The man is safe in his secret hiding place, in that metal and cement box that someone dug deep under the ground long ago in fear of something that never happened. Ever since he discovered its existence, almost by accident, ever since he went inside for the first time and realized what it was and what it was for, he has kept his refuge in perfect working condition. The storeroom is full of tinned food and mineral water. There is a simple but efficient waste recycling system that would allow him to filter and drink his own urine, if necessary. The air is purified by chemical filters and reactants, and there is no need for contact with the outside world. His food and water supply will last for more than a year.
He goes out only occasionally, in darkness, with the sole purpose of breathing the pure air and smelling the perfume of summer, only slightly contaminated by the odour of the night, his natural habitat. The heady scent of a lavender bush in the garden triggers memories of boyhood fears, recurring dreams of a dark staircase. His mind selects these associations, like a record silently chosen from the others and slipped into place by the mechanical arm of a jukebox.
He moves in total silence in that house where he does not need light to see. Sometimes he goes out on to the terrace and, leaning against the wall, hidden in the shadow of the house, he raises his head to observe the stars. He makes no attempt to read the future, and is simply happy to admire the luminous twinkling in that fragment of the present. He doesn’t ask what will happen to him, or to them. It is not thoughtlessness or indifference, only awareness.
He doesn’t blame himself for making a mistake; he was sure that he would make one sooner or later. It is the law of chance applied to the fleeting life of a human being, and someone had taught him long ago that you pay for your mistakes. He had been forced to learn it the hard way.
And he, that is, they, had paid for their mistakes. More harshly every time, with heavier punishments as they grew older and their margin of error became more and more restricted until finally they met with complete intolerance. The man was inflexible, but in his presumption he forgot that he too was only a man. And that mistake had cost him his life.
He survived and that man did not.
He returns to his hiding place after those brief ventures outside and he waits. The dark metal lining makes it seem like a nocturnal place, as though he lets the darkness in through the door every time he opens it. When the door is closed the night is perpetuated for a little longer, and his isolation is complete.
Yet he does not feel the heaviness of waiting or of solitude. He has music and the company of Paso. And that is enough.
Yes, Vibo and Paso.
He no longer remembers when they invented those two meaningless nicknames. There may have been a precise reference, but it was probably just the randomness of it that they liked. A flash of youthful fancy with no need for explanation. Like faith, it was either there or it wasn’t.
With closed eyes, he listens to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, a rare live recording. He sits in the office chair, slowly rocking back and forth, following the melody that evokes a slow, gruelling climb, step by step, towards the sky. The stairway exists, but heaven might not.
In the other room, the corpse is still lying in its crystal coffin as if in suspended animation, waiting to be reawakened at the end of the journey that will never come. Maybe he hears the music too, or maybe he misses its finer points, wrapped in the new face, the last one procured to satisfy his understandable vanity. This false image, like all the others, will soon decompose. Then he will have to do something about it, but for now there is still time, and Robert Plant’s voice is his only priority.
The track ends. He leans on the wooden surface and stretches out his hand to press STOP. He doesn’t want to hear the rest of the record. One song is enough. He will turn on the radio and listen to voices from the outside world.
In the sudden silence following the music, he thinks he hears a series of rhythmic blows, as though something from outside is hammering on the door, causing a faraway series of echoes. He gets up from the chair and goes over to the door. He puts his ear to it and feels the cold of the metal against his skin. The blows are repeated and then, right afterwards, he can hear a voice shouting. The words from outside are indistinct, as from a great distance, but he is well aware that they are meant for him. He cannot make them out, but he guesses their meaning. The voice is certainly telling him to open the door of his refuge and surrender, before…
He takes his ear from the door with a smile. He is well aware that they are serious. He knows that there is not much they can do to get him out, but he also knows that they will do whatever they can. What they don’t know is that they will never catch him. At least not alive. He will never give them that satisfaction.
He walks away from the door and goes into the room where the corpse in the transparent cabinet seems to have a new lifelike tension instead of its normal stillness. There appears to be a hint of anxiety on the expressionless mask covering its face. He thinks that the expression must once have belonged to the man who had the face before. Now it is nothing but an illusion. Every emotion disappeared for ever, at the moment of his last breath.
There is a long, pensive silence. The man is silent, too, waiting. Several minutes pass. All eternity stretches before the dead, for whom time has no meaning. For the living, however, several minutes can last a lifetime. The voice in his head returns and asks the question he is afraid to hear.
What will become of me, Vibo?
The man pictures the cemetery in Cassis, the large cypress tree, the row of graves of people who were never their family, only their nightmare. There are no pictures on the headstones, but the faces of those inside are painted on the walls of his memory.
‘I think you’ll go home. And so will I.’
Oh.
A muffled exclamation, a simple monosyllable. A call for freedom, sunlight, the motion of the waves in the sea where men dive and come up as children again. Tears fall freely from the man’s eyes, running down his face to drop on the crystal case where he is leaning. Wet, ordinary tears devoid of nobility.
The affection in his eyes is boundless. For the last time, he looks at his brother’s body wearing another man’s face and sees him as he was, as he should have been: identical to him, a mirror in which he can see the reflection of his own face.
He takes a few steps back from the coffin before he is able to turn his back on it. He returns to the other room and stands for a moment in front of the long row of machines and recording devices that create music.
There is only one thing he can do now. It is his only escape and the only way he can once again defeat the bloodhounds that are after him. He thinks he can hear their paws scratching frantically on the other side of the metal door. Yes, there is only one thing left to do and he has to do it quickly.
He takes out the Zeppelin CD and puts in another heavy-metal disc, chosen at random, without even looking at the name of the band. The man puts it in the player, presses START, and the tray moves silently into place.
He raises the volume to the maximum with an almost angry gesture and imagines the musical impulse generated by the laser coursing through the plug and socket, running along the cables, as in a cartoon, reaching the Tannoy speakers that are unnaturally powerful for the tiny room, and climbing up to the tweeter and woofer…
Suddenly, the room explodes. The rhythmic fury of the heavy-metal guitars seems to glue itself to the steel walls that resonate and vibrate at their command. The thunder that the music is imitating blocks out the other voices. The man leans his hands on the wooden surface and listens to the beating of his heart. It pulses so hard that he feels that it, too, is about to explode in the amplified throb of white noise.
There is only one thing left to do. Now.
The man opens a drawer under the wooden surface and puts his hand inside without looking. When he takes it out, he is holding a gun.
‘Got it!’
Gachot, the bomb specialist, a tall well-built man with a dark moustache, got up from the ground with surprising agility. Frank could see that his Special Corps uniform was stretched over solid muscle; this man didn’t spend his time sitting at a desk exercising his jaws.
Gachot backed away from the metal door. Taped over the lock was a box the size of a cordless phone with a small antenna and two wires, one yellow and one red. The wires went from the device to a hole in the door under the wheel.
Frank looked at the plain and simple detonator. He thought of all the idiotic things you see in movies, in which the device to set off an atomic bomb that can destroy an entire city and kill millions of people always had a red display that counted down the seconds to the final boom. Of course, the hero always managed to defuse the device with only one second left, after agonizing endlessly, along with the audience, over whether he should cut the red wire or the green. Those scenes always made Frank smile. The lives of millions of people depended on whether or not the hero was colour-blind.
The reality was different. There was no need to visualize the countdown with a detonator linked to a timer, simply because there would be no one watching when the bomb exploded. And if someone actually had to be present, he couldn’t care less about the timer.
Gachot went up to Gavin. ‘I’m ready. Maybe you should have the men clear out.’
‘Is there a risk?’
‘There shouldn’t be a problem. I just used a little C4 and that’s manageable. It’s enough for what we need to do, I think. The effects of the blast should be limited. The only risk is with the door: it’s lined with lead. If I made any miscalculations and used too much C4, there might be some splinters flying. I’d say it’s better if everyone goes into the garage.’
Frank admired the caution of the bomb specialist, trained to defuse bombs as well as make them. He had the natural modesty of someone who knew how to do his job, although Gavin said he was smarter than the Devil.
Smarter than the man on the other side of this door, thought Frank.
‘And is the room upstairs safe?’
Gachot shook his head. ‘No problem, if they keep away from the stairway into the laundry room. The rush of air will be limited, but it will come out through the front windows.’
Gavin turned to his men.
‘Okay, you heard him. We’re going for fireworks. We’ll wait outside but right after the explosion, we rush in through the hall door and down the stairs to keep the shelter door under our control. We have no idea what will happen. He’ll probably be a little stunned by the explosive, but he’ll have a number of options.’ The sergeant counted them off on the fingers of his right hand. ‘Number one, for the optimists among you, he throws away his weapon and comes out with his hands up. Frankly, knowing what we do, I’m not expecting that scenario. Number two, he comes out armed, planning to take down as many men with him as he can. We don’t want any casualties or even wounded. If that’s the case, we shoot to kill, whatever he’s carrying, even if it’s a pencil sharpener.’
He looked at his men one by one to see if they had absorbed what he had just said. ‘Number three, he doesn’t come out. Then we teargas him out. And if he comes out fighting, we do the same as in number two. Okay?’
The men all nodded.
‘Good, now divide into two groups. Half of you go upstairs with Toureau. The others come with me, to the garage.’
The commandos walked away with the silent step that was their way of life. Frank was impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of Gavin and his men. Now that he was absolutely in his element, the lieutenant moved easily and rapidly. Frank imagined them sitting in the van, transported back and forth, the butts of their M-16s on the floor, chatting about nothing and waiting. Now the wait was over. They were about to go into action and each now had the chance to give some meaning to all the time spent in training.
When all the men were gone, Gavin turned to Morelli and Roberts. ‘You’d better keep your men outside. If we have to move, I don’t want too many people down here getting in each other’s way. All we need is for one of your men to get hit in the head by one of my men’s bullets, or vice versa. That wouldn’t be good for anyone. And who’d help them then, the desk boys?’
‘Got it.’
The two policemen went to tell their men the situation and give instructions. Frank smiled to himself at Gavin’s sarcasm. He had plenty of experience of FBI people giving orders without ever being in the firing line.
Now only Gavin, Gachot and Frank were left in the room. The bomb specialist was holding a remote control, slightly bigger than a matchbox, with an antenna just like the one on the detonator hanging from the door.
‘Whenever you’re ready. Just give the word,’ said Gavin.
Frank stood in silence, mulling it over. He stared at the small gadget Gachot was holding. It looked even smaller in his huge hand and Frank wondered how he managed to handle that kind of object with its tiny parts.
Brigadier Gachot had got there quickly, as Gavin had instructed, in a blue van just like the others with his team of two men plus the driver. When they had told him the situation, his dark face had turned even darker at the words bomb shelter. The men had unloaded their gear and gone down to the laundry room. Frank was well aware that one of those hard black-plastic briefcases with aluminium edges resembling a flight case contained explosives. While he knew that it was completely harmless without special conditions and a detonator, he was still a little uneasy. The case probably held enough explosives to reduce the house and everyone inside to shreds.
When he had come to the armoured door, Gachot had studied it for a long time in silence. He had run his hand across the surface as if touching it could tell him something that the metal did not want to reveal. Then he had done something that seemed absurd to Frank. He had pulled a stethoscope from his bag and listened with it to the gears of the mechanism, turning the wheel from one side to another to see which way it rotated.
Frank had been standing with the others, quivering like eggs in a frying pan. They resembled the family of a sick man, waiting for the doctor to tell them how serious the illness was. Gachot had turned around and, luckily for them, cut Gavin’s pessimistic predictions down to size. ‘We might be able to do it.’
The general sigh of relief had seemed to raise the floor two or three inches higher. ‘The door is armoured to protect against radiation and structural damage, but it’s not a safe. I mean, it wasn’t built to protect valuables, just the physical safety of the occupants. So the lock is fairly simple, partly because it’s pretty old. The only risk is that it might block completely instead of opening.’
‘What if that happens?’ Gavin had asked.
‘Then we’re fucked. We’d really have to open it with an atomic bomb, and I didn’t bring one along.’
With that joke, pronounced in all seriousness, Gachot had put a damper on the general enthusiasm. He had gone over to check the briefcases that his men had put near the door with the other equipment, and he had pulled out a drill that looked like something out of a sci-fi film. One of the men had fixed a drill-bit made of a kind of metal with an unpronounceable name, but which Gachot had described as hard enough to drill a hole through the armour of Fort Knox.
In fact the drill-bit had penetrated the door with relative ease, at least to a certain depth, producing thin spirals of metal that had fallen at the feet of the man holding the drill. Finally he had raised his goggles and moved over to make room for Gachot. The brigadier had knelt down in front of the hole and slipped in a fibre optic cable with a micro camera on one end and a visor that looked like a scuba mask on the other. He had put it on in order to guide the camera inside the lock.
Finally, he had opened the briefcase with the goods, revealing bricks of plastic explosive wrapped in silver foil. Gachot had opened one of them and cut off a sliver of explosive that looked like greyish clay. The bomb specialist had handled it offhandedly, but from the looks on everyone’s faces, Frank suspected that they were feeling the same knot in the stomach that he had felt earlier.
Using a wooden stick, Gachot had pushed a bit of C4 into the hole and then linked the wires that led to the detonator hanging next to the wheel.
Now they were ready. Still, Frank could not decide to give the order. He was afraid that something would go wrong and that they would, for some reason, find a corpse on the other side. That, too, might be an answer, but Frank wanted to catch No One alive, if only to see the psychopath handcuffed and taken away.
‘Just a second.’
He went up to the door, practically leaning his cheek on the surface of the lead. He wanted to try one last time to talk to the man inside and, if he was listening, ask him once more to come out unarmed with his hands up. He had tried before the bomb unit had arrived, but to no avail.
Frank banged his fist on the metal door, hoping that the deep thudding echo could be heard inside.
‘Jean-Loup, can you hear me? We’re going to blow the door open. Don’t force us, it might be dangerous. You’d be better off coming out. You won’t be hurt, I promise. I’ll give you a minute to decide and then we’re going to blow open this door.’
Frank stepped back, bent his right arm, and showed everyone his watch. He pressed the button of the chronograph. It marked the seconds one after another, like bad memories.
… 8, 9, 10
Arianna Parker and Jochen Welder, mutilated bodies in the boat wedged between the others at the pier…
… 20
… Allen Yoshida, his bleeding face with the skull-like grimace and blank eyes in the Bentley…
… 30
… Gregor Yatzimin, his composed grace on the bed, the red flower on his white shir, against the horrible mutilation of his face…
… 40
… Roby Stricker lying on the floor, his finger contracted in the desperate attempt to leave a message before he died, with the anguish of someone who knows everything and understands that he can say no more…
… 50
… Nicolas Hulot, slumped in his car with his bleeding face on the steering wheel, dead for the crime of being the first to know the killer’s name…
… 60
The bodies of the three policemen in the house…
‘Time’s up!’
