I Kill (52 page)

In other words, a land regatta, free and easy, with the wind in their hair. He suspected their jaunt would begin and end without leaving her hotel room. Not that he minded. Not at all.

He threw his cigarette into the sea and walked back to the cruiser. He went on board in the absolute silence, listening to the gangplank creak under his step. There was nobody around and the
sailors were sound asleep. He went down to his cabin next to that of Jack Sunstrom, the skipper. Jack was a terrific guy, but he snored so loudly that he sounded like a go-kart race. Light sleepers
needed earplugs to be anywhere near him. The two cabins on either side of Sunstrom’s were chosen by lot and he and John Sikorsky, the tactician, had lost.

There was no noise coming from Sunstrom’s cabin, a sign that he was still at the party or still awake. Hudson removed the jacket of his official uniform, planning to change and put on
something less flashy. The affair that evening was one thing; going around town like a colourful tropical fish was another. He put on a pair of blue trousers and a white shirt that showed off his
tan. He decided to keep his shoes on – comfortable, cool deck shoes. His all-American looks didn’t require a pair of cowboy boots. He sprayed on a little cologne. Looking at himself in
the mirror, he thought that, narcissism aside, a touch of healthy, honest male vanity would add spice to the evening.

Hudson left the boat, trying to make as little noise as possible. The sailors – professionals who worked hard and looked down on regatta crews as spoiled and lazy – were not very
understanding about people who disturbed their well-deserved rest.

He found himself back on the pier, alone.

Serena must have decided to go back to her hotel and change before coming to pick him up. Her evening gown and heels were not the right clothes in which to continue the evening, however it would
end. And it was quite likely that her own healthy, honest female vanity required a bit more time.

He glanced at his watch and shrugged. There was no need to keep checking the time. He would have the next day all to himself and that allowed for some laziness. Up to a point, anyway.

Hudson McCormack lit another cigarette and pondered his stay in Monte Carlo. It included a few tasks that were not exactly part of the regatta. A classic two-birds-with-one-stone. He had to
speak to a few bank directors and see a couple of business people. People who were very, very important for his future.

He ran his hand over his chin, still smooth from his close shave before the fancy event. Hudson knew what he was doing and the risks he was taking. Anyone who saw him as just a good-looking
American – healthy, athletic and in love with his sport – was making a big mistake. There was an intelligent, extremely practical mind behind his charming looks.

He was well aware that he didn’t have what it took to be a king of the courtroom. Not because he lacked the ability, but because he simply didn’t want to wait. He had no desire to
slave away trying to pull delinquents out of jail when they had every reason to be there. He had suspected for some time that his studies were not particularly suited to his temperament: he had no
intention of working his butt off all his life, hobnobbing with the filth of society at whatever level. He did not want to reach the age of sixty-five only to find himself playing golf with other
geezers full of money, making sure his dentures wouldn’t fall out on the putting green. He wanted the things that interested him
now,
at the age of thirty-three, while his mind and
body were able to back him up in the fulfilment of his desires.

Hudson McCormack had his own philosophy on life. He wasn’t greedy. He wasn’t interested in villas or helicopters or endless amounts of money or power. In fact, he considered those
things more a sort of prison than a sign of success. He pitied the bigshots, the ones who slept two hours a night and spent their days buying and selling bonds or whatever it was from five
different phones. They all ended up in intensive care with heart attacks, wondering where it had all gone wrong and why, with all their money and power, they couldn’t buy themselves more
time.

Hudson McCormack, the young lawyer, took absolutely no pleasure in arranging the destinies of others: he wanted only to control his own. His ideal life was on the ocean, sailing. The wind in his
hair and the sound of the prow cutting through the waves; the freedom to choose the route, any route, according to the moment.

