She closed her eyes and shuddered. Now that she knew Frank and understood what two people could really share when they were intimate, she was even more horrified and disgusted by what she had experienced in those years. Frank was the second man she had ever slept with, and the first with whom she had ever made love.
The ground floor of the house was flooded with light. Somewhere, in that city, Frank was living in the same light and feeling the same emptiness. Helena walked down the hallway leading to the garden doors, passing in front of the room in which the telephones were locked. She stopped at the doorway where she and Frank had exchanged a long look on the night that Ryan had been arrested. That was when she had understood. Had it been the same for him? There had been no trace of emotion in his eyes but her woman’s intuition said that everything between them had started right then.
More than anything else, she wanted him there so she could ask him.
She pulled a mobile phone from her pocket. Frank had brought it to her the second night they had spent together, when he had had to rush off to tell Céline that her husband was dead. She reflected a moment on the enormity of the situation that had required her to hide the phone, something the entire world considered an everyday object.
No, please, Frank, don’t run away from me now. I don’t know how much time I have left. I’m dying at the thought of not being able to see you, and at least if we could speak . . .
She pressed another button, the one for police headquarters.
The switchboard operator answered. ‘Sûreté Publique. Bonjour.’
‘Do you speak English?’ Helena asked apprehensively.
‘Of course, madame. How may I help you?’
Helena took a deep breath. At least she was spared from stuttering in a foreign language. Hanneke had taught, or rather forced, her and Arianna to speak German. Her father’s second wife hated French, which she called the language of homosexuals.
‘I’d like to speak to Agent Frank Ottobre, please.’
‘Yes, madame. Who may I say is calling?’
‘Helena Parker, thank you.’
‘One moment please.’
The switchboard operator put her on hold and Frank’s voice came to her a few seconds later.
‘Helena, where are you?’
She felt herself blush and that was the only reason she was glad he couldn’t see her. It was as if she had gone back in time and could feel Andrés Jeffereau’s shy kiss on her cheek. She realized that Frank Ottobre had the magical power to restore her innocence. And that discovery was confirmation for Helena that she loved him.
‘I’m at home. My father went out with Ryan and Stuart and I’m alone in the house. Mosse locked up all the phones. I’m using the one you left me.’
‘Bastard. Good thing I thought of giving you a mobile . . .’
Helena had no idea if the police switchboard operator was listening in on Frank’s calls. He had mentioned that he suspected his mobile phone and home phone at Parc Saint-Roman were being tapped. Maybe that’s why his voice was so brusque. Helena didn’t want to say anything that could harm or embarrass him, but she could feel herself coming apart.
‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
Now, she said to herself. Say it now or you never will!
‘I love you, Frank.’
It was the first time she had ever said those words. And the first time she was not afraid to be scared.
There was a pause on the other end. Only a couple of seconds, but to Helena it felt like trees could have been planted and grown high in the time she waited. Then Frank’s voice finally emerged from the phone.
‘I love you too, Helena.’
There, simple. As it should be. With that sense of peace that comes from being right. Now Helena Parker had no doubts.
‘Thank God you exist, Frank Ottobre.’
There was no time to say more. Helena could hear the sound of a door closing in the room where Frank was, muffled by the filter of the phone.
‘Just a minute,’ he said, suddenly cold.
She heard a voice that was not his say words that she could not understand. Then a shout from Frank, the sound of something hitting a wooden surface, followed by a curse, Frank’s voice shouting, ‘Christ, not again, fucking sonofabitch!’
Then his voice on the phone again.
‘I’m sorry, Helena. Only God knows how much I don’t want to leave you right now, but I have to go.’
‘What happened? Can you tell me?’
‘Sure. You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway. There’s been another killing.’
Frank’s voice was gone and Helena was left looking at the display, confused, trying to figure out how to hang up the cell phone. She was so happy that she didn’t even notice that her first declaration of love had been interrupted by the news of a murder.
FIFTY-FOUR
Frank and Morelli flew down the stairs as if the lives of all mankind depended on them. How many times, Frank wondered, would they have to repeat this same race before waking from the nightmare? He had been on the phone with Helena, a few moments of peace in the midst of a storm, when Claude had burst in and it had all gone up in smoke. No One had struck again and in the worst way, adding insult to injury.
Christ Almighty, when is this massacre going to end? Who is this man? What can he be made ofto do what he’s doing?
They raced through the glass doors of headquarters and saw a group of policemen huddled around a car. There were already police barricades in the street to keep cars and pedestrians off Rue Suffren Raymond and, in the other direction, halfway up Rue Notari.
Frank and Morelli ran down the outside steps. The agents stood to one side to let them pass. Parked right in front of the entrance, in the last space reserved for police cars, was Jean-Loup Verdier’s Mercedes SLK with its boot open.
