Alone, far from the world, the man listens to music.
The notes of the Minuet from Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 float through the air. Enclosed in his metal box, the man is absorbed in the dancing rhythm of the strings and imagines the musicians’ movements and their concentration as they perform the symphony. Now his imagination soars above like a sky cam floating through space and time. Suddenly, he is no longer in his secret place but in a large room with frescoed walls and ceilings, illuminated from above by hundreds of candles suspended from enormous chandeliers. He shifts his gaze to the right in a view so clear that it seems real. His hand presses that of a woman moving next to him in the sensuous rhythm of a dance made up of elegant swirls, pauses and bows, practised so many times that it is smooth as wine poured into a glass. The woman is unable to resist his fixed stare. From time to time, she turns her eyes, veiled by long lashes, to the audience, seeking confirmation of the incredible awareness that she is the chosen one. There is admiration and envy in all those in the drawing room who watch them dance.
He knows that she will be his that night. In the soft glimmering candlelight, amid the lace and ribbons of the enormous canopy bed, he sees her emerge from the tangle of silks that cover her like rose petals. The rights of the king.
But none of that matters now. They are dancing and they are beautiful. And they will be even lovelier when…
Are you there, Vibo?
The voice arrives, gentle as always, anxious as only that voice can be. His dream, the image that he created before his closed eyes, is lost, crumbling away like burning frames of film.
It was only a moment’s respite from his duty, his burden. There is no room for dreams; there never was and there never will be. They could have dreamt once, when they lived in the big house on the hill, when they managed to crawl away from the obsessive care of the man who already wanted them to be men, when they just wanted to be boys. When they wanted to run, not march. But even now there was a voice that could break any vision their imaginations managed to create.
‘Yes, I’m here, Paso.’
What are you doing? I couldn’t hear you.
‘I was just thinking.’
The man lets the music continue. The last postscript of his thin mirage. There will never be a dance with a beautiful woman for him. For them. He gets up and goes into the other room, where the lifeless body lies in its crystal coffin.
He switches on the light. There is a reflection on the corner of the transparent case. It disappears when he moves and changes position. There is another, but it is always the same. Tiny insufficient mirages. He knows what he will find. Another broken illusion, another magic mirror shattered at his feet.
He goes up to the naked body inside and runs his eyes over the dried limbs, the colour of old parchment. His gaze moves slowly, from the feet to the head covered with what, not long ago, was the face of another man.
His heart aches.
Nothing lasts for ever. The mask is showing the first signs of decomposition. The hair is dry and dull. The skin is yellowed and shrinking. In a little while, in spite of his care, it will be no different from the skin of the face it is hiding. He looks at the body with infinite tenderness, eyes softened by the affection he cannot erase. He darkens and clenches his jaw in defiance.
It isn’t true that fate is unavoidable. It isn’t true that you can only watch as time and events occur. He can change; he must change that eternal injustice. He can fight against the mistakes distributed by fate with open hands in the snake pit that is the life of man.
Obscurity means darkness. Darkness means night. And night means that the hunt must continue.
The man smiles. Poor, stupid bloodhounds. Baying with bared teeth to hide their fear. Night-blind eyes searching in the dark to discover where the prey turned hunter will come from. When will he strike, and where?
He is someone and no one. He is the king. The king has no curiosity, only certainty. He leaves curiosity to others, to all those who ask, to all those who show it in their eyes, in their erratic gestures, in their apprehension, their anxiety that is sometimes so thick you can touch it, smell it.
Those two eternal questions. When and where? When will that last breath come, held in with the growl of an animal, kept inside with clenched teeth, because there will never be another? When, at what hour of the day or night, at what tick of an unwinding clock, will there be that last second and no other, leaving the rest of time to the world as it continues in other directions and along other routes? Where, in which bed, car seat, aeroplane lavatory, beach, armchair, hotel, will the heart feel that sharp pain, the interminable, curious, useless expectation of another beat, after an interval that becomes longer and longer, growing infinite? Sometimes death comes so quickly that the last flash is a final calmness, but not an answer, because in that blinding light there is no time to understand it, nor even, sometimes, to feel it.
The man knows with certainty what he has to do. He has already done it and he will do it again, as long as it is necessary. There are many masks out there, worn by people who do not deserve the appearance they give to the world. Nor any other.
What is it, Vibo? Why are you looking at me that way? Is there something wrong?
The man is reassuring. His mouth smiles, his eyes sparkle, his voice protects.
‘No, Paso, there’s nothing wrong. I was thinking how handsome you are. And soon you’ll be even more so.’
Oh, no. Really? Don’t tell me!
The man cloaks his intentions in secret tenderness.