Frank stopped the watch. Those sixty seconds, the last chance he had given the killer, had felt like a moment of silence owed to the victims out of respect.
‘Let’s open this fucking door.’
The three men went through the laundry room, reached the hallway, and turned left to join the others waiting in the garage. They were kneeling against the wall furthest from where the explosion would take place. Morelli and Roberts were standing in the courtyard. Frank motioned to them and they stepped away from the garage door for safety.
Gavin adjusted the microphone with the earpiece connecting him to his men via radio.
‘Okay boys, here we go.’
He joined the others against the wall. Lieutenant Gavin nodded to Gachot and, without any emotion, the bomb specialist raised the remote in his hand and pressed the button.
The explosion, perfectly positioned, was contained. They felt it more as a vibration than a blow. The rush of air, if there was any, was limited to the laundry room. The echo was still reverberating when the soldiers leapt towards the door, immediately followed by Frank and Gavin.
They found the men who entered from the garage and from upstairs standing in formation with their rifles pointed. There was no significant damage. Only the wooden bookcase that hid the entrance to the shelter was ripped off one of the upper hinges and leaning to one side. The little bit of smoke from the explosion was drifting out the windows, pushed open by the force of the blow.
The massive shelter door was ajar. The explosion had only knocked it open a few inches, as if someone had gone inside without closing it behind him. Incredibly loud music was pouring through the open door.
They waited a few seconds. Nothing happened. Nobody came out. The explosives had left an acrid smell in the air. Gavin barked an order into his two-way radio.
‘Tear gas.’
The commandos immediately pulled their gas masks out of their bags. They removed their Kevlar helmets, put on the masks, and replaced the helmets. Frank felt a pat on his shoulder and found Gavin handing him one.
‘You’d better put this on if you want to stay here. Know how to use it?’ In answer, Frank had the mask on in an instant. ‘Good,’ said Gavin, pleased. ‘I see they taught you something useful in the FBI.’
After putting on his own helmet, he waved to one of his men. The soldier leaned his rifle against the wall and inched his way along the door until he was next to the wheel, still attached to the door despite the explosion.
When he grabbed the handle and pulled, the door opened softly without a squeak, as they had all expected. The mechanism was obviously a simple one with perfectly working hinges. He opened the door just enough to allow another soldier to throw in a tear-gas grenade.
Yellow smoke wafted out a few seconds later. Frank was familiar with tear gas. When it got in your eyes and throat, it was unbearable. If there was anyone inside the shelter, it would be impossible to resist the effects. They waited a few endless seconds, but no one came out. Only the blasting music and the clouds of smoke that now seemed to be mocking them.
Frank didn’t like that. Not at all. He turned to Gavin and their eyes met through the gas masks. From his expression, Frank saw that Gavin was thinking the same thing.
Either there was nobody inside or else their man, knowing it was all over, had killed himself rather than letting them take him alive.
Or a third possibility: the bastard had a gas mask, too. This wasn’t science fiction – they had learned to expect anything from him. In that case, since only one man could get through the door at a time, all the killer had to do was get under cover and he’d take more victims before they could shoot him. He was armed and everyone knew what he could do.
Gavin made a decision. ‘Throw in a stun grenade. Then we’ll take our chances and enter.’
Frank could understand the lieutenant’s point of view. On the one hand, he felt ridiculous in that situation, commanding a group of men in combat gear assaulting a door that might lead to an empty room. On the other hand, he had no intention of losing any of his men in an unpleasant surprise. He knew each of them well and did not want to risk their lives.
Frank decided to allay his doubts. ‘After the grenade, I’m going in.’
‘Negative,’ responded Gavin sharply.
‘There’s no reason to risk any of your men uselessly.’
Gavin’s silence and look spoke volumes. ‘I can’t accept your offer.’
‘I have no intention of playing the hero, lieutenant.’ Frank’s answer was final. ‘But this is a personal affair between that man and me. I remind you that I am directing this operation and you’re here in support. I’m not offering. That’s an order.’ Then he changed his tone of voice, hoping that, even through the gas mask and their limited means of communication, the other man understood his intentions ‘If he had killed one of your best friends along with all the others, you’d do the same.’
Gavin nodded to show he understood. Frank walked over to the wall, pulled out his Glock and stood by the door. He waved when he was ready.
‘Grenade,’ Gavin ordered.
The soldier who had thrown the tear gas earlier pulled the tab of the grenade and tossed it in through the door. It was a device designed especially for that kind of assault. It was meant to stun the occupants of a room without killing them.
There was a blinding light and the sound of an explosion, much louder than the one produced by the previous explosives. The blaring music pouring out of the shelter was suddenly in its element, with coloured smoke and flashing lights. Not losing any time, the man on Frank’s right moved and open the door just enough to let him in. A puff of tear gas mixed with the smoke from the grenade came out. It was still impossible to see what lay inside. Frank moved at lightning speed and slipped in with his gun aimed.
The others waited expectantly.
A couple of minutes went by, an eternity to each and every one of them. Then the music stopped, followed by an even more deafening silence. Finally, the door opened completely and Frank reappeared, followed by a last wisp of smoke fluttering around his shoulders like a ghost risen from a tomb to show him out.
He was still wearing the gas mask and it was impossible to see his face. His arms were hanging down as if he had no energy left. He was still holding the gun. Without speaking, he crossed the laundry room like someone who has fought a lifelong war and known only defeat. The men stepped aside to let him pass.
Frank went to the door in front of him and down the hallway. Gavin followed and they reached the garage where Morelli and Roberts were waiting, their faces flushed with adrenalin under their masks. They went to stand in the square patch of sunlight that was coming through the raised garage door. Gavin removed his helmet and gas mask first. His hair was wet and his face dripping with sweat. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his blue uniform.
Frank stood for a moment in the middle of the garage, between sunlight and shade, and then he, too, removed his gas mask. His face was deathly tired.
Morelli went up to him. ‘Frank, what happened? You look like you’ve been to hell and back.’
Frank turned to him and answered with the voice of an old man and the eyes of someone who could see no more reason in life.
‘Worse, Claude, much worse. All the devils in hell would cross themselves before going in there.’
Frank and Morelli watched the stretcher being carried out of the garage and their eyes followed the men sliding it into the ambulance. Lying there, covered with a dark canvas, was the body they had found in the shelter – the wizened, faceless corpse wearing, like a mask, the face of a murdered man.
After Frank had come out of the shelter in shock, all the men, one by one, had entered the bunker, emerging with the same expression of horror. The sight of that mummified body lying in its crystal case wearing the stiffened mask of No One’s latest victim was a sight that could stagger the soundest mind, a vision they would carry with them day and night.
Frank still found what he had seen hard to believe. He felt unclean and wanted to wash himself again and again as if to cleanse his body would disinfect his mind from the evil that hovered in that place. He felt ill at the mere thought that he had breathed that air, as if it were saturated by a virus so contagious that it could infect anyone with criminal madness.
There was one thing Frank could not stop asking himself. Why? He realized that the answer was unimportant, at least for now, but the question continued to bounce around in his head.
He had gone into the bunker through the reinforced door, scanning the room from top to bottom as he advanced through the smoke, his gun in hand and his heart beating so fast that it kept him from hearing the deafening music. When he turned it off, all that was left was the rasp of his breath inside the gas mask. Apart from the motionless presence of the body – displayed in its monstrous vanity in a transparent coffin – all that he had found were empty rooms.
He had stood there looking at the corpse, mesmerized, staring at its pitiful nudity, unable to remove his eyes from that horrible spectacle. He had stared for a long time at the face covered with its death mask, which with the passing of time was beginning to resemble the rest of the body. There were some clots of blood on the neck of the corpse that peeked out from beneath the torn edges of the mask, proof of the difficult nature of that unnatural attempted transplant.
What was the point of the murders? All those people killed just to persuade a dead man that he was still alive? What kind of morbid pagan idolatry could inspire that kind of monstrosity? What was the explanation, if ever there could be any logic to that funeral rite that had required the sacrifice of so many innocent people?
This is true insanity, he had thought. The ability to feed off oneself only to generate more insanity.
When he had finally been able to tear his eyes away from that sight, he had gone out to allow each of the men to enter in turn.
The noise of the ambulance doors slamming shut brought Frank back to the present, and he saw Roberts’s lanky figure coming towards him. There was a police car waiting with its engine running and the door open. Roberts did not look like he wanted to linger there.
‘Okay. We’re done here,’ Frank said in an expressionless voice.
Frank and Morelli shook Roberts’s hand and said goodbye in the same monotone voice. The inspector found it hard to look them in the eye. Although he had lived through the affair on a more marginal level, and although he was not as deeply involved from the beginning, Roberts now had the same look of profound weariness. He too, probably, couldn’t wait to go back to his routine, to the stories of everyday poverty and greed, to men and women who killed out of jealousy or desire for money or by accident. Madness that was momentary and not for ever, madness that he would not be forced to carry around in his memory for the rest of his life. Like everyone else there, all he wanted was to get away from that house as quickly as possible and try to forget that it ever existed.
Frank heard the thud of the door closing and the sound of the engine, and then the car disappeared up the ramp that led to the street. Gavin and his men had already gone, as had Gachot with his team. They had driven away down the road descending to the city, their blue vans loaded with men, weapons, sophisticated equipment, and the prosaic sense of loss that always assails armies, large and small, after a defeat.
Even Morelli had sent most of his men back to headquarters. A couple of them were still there checking on final operations, after which they would escort the ambulance back to the morgue.
The roadblocks had been removed and the long line of cars waiting at either end was slowly clearing, thanks to a couple of policemen who were directing traffic and keeping curious onlookers away. The traffic jam had kept the professional busybodies – the reporters – from reaching the house. When they had arrived, it was all over and, most importantly, there was no news: the only thing the media could share with the police this time was disappointment. Frank had delegated Morelli to speak to them and the sergeant had got rid of them quickly and efficiently. Actually, it hadn’t been too hard.
‘I’m going back, Frank. How about you?’
Frank looked at his watch and thought about General Nathan Parker waiting furiously at the airport. He’d convinced himself that he would appear before him wearing the relief of the finished nightmare like a new suit. He had so wanted it to be all over, and instead it was endless.
‘Go on, Claude. I’m leaving now too.’
They looked at each other and the sergeant simply raised his hand. They said as few words as possible, because both seemed to have used them all up. Morelli walked away, up the ramp to his car. Frank saw him disappear around the curve hidden by the trees.
The ambulance backed up and turned to leave the courtyard, and the man next to the driver gazed at him blankly through the window. He didn’t seem the least bit shocked by what they were carrying in the back. They were just transporting corpses, whether they had been dead an hour, a year or a century. It was a job like any other. There was a folded sports page on the dashboard. As the white van drove away, Frank could see the man’s hand reach for the paper.
He stood alone in the middle of the courtyard under the summer afternoon sun, unable to feel the heat. The air was filled with the listless melancholy of a dismantled circus, when the show must move on. There were no more acrobats or women in colourful costumes, no more lights or music or applause. All that was left was a pile of sawdust strewn with sequins and excrement. And a clown with streaked facepaint standing in the sun. The vision is gone and nothing is left now but reality.
Despite the thought of Helena waiting for him to come, Frank could not bring himself to leave the house. He felt that there was something he had mistakenly taken for granted. Like everything that had happened up to then, it was a question of details. Tiny details. The detail of the record cover in the video, the reflection of Stricker’s message in the mirror, words turned upside down that had turned out to have an entirely different meaning…
Frank forced himself to think rationally.
The entire time that Jean-Loup had been under police protection, there were men at the house day and night. How had he managed to evade them? How had he slipped away at night to stalk and slaughter his next victim, then return unseen bearing his vile trophy?
On the left side of the property, by the gate, there was a sort of embankment that fell steeply away. It was too dangerous to negotiate, considering that he would have had to travel the road at night and without a torch. Maybe he’d left through the garden. In that case, in order to reach the street he would have had to go out through the living room at the front of the house near the swimming pool, climb over the fence, and cross through the garden of the twin house where the Parkers were staying.
If that were the case, someone would have noticed him eventually. On one side he’d had several well-trained policemen. On the other side had been Ryan Mosse and Nathan Parker, two men who most certainly always slept with one eye open. He could have got away with it once, but sooner or later all that nocturnal movement would have been discovered. So that theory didn’t hold water either.
Everyone had assumed that there was a second exit and the logic of construction said that there had to be one. In the event of a nuclear explosion, the house would cave in and the rubble would close off every avenue of escape. Still, the meticulous search of the underground shelter had revealed nothing, not a trace.
And yet…
Frank checked his watch again, for the umpteenth time. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, feeling the car keys in one and the hard shape of his mobile phone in the other. It made him think of Helena, sitting in the airport with her legs crossed, gazing around and hoping to see him in the crowd.
He thought of phoning her, in spite of Nathan Parker. He nearly gave in to the urge, but then thought better of it. He didn’t want to betray Helena and alert the general. Instead, he wanted him to sit there, furious with the entire world but unsuspecting, and wait.
Frank took his hands from his pockets and opened and closed his fists until he felt the tension ease. Then he turned and went back inside the shelter, stopping at the door and studying the underground lair of No One. In the shadows he could see red and green lights and the displays of the electronic equipment. He suddenly remembered all the stories his father had told him when he was a boy. Stories of fairies and gnomes and ogres who lived in terrifying subterranean worlds that they left to steal babies from their cradles and take them into their dens for ever. Except that he was no child and this was not a fable. This was a story with no happy ending.
He stepped forward and turned on the light. Despite its confines, the shelter was rather spacious. That woman’s paranoia and fears for the future must have cost her husband a pretty penny all those years ago. The construction was square and divided into three rooms. On the right was a small space that served both as a bathroom and storeroom. It contained every kind of tinned food imaginable, stacked in an orderly manner on shelves facing the toilet and sink, along with enough reserves of water to outlast any siege. The room that had held the corpse in its crystal coffin also contained a spare single bed, off to one side. The thought of Jean-Loup sleeping next to the dead body gave him a chill, as if an evil breath had touched his back, as if a stranger were standing behind him.
Frank turned his head slowly from side to side while opening and closing his eyes at regular intervals and projecting the images of the room on to his mind like slides.
Click.
A detail.
Click.
Look for a detail.
Click.
What’s wrong? There’s something strange about this room.
Click.
Something tiny, something incongruous.
Click.
You know what it is. You saw it. You registered it.
Click, click, click…
The room appeared and disappeared as if lit by a flash. He went on opening and closing his eyes, hoping each time that whatever he was seeking might magically appear.
The wall on the left.
The shelves on top, full of recording and electronic equipment that Jean-Loup used to filter his voice and transform it into No One’s.
The two Tannoy speakers set up for the best possible stereo effect.
A sophisticated CD and mini-disc reader.
A mixer.
A cassette player and DAT machine.
A record player for old 33s.
The records set up on the lower shelf.
