The light in the other room goes off and the man reappears in the doorway.
‘You like this, Paso?’
Of course. You know I always liked it. But now, let me see what you brought.
The man goes to the box on the chair. He is still smiling. He raises the lid with a solemn gesture and puts it on the ground, next to the chair. He picks up the box and places it on top of the case over the chest of the body lying inside.
‘You’ll like it. You’ll see. I’m sure you’ll like it.’
With a regal gesture he removes the face of Allen Yoshida wrapped around the mannequin’s head like a plastic mask. The hair moves as if it has a life of its own, ruffled by a wind that would never reach them there, below the ground.
‘Here, Paso. Look.’
Oh, Vibo. It’s beautiful. Is it really for me?
‘Of course it’s for you. I’ll put it on you right now.’
Holding the mask in his left hand, with his right he presses a button at the head of the case. He hears the slight whistle of air filling the transparent coffin. Now the man can open the cover by rotating it around hinges on the right.
Holding the mask with two hands, he carefully places it on the body’s face, moving it delicately to match the eye openings with the dead man’s glassy eyes, nose with nose and mouth with mouth. With infinite care he tucks a hand behind the nape of the corpse’s neck and places the mask carefully over the back of the head as well, bringing the ends together to avoid wrinkling.
The voice is impatient and fearful at the same time.
How does it look, Vibo? Let me see.
The man takes a step back and looks hesitantly at the results of his work.
‘Just a minute. Just one minute. There’s still something missing.’
The man goes to the night table, opens the drawer and takes out a comb and a mirror. He returns to the body’s side like an anxious artist putting the last brushstrokes on his masterpiece.
He combs down the hair, which now looks dull and dry. The man is both mother and father at this moment. He is pure dedication, without time or limit. There is infinite tenderness and affection in his gestures, as if he has life and warmth enough for them both, as if the blood in his veins and the air in his lungs were equally divided between him and the corpse lying without memory in the crystal coffin.
He raises the mirror in front of the body’s face with an expression of triumph.
‘There!’
A moment of stupefied silence. The strings of Hendrix’s guitar unravel in the battle cry of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. It contains the wounds of every war and the search for meaning behind all those deaths performed in the name of empty values.
A tear rolls down the man’s cheek and falls on the face of the masked corpse. On the dead man, it looks like a tear of joy.
Vibo, I’m handsome now, too. I have a face like everyone else.
‘Yes, now you’re really handsome. More than all the others.’
I don’t know how to thank you, Vibo. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Before . . . The voice is touched. It contains gratitude and regret. The same affection and dedication as in the man’s eyes. First, you freed me of my illness and now you’ve given me . . . You’ve given me this, a new face, a beautiful face. How can I ever thank you?
‘Don’t say that, do you understand? Not ever. I did it for you, for us, because the others owe us and they have to give back what they stole. I’ll do everything I can to repay you for what they did. I promise.’
As if to underline the threat in that promise, the music suddenly transforms into the electric energy of ‘Purple Haze’, with Hendrix tormenting the metal strings in his tumultuous race towards freedom and annihilation.
The man lowers the lid of the box. It slides silently along the rubber runners. He goes to the compressor on the floor and presses the button. The machine turns on with a hum and starts extracting air from inside the coffin. With the vacuum, the mask adheres even more closely to the dead man’s face, making a small fold on one side, giving the body a satisfied smile.
The man goes over to the bed and removes the black shirt he is wearing. He throws it on to a stool at the foot of the iron bed. He continues removing his clothes until he is naked. He slides his athletic body between the sheets, lays his head on the pillow, and stares up at the ceiling in the same position as the body inside the shiny coffin.
The lamp goes out. The only light comes from the red and green of the electronic displays on the equipment in the next room, furtive as the eyes of a cemetery cat.
The song is over. In the tomblike silence, the living man slips into a dreamless sleep, like that of the dead.
