In front of him, sitting on a chair, a man is staring at him in silence. The man is wearing what seems to be an ordinary black canvas work shirt, at least four or five sizes too large. His face is covered with a black ski mask and the upper part of his face around the eyes is protected by large dark glasses with reflective lenses. He is wearing a black hat with the brim pulled down. His hands are covered with large gloves, also black.
Yoshida’s terrified gaze looks up and down the figure. Under the long coat, his black trousers are of the same fabric as the shirt, and again oversized. The loose trouser bottoms rest on his canvas shoes. Yoshida notices something strange. There are protrusions at the man’s knees and elbows that hold the material of his clothes, as if the person in front of him had extensions on his arms and legs.
They sit in silence for what seems an eternity. One man who has decided not to speak and one who cannot.
How did the intruder get in? Even though Yoshida was alone in the house, the villa was surrounded by impenetrable security, consisting of armed men, guard dogs and cameras. How did he bypass all that? And most of all, what did he want from him? Money? If that is the problem, he can give him all he wants. He can give him anything he wants. There is nothing that money cannot buy. Nothing. If only he could speak . . .
The man continues to look at him in silence, sitting on the chair.
Yoshida makes a faint moan, muffled by the tape on his mouth. The man’s voice finally comes out of that dark blotch of his body.
‘Hello, Mr Yoshida.’
The voice is warm and resonant, but strangely enough, to the man tied to the chair, it sounds harder and sharper than the wire cutting into his arms and legs.
He widens his eyes and moans again.
‘Don’t try to answer. I can’t understand you. And in any case, I’m not remotely interested in what you have to say.’
The man gets up from the chair, moving unnaturally because of the oversized clothes and the extensions on his arms and legs. He goes behind Yoshida, who tries to turn his head to keep him in sight. He hears the voice again, coming from somewhere behind his back.
‘You’ve got yourself a wonderful place here. A discreet place for your little private joys. Some pleasures in life are hard to share. I understand you, Mr Yoshida. I don’t think anyone can understand you better than I . . .’
As he speaks, the man returns to face him. He gestures at the room around them, rectangular and windowless. There is a ventilation system with air nozzles set in the walls just below the ceiling. Against one wall is a bed with silk sheets. There is a painting over the bed, the only lapse in the room’s monastic simplicity. The two longer walls are almost entirely covered in mirrors, the optical illusion of a larger room to eliminate the sense of claustrophobia.
In front of the bed is a series of flat screens connected to a group of VHS and DVD players. When a movie is shown, you can feel surrounded by images and be at their centre. There are also cameras that can shoot any point of the room with no corner overlooked. The cameras are also connected to the home movie system.
‘Is this where you relax, Mr Yoshida? Is this where you forget about the world when you want the world to forget about you?’
The man’s warm voice transmits cold. Yoshida feels it climb up his arms and legs that are growing numb as the wire cuts his circulation. He feels the wire ripping into his flesh, just like that voice digging into his brain.
With his artificial movements, the man bends over a canvas bag on the floor next to the chair. He takes out a record, an old LP with the sleeve protected by a plastic cover.
‘Do you like music, Mr Yoshida? This is heavenly, believe me. Something for a real connoisseur. Which, of course, is what you are.’ He goes over to the stereo and looks at it. He turns back to face Yoshida and the light in the room is a brief flash reflected in his glasses. ‘My compliments. You’ve forgotten nothing. I was prepared for an alternative, in case you didn’t have a record player, but I see you’re well equipped.’
He turns on the system and puts the record on the turntable after slipping it carefully out of its sleeve. He places the needle on the LP and the mournful notes of a trumpet emanate from the speakers and spread through the room. It is sorrowful music, intended to evoke a melancholy that leaves you breathless; the sounds of grief, demanding only to be forgotten. For a moment, the man stands motionless, listening. Yoshida imagines him with his eyes half closed behind the dark glasses. Then he snaps back.
‘Lovely, isn’t it? Robert Fulton, one of the greats. Maybe the greatest of them all. And misunderstood, like all the great ones were.’ He goes and looks curiously at the controls of the video system. ‘I hope I can understand this. I wouldn’t want your equipment to be beyond my meagre abilities, Mr Yoshida. No, it looks fairly simple.’
He presses some buttons and the monitors light up, with the snow-like effect they have when there is no signal. He busies himself with the buttons and the video cameras finally go into action. The screen shows Yoshida, immobilized in the armchair in the middle of the room, sitting before an empty chair.
The man seems pleased with himself.
‘Excellent. This system is excellent. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less of you.’
The man comes back in front of his prisoner, turns the chair around, and sits astride it. He leans his deformed arms on the back of the chair. The extensions on his elbows hold the canvas of his shirt.
‘You’re wondering what I want, aren’t you?’
Yoshida gives a lengthy moan.
‘I know, I know. If you think it’s your money I want, don’t worry. I’m not interested in money. Not yours or anyone else’s. I want a trade.’
Yoshida exhales through his nose. Thank God. Whoever the man is, whatever his price, there might be some way of reaching an agreement. If it isn’t money he wants, it is certainly something that money can buy. There is nothing that money can’t buy, he repeats to himself. Nothing.
