The man’s head emerges from the water not far from the prow of the yacht. Through his underwater mask, he spots the anchor chain and swims to it slowly. His right hand grabs hold and he observes the boat, its fibreglass hull reflecting the full moon. His breathing, fed by his oxygen tank, is calm and relaxed.
The five-litre tank on his back is not for long dives, but it is light and manageable and gives him enough air for his needs. He is wearing a plain black wetsuit, without logos or colours, thick enough to protect him from the cold water. He cannot use a torch but the almost glaring light of the full moon is more than enough. Careful not to splash, he slides back underwater, following the outline of the submerged hull with its long keel extending down towards the sea bed. He reaches the stern and grabs on to the ladder still hanging down.
Good.
No acrobatics needed to get on board. He loosens the rope around his waist. After affixing a snap hook to the ladder, the first thing he does is attach it to the other end of the hermetically sealed box he is carrying. He removes the tank and the belt of weights and leaves them hanging on the ladder, a couple of feet below the water’s surface. He does not want to limit his movements. He intends to take the two people above by surprise while they are asleep.
He is about to remove his fins when he hears footsteps on the deck above. He abandons the ladder and moves to the right so that he is hidden by the wall. From his position in the shadows, he sees the girl walk to the side of the boat and stand looking out, enchanted by the play of moonlight on the flat sea. For an instant, her white bathrobe is yet another reflection. Then, in a fluid gesture, she lets it fall to the ground and stands naked in the light.
From his position, the man sees her profile and admires her toned body, the perfect form of her small, firm breasts. His gaze follows the line of her buttocks that melts into her long, nervous legs.
With quicksilver movements, the young woman reaches the ladder and sticks out a foot to test the water.
The man smiles, a tapered smile like that of a shark. A stroke of luck! He stealthily puts his scuba equipment back on and waits for her next move.
He hopes the girl won’t mind the cold and will give in to the temptation of a moonlit dip in the sea. As if reading his mind, she turns and starts climbing down the ladder, gently slipping into the waves, shaking as the cold water gives her goose bumps and firms her nipples.
She swims away from the boat, out towards the open sea in the opposite direction from where he is waiting in his black wetsuit. The man’s silent movement below the water has the sinister fluidity of a hunter starting to close in on his unwitting prey. The game is cruel and its stakes are life and death.
He slips noiselessly below the surface and descends easily to the bottom of the sea, where he starts swimming towards the girl, reaching her in moments. He looks up and sees her above him, a dark stain against the light on the surface of the water. He rises unhurriedly, breathing very slowly so that the air bubbles do not betray his presence. When the girl is within arm’s reach, he grabs her by the ankles and pulls her brutally down.
Arianna is stunned by the violent thrust underwater. She has no time to fill her lungs with air. Almost immediately, the grasp on her ankle is loosened. She instinctively kicks to push herself upwards but two hands are placed on her shoulders and their weight pushes her further down towards the bottom, far from the film of water shining above her head like a mocking promise of air and light. She feels the slimy contact of the wetsuit, two predatory arms gripping her like a belt above her breasts, and an unknown body attached to hers as her assailant pinions her pelvis with his legs.
Terror encloses reason within a wall of ice.
Wildly, she tries to free herself, whimpering, but her lungs, already lacking oxygen, quickly burn out all her reserves. As her need for air intensifies, Arianna feels her strength fade, still at the mercy of the body clutching hers, pulling her down towards the moonless night at the bottom of the sea.
She senses that she is about to die, that someone is killing her and she doesn’t know why. Salty tears of regret intermingle with the millions of drops of indifferent water around her. She feels the darkness of that embrace expand and become part of her like a bottle of black ink pouring into the clean water. A cold, pitiless hand starts exploring every part of her, inside and out, trying to extinguish any tiny flame of life, until it reaches her young woman’s heart and stops it forever.
The man feels the body suddenly slacken at the moment that it is abandoned by life. He waits a second, then turns the girl so that her face is towards him, puts his hands under her armpits, and starts kicking with his fins to rise to the surface. As he heads upwards, the young woman’s face is no longer a dark blotch outside his goggles. He sees her delicate features, small nose and half-opened mouth from which a few last air bubbles escape. Her magnificent green eyes are immobile as they approach the light that they can no longer see. He looks at the face of the woman he has killed like a photographer developing a particularly important negative. When he is completely sure of the beauty of her face, he smiles.
