I Kill (5 page)

Roland hung up and Jochen sat there staring at the phone. He could practically see his manager’s face.

‘Great!’ said Arianna as she came up the steps, rubbing her hair with a towel. ‘You wait for me to leave and then you start with the phone calls. What am I supposed to think?
Is there another woman?’

‘No, it was Roland.’

‘Ah.’

Their whole situation was contained in that monosyllable. ‘He doesn’t like me, right?’

Jochen pulled her towards him, encircling her tiny waist with his arms. He leaned his cheek against her shoulder and spoke without looking at her.

‘That’s not the problem. Roland has issues, like everyone, but he’s a friend and his heart is in the right place.’

‘Did you tell him?’ asked Arianna, running her fingers through his hair.

‘I didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. I think I’ll tell him and Ferguson in Barcelona next week. But I’ll make the official announcement at the end of the
season. I don’t want to be followed around by journalists any more than I am now.’

The international press was having a field day with their relationship. Their faces were plastered on the front pages of all the gossip magazines, and reporters were making up all kinds of
stories about them.

Jochen raised his head and sought her eyes. His voice was a whisper of emotion.

‘I love you, Arianna. I loved you even before I met you.’

She didn’t answer, but silently watched the glimmer of light from below. Jochen felt a shudder of insecurity but he had already said it, and he couldn’t and wouldn’t go back
now.

The man’s head emerges from the water not far from the prow of the yacht. Through his underwater mask, he spots the anchor chain and swims to it slowly. His right hand
grabs hold and he observes the boat, its fibreglass hull reflecting the full moon. His breathing, fed by his oxygen tank, is calm and relaxed.

The five-litre tank on his back is not for long dives, but it is light and manageable and gives him enough air for his needs. He is wearing a plain black wetsuit, without logos or colours, thick
enough to protect him from the cold water. He cannot use a torch but the almost glaring light of the full moon is more than enough. Careful not to splash, he slides back underwater, following the
outline of the submerged hull with its long keel extending down towards the sea bed. He reaches the stern and grabs on to the ladder still hanging down.

Good.

No acrobatics needed to get on board. He loosens the rope around his waist. After affixing a snap hook to the ladder, the first thing he does is attach it to the other end of the hermetically
sealed box he is carrying. He removes the tank and the belt of weights and leaves them hanging on the ladder, a couple of feet below the water’s surface. He does not want to limit his
movements. He intends to take the two people above by surprise while they are asleep.

He is about to remove his fins when he hears footsteps on the deck above. He abandons the ladder and moves to the right so that he is hidden by the wall. From his position in the shadows, he
sees the girl walk to the side of the boat and stand looking out, enchanted by the play of moonlight on the flat sea. For an instant, her white bathrobe is yet another reflection. Then, in a fluid
gesture, she lets it fall to the ground and stands naked in the light.

From his position, the man sees her profile and admires her toned body, the perfect form of her small, firm breasts. His gaze follows the line of her buttocks that melts into her long, nervous
legs.

With quicksilver movements, the young woman reaches the ladder and sticks out a foot to test the water.

The man smiles, a tapered smile like that of a shark. A stroke of luck! He stealthily puts his scuba equipment back on and waits for her next move.

He hopes the girl won’t mind the cold and will give in to the temptation of a moonlit dip in the sea. As if reading his mind, she turns and starts climbing down the ladder, gently slipping
into the waves, shaking as the cold water gives her goose bumps and firms her nipples.

She swims away from the boat, out towards the open sea in the opposite direction from where he is waiting in his black wetsuit. The man’s silent movement below the water has the sinister
fluidity of a hunter starting to close in on his unwitting prey. The game is cruel and its stakes are life and death.

He slips noiselessly below the surface and descends easily to the bottom of the sea, where he starts swimming towards the girl, reaching her in moments. He looks up and sees her above him, a
dark stain against the light on the surface of the water. He rises unhurriedly, breathing very slowly so that the air bubbles do not betray his presence. When the girl is within arm’s reach,
he grabs her by the ankles and pulls her brutally down.

