I Kill (61 page)

He stepped forward and turned on the light. Despite its confines, the shelter was rather spacious. That woman’s paranoia and fears for the future must have cost her husband a pretty penny
all those years ago. The construction was square and divided into three rooms. On the right was a small space that served both as a bathroom and storeroom. It contained every kind of tinned food
imaginable, stacked in an orderly manner on shelves facing the toilet and sink, along with enough reserves of water to outlast any siege. The room that had held the corpse in its crystal coffin
also contained a spare single bed, off to one side. The thought of Jean-Loup sleeping next to the dead body gave him a chill, as if an evil breath had touched his back, as if a stranger were
standing behind him.

Frank turned his head slowly from side to side while opening and closing his eyes at regular intervals and projecting the images of the room on to his mind like slides.

The room appeared and disappeared as if lit by a flash. He went on opening and closing his eyes, hoping each time that whatever he was seeking might magically appear.

Frank stopped suddenly.

He walked to the back of the room and carefully examined the black box. He wasn’t a stereo aficionado, but from what he knew, it looked like a fairly ordinary model made
of black metal with a small display in front. It didn’t even look very new. There were wires coming out that went to a hole at the bottom of the shelf. There was a series of numbers on the
bottom, written on the metal in white marker pen. Someone had tried sloppily to erase the numbers, but they were still legible.

He was puzzled. He pressed the EJECT button and the tray on the left of the display slid out soundlessly. There was a CD with writing on the gold surface, again in marker pen,
this time in red.

Robert Fulton-‘Stolen Music’.

That damned record again. That music was following Frank like a curse. He stopped to think. It was natural that Jean-Loup would make himself a digital copy of the record, so that he could listen
to it without ruining the original. Then why, when he killed Allen Yoshida, did he need to take the actual LP? There was certainly some symbolic meaning, but there could also be another reason . .
.

Frank turned to look at the modern CD player next to the other components of the sound system and then turned again to the other, much more modest, piece of equipment. And he wondered:
Why
would someone with a CD player like that use a cheap thing like this?

There were many answers to that question, each one with some merit. But Frank knew that none of them was right. He leaned his hand on the black metal of the device and ran his fingers over the
numbers written in white as if he expected them to be raised and palpable.

A theory is a journey that can last months, years, sometimes an entire lifetime. The intuition that ignites it runs through the brain at the speed of light, and its effect is immediate. One
moment all is darkness and the next, everything is light.

Frank suddenly realized what that second player was for and what the numbers that someone had tried to erase from its surface meant. They were the numbers of a combination, presumably for a lock
somewhere. But where? He pushed the tray back in and pressed the start button. A series of numbers appeared on the display, showing the track being played and the elapsed time since it had
started.

He watched the seconds ticking over slowly on the small, illuminated rectangle. After ten seconds he pressed the button that moved from the first track to the next. Then, he waited until the
number 7 appeared and went to the third track. When the display showed 4, he went to the fourth. And when he read the number 8, he pressed the stop button.

Click.

The click was so faint that Frank would not have heard it if he hadn’t been holding his breath. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw that the metal cabinet to his right had
moved over a few inches. The two sides were so perfectly matched that they seemed to be part of the wall.

He stuck his finger into the crack and pulled. Sliding along two runners on either side, the metal cabinet came forward about a yard, revealing a round door behind it. In one corner of the metal
door, there was a wheel that looked just like the one in the laundry room. When they had searched the bunker, they hadn’t asked themselves why this cabinet was completely empty. Now that he
had an answer, Frank found the question that nobody had thought to ask. The cabinet was there to hide a second entrance.

Frank turned the wheel counterclockwise without any effort until he heard the lock click, then he pushed and the door opened, sliding soundlessly on its hinges. Jean-Loup Verdier must have spent
a great deal of time on technical knowledge and maintenance. Behind the door was the opening of a round cement tunnel, about a yard and a half in diameter. It was a black hole that started from the
shelter; where it ended, God only knew.

Frank slid his phone into his shirt pocket, removed his jacket, and pulled the Glock out of its holster on his belt. He knelt on the ground, wriggled past the rods holding up the metal shelves
and crawled into the tunnel entrance. He halted a moment, staring at the tunnel and the darkness it promised. He could see no more than a yard in the dim light of the tunnel, partly obscured by the
cabinet and his own body. It was probably dangerous,
very
dangerous, to squeeze blindly into that tunnel.

Then he remembered who had escaped through the tunnel and everything that person had done, and he decided to follow.

Pierrot peeped out from behind the bushes where he was hiding and looked on to the street, relieved to see that all the cars and people who were waiting had left, along with
the policemen who had been stopping them. Good.
Now
it was good, but before he had been really afraid . . .

After leaving the radio station, he had walked up to Jean-Loup’s house, his knapsack on his back. He had been a little nervous because he wasn’t sure that he would be able to find
the street, even though he had been to Beausoleil several times in Jean-Loup’s car, which was called
a Mercedes.
He hadn’t paid much attention to the route because he had been
too busy laughing and looking at his friend’s face. He always laughed when he was with Jean-Loup. Well, not really always, because there was someone who had said that only fools laughed all
the time and he didn’t want people to think he was a fool.

