The Whisperer (33 page)

“Because I grew up with money, and without it I wouldn’t know how to survive for a single day. As you see, whatever change I make, I’m always destined to die.”

“Balls!” said the man as he got up to wash out the pan.

Joseph tried to put it better: “I could have anything I desire. But for that very reason I don’t know what desire is.”

“What on earth are you talking about? Money can’t buy everything.”

“Oh, believe me, it can. If I wanted you dead, I could pay some men and they would kill you, and no one would ever know.”

“Ever done that?” asked the other man, suddenly serious.

“What?”

“Ever paid someone to kill for you?”

“I haven’t, but my father and grandfather did, I know.”

There was a pause.

“But health you can’t buy.”

“That’s true. But if you know in advance when you’re going to die, the problem’s solved. You see: the rich are unhappy because they know that sooner or later they’re going to have to leave everything they possess. You can’t take your money to the grave. I’m not condemning myself to thoughts of my own death, someone else has already done it for me.”

The man stopped to think. “You’re right,” he said, “but it’s very sad not to desire anything. There must be something you really like, isn’t there? So start with that.”

“Well, I like walking. And since this morning I’ve liked bacon and eggs. And I like boys.”

“You mean you’re…”

“I really don’t know. I go with them, but I can’t say it’s something I really desire.”

“So why don’t you try going with a woman?”

“I probably should. But first it should be something I
desire,
you see? I can’t put it better than that.”

“No. I think you’re clear enough already.”

The man set down the pan on top of the others on the stool. Then he looked at the quartz watch on his wrist.

“It’s ten o’clock, I’ve got to go into town: I need some parts to fix the toaster.”

“Then I’ll go too.”

“No, why? Stay here and rest for a while if you want. I’ll be back soon, maybe we could eat together again and talk some more. You’re really something, you know that?”

Joseph looked at the old sofa with the torn upholstery. It looked very inviting.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll sleep for a while if you don’t mind.”

The man smiled. “Fantastic!” He was about to leave when he turned round. “By the way, what would you like for dinner?”

Joseph stared at him. “I don’t know. Surprise me.”

A hand shook him gently. Joseph opened his eyes and he discovered that it was already evening.

“There’s tiredness for you!” said his new friend, smiling. “You’ve slept nine hours through!”

Joseph pulled himself up, stretching. He hadn’t rested as well as that for a long time. He suddenly felt a pang of hunger.

“Is it dinnertime already?” he asked.

“Time to make the fire and I’ll get it ready straightaway: I’ve got some chicken to cook in the embers, and some potatoes. Is that OK as a menu?”

“Fantastic, I’m starving.”

“Meanwhile get yourself a beer, they’re on the windowsill.”

Joseph had never drunk beer, apart from the beer that his mother put in the Christmas punch. He took a tin from the six-pack and pulled the tab. He rested his lips on the aluminum rim and took a long sip. He felt the cold drink quickly going down his esophagus. It was a pleasant, thirst-quenching sensation. After the second sip, he burped.

“Bless you!” the man exclaimed.

It was cold outside, but inside the fire gave off good warmth. The light from the gas lamp in the middle of the table faintly illuminated the room.

“The ironmonger said the toaster’s fixable. He also gave me some advice on how to mend it. That’s great, it means I might be able to sell it again at a fair.”

“So that’s what you do for a living?”

“Yes, that too from time to time. People throw away a lot of things that can still be used. I take them and fix them up, and then I make some money. Some things I keep, like this painting, for example…”

He pointed at the unframed landscape on the wall.

“Why that one?” asked Joseph.

“I don’t know, I like it. I think it reminds me of the place where I was born, or perhaps I’ve never even been there, who can say: I’ve traveled so much…”

“Have you really been to lots of different places?”

“Yes, loads.” He seemed lost in thought for moment, but he immediately went on: “My chicken is something special, you’ll see. And by the way, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“A surprise? What surprise?”

“Not now, after dinner.”

They sat down at the table. The chicken and potatoes were perfectly cooked and delicious. Joseph filled his plate several times. The guy—that was how Joseph thought of him now—ate with his mouth open, and had already drunk three beers. After dinner he took out a hand-carved pipe and some tobacco. As he was preparing to smoke, he said, “You know, I’ve thought a lot about what you said to me this morning.”

