I Kill (62 page)

After a few steps he no longer had the help of the dim light coming from behind and he had to continue in total darkness. He held the gun in his right hand and leaned his body against the wall
on the left, bending slightly backward to use his free hand as a sort of advance guard to make sure that there were no obstacles or, worse, holes he could fall into. If that happened, he’d be
stuck there for all time.

He moved cautiously, step by step. His legs were beginning to hurt, especially his right knee. That was the knee with torn ligaments from a college football game that had ended his playing
career and kept him from pursuing professional football. He usually stayed in good enough shape to avoid problems, but he had trained very little recently and the position he was in would have
bothered anyone’s knees, even those of a weight-lifter. He shivered slightly. It wasn’t warm in there. Still, nervousness made him sweat, soaking the light material of his shirt. There
was a dank smell of wet leaves and humidity in the tunnel, as well as of the mildewed concrete with which it was lined. He occasionally brushed against a root that had burrowed between the joints
of the piping. It had startled him the first time and he had pulled back his hand as if he had been burned. The pipe obviously led outside and some animal could easily have found its way in and
made a comfortable den. Frank was not skittish, but the idea of touching a grass snake or a rat made him shudder.

In this long manhunt, his fantasy had finally come true. This was the situation he’d imagined every time he spoke of No One. A slow, creeping, furtive advance, in the cold and damp domain
of rats. It described their investigation perfectly: a tiring, step-by-step process done completely in the dark, searching for a slim ray of light to lead them out of the blackness.

Let us perish in the light of day . . .

In the pitch dark, the famous passage of Ajax’s prayer from the
Iliad
came to mind. He’d studied it in high school, a million years ago. The Trojans and the Achaeans were
fighting near the ships and Jove had sent fog to block the vision of the Greeks, who were losing. At that point, Ajax sent up a prayer to the father of all the gods, a heartfelt prayer not for his
own safety, but for the permission to approach destruction in the sunlight. Frank remembered the words of his favourite hero.

His concentration returned as he felt the tunnel slope down. The pavement, or rather the part under his feet, had pitched steeply. It probably didn’t mean that the pipe was now unworkable.
Basically, it had been built for human use and the sloping was surely accidental rather than intentional. They must have found a vein of rock during construction and had been forced to go downwards
in order to continue.

He decided to shuffle forward on his backside rather than crawl and proceeded slowly, doubling his caution. Frank wasn’t particularly worried about the downward slope. His analysis before
had been right, not to mention the fact that No One had gone through here many times, back and forth, although he must have done so much more easily since he knew the terrain and certainly carried
a torch.

Frank, on the other hand, was in total darkness and had no idea what lay ahead. Or even what was next to him. But it was the thought of Jean-Loup that made him more careful. He knew how
dangerously smart the man was, and it was not unlikely that he had set traps for a possible intruder.

He wondered again
who
Jean-Loup Verdier could be and, most of all, who had
created
him. It was now obvious that he was not just a psychopath, someone weak and frustrated who
committed a series of crimes to get attention and be on TV. That superficial explanation might cover most of the cases he knew, but it was as far from No One as the earth from the sun. Most serial
killers were people with lower than average intelligence who were consumed for the most part by an uncontrollable force. They usually accepted the handcuffs with a sigh of relief.

Not Jean-Loup. There was something different about him. The corpse in its transparent coffin testified to his madness. His mind undoubtedly contained thoughts that would shock even the most
jaded psychiatrist. But the madness ended there: Jean-Loup was strong, highly intelligent, well prepared and trained to fight. He was a genuine combatant. With cynical ease, he had killed Jochen
Welder and Roby Stricker, two trained athletes. The haste with which he had disposed of the three policemen in his own house was further confirmation of his abilities, if any more were needed.
There seemed to be two people in him, in the same body, two different natures that cancelled each other out. Perhaps the best definition was the one he had given himself:
I am someone and no
one.

He was an
extremely
dangerous man and had to be treated as such. Frank did not feel that he was being unnecessarily paranoid. Sometimes caution means the difference between life and
death.

