I Kill (26 page)

‘Here, this is the same cabinet. There’s a record sleeve there. It’s a vinyl LP. There weren’t any in Yoshida’s house. Froben confirmed it for me.
Not even
one.
There’s no trace of this record in the photos. Which means that with his mania for music, the killer must have brought with him the record for the soundtrack of his new crime. The
video copy was made in haste and the picture is out of focus, but I’m sure that, if we work on the original with the right equipment, we could make out what the record is. The fact that he
didn’t leave it there means that it has special meaning. For him or in general. It might not be a step forward but it’s the first thing we’ve learned about the killer,
in spite
of himself.
It’s tiny, but it just might be the first mistake he has made.’

There was a long silence. Frank spoke first. ‘Can we examine the video without everybody knowing about it?’

‘Not here in the Principality,’ replied the inspector. ‘Let me think . . . There’s Guillaume, Mercier’s son. We’re old friends. He has a small production
company. Makes video clips and stuff like that. He’s just starting out, but I know he’s good. I could get in touch with him.’

‘Can he be trusted?’

‘He’s a good boy. He was Stéphane’s best friend. He’ll keep his mouth shut if I ask him to.’

‘Good. I think it’s worth checking the tape, but we need to be discreet, Nicolas.’

‘I think so, too. And as you said yourself: small as it is, it’s all we’ve got.’

They looked at each other with a level gaze that told its own story. They really
were
two sides of the same coin and they were in the same pocket. Life hadn’t been kind to either of
them, but each in his own way had had the courage to pick himself up and carry on. Until then, they had been at the mercy of events that were disrupting their existence. Now, thanks to an
accidental discovery suspended in the air like a kite in the wind, a small, coloured speck of hope floated through that grey room.

Laurent Bedon turned off his electric razor and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d slept late, but those extra hours had not erased the excesses of the night before.
He had staggered home at dawn, blind drunk, and collapsed on the bed, already half asleep before he had hit the pillow. Now, even with the long shower and shave, he still had circles under his eyes
and the pallor of someone who had not seen the sun in months. The harsh bathroom light mercilessly accentuated his unhealthy appearance.

Christ, I look dead.

He picked up the bottle of aftershave and splashed some over his face. He overdid it, and the sting of the alcohol burned his lips. He combed his damp hair and sprayed deodorant under his arms.
And with that, he thought, he was ready for another night out.

His clothes were strewn all over the bedroom in what he considered an unavoidable mess. He used to have a housekeeper come and tidy up, putting things in precarious order, which he immediately
demolished. Now he could no longer afford such luxury. It was a miracle he hadn’t been evicted yet, since he owed four months’ rent.

Things had got really bad over recent months. He had even lost a hefty wad of cash at the Menton Casino last night. Moreover, the money wasn’t his. He’d asked Bikjalo for another
advance. The station manager had complained a little, but finally decided to open his purse strings, reluctantly signing a cheque. As he pushed it towards him, he had told Laurent that he’d
reached his limit.

The cheque had been enough to patch up a number of critical emergencies within his dire financial situation. There was the rent, for just two crappy rooms in a building in Nice that disgusted
even the cockroaches. Unbelievable. The landlord was stalking him like they were in an American B-movie. Or a Laurel and Hardy comedy.

Crédit Agricole had repossessed his car when he had stopped making the lease payments after the third instalment. Fuck them. And fuck Monsieur Plombier, the shithead bank official who had
treated him like scum and demanded that he return his credit card and chequebook.

But that wasn’t even his main problem. If only it were. He owed a roll of euros to that thug Maurice, a debt he had contracted when money was still called francs. He had scraped together
enough for a few instalments but the bastard wouldn’t be patient for ever. Everyone knew what happened to people who didn’t repay their debts to that bloodsucker. The stories he had
heard were far from reassuring. They were just rumours, but in this case, Laurent thought, he should probably take them as the gospel truth.