LPs on the left, CDs on the right.
In the centre, the surface that he used as a desk.
Atop another mixer, a Mac G4 computer that ran the sound equipment.
At the back, against the wall, a black device that looked like another small CD player.
The front wall.
Metal cabinet, set into the wall, empty.
The wall on the right.
The doors to the other rooms and in the middle a wooden table and a small halogen lamp.
Frank stopped suddenly.
Another small CD player.
He walked to the back of the room and carefully examined the black box. He wasn’t a stereo aficionado, but from what he knew, it looked like a fairly ordinary model made of black metal with a small display in front. It didn’t even look very new. There were wires coming out that went to a hole at the bottom of the shelf. There was a series of numbers on the bottom, written on the metal in white marker pen. Someone had tried sloppily to erase the numbers, but they were still legible.
1-10
2-7
3-4
4-8
He was puzzled. He pressed the EJECT button and the tray on the left of the display slid out soundlessly. There was a CD with writing on the gold surface, again in marker pen, this time in red.
Robert Fulton-‘Stolen Music’.
That damned record again. That music was following Frank like a curse. He stopped to think. It was natural that Jean-Loup would make himself a digital copy of the record, so that he could listen to it without ruining the original. Then why, when he killed Allen Yoshida, did he need to take the actual LP? There was certainly some symbolic meaning, but there could also be another reason…
Frank turned to look at the modern CD player next to the other components of the sound system and then turned again to the other, much more modest, piece of equipment. And he wondered: Why would someone with a CD player like that use a cheap thing like this?
There were many answers to that question, each one with some merit. But Frank knew that none of them was right. He leaned his hand on the black metal of the device and ran his fingers over the numbers written in white as if he expected them to be raised and palpable.
A theory is a journey that can last months, years, sometimes an entire lifetime. The intuition that ignites it runs through the brain at the speed of light, and its effect is immediate. One moment all is darkness and the next, everything is light.
Frank suddenly realized what that second player was for and what the numbers that someone had tried to erase from its surface meant. They were the numbers of a combination, presumably for a lock somewhere. But where? He pushed the tray back in and pressed the start button. A series of numbers appeared on the display, showing the track being played and the elapsed time since it had started.
He watched the seconds ticking over slowly on the small, illuminated rectangle. After ten seconds he pressed the button that moved from the first track to the next. Then, he waited until the number 7 appeared and went to the third track. When the display showed 4, he went to the fourth. And when he read the number 8, he pressed the stop button.
Click.
The click was so faint that Frank would not have heard it if he hadn’t been holding his breath. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw that the metal cabinet to his right had moved over a few inches. The two sides were so perfectly matched that they seemed to be part of the wall.
He stuck his finger into the crack and pulled. Sliding along two runners on either side, the metal cabinet came forward about a yard, revealing a round door behind it. In one corner of the metal door, there was a wheel that looked just like the one in the laundry room. When they had searched the bunker, they hadn’t asked themselves why this cabinet was completely empty. Now that he had an answer, Frank found the question that nobody had thought to ask. The cabinet was there to hide a second entrance.
Frank turned the wheel counterclockwise without any effort until he heard the lock click, then he pushed and the door opened, sliding soundlessly on its hinges. Jean-Loup Verdier must have spent a great deal of time on technical knowledge and maintenance. Behind the door was the opening of a round cement tunnel, about a yard and a half in diameter. It was a black hole that started from the shelter; where it ended, God only knew.
Frank slid his phone into his shirt pocket, removed his jacket, and pulled the Glock out of its holster on his belt. He knelt on the ground, wriggled past the rods holding up the metal shelves and crawled into the tunnel entrance. He halted a moment, staring at the tunnel and the darkness it promised. He could see no more than a yard in the dim light of the tunnel, partly obscured by the cabinet and his own body. It was probably dangerous, very dangerous, to squeeze blindly into that tunnel.
Then he remembered who had escaped through the tunnel and everything that person had done, and he decided to follow.
Pierrot peeped out from behind the bushes where he was hiding and looked on to the street, relieved to see that all the cars and people who were waiting had left, along with the policemen who had been stopping them. Good. Now it was good, but before he had been really afraid…
After leaving the radio station, he had walked up to Jean-Loup’s house, his knapsack on his back. He had been a little nervous because he wasn’t sure that he would be able to find the street, even though he had been to Beausoleil several times in Jean-Loup’s car, which was called a Mercedes. He hadn’t paid much attention to the route because he had been too busy laughing and looking at his friend’s face. He always laughed when he was with Jean-Loup. Well, not really always, because there was someone who had said that only fools laughed all the time and he didn’t want people to think he was a fool.
And anyway, he wasn’t used to going around by himself because his mother was afraid that something would happen to him or that people would make fun of him, like Mme Narbonne’s daughter, the one with the crooked teeth and pimples who called him ‘retard’. He didn’t know what a retard was and when he had asked his mother, she had turned her back to him, but not fast enough to keep him from noticing that her eyes were wet with tears. Pierrot had not been too worried about that. His mother’s eyes were often damp, like when she watched those movies on TV where there were two people kissing at the end with violin music and then they got married. The only thing he had really been worried about was that his mother’s damp eyes meant that sooner or later he would have to marry Mme Narbonne’s daughter.
Halfway to Jean-Loup’s house, he had got thirsty and had drunk the entire can of Coke that he had brought from home. He was a little unhappy because he had meant to share it with Jean-Loup, but it was a hot day and his mouth was dry and his friend certainly wouldn’t mind such a little thing. And he still had a can of Schweppes left.
He was sweaty on reaching Jean-Loup’s house and thought that it would probably have been a good idea to bring another T-shirt to change into. But it wasn’t a problem. He knew that Jean-Loup had a chest in his laundry room where he kept T-shirts for doing jobs around the house. If his shirt was too sweaty, Jean-Loup would lend him another one, which he would return after his mother washed and ironed it. It had happened once before when he was in the pool and his shirt had fallen in the water and Jean-Loup had lent him a blue one that said ‘Martini-Racing’. He had thought that Jean-Loup was lending it to him, but it was a present.
The first thing he wanted to do was find the key. He found the aluminium mailbox inside the gate with the words JEAN-LOUP VERDIER written in dark green paint, the same colour as the bars. He stuck his hand underneath the metal box. Under his fingers, he felt something that seemed like a key attached with a dried-out piece of chewing gum.
He was about to pull off the key when a car drove up to the construction site not far from the gate. Luckily, Pierrot was covered by a bush and the trunk of a cypress tree and he couldn’t be seen from the car. He saw the American in that blue car, the one who was always with the kind inspector but then he wasn’t any more because someone said that the inspector was dead. Pierrot moved away quickly so the man wouldn’t see him. If he did, he’d ask him what he was doing there and would take him home to his mother.
He went down the road, following the asphalt and staying under cover. After he passed the steep part that made his head spin just from looking at it, he climbed over the guardrail and found himself in a bush that completely covered him. From his observation point he could see the courtyard of Jean-Loup’s house and watch with curiosity as a bunch of people walked back and forth, mostly policemen dressed in blue and a few in normal clothes. There was also the one who had come to the station and never smiled when he spoke, but smiled all the time when he spoke to Barbara.
He stayed in his hiding place for what seemed like a very long time, until everyone had gone and the courtyard was empty. The last one to go, the American, had left the garage door open. It was lucky that Pierrot was there to take care of his friend’s house. Now he could go and make sure the records were okay, and before he left he would close the garage door. Otherwise, anyone could come in and steal whatever they wanted.
He got up slowly from the ground and looked around. His knees hurt from crouching for so long and his legs had fallen asleep. He started stamping his feet on the ground, the way his mother had taught him. In his own small way, Pierrot decided on a plan of action. He couldn’t reach the courtyard from where he was because of the very steep part along the cliff by the sea. So he had to go up the paved road and down again to see if he could climb over the gate.
He adjusted his knapsack on his shoulders and got ready for the climb.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed some movement in the bushes, lower down. He thought maybe he was mistaken. How could anyone be below him? He would have seen them pass by. But just to make sure, he crouched back down in the bushes, parting the branches with his hands so that he could see better. Nothing happened for a while and he was beginning to think he had been wrong. Then he saw something else move in the bushes and held his hand over his eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun.
What he saw made his mouth drop open in surprise. Right below him, dressed in green and brown as if he were part of the earth and the vegetation, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, was his friend Jean-Loup, crawling out from under a tangle of shrubs. Pierrot held his breath. If it were up to him, he would have jumped and cried out that he was there, but maybe it wasn’t a good idea because if not all the policemen were gone, someone might see them. He decided to climb up a little higher and move to the right so that he would be covered by the embankment before making his presence known to Jean-Loup.
He crept quietly, trying to imitate the movements of his friend below him who was going in and out of the bushes without rustling a single leaf. Finally, he reached a point where it was impossible to see any further and he realized it was the perfect position. A piece of rock jutted out below him, just large enough to stand on and call out to Jean-Loup without being seen by the policemen.
He climbed down carefully to get as close to the rock as possible. He bent his legs, then raised his arms to the sky and jumped. As soon as his feet hit the ground, the brittle piece of rock broke under his weight and Pierrot rolled down into the void with a scream.
Frank moved forward very slowly in the pitch dark.
After careful examination of the tunnel, he had seen that it was high enough for him to crawl through on all fours, which was what he decided to do. It was not the most comfortable position, but certainly the least risky. He had thought with a bitter smile that he was literally going to ‘the dark side’.
After a few steps he no longer had the help of the dim light coming from behind and he had to continue in total darkness. He held the gun in his right hand and leaned his body against the wall on the left, bending slightly backward to use his free hand as a sort of advance guard to make sure that there were no obstacles or, worse, holes he could fall into. If that happened, he’d be stuck there for all time.
He moved cautiously, step by step. His legs were beginning to hurt, especially his right knee. That was the knee with torn ligaments from a college football game that had ended his playing career and kept him from pursuing professional football. He usually stayed in good enough shape to avoid problems, but he had trained very little recently and the position he was in would have bothered anyone’s knees, even those of a weight-lifter. He shivered slightly. It wasn’t warm in there. Still, nervousness made him sweat, soaking the light material of his shirt. There was a dank smell of wet leaves and humidity in the tunnel, as well as of the mildewed concrete with which it was lined. He occasionally brushed against a root that had burrowed between the joints of the piping. It had startled him the first time and he had pulled back his hand as if he had been burned. The pipe obviously led outside and some animal could easily have found its way in and made a comfortable den. Frank was not skittish, but the idea of touching a grass snake or a rat made him shudder.
In this long manhunt, his fantasy had finally come true. This was the situation he’d imagined every time he spoke of No One. A slow, creeping, furtive advance, in the cold and damp domain of rats. It described their investigation perfectly: a tiring, step-by-step process done completely in the dark, searching for a slim ray of light to lead them out of the blackness.
Let us perish in the light of day…
In the pitch dark, the famous passage of Ajax’s prayer from the Iliad came to mind. He’d studied it in high school, a million years ago. The Trojans and the Achaeans were fighting near the ships and Jove had sent fog to block the vision of the Greeks, who were losing. At that point, Ajax sent up a prayer to the father of all the gods, a heartfelt prayer not for his own safety, but for the permission to approach destruction in the sunlight. Frank remembered the words of his favourite hero.
His concentration returned as he felt the tunnel slope down. The pavement, or rather the part under his feet, had pitched steeply. It probably didn’t mean that the pipe was now unworkable. Basically, it had been built for human use and the sloping was surely accidental rather than intentional. They must have found a vein of rock during construction and had been forced to go downwards in order to continue.
He decided to shuffle forward on his backside rather than crawl and proceeded slowly, doubling his caution. Frank wasn’t particularly worried about the downward slope. His analysis before had been right, not to mention the fact that No One had gone through here many times, back and forth, although he must have done so much more easily since he knew the terrain and certainly carried a torch.
Frank, on the other hand, was in total darkness and had no idea what lay ahead. Or even what was next to him. But it was the thought of Jean-Loup that made him more careful. He knew how dangerously smart the man was, and it was not unlikely that he had set traps for a possible intruder.
He wondered again who Jean-Loup Verdier could be and, most of all, who had created him. It was now obvious that he was not just a psychopath, someone weak and frustrated who committed a series of crimes to get attention and be on TV. That superficial explanation might cover most of the cases he knew, but it was as far from No One as the earth from the sun. Most serial killers were people with lower than average intelligence who were consumed for the most part by an uncontrollable force. They usually accepted the handcuffs with a sigh of relief.
Not Jean-Loup. There was something different about him. The corpse in its transparent coffin testified to his madness. His mind undoubtedly contained thoughts that would shock even the most jaded psychiatrist. But the madness ended there: Jean-Loup was strong, highly intelligent, well prepared and trained to fight. He was a genuine combatant. With cynical ease, he had killed Jochen Welder and Roby Stricker, two trained athletes. The haste with which he had disposed of the three policemen in his own house was further confirmation of his abilities, if any more were needed. There seemed to be two people in him, in the same body, two different natures that cancelled each other out. Perhaps the best definition was the one he had given himself: I am someone and no one.
He was an extremely dangerous man and had to be treated as such. Frank did not feel that he was being unnecessarily paranoid. Sometimes caution means the difference between life and death.
Frank knew that only too well, since the only time he had been impulsive and rushed in without thinking, he had awoken in a hospital bed after an explosion and fifteen days in a coma. If he ever forgot, he had scars all over his body to remind him.
He didn’t want to take any more unnecessary risks. He owed it to himself, whether or not he decided to remain a policeman. He owed it to the woman who was waiting for him in the departure lounge of Nice airport. And he owed it to Harriet, the promise that he would never forget.
He continued to inch forward, trying to make as little noise as possible. Jean-Loup could be anywhere at that moment, but he might still be crouching at the far end of the tunnel. After all, this underground passage couldn’t go all the way to Menton. It had to open up somewhere east of the house, on the slope of the mountain.
There was probably still a lot of confusion outside: the police roadblocks, the lines of cars, people getting out and rubbernecking, asking each other what was going on. It wouldn’t be hard to lose oneself in that crowd. Yes, Jean-Loup’s pictures had been in all the papers and shown on TV news all over Europe, but Frank had lost faith in those measures long ago. Ordinary people usually only glanced superficially at the people around them. All Jean-Loup had to do was cut his hair and put on a pair of dark glasses to be fairly sure that he could mix in a crowd.
But the roads were still full of cops who were on the alert and had their eyes wide open. And that was something else. They would be suspicious if someone just appeared out of the bushes and climbed down to the side of the road. That would definitely raise the alarm and with everything that had happened, the police would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Then again, his man might have found a less congested place to come out of hiding.