“What exactly?”

“What you said about ‘desire.’ I was struck by it.”

“Really? Why?”

“You see, I don’t think it’s so bad to know exactly when your life is going to end. I see it as more of a privilege.”

“How can you say something like that?”

“Well, of course it depends on how you look at the whole picture. Whether you’re inclined to see the glass as half full or half empty. In short: you can list all the things you lack. Or you can define the rest of your life according to your deadline.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I think the fact you know you’re going to die at fifty makes you think you have no power over your life. But you’re wrong there, my friend.”

“What do you mean by ‘power’?”

The guy took a twig from the fire and lit his pipe with the end of it. He took a deep puff on it before he replied. “Power and desire go hand in hand. They are made from the same accursed substance. The second depends on the first, and vice versa. And that’s not just philosophical crap, you can see it in nature itself. You put it well this morning: we can only desire what we don’t have, you think you have the power to get anything and you desire nothing. But that happens because your power derives from money.”

“Why, is there any other kind?”

“Certainly, the power of the will, for example. You have to put it to the test to understand. But I suspect you don’t want to do it…”

“Why do you say that? I can do it.”

The guy looked at him. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely.”

“Fine. Before dinner I told you I had a surprise for you. Now I’ve got to show it to you. Come on.”

He got up and walked towards one of the closed doors at the end of the room. Joseph unsteadily followed him to the half-open doorway.

“Look.”

He took a step into the darkness, and he sensed it. There was something in the room, breathing quickly. He immediately thought of an animal and stepped backwards.

“Come on,” the guy said, “take a better look.”

It took Joseph a few seconds for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark. The gas lamp on the table was just bright enough to shed a faint light on the boy’s face. He was lying on a bed, with his hands and feet tied to posts with thick ropes. He was wearing a checked shirt and jeans, but no shoes. A handkerchief around his mouth kept him from talking, so he just made disconnected noises, like animal cries. The hair over his forehead was drenched with sweat. He was struggling like an imprisoned animal, and his eyes were wide with terror.

“Who is he?” Joseph asked.

“A present for you.”

“And what should I do with it?”

“Whatever you like.”

“But I don’t know who he is.”

“Neither do I. He was hitchhiking. I got him into the car on the way back here.”

“Perhaps we should untie him and let him go.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because this is a demonstration of what power is, and how it is linked with desire. If you want to free him, do that. But if you want anything else from him, it’s up to you to choose.”

“Are you talking about sex, by any chance?”

The guy shook his head, disappointed. “Your horizon is very limited, my friend. You have a human life at your disposal—the greatest, most astonishing of God’s creations—and the only thing you can think of doing is fucking it…”

“What should I do with a human life?”

“You said it today: if you wanted to kill someone, you would just have to pay someone else to do it for you. But do you really think that gives you the power to take a life?
Your money
has that power, not
you
. Until you do it with your own hands, you’re never going to experience what it means.”

Joseph looked at the visibly terrified boy again. “But I don’t want to know,” he said.

“Because you’re afraid. Afraid of the consequences, of the fact that you might be punished, or about your sense of guilt.”

“It’s normal to be afraid of certain things.”

“No, it isn’t, Joseph.”

He didn’t notice that the guy had called him by name: at that moment he was too busy looking back and forth between man and boy.

“What if I told you that you can do it, that you can take someone’s life and no one will ever know?”

“No one? What about you?”

“I’m the one who kidnapped him and brought him here, remember? And I’ll also be the one who will bury his body…”

Joseph lowered his head. “No one would ever know?”

“What if I told you that you would be unpunished, would that give you the
desire
to try?”

Joseph looked at his hands for a long while, and his breathing grew faster as he began to feel a strange euphoria rising up within him, something he had never felt before.

“I’d like a knife,” he said.

The guy went into the kitchen. As he waited, Joseph stared at the boy who was pleading with him with his eyes and crying. At the sight of those silent tears, Joseph discovered he felt nothing. No one would mourn his death when, at the age of fifty, the disease of his father and grandfather came to claim him. For the world he would always be the rich boy, undeserving of any kind of compassion.

