Hulot leaned his elbows on the table. Frank sat in silence, expressionless, his legs crossed. Nicolas had to struggle to continue.
‘We don’t have a thing. Absolutely nothing. Our man was probably wearing a wetsuit the whole time, including shoes, gloves and cap. In other words, no skin, no hair. The handprints and footprints he left are of such a common physical type that it could be anyone.’ Hulot paused. Frank’s black eyes glowed dully like coal. ‘We’ve started looking into the victims. Two people like that, you can imagine the number of people they met in the lives they led, all over the world . . .’
Suddenly, the inspector’s demeanour changed, struck by the force of an idea.
‘Why don’t you help me, Frank? I can call your boss. I can ask him to call the right people and have you join the investigation. You’re prepared and familiar with the facts. We’ve worked together before, after all. And one of the victims was an American citizen. You’re just the man for a case like this. You speak French and Italian perfectly; you know how us European cops do things and how we think. You’re the right man in the right place.’
‘No, Nicolas.’ His voice was cold and hard. ‘You and I don’t have the same memories any more. I’m not the man I used to be. I’ll never be that again.’
‘Has it never occurred to you,’ said the inspector, getting up from his chair, ‘that what happened to Harriet might not be your fault?’ He went around the desk and leaned against it, standing in front of Frank and leaning towards him slightly, for more emphasis. ‘Or at least not entirely?’
Frank turned his head and looked out of the window. His jaw contracted as if he wanted to bite back an answer he’d already given too many times. His silence increased Hulot’s anger and the inspector raised his voice slightly.
‘God damn it, Frank! You know what happened. You saw it with your own eyes. There’s a murderer out there who has already killed two people and will probably kill again. I don’t know what exactly you’ve got on your mind, but don’t you think that stopping this maniac might be a way out for you? Think about it – could helping others be a way to help yourself? Help yourself to go home?
Frank brought his gaze back to his friend. His look said he felt like a man who could go anywhere and still feel that he did not belong.
‘No.’ That single syllable uttered in such a calm voice erected a wall between them. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
There was a knock at the door and Claude Morelli walked in without waiting for an answer.
‘Inspector . . .’
‘What is it, Morelli?’
‘There’s someone from Radio Monte Carlo outside.’
‘Tell him I’m not talking to reporters now. There’ll be a press conference later, whenever the chief decides.’
‘He’s not a reporter, inspector. He’s a deejay who hosts an evening radio show. He came with the station manager. They read the papers and they say they have some information on the two crimes at the harbour.’
Hulot did not know how to take the news. Anything useful was like manna from heaven. The thing he was afraid of was a parade of maniacs convinced that they knew everything about the homicides, or even wanting to confess that they were the killers. But he could not afford to leave any stone unturned.
He blew out his cheeks. ‘Show them in.’
Morelli went out and it seemed like a prearranged signal for Frank, who got up and retreated to the door just as Morelli came back, accompanied by a young man with long, black hair, about thirty, and an older man, about forty-five. Frank glanced at them and stood aside to let them in, then took advantage of the occasion to slip through the half-open door.
‘Frank,’ called Hulot after him. ‘Sure you don’t want to stay?’ Frank Ottobre left the room without a word and closed the door behind him.
NINE
Outside police headquarters, Frank turned left on Rue Suffren Raymond and soon found himself walking down Boulevard Albert Premier, the road that ran along the coast. A crane moved lazily against the blue sky. The crew was still at work dismantling the Grand Prix bleachers and piling them on to long trucks.
Everything was happening by the rules. Frank crossed the street and stopped on the promenade in front of the harbour to watch the boats coming and going. There was no trace of what had happened on the wharf. The Beneteau had been towed away somewhere safe so that the police could get to it during the investigation. The Baglietto and the other boat that had been rammed were still there, gently nudging each other’s fenders as the waves brought them close. The police barricades had been removed. There was nothing left to see.
The harbour cafe had resumed its normal activity. What had happened was probably attracting more customers, curiosity seekers who wanted to be at the centre of things. Maybe the young sailor who had discovered the bodies was there, enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame and recounting what he had seen. Or maybe he was staring silently into a glass, trying to forget.
Frank sat down on a stone bench. A boy sped past on Rollerblades, followed by a younger girl having trouble with her skates and whimpering for him to slow down. A man with a black labrador was patiently waiting for his dog to finish responding to the call of nature. Then he took out a plastic bag and a little shovel from his pocket and scooped up the evidence, diligently depositing it in the bin.
Ordinary people. Like everybody else, but with a little more money and happiness, or so it seemed. Maybe it was all just a show and nothing more. A cage was still a cage, even if it was made of gold, and every person created his own destiny. Everyone built his own life or destroyed it, according to the rules he alone invented. Or rules he refused to make. There was no escape.
A yacht was motoring out of the harbour. From the stern, a blonde woman in a blue swimsuit waved goodbye to someone on the shore. For a moment the sea and its reflections stirred his memory.
After he had left the hospital he and Harriet had rented a cottage in an isolated spot on the Georgia coast. It was a wooden house with a red-tile roof built about 100 yards from the shore, in the middle of the dunes. There was a veranda with large sliding glass doors that opened in the summer, transforming it into a patio.