Frank kept shuffling on. The sound of his trousers scraping along the bottom of the tunnel sounded like Niagara Falls. The constant abrasion started to hurt. He stopped for a moment to settle into a more comfortable position and decided to go back to crawling. As he changed position, the beep of his mobile phone coming within range of a signal sounded like a church bell in the absolute silence of a country night. That signal might have betrayed his presence, but it also assured him that the exit was near.
He squinted in the darkness, thinking that he could see points of light before him, like white chalk marks on a blackboard. He tried to speed up without abandoning his caution, and his heart raced even faster. Frank’s left hand groped along the concrete wall, his right pressed against the trigger, and his knee hurt like hell, but there was a hint of light in front of him and perhaps a presence lurking that he could not afford to underestimate. The white marks on the blackboard danced, suspended in the air as he approached, and grew slowly larger. Frank realized that the tunnel ended near a bush and that he was seeing the light filtered through the branches. There was probably a breeze swaying the leaves, which was why the points of light looked like fireflies to his eyes, tricked by the darkness.
Suddenly, from outside, he heard the echo of a desperate scream. Frank threw caution to the wind and, as quickly as possible, he reached the thicket of shrubs hiding the entrance to the tunnel. Pushing the branches to one side, he slowly put out his head. The exit was behind a large bush that completely covered the circumference of the concrete pipe.
The scream was repeated. Frank stood up tentatively, his knee protesting in pain. He looked around. The bush was on a fairly level area, a sort of natural terrace on the side of the mountain, covered with occasional trees with thin trunks. The trees were wrapped with ivy and had shrubs of Mediterranean maquis at their base. Behind him, the twin houses and their carefully tended gardens rose like touchstones. The road was fifty yards above him on his left. He was surprised not to be further from his starting point after that long, awkward, shuffling journey. Frank saw something moving halfway down the slope that separated him from the road. A figure in a green shirt and khaki-coloured trousers with a dark canvas bag slung over his shoulder was carefully climbing up through the bushes towards the guard-rail.
Frank would have recognized that man anywhere, among thousands of others and from a million miles away. He brought the Glock up to his eyeline, pointing it with both hands. He centred his target in the gunsights and finally shouted out the words he had been yearning to say for so long.
‘Stop right where you are, Jean-Loup! I’m aiming at you. Don’t make me shoot. Put your hands in the air, kneel down on the ground, and don’t move. Now!’
Jean-Loup turned his head in Frank’s direction. He gave no sign that he recognized him or understood what he had said, and didn’t seem to have any intention of giving in to his request. Despite the fact that he was close enough to see the gun in Frank’s hands, he continued to climb, moving further left. Frank’s finger contracted over the trigger of the Glock.
The scream was repeated, loud and sharp.
Jean-Loup answered, bending his head. ‘Hold on tight, Pierrot, I’m on my way. Don’t worry. I’m coming down to get you.’
Frank moved his eyes to where Jean-Loup was looking. He could see Pierrot, his hands grasping a small tree trunk on the side of the road. He was groping with his feet to find some ground but every time he tried to grip the rock, the fragile terrain crumbled and the boy found himself hanging in midair.
Below him, the steep slope plummeted down. It wasn’t really a sheer cliff, but if Pierrot let go he would fall and bounce like a rag doll straight into the ravine. If he let go, there would be no hope.
‘Hurry, Jean-Loup. I can’t hold on any more. My hands hurt.’ Frank could see how tired the boy was and he could hear the fear in his voice. But he also heard something else, the absolute faith that Jean-Loup, the deejay, the serial killer, the voice of the Devil, his best friend, would come to save him. Frank released the tension on the trigger slightly as he realized what Jean-Loup was doing.
He wasn’t running away. He was going to save Pierrot.
Escape had probably been Jean-Loup’s original intention and things had undoubtedly unfolded as Frank had imagined. He had waited in the tunnel until the commotion died down and he could slip out to evade the police one last time. Then he had seen Pierrot in danger. He had probably wondered why Pierrot was there, hanging from a tree calling for help in his terrified child’s voice. In a split second, he had sized up the situation and made a choice. Now he was acting on it.
Frank felt a dull anger rush through him, the result of his frustration. He had been waiting for that moment for so long and now that he had his gun trained on the man he had been hunting so desperately, he couldn’t shoot. He gripped his weapon more firmly than ever. Just beyond the notch of his pistol sights was the body of Jean-Loup, moving to the place where his young friend was hanging.
Jean-Loup reached Pierrot, dangling slightly below him. The hole that the boy’s fall had made in the terrain lay between them. It was too far for Jean-Loup to reach and pull him up.
‘I’m right here, Pierrot,’ Jean-Loup said to the boy in his warm, deep voice. ‘I’m coming. Stay calm and everything will be all right. But you have to hold on tight and stay calm. Understand?’
Despite the danger, Pierrot answered with one of his solemn nods. His eyes were huge with fear but he was certain that his friend would save him.
Frank watched as Jean-Loup put the bag he was carrying on the ground and started slipping off his belt. He didn’t know how Jean-Loup planned to get Pierrot out of danger. The only thing Frank could do was stand there watching, keeping him in the sights of his gun.
Jean-Loup had just finished removing his belt when they heard the loud hiss of a blowgun and a gust of air hit the ground next to him. He bent down suddenly and it was that instinctive movement that saved his life. Another hiss and gust of air hit exactly where he had been standing a fraction of a second earlier. Frank turned sharply and looked up. On the edge of the slope, standing next to the guard-rail was Captain Ryan Mosse, holding a huge automatic weapon with a silencer.
At that point Jean-Loup turned and did something incredible. He jumped into the mastic bushes and disappeared. Just like that. One moment he was there and the next he wasn’t. Ryan Mosse must have been just as surprised, but that didn’t stop him from firing a series of rapid shots into the bushes where Jean-Loup was hiding. He took out the empty clip and stuck in another. A second later, the gun was ready to fire. He started to climb down carefully, watching closely for any movement in the bushes near him. Frank moved the Glock in his direction.
‘Get out of here, Mosse. This has nothing to do with you. Drop your gun and leave. Or help. First, we have to think of that boy hanging down there. Then we’ll take care of everything else.’
The captain continued climbing down, gun in hand. ‘Who says this has nothing to do with me? I say it does, Mr Ottobre. And I’ll decide the priorities. First I get rid of this nutcase and then I’ll help you with the retard if you want.’
Frank had the massive body of Ryan Mosse in his sights. The desire to shoot him was strong, almost as strong as his desire to shoot Jean-Loup, despite the fact that the guy would risk his life to save a dog or a retard, as Mosse put it.
‘I said, put down that gun, Ryan.’
‘Or what? You’ll shoot?’ he said with a short, bitter laugh, dripping with sarcasm. ‘Then what’ll you tell people, that you killed a soldier from your own country to save a serial killer? Put down that flyswatter and learn how it’s done.’
Still aiming, Frank started moving as quickly as possible towards Pierrot. He had never found himself in a situation with so many variables.
‘Help, I can’t hold on any more!’
Pierrot’s mournful voice came from behind him. Frank lowered his gun and tried as quickly as possible to reach the point where Jean-Loup had been standing before. He felt the shrubs pulling at him like evil hands reaching from the bushes, thorns tearing at his trousers, branches wrapping around his ankles. He kept turning his head to check on Ryan Mosse’s movements. The soldier was still climbing cautiously down the hill, gun in hand, his suspicious eyes searching for Jean-Loup.
Suddenly, the bushes next to Mosse came alive. There was not the slightest warning. Whatever came out of the thicket was not the same man who had dived in for cover. It was not Jean-Loup but a demon kicked out of hell because the other demons were afraid of him. He had a supernatural tension, as if a ferocious animal had suddenly taken over his body, giving him the strength of its muscles and the sharpness of its senses.
Jean-Loup moved with agility, vigour and grace. With a powerful kick, the gun flew out of his adversary’s hand and landed far away, lost in the bushes. Mosse was a soldier, an excellent one, but the menace emanating from the man before him put them on the same level. Mosse, however, had one advantage over Jean-Loup. He could take his time. He didn’t care about the boy hanging from the tree over the ravine and he knew that his opponent was in a rush to save him. That urgency was what he planned to exploit.
He didn’t attack. He waited, taking one step back for every step Jean-Loup took towards him. As he moved, Jean-Loup continued talking to Pierrot.
‘Pierrot, can you hear me? I’m still here. Don’t be afraid. Just a second and I’ll be there.’ As he reassured the boy, he seemed to lose his concentration for an instant. And that’s when Mosse went for it.
Based on what happened afterwards, Frank was sure that it had been a tactical ploy by Jean-Loup to get Mosse to move. Everything happened in a flash. Mosse pretended to move to the left and threw a series of punches that Jean-Loup fended off with humiliating ease. Mosse stepped back. Frank was too far away to make out the details, but he thought he could see surprise on the captain’s face. He tried another couple of blows with his hands and then kicked as fast as lightning. It was the same move he had used on Frank the day they had fought in front of the house. Only Jean-Loup didn’t fall for it the way he had. Instead of blocking the kick and turning away, exposing himself to his adversary’s reaction, he stepped to the side as soon as he saw the foot coming and let Mosse throw his weight upwards. Then he dropped his right knee to the ground, slipped under Mosse’s leg in a flash, and blocked it with his left hand, pushing the captain’s body backward. He gave a terrifying punch to his adversary’s testicles, simultaneously pushing him forward.
Frank could hear Mosse’s moan of pain as he fell. He was not even all the way down in the bushes when Jean-Loup was over him with a knife. He pulled it out so fast that Frank thought he must have had it in his hand from the beginning and it was only just now visible. Jean-Loup bent over and disappeared in the bushes where Mosse’s body had fallen. When he got up, the animal that he seemed to carry inside him was gone and the blade of the knife was covered with blood.
Frank was unable to see the final outcome of the fight because in the meantime he had reached the place where Pierrot was hanging from the tree, leaving Jean-Loup and Mosse behind him. He saw fear on the boy’s face but mostly the disquieting signs of fatigue. His hands were red from the effort and Frank realized that he couldn’t hold on much longer. He showed him that he was there and tried to reassure him, speaking calmly – though he certainly didn’t feel calm – to give him some confidence that everything would be all right.
‘Here I am, Pierrot. I’ve come to get you.’
The boy was so tired that he couldn’t make the effort to answer. Frank looked around. He was standing exactly where Jean-Loup had been removing his belt when Mosse shot at him the first time.
Why? For the second time, he wondered how Jean-Loup was planning to use the belt to save Pierrot. He raised his eyes and saw another trunk, about the same size as Pierrot’s, a couple of yards above him. The leaves had long ago fallen off and the branches rose up like overturned roots growing towards the sky. Suddenly, he realized what Jean-Loup had intended to do. He acted quickly. Removing his phone from his shirt pocket and unfastening the clip that held his holster to his belt, he placed them on the ground by Jean-Loup’s canvas bag.
As he slipped his gun into his pocket, he shivered for a second at the feel of the cold metal against his skin. He took his belt and checked on the strength of the leather and the buckle. Then he slipped the end through and fastened it at the last hole so that he would have as large a leather ring as possible.
He studied the hill beside and below him. With any luck, he could reach the tree that was almost parallel to the one where Pierrot was swaying. He moved with care. Stepping sideways and grabbing on to the bushes that he hoped had deep, solid roots, he reached the dried-out tree. At the touch of the rough bark, the image of the corpse they had found in the bomb shelter flashed through his mind, but then a menacing creak from the tree substituted an image of his own body hurtling down into the ravine. What was true for Pierrot was also true for him. If the tree was pulled down or if he lost his balance, he would not survive the fall. He tried not to picture it and hoped that the tree was sturdy enough to support both of them. He crouched down on the ground and leaned out, trying to make the belt hang down as far as possible.
‘Try to grab on to this.’
Hesitantly, the boy removed one hand from the tree but rapidly returned it to the trunk. ‘I can’t reach.’
Frank had already realized that the length of Pierrot’s arms and the circle of belt were not long enough. There was only one thing he could do. He turned around to grab the tree trunk with his legs and let himself hang upside down into the void like a trapeze artist, twisting around to support his chest and get a better view in order to direct Pierrot’s movements from above. Holding the belt ring with both hands, this time he managed to lower it to the boy.
‘That’s it. Now, let go of the tree and grab on to the belt, one hand at a time, smoothly as you can.’
He watched Pierrot’s hesitant, slow-motion movements. Despite the distance, he could hear the boy’s breath, hissing with anxiety and fatigue. The tree he was hanging on to, bent down by all the additional weight, gave a sinister creak, more chilling than before. Frank felt Pierrot’s weight entirely on his arms and legs wrapped around the trunk. He was sure that if Jean-Loup had been in his place, he would have pulled the boy up without much effort, at least to the point where he could let go of the belt and take hold of the tree where he was hanging like a bat. He hoped against hope that he would be able to do the same.
He started pulling upwards with his arms, feeling the violence of his effort together with the painfully massive flow of blood to his head. He saw Pierrot rise up inch by inch, trying to support himself with his feet. Frank’s arm muscles were burning terribly, as if his shirt had suddenly caught fire.
The gun stuck in his trouser pocket gave in to the force of gravity and fell. Barely missing Pierrot’s head, it plummeted down and was lost in the ravine. Just at that moment, a noise came from the trunk that sounded like a shot or a log crackling in the fireplace.
Frank continued pulling with all his might. In his effort to raise the weight that was growing heavier and heavier, the pain in his arms became unbearable. As each second passed, he felt as if acid had replaced the blood in his veins. His flesh seemed to be dissolving and his bones, no longer protected by his muscles, seemed about to separate from his shoulders and plunge down, along with Pierrot’s screaming body.
But Pierrot slowly continued to rise. Frank kept pulling him up, grasping the tree desperately with his legs, clenching his teeth, astounded by his own resistance. One second after another he felt an overwhelming urge to let go, to release his hands and stop the agony, the burning in his arms. And the very next second, new strength came from some other part of him, as if reserves of energy were stored in an obscure region of his body, a secret place that only anger and stubbornness could release.
Frank arched the upper part of his chest that was on the ground and managed to put the belt around his neck, transferring part of the weight to his back and shoulders. After testing the resistance for a second, Frank let go and stretched out his free hands to Pierrot. With the little breath he had left, he told him what to do.
‘Okay, just like what you did before. Let go of the belt, calmly, one hand at a time. Grab hold of my arms and climb up. I’ll hold you.’
Frank was not sure that he could keep his promise. Still, when Pierrot abandoned his grip and his weight was off Frank’s neck, he felt the relief like refrigeration running along his back, as if someone had poured cold water on his sweaty skin.
He felt the desperate grasp of Pierrot’s hands on his arms. Slowly, inch by inch, clutching with frenzy at Frank’s body and clothes, the boy continued to climb. Frank was astounded that he had so much strength left. The instinct of self-preservation was an extraordinary ally in certain situations, a kind of natural drug. He hoped that the strength would not leave him suddenly, now that he was safe.