The guy came back to him with a long, sharp knife. He put it in his hands.

“There’s nothing more gratifying than taking a life,” he said. “Not a particular person’s life, an enemy or someone who has hurt you. Just any human being. It gives you the same power as God.”

He left him alone and walked away, closing the door behind him.

The moonlight slid between the broken blinds, making the knife in his hand gleam. The boy grew agitated, and Joseph was aware of his anxiety, his fear in the form of sounds, but also of smells. His acid breath, the sweat from his armpits. He approached the bed, slowly, his footsteps squeaking on the floor, so that even the boy must have been aware of what was happening. He put the blade of the knife flat on his chest. Should he say something? Nothing came to mind. A shiver ran through him and something happened that he really wasn’t expecting: he had an erection.

He lifted the blade a few inches, running it slowly along the boy’s body until it reached his stomach. He stopped. He took a breath and slowly pushed the tip of the blade through the fabric of his shirt until it touched the flesh. The boy tried to scream, but all that came out was the pitiful imitation of a cry of pain. Joseph pushed the blade even further in, and the skin parted as if it was being torn. He recognized the white of the fatty tissue. But the wound still wasn’t bleeding. Then he plunged the blade in all the way until he felt the hot blood on his hand and became aware of a pungent exhalation from the intestines. The boy arched his back, involuntarily helping him with his task. He pressed again until he felt the knife tip touch the dorsal column. The boy was a tense bundle of muscle and flesh beneath him. He remained in that arched position for a few moments. Then he fell back heavily on the bed, stripped of his strength, like an inanimate object.
And at that moment, the alarms…

…
began sounding all together
. The doctor and the nurse ran around the patient with the emergency trolley. Nicla, bent over, tried to get her breath back: the shock of what she had seen had torn her violently from her trance. Mila had her hands on her back, trying to make her breathe. The doctor tore open the pajamas covering Joseph B. Rockford’s chest, pulling off all the buttons, which rolled around the room. Boris nearly slipped on them as he tried to come to Mila’s support. Then the doctor put the plates that the nurse had passed him on the patient’s chest, shouting “now!” before the electrical discharge. Goran walked over to Mila. “Let’s get her out of here,” he said, going to relieve the nun. As they were leaving the room with Rosa and Stern, the policewoman turned towards Joseph B. Rockford one last time. His body was racked by the shocks but, under the blankets, she noticed what looked like an erection.

You complete bastard,
she thought.

The beep of the heart monitor stabilized into a single peremptory note. But at that moment Joseph B. Rockford opened his eyes.

His lips began moving without being able to make a sound. His vocal cords had been damaged when they had given him the tracheotomy to enable him to breathe.

He should have been dead by now. The machines around him said that he was now just a lifeless piece of meat. And yet he was trying to communicate. His groans made him sound like a man drowning and trying to catch one last desperate breath of air.

It didn’t take long.

In the end, an invisible hand dragged him down again, and it was as if Joseph B. Rockford’s soul had been swallowed up by his deathbed, leaving nothing but an empty, discarded body.

A
s soon as she recovered, Nicla Papakidis made herself available to a Federal Police draftsman to draw the identikit of the man she had seen with Joseph.

The stranger whom he had christened “the guy,” and who was presumed to be Albert.

The long beard and the curly mane of hair prevented her from giving a precise description of the man’s salient features. She didn’t know what his jaw was like, and his nose was just a vague shadow on his face. She couldn’t catch the exact shape of his eyes.

All she could say with any certainty was that they were gray.

But the result would be sent out to all police cars, to the ports and airports and border patrols. Roche was trying to decide whether to have copies in the press as well, although that would have involved an explanation of how they had ended up with the identikit. If he revealed that there was a medium behind it, the media would deduce that the police had nothing to work with, that they were stumbling around in the dark and that they had turned to a psychic out of desperation.

“That’s a risk you have to take,” Goran suggested.

The chief inspector had joined the team at the Rockfords’ house again. He hadn’t wanted to meet the nun, because he had made it clear from the start that he didn’t want anything to do with their experiment: as always, all the responsibility would fall on Goran. The criminologist had willingly accepted, because he had come to trust Mila’s hunches.

