I Kill (45 page)

And now, after her husband’s funeral, they were standing there facing each other, and all he could do was continue looking at her, as if his eyes could see inside her. Céline
understood the question hidden in that gaze. She smiled gently.

‘It’s no longer necessary, Frank.’

‘What isn’t necessary?’

‘I thought you understood.’

‘What was there to understand, Céline?’

‘My little madness. I was well aware that Stéphane was dead. I always knew it, just as I know that Nicolas is gone now, too.’

Seeing his mystified expression, Céline smiled tenderly and placed a hand on his arm.

‘Poor Frank. I’m sorry. I fooled you, too. I’m sorry I made you suffer each time I mentioned Harriet.’

She raised her head to look at the grey sky. A pair of seagulls whirled overhead, circling lazily in the rain together. That might have been Céline’s thought as she followed them in
flight, her scarf fluttering in a sudden breeze. Her eyes returned to Frank.

‘It was all pretence, my dear. A charade, played only to keep a man from letting himself die. You see, after Stéphane’s death, right here at this very place, as we were
leaving the cemetery after the funeral, I knew that if I didn’t do something, Nicolas would be destroyed. Even more than me. He might have killed himself.’ Céline continued with
the voice of memory. ‘The idea came to me suddenly in the car as we were driving home. I thought that if Nicolas were consumed with worry about me, if there were something else to occupy his
attention, he would be distracted from his desperation over the loss of Stéphane. It was a small distraction, but enough to avoid the worst. And that’s how it started. And how it
continued. I deceived him and I don’t regret it. I’d do it again if I had to, but as you can see, there’s nobody left to pretend for now.’

Now the tears were again streaming down Céline Hulot’s cheeks. Frank looked into the marvellous depths of her eyes and saw a strength and power beyond his understanding.

‘Goodbye, Frank.’ Céline again smiled her gentle smile. ‘Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it soon. I would like very much to see you happy, because you
deserve it. Au revoir, handsome.’

She stood on tiptoe and brushed his lips with a kiss. Her hand left a mark on his arm as she turned her back to him and started down the gravel path. Frank watched her walk away. After a few
steps, she stopped and came back to him.

‘Frank, for me it makes no difference. Nothing on earth will return Nicolas to me. But it might be important for you. Morelli gave me the details of the accident. Have you read the
report?’

‘Yes, Céline. With great care.’

‘Claude told me that Nicolas didn’t have his seat belt on. That’s how Stéphane died. If our son had been wearing his seat belt, he’d still be alive. Ever since
then, Nicolas never even put the keys in the ignition without buckling up. I think it’s strange that this time—’

‘I didn’t know that about your son’s accident. Now that you mention it, I find it strange as well.’

‘Again, it makes no difference to me. But if there’s a chance his death was not an accident, then it means he was going in the right direction, that
you were both
going in the
right direction.’

Frank nodded slowly. The woman turned and left without looking back. As he watched her walk away, Roncaille and Durand came over to him, their expressions perfectly suited to the occasion. They,
too, watched Céline leave. A slight black silhouette on the cemetery path.

‘What a terrible loss. I still can’t believe it.’

Frank spun around. His expression brought a hint of darkness to the police chief s face.

‘You still can’t believe it? You, who sacrificed Nicolas Hulot to official obligations and forced him to die a defeated man, you still can’t believe it?’ Frank’s
pause was cold and heavy like the slabs of marble around them. ‘If you feel the need to be ashamed, if the two of you are capable of it, you have every right.’

Durand looked up sharply.

‘Mr Ottobre, I’ll justify your resentment solely on the grounds of your grief, but I will not allow you to—’

Frank interrupted him harshly. His voice was as dry as the sound of a branch breaking under his feet.

‘Dr Durand, I am perfectly aware that you find it hard to accept my presence here. But I want to get that killer more than anything else in the world, for a thousand different reasons. And
one of them is that I owe it to my friend Nicolas Hulot. I am not concerned by whatever it is that
you
allow or don’t allow. If circumstances were different, I assure you that I would
gladly take all your authority and shove it down your throat.’

