I Kill (12 page)

‘Listen, I don’t know if you really understand the situation,’ Frank had said, knowing what Bikjalo was getting at. He had stood up, upsetting the chair hierarchy. Now he would
dominate Bikjalo from above. ‘Just to clarify, let me show you something.’ Frank had bent down and taken several 5x7 photos from Hulot’s briefcase on the floor. He had thrown them
on the desk. ‘We’re hunting a man capable of doing this.’

They were pictures of the bodies and mutilated heads of Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker. Bikjalo had looked at the photos and blanched. Hulot had smiled to himself and Frank had sat back
down.

‘This man is still at large and we think he’s going to try it again. You’re our only chance at stopping him. This isn’t a strategy to raise the ratings. This is a
manhunt, and people could live or die as a result.’

Bikjalo was mesmerized, as if under a hypnotic spell. Frank had taken the pack of cigarettes on the table and examined it with apparent curiosity. ‘Besides the fact that, if this case is
solved thanks to you, it’ll give you and Jean-Loup a popularity you wouldn’t dream of in a million years.’

Bikjalo had relaxed. He had pushed the photos towards Frank, touching them with only the tips of his fingers, as if they were on fire. He had leaned back in his armchair looking relieved. The
conversation was back to a subject he could understand.

‘Okay. If we have a chance to help the law, a chance to be useful, Radio Monte Carlo certainly isn’t going to back down. That’s what
Voices
is all about, after all. Help
for people needing help. There’s only one thing I would like to ask you in return, if you will.’ He had paused. Frank was silent, so he had continued. ‘An exclusive interview with
you, by Jean-Loup, as soon as it’s all over. Before the others. Here on the radio.’

Frank had looked at Hulot, who had agreed with an imperceptible nod of his head.

‘It’s a deal.’ Frank had stood up again. ‘Our technicians will be coming with their equipment to tap the phones. There are a few other things, but they’ll explain
all that. We’ll start tonight.’

‘Okay. I’ll tell our people to do all they can to help.’

The meeting was over. Everyone had stood up. Frank had found himself facing the bewildered stare of Jean-Loup Verdier. He had grabbed his arm reassuringly.

‘Thanks, Jean-Loup. You’re doing a great thing. I’m sure you’ll be fine. How do you feel?’

The deejay had looked at him with two clear eyes, green as the sea. ‘I’m terrified.’

Frank looked at the time. Jean-Loup was announcing the last commercial before the end of the programme. Laurent gestured towards Barbara. The mixer turned some knobs to fade
out the deejay’s voice. They had a five-minute break. Frank got up and stretched.

‘Tired?’ asked Laurent, lighting a cigarette. The smoke rose and was absorbed by the exhaust fan.

‘Not really. I’m used to waiting.’

‘Lucky you! I’m a nervous wreck,’ said Barbara as she stood up, tousling her red hair with her hands. Sergeant Morelli, sitting on a padded chair near the wall, raised his eyes
from the sports page he was reading. He was suddenly more interested in the girl’s body under her light summer dress than in the World Cup.

‘Maybe it’s none of my business,’ Laurent remarked, turning his swivel chair to face Frank, ‘but I want to ask you something.’

‘Ask, and I’ll tell you if it’s your business or not.’

‘What’s it like to do a job like yours?’

Frank stared at him for a second as if he couldn’t see him. Laurent assumed he was thinking about how to answer. He didn’t know that Frank Ottobre was seeing a woman lying on a
marble slab in a morgue, a woman who for better or for worse had been his wife. ‘What’s it like?’ Frank repeated, as if he needed to hear it again before he could answer.
‘After a while, all you want to do is forget.’

Laurent turned back to the control board. He didn’t really like the American with the athletic build and cold eyes, who seemed so removed from the world around him. His demeanour made any
type of contact impossible. He was a man who gave nothing because he asked for nothing. But he was there, waiting, and not even he knew what he was waiting for.

‘One more commercial,’ said Barbara, sitting back down at the mixer. Her voice interrupted the awkward silence. Although Morelli had returned to his sports page, he kept looking up
at the girl’s hair falling over the back of her chair.

Laurent gestured to Jacques, the console operator. Fade-out. They played a classic by Vangelis. A red light went on in Jean-Loup’s cubicle. His voice again spread through the room and over
the airwaves.