Arianna is stunned by the violent thrust underwater. She has no time to fill her lungs with air. Almost immediately, the grasp on her ankle is loosened. She instinctively kicks to push herself
upwards but two hands are placed on her shoulders and their weight pushes her further down towards the bottom, far from the film of water shining above her head like a mocking promise of air and
light. She feels the slimy contact of the wetsuit, two predatory arms gripping her like a belt above her breasts, and an unknown body attached to hers as her assailant pinions her pelvis with his
legs.

Terror encloses reason within a wall of ice.

Wildly, she tries to free herself, whimpering, but her lungs, already lacking oxygen, quickly burn out all her reserves. As her need for air intensifies, Arianna feels her strength fade, still
at the mercy of the body clutching hers, pulling her down towards the moonless night at the bottom of the sea.

She senses that she is about to die, that someone is killing her and she doesn’t know why. Salty tears of regret intermingle with the millions of drops of indifferent water around her. She
feels the darkness of that embrace expand and become part of her like a bottle of black ink pouring into the clean water. A cold, pitiless hand starts exploring every part of her, inside and out,
trying to extinguish any tiny flame of life, until it reaches her young woman’s heart and stops it forever.

The man feels the body suddenly slacken at the moment that it is abandoned by life. He waits a second, then turns the girl so that her face is towards him, puts his hands under her armpits, and
starts kicking with his fins to rise to the surface. As he heads upwards, the young woman’s face is no longer a dark blotch outside his goggles. He sees her delicate features, small nose and
half-opened mouth from which a few last air bubbles escape. Her magnificent green eyes are immobile as they approach the light that they can no longer see. He looks at the face of the woman he has
killed like a photographer developing a particularly important negative. When he is completely sure of the beauty of her face, he smiles.

The man’s head finally emerges from the water. Still holding the body, he swims to the ladder. He takes the line that he had attached to the metal box and winds it around the woman’s
neck so that it holds her as he removes his tank and mouthpiece. The body slips underwater, rippling slightly; the girl’s hair remains afloat, lapping like the waves against the hull, moving
softly in the moonlight like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

He removes his fins and mask and puts them down carefully, silently. When he is free, he grabs hold of the ladder with his left hand and loosens the rope holding the body, grasping it with his
right arm. Without any apparent effort, he climbs the wooden steps, carrying his victim. He observes her for a while and then leans down to pick up the bathrobe she was wearing before her night
swim.

In a belated gesture of pity, he spreads the robe over the woman lying on the deck, as if he wanted to protect the cold body from the chill of a night, which, for her, would never end.

‘Arianna?’

The voice is suddenly heard from below. The man turns instinctively towards it. The girl’s companion might have been awakened by the sense that he was alone in the whitish moonlight
flooding the cabin. Perhaps he had stretched his leg to seek contact with her skin and felt only emptiness. Perhaps he had called and there had been no answer, so now he was coming to look for
her.

Covered by the black wetsuit that turns him into a shadow even darker than those thrown by the moon, the man finds a hiding place, where the mast and the boom meet.

From where he stands, he sees the woman’s companion emerge from below deck. He is naked. Turning his head as he climbs on deck, he sees her and stops. She is lying at the stern, near the
rudder and the ladder. Her face is turned away and she appears to be sleeping, covered haphazardly by the white bathrobe. He takes a step towards her. His bare feet sense puddles of cold water on
the wooden deck. Maybe he thinks she went for a swim and he feels a surge of tenderness for the body that seems to be asleep in the moonlight. Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he sees her swimming
gracefully in the quiet sea, her wet body shining as she leaves the water and carefully dries herself. He goes over to her as if perhaps to wake her with a kiss, to bring her down to the cabin and
make love to her. He kneels down and puts a hand on her bare shoulder above her robe. The man with the black wetsuit can hear every word he says.

‘Darling.’ The woman does not show the slightest sign of having heard. Her skin is like ice. ‘Darling, you can’t stay out here in the cold.’

