I Kill (15 page)

He went back into the living room and took the remote control out of his pocket. He pushed and the shatterproof windows closed without a sound, sliding down on perfectly oiled hinges. He turned
off the lights in the same way, leaving a glimmer in a few hall lights set into the wall. He was alone, finally. It was the moment to dedicate a little time to himself and to his pleasure, his
secret pleasure.

The models, the bankers, the rock stars, the actors who flocked to his parties were only splashes of colour on a white wall, faces and words to be forgotten as easily as they were noticed. Allen
Yoshida was a handsome man. He had inherited his Yankee proportions and height from his American mother and the tight, well-defined Asian bone structure from his father. His face was a mixture of
the two races, with the arrogant charm of all accidents. His money and his looks had universal appeal. And everyone was intrigued by his solitude. Women, especially, showed off breasts and bodies
full of promises so simple to fulfil in that obsessive search for life-affirming contact. Faces that were so open, so easy to read, that even before he got started he could already read the words
‘The End’. To Allen Yoshida, sex was strictly the pleasure of the stupid.

He stopped in front of a surface of curved briarwood. When he pushed a button on the right, the surface slid into the wall, revealing steps leading downstairs. He walked down impatiently. He had
a new video to watch that had been delivered the day before. This was his first chance to do so comfortably, sitting in his projection room with his flat screen, enjoying every minute, with a glass
of chilled champagne.

When he had let Billy La Ruelle fall off the roof, Allen Yoshida not only became one of the richest men in the world, but he had discovered something else that would change his life. Seeing his
friend’s widened eyes and terrified face as he fell through the air, hearing the desperation in his voice as he’d pleaded,
had given him pleasure.
He had only realized later, at
home, when he had undressed to take a shower and discovered that his pants were soiled with semen.

Ever since then, since the very moment of his discovery, he had attained pleasure without hesitation, just as he had attained riches without regret. He smiled. That smile was like a luminous
cobweb on an indecipherable face. Money did buy everything. Complicity, silence, crime, life and death. For money, men were willing to kill, and to give and receive suffering. He knew that well,
every time he added a new video to his collection and paid an exorbitant price for it.

He had films of real torture and killings, of men, women and sometimes children. They were taken from the street to secure places and then filmed as they were subjected to every type of torture
and rape before being burned alive. A black man was flayed until he literally became a red mass of blood. The screams of pain were music to his ears as he sipped the chilled wine and waited for the
conclusion of his pleasure.

And it was all
real.

A large, illuminated room lay at the bottom of the stairs. On the right were two Hermelin billiard tables, one traditional and one American, built especially for him and imported from Italy. The
cues and everything else needed for the game were hanging from the wall. There were armchairs and couches around a bar, one of many scattered throughout the house.

Passing the billiard room he stopped. To his right, on a wooden pedestal about four feet high, was a marble statue of Venus playing with Eros, from the Hellenic period. It was lit by halogen
from the ceiling. He didn’t stop to gaze at the delicacy of the work, or the tension between the two figures that the sculptor had artfully depicted. Instead, he put his hands on the base of
the statue and pushed. The wooden lid turned on itself, revealing the hollow centre of the base. On the bottom was the dial of an electronic combination lock.

Yoshida punched out the code that only he knew and the wall slid noiselessly aside, disappearing into the wall on the left. This was his realm. Pleasure awaited him, in secret, as absolute
pleasure always did.

He was about to cross the threshold when he felt a violent blow between his shoulders, the flash of a sharp pain and the immediate chill of darkness.

When Allen Yoshida comes to, his vision is hazy and his head hurts. He tries to move his arms, but he cannot. He squints to regain his focus. Finally, he opens his eyes and
discovers that he is in an armchair in the middle of the room. His hands and legs are tied with wire, his mouth covered by a tape.

In front of him, sitting on a chair, a man is staring at him in silence. The man is wearing what seems to be an ordinary black canvas work shirt, at least four or five sizes too large. His face
is covered with a black ski mask and the upper part of his face around the eyes is protected by large dark glasses with reflective lenses. He is wearing a black hat with the brim pulled down. His
hands are covered with large gloves, also black.

