’s lips on his were confirmation of the question, as well as its answer. They made love again, with that lazy sensuality that summoned their bodies, still half-asleep, with a desire
more emotional than physical. And their love made them forget the rest of the world, as only love can.

But the journey had a price. Afterwards, they lay in silence, staring at the white ceiling that hung over them a lot less than other presences they could feel in the amber light of that room
– presences that would not go away if they merely closed their eyes.

Frank had spent the entire day at police headquarters working on the No One investigation. As the hours had passed and he watched every possible clue oscillate between nothing and absolute zero,
he had tried to seem active and concentrate as his mind wandered.

He had thought of Nicolas Hulot following a lead so threadbare that their anxiety showed right through it. He had thought of Helena, held prisoner by unforgivable blackmail and an equally
unforgivable jailer in that impenetrable prison with its open doors and windows.

Frank had returned to Beausoleil that evening and felt rewarded to find her in the garden, like a traveller who comes to the end of his pilgrimage after a long, tiring walk in the desert.

Nathan Parker had called from Paris a couple of times while Frank was with her. The first time he had moved discreetly away, but Helena had stopped him by grabbing his arm with surprising force.
He had listened to her conversation with her father, which consisted mostly of monosyllables, while her eyes gleamed with a terror he feared would never go away.

Finally, Stuart had come to the phone and Helena’s eyes had lit up as she spoke to her son. Frank had realized that Stuart was her lifeboat, her way of escape. He also knew that the way to
her heart passed directly through her son. It was impossible to have one without the other. Frank had wondered whether he would be capable of following that path, and a wave of foreboding swept
over him.

Helena placed her hand on the scar that ran across the left side of his chest, a pink area of skin that stood out against his tan. Helena could feel that it was different, skin that had grown
afterwards,
part of a suit of armour. It was meant to protect against harm, like all armour, but inevitably it had also prevented the gentle touch of a caress.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, running her fingers over it gently, tracing the outline.

‘Not any more.’

There was a moment of silence and Frank felt that Helena was touching
their
scars and not just his.

We’re alive, Helena. Beaten and imprisoned, but alive. And outside there’s someone shouting who is trying to dig us out of the rubble. Hurry, I’m begging you. Please
hurry.

Helena smiled and the light in the room grew brighter. She turned and climbed on top of him as if to declare a personal conquest. She bit his nose gently.

‘What if I bit it off? George Clooney would win by a nose.’

Frank pushed her face away with his hands. Helena tried to resist, and her mouth left his nose with a sucking noise. ‘With or without a nose, I’m going to have a lot of trouble
imagining my life without you.’

A shadow passed over Helena’s face and her grey eyes turned the colour of a knife blade. She took his hands from her face. Frank tried to imagine the thoughts behind that shadow.

‘What’s wrong? I didn’t say anything so bad. I didn’t ask you to marry me, you know.’

Helena buried her face in his shoulder. Her tone declared their brief, light-hearted moment over.

‘I’m already married. Or at least I was.’

‘What do you mean, you were?’

‘You know what the world of politics is like, Frank. It’s show business. Everything’s fake, it’s all fiction. And like in Hollywood, anything’s possible in
Washington, as long as it isn’t made public. A man with a career can’t have the scandal of an unmarried daughter with a baby.’

Frank kept silent, waiting. He felt Helena’s warm, damp breath caress him as she spoke. Her voice came from somewhere on his shoulder, but it sounded like it was coming from the depths of
a well.

‘All the moreso if the man is General Nathan Parker. So officially, I’m the widow of Captain Randall Keegan, killed during the Gulf War with a wife in America expecting a child that
wasn’t his.’

She raised herself to the position she had been in before, her face against his. There was a smile on her lips but she looked into Frank’s eyes as if a pardon could only come from him.
Frank never knew that a smile could hold so much bitterness. As Helena described her situation, it was almost as if she were speaking about someone else, someone she both pitied and despised.