At night they listened to the wind blowing through the sparse vegetation and the sound of the waves hitting the beach. In bed, he could feel his wife hold him tightly before falling asleep. Her frantic need to assure herselfofhispresence,asifshecouldnotreallyconvinceherselfthathe was still there with her, alive.
During the day they lay on the beach, sunbathed and swam. The stretch of coastline was practically deserted. People who loved the sea and the life of crowded beaches went elsewhere, to the ‘in’ places, to watch bodybuilders working out or girls with silicon breasts strutting by as if the were auditioning for Baywatch. Lying there on the towel, Frank could expose his thin body to the sun without being ashamed of the red scars or the painful mark of the heart operation where they took out the piece of metal that had nearly killed him.
Sometimes Harriet traced the sensitive flesh of the scars with her fingers, and tears glistened in her eyes. Sometimes silence fell between them, when they both thought the same thing, remembering the suffering of those last months and the toll it had taken. They did not have the courage to look at each other then. They each looked out at their own piece of ocean until one of them silently found the strength to turn and embrace the other.
From time to time, they did some shopping in Honesty, a fishing village that was the nearest town and looked more like Scotland than America. It was a peaceful little place, without the slightest ambition of becoming a tourist resort. The wooden houses all looked more or less alike and were built along a street that ran parallel to the ocean, where a concrete barrier above the rocks stopped the waves during winter storms.
They ate in a restaurant with large windows across from the pier, built on struts with a wooden floor that echoed with the waiters’ steps. They drank chilled white wine that misted their glasses, and they ate freshly caught lobster
, staining their fingers and splashing their clothes when they tried to crack open the claws. Harriet and Frank laughed like children. They seemed to be thinking about nothing. They spoke about nothing. Until the phone call.
They were at home and Frank was slicing vegetables for the salad. There was a delicious smell offish and potatoes baking in the oven. The wind outside swirled the sand from the peaks of the dunes; the ocean was covered with white foam. The sails of a few windsurfers cut swiftly through the air. Harriet was sitting in a cane chair on the veranda the whistling of the wind kept her from hearing the phone. He had stuck his head out the kitchen door with a large red pepper in his hand.
‘Phone, Harriet. Can you answer? My hands are dirty.’
His wife had gone over to the old wall phone that was ringing with its old-fashioned sound. She had picked up the receiver and he stood there watching her.
‘Hello?’
Her face had changed, the way faces do when they hear bad news. Her smile had faded and she had stood in silence for a moment. Then, she had put down the receiver and looked at Frank with an intensity that would torment him for a long time.
‘It’s for you. It’s Homer,’ she had said, turning and going back to the veranda without another word. He had gone to the phone and picked up thereceiver,stillwarmfromhiswife’shand.
‘Yes?’
‘Frank, it’s Homer Woods. How’re you doing?’
‘Fine.’
‘Really fine?’
‘Yes.’
‘We got them.’ Homer spoke as if their last conversation had taken place ten minutes before. If he had noticed Frank’s monosyllabic replies, he had not let on.
‘Who?’
‘The Larkins. We caught them red-handed this time. Without any bombs. There was a gunfight and Jeff Larkin got killed. There was a mountain of drugs and a bigger mountain of cash. And papers. We have promising new leads. With a little luck, there’s enough material to nail them all.’
‘Fine.’He had repeated the same word, in the same tone of voice, but his boss hadn’t picked up on it this time either. He imagined Homer Woods in his panelled office, sitting at his desk, phone in hand, his blue eyes framed by gold-rimmed glasses, as immutable as his grey three-piece and blue button-down shirt.
‘Frank, we got to the Larkins mostly because of your work, yours and Cooper’s. Everyone here knows it and I wanted to tell you. When do you think you’re coming back?’
‘I don’t know, to be honest. Soon.’
‘Okay, I don’t want to pressure you. But remember what I said.’
‘Okay, Homer. Thanks.’ He had hung up and gone out to look for Harriet. She was sitting on the veranda watching the two kids dismantle their sailboards and load them on to their jeep.
He had sat down in silence next to her on the wooden bench. They had watched the beach until the jeep was gone. It was as if that outside presence, though far away, had kept them from speaking.
‘He wants to know when you’re coming back to work, doesn’t he?’ Harriet had asked, breaking the silence.
‘Yes.’ There had never been lies between them and Frank had no intention of starting now.
‘Do you want to?’
‘Harriet,’ Frank had said, ‘I’m a policeman.’ He had turned to her but Harriet had carefully avoided meeting his gaze. He, too, had gone back to watching the ocean; the waves chasing each other in the wind, white with foam. I didn’t choose this life because I had to. I like it. I’ve always wanted to do what I do and I don’t know if I could adjust to doing anything else. I don’t even think I’d know how. As my grandfather always said, you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.’ He had stood up and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, now slightly stiff. ‘Harriet, I don’t know whether I’m square or round. But I don’t want to change.’