Inside was a man’s body. It looked like a bad imitation of the Yoshida murder, a botched attempt done earlier as a dress rehearsal. The dead man was curled up in foetal position inside the car boot. He was wearing blue trousers and a white, bloodied shirt. There was a gaping cut at his heart, which was where the blood had stained the shirt. But, as usual, the worst damage was to his face. The corpse seemed to be staring at the carpet in the boot a few inches from its wide eyes. Frank saw the horrid grimace, the flayed face, the blood clotted on the bald head where a mocking tuft of hair indicated that, this time, the work had been done in a hurry.
Frank looked around. None of the agents seemed nauseated by the sight. You can get used to anything, good or bad.
But this wasn’t something to get used to: it was a curse and there had to be some way to stop it. Frank had to do it, whatever the cost, otherwise he’d wind up once again on the bench of a mental institution, staring vacantly at a gardener planting a tree.
He remembered his conversation with Fr Kenneth. If he were with the priest now, Frank would tell him that at last his convictions had changed. He still didn’t believe in God, but he had begun to believe in the Devil.
‘What happened here?’ he asked loudly, looking at a group of police officers standing a little back from the scene.
An agent came over. Frank didn’t know his name, but remembered that he had been one of the men in charge of guarding Jean-Loup’s house, luckily for him not the day they discovered that Verdier was No One.
‘I noticed a car parked in a no-parking zone this morning. We usually have them removed immediately, but with everything going on these days . . .’
The agent made a gesture that covered a situation Frank knew all too well. He was aware of the overtime shifts they were all working, the constant coming and going of cars, the bursts of movement to check out the inevitable calls coming in. All kinds of lunatics turned up in cases like this. Already No One had reportedly been seen in dozens of locations, and all of them had to be checked, one by one, without results. Yes, he was aware of the situation. He nodded for the agent to continue.
‘I came out again a l
ittle later and I noticed that the car was still in the same place. I thought maybe it was a resident who had some business here. Sometimes they try just leaving their cars there. I went closer to check. I was about to call the traffic department when I thought I recognized the licence number. I was at Beausoleil, at the house—’
‘Yes, I know,’ Frank interrupted brusquely. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I went up to the car, and I noticed there was a red stain that looked like blood by the lock of the boot. I called Morelli and we forced it open. And this is what we found.’
The agent raised the boot lid all the way so that they could see inside, lifting it with a pen so as not to leave fingerprints.
‘And then there’s this . . .’
Frank knew what he would see. On the metal, words were traced in blood, the usual mocking phrase left as a commentary of his latest exploit.
I kill . . .
Frank bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted the semi-sweetness of blood. It was exactly what Jean-Loup had announced during the brief phone call the day before. There would be no more clues, only bodies. This poor human being in a car boot was proof that the war was still on and that this man’s battle had been lost. The car parked right there in front of headquarters was the latest travesty of all their efforts. Frank thought back to the voice of Jean-Loup, finally free and unmuffled, with the noise of the traffic in the background. He had made the call on a cheap mobile phone with a card purchased in some discount electronics store. Then he had left it on a bench. The kid they had stopped had been passing by when he had seen it and picked it up. He had started making phone calls and they had got to him as he was telling his older brother what he had found. He hadn’t seen the person who’d left the phone and there were no prints on it except those of the boy.
Frank looked at the body in the boot. He couldn’t even imagine the media’s reaction this time. How could they explain this new crime?
He didn’t give a damn about Durand and Roncaille, or their jobs. All he wanted was to stay on the case until he caught No One.
‘Do we know who the guy is?’
Morelli, standing on the other side of the car, came around and joined him. ‘No, Frank. He had no documents on him. Nothing at all.’
‘Well, we’ll find out soon enough. He’s young, judging from the skin. If the bastard followed his usual pattern, he’ll be someone well known, about thirty or thirty-five and good-looking. A guy whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some VIP will be along soon to report a missing person and then we’ll know who it is. Let’s try to figure it out first.’
An agent approached them.
‘Sergeant.’
‘What is it, Bertrand?’
‘Just an idea, sir. Probably wrong, but . . .’
‘What is it?’
‘His shoes, sergeant.’
‘What about them?’
The agent shrugged his shoulders.
‘They’re sailing shoes, sir. I know, because I have a pair.’
‘There are tons of shoes like that, and I don’t think . . .’
Frank, who was beginning to see where the agent was headed, interrupted Morelli. ‘Let him finish, Claude. Go on, Bertrand.’
‘Next to the logo, these shoes also have a cigarette brand name on them. It might be a sponsor. And since right now . . .’
Frank suddenly remembered the regatta. He put his hand on the agent’s shoulder. ‘. . . Since the Grand Mistral, or whatever it’s called, is on now, he might be involved in that. Nice work, Bertrand. Nice work.’
Frank made the comment in a voice loud enough for the other agents to hear him. Bertrand returned to them as if he were the sailor on the Santa Maria who had cried ‘Land ahoy’ to Christopher Columbus.