Still no answer. Jochen feels a strange terror carve its way into the pit of his stomach.

Cautiously, he takes her head in his hands and turns Arianna towards him. His eyes meet a lifeless stare. The movement causes a stream of water to trickle from her mouth. He knows immediately
that she is dead and a silent scream possesses him. He jumps up and in that very instant, feels a damp arm around his neck. The sudden pressure makes him arch backward.

Jochen is taller than average and he has the body of an athlete, perfectly trained during long hours at the gym so that he can endure the extraordinary physical stress of the Grand Prix. Still,
his aggressor is taller and just as strong. He also has the advantage of surprise and of Jochen’s shock at the girl’s death. The driver instinctively raises his hands and grabs the arm
covered by the wetsuit, which is pressed tight against his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a reflection sparkle on his right. A fraction of a second later, the assailant’s
knife, sharp as a razor, cuts through the air with a hiss, drawing a swift circle downward.

The victim’s body shudders and contracts in the agony of death as the blade penetrates his ribs and splits open his heart. He feels the unnatural taste of blood in his mouth, and he dies
with the moon’s cold smile in his eyes.

The man continues to press with the knife until the body is completely limp in his arms. Only then does he let go of the knife, supporting the body with his own. He eases it down to the deck
and, breathing slowly to calm his panting, stands there a moment, looking at the two corpses. Then he grabs the man’s body and starts dragging it below.

He has very little time and a great deal of work to do before the sun comes up.

The only thing lacking is a little music.

Roger came out on the deck of the
Baglietto
and breathed the fresh morning air. It was seven thirty and promised to be a beautiful day. After Grand Prix week, the owners
of the yacht that he commanded had gone, leaving the boat in his care until the summer cruise, which usually lasted a couple of months. He had at least another six weeks of peace in the harbour of
Monte Carlo, without the ship’s owner and his wife, a huge pain in the ass who had every type of plastic surgery imaginable and was so covered in jewellery that you needed dark glasses to
look at her in the sun.

Donatella, the Italian waitress at the Restaurant du Port, was just setting the outdoor tables. The people who worked in the offices and stores around the harbour would soon be coming in for
breakfast. Roger stood watching her in silence until she noticed. She smiled and pushed her chest out just a little more.

‘Life’s good, huh?’

‘Could be a lot better,’ said Roger, continuing the banter that had been going on between them for a while. He pretended to look sad.

Donatella moved the few feet that separated the tables from the stern of the boat and stopped right below him. Her open blouse revealed an intriguing furrow between her breasts and Roger plunged
his gaze down like a fishing line. The girl noticed but gave no sign that it bothered her.

‘You know, if you used your words as well as your eyes . . . Hey, what’s that nutter doing?’

Roger turned his head to follow the girl’s look and saw the twin-engine Beneteau yacht heading straight towards the line of anchored boats at full speed. There was nobody on the
bridge.

‘Stupid idiots.’

He left Donatella and ran to the prow of the
Baglietto.
He started waving his arms frantically, shouting, ‘Hey, you with the twin engine! Watch out!’

There was no sign of life from the yacht. It was heading straight towards the quay without slowing down. Now it was just a few yards away and a collision seemed inevitable.

‘Hey!’

Roger cried out, then grabbed the handrail and waited for the impact. With a violent crash, the Beneteau’s prow rammed into the
Baglietto s
port side, wedging itself between its
hull and that of the boat anchored next to it. Luckily, there was not too much damage; the fenders had helped to soften the blow. Still, there was an ugly grey scratch in the paintwork. Roger was
furious.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!’ he shouted.

There was no answer from the other boat. Roger climbed from the bridge of the
Baglietto
on to the prow of the Beneteau as a group of curious onlookers gathered around the pier. When he
reached the stern, he noticed something strange. The rudder was blocked. Someone had slipped in the pole hook, tying it with a rope. A red trail started on deck and continued over to the steps
leading to the cabins below. It seemed bizarre and Roger got a cold knot in his stomach. As he approached, his legs started to shake. Two words were written on the table in the same red liquid.