‘Stop. You mustn’t speak of it. Secret of secrets. Remember?’
Oh, is it a secret of secrets? Then we can only speak of it at the full
The man smiles at the memory of their childhood game, in the few moments when that man was not there to spoil the only game that they were allowed to play.
‘That’s right, Paso. And the full moon is coming soon. Very soon…’
The man turns and goes towards the door. The music in the other room is over. Now there is a silence that feels like the natural continuation of the music.
Where are you going, Vibo?
‘I’ll be right back, Paso.’
He turns to look at the body lying in the crystal coffin. ‘First, I have to make a phone call…’
At Radio Monte Carlo they were sitting and waiting, like every night. The story had created such a fervour that there were three-times the usual number of people in the building at that hour.
Now, in addition, there was Sergeant Gottet and a couple of men who had installed a much more powerful and sophisticated computer system than that of the radio station, and had hooked it up to the Internet. There was a young guy with them, about twenty-five and intelligent-looking, short brown hair with blond streaks and a ring through his right nostril. He busied himself with a pile of floppy disks and CD-ROMs, his fingers flying over the keyboard. The kid’s name was Alain Toulouse but hackers knew him as Pico. When he was introduced to Frank, he smiled and his eyes sparkled.
‘FBI, huh?’ he said. ‘I got in once. Well, actually more than once. It used to be easier, but now they’ve wised up. Know if they’ve got any hackers working for them?’
Frank couldn’t answer the question, but the boy was no longer interested. He turned and sat back down at his station. He typed with lightning speed as he explained what he was doing.
‘First, I’m going to set up a firewall to protect the system. If someone tries to get in, I’ll know. Usually we try to stop attacks from the outside and that’s it. This time it’s different: we want to find out who’s attacking, without their knowledge. I’ve installed a program that I developed. It’ll let us hook on to the signal and follow it back. It might be a Trojan horse.’
‘Trojan horse?’ Frank asked.
‘It’s what we call a masked communication that travels covered by another one, like some viruses. So I’m also installing anti-virus protection. I only want the signal that we intercept, when we intercept it.’
He stopped to unwrap a sweet and stuck it in his mouth. Frank noticed that the kid had no doubt that he would intercept the call. He must have a pretty high opinion of himself. Then again, his attitude was typical of computer hackers. Their presumption and sarcasm led them to do things that might not actually be criminal but were simply aimed at showing their victims that they could avoid surveillance and get through any wall designed to keep them out. They saw themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods, armed with mouse and keyboard instead of bow and arrow.
‘As I was saying,’ Pico continued, chewing vigorously on the caramel stuck to his teeth, ‘I don’t want them to include a virus that gets out if they’re intercepted. Otherwise, we’d lose the signal and our chance to follow it, along with our computer, obviously. A really good virus can literally melt a hard drive. If this guy is really good, then any virus he lets out won’t smell like roses.’
Until then, Bikjalo had been sitting silently at a desk nearby. Now he asked a question. ‘Do you think any of your friends might play tricks on us while we’re doing this?’
Frank shot him a look but the station manager didn’t notice. Pico turned his chair around to look at Bikjalo directly, incredulous at his ignorance of the computer world.
‘We’re hackers, not hoodlums. Nobody would do anything like that. I’m here because this guy doesn’t just break in where he doesn’t belong and leave a smiley face behind as his signature. This guy kills – he’s a murderer. No hacker worthy of the name would do anything like that.’
‘Okay, okay. Get on with it,’ Frank said, putting a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of trust that was also an apology for Bikjalo. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here who can teach you anything.’ Then he turned to Bikjalo who had now come to stand next to them. ‘There’s nothing left for us to do here. Let’s go and see if Jean-Loup is back yet.’
What he really wanted to do was tell Bikjalo to get the hell out of the way and let them work without breathing down their necks. They had enough pressure without him. But a sense of diplomacy held Frank back. They were all working together at the station and he didn’t want to ruin anything. There was already too much tension in the air.
‘Okay.’
The station manager shot a last puzzled look at the computer and at Pico, who had already forgotten about him. Excited by this new challenge, his fingers were again flying over the keys.
Bikjalo and Frank left the computer station and went over to Raquel’s desk as Jean-Loup and Laurent came in at the door.
Frank scrutinized the deejay. Jean-Loup looked better than he had that morning, but there was an indelible shadow under his eyes. Frank knew that shadow. When this was all over, he would need a lot of sun, and a lot of light, to get rid of it.
‘Hey, guys. All set?’
Laurent answered for both of them.
‘Yeah, the outline’s ready. The hard part is thinking that the show has to go on, no matter what. Aside from those calls, we’ve still got our normal callers. How’re things here?’