‘I’m the widow of a man I saw for the first time on our wedding day and never saw again, except in a flag-draped coffin. Don’t ask me how my father got him to marry me. I
don’t know what he promised in exchange, but I can imagine. It was to be a marriage by proxy, long enough to create a smokescreen, followed by a simple divorce. Meanwhile, an uncomplicated
career, an endless red carpet. And you know the funny thing?’ Frank waited, silently. He knew very well that the funny thing would not be at all funny. ‘Captain Randall Keegan died in
the Gulf War without firing a single shot. He fell heroically during unloading operations, hit by a Hummer with failed brakes. One of the shortest marriages in history.’

Frank did not have time to answer. He was still absorbing this further demonstration of Nathan Parker’s treachery and power when his mobile phone on the table started to vibrate. Frank
managed to grab it before the ringer went on. He looked at the time. Time for trouble.

‘Hello?’

‘Frank? It’s Morelli.’

Helena, lying next to him, saw his face contract.

‘What is it, Claude? Something bad?’

‘Yes, Frank, but not what you think. Inspector Hulot was in a car accident.’

‘When?’

‘We don’t really know yet. The French traffic police just informed us. A hunter who went out to train his dogs found his car at the bottom of a ditch off a side road near Auriol, in
Provence.’

‘How is he?’

Morelli’s brief silence was eloquent. Frank felt anguish tear at his heart.

No, Nicolas. Not you, not now. Not in this God-awful way when your life seemed like a pile of shit. Not like this, bad boy.

‘He’s dead, Frank.’

Frank gnashed his jaws so hard that he could hear his teeth crunch. His knuckles turned white on the phone. For a moment, Helena thought he might crush it in his hand.

‘Does his wife know?’

‘No. I haven’t told her. I thought you’d want to.’

‘Thanks, Claude. Good thinking.’

‘I would have preferred not to get that compliment.’

‘I know, and I thank you, on Céline Hulot’s behalf as well.’

Helena watched him go over to the armchair where his clothes were scattered. He pulled on his trousers. She got out of bed, covering her breasts with the sheet. Frank didn’t notice that
instinctive gesture of modesty – nudity was still not natural for her.

‘What happened, Frank? Where are you going?’

Frank looked at her and Helena could read the bitter pain on his face. She watched him sit on the bed to put on his socks. His voice came to her from behind the shield of his scarred
shoulder.

‘I’m going to the worst place on earth, Helena. I’m going to wake a woman in the middle of the night to tell her that her husband is never coming home.’

It rained during Nicolas Hulot’s funeral. The sky had apparently decided to interrupt the beautiful summer weather and pour down the same tears that were being cried
below. It was a steady, uncompromising rain, as steady and uncompromising as the life of an ordinary police inspector. Now, unwittingly perhaps, he was collecting the only reward he might have
desired while he was still alive: to be lowered into the same earth that held his son, to the accompaniment of words written only to console the living.

Céline was standing by the grave next to the priest, her face frozen in a mask of pain as she witnessed the reuniting of her husband and son. Her sister and brother-in-law, who had rushed
in from Carcassonne at the news, were beside her.

The funeral was private, in accordance with Nicolas’s wishes. Nonetheless, a small crowd had gathered at the Eze cemetery. From where Frank was standing, on the side at a slightly higher
elevation, he could observe the people surrounding the young priest conducting the burial service, his head uncovered despite the rain. They were friends and acquaintances and inhabitants of Eze,
and all of them knew and appreciated the character of the man to whom they were bidding a final farewell. There were also some who had come just out of curiosity.

Morelli was there, and Frank was moved by his profound expression of grief. Roncaille and Durand had come, representing the Principality authorities, as well as all the Sûreté
personnel who were not on duty. Frank saw Froben opposite him, his head also uncovered. In addition, Bikjalo, Laurent, Jean-Loup and Barbara, along with many of the staff of Radio Monte Carlo, were
there. Even Pierrot and his mother, off to one side.