The man’s head finally emerges from the water. Still holding the body, he swims to the ladder. He takes the line that he had attached to the metal box and winds it around the woman’s neck so that it holds her as he removes his tank and mouthpiece. The body slips underwater, rippling slightly; the girl’s hair remains afloat, lapping like the waves against the hull, moving softly in the moonlight like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
He removes his fins and mask and puts them down carefully, silently. When he is free, he grabs hold of the ladder with his left hand and loosens the rope holding the body, grasping it with his right arm. Without any apparent effort, he climbs the wooden steps, carrying his victim. He observes her for a while and then leans down to pick up the bathrobe she was wearing before her night swim.
In a belated gesture of pity, he spreads the robe over the woman lying on the deck, as if he wanted to protect the cold body from the chill of a night, which, for her, would never end.
‘Arianna?’
The voice is suddenly heard from below. The man turns instinctively towards it. The girl’s companion might have been awakened by the sense that he was alone in the whitish moonlight flooding the cabin. Perhaps he had stretched his leg to seek contact with her skin and felt only emptiness. Perhaps he had called and there had been no answer, so now he was coming to look for her.
Covered by the black wetsuit that turns him into a shadow even darker than those thrown by the moon, the man finds a hiding place, where the mast and the boom meet.
From where he stands, he sees the woman’s companion emerge from below deck. He is naked. Turning his head as he climbs on deck, he sees her and stops. She is lying at the stern, near the rudder and the ladder. Her face is turned away and she appears to be sleeping, covered haphazardly by the white bathrobe. He takes a step towards her. His bare feet sense puddles of cold water on the wooden deck. Maybe he thinks she went for a swim and he feels a surge of tenderness for the body that seems to be asleep in the moonlight. Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he sees her swimming gracefully in the quiet sea, her wet body shining as she leaves the water and carefully dries herself. He goes over to her as if perhaps to wake her with a kiss, to bring her down to the cabin and make love to her. He kneels down and puts a hand on her bare shoulder above her robe. The man with the black wetsuit can hear every word he says.
‘Darling.’ The woman does not show the slightest sign of having heard. Her skin is like ice. ‘Darling, you can’t stay out here in the cold.’
Still no answer. Jochen feels a strange terror carve its way into the pit of his stomach.
Cautiously, he takes her head in his hands and turns Arianna towards him. His eyes meet a lifeless stare. The movement causes a stream of water to trickle from her mouth. He knows immediately that she is dead and a silent scream possesses him. He jumps up and in that very instant, feels a damp arm around his neck. The sudden pressure makes him arch backward.
Jochen is taller than average and he has the body of an athlete, perfectly trained during long hours at the gym so that he can endure the extraordinary physical stress of the Grand Prix. Still, his aggressor is taller and just as strong. He also has the advantage of surprise and of Jochen’s shock at the girl’s death. The driver instinctively raises his hands and grabs the arm covered by the wetsuit, which is pressed tight against his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a reflection sparkle on his right. A fraction of a second later, the assailant’s knife, sharp as a razor, cuts through the air with a hiss, drawing a swift circle downward.
The victim’s body shudders and contracts in the agony of death as the blade penetrates his ribs and splits open his heart. He feels the unnatural taste of blood in his mouth, and he dies with the moon’s cold smile in his eyes.
The man continues to press with the knife until the body is completely limp in his arms. Only then does he let go of the knife, supporting the body with his own. He eases it down to the deck and, breathing slowly to calm his panting, stands there a moment, looking at the two corpses. Then he grabs the man’s body and starts dragging it below.
He has very little time and a great deal of work to do before the sun comes up.
The only thing lacking is a little music.
Roger came out on the deck of the Baglietto and breathed the fresh morning air. It was seven thirty and promised to be a beautiful day. After Grand Prix week, the owners of the yacht that he commanded had gone, leaving the boat in his care until the summer cruise, which usually lasted a couple of months. He had at least another six weeks of peace in the harbour of Monte Carlo, without the ship’s owner and his wife, a huge pain in the ass who had every type of plastic surgery imaginable and was so covered in jewellery that you needed dark glasses to look at her in the sun.
Donatella, the Italian waitress at the Restaurant du Port, was just setting the outdoor tables. The people who worked in the offices and stores around the harbour would soon be coming in for breakfast. Roger stood watching her in silence until she noticed. She smiled and pushed her chest out just a little more.
‘Life’s good, huh?’
‘Could be a lot better,’ said Roger, continuing the banter that had been going on between them for a while. He pretended to look sad.
Donatella moved the few feet that separated the tables from the stern of the boat and stopped right below him. Her open blouse revealed an intriguing furrow between her breasts and Roger plunged his gaze down like a fishing line. The girl noticed but gave no sign that it bothered her.
‘You know, if you used your words as well as your eyes… Hey, what’s that nutter doing?’
Roger turned his head to follow the girl’s look and saw the twin-engine Beneteau yacht heading straight towards the line of anchored boats at full speed. There was nobody on the bridge.
