‘Fucking bastard,’ he muttered.
The others flashed a look at him and Frank nodded, as if apologizing for the disturbance. Everyone turned back to the video. They watched in horror as the figure in black repeatedly stabbed the man tied to the chair, methodically, so that none of the stab wounds would be fatal. They saw his movements, hampered by his clothes, opening wounds that would never heal. They saw the blood ooze and drip slowly down Yoshida’s white shirt, like a blossoming scarlet flower. They saw death itself dancing around the man, tasting his pain and terror before taking him away for all eternity.
After what seemed like hours, the man in black stood still. Yoshida’s face was dripping with sweat. The man stretched out an arm and wiped Yoshida’s brow with the sleeve of his shirt. On the forehead of the prisoner there remained a reddish smudge, a comma of life in that ritual of death.
There was blood everywhere. On the marble floor, on the clothes, on the walls. The man in black went over to the VCR to his left. He reached for one of the machines. Suddenly, he stopped and leaned his head to one side, as if struck by a thought. Then he turned towards the cameras and bowed, pointing with an elegant flourish of his right arm at the man dying in the chair. He turned again, pressed a button, and the freezing snow of winter covered the screen.
The silence in the room had a different meaning for each of them.
Frank was taken back in time, to the house on the shore and the images he never stopped seeing like an endless film before his eyes. The memory was once again of pain – and that pain became hate and Frank distributed it evenly between himself and the killer.
Hulot went to raise the blinds and sunlight returned to the room as a benediction.
At last Roncaille spoke, relieving the unbearable tension. ‘What in hell’s name is going on here?’ He shuddered as if the air-conditioning were blowing air from the North Pole.
Frank got up from his chair. Hulot saw the light of pain and hatred in his eyes.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Frank, his voice icy and distant. ‘That’s the Devil incarnate on that tape. The man may be completely insane, but he’s got superhuman clarity and shrewdness.’ He pointed to the monitor that was still on, covered with static. ‘You saw how he was dressed. The bulges at the elbows and knees. I don’t know if he had planned to make this tape when he went to Yoshida’s house. Probably not, because he couldn’t have known about the secret room and the perversion in there. He might have been improvising. Maybe he surprised Yoshida when he was opening his inner sanctum. But the point is he was amused at the idea that we could watch him at work, killing the guy. No, the proper term is admire. That’s where you can see that he’s crazy. Morelli, rewind the tape, please.’
The sergeant pointed the remote control and the machine started to rewind with a click and a swish. A few seconds later, Frank stopped him with a wave of his hand.
‘That’s enough, thanks. Can you pause it at a place where we can get a good view of our man?’ Morelli pressed a button and the image on the screen froze upon the figure in black with his dagger raised. The still image showed a drop of blood falling from the knife in midair. The chief of police narrowed his eyes in disgust. He obviously didn’t see that kind of thing every day.
‘Here,’ said Frank, going over to the screen and pointing at the elbow of the killer’s raised arm. ‘The man knew there’d be cameras in the house. And he knew that there are cameras all over the Principality. He knew that by taking the car to the Parking de Boulingrin garage, he risked being captured on tape. And most of all, he knew that anthropometric measurement is a form of identification and that you can do it by analysing a video shot. There are average values for individuals. The size of the ears, the distance from the wrist to the elbow, from the ankle to the knee. Police all over the world have that kind of equipment. So he put protection over his elbows and knees to prevent such measurement. And we can’t analyse anything. No face or body. Only his height, which tells us nothing. That’s why I say that, apart from being insane, he’s also perfectly lucid.’
‘Why did that maniac have to end up here?’ Roncaille was probably seeing his job as chief of police crumble away. He looked at Frank, trying to recover some semblance of level-headedness. ‘What are you planning to do now?’
Frank looked at Hulot, who understood that he was responding in kind to Roncaille’s considerations.
‘We’re investigating in various directions,’ said the inspector. ‘We don’t have many clues, but we do have something. We’re waiting for Lyons to send us the results of their analysis of the phone call tapes. Cluny, the psychiatrist, is preparing a report, again based on the tapes. There are results from the tests on the boat, and from Yoshida’s car and house. We’re not expecting an early breakthrough, but something could come out of it. The protocols of the autopsies didn’t add very much to the first reports. The only real connections we have with the murderer are the phone calls he made to Radio Monte Carlo before striking. We’re monitoring the station 24/7. But he’s a clever bastard. We’ve seen that. And he’s as well prepared as he is ferocious. All we can hope for now is that he’ll slip up somehow. We’ve set up a special unit under Morelli, here, that fields calls and controls anything that might be suspicious.’
‘There have been lots of calls,’ Morelli added, feeling obliged to say something. ‘And now there’ll be more. Sometimes the callers are raving lunatics, you know, UFOs and avenging angels. But for the rest, we’re examining everything. Of course, checking all that out takes time and manpower, of which we have neither.’