“Little one, one thing has occurred to me,” said Nicla to her favorite as they sat in the mobile unit camper watching Gavila and the chief inspector talking on the lawn in front of the house.

“What?”

“That I don’t want the reward.”

“But if this is the man we’re looking for, it will go to you by right.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Just think of all the things you could do for the people you look after every day.”

“And what do they need that they don’t have already? They have our love, our care and, believe me, when one of God’s creatures reaches the end of his days, he doesn’t need anything else.”

“If you took that money, I could think that something good had come out of all this…”

“Evil generates only more evil. That has always been its chief characteristic.”

“Once I heard someone say that evil can always be demonstrated. Good can’t. Because evil leaves traces of its passing. While you can only bear witness to good.”

Nicla smiled, finally. “It’s odd,” she said suddenly. “You see, Mila, the fact is that good is too fleeting to be recorded in any way. And as it passes it doesn’t leave a trail. Good is clean, evil is dirty…But I can prove that good exists, because I see it every day. When one of my poor people is approaching the end, I try and stay with them as much as possible. I hold their hand, listen to the things they have to say to me; if they tell me their sins I don’t judge them. When they understand what is happening to them, whether they have led a good life and done no evil, or whether they have done evil and repented…well, they’re always smiling. I don’t know why but it happens, I assure you. So the proof of good is the smile with which they challenge death.”

Comforted, Mila nodded. She wouldn’t insist that Nicla accept the reward. Perhaps she was right.

It was almost five in the evening, the nun was tired. But there was one more thing to do.

“Are you sure you would recognize the abandoned house?” she asked.

“Yes, I know where it is.”

They just had to perform a routine inspection before going back to the Studio. It was required for positive proof of the medium’s information.

But they all went anyway.

In the car, Sarah Rosa followed Nicla’s directions, and turned where she said. The weather report said there was more snow on the way. On one side, the sky was clear and the sun was setting quickly. On the other, the clouds were already gathering on the horizon, and there were flashes of approaching lightning.

They were bang in the middle.

“We’ve got to get a move on,” said Stern. “It will soon be dark.”

They reached the dirt road and turned down it. The stones rattled under their tires. After all those years, the wooden house was still standing. The white paint had flaked off completely, and only remained in a few distinct patches. The planks exposed to the weather were rotting, making the house look like a rotten tooth.

They got out of the car and headed towards the porch.

“Careful, it could collapse,” Boris warned.

Goran climbed the first step. The place matched the nun’s description. The door was open, the criminologist barely had to push it. Inside, the floor was covered with a layer of soil, and rats could be heard moving under the tables, disturbed by their presence. Gavila recognized the sofa, even though nothing was left of it now but a skeleton of rusty springs. The dresser was still there. The stone fireplace had partly collapsed. Goran took a little torch from his pocket to examine the two back rooms. Meanwhile Boris and Stern had come in and were looking around.

Goran opened the first door. “This is the bedroom.”

But the bed was no longer there. In its place was a lighter shadow on the floor. It was there that Joseph B. Rockford had received his blood baptism. God knows who the boy was who had been killed in that room almost twenty years before.

“We’ll have to dig around here for human remains,” said Gavila.

“I’ll call the gravediggers and Chang’s men as soon as we’ve finished checking the place,” Stern said.

Meanwhile, outside the house, Sarah Rosa was walking nervously back and forth, her hands in her pockets to protect them against the cold. Nicla and Mila watched her from inside the car.

“You don’t like that woman,” said the nun.

“It would be more accurate to say that she doesn’t like me.”

“Have you tried to work out why?”

Mila looked at her sideways. “Are you trying to tell me it’s my fault?”

“No, I’m just saying that before making accusations we should always be sure.”

“She’s been on my back ever since I got here.”

Nicla raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Then don’t rise to her bait. It will all pass as soon as you have gone.”

Mila shook her head. Sometimes the nun’s good sense was unbearable.

Inside, Goran left the bedroom and turned automatically towards the other closed door.

The medium hadn’t mentioned that second room.

He aimed the light at the handle and opened the door.

It was exactly the same size as the one next to it. And it was empty. The damp had attacked the walls and a patina of mildew already nestled in the corners. Goran shone his torch beam around. As it passed across one of the walls, he noticed that something was reflecting the light.