Frank knew that only too well, since the only time he had been impulsive and rushed in without thinking, he had awoken in a hospital bed after an explosion and fifteen days in a coma. If he ever
forgot, he had scars all over his body to remind him.

He didn’t want to take any more unnecessary risks. He owed it to himself, whether or not he decided to remain a policeman. He owed it to the woman who was waiting for him in the departure
lounge of Nice airport. And he owed it to Harriet, the promise that he would never forget.

He continued to inch forward, trying to make as little noise as possible. Jean-Loup could be anywhere at that moment, but he might still be crouching at the far end of the tunnel. After all,
this underground passage couldn’t go all the way to Menton. It had to open up somewhere east of the house, on the slope of the mountain.

There was probably still a lot of confusion outside: the police roadblocks, the lines of cars, people getting out and rubbernecking, asking each other what was going on. It wouldn’t be
hard to lose oneself in that crowd. Yes, Jean-Loup’s pictures had been in all the papers and shown on TV news all over Europe, but Frank had lost faith in those measures long ago. Ordinary
people usually only glanced superficially at the people around them. All Jean-Loup had to do was cut his hair and put on a pair of dark glasses to be fairly sure that he could mix in a crowd.

But the roads were still full of cops who were on the alert and had their eyes wide open. And that was something else. They would be suspicious if someone just appeared out of the bushes and
climbed down to the side of the road. That would definitely raise the alarm and with everything that had happened, the police would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Then again, his
man might have found a less congested place to come out of hiding.

Frank kept shuffling on. The sound of his trousers scraping along the bottom of the tunnel sounded like Niagara Falls. The constant abrasion started to hurt. He stopped for a moment to settle
into a more comfortable position and decided to go back to crawling. As he changed position, the
beep
of his mobile phone coming within range of a signal sounded like a church bell in the
absolute silence of a country night. That signal might have betrayed his presence, but it also assured him that the exit was near.

He squinted in the darkness, thinking that he could see points of light before him, like white chalk marks on a blackboard. He tried to speed up without abandoning his caution, and his heart
raced even faster. Frank’s left hand groped along the concrete wall, his right pressed against the trigger, and his knee hurt like hell, but there was a hint of light in front of him and
perhaps a presence lurking that he could not afford to underestimate. The white marks on the blackboard danced, suspended in the air as he approached, and grew slowly larger. Frank realized that
the tunnel ended near a bush and that he was seeing the light filtered through the branches. There was probably a breeze swaying the leaves, which was why the points of light looked like fireflies
to his eyes, tricked by the darkness.

Suddenly, from outside, he heard the echo of a desperate scream. Frank threw caution to the wind and, as quickly as possible, he reached the thicket of shrubs hiding the entrance to the tunnel.
Pushing the branches to one side, he slowly put out his head. The exit was behind a large bush that completely covered the circumference of the concrete pipe.

The scream was repeated. Frank stood up tentatively, his knee protesting in pain. He looked around. The bush was on a fairly level area, a sort of natural terrace on the side of the mountain,
covered with occasional trees with thin trunks. The trees were wrapped with ivy and had shrubs of Mediterranean maquis at their base. Behind him, the twin houses and their carefully tended gardens
rose like touchstones. The road was fifty yards above him on his left. He was surprised not to be further from his starting point after that long, awkward, shuffling journey. Frank saw something
moving halfway down the slope that separated him from the road. A figure in a green shirt and khaki-coloured trousers with a dark canvas bag slung over his shoulder was carefully climbing up
through the bushes towards the guard-rail.

Frank would have recognized that man anywhere, among thousands of others and from a million miles away. He brought the Glock up to his eyeline, pointing it with both hands. He centred his target
in the gunsights and finally shouted out the words he had been yearning to say for so long.

‘Stop right where you are, Jean-Loup! I’m aiming at you. Don’t make me shoot. Put your hands in the air, kneel down on the ground, and don’t move. Now!’