He sat down on the bed and ran his hands through his hair. He looked around. Everything he saw was disgusting. He still found it impossible to believe that he was living in a dump in Ariane.
Maurice had taken his wonderful apartment at the Acropolis in exchange for part of his debt, but the interest had added up so fast that he would soon be taking his balls for the rest, simply for
the joy of hearing him sing soprano.

He threw on some clothes, retrieving a pair of trousers and one of the cleaner shirts. He picked up yesterday’s socks from under the bed. He had absolutely no idea how they had got there.
He couldn’t remember getting undressed last night. There was a mirror in the wardrobe of the furnished apartment and the reflection it showed was not much better than the one in the
bathroom.

Forty years old. And in that state. If he didn’t make some changes, and soon, he would end up a
clochard,
a homeless bum. There wouldn’t even be enough money for razor blades.
Unless, of course, Maurice stepped in to help . . .

But he had felt it last night: luck. Pierrot had given him the numbers and Pierrot’s numbers were usually lucky. Thanks to ‘Rain Boy’ he’d left the casino more than once
with a huge smile on his face. He always squandered the money immediately, like anything earned without effort.

He had cashed Bikjalo’s cheque with a guy he knew who hung around the casino waiting for people like him, men with a feverish look who were used to following a ball around the wheel. He
had taken a hefty commission, as that cheat called it, but Laurent had gone into the main room with the best intentions, not knowing that he was about to pave another mile of his road to hell.

A disaster. Not even one win; not one big number. The croupier had mechanically swept up his bets, one after another, with the professional disdain of all croupiers. Just the time of a spin, the
launching of a ball, and that bastard’s able hands pushed the chips over with the previous win. Everything had gone up in smoke.

One wisp of smoke after another. If he had burned all the money in the fireplace, it would have been more useful. Except that
now
he had no fireplace. Maurice, or someone like him, was
warming himself by it, damn him.

Laurent got up from the bed and went to boot up his computer, precariously balanced on that desk-like thing in the bedroom. His PC was very fast; he’d assembled it himself. At least he
still had that. He would be lost without his computer. It had his notes, his programme schedules, the things he wrote when he was sad. Which meant all the time, right then. And there was the Web to
surf, a virtual escape from the reality where he was imprisoned.

When he turned on the computer, he saw that he had an e-mail. He opened it. It was a message from an unknown sender, in handsome Book Antiqua font:

He wondered what jerk was making such bad jokes. A friend who knew his troubles, most likely. Who? Jean-Loup? Bikjalo? Someone from the station?

And who was the ‘rich uncle?’ For a moment, he thought of the American, the FBI agent investigating the murders. His eyes were even creepier than that voice calling in to the
station. Maybe it was a way of keeping him under pressure. But he didn’t seem like the type who would resort to that. He’d just throw you against a wall and beat it out of you until you
vomited up your guts.

That whole business came to mind. The voice at the radio was a godsend for Jean-Loup. He was becoming more well-known than the Beatles. It made him miserable, but in the end, once they caught
the guy, he would come out a winner. Jean-Loup would take off and he, Laurent, would stand there on the ground with his nose in the air, watching him soar. And to think that he was the one who had
introduced Jean-Loup to the station after first meeting him a few years ago in front of the Café de Paris. He had witnessed the episode that got that arsehole his amazing house in
Beausoleil. He had only found out a few years later that saving that mutt for the old biddy had been like finding a winning lottery ticket.

Laurent’s fate was always the same: to observe the luck of others. He never failed to be there to see someone hit by a golden ray of sunshine, which might have hit him if its trajectory
had deviated by just a foot.

He had started talking to the guy with the dark hair and green eyes after he had saved the dog. He was looking around, a little embarrassed at suddenly becoming the centre of attention. One
thing had led to another. Laurent had been struck by what Jean-Loup exuded, a sense of serenity and involvement at the same time. It was something that he couldn’t exactly describe, but it
was strong enough to make an impression on anyone who came in contact with him. Especially someone like Laurent.

Bikjalo, who was no fool, had sensed it as soon as Laurent had introduced him as a possible host for
Voices,
the programme Laurent had been thinking about for some time. For Bikjalo,
Jean-Loup had the undeniable advantage of being a good candidate and of being dirt cheap, since he knew absolutely nothing about radio.