The door opened again and Hulot came in. He seemed to have aged ten years since Frank had arrived in Monte Carlo.
‘Oh, here you are. Evening, everyone. Frank, can I talk to you for a sec?’
Jean-Loup, Laurent and Bikjalo moved over to let Frank and the inspector have some privacy.
‘What’s up?’
They walked to the other wall, next to the two glass panels covering the switchboard, the satellite connections and the ISDN links that were there in case there was a blackout and the repeater failed.
‘Everything’s ready. The Crisis Unit’s on call. There are ten men standing by at the police station. They can get anywhere in a flash. There are plainclothes men all over the streets. Nothing’s going on. People walking dogs, prams, things like that. The whole city’s covered. We can move people in seconds if we need to. If the victim is here, in Monte Carlo, I mean. If Mr No One has decided to get his victim somewhere else, we’ve alerted the police forces all along the coast. All we can do now is try to be sharper than our friend there. Otherwise, we’re in the hands of God.’
‘And in the hands of Pierrot, whom God has treated so badly…’ Frank pointed to two people walking in with Morelli.
Pierrot and his mother came over to them and stopped. The woman held her son’s hand as if she were clutching a lifesaver. Instead of offering protection, she seemed to be seeking it from her innocent son who was savouring his personal participation in that moment, something that was usually denied to him.
Pierrot was the only one who knew all the music that was in the room. He liked what had happened last time, when all those bigshots had watched him anxiously, waiting for him to tell them whether or not it was there and then when he had gone out to find the record. He liked being there every night at the radio station with Jean-Loup, watching him from behind the glass, waiting for the man who spoke with the devils, instead of staying at home and only listening to the voice coming out of the stereo. He liked this game, even though he realized that it wasn’t really a game.
Sometimes he dreamt about it at night. For the first time, he was glad he didn’t have a room to himself in their tiny house but that he slept in the large bed with his mother. They woke and were both afraid and couldn’t fall asleep again until the pink light of dawn filtered through the shutters.
Pierrot freed himself from his mother’s hand and ran to Jean-Loup, his idol, his best friend. The deejay tousled his hair. ‘Hey, handsome. How ya doing?’
‘Fine, Jean-Loup. Know what? Tomorrow I might ride in a police car!’
‘Great. You’re a cop too, then?’
‘Yeah, I’m an honourable policeman.’
Hearing Pierrot’s unintentional mistake, Jean-Loup smiled and instinctively pulled the boy towards him. He pressed his face against his chest and tousled his hair even harder.
‘Here’s our honourable policeman, engaged in ruthless hand-to-hand combat with his bitter enemy, Dr Tickle.’ As he started tickling, Pierrot burst out laughing. They headed into the control room, followed by Laurent and Bikjalo.
Frank, Hulot and Pierrot’s mother watched the spectacle in silence. The woman smiled with enchantment at seeing the friendship between Jean-Loup and her son. She pulled a freshly laundered handkerchief out of her handbag and blew her nose. Frank noticed that the woman’s clothes, though inexpensive, were also perfectly pressed.
‘Madame, we can’t thank you enough for your patience.’
‘Me? Patient with you? But I’m the one who should thank you for all you’re doing for my son. He’s completely changed. If it weren’t for this horrible business, I would be very happy.’
‘Don’t worry, madame,’ said Hulot in a soothing voice, although he was anything but calm at that moment. ‘It will all be over soon, with Pierrot’s help. We’ll be sure that he gets the attention he deserves. Your son has become something of a hero.’
The hero’s mother started walking down the hall with slow, timid steps, her shoulders slightly bent. Frank and Hulot were alone.
Just then, the theme song of Voices filled the air and the show started. But it had no spark that evening and Jean-Loup felt it as well as the others. There was palpable tension in the air, but not the kind to lend any energy to the programme. The listeners did phone in, but they were routine calls that Raquel had screened beforehand with the help of the police. The callers were asked not to mention the murderer. If someone did, Jean-Loup ably steered the conversation to other, easier topics. Everyone knew that millions of listeners tuned in to Radio Monte Carlo every night. Along with Italy and France, the show was broadcast in many other European countries through networks that had bought the rights. They listened to it, translated it and talked about it. And everyone was waiting for something to happen. It meant a huge amount of money for the station. A triumph of Latin wisdom.
Mors tua, vita mea. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
Everyone died a little in experiences like this, Frank thought. No one really won. He was struck by the meaning of what he had just thought. No one really won.
He was even more convinced that they were dealing with an exceptional man who had set them a scornful challenge and that they had to catch him as soon as possible. At the very first opportunity. He instinctively touched the gun in its holder under his jacket. That man’s death, real or metaphorical, would really and truly mean life for someone else.