‘Stupid idiots.’
He left Donatella and ran to the prow of the Baglietto. He started waving his arms frantically, shouting, ‘Hey, you with the twin engine! Watch out!’
There was no sign of life from the yacht. It was heading straight towards the quay without slowing down. Now it was just a few yards away and a collision seemed inevitable.
‘Hey!’
Roger cried out, then grabbed the handrail and waited for the impact. With a violent crash, the Beneteau’s prow rammed into the Baglietto s port side, wedging itself between its hull and that of the boat anchored next to it. Luckily, there was not too much damage; the fenders had helped to soften the blow. Still, there was an ugly grey scratch in the paintwork. Roger was furious.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!’ he shouted.
There was no answer from the other boat. Roger climbed from the bridge of the Baglietto on to the prow of the Beneteau as a group of curious onlookers gathered around the pier. When he reached the stern, he noticed something strange. The rudder was blocked. Someone had slipped in the pole hook, tying it with a rope. A red trail started on deck and continued over to the steps leading to the cabins below. It seemed bizarre and Roger got a cold knot in his stomach. As he approached, his legs started to shake. Two words were written on the table in the same red liquid.
I kill…
The threat of the words and the ellipsis following them made him sick. Roger was twenty-eight years old and no hero, but something pushed him towards the door of what was probably the main cabin. He stopped for a second, his mouth dry with dread, and then he opened the door.
He was overcome by a sweetish odour that took hold of his throat and made him gag. He didn’t even have the strength to cry out. For all the years he had left to live, the scene before him would return to his dreams every night.
The policeman about to come on board and the people on the pier saw him rush out on deck, bend over the edge of the boat, and vomit into the sea, his body retching convulsively.
Frank Ottobre awoke with the feeling that he was lying between strange sheets in a strange bed, in an unknown house, in a foreign city.
Then memory seeped into his brain like sunlight through the shutters and the pain was still there, just as he’d left it the night before. If there was still a world outside, and if there was a way to forget that world, his mind had rejected both. Just then, the cordless phone on the bedside table rang. He turned over and extended his hand to the phone’s flashing display.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, Frank.’
He closed his eyes and the face called forth by the voice in the receiver came immediately to mind. The pug nose, the sandy hair, the eyes, the smell of aftershave, the pained walk, the dark glasses and grey suit that was like a uniform.
‘Hey, Cooper.’
‘It’s early for you, but I knew you’d be up.’
‘Yeah. What’s up?’
‘What’s up? Total pandemonium. We’re on duty 24/7. If there were twice as many of us, we’d need twice as many as that to keep up with everything. Everyone’s trying to pretend that nothing’s happened, but everyone’s afraid. And we can’t blame them: we’re scared too.’
There was a brief pause.
‘How are you doing, by the way?’
Yeah, how am I doing?
Frank asked himself the question as if just reminded that he was alive.
‘Okay, I guess. I’m here in Monte Carlo hobnobbing with the jet set. Only problem is, with all these billionaires I’m in danger of feeling like one myself. I’ll leave when I no longer think that buying a mile-long yacht is a crazy idea.’
He got out of bed, still holding the phone to his ear, and headed to the bathroom in the nude. In the semi-darkness, he sat down on the toilet and urinated.
‘If you buy one, let me know so I can come try it out.’
Cooper wasn’t fooled by Frank’s bitter humour, but he decided to play along. Frank imagined him on the phone in his office, with a strained smile and a distressed look on his face. Cooper was the same as ever. He, however, was in a tailspin and they both knew it.
There was a moment of silence and then Frank distinctly heard the sigh that Cooper often used. His voice was harsher now and more anxious.
Frank, don’t you think-’
‘No, Cooper,’ said Frank, knowing what he was going to say and cutting him off. ‘Not yet. I don’t feel up to coming back. It’s too soon.’
Frank. Frank. Frank! It’s been almost a year. How much time do you need to…’
In Frank’s mind, Cooper’s words were lost in the huge space between where he was, America, and the void of the galaxies. All he could hear was the voice of his own thoughts.
Yeah, how much time, Cooper? A year, a hundred years, a million years? How much time does it take for a man to forget that he destroyed two lives?
‘Homer said you can come back on duty whenever you like, if that helps. You’d be a help anyway. We need people like you right now, for Christ sake. Don’t you think that being here and feeling like you’re part of something, after all this-’
Frank interrupted and destroyed any false idea of closeness.
‘There’s only one thing left after all this, Cooper.’
Cooper was silent, with a burning question that he was afraid even to whisper. Then he spoke, and the thousands of miles separating Monte Carlo from America were nothing compared to the distance between the two men.