He threw his cigarette butt into the sea. To do what he wanted, he needed money. Lots of money. Not an enormous amount, but a substantial sum. And there was only one way to get it in a hurry: by
circumventing the law. That was how he put it. A slight euphemism. Not
breaking
the law, but
circumventing
it. Walking along the edge, on the margins, so that he could turn around
quickly if someone called, showing his good-boy face and answering ‘Who, me?’ with innocent eyes. He could not deny that there was a risk involved, but he had weighed it up carefully.
He had examined the question up and down, front and back, and decided that the risk was, all told, acceptable. There were drugs involved and that was not to be taken lightly. Still, this case was
special,
very
special, as cases involving mountains of money always are.

Everyone knew where drugs were produced and refined and what they were used for. Entire countries based their economies on different kinds of powders, which cost less than talcum powder where
they were produced but went up 5,000 or 6,000 per cent once they reached their destination.

The various comings and goings of these operations were part of a horrific war, no less ferocious and well-organized because it was underground. There were soldiers, officers, generals and
tacticians who remained in the shadows but were no less capable and determined. And liaising between the various armies were people who had turned money laundering into a professional calling. The
business world was not sophisticated enough to turn its back on someone who came with three or four billion dollars, if not more.

Hudson McCormack was not a big enough hypocrite to hide his head in the sand. He knew that what he was doing was a legitimate part of the shit that was destroying the planet. He did not intend
to shirk from his own implacable judgement. It was only a question of stimuli, of weights on the scales. For the moment, what he wanted was on one side and had much greater weight than any argument
he could put on the other.

He had carefully assessed the situation during long evenings at home, poring over the facts with the same coldness used to analyse the balance sheet of any legitimate company. He believed that
he had foreseen everything. He had even made a list of things that were unforeseeable. The possible events and outcomes that couldn’t be known.

In the best-case scenario, he would have enough money to soothe his conscience and get the boat he wanted. Then he would sail around the world, free as the wind. In the worst-case scenario
– and he knocked on wood – the consequences would not be that bad. In any case, they would not be enough to ruin his life completely.

He had left himself several outs, which put acceptable limits on the risks. As acceptable as a risk of that kind could be. Everyone has a price, and he knew he was no different. Still, Hudson
McCormack was neither corrupt nor greedy enough to raise the price to a rash level that he could not support.

He was pulling the strings. In a very short time, his fee would be deposited into a Cayman Islands bank account, where the first half was already credited. He thought about the person who had
made the deposit for him, his client Osmond Larkin, who at that moment was sitting in jail in America.

The man disgusted him; his revulsion had only grown with every meeting. His cruel eyes. His attitude that the world owed him something. His arrogant tone, always smarter than everyone else,
turned Hudson’s stomach. Like anyone who thought himself clever, Osmond Larkin was also stupid. Like every cunning person, he could not keep from showing it off, and that was why he was in
jail. Hudson would have loved to stand up and tell him so, and then leave the room. If he could have had his way, he would even have violated professional secrecy and told the investigators
everything.

But he couldn’t do that.

Besides the risks he had already taken, that option would mean pressing the remote and turning off a TV showing a magnificent yacht cutting through the waves with a handsome man at the
tiller.

No, there was nothing he could do. Despite his aversion to Larkin, he had to deal with certain unpleasant things if he was to get everything he wanted.
Not everything,
he said to himself,
but a lot and without delay.

He walked back towards the sponsor’s cruiser. The boats were lost in the darkness. Only the larger ones had on their service lights, reflecting in the water.

He looked around. The wharf was deserted, the bars closed, their plastic chairs piled atop the outdoor tables, the umbrellas down. It seemed strange. It was summer after all, despite the late
hour, and summer nights always had impromptu actors onstage. Especially summer nights on the Côte d’Azur. He remembered what Serena had told him about the serial killer. Was that why he
was the only person on the pier? Maybe nobody wanted to wander around and chance running into the killer. When people are afraid, they generally seek the company of others in the illusion of
protection. In that sense, Hudson was a real New Yorker. If he allowed himself to think like that, he would never leave his apartment.