The red light lit up on the phone. Laurent sent the call to Jean-Loup.
‘Hello?’
Silence. Then a simulated voice came out of the speakers.
‘Hi, Jean-Loup. My name’s someone and no one.’
Everyone froze in unison. Behind the glass of the broadcast booth, Jean-Loup turned, the blood drained from his face. Barbara, sitting at the mixing desk, moved quickly away from the machine as if it were suddenly extremely dangerous.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, taken aback.
‘It don’t matter who I am. What’s important is that I’m gonna strike again. Tonight, whatever happens.’
Frank jumped up as if from an electric chair.
Cluny, sitting on his left, stood up too and grabbed his arm. ‘It’s not him, Frank,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean, “It’s not him?”’
‘It’s wrong. This one said, ‘My name’s someone and no one.’ The other says, “I’m someone and no one.”’
‘Does it make a difference?’
‘In this case, it makes a big difference. And the person on the phone is uneducated. Some bastard’s playing a really sick joke.’
As confirmation of the psychiatrist’s words, a laugh that pretended to be satanic swept out of the loudspeakers and the line went dead.
Morelli rushed into the control room.
‘We’ve got him!’
Frank and Cluny followed him out into the corridor. Hulot, who was in the director’s booth just then, was also running towards them, followed by Bikjalo.
‘You’ve got him?’
‘Yes, inspector. The phone call came from somewhere on the outskirts of Menton.’
Frank dashed their hopes. And his own, unfortunately.
‘Dr Cluny says that it might not be him, that it might be a hoax-’
‘The voice could be disguised in the same way,’ the psychiatrist broke in, compelled to speak up. That phrase left an opening that he hurried to close. ‘But he doesn’t use the same language as the man who made the other calls. It’s not him.’
‘Damn him, whoever he is. Have you contacted the police in Menton?’ the inspector asked Morelli.
‘As soon as we located the call. They took off like lightning.’
‘Of course, they wouldn’t miss the chance to get him themselves.’ The inspector avoided looking at Cluny as if not having him in his line of vision could exclude the psychiatrist’s theory.
Fifteen minutes dragged by. They heard the music playing through the speakers at the other end of the corridor and Jean-Loup’s voice continuing the broadcast in spite of everything. There must have been dozens of calls coming in and the switchboard was probably flooded. The mike that Morelli was wearing around his neck buzzed. The sergeant almost snapped when the call arrived.
‘Sergeant Morelli.’
He listened. Disappointment swept over his face like clouds covering the sun. Even before he handed over the earpiece, Hulot knew it was all over.
‘Inspector Hulot.’
‘Hi, Nicolas. Roberts, from Menton.’
‘Hi. Let’s hear it.’
‘I’m there right now. False alarm. This fucker’s high as a kite and he wanted to impress his girlfriend. Even called from his own place, the idiot. When we caught them, him and the girl, they practically pissed their pants with fright.’
‘Those fools should die of fright. Can you arrest them?’
‘Of course. Wasting police time, and we found a nice hunk of cheese.’ By that, he meant marijuana.
‘Okay. Take them in and scare the shit out of them. And make sure the press knows about it. We have to set an example; otherwise we’ll be swamped with calls like this. Thanks, Roberts.’
‘Don’t mention it. Sorry, Nicolas.’
‘Yeah, so am I. Goodbye.’
The inspector hung up. ‘You were absolutely right, doctor. False alarm.’ He looked at them with suddenly hopeless eyes.
‘Well… I…’
‘Excellent work, doctor,’ interrupted Frank.
They headed slowly to the control room at the end of the hall. Gottet came up to them.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing. A false lead.’
‘I thought it was weird that it would be so easy. But in a case like this, how can you-’
‘It’s fine, Gottet. What I just told Dr Cluny goes for you as well. Excellent work.’
They went back into the control room where everyone was waiting to hear what had happened. They saw their disappointed faces and didn’t even need to ask. Barbara relaxed in her chair and leaned on the mixer. Laurent ran a hand through his hair in silence. Just then, the red light started flashing. The deejay looked exhausted. He took a sip of water from the glass on the table and moved closer to the mike.
‘Hello?’
At first, there was only silence. The silence they had all learned to recognize. Then the muffled sound, the unnatural echo.
And, finally, the voice. Everyone turned their heads slowly towards the speakers, as if that voice had stiffened the muscles in their necks.
‘Hello, Jean-Loup. I have the feeling that you’ve been waiting for me.’
Cluny bent closer to Frank.
‘Hear that? Perfect grammar; correct language. That’s him.’