‘What, Frank, for the love of God?’
‘God has nothing to do with it. It’s me; it’s between me and myself. A fight to the death, and you know it.’
Frank removed the phone from his ear and watched his finger in the dark as he pressed the button and ended the call. He raised his eyes towards his naked body reflected in the large bathroom mirror. Bare feet on the cold marble floor, muscular legs, then all the way up to the dull eyes and back down to examine his chest and the red scars crisscrossing it. Almost of its own accord, his right hand rose slowly to brush over them. He sat there, freely allowing the little piece of death he constantly carried inside to wash over him.
When he had awoken, Harriet’s face was the first thing he had seen. Then, Cooper’s face had emerged from the mist. When he had managed to focus on the room, he had seen Homer Woods sitting impassively on an armchair in front of the bed, his hair brushed back, his blue eyes watching without expression behind his gold-rimmed glasses.
He had turned his head to his wife and realized as if in a dream that he was in a hospital room with green light filtering through the Venetian blinds, a bouquet of flowers on the table, tubes coming out of his arm, the monotonous bleep of a monitor, and everything spinning around. Harriet had approached him, bringing her face close to his. She had put a hand on his forehead. He had felt her hand but couldn’t hear what she was saying because once again he’d plunged back to where he had been.
When he had finally come to and was able to talk and think, Homer Woods was standing next to Harriet. Cooper was not there.
The light in the room had changed but it was still, or once again, daytime. Frank had wondered how long it had been since he had last awoken and whether or not Homer had been there all that time. He was wearing the same clothes, the same expression. Frank had realized that he had never seen him with different clothes or different expressions. Maybe he had an entire closet full of identical ones. They called him ‘Husky’ in the office, because his steely blue eyes looked like those of a sled dog.
‘Hi, sweetheart. Welcome back,’ Harriet had said with her hands in his hair and a tear running down her face. That tear was part of her, as if it had been there since the beginning of time.
She had risen from her seat next to the bed and placed her lips on his in a salty kiss. Frank had breathed in the scent of her breath the way a sailor breathes the air that carries the fragrance of the coast, the air of home. Homer had discreetly moved away.
‘What happened? Where am I?’ Frank had asked in a toneless voice that he didn’t recognize. His throat was strangely sore and he remembered nothing. His last memory was of a door being kicked open and of holding his gun as he entered a room. Then came the flash and the thunder and an enormous hand pushing him upwards, towards a painless darkness.
‘You’re in the hospital. You’ve been in a coma for a week. You had us worried sick.’ The tear was melded on to his wife s cheek like a fold in her skin. It sparkled with her pain.
She was standing to one side and had glanced at Homer to let him do the rest of the explaining. He had come over to the bed and looked at Frank from behind the barrier of his glasses.
‘The two Larkins spread a rumour that there was a big deal about to happen, and that they were going to be exchanging the goods and the money with their contacts at the warehouse. Lots of goods and lots of money. They did it on purpose to get Harvey Lupe and his men jealous and convince them to break in and get their hands on everything: drugs and cash. The building was stuffed with explosives. With one show of fireworks they were planning to free themselves of all the competition. But you and Cooper came along instead of Lupe. He was still outside the south side of the warehouse when you went in through the office. In Cooper’s direction the blast was partly absorbed by the shelves inside and all he got was a little debris in his face and a few scratches. You got hit with the full force of the explosion and it’s lucky for you that the Larkins are big dealers but lousy bombers. It’s a miracle you’re alive. I can’t even tell you off for not waiting for the team. If you had all gone in there together it would have been a massacre.’
Now he knew it all but still could remember nothing. All he could think was that he and Cooper had worked for two years to get the Larkins and instead the Larkins had got them. Him, to be precise.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Frank had asked, sensing some strangeness in his body. He felt a vague constriction and saw his right leg in a cast, as if it belonged to someone else.
A doctor had entered the room just in time to hear the question, and he had given the answer. The doctor’s hair was grey but his face and manner were those of a young man. He had smiled at Frank ceremoniously, his head to one side.
‘Hello, I’m Dr Foster, one of the reasons you’re still alive. Hope you don’t mind. If you like, I can tell you what’s wrong. A few broken ribs, a lesion of the pleura, a leg broken in two places, wounds of various sizes everywhere, serious injuries of the thorax, and a concussion. And enough bruises to make your skin three shades darker. And there is – that is, there was – a piece of metal that stopped a quarter of an inch from your heart and made us sweat blood to get rid of it before it got rid of you. And now, if you will allow me’-he picked up the chart hanging at the foot of the bed – I think it’s time to examine our efforts at damage control.’ He had gone to the head of the bed and pressed a button, near enough for Frank to smell his freshly laundered shirt.