A total beginner. Two birds with one stone. A new hit and a new host at almost zero cost. After two weeks of recorded rehearsals, with Jean-Loup proving the assumptions about him and his talent
correct,
Voices
had finally gone on air. It had started well and carried on improving. People liked the guy. They liked his way of talking and communicating: fanciful, imaginative, with bold
metaphors understood by all.

Even killers,
thought Laurent, bitterly.

Inadvertently, the watershed episode – when two boys thought lost at sea were saved – had transformed the show into the socially conscious programme it now was. The pride and joy of
the radio and the Principality. And honey for the buzzing flies: its sponsors.

And the deejay became the star of a show that Laurent had conceived, a show in which Laurent now had less and less to say and which was pushing him aside, a little more each day.

‘Fuck all of them. It’ll change. It has to change,’ he muttered to himself.

He finalized his notes for that evening’s show and the printer started spitting freshly inked sheets of paper on to the tray. They would change their minds about him. All of them, one by
one. Barbara especially.

He thought back to her copper hair spread on the pillow. They had had an affair. It was intense, and he had fallen for her deeply, physically and emotionally, before he had let everything go to
hell. She had tried to stand by him, but it was like living with a drug addict. After a lot of back and forth, she had left him, turning her back on him when she had realized that she would never
be able to compete with the four other women in his life: spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs.

He got up from the unsteady chair and slipped the printed sheets into a folder. He took his jacket from the armchair that he used as a coat rack and went out. The landing was no less a picture
of gloom than the apartment. He pulled the door closed and sighed. The lift wasn’t working: a new notch on the building-manager’s belt. He walked downstairs in the dim, yellow light,
brushing his hand against the beige wallpaper of the stairwell. Like him, it had seen better days.

He went into the lobby and pushed open the front door, made of glass in a rusted metal frame with chipped paint. Entirely different from the elegant buildings of Monte Carlo or Jean-Loup’s
lovely villa. The street outside was submerged in the shadows of evening, that intense blue that only summer sunsets leave behind. It even lent a semblance of humanity to that desolate
neighbourhood. Ariane was not the Promenade des Anglais or the Acropolis. The smell of the sea never reached that area. Or, if it did, it was overpowered by the stench of garbage.

Laurent had to walk three blocks to reach the bus that would take him into the Principality. So much the better. A walk would do him good and clear his head, and to hell with Plombier and his
shitty bank.

Valentin emerged from the shadows at the corner of the building. He was so fast that Laurent didn’t see him coming. Before he even knew what was happening, he felt himself being raised off
the ground and a moment later he was pushed against the wall with an arm pressing against his throat and the man’s breath, stinking of garlic and gum disease, in his face.

‘Well, Laurent? Why don’t you remember your friends when you’ve got a little cash?’

‘What do you mean? You know . . . that I . . .’

A thrust against his neck interrupted his protests and he gasped.

‘Stop bullshitting, you wanker. You laid down a whole bunch of dough last night in Menton. You forgot that the money you were playing with belongs to Maurice, didn’t you?’

Valentin Rohmer was Maurice’s bully, his troublemaker, his tax collector. Fat and flabby as he was, Maurice could not pin people’s arms behind their backs until they cried. Or push
them against a wall until they felt the rough plaster rip their skin. But Valentin could, the bastard. And that other bastard who had cashed his cheque last night in the bar in front of the casino
– he was the one who had ratted on him. Laurent hoped that piece of shit would get the Valentin treatment one day.

‘I . . .’

‘Shut the fuck up. There are a few things about me and Maurice you just don’t get. Like how he loses patience and so do I. It’s about time I refresh your memory.’

The punch in his stomach left him breathless. He retched, bringing the acid taste of vomit up to his dry mouth. His legs buckled. Valentin held him up effortlessly, grabbing him by the shirt
collar with an iron grip. He saw the thug’s right fist and realized that his face was the target and that the blow would be so powerful that his head would smash into the wall behind him. He
closed his eyes and stiffened, waiting for the fist to strike.