TWENTY-TWO
Frank and Hulot reached the main square of the village of Eze. Passing the Fragonard perfume boutique, Frank remembered with a stab in his heart that Harriet had stocked up on perfume there during their trip to Europe. He could see her body under the fabric of her light summer dress as she held out the inside of her wrist to test the scent. He saw her rub it against her other wrist and wait for the liquid to evaporate before smelling the combined scent of skin and perfume. She had been wearing that perfume on the day . . .
‘Are you here, or millions of miles away?’
‘No, I’m here. A little tired, but here.’ Nicolas’s voice dispersed the images running through Frank’s mind. He realized that he had been completely absent.
Actually, Nicolas was the more tired of the two. He had dark circles under his reddened eyes and was in desperate need of a warm shower and a cool bed, in that order. Frank had gone up to Parc Saint-Roman and slept a few hours in the afternoon, but Nicolas had stayed at the office to catch up on all the paperwork that comes with every police investigation. When Frank had left him at headquarters, it was clear to Frank that the police could probably save a lot more ordinary people and maybe even the rainforests if only they didn’t have to waste half their time writing reports and filling in forms.
Now he was going for dinner at the home of Nicolas and his wife Céline. They drove past the restaurants and souvenir shops, turning left on the street leading to the upper part of the town. The Hulots lived not far from the church overlooking Eze. Their house was built right on the edge of the valley, and Frank often wondered what the architect had done to keep it from obeying gravity and sliding to the bottom.
They parked the Peugeot in the reserved spot and Frank waited as Nicolas opened the front door. They went inside and Frank stood and looked around. Nicolas closed the door behind them.
‘Céline, we’re home!’
‘Hi, darling.’ Mme Hulot’s brunette head peeked out of the kitchen door at the end of the hall. ‘Hello, Frank. I see you’re still as handsome as I remember. How are you?’
‘Exhausted. The only thing that can revive me is your cooking, judging by that delicious smell.’
Mme Hulot’s smile lit up her suntanned face. She came out of the kitchen drying her hands on a towel. ‘It’s almost ready. Nick, give Frank something to drink while you’re waiting. I’m running a little late. It took me longer than usual to clean Stéphane’s room today. I’ve told him to tidy it thousands of times but it’s useless. He leaves it in a mess every time he goes out.’
She walked back to the kitchen, her skirt swaying. Frank and Nicolas exchanged glances. Stéphane, Céline and Nicolas twenty-year-old son, had died in a car accident a few years before, after a prolonged coma. In her mind, Céline had never accepted her son’s death. She remained the woman she had always been: gentle, intelligent and sharp-witted, losing nothing of her personality. She simply behaved as if Stéphane were still somewhere in the house instead of in a grave in the cemetery. The doctors who examined her gave up after a few sessions, suggesting that Hulot simply go along with his wife’s harmless fantasy. They saw it as a relatively healthy solution that was protecting her psyche from worse damage.
Frank knew about Céline and had adjusted to her problem when he had come to
Europe the first time. Harriet had done the same when they had holidayed together on the Côte d’Azur. After Harriet’s death, Frank and Nicolas had grown closer. Each of them knew the other’s suffering and it was because of this bond that Frank had accepted the invitation to come back to Monaco.
Hulot took off his jacket and hung it on a coat rack on the wall. The house was decorated in a modern style that blended pleasantly with the period in which it was built. He led Frank into the living room, which had double French doors that opened on to a terrace overlooking the coast.
Out on the terrace, the table was exquisitely set, with an arrangement of yellow and purple flowers in a vase placed at the centre of a pristine tablecloth. The Hulots’ manner was relaxed, with carefully chosen yet simple objects and a love of the peaceful life, without ostentation. Nicolas and his wife shared an indissoluble bond: pain for what they no longer had and regret for everything that could have been.