Yoshida’s terrified gaze looks up and down the figure. Under the long coat, his black trousers are of the same fabric as the shirt, and again oversized. The loose trouser bottoms rest on
his canvas shoes. Yoshida notices something strange. There are protrusions at the man’s knees and elbows that hold the material of his clothes, as if the person in front of him had extensions
on his arms and legs.

They sit in silence for what seems an eternity. One man who has decided not to speak and one who cannot.

How did the intruder get in? Even though Yoshida was alone in the house, the villa was surrounded by impenetrable security, consisting of armed men, guard dogs and cameras. How did he bypass all
that? And most of all, what did he want from him? Money? If that is the problem, he can give him all he wants. He can give him anything he wants. There is nothing that money cannot buy. Nothing. If
only he could speak . . .

The man continues to look at him in silence, sitting on the chair.

Yoshida makes a faint moan, muffled by the tape on his mouth. The man’s voice finally comes out of that dark blotch of his body.

‘Hello, Mr Yoshida.’

The voice is warm and resonant, but strangely enough, to the man tied to the chair, it sounds harder and sharper than the wire cutting into his arms and legs.

He widens his eyes and moans again.

‘Don’t try to answer. I can’t understand you. And in any case, I’m not remotely interested in what you have to say.’

The man gets up from the chair, moving unnaturally because of the oversized clothes and the extensions on his arms and legs. He goes behind Yoshida, who tries to turn his head to keep him in
sight. He hears the voice again, coming from somewhere behind his back.

‘You’ve got yourself a wonderful place here. A discreet place for your little private joys. Some pleasures in life are hard to share. I understand you, Mr Yoshida. I don’t
think anyone can understand you better than I . . .’

As he speaks, the man returns to face him. He gestures at the room around them, rectangular and windowless. There is a ventilation system with air nozzles set in the walls just below the
ceiling. Against one wall is a bed with silk sheets. There is a painting over the bed, the only lapse in the room’s monastic simplicity. The two longer walls are almost entirely covered in
mirrors, the optical illusion of a larger room to eliminate the sense of claustrophobia.

In front of the bed is a series of flat screens connected to a group of VHS and DVD players. When a movie is shown, you can feel surrounded by images and be at their centre. There are also
cameras that can shoot any point of the room with no corner overlooked. The cameras are also connected to the home movie system.

‘Is this where you relax, Mr Yoshida? Is this where you forget about the world when you want the world to forget about you?’

The man’s warm voice transmits cold. Yoshida feels it climb up his arms and legs that are growing numb as the wire cuts his circulation. He feels the wire ripping into his flesh, just like
that voice digging into his brain.

With his artificial movements, the man bends over a canvas bag on the floor next to the chair. He takes out a record, an old LP with the sleeve protected by a plastic cover.

‘Do you like music, Mr Yoshida? This is heavenly, believe me. Something for a real connoisseur. Which, of course, is what you are.’ He goes over to the stereo and looks at it. He
turns back to face Yoshida and the light in the room is a brief flash reflected in his glasses. ‘My compliments. You’ve forgotten nothing. I was prepared for an alternative, in case you
didn’t have a record player, but I see you’re well equipped.’

He turns on the system and puts the record on the turntable after slipping it carefully out of its sleeve. He places the needle on the LP and the mournful notes of a trumpet emanate from the
speakers and spread through the room. It is sorrowful music, intended to evoke a melancholy that leaves you breathless; the sounds of grief, demanding only to be forgotten. For a moment, the man
stands motionless, listening. Yoshida imagines him with his eyes half closed behind the dark glasses. Then he snaps back.

‘Lovely, isn’t it? Robert Fulton, one of the greats. Maybe the greatest of them all. And misunderstood, like all the great ones were.’ He goes and looks curiously at the
controls of the video system. ‘I hope I can understand this. I wouldn’t want your equipment to be beyond my meagre abilities, Mr Yoshida. No, it looks fairly simple.’

He presses some buttons and the monitors light up, with the snow-like effect they have when there is no signal. He busies himself with the buttons and the video cameras finally go into action.
The screen shows Yoshida, immobilized in the armchair in the middle of the room, sitting before an empty chair.

