"I Kill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Faletti Giorgio)

SEVEN

As he walked towards the port, Frank saw a group of people watching police cars and uniformed men work their way among the boats moored along the quay. He heard a siren approaching behind him and he slowed his step. All those police meant that something more than a mere boating accident had occurred.

And then there were the reporters. Frank had too much experience not to recognize them at first sight. They were wandering around, sniffing out news with a frenzy only caused by something big. The siren, far away at first like a premonition, now wailed ever closer.

Two police cars raced along the coast from the Rascasse, pulling up in front of the barricades. A policeman hurried over to let them through. The cars stopped behind the ambulance, its back doors open like the jaws of a beast ready to swallow its prey.

Several uniformed and plainclothes policemen got out of the cars and headed towards the stern of a yacht anchored not far away. Frank saw Inspector Hulot standing in front of the gangway. The newcomers stopped to talk to him and then they all boarded the vessel and crossed the deck on to the boat wedged, listing, between the two either side of it.

Frank wandered slowly through the crowd and ended up at the wall to the right of the cafe. He found a position from which he could watch the scene comfortably. From the hold of the twin-masted vessel, several men emerged, carrying two plastic body bags. Frank observed with indifference the transfer of the bodies to the ambulance. Years ago, crime scenes had been his natural habitat. Now the spectacle was foreign to him, neither a professional challenge for a policeman, nor a scene of horror that offends his sense of humanity.

As the ambulance doors closed on their cargo, Inspector Hulot and the people with him walked single file down the Baglietto gangway. Hulot went directly towards the small crowd of newspaper, radio and TV reporters, which two policemen were now trying to hold back. Before he even reached them, Frank could hear the clamour of overlapping questions and see the microphones thrust up Hulot’s nose to force some scrap of information out of him, even a fragment that they could manipulate to arouse interest. When reporters couldn’t offer the truth, they were content to stir up speculation.

As Hulot dealt with the press with a robotic repetition of ‘no comment’, he turned to look in Frank’s direction. Frank realized that Hulot had seen him. The inspector abandoned the group of reporters with their unanswerable questions and waved Frank over to the barricade. Reluctantly, Frank detached himself from his vantage point and made his way through the crowd towards Hulot. The two men looked at each other. The inspector had probably only been up for a little while, but he already looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

‘Hi, Frank. Come inside.’

He motioned to a policeman nearby to move the barricade so Frank could pass through. They sat down at one of the cafe’s outdoor tables, under a parasol. Hulot’s eyes wandered as if he couldn’t explain to himself what had just happened. Frank removed his Ray-Bans and waited to make eye contact.

‘What’s up?’

‘Two dead, Frank. Murdered,’ he said, without looking at him. Hulot paused. Then he finally turned and looked at Frank. ‘And not just any two. Jochen Welder, the Formula 1 racing driver. And his girlfriend, Arianna Parker, a famous chess champion.’ Frank said nothing. He knew, instictively, that it wasn’t over. ‘They have no faces left. The killer flayed them like animals. It’s horrible. I have never in my life seen so much blood.’

In the distance, the plaintive siren of the ambulance and the forensics van receded into the city. The curiosity seekers gradually straggled off, overcome by the heat and bored by the dwindling activity on the quay. The reporters had gleaned all they could possibly get and they, too, were starting to pack up.

Hulot paused again. He stared at Frank, saying a great deal with his silence. ‘Want to take a look?’

Frank wanted to say no. Everything inside him said no. He would never again look at a trace of blood or overturned furniture, or touch the throat of a man lying on the ground to see if he was dead. He was no longer a policeman. He was no longer even a man. He was nothing.

‘No, Nicolas. I don’t feel like it.’

‘I’m not asking for you. I’m asking for me.’

Although Frank Ottobre had known Nicolas Hulot for years, he felt as though he were seeing him for the first time. They had once collaborated on an investigation that had involved the Bureau and the Sûreté Publique – some international money-laundering story tied to drugs and terrorism. The Monaco police, given their nature and efficiency, were in constant contact with police forces all over the world, including the FBI. Because of his perfect French and Italian, Frank had been sent to follow the investigation on the ground. He had got on well with Hulot and they had quickly become friends. They had stayed in touch, and he and Harriet had come to Europe once as guests of Hulot and his wife.