He heard the engine of an approaching car and smiled. Serena had finally made it. He imagined the girl’s nipples hardening at his touch and he felt a pleasant, warm sensation and a
satisfying bulge under his zipper. He would think of some excuse to get her to let him drive. An intriguing image came to him as he waited, of him driving the convertible past the pine trees along
the dark
haute corniche,
the wind in his hair and a lovely New Zealander bent over his lap with his cock in her mouth.

He moved towards the city lights on the other side of the wharf to meet her. He did not hear the steps of the man coming up from behind, for the simple reason that they were silent.

But the arm that encircled his throat and the hand that covered his mouth were made of iron. The blade of the knife, striking him from above, was precise and lethal.

It cut his heart in two.

Hudson’s athletic body doubled in weight and suddenly fell limp in the arms of his killer, who held him effortlessly. Hudson McCormack died with the sight of the castle of Monte Carlo in
his eyes, without the satisfaction of one small, final vanity. He never knew how well his white shirt set off the red of his blood.

From her balcony, Helena responded with a smile to her son’s wave as he walked out of the courtyard with Nathan Parker and Ryan Mosse. The gate clicked shut and the house
was deserted. This was the first time in several days that they were leaving her alone and she was surprised. She could see that her father was following a plan, but she was unsure of the details.
She had walked in on her father and his thug in the midst of a conversation that had stopped suddenly as she entered the room. Ever since her involvement with Frank, her presence was considered
suspicious, even dangerous. The general hadn’t even considered the idea of leaving her alone with Stuart for an instant. So now that she was left at home, anguish was her only companion.

Before going out, on her father’s orders Ryan Mosse had removed all the phones and locked them in a room on the ground floor. Helena didn’t own a mobile phone. Nathan Parker spoke to
her briefly in the tone he used when he would not accept ‘no’ as an answer.

‘We’re going out. You’ll stay here, alone. Need I say more?’ He interpreted her silence as an answer. ‘Good. Let me remind you of just one thing, if I have to.
Frank’s life depends on you. If your son isn’t enough to bring you to reason, maybe the other one will be a deterrent for anything you want to do.’

As her father spoke to her through the door that opened on to the garden, she could see Stuart and Mosse waiting for him by the gate.

‘We’ll be leaving here as soon as I finish what I have to do. We have to take your sister’s body home, although that doesn’t seem to matter much to you. When we’re
back in the States, your attitude will change, you’ll see. This is just a stupid infatuation.’

When he had returned from Paris and she’d found the courage to throw her affair with Frank Ottobre in his face, Nathan Parker had gone crazy. He certainly wasn’t jealous, at least
not the traditional jealousy of a father for his daughter. Nor was it the attachment of a man towards his lover since, as she had told Frank, it had been years since he had forced her to have
sexual relations with him.

That seemed to be over for ever, thank God. The mere thought of his hands on her brought back a revulsion that she could still feel years later, which gave her an urgent need to wash. His
attentions
had stopped as soon as the baby had been born. Even earlier, when she had told him in tears that she was pregnant.

She remembered her father’s eyes when she had told him that she was going to have an abortion.

‘You’re going to do what?’ Nathan Parker had asked, incredulous, as if it were that idea and not the pregnancy that was an abomination.

‘I don’t want this child. You can’t force me to keep it.’

‘And you can’t tell me what I can and cannot do. I am the one who tells you. And you will do nothing, do you understand? N-o-t-h-i-n-g,’ he had enunciated slowly, inches from
her face.

‘You
will have
this child.’ He had handed down his sentence.

Helena would have liked to slash open her womb and pull out what she carried inside with her own bloody hands. Her father had read her mind, which was written on her face. In any case, she had
not been left alone for a single moment after that.

To justify her pregnancy and Stuart’s birth in the eyes of the world, Nathan Parker had invented that ridiculous story of the marriage. Parker was a powerful man. As long as national
security was not at stake, he was permitted to do almost anything he wanted.