He relaxes in the chair. The wire seems a little bit looser now that he sees a glimmer of hope, a chance to negotiate.
‘I took a look at your videos while you were asleep, Mr Yoshida. I think we have a great deal in common. Both of us, in some way, are interested in the death of people we don’t know. You for your own pleasure; me, because I have to.’
The man bows his head as if he is studying the shiny wood of the chair. Yoshida has the impression that he is thinking about something that for a moment takes him far away. There is a sense of inevitability in his voice that is the very essence of death.
‘And that is all we have in common. You do it through a third party. I’m forced to do it myself. You’re someone who watches killing, Mr Yoshida, while I . . .’
The man puts his faceless head next to Yoshida’s.
‘I kill . . .’
Suddenly, Yoshida knows there is no hope. The front pages of all the newspapers flash through his mind with their headlines of the murders of Jochen Welder and Arianna Parker, the woman who was with him. For days now, the TV news has been full of the horrifying details of those two crimes, including the signature in blood that the murderer left on the table on a yacht. The same words now spoken by the man sitting before him. He is distraught. Nobody can come to his rescue because nobody knows of the existence of his secret room. Even if his bodyguards looked for him, they would search outside when they did not find him at home. He starts to moan again, struggling, panic-stricken, in the chair.
‘You have something that interests me, Mr Yoshida. Something that interests me very much. That is why I feel obliged to propose a trade.’
He gets up from the chair and goes to open the glass door of the cabinet holding the video cassettes. He takes out a new tape, removes the cellophane wrapping and inserts it in the VCR. He presses the RECORD button and the spindles begin to turn.
‘Something for my pleasure in exchange for yours.’
With a graceful gesture, he puts his hand in his shirt pocket and removes
a dagger that gives out a sinister gleam. He goes up to Yoshida, who thrashes violently, ignoring the wire cutting into his flesh. With the same fluid movement, the man sticks the dagger into his thigh. The prisoner’s hysterical moaning becomes a scream of muffled pain from behind the tape over his mouth. ‘There. This is what it feels like, Mr Yoshida.’
That last ‘Mr Yoshida’, said in a smothered voice, rings through the room like a funeral eulogy. He stabs the bloodstained dagger again, now in the victim’s other thigh. The movement is so swift that this time Yoshida does not even feel any pain, only a cool sensation in his leg. Immediately afterwards, he feels the tepid dampness of blood dripping down his calf.
‘Funny, isn’t it? Things change when you see them from a different point of view. But you’ll see. You’ll be pleased with the result anyway. You’ll have your pleasure this time, too.’
With cold determination, the man continues stabbing his victim, as his gestures are projected on the screens by the cameras. Yoshida watches himself being stabbed over and over again. He sees the blood rush out in large red streams on his white shirt and the man who raises and lowers, in the room and on the screen, the blade of his knife, again and again. He sees his eyes widen with terror, and pain fills the indifferent space of the monitors.
Meanwhile, the music in the background has changed. The trumpet cuts through the air with high notes sustained by a rhythmic accentuation, a sound of ethnic percussion that evokes tribal rituals and human sacrifice. The man and his dagger continue their agile dance around Yoshida’s body, opening wounds everywhere, with the blood rushing out in evidence, on the fabric of his clothes and on the marble floor. The music and the man stop at exactly the same time, like a ballet rehearsed an infinite number of times.
Yoshida is still alive and conscious. He feels his blood and his life ebbing from the wounds opened everywhere on his body, which is now sending a lone signal of pain. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead and drops burning into his left eye. The man wipes Yoshida’s soaked face with the sleeve of his bloodstained shirt. A reddish smudge remains on his forehead.
Blood and sweat. Blood and sweat, like so many other times. And through it all, the gaze of the cameras, surprised by nothing.
The man is panting under his ski mask. He goes over to stop the VCR and rewinds the cassette. When the tape is back at the beginning, he presses PLAY.
On the screen, in front of Yoshida’s half-closed eyes and slowly bleeding body, it all begins again. The first stab, the one that went through his thigh like a searing iron. Then the second, with its cool breeze. And then the others . . .
The man’s voice is that of fate now, soft and thickened by desire. ‘Here’s what I offer you. My pleasure for yours. Relax, Mr Yoshida. Relax and watch yourself die . . .’
Yoshida hears the voice through space as if from the next room. His eyes are staring at the screen. As his life blood slowly evacuates his body, as the cold slowly rises to occupy every cell, he cannot help but feel that same damnable pleasure.
When the light abandons his eyes, he cannot decide whether it is heaven or hell that he sees before him.
SEVENTEEN
Margherita Vizzini drove into the underground garage at the Place du Casino. There weren’t many people around at that time of morning. The residents of Monte Carlo who took part in its nightlife, the rich and the desperate, were still asleep. And it was too early for tourists. Everyone on the street, like her, was going to work. She left the sunshine, the colourful, meticulously maintained flower beds, and the people having breakfast at the Café de Paris for the warm, damp shadows of the garage. She pulled up her Fiat Stilo at the entrance and stuck her card in the machine. The barrier rose and she drove slowly inside.