As soon as he was within reach, Frank seized Pierrot by his belt and pushed up, helping him reach the trunk. He eyes were burning from the sweat pouring down his face. He closed and opened them again as he felt the cleansing tears well up and lose themselves in his eyebrows in that strange, upside-down weeping. He couldn’t see a thing. He could only feel the frantic movements of Pierrot’s body rubbing against his own, which was now nothing but a single, desperate cry of pain.
‘Did you make it?’
Pierrot didn’t answer, but Frank suddenly felt free. He bent his head until it was almost touching the warm, damp earth. He felt, rather than saw, the belt slip off his neck and tumble down to join his gun. Then he turned his head to avoid breathing in dirt along with the air that his lungs were desperately seeking. The pressure of the blood in his temples was unbearable. He heard a voice from above, from behind his shoulders, a voice that seemed to come from an unbridgeable distance, like a cry from a faraway hilltop. From the state of torpor that had enveloped his body and mind, Frank still recognized that voice.
‘Good, Pierrot. Now grab on to the bushes and come over here to me. Calmly. You’re okay now.’
Frank felt a wave of shock run through his suspended body and heard a new crackle of the wood as Pierrot’s weight abandoned the trunk. The dried-out tree probably felt the same relief he did, as if it were alive rather than long dead.
He knew it wasn’t over. He still had to conquer the mental and physical lethargy that had overcome him with the knowledge that Pierrot was finally safe. He had no physical strength or force of will left, but he knew that this was not the time to give in. If he allowed himself to feel that illusory relaxation for another second, he would not be able to straighten up and grab on to the trunk.
He thought of Helena and her silent wait at the airport. He again saw the sadness in her eyes, the sadness that he wanted to erase if he could. He saw the hand of her father, Nathan Parker, suspended like a claw over her. Rage and hatred came to him as a salvation. He clenched his teeth and gathered up all the energy he had left before it vanished into the air like smoke. He arched his back and, throwing up his arms, forced himself up. His abdominal muscles, the only part of his body still unused, now burned with the stress.
He saw the dry wood of the tree trunk slowly approach him like a mirage. Another creak reminded him that, like any mirage, it could dissolve at any second. He forced himself to go slowly, without abrupt movements, to avoid worsening the precarious situation.
His left hand finally gripped the tree, then his right. Somehow he managed to pull himself to a sitting position. The violent flow of blood as it started going down and resuming its normal course made his head spin. He closed his eyes, waiting for it to go away and hoping that the two dried sponges that were his lungs would be able to contain all the air he was sending them. In the comforting darkness of his closed eyes, his arms grabbed the tree and he sat there feeling the rough bark against his cheek until some of his strength returned.
When he reopened his eyes, Pierrot was a few yards from him, on level ground. He was standing next to Jean-Loup and had his arms around his waist, as if hanging in midair had given him the need to grab on to something or someone in order to believe that he was really safe.
Jean-Loup had his left arm around the boy’s shoulder and a bloody knife in his right hand. For an instant, Frank thought that he was using the boy’s body as a shield, that he would hold the knife at his throat and take him hostage. He pushed that thought out of his mind. No, not after what he had seen. Not after Jean-Loup had given up any chance of escape in order to rescue Pierrot. He wondered what had become of Ryan Mosse. And at the same time, he realized that he didn’t give a damn.
He noticed a movement from above and instinctively raised his head. There was a group of people standing at the edge of the road, leaning on the guard-rail in front of a line of cars. Pierrot’s cries must have attracted their attention or else, more probably, a group of tourists had happened to stop just then to admire the view and had watched the nerve-racking rescue. Jean-Loup turned his head and looked up. He, too, saw the people and the cars parked forty yards above him. His shoulders slumped slightly as if an invisible weight had suddenly fallen on him.
Frank stood up and, leaning on the tree trunk, slowly went back the way he had come. He bid farewell to the lifeless tree with the gratitude due to a true friend who has helped in a difficult moment. His fingers felt the touch of the live branches on the bushes he clutched as he placed his feet on the firm surface of the horizontal world.
Jean-Loup and Pierrot were before him, watching him. He saw the green flash in Jean-Loup’s eyes. Frank was exhausted and knew that he didn’t stand a chance of winning a fight, not in this weakened state, and definitely not after what he had seen Jean-Loup do to Mosse. Jean-Loup must have sensed his thoughts. He smiled, a smile that was suddenly weary. Frank could only imagine what lay behind that simple movement of his facial muscles: a life divided by continuous motion from light to darkness, from warmth to cold, from lucidity to delirium in the perpetual dilemma of being someone or no one. Jean-Loup’s smile faded. He spoke with the familiar voice that had enchanted so many radio listeners, radiating tranquillity and well-being.
‘Don’t worry, Agent Ottobre. It’s all right. I know the words “The End” when I see them.’
Frank bent over and picked up his phone. As he dialled Morelli’s number, he thought about the absurdity of the situation. There he was, unarmed, completely at the mercy of a man who could easily destroy him with one hand tied behind his back, and he was able to remain alive only because Jean-Loup had decided not to kill him.
Morelli’s brusque voice leapt from the phone. ‘Hello?’
In exchange, Frank offered his own exhausted voice and the good news. ‘Claude, it’s Frank.’
‘What is it? What happened?’
His few words cost him enormous effort. ‘Get a car to Jean-Loup’s house right away. I’ve got him.’
He didn’t listen to the sergeant’s astonished response. He didn’t see Pierrot bend his head and cling to his friend’s body more tightly, as a reaction to those last words. All he saw as he lowered the phone was Jean-Loup’s hand slowly opening and dropping the bloody knife to the ground.
The Sûreté Publique de Monaco car veered right and turned at incredible speed on to the highway to Nice airport. Frank had told Xavier that it was a matter of life or death, and the agent was interpreting his words to the letter. Even above the wail of the siren, he could hear the tyres screeching on the asphalt. They reached a roundabout where there were roadworks under way. Frank knew that although they were in a police car they were still not exempt from the laws of physics. He feared that this time, despite Xavier’s talent, the car might not hold the road and they’d plunge into the Var river below. But his favourite racing driver stunned him again. With a sharp turn of the wheel, Xavier swerved and narrowly avoided disaster.
Morelli was in the front beside the driver. Frank saw his body relax when he realized they would make it. They drove straight ahead for a short stretch and Xavier began to slow down. He turned off the siren when they pulled on to the access road of Terminal 2 and followed a sign indicating the unloading zone for passengers and luggage. Cars were only allowed a brief stop, a ritual known as Kiss and Fly. Frank smiled to himself. He doubted that Parker would kiss him before he left.
They stopped in a reserved access area halfway down on the left. It was protected by a barricade and two guards from the Côte d’Azur airport. Seeing the police markings, they raised the barricade and let them through. A few minutes later, the car pulled up in front of the international departures terminal.
Morelli turned sharply to the driver. ‘If you do that on the way back, the next vehicle you’ll be operating will be a lawn mower. Landscape gardeners love to hire former cops.’
‘Don’t worry, champ, his bark is worse than his bite.’ Frank smiled and leaned over from the backseat to put his hand on Xavier’s shoulder.
Frank’s mobile phone rang inside his jacket pocket. He could guess who it was. The ring was so insistent that he was surprised the phone wasn’t hot.
‘Hello?’
‘Frank? It’s Froben. Where are you?’
‘Outside the airport. I’m getting out of the car now.’
‘Thank the lord.’ The inspector sounded genuinely relieved. ‘This guy’s about to explode. He’ll probably declare war against France single-handedly in a matter of minutes. You wouldn’t believe the stories I had to make up to keep him calm.’
‘I believe it. But I assure you, it wasn’t a whim. It’s the biggest favour anyone’s ever done for me in my life.’
‘Okay, Americano. My phone’s getting wet with tears. Cut the sentimentality and get your arse over here. You’ve got to take this hot potato off my hands. I’m coming to meet you.’
Frank opened the car door. Morelli’s voice stopped him just as his foot hit the pavement. ‘Should we wait?’
‘No, you go. I’ll make my own way back somehow.’
Frank was about to walk away but then changed his mind. Even in such a hurry, he had to express his gratitude. ‘Uh, Claude?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you, really. Both of you.’
‘For what? Go on. They’re waiting for you.’
Before he got out, Frank glanced knowingly at Xavier. ‘I’ll bet €1,000 against one of Roncaille’s calling cards that you can get back faster than you got here.’
He closed the door on Morelli’s protests. But as he heard the car race off, he smiled.
Jean-Loup’s capture and the end of the nightmare had created a sort of holiday cheer among the police of the Sûreté Publique. All the deaths in the criminal’s path had kept things solemn, but seeing him arrive at headquarters in handcuffs had been like finding a special present under the Christmas tree. And anyone who regretted that Nicolas Hulot was not there to share that moment kept it to himself. The fact that the arrest was due solely to Frank’s stroke of genius and that it had been carried out by him alone raised the general level of admiration for him and even created esteem where it hadn’t existed. He had smiled when smiles were required, shaken hands when they were offered along with congratulations, and had taken part in a joy that he could not completely share. He hadn’t wanted to be the only guy not smiling in the group photo. But he kept doing something that was becoming a ritual that day. He kept looking at his watch. And he had requested a car to get him to the airport as quickly as possible. And young Xavier hadn’t let him down.
He hurried towards the glass doors, which opened obligingly at his arrival. Froben’s familiar face greeted him as soon as he entered the departure lounge. The inspector snorted theatrically and mimed someone wiping sweat off his brow with one hand.
‘You have no idea what a great pleasure it is to see you, Agent Ottobre.’
‘I have a really good idea, don’t you worry,’ Frank answered in the same joking tone. They were both being perfectly sincere.
‘I was clutching at straws to find some way to convince him that no official intervention was necessary. I could barely manage to keep him from calling the President of the United States. I’m sure you can imagine. They missed their flight, but the next one to the States leaves in just under an hour. And I guarantee that General Parker won’t be kept off it.’
‘Everything you say about Parker is true. And believe me, I could tell you a few more things about him.’
As they spoke, they walked rapidly to the area of the airport where Froben had parked the Parkers. They reached the security check. The inspector showed his badge to the agents at the metal detectors, and a uniformed officer pointed to a side entrance that would bypass the line of passengers waiting to have their hand luggage checked. They turned left to go to the gates.
‘Now you must tell me something, Frank. How’s the other business going? Am I wrong, or is there news?’
‘You mean No One?’
‘Who else?’
‘We got him,’ said Frank in a neutral voice.
‘When?’ The inspector looked at him, astonished.
‘About an hour ago. He’s in jail.’
‘That’s how you tell me? Just like that?’
Frank turned to look at Froben. He waved vaguely in the air. ‘It’s over, Christophe. End of story.’ He couldn’t say anything more because they had reached the reserved room, guarded by a policeman.
Frank stopped outside the door that obscured General Nathan Parker, Helena and Stuart from his view. One of them was a burdensome part of his present; the other two were his future. He stood staring at the door as if it were transparent and he could see what those on the other side were doing. Froben put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Want any help, Frank?’
There was a protective note in the inspector’s voice. Froben’s delicate sensitivity contrasted sharply with his lumberjack’s appearance.
‘No, thanks. You’ve given me more than I could have hoped for. Now I have to fend for myself.’
The room was one of the many anonymous, comfortable VIP lounges scattered throughout all airports for business-class passengers. Armchairs and leather sofas, walls painted pastel colours, plush carpeting, a small cafeteria to one side, and reproductions of Van Gogh and Matisse paintings on the walls alongside a few travel posters framed in satinized steel. There was a sense of impermanence that one generally finds in that kind of room, with all those arrivals and departures breaking the false illusion of comfort.
Helena was sitting on a sofa leafing through a magazine. Stuart was beside her playing his Game Boy. The low coffee table in front of them had a couple of plastic cups and a soda can on its glass surface.
General Parker was standing on the other side of the room, his back to the door. He was staring at a reproduction of a crucifixion by Dalí hanging on the wall, his hands crossed behind his back. He turned his head as he heard the door open, looking momentarily puzzled at Frank as if he were searching for a name and a place to connect to the face.
Helena raised her head from the page and her face lit up when she saw him. Frank thanked heaven that the light of that gaze was meant for him, but he had no time to enjoy her smile. Parker’s rage exploded instantly. In two steps he positioned himself between them, with hatred hotter than fire blazing on his face.
‘I should have known that you were the cause of all this,’ he spluttered. ‘This is the last mistake you’ll ever make. I’ve already told you once, and now I’m confirming it. You’re finished. You’re so stupid, you thought I was bluffing. As soon as I’m back in the States, I’ll make sure there’s nothing left of you. I’ll-’
Frank stared fixedly at the red face of the man before him. There was a storm inside him crashing against the shore, shaking the wooden pier. But when Frank interrupted the general, his voice was so calm that it aggravated his adversary even more.
‘I’d calm down if I were you, general. At your age, the heart is an organ that needs to be treated with care. You wouldn’t want to risk a heart attack and rid me of your presence so easily.’
The look that passed over the old soldier’s face was one of a thousand flags waving, each moved by the winds of war. Frank saw with pleasure that, along with hatred, fury and disbelief, there was a shadow of doubt behind those blazing blue eyes. He might have begun to wonder where Frank found the nerve to speak to him that way. It was just an instant, and then Parker’s gaze was again filled with utter disdain. He imitated Frank and calmed his voice as well. The corners of his mouth lifted in a self-satisfied smile.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, young man. Unfortunately for you, my heart is solid as a rock. You, apparently, are having useless palpitations. And that’s another mistake. My daughter-’
Frank interrupted him again, which was not something to which General Nathan Parker was accustomed.
‘As far as your daughter and grandson are concerned -’ Frank paused a moment at the word grandson, lowering his voice so that the boy could not hear. Stuart was sitting on the sofa with his hands in his lap, watching the scene in wonder. His electronic toy, completely ignored, continued on its own: beep, beep, beep.
‘As far as your daughter and grandson are concerned, I would advise you to let them go visit the duty-free shop. It might be better if we keep the things we have to say to each other to ourselves.’
‘We have absolutely nothing to say to each other, Agent Ottobre. And my daughter and grandson don’t need to go to any goddamn duty-free shop. You’re the one who should walk out that door and get out of our lives for good. We’re getting on a plane to the United States. Let me repeat-’
‘General, perhaps you’ve forgotten that all your blustering won’t pay off in the long run. Sooner or later, someone will have the right cards to call. And win. I don’t give a damn about you. If I saw you on fire I wouldn’t even bother pissing in your pocket. If you want me to say what I have to say in front of them, I will. But be aware that you won’t be able to turn back. So if you want to take that risk…’
Frank’s voice was so low that Helena could barely hear him. She wondered what he had just said to her father to silence him that way. Frank looked at her and nodded slightly. Helena stood up and took her son by the hand.