And anyway, he wasn’t used to going around by himself because his mother was afraid that something would happen to him or that people would make fun of him, like Mme Narbonne’s
daughter, the one with the crooked teeth and pimples who called him ‘retard’. He didn’t know what a retard was and when he had asked his mother, she had turned her back to him,
but not fast enough to keep him from noticing that her eyes were wet with tears. Pierrot had not been too worried about that. His mother’s eyes were often damp, like when she watched those
movies on TV where there were two people kissing at the end with violin music and then they got married. The only thing he had really been worried about was that his mother’s damp eyes meant
that sooner or later he would have to marry Mme Narbonne’s daughter.

Halfway to Jean-Loup’s house, he had got thirsty and had drunk the entire can of Coke that he had brought from home. He was a little unhappy because he had meant to share it with
Jean-Loup, but it was a hot day and his mouth was dry and his friend certainly wouldn’t mind such a little thing. And he still had a can of Schweppes left.

He was sweaty on reaching Jean-Loup’s house and thought that it would probably have been a good idea to bring another T-shirt to change into. But it wasn’t a problem. He knew that
Jean-Loup had a chest in his laundry room where he kept T-shirts for doing jobs around the house. If his shirt was too sweaty, Jean-Loup would lend him another one, which he would return after his
mother washed and ironed it. It had happened once before when he was in the pool and his shirt had fallen in the water and Jean-Loup had lent him a blue one that said ‘Martini-Racing’.
He had thought that Jean-Loup was lending it to him, but it was a present.

The first thing he wanted to do was find the key. He found the aluminium mailbox inside the gate with the words JEAN-LOUP VERDIER written in dark green paint, the same colour as the bars. He
stuck his hand underneath the metal box. Under his fingers, he felt something that seemed like a key attached with a dried-out piece of chewing gum.

He was about to pull off the key when a car drove up to the construction site not far from the gate. Luckily, Pierrot was covered by a bush and the trunk of a cypress tree and he couldn’t
be seen from the car. He saw the American in that blue car, the one who was always with the kind inspector but then he wasn’t any more because someone said that the inspector was dead.
Pierrot moved away quickly so the man wouldn’t see him. If he did, he’d ask him what he was doing there and would take him home to his mother.

He went down the road, following the asphalt and staying under cover. After he passed the steep part that made his head spin just from looking at it, he climbed over the guardrail and found
himself in a bush that completely covered him. From his observation point he could see the courtyard of Jean-Loup’s house and watch with curiosity as a bunch of people walked back and forth,
mostly policemen dressed in blue and a few in normal clothes. There was also the one who had come to the station and never smiled when he spoke, but smiled all the time when he spoke to
Barbara.

He stayed in his hiding place for what seemed like a very long time, until everyone had gone and the courtyard was empty. The last one to go, the American, had left the garage door open. It was
lucky that Pierrot was there to take care of his friend’s house. Now he could go and make sure the records were okay, and before he left he would close the garage door. Otherwise, anyone
could come in and steal whatever they wanted.

He got up slowly from the ground and looked around. His knees hurt from crouching for so long and his legs had fallen asleep. He started stamping his feet on the ground, the way his mother had
taught him. In his own small way, Pierrot decided on a plan of action. He couldn’t reach the courtyard from where he was because of the very steep part along the cliff by the sea. So he had
to go up the paved road and down again to see if he could climb over the gate.

He adjusted his knapsack on his shoulders and got ready for the climb.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed some movement in the bushes, lower down. He thought maybe he was mistaken. How could anyone be below him? He would have seen them pass by. But just to make
sure, he crouched back down in the bushes, parting the branches with his hands so that he could see better. Nothing happened for a while and he was beginning to think he had been wrong. Then he saw
something else move in the bushes and held his hand over his eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun.

What he saw made his mouth drop open in surprise. Right below him, dressed in green and brown as if he were part of the earth and the vegetation, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, was
his friend Jean-Loup, crawling out from under a tangle of shrubs. Pierrot held his breath. If it were up to him, he would have jumped and cried out that he was there, but maybe it wasn’t a
good idea because if not all the policemen were gone, someone might see them. He decided to climb up a little higher and move to the right so that he would be covered by the embankment before
making his presence known to Jean-Loup.

He crept quietly, trying to imitate the movements of his friend below him who was going in and out of the bushes without rustling a single leaf. Finally, he reached a point where it was
impossible to see any further and he realized it was the perfect position. A piece of rock jutted out below him, just large enough to stand on and call out to Jean-Loup without being seen by the
policemen.

He climbed down carefully to get as close to the rock as possible. He bent his legs, then raised his arms to the sky and jumped. As soon as his feet hit the ground, the brittle piece of rock
broke under his weight and Pierrot rolled down into the void with a scream.

Frank moved forward very slowly in the pitch dark.

After careful examination of the tunnel, he had seen that it was high enough for him to crawl through on all fours, which was what he decided to do. It was not the most comfortable position, but
certainly the least risky. He had thought with a bitter smile that he was literally going to ‘the dark side’.