The man seems pleased with himself.

‘Excellent. This system is excellent. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less of you.’

The man comes back in front of his prisoner, turns the chair around, and sits astride it. He leans his deformed arms on the back of the chair. The extensions on his elbows hold the canvas of his
shirt.

‘You’re wondering what I want, aren’t you?’

Yoshida gives a lengthy moan.

‘I know, I know. If you think it’s your money I want, don’t worry. I’m not interested in money. Not yours or anyone else’s. I want a trade.’

Yoshida exhales through his nose. Thank God. Whoever the man is, whatever his price, there might be some way of reaching an agreement. If it isn’t money he wants, it is certainly something
that money can buy. There is nothing that money can’t buy, he repeats to himself. Nothing.

He relaxes in the chair. The wire seems a little bit looser now that he sees a glimmer of hope, a chance to negotiate.

‘I took a look at your videos while you were asleep, Mr Yoshida. I think we have a great deal in common. Both of us, in some way, are interested in the death of people we don’t know.
You for your own pleasure; me, because I have to.’

The man bows his head as if he is studying the shiny wood of the chair. Yoshida has the impression that he is thinking about something that for a moment takes him far away. There is a sense of
inevitability in his voice that is the very essence of death.

‘And that is all we have in common. You do it through a third party. I’m forced to do it myself. You’re someone who watches killing, Mr Yoshida, while I . . .’

The man puts his faceless head next to Yoshida’s.

‘I kill
. . .’

Suddenly, Yoshida knows there is no hope. The front pages of all the newspapers flash through his mind with their headlines of the murders of Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker, the woman who was
with him. For days now, the TV news has been full of the horrifying details of those two crimes, including the signature in blood that the murderer left on the table on a yacht. The same words now
spoken by the man sitting before him. He is distraught. Nobody can come to his rescue because nobody knows of the existence of his secret room. Even if his bodyguards looked for him, they would
search outside when they did not find him at home. He starts to moan again, struggling, panic-stricken, in the chair.

‘You have something that interests me, Mr Yoshida. Something that interests me very much. That is why I feel obliged to propose a trade.’

He gets up from the chair and goes to open the glass door of the cabinet holding the video cassettes. He takes out a new tape, removes the cellophane wrapping and inserts it in the VCR. He
presses the RECORD button and the spindles begin to turn.

‘Something for my pleasure in exchange for yours.’

With a graceful gesture, he puts his hand in his shirt pocket and removes a dagger that gives out a sinister gleam. He goes up to Yoshida, who thrashes violently, ignoring the wire cutting into
his flesh. With the same fluid movement, the man sticks the dagger into his thigh. The prisoner’s hysterical moaning becomes a scream of muffled pain from behind the tape over his mouth.
‘There. This is what it feels like, Mr Yoshida.’

That last ‘Mr Yoshida’, said in a smothered voice, rings through the room like a funeral eulogy. He stabs the bloodstained dagger again, now in the victim’s other thigh. The
movement is so swift that this time Yoshida does not even feel any pain, only a cool sensation in his leg. Immediately afterwards, he feels the tepid dampness of blood dripping down his calf.

‘Funny, isn’t it? Things change when you see them from a different point of view. But you’ll see. You’ll be pleased with the result anyway. You’ll have your
pleasure this time, too.’

With cold determination, the man continues stabbing his victim, as his gestures are projected on the screens by the cameras. Yoshida watches himself being stabbed over and over again. He sees
the blood rush out in large red streams on his white shirt and the man who raises and lowers, in the room and on the screen, the blade of his knife, again and again. He sees his eyes widen with
terror, and pain fills the indifferent space of the monitors.

Meanwhile, the music in the background has changed. The trumpet cuts through the air with high notes sustained by a rhythmic accentuation, a sound of ethnic percussion that evokes tribal rituals
and human sacrifice. The man and his dagger continue their agile dance around Yoshida’s body, opening wounds everywhere, with the blood rushing out in evidence, on the fabric of his clothes
and on the marble floor. The music and the man stop at exactly the same time, like a ballet rehearsed an infinite number of times.