Margherita came in every day from Ventimiglia, in Italy, where she lived. She worked at the Securities Office of ABC, Banque Internationale de Monaco, located in the Place du Casino right next to the Chanel boutique.
She had been very lucky to find a job like that in Monaco, especially without any contacts or referrals. Like all good students she’d had a number of job offers after getting her degree in business and economics with honors. Surprisingly, one of the offers had been from ABC.
She had gone to the interview without much hope, but to her surprise she had been selected and hired. There were many advantages. First of all, her starting salary was considerably higher than anything she would have had in Italy. Then there was the fact that, working in Monte Carlo, the tax situation was much more favourable.
Margherita smiled. She was a good-looking woman, with light brown hair cut short to frame a face that was friendly as well as attractive. A smattering of freckles on her straight nose gave her a mischievous elfin expression. A car was reversing to get out and she had to stop. She took advantage of the moment to glance at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She was happy with what she saw.
Michel Lecomte was coming back that day, and she wanted to look her best.
Michel . . .
She felt a warm fluttering in the pit of her stomach at the thought of his tender gaze. A delightful game had been going on between them for some time, very delicate and therefore very intense. The time had come to step it up a notch.
The way was clear. She turned on to the ramp and started to drive down to the next-to-last level in an area set aside for bank employees. Her parking space was at the back, behind the wall. But when she turned right, past the wall, she was surprised to see her space taken by a limousine, a glossy black Bentley with tinted windows.
Strange. One rarely saw that kind of car in the underground garage. Those cars usually had chauffeurs in dark suits holding the door open for passengers, or else they were left carelessly in front of the Hôtel de Paris for the hotel staff to park. It probably belonged to a customer of the bank. Given the make of the car, complaining would be a bad idea. She decided to park in the free space next to it.
Distracted by these thoughts, Margherita misjudged the distance and hit the back of the Bentley on the left side. She heard her headlight smash as the heavy limousine absorbed the shock with a light bounce of its suspension.
She backed up slowly, as if this extra caution could somehow make up for the small disaster she had just caused. She stopped and looked nervously at the back of the Bentley. There was a dent on the body, not very large but visible as a mark from her plastic bumper. She banged her hands on the steering wheel in irritation. Now she would have to deal with all the annoying red tape involved in an accident, not to mention the embarrassment of confessing to a bank customer that she had damaged his car.
She got out and walked over to the limo, bending to look in the back window. She was suddenly puzzled. There appeared to be someone inside, a form she could see indistinctly through the tinted glass. She looked closer, shielding her eyes with her hands. It did indeed seem that there was someone in the back seat.
She narrowed her eyes. Just then, the figure inside bent over and slumped to the right, his head pressed against the window. In horror, Margherita saw the face of a man completely covered in blood, his wide-open, lifeless eyes staring at her, his teeth completely bared in the smile of a skull.
She jumped back without realizing that she had already started to scream.
EIGHTEEN
Neither Frank Ottobre nor Inspector Hulot had been able to sleep. They had spent the night staring at a meaningless record sleeve, listening over and over again to a tape that told them nothing. One by one, they had constructed one hypothesis after another and demolished them all. Anyone with the slightest expertise in music had been asked for help. Even Rochelle, a cop and music fanatic with an amazing record collection, was stumped by the agile fingers of Carlos Santana fondling the neck of his guitar.
They had surfed the Internet for hours in search of any hint that might help them decipher the killer’s message.
Nothing.
They were confronted with a locked door and the key was nowhere to be found. It had been a long night of
confusion and bitter-tasting coffee, no matter how many sugars they added. Time had passed and all their hopes had turned to naught.
Outside the window, beyond the rooftops, the sky was turning blue. Hulot got up from his desk and went to look through the glass at the worsening traffic. For all those people, it was a new day of work after a good night’s sleep. But here, it would be another day of waiting after nothing but nightmares.
Frank was sitting on a chair, one leg swung over the arm, staring intently at the ceiling. He had been in that position for quite some time. Hulot pinched his nostrils together with his fingers, then turned to Morelli with a sigh of fatigue and frustration.
‘Claude, do me a favour.’
‘What is it, inspector?’
‘I know you’re not a waiter, but you’re the youngest so you’ve got to pay your dues. Could you manage to get us some coffee that’s any better than the mud in that machine?’
‘I was waiting for you to ask,’ replied Morelli with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t mind some decent coffee myself.’
As the sergeant left the office, Hulot ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, slightly parted at the nape of his neck to reveal the puffiness of his skin after a sleepless night.
When the call came, they knew they had failed. As Hulot lifted the receiver to his ear, it seemed as heavy as lead.
‘Hulot,’ the inspector answered laconically. He listened to the person on the other end and paled. ‘Where?’ Another pause. ‘Okay. We’ll be right there.’ He hung up and buried his face in his hands.
Frank had got to his feet during the conversation. His weariness seemed to have instantly disappeared. Suddenly, he was on high alert. His jaw tightened and his red eyes narrowed to tiny slits.
‘There’s a body, Frank, in the underground car park next to the casino. No face, like the other two.’