He held the torch steady and saw that there were five gleaming squares, each about six inches across. He stepped closer, then froze. Fixed to the walls with simple drawing pins was a series of snapshots.

Debby. Anneke. Sabine. Melissa. Caroline.

In the pictures they were still alive. Albert had brought them here before killing them. And he had immortalized them in that very room, in front of that wall. Their hair was disheveled, their clothes a mess. A merciless flash had surprised them with their eyes red from crying, their faces filled with terror.

They were smiling and waving.

He had forced them to assume that grotesque pose in front of the lens. That cheerfulness, forced by fear, was horrifying.

Debby’s lips were twisted into a grimace of unnatural contentment, and she looked as if she might burst into tears again at any moment.

Anneke held one arm raised, the other dangling along her hips, in a gesture of resignation and defeat.

Sabine had been captured as she was looking round, trying to understand what her childish heart could not grasp.

Melissa was tense and combative. But it was plain that she too would soon give in.

Caroline was motionless, eyes wide above her smile of disbelief.

It was only after studying them all that Goran called in the others.

Absurd. Incomprehensible. Pointlessly cruel.

There were no other terms for it. They all maintained the silence that had taken hold of them on their way back to the Studio.

It was going to be a long night. No one was confident of finding sleep after a day like that. Mila had held out for forty-eight uninterrupted hours, during which too many things had happened.

Albert’s outline being found on the wall of Yvonne Gress’s villa. Her evening chat at Goran’s house, when she had told him she had been followed, as well as revealing her theory that their man had an accomplice. Then there had been that question about the color of Sabine’s eyes that had led to the discovery of Roche’s deception. The visit to the Rockfords’ ghostly house. The common grave. Lara Rockford. The intervention of Nicla Papakidis. The exploration of the mind of a serial killer.

And last of all, those photographs.

Mila had seen many photographs in the course of her work. Pictures of minors, taken by the sea or at school concerts. She was shown them by parents or relations when she went to see them. Children who disappeared before reappearing in other photographs—often naked, or wearing grown-up clothes—in the collections of pedophiles, or in mortuary files.

But in the five pictures found in the abandoned house there was something more.

Albert knew they would find their way there. And he was waiting for them.

Had he even predicted that they would investigate his pupil Joseph with a medium?

“He’s been watching us from the start,” had been Gavila’s laconic comment. “He’s always a step ahead of us.”

Mila reflected that their every move had been circumspect, elusive and neutralized. And now they had to watch their backs, too. That was the burden that weighed upon her companions in the car as they returned to their headquarters.

And there were still two bodies to discover.

The first was definitely a corpse. The second would be with the passing of time. No one was brave enough to admit it, but now they despaired of preventing the murder of child number six.

As for little Caroline, who could say what horror would be revealed. Could there be anything worse than all that they had already discovered? Albert was preparing for a grand finale with the sixth.

It was after eleven when Boris parked the minivan below the Studio. He let everyone out, locked the car and noticed that they were waiting for him to go up.

They didn’t want to leave him behind.

The horror that they had witnessed had left them more united than before. Because all they had left was their colleagues. Even Mila was part of that fellowship. And so was Goran. They had been shut out for a while, but it hadn’t lasted for long, and it had only happened because of Roche’s desire to control everything. They had been allowed back in again. That wrong had been forgiven.

They slowly climbed the stairs of the building. Stern put an arm around Rosa’s shoulders. “Go home to your family tonight,” he said to her. But she merely shook her head. Mila had understood. Rosa couldn’t break the chain. Otherwise the whole world would fall apart, and the gates that still protected it would be thrown wide open to the Champion of evil, and he would come flooding in. They were the last vanguard in this struggle, and even if they were losing they had no intention of letting go.

They all crossed the threshold of the Studio at the same time. Boris waited to close the door, then joined them and found them standing in the corridor, as though hypnotized. He didn’t understand what was happening until he glimpsed, in a gap between their shoulders, the body lying on the ground. Sarah Rosa screamed. Mila turned away, unable to look. Stern crossed himself. Gavila couldn’t speak.

Caroline, the fifth girl
.