‘Hmm. I’ll see what I can do,’ said Roncaille. ‘I can always ask for some support from the French police. I don’t need to tell you that the Principality could have very well done without this. We’ve always been the picture of security, a happy island in the midst of the chaos everywhere else in the world. Now we’ve got this madman who has given us a shock, and we have to solve the case with a show of efficiency in keeping with our image. In other words, we have to get him. Before he kills someone else.’
Roncaille stood up and brushed down the folds of his linen trousers. ‘Okay. I’ll leave you to your work. I should inform you that I’ll be reporting all of this to the attorney general, which is something I’d rather not have to do. Hulot, keep us informed, at any time, day or night. Good luck, gentlemen.’
With that he left the office, closing the door gently behind him. By his demeanour and, most of all, his tone, the words ‘we have to get him’ were understood by all. He meant ‘you have to get him,’ and the threat of unpleasant reprisals in the face of failure was crystal clear.
TWENTY-ONE
Frank, Hulot and Morelli remained where they were, savouring in silence the bitter taste of defeat. They’d been given a clue but hadn’t understood it. They’d had a chance to stop the murderer and now there was another body lying on a mortuary slab with its face skinned off. Roncaille had only come as a form of advance notice, to get the lie of the land before the real battle began. He wanted to warn them that from there on in, the forces above would want heads to roll. And in that case, his head would not be the only one. Not by a long chalk.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in.’ Christophe Froben’s drawn face appeared. ‘Hi, Christophe. Come on in.’
‘Hello, everyone. I just saw Roncaille outside. Not a good sign, huh?’ Froben immediately noticed the downcast feeling in the room.
‘Could hardly be worse.’
‘Here, Nicolas. I brought you a present. Developed in record time, just for you. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the rest of it. Sorry.’
He placed a brown envelope on the table. Frank got up from his chair and went to open it. Inside were black-and-white photos. Turning them over, he saw a still version of what he’d seen in the video: an empty room that was the metaphysical image of a crime. The room where a man had been butchered by a figure in black with an even blacker soul. Neither of them was there in the photographs.
He flipped rapidly through the photos and handed them to Hulot. The inspector put them back on the table without even looking.
‘Did you find anything?’ he asked Froben with little hope.
‘You can imagine the care my boys used in going over the room and the house. There are a bunch of fingerprints, but as you know, prints often mean nothing. If you let me have the prints from the body, I can compare them for a definitive ID. We found some hairs on the armchair, probably Yoshida’s—’
‘The hair is Yoshida’s. He’s the dead man. No doubt about it,’ interrupted Hulot.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Before we go on, I think you should see something.’
‘What?’
‘Sit down and brace yourself.’ Hulot leaned back and turned to Morelli. ‘Start the tape.’
The sergeant pressed the remote and the screen was once again filled with the macabre dance of a man killing another man who must die. His dagger looked like a needle sewing a blood-red costume of death on to Yoshida’s body. Froben’s eyes widened. When the film ended with that strange, self-satisfied bow of the man in black, it took him a few minutes to regain his composure.
‘My God. This isn’t even human any more. I feel like crossing myself. What kind of creature is this?’
‘He uses all his talent to serve evil: he’s cold-blooded, he’s intelligent, he’s shrewd. And without a shred of pity.’
Frank’s words were a condemnation of himself as well as the killer. Neither of them could stop. One would continue killing until the other nailed him to the wall. And if he wanted to succeed, he had to abandon his rational mind to a darker one.
Froben, what can you tell us about the videos you found at Yoshida’s place?’ Frank jumped from one topic to another without changing his tone.
For an instant, the inspector seemed relieved at the change of subject. He was intimidated by the light in Frank’s eyes. And by his cold whisper – he sounded like someone invoking spirits at a séance. Froben pointed to the monitor with a grimace.
‘Stuff like this blows your mind. We’ve started an investigation and we’ll see where it leads. There were things in there that make me think the late Mr Yoshida was not worth much more than the man who killed him. Things like that take away your faith in humanity. In my opinion – I’ll say it again – that sadistic motherfucker got exactly what he deserved.’
‘There’s something else I’m wondering,’ said Hulot, finally voicing his thoughts. ‘Why do you think the murderer decided to make this tape?’
‘He didn’t do it for us,’ said Frank, moving towards the window. He leaned on the marble windowsill and looked blindly out at the street.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘There’s a point towards the end of the video when he stops, just before he turns off the camera. That’s when he thought about us. That’s when he turned and bowed. No, that tape wasn’t made for us.’
‘Then who was it for?’ Froben turned around, but all he saw was the back of the American’s neck and shoulders.
‘He made it for Yoshida.’
‘For Yoshida?’
Frank turned slowly to face the room.
‘Of course. Didn’t you see that he made sure none of the stab wounds was fatal? He wanted Yoshida to bleed to death, slowly. Sometimes, evil has its own bizarre form of retribution. The guy who killed him made him watch a film of his own death.’
FIFTH CARNIVAL
The man is back.
He carefully closes the sealed door in the metal wall behind him. Silent and alone, as always. Now, he is once again closed off from the world, just as the world is closed off from him.