Jean-Loup didn’t hesitate this time. His hands gripped the table so hard that his knuckles whitened, but there was no trace of that tension in his voice.
‘Yes, we were waiting for you. You know we were waiting for you.’
‘So here I am. The bloodhounds must be worn out from chasing shadows. But the hunt must go on. Mine and theirs.’
‘Why do you say “must”? What does all this mean?’
‘The moon belongs to everyone and we all have the right to howl.’
‘Howling at the moon means pain. But you can sing to the moon, too. You can be happy in the dark sometimes when you see the moon. For heaven’s sake, you can be happy in this world. Believe me.’
‘Poor Jean-Loup. You think that the moon is real when it’s only an illusion… Do you know what the darkness of that sky contains, my friend?’
‘No. But I think you’re going to tell me.’
The man on the phone didn’t notice Jean-Loup’s bitter sarcasm. Or perhaps he did, but felt above it.
‘No moon and no God, Jean-Loup. The correct term for it is “nothing”. There is absolutely nothing. And I’m so used to living in it that I no longer notice. Everywhere, wherever I turn, there is nothing.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Jean-Loup blurted out, in spite of himself.
‘I, too, have wondered about that, often. It is quite likely true, although I read somewhere that the insane do not wonder if they are or are not. I don’t know what wanting to be crazy means, which is what sometimes happens to me.’
‘Even insanity can end. It can be cured. What can we do to help you?’
The man ignored the question as if it were not a solution.
‘Ask me instead what I can do to help you. Here, I’ll throw you another bone. For the bloodhounds who keep chasing their tail in a desperate attempt to bite it. It s a loop. A loop that goes round and round and round… Like in music. When there’s a loop that goes round and round and round…’
The voice faded out. Music poured from the speakers, like the last time. No guitars tonight, no classic rock, but some contemporary dance music. A feat of electronics and sampling. The music ended as suddenly as it had begun. The silence that followed lent Jean-Loup’s question even more weight.
‘What does that mean? What are you saying?’
‘I asked the question. It’s up to you to answer. That’s what life is made of, my friend. Questions and answers. Every man drags his questions along behind him, starting with the ones he has written inside him when he’s born.’
‘What questions?’
‘I’m not fate. I’m someone and no one, but I’m easy to understand. When someone who sees me realizes who I am, his eyes ask the question in a split second: he wants to know when and where. I am the answer. For him I mean now. For him, I mean here.’
He stopped. Then the voice hissed another sentence.
‘And that is why I kill…’
A metallic click ended the conversation, leaving an echo like the snap of a guillotine. In his mind, Frank saw another head roll.
For Christ’s sake no, not this time!
‘Did you get him?’ Frank asked Sergeant Gottet who’d turned his back and was already talking to his men.
His answer took all the breath from his lungs
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No signal whatsoever. Pico says that whoever’s handling the calls must be really great. He didn’t see anything. If the call came from the Internet, the signal’s so well hidden that our equipment can’t visualize it. The bastard fooled us again.’
‘Damn him. Did anyone recognize the music?’ Silence usually means consent. But in this case the general silence was a no. ‘Shit. Barbara, get me a tape with the music as soon as possible. Where’s Pierrot?’
Barbara was already making a copy.
‘In the conference room,’ said Morelli.
There was feverish anxiety in the room. They all knew they had to hurry, hurry, hurry. At this very moment, the caller might be going out to start his hunt. And someone else, somewhere else, did not know that he was living out the last minutes of his life. They went to get Rain Boy, the only one who would recognize the music right away.
Pierrot was in the conference room, sitting at a table next to his mother, his head hanging down. When they got there, he looked at them with tears in his eyes, then bowed his head again.
Like the last time, Frank went over and crouched next to the chair. Pierrot raised his face a little, as if he didn’t want to be seen crying.
‘What is it, Pierrot? Something wrong?’ The boy nodded. ‘Did it frighten you? There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re here with you.’
‘No, I’m not scared,’ Pierrot sniffed. ‘I’m a policeman too, now.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I don’t know the music,’ he cried mournfully. There was real pain in his voice. He looked around as if he had failed the great moment of his life. The tears rolled down his cheeks.
Frank felt his last hopes vanish, but he forced himself to smile at Pierrot.
‘Hey, calm down. Don’t worry. We’ll let you listen to it again and you’ll recognize it, you’ll see. It’s hard, but you can do it. I’m sure that you can.’
Barbara ran into the room holding a DAT. She slipped it in the recorder and turned it on.
‘Listen carefully, Pierrot.’
The electronic percussion cranked into the room. The 4/4 pulse of the dance music sounded like a heartbeat. One hundred and thirty-seven beats per minute. A heart racing with fear, a heart somewhere that could stop at any moment.