Jean-Loup turned his head in Frank’s direction. He gave no sign that he recognized him or understood what he had said, and didn’t seem to have any intention of giving in to his
request. Despite the fact that he was close enough to see the gun in Frank’s hands, he continued to climb, moving further left. Frank’s finger contracted over the trigger of the
Glock.

The scream was repeated, loud and sharp.

Jean-Loup answered, bending his head. ‘Hold on tight, Pierrot, I’m on my way. Don’t worry. I’m coming down to get you.’

Frank moved his eyes to where Jean-Loup was looking. He could see Pierrot, his hands grasping a small tree trunk on the side of the road. He was groping with his feet to find some ground but
every time he tried to grip the rock, the fragile terrain crumbled and the boy found himself hanging in midair.

Below him, the steep slope plummeted down. It wasn’t really a sheer cliff, but if Pierrot let go he would fall and bounce like a rag doll straight into the ravine. If he let go, there
would be no hope.

‘Hurry, Jean-Loup. I can’t hold on any more. My hands hurt.’ Frank could see how tired the boy was and he could hear the fear in his voice. But he also heard something else,
the absolute faith that Jean-Loup, the deejay, the serial killer, the voice of the Devil, his best friend, would come to save him. Frank released the tension on the trigger slightly as he realized
what Jean-Loup was doing.

He wasn’t running away. He was going to save Pierrot.

Escape had probably been Jean-Loup’s original intention and things had undoubtedly unfolded as Frank had imagined. He had waited in the tunnel until the commotion died down and he could
slip out to evade the police one last time. Then he had seen Pierrot in danger. He had probably wondered why Pierrot was there, hanging from a tree calling for help in his terrified child’s
voice. In a split second, he had sized up the situation and made a choice. Now he was acting on it.

Frank felt a dull anger rush through him, the result of his frustration. He had been waiting for that moment for so long and now that he had his gun trained on the man he had been hunting so
desperately, he couldn’t shoot. He gripped his weapon more firmly than ever. Just beyond the notch of his pistol sights was the body of Jean-Loup, moving to the place where his young friend
was hanging.

Jean-Loup reached Pierrot, dangling slightly below him. The hole that the boy’s fall had made in the terrain lay between them. It was too far for Jean-Loup to reach and pull him up.

‘I’m right here, Pierrot,’ Jean-Loup said to the boy in his warm, deep voice. ‘I’m coming. Stay calm and everything will be all right. But you have to hold on tight
and stay calm. Understand?’

Despite the danger, Pierrot answered with one of his solemn nods. His eyes were huge with fear but he was certain that his friend would save him.

Frank watched as Jean-Loup put the bag he was carrying on the ground and started slipping off his belt. He didn’t know how Jean-Loup planned to get Pierrot out of danger. The only thing
Frank could do was stand there watching, keeping him in the sights of his gun.

Jean-Loup had just finished removing his belt when they heard the loud hiss of a blowgun and a gust of air hit the ground next to him. He bent down suddenly and it was that instinctive movement
that saved his life. Another hiss and gust of air hit exactly where he had been standing a fraction of a second earlier. Frank turned sharply and looked up. On the edge of the slope, standing next
to the guard-rail was Captain Ryan Mosse, holding a huge automatic weapon with a silencer.

At that point Jean-Loup turned and did something incredible. He jumped into the mastic bushes and disappeared. Just like that. One moment he was there and the next he wasn’t. Ryan Mosse
must have been just as surprised, but that didn’t stop him from firing a series of rapid shots into the bushes where Jean-Loup was hiding. He took out the empty clip and stuck in another. A
second later, the gun was ready to fire. He started to climb down carefully, watching closely for any movement in the bushes near him. Frank moved the Glock in his direction.

‘Get out of here, Mosse. This has nothing to do with you. Drop your gun and leave. Or help. First, we have to think of that boy hanging down there. Then we’ll take care of everything
else.’

The captain continued climbing down, gun in hand. ‘Who says this has nothing to do with me? I say it does, Mr Ottobre. And I’ll decide the priorities. First I get rid of this nutcase
and then I’ll help you with the retard if you want.’