Halfway to Jean-Loup’s house, he had got thirsty and had drunk the entire can of Coke that he had brought from home. He was a little unhappy because he had meant to share it with Jean-Loup, but it was a hot day and his mouth was dry and his friend certainly wouldn’t mind such a little thing. And he still had a can of Schweppes left.
He was sweaty on reaching Jean-Loup’s house and thought that it would probably have been a good idea to bring another T-shirt to change into. But it wasn’t a problem. He knew that Jean-Loup had a chest in his laundry room where he kept T-shirts for doing jobs around the house. If his shirt was too sweaty, Jean-Loup would lend him another one, which he would return after his mother washed and ironed it. It had happened once before when he was in the pool and his shirt had fallen in the water and Jean-Loup had lent him a blue one that said ‘Martini-Racing’. He had thought that Jean-Loup was lending it to him, but it was a present.
The first thing he wanted to do was find the key. He found the aluminium mailbox inside the gate with the words JEAN-LOUP VERDIER written in dark green paint, the same colour as the bars. He stuck his hand underneath the metal box. Under his fingers, he felt something that seemed like a key attached with a dried-out piece of chewing gum.
He was about to pull off the key when a car drove up to the construction site not far from the gate. Luckily, Pierrot was covered by a bush and the trunk of a cypress tree and he couldn’t be seen from the car. He saw the American in that blue car, the one who was always with the kind inspector but then he wasn’t any more because someone said that the inspector was dead. Pierrot moved away quickly so the man wouldn’t see him. If he did, he’d ask him what he was doing there and would take him home to his mother.
He went down the road, following the asphalt and staying under cover. After he passed the steep part that made his head spin just from looking at it, he climbed over the guardrail and found himself in a bush that completely covered him. From his observation point he could see the courtyard of Jean-Loup’s house and watch with curiosity as a bunch of people walked back and forth, mostly policemen dressed in blue and a few in normal clothes. There was also the one who had come to the station and never smiled when he spoke, but smiled all the time when he spoke to Barbara.
He stayed in his hiding place for what seemed like a very long time, until everyone had gone and the courtyard was empty. The last one to go, the American, had left the garage door open. It was lucky that Pierrot was there to take care of his friend’s house. Now he could go and make sure the records were okay, and before he left he would close the garage door. Otherwise, anyone could come in and steal whatever they wanted.
He got up slowly from the ground and looked around. His knees hurt from crouching for so long and his legs had fallen asleep. He started stamping his feet on the ground, the way his mother had taught him. In his own small way, Pierrot decided on a plan of action. He couldn’t reach the courtyard from where he was because of the very steep part along the cliff by the sea. So he had to go up the paved road and down again to see if he could climb over the gate.
He adjusted his knapsack on his shoulders and got ready for the climb.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed some movement in the bushes, lower down. He thought maybe he was mistaken. How could anyone be below him? He would have seen them pass by. But just to make sure, he crouched back down in the bushes, parting the branches with his hands so that he could see better. Nothing happened for a while and he was beginning to think he had been wrong. Then he saw something else move in the bushes and held his hand over his eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun.
What he saw made his mouth drop open in surprise. Right below him, dressed in green and brown as if he were part of the earth and the vegetation, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, was his friend Jean-Loup, crawling out from under a tangle of shrubs. Pierrot held his breath. If it were up to him, he would have jumped and cried out that he was there, but maybe it wasn’t a good idea because if not all the policemen were gone, someone might see them. He decided to climb up a little higher and move to the right so that he would be covered by the embankment before making his presence known to Jean-Loup.
He crept quietly, trying to imitate the movements of his friend below him who was going in and out of the bushes without rustling a single leaf. Finally, he reached a point where it was impossible to see any further and he realized it was the perfect position. A piece of rock jutted out below him, just large enough to stand on and call out to Jean-Loup without being seen by the policemen.
He climbed down carefully to get as close to the rock as possible. He bent his legs, then raised his arms to the sky and jumped. As soon as his feet hit the ground, the brittle piece of rock broke under his weight and Pierrot rolled down into the void with a scream.
SIXTY-ONE
Frank moved forward very slowly in the pitch dark.
After careful examination of the tunnel, he had seen that it was high enough for him to crawl through on all fours, which was what he decided to do. It was not the most comfortable position, but certainly the least risky. He had thought with a bitter smile that he was literally going to ‘the dark side’.
After a few steps he no longer had the help of the dim light coming from behind and he had to continue in total darkness. He held the gun in his right hand and leaned his body against the wall on the left, bending slightly backward to use his free hand as a sort of advance guard to make sure that there were no obstacles or, worse, holes he could fall into. If that happened, he’d be stuck there for all time.
He moved cautiously, step by step. His legs were beginning to hurt, especially his right knee. That was the knee with torn ligaments from a college football game that had ended his playing career and kept him from pursuing professional football. He usually stayed in good enough shape to avoid problems, but he had trained very little recently and the position he was in would have bothered anyone’s knees, even those of a weight-lifter. He shivered slightly. It wasn’t warm in there. Still, nervousness made him sweat, soaking the light material of his shirt. There was a dank smell of wet leaves and humidity in the tunnel, as well as of the mildewed concrete with which it was lined. He occasionally brushed against a root that had burrowed between the joints of the piping. It had startled him the first time and he had pulled back his hand as if he had been burned. The pipe obviously led outside and some animal could easily have found its way in and made a comfortable den. Frank was not skittish, but the idea of touching a grass snake or a rat made him shudder.