Pierrot listened in silence, his head hanging down. When the music stopped, he looked up and a timid smile broke out on his face.
‘It’s there,’ he said softly.
‘Did you recognize it? Is it in the room? Go get it, please.’
Pierrot nodded and got up from the chair. He took off with his loping gait. Hulot nodded to Morelli who got up to go with him. They returned after what seemed like an endless wait. Pierrot held a CD in his hands.
‘Here it is. It’s a complication.’
They slid the CD into the player and went through the tracks until they found it. The music was exactly what the killer had played a little while earlier. Pierrot was a hero. His mother went over to embrace him as if he had just won the Nobel Prize. The pride in her eyes broke Hulot’s heart.
‘“Nuclear Sun”, by Roland Brant. Who’s that?’ Frank said, reading the title on the cover of the compilation.
Nobody had heard of him. They all ran to the computer. A quick search on the Internet took them to an Italian site. Roland Brant was the pseudonym of an Italian deejay, a certain Rolando Bragante. ‘Nuclear Sun’ was a dance track that was popular a few years ago.
Meanwhile, Laurent and Jean-Loup had finished the show and joined them. They were beside themselves. Both looked as if they’d been caught in a thunderstorm and part of it had remained inside them.
Laurent gave them the lowdown on dance music, a genre all to itself in the music market.
‘Sometimes the deejays take on assumed names. Sometimes it’s a made-up word but most of the time it’s in English. There are a few of them in France, too. They’re usually musicians who specialize in club music.’
‘What does the term “loop” mean?’ asked Hulot.
‘It’s a way of saying that you’re using sampled music on the computer. A loop is the base, the heart of the track. You take a beat and you let it turn around itself so that it’s always exactly the same.’
‘Just like the bastard said. A dog chasing its tail.’
Frank cut those thoughts short and brought them immediately back to the present. There was something much more important to figure out.
‘Okay, we’ve got a job to do. Come on, can you think of something? Think of a famous person, about thirty, forty, fifty who has something in common with all the elements we have. Here, in Monte Carlo.’
Frank sounded possessed. He walked around to each of them, repeating himself. His voice seemed to be hunting an idea like a howling pack of hounds after a fox.
‘A youngish, attractive, famous man. Who hangs out around here, in the area. Who lives here or is here now. CDs, compilations, “Nuclear Sun”, discotheques, dance music, an Italian deejay with an English name, a pseudonym. Think about the papers, society news, the jet set…’
Frank’s voice was like the whip of a jockey urging his horse to go faster and faster. Their minds were all racing.
‘Come on. Jean-Loup?’ The deejay shook his head. Jean-Loup was worn out and it was clear that they could expect nothing more from him. ‘Laurent?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything.’
Barbara started and raised her head, moving her copper hair like a wave. Frank saw her face light up. He went over to her. ‘What is it, Barbara?’
‘I don’t know… Maybe…’
Frank pounced upon her uncertainty. ‘Barbara, there are no maybes. Say a name if you’re thinking of one. Whether it’s right or wrong.’
The girl turned to all those present for an instant, as if apologizing for saying something ridiculous.
‘Well, I think it might be Roby Stricker.’
René Coletti really needed to piss. He breathed deeply through his nose. His full bladder was causing stabs of pain in his stomach and he felt like he was in one of those science-fiction movies where the spaceship starts to fail and the red danger light comes on with a robotic voice repeating, ‘Attention, please. This ship will self-destruct in three minutes. Attention, please…’
It was only normal for a biological need to assert itself at the worst possible moment, in keeping with the logic of cause and effect designed to break the balls of human beings whenever possible. He was tempted to get out of his car and take a leak on the side of the road, regardless of the people hanging around the dock and on the other side of the road. He looked longingly at the wall on his right.
He lit a cigarette as a distraction and blew the smoke from his Gitane out of the car window. The overflowing ashtray showed that he had already been waiting a long time. He reached out to turn off the radio, tuned to Radio Monte Carlo, since the part he had wanted to hear was over now.
He had parked his Mazda MX-5 at the harbour near the Piscine, pointed towards the building where the station was located. It had to be swarming with cops. He had listened to the show and the killer’s phone call as he sat in his car, waiting. At his newspaper, France Soir, a number of colleagues had done the same thing, and now they were probably digging all over the Web or God knows where else, hunting for information. Quite a few brains were working overtime to decipher the new message broadcast over the radio by ‘No One’, as the press had dubbed him. Everyone called him that now. The power of the media. Who knew what the police might have been calling him before some reporter thought up a name that had stuck.