Harriet and Homer Woods had started towards the door, opening it just in time to let in a nurse pushing a trolley. As she was leaving, Harriet had thrown a strange glance at the monitor checking her husband’s heart, as though she thought her presence was necessary for both his heart and the machine to work. Then she had turned away and closed the door behind her.
As the doctor and nurse bustled around his body covered with bandages and tubes, Frank had asked for a mirror. Without a word, the nurse had taken one hanging near the door and handed it to him. What he saw in the mirror, strangely without emotion, were the pale face and suffering eyes of Frank Ottobre, FBI special agent, still alive.
Mirror to mirror, eye to eye. The present overlapped with the past and Frank met his own eyes once again in the big bathroom mirror and asked himself if it had really been worth it for all those doctors to work so hard just to keep him around.
He went back into the bedroom and turned on the light. He pressed a button beside the bed to open the electric shutters. They parted with a hum, mixing sunlight with the electric light.
Frank went over to the window, pushed aside the curtains, pulled the handle of the sliding door, and softly opened it. He went out on the terrace.
Monte Carlo, paved with gold and indifference, lay below. Before him, under the rising sun, down at the end of the world, the blue sea mirrored the azure sky. He thought back to his conversation with Cooper. His country was at war on the other side of that sea. A war that involved him and those like him. A war that concerned everyone who wanted to live without shadows or fear in the sunlight. And he should be there, defending that world and those people.
There was a time when he would have gone, when he would have been on the front line like Cooper, Homer Woods and all the others. But that time was over. He had almost given his life for his country and his scars were the proof.
And Harriet…
A gust of fresh air made him shudder. He realized that he was still naked. As he went back inside, he wondered what the world could still do with Frank Ottobre, FBI special agent, when he didn’t even know what to do with himself.
As he got out of the car, police inspector Nicolas Hulot of the Sûreté Publique of the Principality of Monaco saw the yacht wedged in between the other two, slightly listing to one side. He walked over to the wharf. Sergeant Morelli came towards him, down the gangway of the Baglietto that had been rammed. When they were face-to-face, the inspector was shocked to see that the other man was extremely upset. Morelli was an excellent policeman, who had even trained with Mossad, the Israeli secret service. He had seen all kinds of horrors. But he was pale and avoided Hulot’s eyes as they spoke, as though what was happening were his fault.
‘Well, Morelli?’
‘Inspector, it was a massacre. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ He sighed deeply and Hulot thought for a moment that he was about to vomit.
‘Calm down, Claude, and explain. What do you mean “massacre”? They told me there was a homicide.’
‘Two, inspector. A man and a woman. What’s left of them, anyway.’
Inspector Hulot turned around and looked at the crowd forming behind the police barricades. He had a sinking sense of foreboding. The Principality of Monaco was not a place where this kind of thing happened. The police force was one of the most efficient in the world and the low crime rate was an Interior Minister’s dream. There was a policeman for every sixty inhabitants and CCTV everywhere. Everything was under control. Men got rich or went bankrupt here, but nobody was killed. There were no robberies, no murders, no organized crime. In Monte Carlo, by definition, nothing ever happened.
Morelli pointed to a man of about thirty who was sitting at an outdoor cafe with a policeman and the medical examiner’s assistant. The place, usually swarming with people in designer clothes, was half empty. Anyone who could be useful as a witness had been detained, and anyone else was denied access. The owner was sitting on the doorstep next to a busty waitress, twisting his hands nervously.
‘That guy was on the Baglietto, the yacht that got hit. His name’s Roger something or other. He went on board to confront someone about the collision. He didn’t see anyone on deck so he went down below and found them. He’s in shock and they’re trying to get something out of him. Agent Delmore – he’s new – went on to the boat after he did. He’s in the car now. Not feeling so hot.’
The inspector turned back again to look at the curious crowd gathered between the police and Boulevard Albert Premier, where a team of workers had just finished dismantling the stands set up for the Grand Prix. He missed the bedlam of the event, the crowds and the inconvenience it always brought.
‘Let’s go see.’
They walked down the unsteady gangway of the Baglietto and then on to the Beneteau via another gangway that had been set up. As the inspector climbed on to the boat, he saw the rudder blocked with the hook and the trail of dried blood that started on deck and continued below where it was lost in darkness. The sun was warm but he felt the tips of his fingers grow suddenly cold. What the hell had happened on that boat?
‘If you don’t mind, inspector,’ said Morelli, pointing to the steps leading to the cabin below, ‘I’ll wait here. Once was more than enough.’