Durand’s face turned red. Roncaille intervened and tried to smooth things over. Frank was surprised to hear him take a stand, even if his motivation was questionable.

‘Frank, our nerves are all shot because of what happened. Let’s not let our emotions get the better of us. The job we have to do is difficult enough without creating more problems.
Whatever our personal disagreements, they
must
take a back seat for now.’

Roncaille took Durand’s arm and pulled him away. The attorney general only pretended to resist for a moment. They walked off beneath their umbrellas, leaving Frank alone. He stepped
forward in front of the mound where Nicolas Hulot lay buried. He watched the rain begin its work of levelling the earth, and the rage boiled up inside him like burning lava in the mouth of a
volcano.

A gust of wind swept through the branches of a nearby tree. The rustle of the leaves brought a voice to his ears that he had already heard far too many times.

I kill . . .

His best friend lay there, under that freshly dug mound of earth. Without realizing it, Frank started talking to someone who could not answer.

‘It was him, wasn’t it, Nicolas? You weren’t a chosen victim; you weren’t part of his plan. You were just an accident in his way. You discovered who he was before you
died, didn’t you? How can I find out too, Nicolas? How?’

Frank Ottobre stood for a long time beside the mound under the pouring rain, obsessively repeating that question to himself. There was no answer, not even a whisper. No clue to decipher in the
movement of the air through the treetops.

Umbrellas in cemeteries are always black. On this sunless day, they look like upside-down shadows, projections of the earth, funerary thoughts dancing over the heads of the
fools, the people of no importance who, now that the ceremony is over, walk slowly away, trying with each step to put distance between them and the thought of death.

The man has watched the coffin lowered into the ground without any expression on his face. It is the first time he has attended the funeral of someone he has killed. He is sorry for the
effortful composure of his wife as she watches him disappear into the damp earth. The grave that welcomes him, next to that of his son, reminds him of another cemetery, another row of graves. Other
tears, other grief.

The man thinks about how stories are repeated infinitely. Sometimes they seem to end, but it is only the characters that change. The actors are different but their roles are always the same. The
man who kills, the man who dies, the man who does not know, the man who finally understands and is willing to pay with his life.

The man closes his umbrella and lets the rain fall on his head. He walks towards the cemetery entrance and his footprints blend in among the others on the ground. They, too, will be rubbed out,
like all memory.

He envies the peace and quiet that will remain there after everyone has gone. He thinks of all those dead people, motionless in their underground coffins. Their eyes closed, their arms crossed
over their chests; lips silenced without voices to question the world of the living. He thinks about the consolation of silence and darkness. Eternity. Of sleep without dreams or sudden
awakenings.

Pity for himself and for the whole world comes to him like a gust of wind, as a few tears finally fall from his eyes and mingle with the rain. They are not tears for the death of another man.
They are the salty tears of longing for the sun of a time past, for the brief flashes of summer that disappeared in the blink of an eye. For the few happy moments that he can recall, so deep in his
memory that they seem never to have existed.

The man leaves the graveyard as if at any moment he is afraid to hear a voice, many voices, calling him back. As if beyond that wall there is a world of the living to which he does not
belong.

Struck by a sudden thought, he turns to look behind him. At the end of the cemetery, framed in the gate like a picture, alone before a freshly dug grave, is a man dressed in black.

He recognizes him. He is one of the men hunting him, one of the bloodhounds with the dripping jaws, running and barking their challenge. He imagines that he will now be even more determined,
more ferocious. He would like to go back, to stand beside him and explain everything. To tell him that it is not anger or revenge he seeks, but only justice. That he has a sense of absolute
certainty, which can only come from death.

As he gets into the car that will take him away, he runs a hand through his hair, wet with rain.

He would like to explain but he cannot. His task is not yet finished. He is someone and no one and his task will never be finished.