He smiles as he delicately places a black backpack on the wooden table against the wall. This time, he is certain he has made no mistakes. He sits down and turns on the light over the table with the solemn gesture of a ritual. He clicks open the bag with the same ceremonial movements as before, taking out a black wax-board box. Placing the box on the table, he sits for a moment looking at it, as if it is a present and he is delaying the pleasure of discovering what’s inside.
The night was not spent in vain. Time gently lent itself to his needs. Another useless man has given him what he needs. The music is free now, and in his head a triumphant victory march is playing.
He opens the box and puts his hand carefully inside. The lamp illuminates Allen Yoshida’s face as he gently lifts it from the wax board. A few drops of blood fall to join those at the bottom of the box. The man’s smile broadens. This time he was very careful. He used the head of a plastic mannequin to support his trophy, the kind hairdressers use for wigs. Looking carefully at the funeral mask, he has more reason to smile as he thinks about how nothing has changed. From the emptiness of a human mannequin to the inert plastic of another.
He runs his hands gently over the taut skin, caressing the hair whose light has been taken by death. No cuts, no abrasions. The circle of the eyes is cut clean. The lips, the most difficult part, are full and fleshy. Only a few drops of blood mar the beauty of that face.
Excellent work. He relaxes an instant and folds his hands behind his neck. He arches his back to stretch. The man is weary. The night was rewarding but extremely tiring. The tension is gradually dissipating and the price has to be paid.
The man yawns but it is not yet time to sleep. First, he must finish his work. He gets up and goes to open a cabinet. He takes out a box of Kleenex and a bottle of disinfectant and sits back down at the table. He carefully cleans the spots of blood from the mask.
Now the music in his head is quiet, a New Age piece with the delicate counterpoint of an ethereal choir. An ethnic instrument, panpipes perhaps, caresses his mind with the same delicate movement with which he caresses the man’s face. Now he is finished. On the table, next to the mask, there are tissues stained pink. The man admires his masterpiece with half-closed eyes.
Since coming in, he has made almost no sound, but the voice still comes, filled with apprehension.
Isthatyou,Vibo?
The man raises his head and looks at the large door that is open next to the desk where he sits.
‘Yes, it’s me, Paso.’
Why were you so late? I felt lonely, here in the dark.
The man starts nervously but it is not noticeable in his voice. He turns to the open door in the shadows to his left.
‘I wasn’t out having fun, Paso. I was doing it for you.’
The tone is one of slight reproach, and it quickly provokes a remorseful answer.
I know, Vibo, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that time never passes when you’re away.
The man feels a wave of tenderness and his slight anger fades. He is suddenly a lion remembering the infantile games of his litter. He is a wolf defending and protecting the weaker members of his pack.
‘It’s all right, Paso. Now I’ll go to sleep here with you. And I brought you a present.’
Surprise. Impatience.
Whatisit,Vibo?
The man smiles again. He returns the face to the box and closes the lid. He turns off the light in front of him. This time it would all be perfect. Still smiling, he takes the box and goes to the door where there is darkness and the voice.
He uses his elbow to turn on a light switch to his left. ‘You’ll like it, you’ll see.’
The man goes into the room. It is a room with grey metal walls, the colour of lead. On the right there is a metal bed, and next to it a simple night table with just a lamp on it. The blanket is pulled tight, without a wrinkle; there is a perfectly clean pillow and a clean sheet folded neatly over the blanket.
Parallel to the bed, about a yard away, is a crystal case about ten feet long, held up by two trestles like the ones supporting the table in the other room. The back of the case has a hermetic gasket set in a hole and the rubber tube connected to it leads to a small machine on the floor between the legs of the trestle nearest the door. A cord connects the machine to a socket in the wall.
Inside the crystal case lies a mummified body. It is the body of a man about six feet tall, completely naked. The dried-out limbs indicate that his build must have been very similar to that of the man, although the wizened skin now shows ribs and is taut over the knees and elbows, which protrude sharply.
The man places a hand on the case. The warmth draws a halo on the perfectly clean glass. His smile is broader now. He raises the box and holds it up over the body, at the height of the shrivelled face.
Come on, Vibo. Tell me what it is.
The man looks at the body affectionately. His gaze runs over the face and head from which someone, with surgical ability, has completely removed the skin. The man returns the mysterious smile of the cadaver, seeking its lifeless eyes with his own, anxiously examining the fixed expression as if he can perceive a movement of the dried muscles, the colour of grey wax.
‘You’ll see. You’ll see. Want some music?’
Yes. No. No, afterwards. First, let me see what you have there. Let me see what you have brought me.
The man steps back as if playing with a baby whom he wants to restrain to protect it from its own impatience.
‘No, the moment is important, Paso. We need some music. Wait here. I’ll be right back.’
Come on, Vibo. Afterwards. Let me see.
‘It’ll only take a second. Wait.’
The man places the box on a wooden folding chair next to the transparent case.
He disappears through the door. The body lies there alone, motionless in its tiny eternity, staring at the ceiling. Moments later, the mournful notes of Jimi Hendrix playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock float through the air. The American anthem no longer sounds triumphant on that distorted guitar. There are no heroes and no flags. Only longing for those who went off to fight a stupid war and the sobbing of those who never saw them return.