Investigators used logic. Journalists used imagination. But one didn’t necessarily preclude the other. Coletti was a prime example in that sense. Or so he hoped.
The mobile on the seat next to him started to ring. The ringtone was a Ricky Martin song that his niece had downloaded and foisted upon him. He detested it but was too ignorant about how mobile phones worked to be able to change it. Imagination and logic, yes, but with an aversion to technology. He snatched up the phone and answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Coletti, it’s Barthélemy.’
‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve got a tip. A fantastic piece of luck. Giorgio Cassani, our Milan correspondent, is a friend of the guy who wrote the music that No One played on the radio. He called us from Italy a couple of minutes ago. They’ll give us a few more minutes before they call the police.’
A stroke of luck indeed. Let’s hope nobody gets killed by it. And let’s hope I don’t piss my pants.
‘Well?’
‘It’s called “Nuclear Sun”. The guy who wrote it is an Italian deejay named Rolando Bragante, a.k.a. Roland Brant. Got it?’
‘Sure, I got it. I’m not stupid. Text me with the details, though. You never know.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Just outside the station. Everything’s under control. Nothing’s happened yet.’
‘Be careful. If the cops get on to you, we’ll be in fucking hot water.’
‘I know what they’re like.’
‘Be good,’ was Barthélemy’s laconic farewell.
‘You, too. Let me know if there’s any news.’
He clicked off. An Italian deejay with an English pseudonym. Some disco music called ‘Nuclear Sun’. What the hell did that mean?
He felt another stab in his abdomen and made a decision. Throwing the cigarette out the window, he opened the door and got out. He went down a few steps on the other side of the road and hid himself in the semi-darkness, away from the silhouette of the car. He took advantage of a recess in the wall next to the shuttered windows of a store and, with a heavy sigh, unzipped his trousers and relieved himself. He felt like he was flying. He watched the yellow stream of urine splash like a torrent on the downhill slope. Letting yourself go in a case like that was an almost sensual pleasure. The satisfaction was at once physical and something deeper on the human level. Like when he was a child and he and his brother used to pee in the snow, making patterns.
Wait a sec. He had a thought. The snow. What did the snow have to do with it? He could see a magazine photo, a male figure in a ski suit standing next to a ski lift, ready to go, with a pretty girl at his side. There was snow. Lots of snow. He had a sudden flash of intuition and held his breath.
Fuck. Roby Stricker. That’s who it was. And if it was him, he had figured it out.
His physiological needs gave no sign of relenting. The excitement made him nervous. He interrupted the flow and almost peed on his hands. He had covered stories where the risk of getting one’s hands dirty was almost certain. This wouldn’t be any more disgusting. But where was Roby Stricker now?
He shook himself vigorously and tucked his shirt back in his trousers. Running back to the car, he paid no attention to the fact that his zip was undone. There’s a murderer in this city, René, he told himself. Who gives a damn if your flies are open?
He got in the car and picked up his phone, calling back Barthélemy at the paper.
‘It’s Coletti again. Find me an address.’
‘Out with it.’
‘Roby Stricker. That’s S-t-r-i-c-k-e-r with a c and a k. Roby might be short for Robert. He lives here in Monte Carlo. And if we’re really, really lucky, he might even be in the phone book. If not, get it some other way, but fast.’
‘Hold on a minute.’ The newspaper wasn’t the police, but they had their methods.
That minute felt endless, even longer than when his bladder had been full. Barthélemy came back on the line.
‘Bingo. He lives in a condo called Les Caravelles, Boulevard Albert Premier.’
Coletti held his breath. He could not believe his luck. It was just 200 yards from where he was parked.
‘Great. I know where it is. I’ll be in touch.’
‘René, I’m telling you again. Watch out. Not just for the cops. This No One guy’s dangerous. He’s already killed three people.’
‘Touch wood, cross your fingers. I don’t want to lose my skin, but if things end up the way I think they will, it’ll be a sensation.’ He hung up.
For a moment, he heard the voice on the radio again.
I kill…
He shivered in spite of himself. But the excitement and the adrenalin were already flowing and dispelling any normal sense of caution. As a man, Coletti had his limitations, but as a reporter, he knew his job and was willing to risk anything to do it. He could recognize something big. A piece of news to hunt down, open like an oyster and let the world see whether there was a pearl inside or not. And this time, there was a gorgeous pearl, as big as an ostrich egg.
Everyone had a drug, and this was his.
He looked at the brightly lit windows of Radio Monte Carlo. There were several police cars parked outside the entry. The blue flashing light on one of them went on and the car pulled out. Coletti relaxed. That must be the police escort that took Jean-Loup Verdier home every night. He had followed them a number of times and knew what they would do. They drove up to the deejay’s house, slipped inside the gate, and that was it. With the police standing guard, any contact was impossible.