‘It’s eleven forty-five here at Radio Monte Carlo. The night is young. We’ve got the music you want to hear and the words you want to listen to. Nobody’s judging but
everybody’s listening. This is
Voices.
Give us a call.’

The music swelled again in the director’s booth, slowly and rhythmically, like the waves of the sea. Behind the glass, Jean-Loup moved easily – he was on his own turf. In the control
room the phone display started to flash. Frank felt a strange tremor. Laurent gestured to Jean-Loup. The deejay nodded in response.

‘Someone’s on line one. Hello?’

A moment of silence, then unnatural noise. The music in the background suddenly sounded like a funeral march. Everyone recognized the voice that emerged from the amplifier: it was seared
permanently in their brains.

‘Hello, Jean-Loup.
’

Frank straightened up in his chair as if shocked by an electric current. He snapped his fingers in Morelli’s direction. The sergeant roused himself immediately. He stood up and took the
mike from the walkie-talkie hanging on his belt.

‘Okay, guys. This is it. Contact. Keep your wits about you.’

‘Hi. Who is this?’ asked Jean-Loup.

‘You know who I am, Jean-Loup. I’m someone and no one.
’ There was a hint of a smile in the muffled voice.

‘You’re the one who called once before?’

Morelli rushed out of the room. He came back a moment later with Dr Cluny, the criminal psychiatrist who was in the corridor, waiting like everyone else. The doctor sat down next to Frank.
Laurent turned on the intercom that allowed him to speak directly into Jean-Loup’s headphones without broadcasting his voice.

‘Yes, my friend. I called once before and I will call again. Are the bloodhounds there?’

The electronic voice contained both fire and ice. The room felt stuffy, as though the air-conditioning was sucking air in instead of blowing it out.

‘What bloodhounds?’

A pause. Then the voice again.

‘The ones hunting me. Are they there with you?
’

Jean-Loup raised his eyes, lost. Dr Cluny moved a little closer to the mike. ‘Agree with him. Tell him whatever he wants to hear, but get him talking.’

‘Why do you ask?’ Jean-Loup resumed, with a leaden voice. ‘You knew they’d be here.’

‘
I don’t care about them. They don’t matter. You’re the one I care about.
’

Another pause.

‘Why me? Why are you calling me?’

Another pause.

‘
I told you. Because you’re like me, a voice without a face. But you’re lucky. Of the two of us, you’re the one who can get up in the morning and go out in the
sun.’

‘And you can’t?’

‘No.’

That sharp syllable was utter negation, a denial that allowed no contradiction.

‘Why is that?’ asked Jean-Loup.

‘Because someone decided it that way. There’s very little I can do.’
The voice changed. It became suspended, softer, as if crossed by gusts of wind.

Silence. Cluny turned to Frank and whispered, surprised: ‘He’s crying.’

‘There’s very little I can do. But there is one way to repair the evil, and that is to fight it with the same evil.
’

‘Why do evil when there are people all around you who can help?’

Another pause. A silence like a thought, then the voice again, and the fury of blame.

‘
I asked for help, but the only help I had killed me. Tell that to the bloodhounds. Tell everyone. There will be no pity because there is no pity. There will be no forgiveness because
there is no forgiveness. There will be no peace because there is no peace. Just a bone for your bloodhounds .
. .’

‘What does that mean?’

A longer pause. The man on the phone had mastered his emotions. The voice was once again a breath of wind from nowhere.

‘You like music, don’t you, Jean-Loup?’

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘Music doesn’t let you down. Music is the end of the journey. Music is the journey.
’

Suddenly, just like the time before, the sound of an electric guitar, slow and seductive, was heard through the phone. A few notes, suspended and isolated, of a musician communicating with his
instrument. Frank recognized the notes of ‘Samba Pa Ti’, in the mastery of the fingers and imagination of whoever was playing. It was just guitar in a furious introduction, an explosion
ending in thunderous applause. And as suddenly as it had come, the music was turned off.

‘Here’s the bone your bloodhounds want. I have to go now, Jean-Loup. I have things to do tonight
.’

‘What do you have to do tonight?’ the deejay asked in a shaking voice.