‘Claude, it sounds plausible,’ Frank said, taking Morelli aside. ‘Let’s look into it. We’ve played all our other cards already. There’s nothing to lose.’
The blue forensic van turned the corner of Rue Raymond and a policeman moved the barricades to let it through. Frank nodded towards the van.
‘I don’t think I need to tell you, but remind them to get the victim’s fingerprints first. In that condition, it’s the only way we can identify him. His dentist might not be available right away to provide his dental records.’
Morelli looked despondent. It was hard to accept that another murder had taken place. Frank let him give the forensic people instructions and headed up to his office. He thought of Helena, summoning up the sound of her voice on the phone, frightened but so confident when she had told him she loved him. The woman who was his salvation was only a few miles way. The world he was striving for was just within reach, but there were two men blocking his way.
First, there was No One, whose homicidal fury meant that he would keep on killing innocent victims until he was stopped. Second, there was General Parker, who killed everything good that stood in his way, until someone did the same to him.
And Frank wanted to be that someone.
Durand, Roncaille, the Minister of State, the Prince, and even the President of the United States could think whatever they liked. Frank felt like a mere workman, far from the rooms where the plans were made. He was the one who stood before the walls to be demolished and rebuilt, in the midst of the cement dust and the smell of mortar. He was the one who had to see the mutilated, flayed bodies and smell the stench of gunpowder and blood. He didn’t want to write immortal pages. All he wanted to do was write a report explaining how and why the man who had committed so many murders was locked in jail.
Then he would think about Parker. With all his psychotic delirium, No One had taught Frank something important. To be ferocious in the pursuit of his goals. And that is exactly how he would pursue the general. With a ferocity that would surprise even Parker, a master of it.
When he got back to the office, he sat down at the desk and tried to call Helena. Her mobile was off. She was probably no longer alone and didn’t want to risk the phone suddenly ringing and revealing that she had one. He imagined her in the house with her jailers, Nathan Parker and Ryan Mosse, and Stuart, her only consolation.
He sat thinking for quite some time, his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Wherever he turned, he found a closed door. Still, he felt that the solution was right there, within reach. There was no doubt as to the effort they were making, or their capabilities. Every one of the men involved in the investigation had a long record of experience. All they were missing was that tiny speck of luck, that crucial ingredient for success. And it was absurd that their relentless bad luck kept happening right there in Monaco, the city of casinos, where WINNING IS EASY is written on every slot machine. Frank wished he could stand in front of a machine and insert enough coins to spin the wheels until the name of the place where Jean-Loup Verdier was hiding would appear.
The door of the office opened suddenly and Morelli burst in, so excited that he forgot to knock.
‘Frank, a stroke of luck.’
Speak of the Devil and let’s hope it really is the Devil this time and not just a ghost.
‘What is it?’
‘A couple of people have come to file charges – well, not really charges, but to express their concern.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A member of the team of Try for the Sun, a boat in the Grand Mistral, is missing.’
Frank took his hands from behind his head and waited for the rest. Morelli went on.
‘He had a date with a girl last night, at the Fontvieille pier. When she drove by to pick him up, he wasn’t there. The girl is a hardass type and this morning she went back to the sponsor’s yacht he’s on to give him a piece of her mind – he can’t treat a woman like her that way, etcetera . . . Faced with her female fury, a sailor went to call him in his cabin but it was empty. The bed hadn’t been slept in.’
‘Couldn’t he have made it before he went out this morning?’
‘Maybe, but not likely. The sailors on the yacht ge
t up early and someone would have seen him. And his clothes from last night were scattered all over the cabin. It was the official uniform of the Try for the Sun team that he had been wearing at last night’s ceremonies, a sign that he had gone back to change . . .’
‘It’s not conclusive evidence, but we have to follow everything. Compare the prints of the corpse with those in the cabin. That’s the surest way . . .’
‘I already gave the orders. And I told an agent in the area to isolate the cabin. Someone from forensics is on his way to Fontvieille.’
‘What do you think?’
‘The missing person meets No One’s criteria. He’s thirty-three, good-looking, moderately well-known in the sailing world . . . an American, Hudson McCormack.’
When he heard the name, Frank started so abruptly that Morelli was afraid he would fall off the chair.
‘What’s the name again?’
‘Hudson McCormack. He’s a lawyer from New York.’ Frank stood up. ‘I know, Claude. I know exactly who he is. That is, I don’t know him at all, but he’s the person I told you about, the one I wanted to have watched.’
Morelli slipped a hand in his back pocket and pulled out the floppy disk Frank had given him the day before.
‘The disk’s right here. I just didn’t have time yesterday. I was going to take care of it today.’
Frank and Morelli were thinking the same thing. They both knew what putting off that surveillance had meant. If there had been a man watching McCormack the day before, he might still be alive and they might have Jean-Loup behind bars.