The few reporters present were kept outside by security guards, although they were not really necessary. The death of a man in a car accident was far too commonplace to be of real interest, even
if it was the inspector of the No One case who had recently been removed from the investigation.

Frank looked at Nicolas Hulot’s coffin. It was being slowly lowered into the grave, dug into the earth like a wound, accompanied by a mixture of rain and holy water like a joint blessing
from heaven and earth. Two attendants wearing green raincoats and holding shovels started to fill the grave with earth.

Frank stood there until the last shovelful. Soon the ground would be smoothed over and someone who worked there would place a marble slab on top, like the one next to it. There would probably be
an epitaph saying that in some way, Stéphane Hulot and his father, Nicolas, had found each other. The priest said the final blessing and they all crossed themselves. In spite of everything,
Frank could not manage to say the word
Amen.

The crowd began to disperse straight away. Those closest to the family said a few words to the widow before leaving. Céline saw Frank as she was embraced by the Merciers. She greeted
Guillaume and his parents, received the hurried condolences of Roncaille and Durand, then turned and whispered something to her sister, who left her alone and started walking towards the cemetery
entrance with her husband. Frank saw Céline’s graceful figure approach him with her calm step and reddened eyes, which she refused to hide behind dark glasses.

Without a word, Céline sought refuge in his arms. He felt her weep silently on his shoulder, as she finally granted herself the relief of tears, which could not reconstruct her small,
shattered world. After a few moments Céline pulled away and looked at him. Incandescent grief shone in her eyes.

‘Thank you, Frank. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being the one to tell me. I know how difficult that must have been for you.’

Frank didn’t say anything. After Morelli’s phone call, he had left Helena and driven to Eze. He had pulled up at Nicolas’s house and stood in front of the door for five long
minutes before finding the courage to ring the bell. Céline had come to open it, holding the edges of her dressing gown over her light nightdress. She had known as soon as she saw him. She
was, after all, a policeman’s wife. She must have imagined that scenario many times, even while pushing it away as a bad omen. And now Frank was there, standing in the doorway, his face
grief-stricken, his silence confirming it, and now, after her son, her husband too would be far away.

‘Something’s happened to Nicolas, hasn’t it?’

Frank had nodded silently.

‘And . . .?’

‘Yes, Céline. He’s dead.’

Céline had closed her eyes for a moment and grown deathly pale. She had swayed slightly and he was afraid that she might faint. He had stepped forward to support her, but she had
recovered immediately. Frank had seen a vein throbbing at her temple as she asked him for the details she didn’t want to hear.

‘How did it happen?’

‘A car accident. I don’t know very much. He swerved off the road and landed in a ditch. He must have died immediately. He didn’t suffer, if that’s any comfort.’

As he spoke, Frank knew that his words were futile. Of course it wasn’t any comfort. Nor could it be, although Nicolas had told him of their agony over Stéphane lying in a coma, a
vegetable, until their pity overcame their hopes and they allowed the doctors to pull the plug.

‘Come in, Frank. I have to make a couple of phone calls, but one of them can wait until tomorrow morning. And I have to ask you a favour.’

When she had turned to look at him, her eyes, the eyes of a woman still in love with her husband, were full of tears. ‘Anything you want, Céline.’

‘Don’t leave me alone tonight, please.’

She had called Nicolas’s only relative, a brother who lived in America and who, due to the time difference, would not be woken in the middle of the night. She had explained the situation
briefly and hung up with a whispered ‘No, I’m not alone,’ in answer to what must have been the concern of the person on the other end of the line. She had turned to him.

‘Coffee?’

‘No, Céline. Thanks, I don’t need anything.’

‘Then let’s sit down, Frank. I want you to hold me tight while I cry.’

And so it was. They had sat there on the couch in the elegant room facing the terrace and the void of the night, and Frank had listened to her cry until the light began to tinge the sea and sky
with blue on the other side of the window. He had felt her exhausted body slip into a sort of stupor and he had held her with all the affection that he owed her and Nicolas, until he had given her
over to the care of her sister and brother-in-law much later in the day.