‘You know what I’m doing tonight, my friend. You know very well.
’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

Silence.

‘It wasn’t my hand that wrote it, but now everyone knows what I do at night
. . .’

Another pause that felt like a drum roll.

‘
I kill
. . .’

The voice clicked off the line but its tone reverberated in their ears. His last words were like the flash of a camera: for an instant, they all felt disorientated, as if momentarily blinded in
white light. Frank was the first to come to his senses.

‘Morelli, call the guys and see if they found out anything. Laurent, did you get all that on tape?’

The director was leaning on the table with his face in his hands. Barbara answered for him. ‘Yes. Can I faint now?’

Frank looked at her. Her face was deathly pale under that mass of red hair. Her hands were shaking.

‘No, Barbara. I still need you. Make a tape of that phone call right away. I need it in five minutes.’

‘I already have it. I had a second recorder ready on pause and I started it right after the phone call came in. All I have to do is rewind.’

Morelli shot an admiring glance at the girl and made sure she noticed.

‘That’s great. Morelli?’

‘One of the guys is coming,’ Morelli said. He stopped staring at Barbara and blushed, as if caught in the act. ‘I doubt there’s any good news.’

‘Well?’ Frank said to a swarthy young man who had just entered.

‘Nothing.’ The technician shrugged. He looked disappointed. ‘We couldn’t trace the call. That bastard must have some pretty good equipment.’

‘Mobile or land line?’

‘We don’t know. We even have a satellite unit, but we found nothing.’

‘Dr Cluny?’ Frank asked, turning to the psychiatrist, still sitting in his chair. The doctor was pensive, biting the inside of his cheek.

‘I don’t know. I have to listen to the tape again. The only thing I can say is that I have never heard anything like this in my entire life.’

Frank pulled out his phone and dialled Hulot’s number. The inspector answered right away. He obviously was not asleep.

‘Nicolas, this is it. Our friend had shown up again.’

‘I know. I heard the programme. I’m getting dressed and I’ll be right there.’

‘Good.’

‘Are you still at the radio station?’

‘Yes. We’ll wait for you.’ Frank hung up. ‘Morelli, as soon as the inspector gets here, I want a meeting. Laurent, I need your help, too. I think I saw a conference room
near the manager’s office. Can we use it?’

‘Sure. There’s a DAT machine and anything else you need.’

‘Great. We don’t have much time and we have to fly.’

In the confusion, they had completely forgotten about Jean-Loup. His voice reached them through the intercom.

‘Is it all over, now?’ They saw him leaning on his chair, immobile, a butterfly pinned to a piece of velvet. Frank pressed the button to talk to him.

‘No, Jean-Loup. I’m sorry to say that this is only the beginning. You were great.’

In the silence that followed, they saw Jean-Loup slowly rest his arms on the table and cover his face.

Hulot arrived soon after, along with Bikjalo. The manager was clearly upset. He lagged behind the inspector, as if he wanted nothing at all to do with the nasty business. Only
now was he beginning to realize what it all meant. Armed men were wandering around the radio station, which was in the grip of a new, unfamiliar tension. There was a voice, and with that voice, an
awareness of death.

Frank and Morelli were waiting for them in silence. They went into the conference room together, where the others were sitting around the long table, waiting. The panel curtains were drawn and
the windows were open. The faint noise of the Monte Carlo night traffic filtered through from outside.

Hulot sat down to Frank’s right, leaving him the seat at the head of the table and tacitly the job of chairing the meeting. He was wearing the same shirt as when he’d left earlier
and seemed no more rested.

‘We’re all here now,’ Frank began. ‘Aside from Mr Bikjalo and Inspector Hulot – who heard the programme at home – we were all here this evening. Everyone
heard what happened. We don’t have many facts to work with. I regret to say that we couldn’t trace the call.’ He paused for a moment. The young technician and his colleague
shifted with embarrassment. ‘It’s nobody’s fault. The man knows what he’s doing and how to avoid being traced. The technology we generally use for this kind of thing was
used against us today. So there’s no help that way. Since it might give us some clues, I suggest we listen to the recording of the call before making any hypotheses.’

Dr Cluny nodded and everyone else seemed to agree. Frank turned to Barbara who was standing at the back of the room next to a table with a stereo. She started the tape.