He would have given half of Bill Gates’s fortune for an interview with Verdier, but for the moment there was no way. He was sealed tight, coming in and going out. He’d stood in front of that house long enough to know that it was impossible.
Everything seemed impossible recently. He’d done all he could to get an assignment in Afghanistan to cover the war. He could feel the story in his gut. He knew he could tell it better than anyone else, like he had done in the former Yugoslavia. But they had picked Rodin, maybe because they thought he was younger and hungrier and more willing to take risks. Maybe there was some politics behind it, the right connections with someone he wasn’t aware of.
Coletti opened the glove compartment and pulled out his digital camera. He placed it on the seat beside him and checked it carefully, like a soldier testing his weapon before battle. The batteries were charged and it had four 128 meg cards. He could shoot the Third World War if he needed to. He climbed out of his Mazda, not bothering to lock it, and hid the camera under his jacket so it would not be noticed. He left the car and the Piscine behind him and headed off in the opposite direction. A few dozen yards away were the stairs leading up to the promenade.
As he reached the street, an unmarked police car with a flashing light on its roof left the Rascasse and sped off in front of him. He could see two people inside and imagined who they might be. Inspector Hulot and Sergeant Morelli, no doubt. Or maybe that dark-haired cop he had seen that morning coming out of Jean-Loup Verdier’s house, who had looked at him as his car passed by. He had a strange feeling when their eyes met. That man was very familiar with evil and could recognize people who carried it with them. Maybe he should find out more about that cop.
Coletti had long ago given up on following police cars. The cops were not stupid and would have detected him immediately. He’d get stopped and could forget about the scoop. He could not risk making any mistakes.
There had been that hoax call earlier in the evening, as fake as a bad cheque. The cops must have turned nasty. He wouldn’t want to be the guy who made that call when they got hold of him. He saw no point in getting caught in a similar trap.
If the maniac’s next victim was really Roby Stricker, they would use him as bait, and the only place where that could happen was at his house. So all he had to do was find some place to wait, where he could see without being seen. If his assumptions were correct and they caught No One, he would be the only eyewitness and reporter with photos of the arrest. If he could manage it, the story was worth its weight in plutonium.
The streets were practically empty. Everyone in the city must have been listening to the radio and heard No One’s new call. Not many people felt like going out for a walk, knowing there was a killer lurking.
Coletti headed for the well-lit entrance of Les Caravelles. When he reached the glass doors of the condo, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was a normal lock that did not require a code. Coletti rummaged in his pockets like any normal tenant looking for his keys.
He pulled out a gadget given to him by an informant, a sharp-witted bastard he had once helped out of a jam. The guy loved money, whatever the source – either what Coletti passed him for his leaks or the money he found by breaking into apartments. Coletti slipped the gizmo in the lock and the door opened. He entered the lobby of the luxury building and looked around. Mirrors, leather sofas, Persian carpets on marble floors. There was no security there now, but during the day the doorman was probably pretty strict. His heart was pounding. It wasn’t fear, but pure adrenalin. This was paradise on earth. This was his job.
To his right, at the shorter end of the rectangular room, there were two wooden doors. One had a brass sign that said CONCIERGE. The other, on the opposite corner, probably led down to the basement. He had no idea what floor Roby Stricker lived on, and waking the doorman at that hour to ask was definitely not a good idea. But he could take the service lift, ride up to the top floor, and go down the stairs until he found the right floor. Then he’d find a good observation point, even if he had to hang out of a window, something he had already done in the past.
The Reeboks on his feet made no noise as he reached the basement door. He pushed against it, hoping it wasn’t locked. He had his gizmo, but every second saved was a second gained. He breathed another sigh of relief. The door was unlocked. It was pitch black inside. In the reflection of the lobby lights, he could see the stairs descending into darkness. The tiny red dots of the light switches shone at regular intervals like cats’ eyes.
Coletti couldn’t risk turning on the light. He went down the first two steps, easing the door closed and giving silent thanks for the efficiency of the person who had oiled the hinges. Feeling along the wall with his hands, he turned and started groping his way down the steps. Coletti’s heart was beating so loudly that he wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone in the building could hear.
At last he reached the bottom of the stairs. He put a hand out, felt the rough plaster and began to advance slowly. Searching in his pocket, he realized that, along with his cigarettes, he had also left his Bic lighter in the car. It would have come in handy. Proof that haste makes waste. He continued inching his way along. He was just a few steps further into total darkness when he felt an iron grip around his neck and his body was thrown violently against the wall.