He had gone back into the house and when he had come out a while later to look for her, she had disappeared. Her footprints on the sand in front of the house went in the direction of the dunes. He had seen her walking in the distance by the shore, a tiny figure with hair flying in the wind. He had followed her with his gaze until two other dunes had hidden her from view. He thought she wanted to be alone and that it was only right. He had gone back into the house and sat down at the table, in front of food he would never want to eat.
Suddenly, he had not felt so sure about what he’d said earlier. Maybe there was another life for the two of them. Maybe someone who was born square couldn’t become round, but he could try to round off the edges so that nobody would be hurt. Especially those he loved. He had decided to give himself a night to think it over. He would talk to her about it the next morning. He was sure that together they could find a solution.
There was never to be a next morning for the two of them.
He had waited until late afternoon for Harriet to return. As the sun set and the shadows of the dunes lengthened over the beach like dark fingers, he had seen two figures walking slowly along the shore. The reflection of the fiery sunset had made him narrow his eyes. They were still too far away for him to make them out clearly. Watching through the open window, Frank could see the footprints they left with every step, a trail that started from the dunes on the horizon. Their jackets flapped in the breeze, their silhouettes shimmering in the sea air. When they were near enough for him to see them clearly, Frank realized that one of them was the sheriff from Honesty.
He had felt the anxiety rise up inside him as he finally came face-to-face with the man who he considered more an accountant than a policeman. But Frank’s worst fears were about to become a reality as, holding his hat in his hand and trying to avoid Frank’s eyes as much as possible, the sheriff had told him what had happened.
A couple of hours earlier, some fishermen had been sailing a few hundred yards from the coast and they had seen a woman fitting Harriet’s description. She was standing at the top of a cliff, strangely jutting out above the coastal dunes. She was alone and looking out to sea. When they were just about opposite her, she had jumped. Not seeing her emerge from the water, the fishermen had immediately turned their boat around to go to the rescue. One of them had dived into the ocean right where she had jumped but they could not find her. They had called the police right away and started searching. So far they had found nothing.
The ocean had returned Harriet’s body two days later, when the current had carried it to an inlet a couple of miles south of the coast.
When he had identified her body, Frank had felt like an assassin before his victim. He had looked at the face of his wife lying on the mortuary slab and, nodding, confirmed both Harriet’s identity and his own lie sentence. There had been no inquest thanks to the fishermen’s testimony, but that did not help to free Frank of the remorse consuming him. He had been so busy taking care of himself that he had not noticed Harriet’s deep depression. No one had noticed it. But that was no excuse. He should have noticed his wife s agitation. He was supposed to understand. All the signals had been there, but in his own delirium of self-pity, he had ignored them. And their conversation after Homer’s phone call had been the last straw. When you got right down to it, he was neither square nor round. Just blind.
He had left town with his wife’s body in a coffin without even going back to the house to pack.
‘Mummy, there’s a man crying.’
The child’s voice shook Frank from his trance. Next to him, the mother of the little blonde girl in a blue dress hushed her and smiled at him in embarrassment. She hurried away, pulling her daughter by the hand.
Frank did not realize that he was crying, nor for how long. His tears came from far away. They were not tears of salvation, nor oblivion, but just relief. A small truce to let him breathe for a moment, feel the heat of the sun, see the colour of the sea, and listen to his heart beating under his shirt without the sound of death, just for once. He was paying the price for Harriet’s death, sitting on a bench in the garden of the St James Clinic where they had admitted him on the verge of a nervous brea
kdown. He had understood it definitively months later, with the World Trade Center disaster, when he had watched on television as the buildings fell. Men hurtling planes against skyscrapers in the name of God, while someone sitting comfortably in an office knew how to exploit their derangement on the stock market. Other men earned their living by selling land mines, and at Christmas they bought their children presents with money earned by killing and maiming someone else’s children. Conscience was an accessory whose value was tied to fluctuations in the price of oil. And in the middle of all that, it was no surprise if, from time to time, there was someone who wrote his own destiny in blood.
I kill . . .
Remorse for Harriet’s death was a cruel travelling companion that would never leave his side. It alone would be enough punishment for a lifetime. He would never forget until his dying breath. And he would never be able to forgive himself. He could not end the insanity in the world. He could only try to end his own, hope that those who could would follow his example, and erase those two words or others like them. He sat on the bench and cried, ignoring the curious passers-by until he had no tears left.
Then he got up slowly and headed over to police headquarters.
TEN
‘I kill . . .’
The voice hung in the air and seemed to feed off the faint drone of the car engine, reverberating like an echo. Inspector Hulot pressed a button on the car radio and the cassette stopped on the voice of Jean-Loup Verdier as he’d struggled to end the programme. After Hulot’s conversation with the deejay and Robert Bikjalo, the manager of Radio Monte Carlo, a small, cruel wisp of hope had peeped out from behind the mountain that the investigators were trying desperately to climb.
There was a slight chance that it could have been a crank call, a bizarre accident, a coincidence caused by some one-in-a-million conjunction of the stars. But those two words, ‘I kill,’ hurled like a threat at the end of the show, were the same as those left on the table on the yacht, written in blood.