In this long manhunt, his fantasy had finally come true. This was the situation he’d imagined every time he spoke of No One. A slow, creeping, furtive advance, in the cold and damp domain of rats. It described their investigation perfectly: a tiring, step-by-step process done completely in the dark, searching for a slim ray of light to lead them out of the blackness.
Let us perish in the light of day . . .
In the pitch dark, the famous passage of Ajax’s prayer from the Iliad came to mind. He’d studied it in high school, a million years ago. The Trojans and the Achaeans were fighting near the ships and Jove had sent fog to block the vision of the Greeks, who were losing. At that point, Ajax sent up a prayer to the father of all the gods, a heartfelt prayer not for his own safety, but for the permission to approach destruction in the sunlight. Frank remembered the words of his favourite hero.
His concentration returned as he felt the tunnel slope down. The pavement, or rather the part under his feet, had pitched steeply. It probably didn’t mean that the pipe was now unworkable. Basically, it had been built for human use and the sloping was surely accidental rather than intentional. They must have found a vein of rock during construction and had been forced to go downwards in order to continue.
He decided to shuffle forward on his backside rather than crawl and proceeded slowly, doubling his caution. Frank wasn’t particularly worried about the downward slope. His analysis before had been right, not to mention the fact that
No One had gone through here many times, back and forth, although he must have done so much more easily since he knew the terrain and certainly carried a torch.
Frank, on the other hand, was in total darkness and had no idea what lay ahead. Or even what was next to him. But it was the thought of Jean-Loup that made him more careful. He knew how dangerously smart the man was, and it was not unlikely that he had set traps for a possible intruder.
He wondered again who Jean-Loup Verdier could be and, most of all, who had created him. It was now obvious that he was not just a psychopath, someone weak and frustrated who committed a series of crimes to get attention and be on TV. That superficial explanation might cover most of the cases he knew, but it was as far from No One as the earth from the sun. Most serial killers were people with lower than average intelligence who were consumed for the most part by an uncontrollable force. They usually accepted the handcuffs with a sigh of relief.
Not Jean-Loup. There was something different about him. The corpse in its transparent coffin testified to his madness. His mind undoubtedly contained thoughts that would shock even the most jaded psychiatrist. But the madness ended there: Jean-Loup was strong, highly intelligent, well prepared and trained to fight. He was a genuine combatant. With cynical ease, he had killed Jochen Welder and Roby Stricker, two trained athletes. The haste with which he had disposed of the three policemen in his own house was further confirmation of his abilities, if any more were needed. There seemed to be two people in him, in the same body, two different natures that cancelled each other out. Perhaps the best definition was the one he had given himself: I am someone and no one.
He was an extremely dangerous man and had to be treated as such. Frank did not feel that he was being unnecessarily paranoid. Sometimes caution means the difference between life and death.
Frank knew that only too well, since the only time he had been impulsive and rushed in without thinking, he had awoken in a hospital bed after an explosion and fifteen days in a coma. If he ever forgot, he had scars all over his body to remind him.
He didn’t want to take any more unnecessary risks. He owed it to himself, whether or not he decided to remain a policeman. He owed it to the woman who was waiting for him in the departure lounge of Nice airport. And he owed it to Harriet, the promise that he would never forget.
He continued to inch forward, trying to make as little noise as possible. Jean-Loup could be anywhere at that moment, but he might still be crouching at the far end of the tunnel. After all, this underground passage couldn’t go all the way to Menton. It had to open up somewhere east of the house, on the slope of the mountain.
There was probably still a lot of confusion outside: the police roadblocks, the lines of cars, people getting out and rubbernecking, asking each other what was going on. It wouldn’t be hard to lose oneself in that crowd. Yes, Jean-Loup’s pictures had been in all the papers and shown on TV news all over Europe, but Frank had lost faith in those measures long ago. Ordinary people usually only glanced superficially at the people around them. All Jean-Loup had to do was cut his hair and put on a pair of dark glasses to be fairly sure that he could mix in a crowd.
But the roads were still full of cops who were on the alert and had their eyes wide open. And that was something else. They would be suspicious if someone just appeared out of the bushes and climbed down to the side of the road. That would definitely raise the alarm and with everything that had happened, the police would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Then again, his man might have found a less congested place to come out of hiding.
Frank kept shuffling on. The sound of his trousers scraping along the bottom of the tunnel sounded like Niagara Falls. The constant abrasion started to hurt. He stopped for a moment to settle into a more comfortable position and decided to go back to crawling. As he changed position, the beep of his mobile phone coming within range of a signal sounded like a church bell in the absolute silence of a country night. That signal might have betrayed his presence, but it also assured him that the exit was near.