Frank could feel it in the air. It was a state of mind he knew perfectly well, that sense of loss that inevitably comes to places that are touched by the harsh hand of suffering. Yet, strangely enough, instead of being frightened, Frank found some solace here in the lively eyes of Céline Hulot, who had the courage to survive the loss of her son by escaping through innocent delusion.
Frank envied her and was sure that her husband felt the same. For her, the days were not numbers crossed off one after another, time was not an endless wait for someone who would never come. Céline had the happy smile of a woman in an empty house, who knows that her loved ones would soon be home.
‘What can I get you to drink, Frank?’
‘It feels so French here tonight. How about a French aperitif? Pastis, even.’
‘Coming up.’
Nicolas went to the bar and started taking out bottles and glasses. Frank went out on the terrace to admire the view. A long stretch of the coast was visible, with coves and inlets and cliffs that jutted into the sea like fingers pointing to the horizon. The red of the sunset was a promise that tomorrow would be another beautiful day, blue skies for everyone but them.
Frank knew they would be marked by this story for ever. He started thinking of a Neil Young record, Rust Never Sleeps. All the colours of paradise were before him. Blue water, green mountains emerging from the sea, the red gold of the sky in a sunset that could break your heart. But they were men of this earth who, just as in a hundred other places, were at war over everything and could only agree on their desperate desire to destroy it all.
We are the rust that never sleeps.
He heard Nicolas behind him. He held two glasses of opaque, milky liquid. The ice clinked as Nicolas handed him the aperitif.
‘Here, feel French for a sip or two. Then go back to being American. For now, that’s how I want you.’
Frank brought the glass to his lips, tasting it and taking in the pungent flavour of anise. They drank calmly, in silence, standing side by side, alone and resolute in the face of something that seemed endless. A day had passed since Yoshida’s body had been discovered and nothing had turned up. A useless day spent looking for a clue, a trace. Frenetic activity that felt like racing at breakneck speed along a road that stretched to infinity.
‘What do we do now, Frank?’
‘I don’t know, Nicolas. I really don’t know. We’ve got nothing. Any news from Lyons?’
‘They finished analysing the first tape, but their findings are no different from Clavert’s in Nice. So I don’t expect anything more from the second tape. Cluny, the psychiatrist, told me I’d have his report tomorrow. I sent over a copy of the video to see if they can get anything from the measurements, but if things are the way you said, we won’t find anything there either.’
‘Any news from Froben?’
‘No,’ replied Hulot with a sigh. ‘They didn’t find anything in Yoshida’s house. All the prints in the room where he was killed are his. The footprints on the floor are the same size as the ones on Welder’s boat so we have the dubious consolation of knowing that the killer wears a size nine. The hair on the chair belonged to the victim. The blood is his too, type O negative.’
‘Did they find anything in the Bentley?’
‘Same thing there. Lots of Yoshida’s prints and other prints on the steering wheel that we’re comparing with those of the bodyguard who occasionally drove the car. I ordered a handwriting test on the words on the seat. But you probably noticed it was very similar to the first writing. Probably stencilled again, I’d say.’
‘Yeah.’
‘The only thing we have is the hope that he keeps on calling Jean-Loup Verdier and that he’ll make a mistake that leads us to him.’
‘Think we should put Verdier under protection?’
‘I already did, just to be sure. He called me and said his house was overrun by reporters. I asked him not to talk to them and I sent a car and two officers to keep an eye out. Officially, it’s to take him back and forth to the station without letting him fall into the clutches of the press. Actually, I feel safer that way, though I decided not to say anything that would alarm him. Otherwise, all we can do is keep the station under close watch. Which is exactly what we’re doing.’
‘Good. Anything on the victims?’ Frank asked.
‘We’re looking into it with the German police and your pals at the FBI. We’re digging into their lives but nothing’s come up so far. Three famous people, two Americans and a European. They all had intense lives but nothing aside from what we already know. The only common factor is the guy who killed them.’
Frank finished his Pastis and placed the glass down on the wrought-iron balustrade. He seemed puzzled.