Going down the wooden steps, Inspector Hulot nearly bumped into Dr Lassalle, the medical examiner, who was leaving. He had a cushy job in the Principality and extremely limited experience. Hulot had no respect for him whatsoever, as a man or as a physician. He had got the job because of his wife’s connections and he enjoyed life while doing almost none of the work he was paid to do. Hulot had always thought of him as a luxury doctor. His presence there simply meant that he was the only person around at the time.
‘Good morning, Dr Lassalle.’
‘Ah, good morning, inspector.’ The doctor seemed relieved to see him. It was clear that he was facing a situation he couldn’t handle.
‘Where are the bodies?’
‘In there. Come and see.’
Now that his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, the inspector saw the trail of blood that continued along the floor and disappeared through an open door. To his right, there was a table where someone had written something in blood.
I kill…
Hulot felt his hands turn to ice. He forced himself to breathe deeply through his nose. He was hit by the sweetish smell of blood and death, odours that bring anguish and flies.
He followed the trail of blood and went into the cabin on the left. When he was at the door and could see what was inside, the ice in his hands spread through his entire body. Lying on the bed, one next to the other, were the bodies of a man and a woman, completely naked. The woman had no apparent wounds, while there was a large red blotch on the man’s chest at his heart, where the blood had stained the sheet. There was blood everywhere. It seemed impossible that those two lifeless bodies had contained so much blood. The inspector forced himself to look at the faces of the corpses. But their faces were no longer there. The murderer had completely removed the skin, hair included – the way one skins an animal. He stared, sickened by the wide-open eyes, gazing at a ceiling they could not see, the muscles of each face red with dried blood, the teeth exposed in a macabre smile that the absence of lips made eternal.
Hulot felt as though his life would stop there, that he would be standing near the door of the cabin staring at that spectacle of horror and death for ever. For an instant he prayed that the person capable of that slaughter had at least put his victims to death first, before inflicting that torture on them.
He made an effort to shake himself and turned towards the galley, where Lassalle was waiting. Morelli had finally managed to come back down and was there, too. He was standing in front of the doctor, searching the inspector’s face to see his reaction.
First, Hulot turned to the physician. ‘What can you tell me, doctor?’
Lassalle shrugged. ‘The deaths occurred a few hours ago. Rigor mortis has just set in. Hypostatic testing will confirm that. The man was apparently killed with some kind of knife; a sharp thrust right to the heart. As for the woman, apart from’ – the doctor paused to swallow his saliva – ‘apart from the mutilation, there is nothing, at least in front. I haven’t moved the bodies because we’re waiting for forensics. The autopsies should tell us more.’
‘Do we know who they are?’
‘According to the ship’s papers,’ said Morelli, ‘the yacht is the property of a Monte Carlo company. We haven’t done a thorough search yet.’
‘Forensics is going to be furious. With all the people coming and going on this boat, the evidence is contaminated and who knows what we’ve lost.’ Hulot looked at the floor and the trail of blood. Here and there were footprints he hadn’t noticed earlier. When he turned his gaze to the table, he was surprised to realize that he was doing so in the absurd hope that those desperate words would no longer be there.
He heard two voices from the deck above. He climbed up the steps and suddenly found himself in another world, of sunlight and life, of fresh salt air, without the smell of death he had been breathing below. An agent standing on deck was trying to hold back a man of about forty-five who was shouting in French with a strong German accent. The man was trying with all his might to get past the policeman.
‘Let me through, I said!’
‘You can’t. It’s not allowed. Nobody is allowed through.’
‘I have to get in there, I tell you. I have to know what happened.’ The man struggled to shrug off the policeman who was holding his arms. He was red in the face and hysterical.
‘I’m sorry, inspector,’ said the policeman, looking at his superior with relief. ‘We couldn’t stop him.’
Hulot nodded to say that it was all right and the policeman let go. The man straightened his clothes with a gesture of annoyance and approached the inspector as if he were someone he could finally address as an equal. He stopped and removed his sunglasses to look him straight in the eye. ‘Good morning, inspector. Would you kindly tell me what is going on here on this boat?’
‘And may I know to whom I have the pleasure of speaking?’
‘My name is Roland Shatz and I assure you that it’s a name that means something. I am a friend of the owner of this boat. I demand an answer.’
‘Mr Shatz, my name is Hulot and it probably means much less than yours, but I’m a police inspector, which means, that until otherwise informed, I am the person who asks the questions and demands the answers on this boat.’
Hulot clearly saw the anger rise in Shatz’s eyes. The man took a step closer and lowered his voice slightly.