‘Come on, Stuart. Let’s go for a walk. There are lots of things to see outside.’ The boy followed her obediently. He lived in the Parker house, like his mother. He was used to receiving orders. And orders were meant to be obeyed. The two of them walked over to the door, the carpet muffling their footsteps. The only sound was that of the door closing behind them.
Frank sat down on the sofa where Helena had been a minute before. The warmth of her body was still on the leather and that warmth became his. He pointed to the armchair in front of him.
‘Sit down, general.’
‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’ Frank noticed the slight hysterical note in Parker’s voice. ‘Hurry up and spare me your ranting. We have a plane to catch in…’ He looked at his watch. Frank smiled to himself. It must have become a habit for him, too. Frank noticed that he had to move his arm further away to see the dial.
Parker looked up from his watch. ‘We all have a plane to catch in less than an hour.’
Frank shook his head. Negative, sir.
‘I’m sorry to contradict you, general. Not all of you. Just you.’
Parker looked at him as if he could not believe what he had just heard. He seemed surprised, like he had just heard the punch line of a very long joke. Then, suddenly, he burst out laughing. Frank was happy to see that his laughter was sincere, and it gave him great pleasure to know that in another minute it would be silenced.
‘Laugh if you like. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re leaving on your own and your daughter and grandson are staying here in France, with me.’ Parker shook his head with the pity one feels before the ramblings of an idiot.
‘You’re out of your mind.’
Frank smiled and relaxed on the sofa. He crossed his legs and stretched his arm over the back.
‘Sorry to contradict you again. I once was, I think. But I’m cured. I’ve never been so sane. So much the worse for you. You see, general, you were so concerned with finding my mistakes that you never stopped to think about yours, which were much worse.’ The general looked towards the door and took a couple of steps in that direction. Frank cut that plan short. ‘There’s no help coming. I wouldn’t advise involving the police, if that’s what you’re thinking. And if you’re hoping Captain Mosse will come to the rescue, I’ll be the first to inform you that he’s lying in the morgue with his throat cut.’
The general spun around. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I just told you. As good as he was, you can always find someone better. Your lackey was an excellent soldier, but unfortunately for him, the man he was supposed to kill, No One, was a much better fighter. He killed him so very easily, which must have come as an unpleasant surprise to Mosse.’
Parker had to sit down at that news. His tanned face clouded over.
‘In any event, so far as your daughter’s killer is concerned, we caught him. There’s no chance that what you were afraid of could happen now. We’re locking him up in an insane asylum and he’ll never get out.’
Frank paused briefly. He moved to the edge of the sofa and looked carefully at the man sitting before him. He couldn’t imagine what he was thinking just then, and he didn’t care. All he wanted was to wrap things up quickly and stare at his back as he walked to the plane.
Alone.
‘It might be better if I start at the beginning, general. And the beginning has to do with me, not with you. I don’t think I need to dwell on my story, do I? You know everything about me, about my wife and her suicide after my miraculous escape from an explosion while I was investigating Jeff and Osmond Larkin, two drug dealers who ran a $300 million-a-year enterprise. I was destroyed by that experience. I ended up here trying to pull myself out of the mire and I started investigating this serial killer case almost against my better judgement. A killer as ferocious as a shark, whose first victim was your daughter Arianna. And then you appeared on the scene. You came to Monte Carlo, distraught with suffering, thirsting for revenge…’
‘And what would you have done if someone had killed your wife like that?’ Parker took Frank’s comment to mean that he doubted the sincerity of Parker’s grief.
‘I would have done exactly what you said you wanted to do. I would have had no peace until I killed the murderer with my own bare hands. But it’s different in your case.’
‘What the hell are you saying, you clown? What do you know about a father’s feelings towards his daughter?’
Parker spoke hastily, without thinking, but he immediately realized his mistake. Frank felt like kicking Parker’s face to a bloody pulp and leaving a nice stain on the deep-pile carpet. The effort he made to control himself probably took ten years off his life.
‘You’re right, general. I’m totally ignorant of the feelings a father can have for a daughter. But I know exactly what your feelings are for your daughter. You make me sick, Parker. You completely disgust me. I told you that you are a despicable person and that I would crush you like an ant, but in your egomania, you didn’t believe me.’
A shadow of a smile passed over Parker’s face. He probably considered the reaction he had provoked in Frank a small personal triumph.
‘If it’s not too much for you, could you tell me just how you plan on doing that?’
‘Here. There’s confirmation of everything I’m about to tell you inside this envelope. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue.’ Frank pulled a large yellow envelope from his inside pocket and threw it down on the glass table in front of them. Parker waved at him to go on.
Frank’s mind was still in turmoil and he had to force himself to calm down and explain things in order. ‘As I was saying, you came here to Monte Carlo, distraught over the death of your daughter and the barbaric way she was killed. I must say, you were hardly reticent about your desire to get your hands on the killer yourself. You were so obvious about it that you aroused some suspicion. But that intention was the furthest thing from your mind.’ His voice became a chilling hiss. ‘What you wanted most was the exact opposite. You wanted the murderer to go on killing.’
Parker jumped to his feet as if suddenly bitten by a snake.
‘Now I’m sure of it. You’re off your rocker and you should be locked up in a cell with that other one.’ Frank nodded to him to sit down again.
‘Quit protesting, general. It’s completely useless. You don’t get it yet, do you? I know all about you and the late, not at all lamented Captain Mosse.’
‘You know all about just what, exactly?’
‘If you’d just stop interrupting me, you’d find out before you get on that plane – alone. You realize of course that we have to go back a minute to my story. Remember the two drug lords I was telling you about? One of them, Jeff Larkin, was killed in a shootout when they were arrested, may he rest in peace. The other one, Osmond, landed in jail. When the investigation into the activities of those two gentlemen continued, the FBI started to suspect that someone high, very high up, was involved in their trafficking. But despite all their efforts, they couldn’t figure out who it was.’
Nathan Parker’s face was now a mask of stone. He sat on the leather armchair and crossed his legs, his eyes half closed, waiting. This was Frank’s moment to show his cards, one by one, and the general was curious to know what they were. Frank couldn’t wait to turn that curiosity into the certainty of defeat.
‘Locked in prison, Osmond’s only contact with the outside world was through his lawyer, a little-known attorney in New York who came out of nowhere. We suspected that this lawyer, one Hudson McCormack, was more than just a defence attorney. We started to think that he might be the outside contact for his jailed client. My partner at the FBI who was running the Larkin case e-mailed me McCormack’s picture because, by pure coincidence, he showed up in Monte Carlo. Life’s funny that way. Officially, he came here for a regatta, but you know as well as I do that official reasons can hide more important unofficial ones.’
The general raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain what I have to do with this cops-and-robbers business?’
Frank leaned over the table, opened the yellow envelope and pulled out the photograph of McCormack that Cooper had sent him, the picture taken in the New York bar. He pushed it over to Parker. It reminded him of the night of Mosse’s arrest, when he had shown him the picture of Roby Stricker.
‘May I introduce the late Hudson McCormack, legal representative of Osmond Larkin and the last victim of the serial killer Jean-Loup Verdier, better known as No One.’
‘I only recognize him because I saw his picture in the paper,’ the old man said, shooting a glance at the photo and then raising his eyes. ‘I never knew he existed before that.’
‘Really? Strange, general. See the person with his back to McCormack? You can’t see his face, but the bar is full of mirrors.’ Frank’s voice changed, as if he were musing over something. ‘You have no idea how important mirrors are in this whole story. Mirrors have a terrible tendency of reflecting what’s in front of them.’
‘I know how mirrors work. Every time I look in one, I see the person who’s going to reduce you to dust.’
Frank smiled in conciliation. ‘May I commend your sense of humour, general? It’s more than I can say for your strategic ability and choice of men, however. As I said, the bar where this photo was taken is full of mirrors. With the help of a talented, very talented young man, I managed to figure out who is the person sitting at the table with Hudson McCormack. All the young man did was enlarge the reflection in the mirrors. And just take a look at who he is.’
Frank took another picture from the envelope and threw it on the table without even looking at it. This time, Parker picked up the photo and stared at it for a long time.
‘You can’t really say that Captain Ryan Mosse was photogenic. But you didn’t need a fashion model, did you, Parker? You needed someone exactly like the captain: a borderline psychopath who was loyal to the point of fanaticism. Someone willing to kill anyone you told him to.’ He leaned in towards Nathan Parker. ‘General, does your surprised expression mean that you deny the person in that picture with Hudson McCormack is Ryan Mosse?’
‘No, of course I don’t. It’s definitely Captain Mosse. But this picture only proves that he knew the lawyer in question. What does that have to do with me?’
‘We’re getting there, general. We’re getting there.’
This time, it was Frank who looked at his watch. And without having to move it away to see it.
‘We’ll have to get there quickly. Your plane’s due to depart soon, so I’ll summarize. Here’s how things went. You and Mosse came to an agreement with Laurent Bedon, director at Radio Monte Carlo. The poor guy needed money desperately and it couldn’t have been hard to convince him. You gave him piles of money in exchange for any information he could find out about the investigation. A spy, like in any war. That’s why, when we suspected that Roby Stricker might be the next victim after the killer’s phone call, Mosse was already there, outside Stricker’s apartment building. Then Stricker was killed and I got ahead of myself and slipped up. I forgot the first rule of a cop: examine everything from every angle. Ironic, isn’t it? A reflection in the mirror helped Nicolas Hulot realize who the real killer was and the same detail helped me realize it too. Funny how simple things look, in retrospect.’
Frank rubbed his face with his hands. He was beginning to feel all his aches and scratches from his adventure on the cliff, but it wasn’t the moment to feel sorry for himself, not yet. When it was over, he would have all the time in the world to relax. And in the right company.
‘You must have felt a little lost with your stooge in jail, didn’t you? You didn’t need that at all. When we finally realized who No One was, Mosse was proven innocent and released from prison. You must have been a mite relieved. Nothing lost. You still had all the time you needed to solve your personal problems, and you even got a stroke of luck.’
Frank had to admire Nathan Parker’s self-control. After his initial furious outburst, he was now sitting impassively in front of him, not batting an eye. There must have been many people in his past who had met him and decided not to take him on as an enemy. But Frank had crossed his path and now he couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
He felt no elation, just a profound emptiness. He was surprised to realize that his real desire was not simply to beat him. What he wanted more than anything was never to see him again. He continued listing the facts.
‘Let me tell you exactly what that stroke of luck was. No One was identified but he managed to escape. You must have had a hard time believing it. Captain Mosse was back and the killer was hidden out there somewhere, outsmarting the police and free to kill again.’
He looked at the backs of his hands and remembered a time not long ago when they always trembled. Now his hands were firm, strong. He could make a fist with the knowledge that General Parker was crushed.
‘Not long after, No One called Agent Frank Ottobre again. But not the usual way. This time, he called from a mobile phone, without masking his voice. Why should he bother, after all? Everyone knew who he was: Jean-Loup Verdier, the deejay of Radio Monte Carlo. Just an anonymous phone left on a bench in Nice. We traced it through a satellite system and found it easily. No prints on the phone, except those of the boy who had found it. And that was strange.’ He shot a glance at Parker as if he didn’t know the answer to his own question.
‘Why did No One bother rubbing off the fingerprints when we knew who he was? I didn’t pay much attention to it then, partly because we were thinking about what the phone call meant. The killer told us that he was planning more murders, regardless of the fact that the police were looking for him. And that’s what he did. Hudson McCormack was found dead right in front of the Sûreté headquarters, in Jean-Loup Verdier’s car with his face skinned off. The world was horrified at this new killing. Everyone wondered the same thing. Why couldn’t the police catch this monster who went on killing unchecked and then disappeared like a ghost?’
Frank got up from the couch. He was so tired that he was surprised his joints didn’t audibly creak. His knee, though, had strangely stopped bothering him. He took a few steps around the room and went to stand behind the general who was sitting motionless in the armchair. The man didn’t even turn to follow him with his eyes.
‘I think it was Laurent Bedon’s death that aroused my suspicion. A mere accident, a man killed in an everyday, botched robbery. Suspicions are like crumbs in your bed, general. You can’t sleep until you get rid of them. That’s how it started, with the death of that poor fool Bedon. That’s why I checked out the photos my friend sent and discovered that the man sitting in the bar in New York with Hudson McCormack was Ryan Mosse. And that’s why I had the same person examine the tape of the phone call that I received from No One. You know what we discovered? Let me tell you, even though you already know. We found that it was a piece of editing work. The things you can do with technology today. It’s a great help, though, if you use it with a grain of salt, cum grano salis, if you don’t mind a little Latin.’
Parker didn’t flinch. Frank was warming to his story now.
‘We listened to the message word by word and we found that some of them were repeated several times: “moon”, “dog”, “speak to me”. Analysis of the intonation showed that every word was repeated twice in exactly the same way. The voice graph of each word when placed one on top of the other matched perfectly. I’m told that can’t happen, just like no two snowflakes or fingerprints can be identical. Which means that the words were taken and spliced on a tape, one after the other until the desired message was obtained. And that was the tape used for the phone call.’ Frank came round to face the general again. ‘It was Laurent, wasn’t it? He’s the one who gave you the recordings of Jean-Loup’s voice so that you had enough material to edit that tape. What else is there to say?’
Frank went on as if what he was about to say was completely unnecessary, like someone explaining the obvious to someone who refuses to understand. All the while he walked slowly around the room to aid his concentration.
‘After the phone call, Mosse went to Jean-Loup Verdier’s house. He took the car, killed Hudson McCormack, and gave him the same treatment that No One used on his victims. Then Mosse left the car and the corpse near police headquarters.’ Frank stopped in front of Parker. He did so deliberately, to force the old man to raise his head and look at him as he drew his conclusions. Just then, in that anonymous airport lounge, he was the judge and jury and his verdict was final.
‘And that was your real aim, Parker. You wanted to eliminate any connection between the heroic, powerful General Nathan Parker and the Larkin brothers whom you supplied with cover and protection in exchange for a sizeable percentage of the profits. I’ll bet that every time General Parker took part in a war somewhere in the world, he didn’t just protect the interests of his country. No, he took advantage of the situation to protect his own interests. I don’t know why and I don’t give a damn. That’s for you and your conscience to sort out, although I’m not sure you have one.’
Frank was like a hunter with a stag in his crosswires.
‘McCormack, your contact with Osmond Larkin, was just a fool in a game that was too big for him, and he could have made a lot of trouble if he decided to talk. And he would have, to protect his own hide if things started going badly. He was killed in mimicry of the serial killer’s modus operandi so it looked like another of his victims. Even if No One had been caught and declared he was not guilty of that particular murder, who would have believed him? The answer makes me laugh: no one. Maybe McCormack had brought you a message from his client. Actually, tell me if I’m wrong, but I would guess that Osmond Larkin threatened to start talking if you didn’t get him out of jail right away. The fact that he was killed during an ordinary prison fight might only be a coincidence, but there have been far too many coincidences in this story.’