He squinted in the darkness, thinking that he could see points of light before him, like white chalk marks on a blackboard. He tried to speed up without abandoning his caution, and his heart raced even faster. Frank’s left hand groped along the concrete wall, his right pressed against the trigger, and his knee hurt like hell, but there was a hint of light in front of him and perhaps a presence lurking that he could not afford to underestimate. The white marks on the blackboard danced, suspended in the air as he approached, and grew slowly larger. Frank realized that the tunnel ended near a bush and that he was seeing the light filtered through the branches. There was probably a breeze swaying the leaves, which was why the points of light looked like fireflies to his eyes, tricked by the darkness.
Suddenly, from outside, he heard the echo of a desperate scream. Frank threw caution to the wind and, as quickly as possible, he reached the thicket of shrubs hiding the entrance to the tunnel. Pushing the branches to one side, he slowly put out his head. The exit was behind a large bush that completely covered the circumference of the concrete pipe.
The scream was repeated. Frank stood up tentatively, his knee protesting in pain. He looked around. The bush was on a fairly level area, a sort of natural terrace on the side of the mountain, covered with occasional trees with thin trunks. The trees were wrapped with ivy and had shrubs of Mediterranean maquis at their base. Behind him, the twin houses and their carefully tended gardens rose like touchstones. The road was fifty yards above him on his left. He was surprised not to be further from his starting point after that long, awkward, shuffling journey. Frank saw something moving halfway down the slope that separated him from the road. A figure in a green shirt and khaki-coloured trousers with a dark canvas bag slung over his shoulder was carefully climbing up through the bushes towards the guard-rail.
Frank would have recognized that man anywhere, among thousands of others and from a million miles away. He brought the Glock up to his eyeline, pointing it with both hands. He centred his target in the gunsights and finally shouted out the words he had been yearning to say for so long.
‘Stop right where you are, Jean-Loup! I’m aiming at you. Don’t make me shoot. Put your hands in the air, kneel down on the ground, and don’t move. Now!’
Jean-Loup turned his head in Frank’s direction. He gave no sign that he recognized him or understood what he had said, and didn’t seem to have any intention of giving in to his request. Despite the fact that he was close enough to see the gun in Frank’s hands, he continued to climb, moving further left. Frank’s finger contracted over the trigger of the Glock.
The scream was repeated, loud and sharp.
Jean-Loup answered, bending his head. ‘Hold on tight, Pierrot, I’m on my way. Don’t worry. I’m coming down to get you.’
Frank moved his eyes to where Jean-Loup was looking. He could see Pierrot, his hands grasping a small tree trunk on the side of the road. He was groping with his feet to find some ground but every time he tried to grip the rock, the fragile terrain crumbled and the boy found himself hanging in midair.
Below him, the steep slope plummeted down. It wasn’t really a sheer cliff, but if Pierrot let go he would fall and bounce like a rag doll straight into the ravine. If he let go, there would be no hope.
‘Hurry, Jean-Loup. I can’t hold on any more. My hands hurt.’ Frank could see how tired the boy was and he could hear the fear in his voice. But he also heard something else, the absolute faith that Jean-Loup, the deejay, the serial killer, the voice of the Devil, his best friend, would come to save him. Frank released the tension on the trigger slightly as he realized what Jean-Loup was doing.
He wasn’t running away. He was going to save Pierrot.
Escape had probably been Jean-Loup’s original intention and things had undoubtedly unfolded as Frank had imagined. He had waited in the tunnel until the commotion died down and he could slip out to evade the police one last time. Then he had seen Pierrot in dange
r. He had probably wondered why Pierrot was there, hanging from a tree calling for help in his terrified child’s voice. In a split second, he had sized up the situation and made a choice. Now he was acting on it.
Frank felt a dull anger rush through him, the result of his frustration. He had been waiting for that moment for so long and now that he had his gun trained on the man he had been hunting so desperately, he couldn’t shoot. He gripped his weapon more firmly than ever. Just beyond the notch of his pistol sights was the body of Jean-Loup, moving to the place where his young friend was hanging.
Jean-Loup reached Pierrot, dangling slightly below him. The hole that the boy’s fall had made in the terrain lay between them. It was too far for Jean-Loup to reach and pull him up.
‘I’m right here, Pierrot,’ Jean-Loup said to the boy in his warm, deep voice. ‘I’m coming. Stay calm and everything will be all right. But you have to hold on tight and stay calm. Understand?’
Despite the danger, Pierrot answered with one of his solemn nods. His eyes were huge with fear but he was certain that his friend would save him.
Frank watched as Jean-Loup put the bag he was carrying on the ground and started slipping off his belt. He didn’t know how Jean-Loup planned to get Pierrot out of danger. The only thing Frank could do was stand there watching, keeping him in the sights of his gun.
Jean-Loup had just finished removing his belt when they heard the loud hiss of a blowgun and a gust of air hit the ground next to him. He bent down suddenly and it was that instinctive movement that saved his life. Another hiss and gust of air hit exactly where he had been standing a fraction of a second earlier. Frank turned sharply and looked up. On the edge of the slope, standing next to the guard-rail was Captain Ryan Mosse, holding a huge automatic weapon with a silencer.