‘Inspector,’ he whispered, just a few inches from the other man’s face. There was infinite contempt in his voice. ‘This boat belongs to Jochen Welder, twice Formula 1 world champion, and I’m his manager and personal friend. I am also a personal friend of His Highness, Prince Albert. So will you please tell me in detail exactly what has happened on this boat and to the people on it?’
Hulot left those words suspended between them for a moment. Then, his hand shot out with lightning speed and he grabbed Shatz by the knot of his tie, pulling it until he couldn’t breathe. The man’s face turned purple.
‘You want to know? Okay, I’ll make you happy. Come with me and I’ll show you what happened on this boat.’
He was furious. He pulled violently at the manager and practically dragged him below deck.
‘All right, my personal friend of Prince Albert. Come and see with your own eyes what happened.’
He stopped at the door of the cabin and finally let Shatz go. He waved his hand at the two bodies on the bed.
‘Look!’
Roland Shatz regained his breath, and then lost it again. As the reality of the scene before him began to sink in, his face grew deathly pale. The whites of his eyes flashed in the dim light and then he fainted.
As he walked towards the port, Frank saw a group of people watching police cars and uniformed men work their way among the boats moored along the quay. He heard a siren approaching behind him and he slowed his step. All those police meant that something more than a mere boating accident had occurred.
And then there were the reporters. Frank had too much experience not to recognize them at first sight. They were wandering around, sniffing out news with a frenzy only caused by something big. The siren, far away at first like a premonition, now wailed ever closer.
Two police cars raced along the coast from the Rascasse, pulling up in front of the barricades. A policeman hurried over to let them through. The cars stopped behind the ambulance, its back doors open like the jaws of a beast ready to swallow its prey.
Several uniformed and plainclothes policemen got out of the cars and headed towards the stern of a yacht anchored not far away. Frank saw Inspector Hulot standing in front of the gangway. The newcomers stopped to talk to him and then they all boarded the vessel and crossed the deck on to the boat wedged, listing, between the two either side of it.
Frank wandered slowly through the crowd and ended up at the wall to the right of the cafe. He found a position from which he could watch the scene comfortably. From the hold of the twin-masted vessel, several men emerged, carrying two plastic body bags. Frank observed with indifference the transfer of the bodies to the ambulance. Years ago, crime scenes had been his natural habitat. Now the spectacle was foreign to him, neither a professional challenge for a policeman, nor a scene of horror that offends his sense of humanity.
As the ambulance doors closed on their cargo, Inspector Hulot and the people with him walked single file down the Baglietto gangway. Hulot went directly towards the small crowd of newspaper, radio and TV reporters, which two policemen were now trying to hold back. Before he even reached them, Frank could hear the clamour of overlapping questions and see the microphones thrust up Hulot’s nose to force some scrap of information out of him, even a fragment that they could manipulate to arouse interest. When reporters couldn’t offer the truth, they were content to stir up speculation.
As Hulot dealt with the press with a robotic repetition of ‘no comment’, he turned to look in Frank’s direction. Frank realized that Hulot had seen him. The inspector abandoned the group of reporters with their unanswerable questions and waved Frank over to the barricade. Reluctantly, Frank detached himself from his vantage point and made his way through the crowd towards Hulot. The two men looked at each other. The inspector had probably only been up for a little while, but he already looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours.
‘Hi, Frank. Come inside.’
He motioned to a policeman nearby to move the barricade so Frank could pass through. They sat down at one of the cafe’s outdoor tables, under a parasol. Hulot’s eyes wandered as if he couldn’t explain to himself what had just happened. Frank removed his Ray-Bans and waited to make eye contact.
‘What’s up?’
‘Two dead, Frank. Murdered,’ he said, without looking at him. Hulot paused. Then he finally turned and looked at Frank. ‘And not just any two. Jochen Welder, the Formula 1 racing driver. And his girlfriend, Arianna Parker, a famous chess champion.’ Frank said nothing. He knew, instictively, that it wasn’t over. ‘They have no faces left. The killer flayed them like animals. It’s horrible. I have never in my life seen so much blood.’
In the distance, the plaintive siren of the ambulance and the forensics van receded into the city. The curiosity seekers gradually straggled off, overcome by the heat and bored by the dwindling activity on the quay. The reporters had gleaned all they could possibly get and they, too, were starting to pack up.
Hulot paused again. He stared at Frank, saying a great deal with his silence. ‘Want to take a look?’
Frank wanted to say no. Everything inside him said no. He would never again look at a trace of blood or overturned furniture, or touch the throat of a man lying on the ground to see if he was dead. He was no longer a policeman. He was no longer even a man. He was nothing.
‘No, Nicolas. I don’t feel like it.’
‘I’m not asking for you. I’m asking for me.’