Frank sat back down on the couch, looking at his adversary with the expression of a man who is surprised by his own words.
‘Lots of coincidences, right? Like Rouget, the owner of the house you rented. When you were leaving, the old guy must have told you about the nuclear bunker that his sister-in-law had forced his brother to build. You realized that was where Jean-Loup Verdier must have been hiding and you left Mosse to take care of him. All you had to do was get rid of the last witness and everything would be sweet as pie.’
He paused as a flicker of a smile crossed his face. ‘Want to know something funny?’
‘No, but I suspect you’re going to tell me anyway.’
‘You bet I am. Just before I came here, I found out that the delinquent who bumped off Laurent Bedon has been arrested. He’s just a small-time punk who rolled people coming out of the casinos.’
‘And the funny thing?’
‘The funny thing is that my suspicions started with the only death in all this that seems to be accidental and not really a murder. A crime that at first I blamed on you and of which you are completely innocent. I call that funny.’
Parker sat there a moment as if he were thinking over everything Frank had just said. Frank had no illusions. It was just a pause, not a surrender. The general was a chess player taking his time after his opponent had said ‘check’. He gestured vaguely with his hand.
‘This is all just conjecture. You can’t actually prove what you’ve just said.’
And that was the move the FBI man had been expecting. He knew that the general wasn’t all wrong. Although Frank was holding a number of important pieces, the lack of definitive evidence would make it hard to force checkmate. The witnesses were all dead and the only one still alive, Jean-Loup Verdier, was destined for an asylum and not exactly reliable. But this was his attack, and the general would have to marshall his assets expertly to resist its force. He shrugged.
‘Maybe I can. Or maybe not. You’ve got enough money to pay a pack of lawyers to get you out of trouble and keep you out of jail. But a scandal is a different story. Lack of evidence will keep you out of a jail cell, but it won’t prevent people from doubting you. Just think… would the President of the United States still want the opinion of a military adviser suspected of drug trafficking?’
General Parker looked at him for a long time and didn’t answer. He ran his hand through his short, white hair. His blue eyes had lost their warrior spark and he was finally an old man. But his voice was still strong.
‘I think I know what you’re getting at.’
‘Do you?’
‘If you didn’t want anything from me, you’d already have told the FBI. You wouldn’t have come here alone. You’d be here with the entire police force. So have the courage to be explicit.’
Frank could see that Parker’s reputation was well deserved. He knew he was in a corner but, like all soldiers worthy of the name, he could see a way out and was taking advantage of it.
‘I’ll be more than explicit, general. I’ll be brutally honest. If it were up to me, I’d take no pity on you whatsoever. I think you’re a piece of shit and I would gladly drop you into a sea of sharks. That’s exactly what I would do. I once told you that every man has his price and you just didn’t understand mine. Here’s my price: Helena and Stuart in exchange for my silence.’ Frank was quiet for a moment. ‘As you can see, general, you were right about something. Somehow, we’re made of the same stuff, you and I.’
The old man bent his head. ‘And if I…’
Frank shook his head. ‘My offer’s not negotiable. Take it or leave it. And that’s not all.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that, now that you’re going back to the States, you’ll realize that you’re too old and tired. You’ll resign from your role as a military consultant, and withdraw from public life. People will advise you against it, but you’ll be adamant. It’s only fair that a distinguished soldier like you, someone who has given so much to his country, a father who has suffered so, should be allowed to enjoy the time he has left in peace.’
Parker stared at him in frank amazement.
‘And you’ll let me go? Without doing anything? Where’s your conscience, Agent Ottobre?’
‘Same place as yours. But mine sure weighs a lot less.’
The silence that fell between them was eloquent. There was nothing more to say. Just then, with the perfect timing of fate, the door opened and Stuart’s head peeked through.
‘Oh, Stuart. Come on in. Our conversation is over.’
Stuart ran in, followed by Helena’s slight figure. The boy didn’t understand, and she couldn’t make the leap. It was Nathan Parker who indirectly gave her the news, speaking to the boy who thought he was his grandfather instead of really his father. The old man knelt down before him without any apparent effort and put his hands on his shoulders.
‘Okay, Stuart. There has been a change of plans. Remember when I told you we had to go right back to the States?’
The boy nodded, reminding Frank of Pierrot’s naive way of communicating. The general pointed to Frank.
‘Well, after talking to this friend of mine for a while, I don’t think there’s any need for you and your mother to go back yet. I’ve got lots of things to do at home and we wouldn’t be able to see each other very much for a while in any case. Would you like to stay here and take a longer vacation?’
‘Really, grandpa? Could we go to Disneyland in Paris?’ The boy’s eyes widened, incredulous. Parker glanced at Frank who lowered his eyelids in agreement.
‘Sure. Disneyland and many other places.’
Stuart raised his arms above his head and shouted, ‘Hurray!’ He ran to embrace his mother who hugged him with a face sculpted in astonishment. Her stunned gaze passed from Frank to Parker, like someone receiving good news that was hard to absorb.
‘Mommy, we’re staying here. Grandpa said so. We’re going to Disneyland, to Disneyland, to Disneyland…’
Helena put a hand on his head, trying to calm him, but Stuart was relentless. He started dancing around the room, repeating the words like an endless nursery rhyme. There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Parker, standing up. Until then, he had been watching Stuart’s joyfulness from his kneeling position. For Frank it was fitting. He was a man who had been humbled.
Froben’s face appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh, excuse me.’
‘Come in, Froben.’
The inspector looked understandably embarrassed. He saw with relief that the atmosphere was tense but not hostile. Not any more, at least. He turned to Parker.
‘General, excuse me for the inconvenience and the unforgivable wait. I wanted to tell you that your flight has been called. We have just put the coffin on board and your luggage.’
‘Thank you, inspector. There have been some last-minute changes. My daughter and grandson will be staying here. If you would be so kind as to board my bags and leave the others here, I would be most grateful. They’re easy to recognize: light blue Samsonites.’
‘It’s the least I can do, general.’ Froben bent his head. He reminded Frank of someone emerging unscathed from a car accident.
‘Thank you. I’ll be right there.’
‘Gate nineteen.’
Parker turned back to Stuart. ‘Okay, I have to go. You be good. Roger?’ The boy snapped to attention and saluted as if it were an old game they shared. Parker opened the door and left without a look or a word for his daughter. Frank went over to Helena and caressed her cheek with his hand. He would have faced an army of Parkers for the look in her eyes.
‘How did you do it?’
Frank smiled. ‘All in good time. I still have something left to do. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. I need to check one last thing.’
He left the room and looked for Nathan Parker. He saw him walking down the hallway next to Froben who was escorting him to the gate. He reached them an instant before the general turned to board the plane. He was the last passenger. His privileged status had given him a little extra time.
When he saw Frank coming, Froben stepped discreetly aside. Parker spoke to him without turning.
‘Don’t tell me you had an irresistible urge to say goodbye.’
‘No, general. I just wanted to make sure you left and also I needed to share one last thought with you.’
‘Which is?’
‘You told me several times that I was finished. Now I’d just like to point out that you’re finished. I don’t care if the rest of the world will ever know…’ The two men looked at each other. Black eyes against blue. Two men who would never stop hating each other. ‘You know it, and that’s enough for me.’
Without a word, Nathan Parker turned and walked past the barrier and down the hallway. The last vestige of soldierly pride had fallen away; now he seemed like any old man shuffling through an airport. Everything he was leaving behind was no longer his problem. The real problem lay ahead of him. As he walked towards the plane, his reflection was caught in the mirror on the wall. A coincidence, one of many. Another mirror…
Frank stood still and watched Parker until he turned the corner and left the mirror empty.
Frank reached the end of the hallway and found himself in front of Roncaille’s office. He waited before knocking, thinking of all the closed doors that had stood before him, real and metaphorical. This was just one more, but now everything was different. Now the man known as No One was safely behind bars and the case would go down as another successful investigation.
Four days had passed since Jean-Loup Verdier’s arrest and the meeting with Parker at Nice airport. Frank had spent that time with Helena and her son, without reading the papers or watching TV, trying to put everything behind him. Although he knew he would never be able to get rid of it entirely.
He had left the Parc Saint-Roman apartment and taken refuge with Helena and Stuart in a small, discreet hotel where they could escape the relentless pursuit of the media. Despite their desire for each other, he and Helena were not sleeping in the same room. Not yet. There would be time for that. He spent his days resting and getting to know Stuart, trying to build a relationship with him. The official confirmation that he would keep his promise about Disneyland had laid the groundwork. The fact that their vacation would also include a couple of weeks in the Canal du Midi on a houseboat hadn’t hurt either. Now all he had to do was wait for the cement to harden.
Frank knocked at the door and Roncaille asked him to come in. He was not in the least surprised to find Durand there as well, but hadn’t expected to see Dr Cluny. Roncaille greeted him with his standard PR smile that now seemed a little more natural. In that moment of grandeur, the police chief knew how to play the perfect host. Durand was sitting in the chair with his usual owlish expression and merely waved.
‘Good, Frank. You were the only one missing. Come in. Sit down. Attorney General Durand’s just arrived.’ It was such a formal atmosphere that Frank almost expected to see an ice bucket with champagne on the desk. There probably would be one, later on, somewhere else.
Frank settled into the chair that the chief had indicated. He waited in silence. There was nothing more for him to say. But there were things he wanted to know. Roncaille spoke.
‘Since everybody’s here, I’ll get straight to the point. There are other sides to this story that you don’t know about, things that go far beyond Daniel Legrand, alias Jean-Loup Verdier. Here’s what we managed to find out.’
Roncaille leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Frank thought it strange that Durand was allowing him to conduct the meeting, though he wasn’t much interested in the reason why. Roncaille shared what he knew with the spontaneity and benevolence of a saint sheltering a poor man with his cloak.
‘His father, Marcel Legrand, was a senior officer in the French secret service, in charge of training. An expert in undercover operations and intelligence. At some point he started showing signs of being unbalanced, although we don’t have much information on that. We got as far as we could, but the French government didn’t open up very much. It must have caused a lot of headaches. But we know enough to reconstruct what happened. After a series of episodes, Legrand was invited, one might say, to leave active service of his own accord and take early retirement. That must have unsettled him even more. It was probably the final blow to his unstable mental state. He moved to Cassis with his pregnant wife and his housekeeper, a woman who had been with him since he was a child. He purchased an estate, La Patience, and locked himself up there like a hermit without any contact with the outside world. And he forced his family to do the same. No contact, for any reason whatsoever.’
Roncaille turned to Dr Cluny, tacitly acknowledging that he was the person best equipped to explain the psychological implications of the story. Cluny removed his glasses and pinched his nose with his forefinger and thumb, as usual. Frank still didn’t understand whether that gesture was the result of a careful strategy to get attention or simply a habit, but it didn’t matter. Having captured his audience, the psychiatrist replaced his glasses. Many of the things he was about to say were new, even to Roncaille and Durand.
‘I spoke with Jean-Loup Verdier, or Daniel Legrand. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to draw a general picture. At times, the subject showed readiness to open up and emerge from his total isolation. Anyway, as the chief said, the Legrand family moved to Provence. By the way, Mme Legrand was Italian. That’s probably why Daniel, or Jean-Loup if you prefer, speaks that language so well. For the sake of clarity I’ll continue to call him Jean-Loup.’
He looked around for their approval and the silence showed that there was no objection. Cluny continued explaining the facts, or what he thought they were.
‘His wife gave birth not long after they moved. According to her husband’s wish for isolation, which had become an obsession, no doctor was called. The woman gave birth to twins, Lucien and Daniel. But there were complications and Lucien was born deformed. There were skin growths that made him look monstrously disfigured. Clinically, I can’t say exactly what it was because Jean-Loup’s testimony is unclear. In any event, DNA tests on the mummified remains found in the bunker prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were brothers. The father was overwhelmed by this trauma and his mental state grew even worse. He refused to acknowledge his deformed son, as if he didn’t exist – to the point where he only declared the birth of one child, Daniel. The other boy was hidden inside the house, like a shameful secret. The mother died a few months later, from what the death certificate says were natural causes. There is no reason to suspect otherwise.’
Durand interrupted Cluny.
‘We have suggested to the French government that Mme Legrand’s body be exhumed. But after all these years, and with all the people involved gone, it probably won’t be of any significance.’ Durand leaned back in his chair, his face showing that he found such lack of care for details deplorable. He motioned to Cluny to continue. Cluny pretended it was a duty, not a pleasure.
‘The two children grew up under the rigid, obsessive hand of their father, who assumed total responsibility for their education, without any outside interference. No kindergarten, no school, no friends their own age. Meanwhile, he was really becoming maniacal. He might have suffered from paranoia, obsessed with the idea of having ‘enemies’ everywhere outside the home, which becomes a sort of fortress. That’s only a hypothesis, mind you. There is no concrete proof. The only person allowed to have sporadic contact with the outside world, under his father’s strict control, was Jean-Loup. His twin brother Lucien was kept prisoner in the house. His face was not to be seen, a sort of Iron Mask. Both boys were forced to undergo rigid military training, something like what Legrand had taught to secret service agents. That’s why Jean-Loup is so skilled in so many different fields, including combat and concealment. I don’t want to dwell on it too long, but he told me some horrifying details, perfectly in keeping with the personality he developed later.’
Cluny stopped again, as if it would be better for everyone if the details remained known only to him. As for Frank, he was beginning to understand. Or at least he was beginning to imagine, which was more or less what Cluny had had to do. He was narrating a story that floated in time like an iceberg in the sea, and the part that emerged above the water’s surface was just the tip, a tip covered in blood. It was this tip that the world called No One.
‘I can say that Jean-Loup and his brother had no childhood to speak of. Legrand managed to transform one of the oldest childhood games, the game of war, of playing soldiers, into a nightmare. The experience cemented their relationship. Twins generally have a closer bond than other brothers anyway. There are plenty of examples. And especially since one was obviously handicapped, Jean-Loup took on the task of defending his less fortunate brother, whom his father treated as an inferior. Jean-Loup himself told me that his father’s kindest words were “you ugly monster”.’
There was a moment of silence. Cluny gave everyone time to absorb what he had said. The story they were hearing was confirmation of the trauma Jean-Loup had suffered, but it was beyond what they had imagined. And there was more to come.
‘They had a morbid attachment to each other. Jean-Loup experienced his brother’s distress as if it were his own, but perhaps even more so, more viscerally, because he saw him defenceless before the persecution of his own father.’
Cluny paused again, subjecting them to another nose-pinching ritual. Frank, Roncaille and Durand endured it patiently. He had earned it through his conversations with Jean-Loup, his contact with the darkness of that mind, his attempts to navigate the past in order to explain the present.
‘I don’t really know what set off the episode in Cassis that night so long ago. It might not have been anything special, but simply a series of incidents over time that created the ideal conditions for the tragedy. As you know, a corpse with a disfigured body was found in the burning house.’