By the time Frank left the cemetery, everyone had gone. Even the rain had stopped. There was no merciful God in the sky, just the movement of grey and white clouds where the
wind was carving out a small patch of blue.

His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked to his car. He got in and started the engine. The windscreen wipers swept away the excess rain with a swishing noise. In tribute to the memory
of Nicolas Hulot, Frank buckled his seat belt. A copy of the newspaper
Nice Matin
lay on the seat beside him with the headline ‘US Government Seeks Extradition of Captain Ryan
Mosse’ on the front page. Nicolas’s obituary was on page three. The death of a police inspector was not headline news.

He picked up the paper and threw it disparagingly on to the back seat. Then Frank put the car in gear and glanced instinctively in the rearview mirror before stepping on the gas. He could see
the newspaper upright against the back of the seat.

Frank sat still for a second, breathless. He felt like one of those crazy bungee jumpers, flying over empty space at a wild speed without the mathematical certainty that his cord was the right
length. A silent prayer rose up inside him, in the hope that his sudden flash of intuition was not yet another illusion.

As he sat thinking, a floodgate opened. A waterfall of unconfirmed theories started flowing through his mind, strengthening like the force of water widening a small hole in a dam until it
becomes a powerful gush. In light of what had just occurred to him, numerous tiny discrepancies were suddenly explained, and many details that they had ignored suddenly slotted into place.

He picked up his mobile and dialled Morelli’s number. As soon as Claude answered, Frank assailed him.

‘Claude, it’s Frank. Can you talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’m on my way to Roby Stricker’s place. Meet me there and don’t say a word to anyone. I have to check a few things out and I want you there with me.’

‘Something wrong?’

‘I don’t think so. I have a hunch, so small that it’s probably nothing, but if I’m right, the whole thing might be over.’

‘You mean . . .?’

‘See you at Stricker’s.’ Frank cut him off.

Now he was sorry to be driving an unmarked vehicle instead of a real police car with a blue lamp and a siren. He chided himself for not having asked for a magnetic light to put on the roof.

Meanwhile, he started blaming himself. How could he have been so blind? How could he have let his personal resentment cloud his vision? He had seen what he wanted to see, heard what he wanted to
hear, and accepted only what he felt like accepting.

And they had all paid the price, Nicolas most of all. If he had used his head, Nicolas might still be alive and No One behind bars.

When Frank got to Les Caravelles, Morelli was waiting for him in front of the building. Frank left his car on the street without worrying about the no-parking zone. He rushed past Morelli; the
sergeant followed him inside without a word. They stopped at the desk and the doorman looked at them with genuine concern. Frank leaned on the marble counter.

‘The keys to Roby Stricker’s apartment, please. Police.’

The clarification wasn’t necessary. The doorman remembered Frank: his nervous swallow was proof enough. Morelli showed his badge anyway. In the lift on the way up, he finally plucked up
the courage to question Frank’s furious mood.

‘What’s going on, Frank?’

‘What’s going on is that I’m a complete idiot, Claude. A total fucking idiot. If I hadn’t been such a hothead, I would have remembered how to be a cop and we might have
avoided a lot of this.’

Morelli didn’t understand but saw that the American wasn’t going to stop to explain. They reached the door, which still had police seals on it. Frank tore off the strips of yellow
tape. He opened the door and they went inside the apartment.

There was the usual sense of inevitability that hovers over a crime scene: the broken picture on the floor, the marks on the carpet, the dust traces left by forensics, the metallic smell of
dried blood evoking a man’s vain struggle with death.

Without hesitation, Frank went into the bedroom. Morelli watched him standing at the doorway surveying the room. The blood on the marble floor had been cleaned away. The only evidence of the
crime committed there were the traces of blood on the walls.

Frank stood motionless for a few seconds and then did something strange. He reached the bed in two strides and lay down on the floor in the same position in which Stricker’s body had been
found, which forensics had traced on the marble tiles before removing the body. He lay there for a long time, barely moving. He raised his head to check something that could obviously only be seen
from the floor.