‘What is it, Frank?’
‘Nicolas, do you ever feel like you have something on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t know what it is? Like when you want to remember the name of an actor you know well, but just then, try as you might, it won’t come to you?’
‘Sure, quite often. At my age, it’s normal.’
‘There’s something I saw or heard, Nicolas. Something that I should remember but I can’t think of it. And it’s driving me crazy because I can feel that it’s important.’
‘I hope you remember soon, whatever it is.’
Frank turned his back on the magnificent view and crossed his arms over his chest. Fatigue and the feverish nervous energy that kept him going were etched on his face.
‘Let’s see. We have a killer who likes music. A connoisseur who calls the deejay of a hit show on Radio Monte Carlo to announce his intentions to murder. He leaves a musical clue that nobody recognizes and then kills two people, a man and a woman, right after. He leaves them for us to find, in a horrible state, as if he is laughing at us. He signs the crimes “ I kill . . .” written in blood. He leaves absolutely no trace. He is cold-blooded, cunning, expert and ruthless. Cluny talks about above-average intelligence. I would say way above average. He’s so sure of himself that he gives us a second clue in the next call. Again, it’s music-related and again we don’t get it. And he kills again. Even more ruthlessly than the first time, and now the crime has a sense of justice about it. But he’s even more contemptuous. The tape in the car, the video of the murder, the same writing as the last time. None of the victims shows signs of sexual violation, so he’s not a necrophiliac. But in each case he removes all the skin of the victim’s face. Why? Why does he do that to them?’
‘I don’t know, Frank. I hope Cluny has some ideas. I’ve been hitting my head against the wall, but I can’t even come up with a plausible idea. How can you fathom the mind of a psycho?’
‘We have to try, Nicolas. If we manage to figure out why he does it, I’m sure we can find out who and where he is!’
‘Now you two stop talking shop.’ Céline’s warm voice and the aroma of her cooking suddenly penetrated their dark speculation. She set a steaming tureen on the table. ‘Here’s some bouillabaisse for you. Only one course tonight, but there’s lots of it. Frank, if you don’t have at least two helpin
gs I’ll be personally offended. Nicolas, you’ll take care of the wine, please?’
Frank realized that he was starving. The sandwiches he had eaten in the office without even tasting them were a distant memory. He sat down and unfolded his napkin.
‘They say that food is the true culture of the people. If that’s true, then your bouillabaisse is immortal poetry.’
‘You’re a shameless flatterer, Frank.’ Céline laughed, illuminating her dark, lovely Mediterranean complexion. The tiny lines around her eyes only heightened her charm. ‘But it’s nice to hear.’
Hulot looked at Frank across the table. He knew what his friend was holding inside, but in spite of it all, his affection for Céline and for Hulot made him behave with a natural kindness that few people shared. Nicolas didn’t know what Frank was looking for, but he hoped that he would find it soon, whatever it was, so that he could find some peace.
‘You’re made of gold, Frank,’ said Céline, raising her glass to toast him. ‘And your wife is a lucky woman. I’m sorry she couldn’t make it tonight. But she’ll come next time. And I’ll take her out shopping, to cut into your retirement fund.’
Frank didn’t flinch and his smile didn’t change. A brief shadow passed quickly over his eyes and then disappeared in the warmth around the table. He raised his glass and responded to Céline’s toast.
‘Sure. I know you’re not serious. You’re a cop’s wife, so you know that after three pairs of shoes it’s grounds for divorce.’
Céline laughed again and the moment passed. One by one, the lights along the coast lit up the border between land and sea. They sat eating the excellent food and drinking good wine in the shadow of the terrace, with darkness all around them.
TWENTY-THREE
Frank stood at the taxi rank in the main square of Eze, but there were no cabs in sight. He looked around. There were people on the street despite the fact that it was almost midnight. Summer was coming and tourists were beginning to flock to the coast, searching for picturesque images to take home with them.