Another pause. The psychiatrist’s eyes wandered around the room, not seeking but avoiding the others. As if he were partly responsible for what he was about to say.
‘It was Jean-Loup who killed poor Lucien. His love for his brother was so fierce that, in his deranged mind, he thought that it was the only way to heal him from his “sickness”, as he put it. As if his brother’s deformity was an actual illness. After that symbolic gesture of liberation came the ritual of skinning off the face to free his brother of his deformity. Later, he killed his father and the housekeeper to make the theory of the double murder-suicide seem credible. Then he set fire to the house. I could add the symbolic meaning of catharsis here, but I think it would be useless and rhetorical, not scientific. Then he ran away. I have no idea where he went.’
Roncaille intervened for an instant to bring the story, which was getting more grotesque and bizarre, back to earth.
‘Documents found in Jean-Loup’s house led us to an account in a Zurich bank. It probably contained money deposited by Marcel Legrand – a great deal of money, by the way. Only a code was needed in order to access that money. We’re unclear as to the source of Marcel’s wealth at this stage, and the trail on him has gone pretty cold. Nor do we know where Jean-Loup lived before he showed up in Monte Carlo, but it’s easy to say how. With that much money, he never had to work.’
Then Attorney General Durand had to have his say. ‘Another thing to remember. Since everyone thought that there was only one boy in that house, a body of that age aroused no suspicion. And the fire devastated practically everything inside. There were no traces left. Which is why the case was closed so quickly. When Jean-Loup found out that his brother’s body wasn’t destroyed by the flames, he broke open the grave and stole it from the cemetery.’
Durand fell silent and Frank spoke up.
And the music?’ he asked Cluny.
The psychiatrist took a moment before answering. ‘I’m still working on his relationship with music. Apparently, his father was a passionate fan and an avid collector of rare recordings. It was probably the only luxury he allowed his sons in exchange for what he made them go through. It’s hard for him to talk about it. Whenever I mention music, the subject closes his eyes and becomes completely removed.’
Now they were hanging on his every word. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He was probably too immersed himself in the story he was telling.
‘I’d like to outline a particularly delicate aspect of the story. Jean-Loup suffers from unconscious feelings of guilt for killing his brother, which he’ll probably never get rid of. He has always believed that the whole world was responsible for Lucien’s death and for all he suffered for his monstrous appearance. And that’s how Jean-Loup evolved into a serial killer: it’s part missionary complex, part desire for power. A complex induced by external forces, by his dysfunctional family and by his obsession with giving some fleeting sense of normality to his brother. The real reason that he killed all those people and used the mask of their faces on his brother’s corpse is that he thought he owed it to him. It was a way of repaying him for everything he suffered.’
Cluny was seated with his legs slightly apart. He lowered his eyes to the table and they were filled with pity when he raised them. ‘Whether we like it or not, everything he did was out of love. An abnormal, unconditional love for his brother.’
He got up from his chair almost immediately, as if finishing his presentation relieved him of a burden that he had no desire to carry alone. Now that he could share it with others, his presence was superfluous.
‘That’s all I have to say for the moment. I’ll have a report ready in a couple of days. Meanwhile, I’ll go on examining him, though we’ve learned almost all we can.’
Roncaille got up and came around his desk to thank the psychiatrist. He shook his hand and walked him to the door. When he passed Frank, Cluny lay his hand on his shoulder. ‘Congratulations,’ he said simply.
‘You, too. And thank you for everything.’
Cluny replied with a grimace that was either a smile or a declaration of modesty. He motioned to Durand who was sitting very still. Durand nodded back. Then Cluny left and Roncaille closed the door gently behind him.
The three men sat in silence, lost in thought. Finally, the attorney general stood up and went to look out of the window. He decided to break the silence from that observation point. He spoke with his back to them, as if ashamed to face them.
‘It seems that the whole business is finished. And it’s thanks to you, Frank. Chief Roncaille can confirm that the Prince himself has asked us to send his personal congratulations.’ Durand’s pause had far less dramatic impact than Cluny’s. He decided to turn around. ‘I’ll be as honest with you as you were with me. I know you don’t like me. You were quite open about it. I don’t like you either. I never did and never will. There are thousands of miles between us and neither of us has the slightest intention of building a bridge. But to be fair, there’s one thing I have to say -’ he took a couple of steps and stood right in front of Frank, putting out his hand – ‘I wish there were a lot more policemen like you.’
Frank stood up and shook Durand’s hand. For now and probably for ever, it was the most the two of them could do. Then Durand went back to being what he was, a distant, elegant political official with a slight claim to efficiency. ‘I’ll leave you now, if you don’t mind. Goodbye, chief. Congratulations to you as well.’
Roncaille waited for the door to close and then his face relaxed considerably. He became less formal, at least.
‘Where to now, Frank? Back to the States?’
Frank made a gesture that could mean anywhere or nowhere. ‘I don’t know. For now I’m just going to have a look around. We’ll see. I have time to decide.’
They said their goodbyes and Frank finally felt authorized to leave. As he put his hand on the doorknob, Roncaille’s voice stopped him.
‘One last thing, Frank.’
Frank didn’t move. ‘What is it?’
‘I just wanted to confirm that I’ve taken care of what you asked for in respect to Nicolas Hulot.’ Frank turned and bowed slightly, as one does to a gallant adversary who has proved himself a man of honour.
‘I never had any doubt that you would.’
He left the office, closing the door behind him. As Frank walked down the hallway, he wondered whether or not Roncaille knew that he had just lied through his teeth.
Frank walked out into the sun through the main entrance of the Sûreté Publique of the Principality of Monaco. He narrowed his eyes against the sudden brightness, after the dim lights of headquarters. The Frank Ottobre of the past would have been bothered by that total luminosity, that unmistakable sign of life. But not any more. Now all he needed was a pair of sunglasses, and he pulled his Ray-Bans out of his pocket. So much had happened, most of it awful and some of it horrendous. So many people had died. Now and in the past. Among them Nicolas Hulot, one of the few men he had ever known whom he could really call a friend.
Sergeant Morelli was waiting for him on Rue Notari, his hands thrust into his pockets. Frank walked calmly down the steps and joined him, taking off the sunglasses he had just put on. Claude deserved to be able to look him in the eye, without screens or barriers. Frank smiled and wondered if he still possessed a light-hearted tone somewhere.
‘Ciao, Claude. What are you waiting for? Someone stand you up?’
‘No, sir. I only wait for people I know will come. In this case, I was waiting for you. Did you think you could get away with leaving just like that? I’m holding you responsible for a return trip from Nice with a daredevil maniac.’
‘Xavier?’
‘Former Agent Xavier, you mean. At the moment, he’s looking through the classified ads. Landscaping in particular. You know, lawn mowers.’
Just then Agent Xavier Lacroix drove up Rue Suffren Raymond at the wheel of a police car. He smiled and waved as he passed them. He stopped a littler further on, to pick up a cop who was waiting for him. Then he sped off. Morelli blushed; he’d been caught in the act. Frank laughed. He was glad their mood was so much lighter than the one upstairs in Roncaille’s office.
‘Well, if you haven’t fired him yet, you now have good reason. He just made a complete ass out of you.’
‘Me? Come on. And what about you? Any plans for the near future?’
Frank assumed a noncommittal air. ‘I don’t know. Travel a little maybe. You know how it is.’
Alone?’
‘Sure! Who would want a washed-up former FBI agent?’
And then Morelli got his revenge. At that moment, a silver Laguna station wagon drove up and stopped in front of them. Helena Parker was at the wheel, smiling and looking like a different person. If one compared her eyes at that moment with a photograph of her taken just a week earlier, one would swear it wasn’t the same woman. Stuart was in the back, curiously observing their entrance into the Sûreté Publique. Morelli looked at Frank and laughed.
Alone, huh? There’s justice in the world. Lacroix can keep his job and you can drive away in this car.’
He held out his hand and Frank shook it happily. Morelli’s voice was different now. His tone was that of someone talking to a friend who had witnessed the same things. ‘Get out of here before this woman figures out you’re a washed-up former agent and leaves. Everything’s finished here.’
‘Yeah, finished. This one. There’ll be something else tomorrow. You’ll see.’
‘That’s how it works, Frank. In Monte Carlo like everywhere else. Things are just a little shinier here.’ Morelli didn’t want to shake Frank’s reserve and was unsure whether or not to continue. ‘Have you decided what you’ll do afterwards?’
‘You mean work?’
‘Yes.’
Frank shrugged. Morelli knew it wasn’t the whole truth but he couldn’t expect any more.
‘The FBI, like heaven, can wait. What I need now is a long vacation, a real one, where you laugh and have fun with the right people.’ And Frank waved towards the car as Morelli suddenly opened his eyes wide and dug his hand in his pocket.
‘Hey, I almost forgot. I would have had to get every policeman in France after you to give you this.’ He pulled a light blue envelope out of his pocket. ‘And the person who gave me this letter would never have forgiven me.’
Frank looked at it for a moment without opening it. His name was written in a woman’s handwriting, delicate but not overly so. He could guess who it was from. For the moment, he put it in his pocket.
‘’Bye, Claude. Take it easy.’
‘You take it easy. Relax, see the world.’
‘We’re going to Disneyland,’ Stuart’s voice in English piped up from the car in confirmation. Morelli stepped back and raised his eyes to the sky. He pretended to look upset for the boy leaning forward between the two front seats. He replied in good English with a slight French accent.
‘Not fair. You go to Disneyland and I have to stay here and mind the shop.’ He paused for a slight concession. ‘Okay, it’s Monte Carlo. But I’m slaving away all alone.’ Frank got into the car, closed the door, and opened the window. He spoke to Helena, but loud enough for the sergeant to hear him.
‘Let’s get out of here before this clown ruins our day. I don’t know where they get their cops here. And they say the Monte Carlo police force is one of the best in the world.’
The car pulled away and Frank left Morelli with a final wave. They reached the bottom of Rue Notari and turned right. At the end of Rue Princesse Antoinette, they stopped to let a car pass. At the corner, Frank saw Barbara headed in the opposite direction. She was walking quickly and her wavy red hair was swaying with her step. As the car started moving again, Frank watched her, knowing that the girl’s presence on that street was no accident. Morelli had just said he only waited for people he knew would show up… Helena poked him on the arm. He turned to see her smiling at him.
‘Hey you, we haven’t even left yet, and you’re already looking at other women?’
Frank leaned back and put on his sunglasses with a dramatic gesture.
‘If you have to know, that woman was the real reason Morelli was standing in the street. Ha! And I thought he was my true friend waiting to say goodbye. All alone in Monte Carlo!’
‘Which confirms the theory that this world is full of cowardly, lying men.’
Frank looked at the woman sitting next to him. She was transformed, after only a few days. And the knowledge that it was his doing had transformed Frank as well. He smiled and shook his head in denial.
‘No, it confirms the theory that the world is full of cowardly liars. It’s just statistics that some of them happen to be men.’ Frank stopped Helena’s reaction by giving her directions. ‘Bear right here,’ he pointed. ‘We’ll drive along the harbour and follow the signs for Nice.’
‘Don’t try to get out of it,’ Helena retorted. ‘We’re going to continue this discussion.’
But her expression was gentle. They descended towards the harbour and drove past the crowded pier. Stuart was hanging out the window, fascinated with the colourful summer crowd of people and boats. He pointed to an enormous private yacht anchored at the pier that even had a small helicopter parked on the upper deck.
‘Mommy, look how long that boat is. There’s a helicopter on it.’
‘I already told you, Stuart,’ Helena replied without turning around. ‘Monaco is a strange place. It’s a small country but lots of important people live here.’
‘I know why. ’Cause they don’t have to pay taxes.’
Frank refrained from pointing out to him that sooner or later you always had to pay taxes, wherever you lived. Stuart wouldn’t understand and Frank didn’t feel like explaining. He didn’t want to think about anything at all. They passed the place where Arianna’s body had been found with her boyfriend. Helena said nothing and neither did Frank. He was glad to be wearing his sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes. They came to the curve of the Rascasse, with the Radio Monte Carlo building on their left. For an instant, Frank could see an image of the director’s booth behind the glass and the deejay on the air.
That’s enough. It’s over now. And if something else happens tomorrow, it has nothing to do with me.
They turned down the road to leave the city and the slight tension in the car faded away as soon as they passed the junction for Fontvieille and headed towards Nice. Shifting position in his seat, Frank felt something in his pocket and pulled out the envelope Morelli had given him. The flap was tucked inside. Frank opened it and pulled out a sheet of blue paper, folded in half. The note was written in the same delicate handwriting.
Hello Handsome,
Allow me to join in the congratulations for our hero. Along with all my thanks for everything you’ve done. I was just informed by the Principality authorities. They’re holding an official ceremony in memory of Inspector Nicolas Hulot in recognition of his merits, and reliable sources have told me that you’re responsible. You know how much that means to me. And I’m not referring to the economic aspect, which will guarantee me a peaceful old age, whatever that means in my case.
After certain events, the world just wants to forget as quickly as possible. Some people are left with the task of remembering so that they don’t happen again.
I’m very proud of you. You and my husband are the best men I have ever known. I loved Nicolas and I still do. I’ll love him for ever.
I wish you all the good fortune you deserve and which I know you will find.
With affection,
Céline
Frank read Céline Hulot’s note two or three times before folding it and slipping it into his pocket. As she weaved through the traffic and turned down the road for the highway, Helena turned to him.
‘Bad news?’
‘No. Just regards and best wishes from a woman who is a dear friend.’
Stuart leaned forward between the seats. His head was between Frank’s and Helena’s. ‘Does she live in Monte Carlo?’
‘Yes, Stuart. She lives here.’
‘Is she an important person?’
‘Of course. She’s the wife of a police inspector.’ Frank looked at Helena. His answer to Stuart was mostly meant for her.
Helena smiled and Stuart sat back, puzzled, and looked out at the sea that disappeared from view as they headed inland. Frank reached for his seat belt.
‘Young man,’ he said to Stuart as he buckled it, ‘from now on, buckle up until further orders. Roger?’
Frank decided that he had earned the right to be a little silly, after all that had happened. He put his arms out in front of him like the head of a caravan leading a group of pioneers west. ‘France, here we come.’
He and Helena smiled at the boy’s enthusiastic reaction. As he checked to make sure that Stuart had buckled his seat belt correctly, Frank observed the face of the woman at the wheel, concentrating on getting through the congested summer Côte d’Azur traffic. He traced her profile with his eyes; his gaze was like a pencil drawing an indelible picture of that moment in his memory.
He knew it would not be easy for them. They would have to separate their need to forget from their need to remember. But they were together, and that was an excellent start. He closed his eyes behind the screen of his dark glasses. He recorded for the future that everything he really cared about was in that car with him. He couldn’t possibly want for anything more.