Although Frank Ottobre had known Nicolas Hulot for years, he felt as though he were seeing him for the first time. They had once collaborated on an investigation that had involved the Bureau and the Sûreté Publique – some international money-laundering story tied to drugs and terrorism. The Monaco police, given their nature and efficiency, were in constant contact with police forces all over the world, including the FBI. Because of his perfect French and Italian, Frank had been sent to follow the investigation on the ground. He had got on well with Hulot and they had quickly become friends. They had stayed in touch, and he and Harriet had come to Europe once as guests of Hulot and his wife.
The Hulots had been planning a return visit to the States when the business with Harriet had happened. Frank still couldn’t give the events their proper name, as though not saying the actual words, Harriet’s suicide, kept the darkness at bay. In his mind, what had happened was still ‘the business with Harriet’.
When he had heard, Hulot had called almost every day for months. He had finally convinced Frank to end his isolation and come to Monte Carlo to visit him. With the discretion of a true friend, he had found him the apartment where he was staying. It belonged to André Ferrand, a company executive who was spending several months in Japan.
At that moment, Hulot was looking at him like a drowning man in need of a lifeboat. Frank couldn’t help but ask himself which of them was drowning and which was the lifeboat. They were two people alone against the cruelty of death.
‘Let’s go,’ said Frank, replacing his sunglasses and getting up suddenly, before he could give in to the impulse to turn and flee.
He followed his friend to the Beneteau, feeling his heart beating faster and faster. The inspector pointed to the steps on the twin-mast that led below deck, and let Frank go first. Hulot saw that his friend noticed the blocked rudder, but said nothing. When they were below, Frank looked around, keeping his eyes behind his shades.
‘Hmm… Luxury boat. Everything’s computerized. This is the boat of the lone sailor.’
‘Yeah, money was not an issue. Just think, he earned it by risking his life for years in a racing car and then ended up like this.’
Frank saw the traces left by the killer and the familiar marks left by forensics, who had found other less obvious details. There were the signs of a careful examination, of fingerprints taken and measurements made. The smell of death still lingered, even though all the portholes had been opened.
‘They found the two of them in there, in the bedroom, lying next to each other. The footprints you see were left by rubber shoes, maybe from a wetsuit. There are no fingerprints in the hand marks. The killer wore gloves at all times.’
Frank walked down the corridor, reaching the bedroom and stopping at the doorway. Outside was calm but inside it was hell. He had often witnessed scenes like this. Blood splashed on the ceiling. He had seen real slaughter. But that was men fighting other men, ruthlessly, for the things that humans desire: power, or money, or women. They were criminals fighting other criminals. Men against men, at any rate. Here, floating in the air was someone’s battle against his own personal demons, the ones that devour the mind as rust eats iron. No one could understand that better than Frank. He couldn’t breathe and turned to leave. Hulot greeted him above deck, then resumed his story.
‘At the port of Fontvieille where they were anchored, we were told that Welder and Parker set sail yesterday morning. They didn’t come back, so we think they dropped anchor off the coast somewhere. Not far off presumably, since they didn’t have much fuel. We still have to clarify the mechanics of the crime, but we have a plausible hypothesis. We found a bathrobe on deck. The girl might have gone out for some air. Maybe she went for a swim. The killer must have swum over from land. At any rate, he surprised her, pulled her underwater and drowned her. There were no wounds on her body. Then he got hold of Welder on deck and stabbed him. He pulled them both into the bedroom and calmly did… what I hope God strikes him dead for. Then he pointed the boat in the direction of the port, blocked the rudder so that it headed towards the dock, and left the way he came.’
Frank didn’t answer. In spite of the dim light, he was still wearing his sunglasses. With his head lowered, he seemed to be staring at the trail of blood that went between them like a track.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘You need to be fairly cold-blooded to do something like this, if that’s how it happened.’
He wanted to leave, to go back home. He didn’t want to have to say what he was saying. He wanted to return to the pier and resume his peaceful aimless walk in the sun. He wanted to breathe without realizing that he existed. But he went on talking.
‘If he came from land, then he didn’t do it in a fit of rage. It was premeditated. The whole thing must have been carefully planned. He knew where they were and they were more than likely the people he wanted to strike.’
The other man nodded, hearing something that had already occurred to him.
‘That’s not all, Frank. He left this as a commentary on what he did.’
Hulot made a gesture that underscored what was behind him. A wooden table and delirious words that could have come from the pen of Satan.
I kill…
At last Frank removed his glasses, as if he needed to see better in order to understand the words.
‘If that’s the way things were, these words mean only one thing, Nicolas. It’s not a commentary on what he did. It means he’s planning to do it again.’