The Hulots had been planning a return visit to the States when the business with Harriet had happened. Frank still couldn’t give the events their proper name, as though not saying the actual words, Harriet’s suicide, kept the darkness at bay. In his mind, what had happened was still ‘the business with Harriet’.

When he had heard, Hulot had called almost every day for months. He had finally convinced Frank to end his isolation and come to Monte Carlo to visit him. With the discretion of a true friend, he had found him the apartment where he was staying. It belonged to André Ferrand, a company executive who was spending several months in Japan.

At that moment, Hulot was looking at him like a drowning man in need of a lifeboat. Frank couldn’t help but ask himself which of them was drowning and which was the lifeboat. They were two people alone against the cruelty of death.

‘Let’s go,’ said Frank, replacing his sunglasses and getting up suddenly, before he could give in to the impulse to turn and flee.

He followed his friend to the Beneteau, feeling his heart beating faster and faster. The inspector pointed to the steps on the twin-mast that led below deck, and let Frank go first. Hulot saw that his friend noticed the blocked rudder, but said nothing. When they were below, Frank looked around, keeping his eyes behind his shades.

‘Hmm… Luxury boat. Everything’s computerized. This is the boat of the lone sailor.’

‘Yeah, money was not an issue. Just think, he earned it by risking his life for years in a racing car and then ended up like this.’

Frank saw the traces left by the killer and the familiar marks left by forensics, who had found other less obvious details. There were the signs of a careful examination, of fingerprints taken and measurements made. The smell of death still lingered, even though all the portholes had been opened.

‘They found the two of them in there, in the bedroom, lying next to each other. The footprints you see were left by rubber shoes, maybe from a wetsuit. There are no fingerprints in the hand marks. The killer wore gloves at all times.’

Frank walked down the corridor, reaching the bedroom and stopping at the doorway. Outside was calm but inside it was hell. He had often witnessed scenes like this. Blood splashed on the ceiling. He had seen real slaughter. But that was men fighting other men, ruthlessly, for the things that humans desire: power, or money, or women. They were criminals fighting other criminals. Men against men, at any rate. Here, floating in the air was someone’s battle against his own personal demons, the ones that devour the mind as rust eats iron. No one could understand that better than Frank. He couldn’t breathe and turned to leave. Hulot greeted him above deck, then resumed his story.

‘At the port of Fontvieille where they were anchored, we were told that Welder and Parker set sail yesterday morning. They didn’t come back, so we think they dropped anchor off the coast somewhere. Not far off presumably, since they didn’t have much fuel. We still have to clarify the mechanics of the crime, but we have a plausible hypothesis. We found a bathrobe on deck. The girl might have gone out for some air. Maybe she went for a swim. The killer must have swum over from land. At any rate, he surprised her, pulled her underwater and drowned her. There were no wounds on her body. Then he got hold of Welder on deck and stabbed him. He pulled them both into the bedroom and calmly did… what I hope God strikes him dead for. Then he pointed the boat in the direction of the port, blocked the rudder so that it headed towards the dock, and left the way he came.’

Frank didn’t answer. In spite of the dim light, he was still wearing his sunglasses. With his head lowered, he seemed to be staring at the trail of blood that went between them like a track.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘You need to be fairly cold-blooded to do something like this, if that’s how it happened.’

He wanted to leave, to go back home. He didn’t want to have to say what he was saying. He wanted to return to the pier and resume his peaceful aimless walk in the sun. He wanted to breathe without realizing that he existed. But he went on talking.

‘If he came from land, then he didn’t do it in a fit of rage. It was premeditated. The whole thing must have been carefully planned. He knew where they were and they were more than likely the people he wanted to strike.’

The other man nodded, hearing something that had already occurred to him.

‘That’s not all, Frank. He left this as a commentary on what he did.’

Hulot made a gesture that underscored what was behind him. A wooden table and delirious words that could have come from the pen of Satan.

I kill…

At last Frank removed his glasses, as if he needed to see better in order to understand the words.

‘If that’s the way things were, these words mean only one thing, Nicolas. It’s not a commentary on what he did. It means he’s planning to do it again.’